by Andrea Ring
I watch her wiggle her tongue around in her mouth.
“I’m not burned. What nonsense is this?”
Dad and I exchange a glance over her head. Does Grandma not remember scalding herself thirty seconds ago, or did she actually heal herself?
I clean up the spill while Dad pours Grandma another cup of tea. He adds two ice cubes to cool it down before handing it to her.
“Do you have honey?” she asks.
“Mom, you don’t put honey in your tea,” Dad points out.
“So a girl can’t change her mind?”
“Give her some honey, Dad,” I say, giving the floor a final swipe.
Grandma looks down at me. “Why are you on the floor?”
“I’m just cleaning up a spill, Grandma,” I say.
“You should be more careful,” she says. “I could slip and fall.”
“That’s why I’m cleaning up,” I say, getting to my feet.
She holds her cup out to me. “I’d like some honey in my tea, please.”
“I don’t have honey, Mom,” Dad says.
“Who doesn’t have honey? You have a kitchen. A kitchen without honey is like…a body without a soul.”
“I’m a single guy with a son. Not a lot of honey-eating going on here,” he says.
I squat down next to Grandma. “Have you known anybody without a soul, Grandma?” I ask her.
She laughs. “That would be an impossible thing. I’ve known people without hearts, that’s for damn sure. But a soul? We don’t work without a soul.”
“Why not?”
She takes a small sip of tea, grimaces, and turns to me. “Let’s pretend you were walking in the woods, and you find a car. Maybe it’s a rusty piece of crap, maybe it’s a brand new Ferrari. Doesn’t matter. Do you assume the car grew out of the ground?”
“Of course not,” I say. “Someone made it.”
“Exactly. Now compare a car to a human body. Which is more complex?”
“The human body.”
“Yes. We have a maker. Complex systems cannot spontaneously occur from rock and dust. There is more to us than that.”
“But I can take that car and make it work,” I say. “I can fix it. I can give it gas and a new battery and I can make it come to life,” I tell her.
“And you cannot do that with a human body,” she says. “Dead is dead. Feed a dead body, water it, jump-start it with electricity, it’s not waking up.”
“Because the cells die,” I insist. “If I can re-grow the cells, or keep them from decaying, surely there’s a way to bring a body back.”
“If the soul has not returned to Heaven, perhaps. But at what cost? It costs us to heal. Our abilities do not work for free.”
I swallow hard at her words. “You know who I am?”
“Oh, Thomas,” she says, placing a hand on my cheek. “Do you know why I’ve lived so long? Because I stopped using my abilities. Thirty years without healing gave me enough life to come be here with you. Be choosy, Thomas. Be very choosy.”
I glance at Dad. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sixty-five years old and you’re what? Six? You don’t look six, by the way. But six-year-olds think they have all the time in the world. You don’t. Healing takes its toll.”
“What is she talking about?” I ask Dad.
He sits in a chair across the table from Grandma. “Mom, you’re seventy-five, and Thomas is sixteen. You’ve lived an amazing life.”
Grandma laughs. “Seventy-five! That’s ridiculous. We’re lucky if we hit fifty. Harry knew that, but it turned out he was the one who went first. Ironic.”
I stand up and glare at Dad. “What is she talking about?”
Grandma sips her tea again. “Do we have any honey?”
Then the front door opens, and Tessa and Erica interrupt us.
***
The five of us have dinner, and then Dad tucks Grandma into bed. At my discreet direction to Tessa, the girls make a hasty exit afterward.
“I guess it’s too much to hope for that you want to have a father-son movie night,” Dad says with a small smile.
I scowl. “Have a seat. You and I need to talk.”
Dad settles in his recliner and kicks his feet up. I sit on the edge of the couch.
“First. What exactly do you want me to do with Grandma?”
Dad raises an eyebrow, and his surprise seems genuine. It’s not too often that I surprise him.
But he doesn’t crack. He stays silent.
“I heard you tell Erica, you’d ‘give me the opportunity’ to do it. I assume you mean heal her. Explain yourself.”
“Thomas, you heard me wrong—”
“Bullshit. Here’s the deal. I’m giving you one opportunity to come clean. You tell me everything—what you want from me, what you have planned, who exactly might be following me, all of it. I may or may not agree to go along with you. That’s up to me. But if you refuse to be one hundred percent honest with me here and now, I’m leaving. I’m moving out, and I will never speak to you again. I won’t go back to the Attic and help Dacey and Tyrion. I won’t cooperate with you at all.”
Dad doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak.
And then he slowly lowers the recliner to its upright position and sits forward.
“No one specific is following you, but we have gotten some letters from a father of a coma patient, and they’re just short of threatening. He knows about your accident on the playground all those years ago. He knows of your relationship to Dr. Rumson and his newfound health. There’s something off about the whole thing.”
“Do you mean Cyrus Brooks?”
Dad startles. “He’s contacted you?”
“Not directly, but I’m aware of his case. Next.”
Dad scrubs a hand across his face. “You’ve been a controlled experiment since you were born.”
This floors me, but I force myself not to react.
