Broken Mirror (12 page)

Victor shrugged and smiled. “I just see it.”

“You got laid or something, didn’t you?”

Victor blushed. “That’s my secret,” he said, glancing at his desk drawer where he’d hidden a handful of fumewort vials. He didn’t credit the herb for his new efficiency, not entirely. The Personil was also clearing from his system, allowing his thoughts to speed up to their natural potential.

That night at home, Victor looked over Granfa Jeff’s medical records again.

He noticed something odd right away, something he’d missed before. The papers from the first three months listed symptoms in detail and included multiple results from over a dozen tests. But after that, the paper trail thinned out. From September onward, there were no new prescriptions, only a few neatly typed notes, and barely any tests
—
all at a time when his granfa’s condition must have been progressively worsening. It was as if both his grandfather and the doctor had given up.

Victor sat back in his sofa and tried to imagine a scenario to explain the records. The only treatment Jefferson had received during his final months was a prescription for Vasistatin. Surely there were more invasive treatments available as well. Why hadn’t he turned to those?

Maybe his granfa had stopped fighting the disease. That wasn’t like him
—
Granfa Jeff was the definition of take-charge-and-do-it tenacity
—
but maybe his illness had taken such a toll on him that he’d welcomed the end. Or maybe dementia had taken hold, and he wasn’t able to plan his own treatment. But if either of those was the case, the doctors would have pushed treatment on him.

Victor rifled through each of the papers again. Prior to Oak Knoll Hospital closing, a broad battery of tests for Jefferson had been ordered, and the results were thoroughly documented, some coming back with values well outside normal ranges, including hair loss, mouth ulceration, and kidney ailments.

After Oak Knoll closed, the number of tests diminished, and all came back within normal ranges, except those related to heart failure: blood tests for electrolytes and creatinine, and electrocardiogram and angiogram measurements. Pre- and post-closure of the hospital, the results were staggeringly different. If not for the patient’s name, Victor would have said the records were for different patients.

He looked again at the post-closure results. They looked too perfect, too spot-on.

The records made after Oak Knoll closed were lies.

Another bad dream. I walked through a hospital full of comatose patients. I followed a nurse as she stepped up to a bed, checked on the patient’s vital signs, shook her head, and moved to the next. Her sighs echoed through the rooms and corridors until the sounds seemed alive, malignant, taunting the injured sleeping who were calling out for help in their dreams.

Somehow it dawned on me that I was responsible. Each patient was half-dead because of something I’d done.

Then they started waking up, their vengeful and hungry eyes popping open. They were illogically frenzied. They knew me, their eyes found me, and all they wanted was revenge.

—Victor Eastmore’s dreambook

Around ten a.m. Victor hurried through the open plaza of the Semiautonomous California National University. Lining the plaza were eight pillars, each five meters tall and topped with a huge bust of one of the architects of the Repartition process that created SeCa and the other eight nations of the American Union.

Victor found Elena leaning against the base of Jefferson Eastmore’s pillar. “Thanks for meeting me,” he said. “This is important.”

She scowled at him and didn’t say anything.

Victor looked up at Granfa Jeff’s stone face. Two gray slugs for eyebrows, his nose a blunt nubbin, and eyes painted to stare at the Golden Gate Strait. Victor wondered if Elena had purposefully chosen to stand there to unnerve him.

She took a wary step forward and wrinkled her nose. “When was the last time you showered?”

“What? Doesn’t matter. Come on.” He started off toward the Medical Sciences Building. “The lab isn’t as busy during lunch hour,” he called over his shoulder.

“Wait,” Elena said.

Victor turned. She hadn’t moved.

“I’ll help you with whatever you have planned,” she said, “but we need to talk first.”

He walked back to her. “I know you think I’m obsessing. But the whole thing stinks. The hospital closing. How his face looked. You saw: he’d aged
years
. Heart failure doesn’t act that fast. And the records don’t add up. It’s like they’re for two different people.”

Elena shook her head and held up a hand. “We can talk about that later. I’ll help you. I promise. First, we need to talk about what happened with us.”

