She's Not Here

by Mandi Lynn

  She wanted to let his words comfort her, but instead she looked up at Randy and felt herself falling. Not in the literal sense—no, that would be too easy—but in a much harder way. She could feel herself slipping into the darkness that sometimes consumed her when she wasn’t careful enough to distract herself away from the reality of life.

  “Jeremy,” Randy said.

  A tear slipped when Willow looked up. She was consumed with the type of grief that took you far away, away from your own body, but with Randy’s voice she would hear herself being pulled in again.

  “What?” she said.

  “Jeremy. That was the name of the man that called 911. He was driving to the store when he saw you and Tom on the side of the road. I talked to him—I wanted to thank him.”

  Willow looked at her husband, wide-eyed. The day her father died, she felt so trapped, much like she did now. If she thought back, she wouldn’t be able to say what the stranger looked like, never mind his name. The details were so skewed from that day. She remembered the look on her father’s face as she saw the light fade from his eyes, she could remember the stain that was on his shirt from when he spilled his drink at lunch, but the one person who stopped to help?

  “He died twice, didn’t he?” she said.

  Randy looked over to her, his ears never straying from hers.

  “When someone has Alzheimer’s, they die first when they lose their memories, their thoughts, and their personality. And then they die again. We can no longer pretend that, that shell of a person is them anymore, we’re forced to finally let them go.” She choked on her words as she spoke. “I didn’t want to let my father go.”

  “I didn’t want to let him go either,” Randy said. Their voices hung in the air. He looked at her; his hand was still gripped to hers. The car was hot and sweat was beginning to coat her forehead, her dress clinging to her body.

  “Tell me about work,” she said. He frowned when she spoke, but she wouldn’t let her eyes leave him.

  “Do you remember a few months ago, how I applied for a fund to conduct research on Alzheimer’s?”

  The word made Willow cower, like it was a knife being skimmed across her skin.

  “I remember,” she said.

  “My department was chosen for the funding. Our program can move forward. We’ll be able to do more research, find out how we can put a stop to this disease—or at least how to curb it.”

  He was full of possibilities when he spoke. A cure. That was the dream. But Willow had been there before, had seen clinical trial after clinical trial fail. When her father was diagnosed, she wanted the best for him, but the best wasn’t good enough. What difference could Randy make? What if there was no cure to be found? Did he know, with each day it felt like she was losing herself more and more? That soon enough, she was going to wake up and forget who her husband was?

  “Good,” she said, but the smile wasn’t there.

  She kept a paper in her pocket now, to write things down. She wouldn’t lose her memories the same way her father had.

  “Willow.” He released her hand and let it fall to her lap. It felt like a betrayal to have him release her, but a moment later his hand was on her cheek, turning her face to look at him. Her fingers traced the warn piece of paper in her pocket. “I promise you, I will do everything I can to find a cure. I won’t let this happen to you, or me, or anybody else ever again.”

  And she let herself pretend his words were true.

  Chapter 10

  There were three people in the room sitting huddled together when Sam’s neurologist walked in. The oldest two—the grandparents he supposed—looked as if life had hit them like a truck. They leaned into each other, neither able to support themselves. The youngest was a girl who looked about nineteen with eyes that darted around the room. She was the first person to spot him, and when she did, her demeanor changed. She lifted her head and sat up straight, but her hands stayed in her lap; a slight tremor shook her.

  “Good evening,” he said as he approached the group. They all lifted their heads. “My name is Dr. Randy Ash. I’ll be taking care of Samantha during her time here. Though we meet under unfortunate conditions, I hope we can accommodate you all the best we can.”

  “Thank you,” Shelly said. Her hands gripped around her husband’s like a vice. Paul nodded his head toward the doctor, but the rest of his body stayed rooted in place.

  The room stayed silent, hold for the hushed murmurs of the waiting room.

  “Can we see Sam?” Avery said. Everyone tuned to look at her and then towards Dr. Ash, waiting for an answer. Paul wasalready on the edge of his seat, ready to leave and find his granddaughter.

  “Unfortunately, Sam is a bit under the weather at the moment. I’m not sure the best thing for her would be seeing visitors.” Paul opened his mouth to speak until Shelly put her hand on his knee. His body relaxed and leaned into her again and closed his eyes, resting his head on Shelly’s shoulder.

  “What’s wrong with her?” It was Avery who spoke the words everyone else was too terrified to say. Paul opened his eyes to look at the doctor, but he didn’t lift his head.

  “As of right now, she’s sleeping. The seizure she had earlier took a lot out of her, and her body needs some time to recoup. We hope to perform a few tests soon to determine what caused the seizure, but we have to wait until she’s stable.”

  “Do you think the fire had anything to do with it?” Shelly asked. Her arm was wrapped around Paul while her other hand reached out for Avery.

  “It’s possible that the lack of oxygen could have brought on a seizure, though it’s not likely. It may have been a pre-existing condition that hasn’t come to a head until now. The fact that she was already in a hospital is just luck. It’s allowed us to give her immediate treatment to stabilize her.”

  Avery was sinking. Her body was heavy; her feet were planted firmly to the floor, but the urge to run was strong.

