She's Not Here

by Mandi Lynn

  He looked down at his chart, mostly for an excuse to look away. “Not at this time,” he said.

  Shelly nodded and leaned forward to kiss Sam on the forehead. Sam felt a lingering feeling that she didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t speak up for Shelly to stay. Paul got up from his chair and kissed her on the cheek. Sam reached to where her Pup had been sitting on the table and held him close.

  “See you soon, kid.” He squeezed her hand and gave her a smile.

  Two days passed for Sam. She never vomited again after the first spell, but she did continue to have a slight fever that came and went. Every now and then, a nurse would observe her and find a rash on her stomach and arm, but by the time they started to think it might be serious, it began to go away on its own before anyone could make anything of it.

  “Try not to itch it, okay?” Jamie said. She had become Sam’s regular nurse. Willow had stopped coming after the last shot, and although Sam couldn’t remember the name or face of the woman that had given her the shot, she knew that if she ever walked in the room to touch her again, she would know.

  “It itches,” Sam said. She was holding her arm out and Jamie was rubbing a cream in. Sam’s arm was speckled with small red dots, like an allergic reaction, but with all the tests they had run, they hadn’t discovered what she was allergic to yet—or if allergies were even the cause. Willow and Randy made sure to interfere with each test, working closely and carefully to hide any signs of abnormalities in her test samples.

  “I know, we’re working on it,” Jamie said. Sam smiled and held out her other arm. It had been red and irritated the other day, but it was starting to heal while the other was beginning to flare.

  “What does my blood look like?” Sam asked.

  Jamie was looking closely at Sam’s arm before she put more cream on it.

  “It’s red,” she said, and Sam rolled her eyes. “But details beyond that? You’ll have to ask Dr. Ash. He’s the one who looked really close at your blood.”

  She finished the cream, and Sam pulled her arm back to her side. She liked the feel of the cream against her skin. Whenever she got the rash, the cream was the only way to calm the itching.

  “Who’s that?” Jamie asked. She was pointing to the little stuffed dog that was on the side table of Sam’s bed.

  Sam looked over at the stuffed dog while Jamie cleaned up the cream and put things away.

  “That’s Pup,” she said, placing him back in her lap. The fur on his body was stained, the tips of his fur bunching together. A bit of the cream that was on Sam’s skin was already crusted into his fur.

  “He’s cute,” Jamie said. “I’ll be back later today to check on you, okay?”

  “Okay,” Sam said.

  Sam kept her hand on Pup after Jaime left the room. He was her only constant. When everyone else came and went, Pup always stayed. She pet his head, running her fingers through his floppy ears.

  “Good morning, Sam,” the woman said. Sam turned to look and saw the woman who had given her the shot. Her throat felt like it closed, making it hard to breathe, but she wasn’t sure if it was because she was scared, or because she was having another allergic reaction to some unknown cause.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said. The words were meant to come out fierce, but instead her voice was feeble, fading.

  Willow froze for a moment. She hadn’t expected Sam to recognize her. She always had a feeling that Sam didn’t trust her fully, but remembering Willow the second she walked into the room was a first for Sam. She panicked at first, knowing how much harder this would make monitoring the effects of the vaccine, but then she realized that this might mean the vaccine was in effect and working.

  “I won’t,” she said. Willow had to be careful now. Before, she could do almost any examinations to Sam without having to worry about her talking about it to other nurses. Sam would forget things as soon as the subject was over, but what if Willow left the room and Sam told the next nurse that walked in that Willow had been giving her shots or asking weird questions.

  Sam didn’t relax. She had the stuffed dog clutched in her hands and watched Willow closely as she walked into the room. The only thing that kept Sam calm was the fact that the only thing in her hand was a clipboard, and she wasn’t reaching forward for any tools that were hidden away in drawers of the room.

  “I just want to ask you a few questions,” Willow said. “Actually, I want you to draw something for me.”

  Sam eyed her as she stepped forward to hand her a clipboard and pen.

  “Just draw a few shapes for me,” she said.

  Sam took it and Willow held up a card with a square on it. Sam drew it almost effortlessly onto the page. Willow smiled and held up another card, this time with a triangle. Sam drew all the basic shapes that were held up, and eventually, Willow held up harder things to draw, like a boat or house. It took longer, and Sam had to concentrate a little harder, but she was still able to draw them.

  “Good,” Willow said once they had gone through all the cards. She took the clipboard and pen from Sam. “Can you tell me what time it is?” She pointed to the clock that was on the wall opposite Sam.

  She looked at the clock, with all its ticks and numbers, and tried to find the place in her memory that told her how to tell time on the clock. The clock had three hands, the hour, the minute, the third one was for seconds, wasn’t it?

  “It’s two,” she looked closer to the minute hand. “Twenty-five.”

  “Can you tell me the months of the year?” she asked.

  She thought for a moment and began to name them off one by one. “January. February. March. April. May. June. July. August. September. October. November. December.”

  “And now backwards.”

  Sam could feel her eyes widen in surprise. The questions were getting harder. She took a breath and recited them. “December. November. October. September. August. July. June.” She paused. “May. April. March. February. January.”