“Basically…we don’t know of any Dwellers born outside of Dweller-family lines in the last hundred years. We all had the benefit of our parents’ training. You didn’t.”
“Old news, Dad,” I say as dismissively as I can, even though my body has started to shake. “You were a shitty parent. Tell me something I don’t know.”
Dad sighs. “There’s something about the act of discovery. It grows neurons in ways we don’t understand. We believe…you and Jack have abilities far beyond the rest of us. We believe your personal discoveries with your own bodies created these abilities.”
“Jack can do what I do?”
Dad shakes his head. “No. She has unique abilities, but they’re not the same as yours.”
“Like what?”
Dad stays silent.
“Like what?” I repeat.
“Heal your grandmother.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
I sit back and stare at my father. He’s conveniently turned the conversation away from Jack to something I can’t ignore. I know what he’s doing, but I decide to go along and revisit the Jack issue later, because Grandma is more important.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy on him.
“What was she talking about earlier?”
Dad shrugs. “Just her religious crap. Intelligent design theory.”
“I know that,” I say impatiently. “Stop evading. That stuff about living longer. Do we die earlier than most people?”
Dad clenches his jaw. “Think about it. The most basic thing we do is replicate cells. We make copies. A copy is not as good as the original. Eventually, the copies break down.”
“If we’re healing ourselves, yeah,” I say. “If I heal you, my cells aren’t replicating.”
“But you’re straining your body. The body is a machine. Machines wear out.”
I sit back on the couch. “You’re the oldest person at the Attic right now, aren’t you?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
“So this is why you’ve k
ept my healing to a minimum.”
Dad doesn’t answer.
I growl. “So now you want me to heal Grandma. Why now?”
“You’re ready.”
“I wasn’t ready last week.”
“You’ve always been ready.”
I gnash my teeth. My father is the most irritating person on the planet.
“So you’re going Yoda on me,” I tell him. “I’ve been a Jedi all along.”
“You’ve demonstrated maturity this week I wasn’t aware of,” he says. “Like your decisions about Tessa.”
God, he’s good. So my virginity makes me a man. Yeah, right.
But what’s his angle? He previously told me he thought I’d come to harm if I hooked up to Grandma, and he wasn’t willing to risk my life. Now he’s willing. What changed?
Actually, that was a lie he told me to keep me from doing it. He told Erica he’d give me the opportunity, that presumably he wants me to heal Grandma. Was he just trying to use reverse psychology all along? Tell me not to do something so I’d do it?
But he knows I generally follow the rules! He knows my every thought! He predicts my every action! Why tell me what to do, and then tell me the complete opposite?
He…
I close my gaping mouth, and I narrow my eyes.
I am an experiment.
I believe that’s the only truthful thing he’s said this entire conversation—besides the fact that we are machines that break down, which I fully believe, but which does not change my resolve. I made peace with my death a long time ago.
I am an experiment predicated on the fact that I’ve had no guidance, at least none that’s been consistent. The only consistent thing in my life has been the inconsistency. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what Dad wants or what he thinks I should do. How I use my abilities is up to me. Fuck him and his experiment.
“I’m going to explore Grandma’s body and figure out the problem,” I finally say. “Maybe I’ll fix it. I won’t know until I get in there.”
Dad nods.
“As for the rest, we’ll deal with it one issue at a time. Don’t think you’re off the hook.”
“Fair enough,” he says.
I stand. “Okay then. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
In Grandma’s bedroom doorway, I pause. She’s breathing lightly with her mouth open, soft snores drifting through the room. I lean on the doorjamb, excited but nervous.
Dad puts his hands on my shoulders. “You okay?”
I crane my neck to look back at him. “She’s going to be in pain until I can get hooked up to her brain and turn off the nerve signals. She’ll wake up and be frightened, might even fight me. Do we have anything we can give her?”
Dad squeezes lightly. “I already drugged her tea.”
I clench my fists and fight not to turn around and punch him. This whole thing is choreographed! He somehow knew it would come to this, that I would make this decision. How? Why am I so Goddamn easy to read?
Or maybe he would have drugged her every night of her stay, just in case.
I have no way of knowing.
So what do I want to do?
I stare at Grandma, her thin, frail little body barely making a bump under her covers. I want to heal her.
I shrug off Dad’s hands and make my way to her bed. I take my knife out of my pocket, kneel beside her, and take her hand in mine.
I repeat Psalm 41:3 in my head: The LORD sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.
Except I am not the Lord. And I know that. God, please just guide me and watch over us, I pray. Give me the strength to help her.
I take a deep breath, and it bolsters me. Maybe it’s God’s presence, maybe not—who’s to say?—but I feel ready.
I drop Grandma’s hand and slash open my palm. I grab Grandma’s hand again and make an identical cut. I press our hands together.
I grow my nerves, attach them, race along the connection up to Grandma’s brain. I hook up to her brain stem, block the nerve signals from her hand, and take a look around.
Her body and organs seem to be in decent shape. Her cells are slow to replicate, but I assume that’s because of her age. Her brain is intact, no degeneration, but I find the problem immediately—her neurons are not firing properly, particularly in the pre-frontal lobe, which is responsible for short-term memory.