  They weren’t sure if they’d be able to stabilize her?

  — — — — —

  Willow couldn’t ignore the beats of her heart. It made her panic to hear it so loud, like she was holding her head up to her own chest. She had been working with a patient, checking his vitals, when she lost her breath.

  Sweat was coating her skin as her throat closed in on itself. Panic jumped through her veins, and her body urged her to do something, so she smiled to her patient, walked out of the room, and ran down the hall.

  The corners of her vision began to recede, and she walked the halls, holding her head high. Coworkers walked by and smiled; she smiled back but the muscles didn’t feel right. Black edged her vision, and she began to run when she thought she couldn’t see anyone anymore.

  Willow ran through the door of a patient’s room that had been empty earlier, but she almost screamed when she saw someone in the bed.

  Tubes lined the young girl’s body. Her eyes were shut, but her chest moved in a steady rhythm. Willow backed away, but panic took over and she leaned on the edge of the girl’s bed for support. The stranger never stirred.

  This wasn’t her patient. A white board on the wall read Samantha Ellison, and Randy’s name was written at the top as the practitioner.

  By law, they couldn’t care for the same patients. Willow put her hand to her throat as if that would help clear her airways.

  The girl in the bed stirred and shifted to the side. Her breath hitched, then she fell back into a slumber. The monitors and wires connected to her beeped in response.

  Willow watched the rise and fall of the girl’s chest and tried to mimic the movement.

  The panic refused to leave her body. It moved like a current through her skin until it urged her to pace the room. She didn’t think about her movements. She couldn’t stop herself if she wanted to. Instead, she paced. She panicked. And she prayed for the moment end.

  Was this what her father had felt like when he had an episode?

  As soon as the thought entered her mind she couldn’t forge
t it. Her heartbeat rose and her breathing thinned. She tried to remember why she started panicking but she couldn’t. Alzheimer’s. The disease haunted her. Could it be running its course through her nerve cells?

  “Willow?”

  Someone was at the doorway. Willow blinked until her eyes came into focus and saw that it was a nurse—Jenna. She walked into the room with a smile though questions littered her eyes. She put a folder onto the table next to the patient’s bed.

  “Are you okay?” Jenna asked. In the months since her father had died, she hadn’t been going out with Jenna as much, but they always made sure to make time at least once a week to sit down and talk. In truth, Jenna was the only person who could keep Willow grounded, especially after her father had passed away, but now she couldn’t speak.

  Jenna walked closer to Willow, and she backed away and turned to leave.

  “Sorry,” Willow said. Her body couldn’t hold still and she could barely make her words form between breaths.

  “Willow?”

  Willow heard Jenna calling for her as she paced down the hall to Randy’s office. She only hoped Jenna didn’t follow her and Randy wasn’t inside.

  She walked down the hall, only able to focus on what was directly in front of her. She felt her body swaying and knew if she stopped that she may not be able to start again.

  Randy’s door was locked when Willow found her way through the long hallways. She murmured a soft prayer as she slipped the spare key into the lock and shut herself into the small room. It was empty.

  Papers littered Randy’s desk, and dozens of notebooks were left open, each filled with illegible writing.

  Her body was still frantic as Willow searched through folders of research. Her vision was blurred, but as the seconds passed, her head began to clear enough to read and she tried to focus as much as her attention on the papers in front of her.

  He had been approved for his research, thank god he had been approved, but could he work fast enough to save her? She skimmed article after article written about Alzheimer’s hoping to find something to ease her mind. The words swam around her, and her throat threatened to cut off supply of oxygen as she leafed through the pages. She knew the symptoms of Alzheimer’s like the back of her hand, but to be a victim felt different—dangerous.

  Willow wasn’t sure how long she spent looking through the files. She expected her heart rate to calm, but it only edged closer and closer to hysteria the longer she read articles with hopeless fingers.

  Willow opened a thick folder only to find her handwriting staring back it her. Page after page of Tom’s symptoms, his medications, his good days. It was a medical journal Willow obsessively worked to create. Looking at it now was disturbing. She read the pages of notes over and over until she thought she saw herself in the pages and flung it away. She tried to breathe.

  She pulled out another folder. All the other articles she had read so far had Randy’s handwriting in the margins, but this one was clean. The article was about a trial that was being conducted in New Zealand—The Venom Trials. As she skimmed the pages, her heart dropped. Was this the trial Dr. Gadel had been talking about? A note was made about the drug Derilum. It was noted as failed.

  Willow pushed the papers away, but she couldn’t stop looking at them. The half thought-through drug they had used on her father.

  The tears ran in violent streams when she finally picked up the papers again, this time pacing as she read.

  The article made notes of the formula used to create the venom. She laid out the page out on Randy’s desk, and her heart stopped. Could it be that simple?

  Willow looked the chemicals over and over. Their grams, their composition—it was all there. If she wanted, it was as simple as going to the lab and putting it all together. She could perfect the serum, fix what everyone else had missed or were too afraid to try.