  Willow didn’t know how to respond. She wrote some notes quickly in her notebook, but she knew she wouldn’t have to look back at it to remember how well Sam had done. Sam looked back at Willow, her eyes attentive but calm, having no idea how much she had progressed in such a short amount of time.

  “Okay, just one last test.” She pulled a small keychain light out of her pocket. Sam braced herself when she took it out, but once she saw that it was nothing more than a small light she relaxed into the bed again. “Just follow the light with your eyes.”

  She put a finger hovering in front of Sam’s nose and moved the light from side to side. She was worried that along with the fever, vomiting, and rash, that the vaccine would have some effect on Sam’s cognitive abilities, but her eyes followed the light perfectly. She wanted to ask Sam to stand and walk in a straight line as well, but she didn’t want to do anything out of the ordinary that would cause Sam to talk about the tests later with the other nurses.

  “Okay, you’re all set,” she said.

  “Oh,” Sam said. She was surprised the test was over. It was quick and seemed a bit pointless, but she felt like she had done well. She had answered all the questions correctly, hadn’t she?

  “Did I do okay?” Sam asked.

  “You did very well.” Willow smiled and left the room.

  Chapter 30

  Randy wasn’t in his office. It was just Willow, her notes, and the vaccine. She had produced more of the vaccine with the blood samples she had taken from Sam and now she had plenty of vaccine to administer to Sam when and if the first dose showed signs of wearing off.

  She was looking over the notes she had taken when testing Sam’s memory. It didn’t seem possible for Sam to progress so quickly. Just a week ago, she could barely remember events of the day before. Willow kicked herself, because she forgot to do the most basic memory test with Sam. She was supposed to tell her an address at the beginning of the session and ask for Sam to repeat it back to her at the end of the session. Of all the tests Sam had take
n, that was the one that she’d never been able to pass.

  Willow took the vial of the vaccine out of the safe that was hidden under Randy’s desk and held it in her hands until the glass became warm from her touch. When she looked into the clear-tinted liquid in her hands, she could feel her father looking back at her. She wished she had found this for him years earlier. Could it have saved him?

  All the years of him losing his memory, fading into the background. In the days he lived with her, it felt as if she woke upexpecting to see her father but realizing he wasn’t there. She would watch him in the morning, gazing out the window. She could love who he was in those silent moments, but when she spoke to him, he wasn’t there. His mind was elsewhere, daydreaming, lost in reality.

  Could that be her someday? Would her family be forced to love her, just an empty shell of a person? Would she look back at her husband one day and wonder who he was? Would she have that same lost gaze her father had?

  As she aged, she felt like she was losing herself. There were moments she would be acting normal and then just…forget. She would forget why she was there and where she was supposed to be. Randy never said anything about her memory or anything else seeming off, but he was always too busy to notice such subtle changes. That was how it always started, wasn’t it? Small differences, too small to ever make note of, but eventually all the small changes added up to larger changes. Was she already at that the point? Were there things about her that had already begun to change without her realizing it?

  She rolled the vial across her palm. The glass was smooth, warm against her skin.

  It could be so simple. She could inject the vaccine. It would run through her bloodstream and stop the Alzheimer’s in its track. It was already making its way through her neurons, she was sure of it. It would be simple. A small injection. That’s what vaccines were for after all: preventative measures. Children got dozens of vaccines in a lifetime to save them from ever having to deal with diseases. Why should a vaccine for Alzheimer’s be any different?

  She took the vial and hide it away in her pocket. She would only need a small bit.

  She was running on autopilot when she left the office. She wasn’t thinking of the effects of the serum or how it may have helped Sam and could kill her. She only thought of how it could cure her before the disease ever got its hold on her.

  She riffled through the drawers of the nurse’s cart out in the hall and pulled out a fresh syringe, slipping into an empty patient room before someone could notice her. She inserted the needle into top of the vial and pulled out a single milliliter. That was all it was going to take. Such a small, almost a miniscule amount, and it could defeat her Alzheimer’s, whether or not it had begun.

  She sanitized the top of her arm off and inserted the needle. It stung, more than she expected it to, but administered the vaccine with a steady hand. It was after she put the syringe down that her hands began to shake, just in the way they had when she administered it to Sam.

  Even after the needle left her skin she felt a burn in her arm. Is that why Sam had protested so much?

  Willow threw the syringe into the bio-waste trash, removing any evidence she was there, and left the room.

  “Willow.” She heard someone call her name as she walked down the hall. She turned, but there was no one there. She stood for a moment, waiting for someone to come around the corner, but they never did. When she turned back to where she had come from, her head began to spin. She took a moment to steady herself but lightheadedness began to take over. Willow took careful steps, but she could feel herself swaying in the hallway.

  “Willow, you okay?” It was Jenna. Her eyes were roaming over Willow, looking for some sign of distress. She held out her arms in case Willow fell but for now at least, she stayed rooted in place.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. Willow took another step and felt her stomach drop. She was swaying on her feet and Jenna took her arm and walked to a break room.