Victor felt the blood drain from his face.

Elena seemed to read his mind. “I know this is uncomfortable for you. Believe me, I feel the same way. But until I get this off my chest . . . Do you remember what you said? The day I left for Texas?”

Victor hung his head. He studied the square of burgundy paving stone on which they stood. Flecks of mica in the stone sparkled.

“I’ve been thinking about it . . .” Elena’s voice trailed off, weakening. Her gaze shifted toward the port and train terminals to the west. “What you said . . .”

His memories of the day she told him she was leaving came rushing back.

***

During their final year of high school, Victor, Elena, and Scott
—
another intern
—
had worked at Oak Knoll Hospital feeding mountains of health records into an optical scanner and double-checking the encoded bit-runs for errors.

Elena waved one hand toward the pile of papers on Victor’s desk and said, “How can you possibly get useful information from reading those?”

Victor shrugged. “I’m learning a lot.”

“You’re slowing us down,” she said. “Don’t read; just proof.”

Victor pinched the corner of the nearest document, brought it up to his face, and began reading. Elena was always rushing to get stuff done, never thinking about the big picture and how she fit in. His approach was much more careful. He read every document to fully understand diagnoses, surgery reports, notes from checkups, and prescriptions. He trusted his method, not her lack of one.

Sometime later, Scott asked Victor, “What’s wrong with Elena?”

“What do you mean?” Victor looked around, but she had left the room.

“She went to the bathroom about twenty minutes ago, and she’s still not back.”

“So?”

“So she seemed upset. Maybe you should check on her.”

“Upset how?” Victor asked.

Scott scratched one of his bushy sideburns. “I don’t know! She got up and didn’t say anything.”

Victor looked down at the paper in his hands. “That’s not strange, is it?”

“I think she was crying.”

Victor jerked his head up. “How do you know?”

Scott slammed his palm on the desk. “Because I know what crying looks like! She’s your girlfriend. Don’t you think you should check on her?”

Victor hesitated.

“Fine! I’ll go.” Scott stalked out of the room.

Victor looked at Elena’s empty chair. She would have said something, or made a sound, if she were sad. When something bothered her, she would curse, “Shocks!” or “Laws!” or make a growling sound; she wouldn’t slip away quietly and cry.

He turned to his terminal. He had been working on something but couldn’t remember what. A normal person would know what to do about Elena, automatically, without thinking. He was stupid for thinking he could manage a relationship with anyone, even one as atypical as theirs was.

The white type-globe on his vidscreen blinked on and off, marking the passage of each second. It might as well have said, “You are inadequate and unworthy of any woman’s affections.” Elena needed someone with wisdom and empathy, not a freak with deficient mental and emotional capabilities.

Scott returned and stood next to Victor’s chair. “Confirmed. She’s crying in the bathroom. Go check on her.”

Victor looked down at the floor. He was a lousy boyfriend and he didn’t deserve her.

“Just go.” Scott spun Victor’s chair around and tipped him forward onto the carpet. “Thank me later,” Scott said.

Victor picked himself up and plodded down the hall. He reached the door to the bathroom and knocked.

“Elena, what’s going on?” He sounded so meek. He tried again, this time making his voice boom in the small hallway. “Elena? Are you okay?”

She opened the door and pulled him in, shutting it again. “Shhh! People will hear you.”

Victor couldn’t bring himself to look into her eyes yet. An abstract painting of muted blue and green squares hung on the wall next to the sink. It would make a great meditation visual.

Elena walked to the mirror and started rearranging her hair. Her red and puffy eyes shifted, and she caught him studying her discreetly. The corners of her lips turned up slightly. If she was crying before, how could she be smiling now?

“People will think we’re up to something naughty in here,” she remarked.

Was she looking for that kind of comfort? Maybe she would finally agree to relax the prohibition against penetration. “You want to break our rule?” Victor asked. “Should we do it
here
, Elena?”

