Systematic (The System Series Book 2)

by Andrea Ring

  “There’s no need,” I say. “I’ll make sure her respiratory muscles are up to the task before I continue.”

  I dismiss her concern and bend forward. And then Tessa butts in again: “A little self-doubt isn’t a bad thing…you’re not God, Thomas…”

  I grit my teeth. Why am I second-guessing myself now?

  I sit back up. “You know, you’re right, I mean, you never know…if we wanted to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, what do you need?”

  Rachel looks me in the eye. “You mean if she doesn’t start breathing on her own?”

  I nod.

  “I can keep her breathing for a bit, but we need Dr. Park. He can intubate her again if necessary.”

  Great. The wonderful Dr. Park. Just who I need hovering over me.

  “Or we can do it,” Kenneth says.

  “Kenneth we’re not legally supposed to—”

  Kate breaks off, and I imagine Kenneth squeezing her elbow to shut her up.

  “Let me get to that point, and then we can call him in,” I say. “No need to waste his precious time.”

  Rachel cracks a small smile.

  I bend back over Olivia and continue my work.

  ***

  Two minutes and fifteen seconds later, I’m still working. The damage is never-ending.

  I flood a few more cells with Protein T and re-grow them.

  Rachel gasps.

  “What?” I ask, opening my eyes and focusing on her.

  “Her eyes!” she says. “Her eyes moved!”

  Yippee. Eye movement. That’s one for the record books.

  I continue.

  I make one final circuit through the medulla until I’m completely satisfied. Then I move down to Olivia’s chest.

  Her muscles are slightly atrophied. Nothing obvious, nothing physically deforming, but they’ve clearly gone flabby from disuse. I go back to Rule #2. I define my move: re-build the muscles. I assess my resources: I don’t need Protein T, normally, but I still don’t have control of Olivia’s body, so I can’t heal it using my own abilities—I need Protein T. Fine. I generate some more and hurry it along to Olivia’s chest.

  I’m starting to tire. Nothing unmanageable or debilitating, but I can feel it. I grab the Dwellerade bottle and finish it off.

  “You okay, Thomas?” Rachel asks.

  “Fine. Working on her chest.”

  I bulk up her muscles. Then I examine her lungs. She has a slight case of pneumonia, and I detect traces of antibiotics in her system, but they haven’t had a chance to work yet. So I attack the pneumonia. I clear the lungs. And I head up to her throat.

  She has significant damage to her throat from the tracheostomy—most long-term ventilator patients do, so it’s not too troublesome. But I’m glad Olivia doesn’t have to heal the damage on her own. It would be painful.

  I smooth out the throat, heal sores and other damage, kill any bacteria I find. Then I sigh.

  “Okay,” I say. “She’s ready. I’m pushing the trach out now.”

  “What about Dr. Park?” Rachel says, but I barely hear her. She’s the wind rustling through the trees. She’s a distant birdcall. She’s the buzz of a fly beating against a window.

  I contract the flesh in Olivia’s neck, effectively pushing the trach out. I heal the wound as I go, and suddenly I’m out of Protein T, and instinctively I try to heal the flesh like I’d heal myself.

  But it doesn’t work.

  The trach slips out, and a fountain of blood shoots from the wound and splatters my cheek.

  “Thomas!” Rachel cries, pressing gauze to the opening in Olivia’s throat. “Heal it! She’ll choke on her own blood!”

  I fumble around in the dark of Olivia’s neck, trying to heal it. Goddamnit, why won’t it work?

  And then I remember: Olivia is not me. And I am not God.

  ***

  I finally muster the good sense to grab my Protein T and get it to the site of the injury. It takes me a good fifteen seconds, and Rachel is panicked, screaming, Kate is yelling in my ear about a plan, Kenneth is trying to shush his wife, while I try to keep my wits about me and do what I came to do.

  I heal the wound.

  I clear all the blood.

  I destroy bacteria.

  I ensure her muscles are working, the medulla firing.

  I finally lean over Olivia and breathe into her mouth. She needs a kick-start.