  “Is she okay?” It was Jamie. Willow could hear someone pull out a seat. “Here.” Her voice was closer and Willow was being guided to sit in one of the hard metal chairs.

  “What happened?” Jaime said.

  “I don’t know. I saw her walking, and it looked like she was about to fall.”

  A hand touched her forehead.

  “She’s burning up,” Jamie said. “Let me go call Dr. Ash.”

  “No!” Willow said, too loudly. She blinked, her vision cleared, though she had never realized she had lost it in the first place. “I’m fine. You don’t need to disrupt him for this. I’ll just sit for a bit.”

  Her voice was calmer and Jamie walked away.

  “You sure?” Jenna was kneeling next to her. Jenna knew her well, but she hoped that Jenna didn’t know her so well that she could see through the unease that Willow was trying so desperately to hide. She could feel a sweat on her eyebrow and knew Jenna noticed. She smiled it away.

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ll be back in a little bit to go check on you. I’ll let Randy know you’re in here.” She gave Willow a soft squeeze on the shoulder.

  Once she was alone, Willow leaned forward, using her arms to cradle her stomach. She put her head on the table and tried to let the nausea pass. Instead, her stomach took another flip.

  “Willow?” She lifted her head, and the motion was too fast. She could feel herself tipping, but she could also feel something much worse about to come to the surface.

  Arms around her waist. They were familiar, and Willow was happy and horrified that Randy was there. He helped lift her from the chair and guide her to the waste bin. She vomited shortly after.

  “It’s okay,” he said. He had one arm across her chest holding her up, while the other was on her back, holding her steady. He murmured to her every few seconds, saying over and over, “It’s okay.”

  Sweat was gathering at her eyebrows, but she felt chilled. She coughed a low guttural cough, but nothing came up. Randy pushed loose strands of hair out of her face and tucked them behind her ear.

  “Did you eat something?” he said.

  The top of her arm stung. Randy’s fingers were pushing into the tender skin, but she was too afraid he’d notice the similarities between herself and Sam to point out the pain.

  “Yeah, I think I just ate too fast or something.”

  She wrapped her arms around her stomach and lowered herself to the floor. Randy tightened his grip and walked her back to the table to sit.

  “Do you feel any better now?” he asked.

  She was tempted to say she did and go back to work without a problem, but the truth was she wasn’t sure if she could stand. At least when Sam got the vaccine she could just lay in bed.

  “Randy, you should go back to work.”

  “No, not until I know you’re okay.” She was sitting, just barely as he grasped her shoulder to hold her steady.

  “I’m fine, like I said, I just ate too fast.”

  She was looking at the surface of the table, but she could tell Randy was giving her the look that said he didn’t believe a word she said.

  “I’m taking you back to my office.”

  He leaned down until they were shoulder to shoulder, and ducked under her arm until it was draped around his shoulder. He used his own arm to hold onto her torso and began to lift her. A cramp ran down her ribs and into her stomach, and she had to bite her lip to stifle the whimper.

  “Randy,” she said once she was standing. The words came out as a gasp but she pulled away from him and stood on her own. Standing straight felt like she was tearing herself apart, but she tried to compose herself enough to allow Randy to walk away. She was terrified to be in his office with him, that maybe he already had a hunch of what she had done, but he would never dare speak of the vaccine out in the open like this.

  “I’m fine,” she said again. She stood a little straighter but breathed a bit deeper. Her body groaned in protest and begged to turn back into a ball. Out of the corner of her eye, s
he saw the hard linoleum floor and it looked more and more inviting as the seconds passed by.

  “You’re not fine,” he said. She was afraid he would force her out of the room as he wrapped his arms around her again, but instead he gently lowered her to the table and sat her down in a chair. He kneeled in front of her as he quickly, almost dismissively, took her vitals.

  “I’ll be okay,” she told him. Her voice was soft, swollen almost. For a moment, it was like she couldn’t breathe, and she realized it was because there were tears straining their way through. She wanted to swallow them down, but they came to the surface anyways.

  Randy looked up to her and cupped her cheek. Small tears ran over his fingers.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  His eyes were soft. He wasn’t looking for the lie she had just told or the lies she was about to tell. In that moment, he could forget everything that she had done because he only wanted her to be safe. The way he touched her was more than she deserved. She wanted to say how terrified she was that every day, she was becoming more and more like her father. She could feel things—ideas, memories, these small little treasures—slipping away from her. How could she ever tell him all this? How could she tell him that he would have to go through what she went through with her father? How could she expect Randy to love her when her life was stripped away?

  Worst of all, she knew Randy would love her through it all. He would stay by her side, bring her to every doctor appointment and do everything in his power to keep her whole. He deserved better than to love a woman slipping away. She had rather he leave her and let her fall into an ignorant bliss without pulling him down with her.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but something broke. Randy wrapped his arms around her until she buried her face in the groove between his neck and shoulder.

  He never said anything as she cried. He never asked for an explanation. He just held her there until she emptied herself. Willow was clutched into a knot. She was holding onto Randy, but she was also holding onto herself. She was terrified to let go.