She opened her mouth, looking like she might laugh or say something, but instead she pressed her lips together and shook her head. Her hands dropped away from her hair. The humor visibly drained out of her as she said, “We’re going to lose our home.” Her hands fiddled with the pinky ring he had given to her two years earlier, a manufactured ruby set on a textured cobalt band.

He couldn’t think of anything to say.

“My dad was fired—something about making trouble with the union. The bank has been sending foreclosure warnings. I had no idea. I fought with Ma last night when I found out,” she continued. “Apparently, this has been in the works for months, and she never told me.”

“Are you sure they can’t keep the house? Aren’t there assistance programs?”

“There might be for other people, but we’re blacklisted in SeCa now. All three of us. There’s no work for them and no future for me once I graduate. No one will help us. We’re going to live with my granma in the Republic of Texas.”

Victor’s legs wobbled, and he sat down hard on the covered toilet. “You can’t move away,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to!” She sniffed, straightened, and crossed her arms. “I have a plan. I’m going to community college in the summer. I’ll have to live with my family, work, and take night classes.” She tried to smile, but it faded quickly, never reaching her eyes. “I’ll probably start dating some ex-pro-catch-and-carry jock with a beer belly and rocks for brains from being slammed into the ground every game. R.O.T! Of all the shitty places. We could at least go to Las Vegas. I could shack up with the King and make something of my life.”

“He’s not real, is he?”

“Forget it,” she said.

“There must be something you can do.”

Elena went and folded her arms around Victor. He nuzzled into her shoulder, breathing in the scent of her hair.

He didn’t deserve someone like her. She would be better off without him. He said, “I can’t imagine living without you.”

“You have to visit me.” She drew back and looked him in the eye. “Please. Otherwise I
—
I’m going to eat, drink, and let a different swaggering dickie screw me every night.”

“Dickie?” he asked.

“Dickie is short for syndicalist. The freedom fighters, the ones who pushed for the Repartition. I’ve been doing my research. Abuela Julia sent me local MeshNews articles. I’m not moving somewhere without knowing what I’m getting into.”

“I wish you could stay.” Victor clasped her hand, stroking it softly.

“You have to visit,” she said.

She held him tightly. Neither of them stated out loud that such a separation meant an end to their relationship. He knew it, and he had MRS; she had to know it too.

She released him but took hold of his hands. “Listen, Victor, you’re going to be fine. Screw the Classification Commission. Shock their laws to ashes. You’re not broken
—
you’re stronger than anyone I know. You’ve got Dr. Tammet and your family. You’ll be fine.”

The day before Elena’s family moved, Victor met her at a diner, and they sat in a corner booth. He gave her a present wrapped in the cartoon section of the
Bayshore Ledger
.

“You and your presents,” she said, smiling. She unwrapped it and held it up, a white V-neck T-shirt with the “California United!” slogan written in golden cursive letters across the top, and below it the state seal printed in faded and blotchy black, like an ink stamp. Lady Victory sat on the crest of the Oakland & Bayshore hills, a shift hanging from one shoulder and one breast bared to the Golden Gate Strait.

“I should hate this, but I love it,” Elena said. “It won’t make me any friends in Texas though.”

Victor sipped from a large mug of black decaffeinated faux-café
and scowled. “It’s so you don’t forget to come back to us someday.”

They spent most of the remaining time silently sipping their drinks. He concentrated on memorizing the color and texture of her irises
—
shaved cinnamon; the curves of her cheeks and lips
—
kind and seductive at the same time; and her hair, which fought to break free from jeweled butterfly hairpins. The best thing that had ever happened to him was about to end.

“Make sure you come visit,” she told him when she got up to leave.

He stood, and she pressed against him, her face to his chest. She rose on her tiptoes, gently kissed his lips, and let him go with a final squeeze.

“Elena, wait,” he said.

He had to tell her he loved her at least once. To see how it felt.

***

Victor had known it was a mistake as soon as the words “I love you” had passed his lips.

Elena pushed herself away from the pillar. She asked again, “Do you remember what you said to me right before I left?”

“I said, ‘I’ll miss you, Ellie.’”