  She took out her paper. Notes were written all over the margins. Things she needed to buy, phone numbers she needed to remember. But now, more menial things were etched into the page: lunch break is at 12:20, the trash gets picked up on Thursdays; things she used to know that felt like they were slipping. She wrote the chemical formula of the serum into a corner of the page that remained white.

  Already the paper was worn, perfect squares folding into creases, a small rip in the center of the sheet from wear. She started writing on the paper the day her father died, and it was almost every day she added another phone number or name to the list. Randy’s birthday. Yesterday, she added the date her father died with a Sharpie marker. With so many other numbers and letters already written down, it seemed important this one stood out. She would not let herself become that date.

  The paper was soft and worn where it folded. A few more days, and it was bound to rip.

  It was her father she thought about as she folded the page and slipped it back into the pocket of her scrubs.

  Chapter 11

  Willow’s shift finished long after the night rounds began. She knew the lab was going to be locked before she tried to open the door. Her badge didn’t grant her access, but she knew Randy’s would. He was on his lunch break when she slipped back into his office.

  His white coat was on the back of his chair, his ID hanging off the breast pocket. Randy had a bad habit of walking around without his ID. It was something she reprehended him for almost every day, but today it worked to her advantage. She removed his ID and walked back out to the hall in the direction of the lab.

  All she needed was to swipe into the lab, jam the latch so it can’t lock and put Randy’s badge back before he came back. She held his ID tight in her hands and departed down the hall. When she finally got to the lab, she was relieved to hear the click of the lock moving out of place. She took an old brochure off one of the nearby countertops and slipped it between the door-jam so it wouldn’t be able to close all the way. She took a step back, Randy’s ID still in the palm of her hand, and ran.

  She had to put Randy’s ID back in his office and get back to the lab before anyone else walked into the lab. She wasn’t surehow high-traffic the lab was, but if someone else walked in and letthe brochure fall, she had no way of getting in.

  Randy’s office was still empty when she got there and she clipped his ID back into place. He would never notice.

  It felt like too much time had passed when she reached the lab again, but she was able to breathe again when she saw there the brochure was still sticking out the door. She took the edge of the brochure in one hand and the doorknob in the other, and she walked into the lab without issue. The room was empty.

  She shut the door behind herself and unfolded the paper she had been keeping in her pocket all day. Her hands were shaking when she put on a lab coat and gloves and began to work.

  The amount of time that passed was unknown to Willow. Underneath the latex gloves, sweat coated her hands as she mixed liquid and powder milliliter by milliliter. By the end of it, a light yellow, almost orange liquid came to rest at the bottom of the cylinder tube. No more than 5 milliliters, it almost glowed against the hue of the room.

  The repercussions of it wasn’t what struck her. It was the simplicity of it. In her hand was something that could ruin so many lives, but could also bring a cure. The study in New Zealand was making so much forward movement, but they were on mice. It would be years before they ever moved forward with human trials. Was that what was stopping them? Could a cure be as simple as testing it on a human?

  Her father’s face came into her mind. She remembered when Dr. Gadel first told her about the trial and she thought he was suggesting doing the venom trials on her father. At the time, she was appalled, but was that all it would take? One human life.

  When Willow looked up again the clock on the far side of the room read 1:13am. She placed the tube in a holster and backed away, terrified of the thing she had created without even knowing if it had any real power.

  Her fingers went numb. Leaning against the wall, she slipped the gloves off as fast as she cou
ld, throwing them to the floor. A counter was at her back as she watched the serum from across the room. She wanted to imagine it boiling over, bubbling until it burned away at the counter.

  Looking at it was suffocating. She imagined injecting the solution into her skin, feeling how her father felt. Was he in pain? Did he know what was happening to him? The man he used to be seemed too far away. When she pushed against the thoughts, she could only remember the father of her childhood. The memories of adulthood were riddled, stained by Alzheimer’s.

  Heart beating, palms sweating, eyes crying, Willow stepped across the room, gripped the tube, and stepped into the halls.

  The hospital hadn’t changed. Long hallways going in every direction, signs directing to corridors that patients would never be able to find. But Willow found her way, lab coat still on, the cool air making no effect on her fogged mind. She took a syringe from a nurse’s cart as she walked by. She walked until it was Samantha Ellison’s room she entered.

  She wasn’t sure why it was Samantha’s room she walked into. It could have been anyone, but as her feet carried her forward she found herself walking through the doorway of a girl who had already lost so much.

  To have control. To find a cure. That was the goal.

  To never let this disease course through her body. To never forget who she loved. To never forgot why she loved.

  She stood over Samantha’s body, the girl fast asleep. Flowers were beside her bed, a card buried in the petals. Sam’s

  hair was skirted across her pillow, a knit blanket laid across her legs.

  Willow didn’t breathe—she couldn’t breathe. Her hands were steady as she filled the syringe with the solution. She took Sam’s right arm with a gentle touch and wiped it clean with alcohol. Still, she didn’t breathe as she injected the serum into Sam’s arm.

  It was simple and without celebration. There was no thrashing as the solution made its way through Samantha’s body. The girl continued to be undisturbed, and perhaps that was the most frightening thing of all.