I experiment a bit. I tell the neurons to fire. Some of them do, but others won’t. Then I step back and let them do their own thing. They don’t.
Okay, Grandma’s sleeping and drugged. No real reason for her short-term memory neurons to be firing. She needs to be awake.
I find the drug Dad supplied her with and quickly metabolize it. I gather potassium from my own cells, direct it to the cells in Grandma’s brain, and order her pre-frontal lobe neurons to fire. Then I stroke Grandma’s cheek with my free right hand. “Grandma?”
Her eyes flutter and settle open. She turns her head to me. “Thomas?”
I smile. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
She smiles back, then frowns, looking down her body at our hands resting on her stomach. Her eyes fly back to my face. “You’re so big. So…grown up. What are you doing?”
I swallow. “Healing you.”
She closes her eyes and sighs. “What have you done so far?” she asks.
“Nothing. Nothing permanent, anyway. I’m just diagnosing the problem.”
“And?”
“Maybe a potassium deficiency,” I say. “Your neurons aren’t firing properly, and I think the potassium’s responsible. Sometimes they fire, sometimes they don’t.”
“It’s not a deficiency,” she says. “My body’s just not properly using the nutrients I give it anymore.”
“Whatever the case, I’ll figure it out,” I promise her. “I’ll fix it.”
She smiles sadly. “I can’t remember…I don’t remember. How long?”
“It might take me a few sessions,” I concede. “I’m not sure exactly—”
“No,” she says. “Not that. How long have I been…like this?”
I glance at Dad, but he’s stoic, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.
“A few years,” I say.
I see Grandma’s throat work as she swallows.
“Thomas, listen to me. This is…cancer I could take. Pain I can handle. This…please don’t…Michael?”
Dad pushes himself off the wall and comes to stand opposite me on the other side of the bed. He takes her free hand. “Mom.”
“I love you. Both of you. I would do…most anything, to stay here and be with you both. You know that, right?”
Dad nods, and in the dim light of the room, I see the sheen of a teardrop at the corner of his eye.
Grandma nods back. “I can’t ask this of him, of Thomas. But I’ll ask it of you, because you know how it feels to be out of control. You know, and you’d never suffer it willingly.”
Dad nods again, and as the realization of what she’s asking sets in, I explode. “No. No! Grandma, I can fix you. You don’t have to live the way you’ve been living! It doesn’t have to be like this!”
Grandma turns her head towards me. “And what did I tell you? That just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. My body’s giving out, Thomas. Like it or not. And while I respect that fact, I think I’ve earned the right to call it quits.”
“But, no!” I scream. “That makes no sense! You respect your body? Then let it decide when it’s done. You have no right to take your own life. It’s God’s choice!”
“And God gave me free will, Thomas,” she says. “He gave me this life to do with as I see fit. He doesn’t condone suffering. I believe He’s with me.”
“But what about us? What about me?”
Grandma squeezes my hand tight. “You don’t need the burden of worrying about me and healing me. You fix this thing and something else will go wrong. Where’s the end point? I’ve lived a good life. And you have a g
ood life to live. I want you to live it. I want you to breathe it. I want you to save those who still have things left to accomplish.”
“But I can do that if you’re here. Healing you won’t stop me from living.”
Dad and Grandma exchange a glance.
Grandma sighs. “I love you, Thomas. And now I’m ordering you to back off. Unhook me. Now.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Please,” she says. “When you’re out, if I still have my wits about me, I’ll do it myself. Otherwise, Michael, I expect you to help me.”
“Dad!” I whisper.
My father is crying, but for the tears running down his face, you wouldn’t know it. He clears his throat. “You heard her, Thomas.”
I choke on a sob and hold my hand to Grandma’s cheek. “Please don’t do this,” I say. “Not now. I’m not ready…I thought I’d be healing you. Please. I’m not ready.”
Grandma pulls her hand from Dad’s and strokes my hair. “Your Dad didn’t prepare you,” she says, making it a statement. “Michael, why don’t you give us a few minutes alone.”
Dad nods and leaves, closing the door softly behind him.
“Don’t leave me alone with him,” I say.
Grandma sighs. “He loves you, Thomas.”
“He said I’m an experiment. Everything he tells me to do is a test. It’s a wonder I don’t have any ulcers.”
“He told you that?” she asks, eyebrow raised.
“You knew?”
She nods. “I knew what the Attic wanted him to do. But he said he wasn’t going along with it. I believed him.”
“What did the Attic want him to do?” I ask.
“Raise you until age twelve with no outside help using your abilities. At twelve, you were supposed to spend a year in residence at the Attic. Did you do that?”
“No,” I say. “Dad never mentioned it. I’ve only been to the Attic twice now, just recently.”
“So he deviated from the plan,” she says. “Your Dad was always the best at taking orders. And the worst.”
“So what’s his plan now?” I ask her. “What’s really going on?”
“I know your dad, honey. He’s doing whatever’s best for you. Sometimes it might feel like a test, but…think of it this way: Dad’s the one in the worse position. He has to navigate the Attic while protecting you. He’s probably got several ulcers by now.”