  And suddenly she’s breathing on her own.

  ***

  I back out of her body, unhooking and repairing as I go. I heal the wounds in our hands and flop back in the chair.

  “Holy Christ,” I whisper, breathing heavily. I glance at Rachel, who’s still wide-eyed and bent over Olivia, holding blood-soaked gauze to her neck.

  I gently put my hand on Rachel’s shoulder. She jumps.

  “It’s okay,” I say, patting her softly. “She’s healed. You can move away now.”

  Her eyes fly to my face. “You’re sure?”

  I nod. “Yes. She’s fine. She’s breathing.”

  Rachel turns back to Olivia. Rachel is frozen, searching for signs of life from her patient. When she’s calm enough to feel Olivia’s chest move, she gasps and slowly moves her blood-stained hands away.

  “She’s breathing,” she whispers.

  She runs to the trashcan, throws the gauze in, and washes her hands in the sink at the far end of the room. But her eyes are on Olivia the whole time.

  She grabs more gauze and towels and begins to clean up the blood on Olivia’s throat and face.

  “There’s no hole,” she whispers to herself. “She’s actually breathing!”

  I watch the delicate way she cares for Olivia. Rachel takes her vitals and then pulls Olivia’s eyelids up and flashes a penlight in them.

  “Her pupils! They contracted!”

  I nod. I’m still too breathless to speak.

  “Thomas!” I look up and Rachel is kneeling beside me. “How are you feeling?”

  I clear my throat. “I’m fine.”

  She smiles wide. “That was…I’ve never…I can’t believe it. Let me clean you up.”

  Kate and Kenneth have disappeared, and I can hear them speaking with Cyrus in the sitting room. I try to rise, but Rachel pushes me gently back down. “Rest. Your face…let me clean you up.”

  I hold my chin out to her and she carefully cleans my face.

  “This shirt may be a goner,” she says. “We should get you some scrubs.”

  “And a brain!” Kate yells from the other room.

  I laugh. “I wasn’t planning on doing this or I would have been more prepared. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” she says, standing. “What on earth are you sorry for?”

  “Well,” I say, following suit, “that last bit, with the trach…I got a little carried away.”

  Rachel smiles. “You can get carried away with me any time.”

  Oh boy.

  As I gape at her, Kate and Kenneth come back in and Pastor Brooks pokes his head around the corner from the sitting room. “Is everything…”

  “Oh, Cyrus!” Rachel says, running to him and taking his arm. “Come look. I still have to change her bedding, and her hair needs a little wash, but can you stand it, a little blood? She’s breathing!”

  Pastor Brooks stiffens at the mention of blood, but lets Rachel lead him to Olivia’s side.

  He falls to his knees beside the bed and gropes for Olivia’s hand. He squeezes it tight and lays his cheek on the railing, just looking at her.

  “Baby,” he whispers.

  I start to back away. His show of emotion seems a private thing, too raw for human consumption. My own eyes tear in response as I watch the pastor pray and listen to his daughter breathe.

  And then he sits up suddenly, and with a quick swipe of his eyes, heaves himself to his feet.

  “Thomas,” he says.

  I stop a few feet from the door.

  “Thank you.”

  I smile. “It’s a small th
ing, Pastor Brooks, I mean…she still has a long way to go.”

  “I understand,” he says. “But she’s still in there, isn’t she? This is proof, that now she’s breathing on her own.”

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  We stare at each other, and I’m the first to avert my eyes.

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t presume to know,” I say. I steal a glance at him and he’s still staring at me. “We won’t know,” I say, “I mean, that’s not my area of expertise.”

  “What might your Dr. Rumson say?”

  Gooseflesh covers my arms as he says my dear friend’s name. I still don’t like the fact that the pastor knows things about me I’ve never told him.

  “He believes the soul stays with the body until death,” I say. “And so do you, or you would have let Olivia pass months ago. I have no proof otherwise.”

  “But you doubt,” he says. “Doubting Thomas.”

  “If I doubted,” I say, “why would I waste my time here?”

  “You doubt, and yet you hope. You are a sixteen-year-old man with the sensibilities of a child. You have more belief in yourself than you do in God.”

  “Pastor Brooks,” Kate chides.

  I feel the blood heat my cheeks. “You’re wrong. I believe in myself, yes, but my abilities come from God. He made this possible.”

  “True,” he says, “but I don’t think you really believe that.”

  “Why do you stand there and insult me?” I say. “I come in here, work absolute fucking magic on your daughter, and you insult my belief in God? You tarnish it, you spit on it, as though it’s just some trifling excuse to me?”

  Pastor Brooks holds his hands up as though warding me off. “You misunderstand me,” he says. “I meant no insult. I’m trying to get you to see.”

  “See what?”

  “Whatever’s in your heart.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, “Fuck you,” but I’ve already let my anger get the best of me.

  “Let’s go,” I say. I turn my back on him and walk out.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I push through the door of the Planarian Institute and go straight to my desk. I know we’re about to have a come-to-Jesus talk, and it’s the last thing I’m in the mood for.

  Kate heads straight to the coffee bar and starts a pot brewing. Kenneth sits in the lobby chair, scribbling in his notebook.

  I walk back out to them.

  “Do you actually work around here?” I growl. “Or do you just drink coffee?”

  She raises an eyebrow at me. “Someone’s a little testy this morning.”

  Morning? I feel like it’s dinnertime. I glance at my watch and sigh. It’s only 10:15. We were honored guests at the Brooks estate for only an hour.

  “Sorry,” I say, scrubbing a hand through my hair. My fingers catch on something tacky, something beginning to crust, and when I look at my hand, it’s covered in blood.

  Kate glares at me. “In the shower. Now. We can’t have blood all over the lab.” I glare back. I pour myself some coffee with my non-bloody hand, and saunter off to the locker room to wash off Olivia’s blood.

  ***

  So we sit in Kenneth’s office, my hair dripping, and I make them wait for it. I busy myself with meaningless tasks—opening a Word document, sending an email to myself. I know I’m being a jerk, but I can’t help it—I’m in a jerky kind of mood.

  “So you healed her,” Kate finally says, her lips a thin white line.

  “Yes and no,” I say, “but we’ll get to that in a minute. The thing is, do you two believe in God?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” Kate says, while Kenneth says, “We do.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. Until that moment, I didn’t realize how much it meant to me that they shared my beliefs.

  “Great. Okay. So, God gives each of us certain abilities, and —”

  “I don’t believe that,” Kenneth says.

  Kate and I look at him. “You don’t?” I ask.

  “No. Sure, we get the genetic basics, but abilities are things developed, not bestowed.”

  “But I was born with the ability to heal my own body,” I say.

  “And you developed it,” he says. “If you’d never chosen to exercise and practice it, you wouldn’t be able to do what you do.”

  “I’ll buy that,” I say, “but the basics were given to me. You can’t heal, no matter how much you practice.”

  He nods his head at me in agreement.

  “So what I’m wondering is, how much is God really involved in everything we can do? I mean, I can heal. Theoretically, if the flesh is alive, I can bring anyone back to a walking, talking, thinking state. Is God involved?”

  “Sometimes,” Kate says. “Miracles do happen. And the flesh only stays alive because the soul is present.”

  “You both believe that?”

  “Yes,” they both say, nodding.

  “Okay, so can I create life?”

  “Do you mean bring someone back from the dead?” Kenneth asks.

  “That’s one possibility,” I say. “I mean, I think I could grow a baby, either inside of me, or in someone else, or hell, even in a petri dish. But if I did, how does the soul get infused?”

  Kate and Kenneth exchange a worried glance. “Thomas, is this something you’re considering doing?” Kate asks.

  “No,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know, if it ever came up…no. Really, no. But my point is, I think I could do it. Which means maybe we don’t really have a soul at all.”

  “Because you are not God,” Kenneth says.

  “Exactly!” I say. “I know that! But the things I can do…I feel like I’m straddling that line, between the possible and the impossible. And if I can actually do the impossible, well, what does that mean? What are the implications?”

  Kate sits back and sips her coffee. “Thomas, doctors have always felt this way, even back when they were only healers crushing herbs into tea. We’re fighting death, and that’s not the purview of man but of God. So when we win, what do we feel? That we’ve beaten Him, God, in a way. We feel invincible. We grow arrogant. You’re not the first to feel this way.”

  The air goes out of me and I sag. “You think I’m displaying arrogance.” Will my folly never end?

  “I just think your own abilities are causing you to question your faith,” Kate says.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I’ve explored every part of the human body, several bodies, and I’ve never felt the soul. It bothers me. I mean, if it’s in there, don’t you think I would have run into it by now?”

  Kenneth smiles. “I’ve cut up many more bodies than you, and I’ve never seen a soul, either. Doesn’t mean it’s not there. Why do you believe in God at all?”

  “Intelligent design,” I say automatically, and Kenneth raises an eyebrow at me.

  “That’s all?”

  I study my fingernails. “And I have had a few moments, where I was praying or asked for strength, that I felt…something.”

  I sneak a glance at them and they are both staring at me sympathetically.

  “Fine. And if I don’t believe in God, my mother’s gone. Dust. Fish food. Fertilizer for all the pretty daffodils.”

  “Oh, Thomas,” Kate says, squeezing my arm.

  I hang my head and fight not to cry.

  I think Kenneth senses my impending tears. He changes the subject. “So, you healed Olivia.”

  “A little,” I say. “The medulla oblongata. Autonomic systems are functioning. She’s breathing on her own, obviously.”

  “I’m so mad at you I want to spit,” Kate says. “And I’m so in awe of you I want to hug you and never let go. I don’t think I really believed it until I saw the trach come out. I mean, I did, but I didn’t. It’s just so incredible.”

  “So, you’re really mad at me?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says. “What if something had gone wrong? Actually, something did go wrong with the trach. What was it?”

/>   I blow out a loud breath. “I ran out of Protein T. My first instinct was to heal her like I heal myself, but I didn’t have the connection with her yet to do that. So it took me a few seconds to remember and call up more of the protein.”

  “You idiot,” Kate says affectionately. “You forgot Rule #1. And Rule #2.”

  “I used them earlier,” I say. “But when it came time to do the trach, I guess I got a little excited.”

  “Exactly why you need a plan,” she says.

  “Never mind the plan,” Kenneth says. “You were fucking brilliant!”

  “Thanks, Kenneth,” I say.

  “But the plan is going to keep him safe,” Kate insists.

  “I know,” he says, “and we’ll have a plan each time, but I knew the plan was a goner before we even got there.”

  “What?” she shrieks. “You guys planned something else without me?”

  “Calm down,” he says. “I’m a guy. Thomas is a guy. We’re not planners. And this stuff…I think a lot of it is instinct. Thomas needs to do what he feels he should do in the moment. Shit’s gonna come up that you just can’t plan for.”

  Kate huffs a breath and sits silently, sulking.

  “Start over,” Kenneth says. “We need to document the entire thing. Go back to the beginning. Then we need to take your vitals and see what effect today’s impromptu session had on your body.”

  So I begin at the beginning, both of them tapping away on their laptops as they transcribe my description of events.

  Thinking about Olivia and healing her today is infinitely better than thinking about how I might not really believe in God.

  Chapter Thirty

  After work I drive straight to Tessa’s. I promised her I’d come back.

  She throws herself at me and climbs me like a koala on a tree, wrapping her legs around my waist.

  “You healed her, didn’t you?” she says into my neck.

  I squeeze her tight. “Only a little. Nothing dangerous.”

  She clings for a couple of minutes then slides down my body.

  “Your dad’s here. He’s gonna want to hear all about it.”

  “Later,” I say, taking her hand and leading her out the front door. “Later.”

  ***

  I drag Tessa to my lair and lock the door. I pull her shirt over her head and fumble with the zipper on her jeans.