Infected: Shift (52 page)

Roan stared at him a moment. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t seem at all offended by the slightly confrontational nature of the question. “I heard you were in the hospital, yeah? So I thought I’d drop by, see how you were doing.” He picked up a big bouquet of flowers wrapped in blue paper off the room’s lone chair. “I brought you these.”

Again, this remained so weird he wasn’t sure he was awake. But why would he dream that facial hair? “I’m not really a flower kind of gay.”

“There’s a beer in it.” He reached into the bouquet and slid out the top of a beer bottle, which seemed hidden by a large yellow spider mum.

“I love you.”

“I’ve visited lots of people in hospitals,” he said, putting a strange emphasis on the final syllable. “I know ways around things.” He put the bouquet down on the chair again, carefully, as if he was afraid the beer might roll out.

“Microbrew?”

He nodded. “Canadian, not that watery American piss.”

“Will you marry me?”

That made Tank grin at him, and it was oddly childlike. And unlike many hockey players, he appeared to have all his teeth. “If I was gay, I’d be all over you. I gotta thing for redheads.”

What on Earth did you say to that? He didn’t know, so he switched topics. “Where’s Dylan?” He was here, wasn’t he? What if he wasn’t here? He’d taken it for granted that Dylan would be here, but that wasn’t right, was it? Maybe this was what Paris—his subconscious—was trying to warn him about. What was in all this worry and stress for Dylan? He might come to his senses and decide that he simply wasn’t worth all this pain.

“He went to talk to a doctor I think. He wanted to—” He paused and his face screwed up briefly, like he didn’t like the taste of the word. “—damn. If he mentioned it, I forgot. Sorry. If I’m not in game mode, my attention wanders sometimes.”

“You don’t have ADD, do you?” This was a joke.

Tank shrugged as if the question was serious. “I exhaust my concentration. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? But I focus so tightly during games it’s like I don’t wanna do it if I really don’t hafta.”

“I believe it. You have sniper-like concentration.”

“Hardest part of being a goalie. It’s not guys lobbing shit at you or gettin’ in your face, it’s concentrating on a tiny, fast-moving piece of rubber while noise and people and lights are all around you, and just knowing without looking too hard who your guys are and who aren’t. I’d rather catch hundred-mile-an-hour slap shots than have to deal with a three on five with really hungry players and an angry, noisy crowd.”

This was all very interesting, mainly because Roan only knew that goalies were generally considered to be nuts; he had no idea of their perspective on things. As he sat up, he said, “Your reflexes are great, you know. I think they’re equal to mine.”

Again, that unselfconscious grin. Roan couldn’t help but think of most jocks as total assholes, but there was something very likable about Tank. There was something very off-putting too, but once you got to know him, it seemed like less of a worry. He was just an odd man, not scary odd (not constantly), just weird. “I’d hope they’d be better. You know how hard I’ve trained?”

Roan was going to point out he was super-human, therefore Tank shouldn’t feel bad about a draw, but that seemed both arrogant and presumptuous, so he didn’t say anything. He simply sat up and looked at the IV drip in his arm, trying to determine if it was just saline or something more. Then Roan decided to ask, “Why have you visited lots of people in hospitals? Is it sports related?”

Tank shook his head and scratched his arm. He was wearing jeans and a powder-blue T-shirt that seemed to be advertising a seafood place in a city called Trois-Rivieres (he was guessing because the words on the shirt were all in French), and where he scratched Roan could see both an old inoculation scar (?) and a tiny tattoo of a blue sun, with rays like starfish arms. “Sometimes. But mainly it was ’cause of my grandpa and my mom. My grandpa had emphysema that eventually killed him, and my mom got pancreatic cancer when I was a teenager, and she spent the last two months of her life in a hospital.” He shrugged again, but there was a little moment of pain in his eyes, hidden in a frown.

“I’m sorry.” Pancreatic cancer was a real bitch too. All cancers were bad by definition, but some were worse than others.

He shook his head, and the darkness that had briefly clouded his vision disappeared with the return of a friendly smile. “Nah, it’s okay. I learn things. Like how to steal meds from the supply closet. Wow, did me and my friends get high on the hospital’s dime.”

“You still do that?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know American hospitals so well.”

“Too bad. I was gonna have you go get me some Demerol.”

He tossed him a wink. “I’ll see what I can do.” He meant it too. Now that was a friend. Why he’d been adopted by a possibly crazy goalie he had no idea, but at least he was a cool guy.

The door to the room opened, and Dylan came in, looking to Tank before he noticed that Roan was awake and sitting up. “Roan!” he exclaimed, immediately coming to his side and embracing him in a powerful hug. He almost got tangled in Roan’s IV line.

Roan hugged him back and realized that that two day’s growth of beard he'd had after the transformation seemed thicker. Not only that, but Dylan had a dark fuzz of stubble on his cheeks as well, which he hadn’t had earlier. When Dylan pulled back, tears glimmered in dark chocolate eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“A little drugged, but okay. How long have I been here?”

“Only since yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” He’d been out for, what, twelve hours? Could he blame the drugs they gave him or not?

Before he could ask, a familiar voice said, “It should have been a lot worse.” Doctor Rosenberg came in, looking at his chart and shaking her head. “God, your luck. I’d play the lottery if I was you.” She looked up, noticing Tank. “You’re a new one.”

He must have guessed that was an invitation to introduction. “Tank Beauvais.”

“Your name is not Tank.”

“My real name is Thibault.”

She studied him for a moment. “Tank it is.” She pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up to the bridge of her nose and said, “I need to be alone with Roan for a few minutes.”

Dylan gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and told him, “I’ll be right outside.”

Roan nodded at him as Dylan gave him a small smile and a comforting squeeze on the arms before leaving the room, Tank falling in behind him without comment. The way Dylan acted, he couldn’t help but think Rosenberg was here to give him bad news.

“What’s with the Frenchman?” Rosenberg wondered.

“He’s a goalie. I’ve been adopted by a hockey team.”

“The Falcons?”

“You know of them?”

“I’ve seen the logos. I’m not locked up in my office all the time.”

There was no help for it—he had to just come out and ask. “I had another aneurysm, didn’t I?”

She gazed at him steadily, her hazel eyes giving him nothing. “Yes and no.”

Of all possible answers, this one was the most unexpected. “Well, that’s definitive.”

She rolled her eyes and tapped the clipboard holding his chart like somehow the answers on it were his fault. “The long and the short of it is, you probably did have an aneurysm, but beyond the burst blood vessels in your eyes, your blood pressure upon arrival, and initial head CT readings, we can no longer prove it.”

He mulled over everything she said carefully before answering. “Huh?”

“You’ve totally recovered.”

He considered this again. Yes, he was drugged. “Umm… didn’t I fully recover last time?”

“You weren’t brain damaged, but you did suffer some aftereffects. Now—” She shrugged with her hands, almost flinging the clipboard by accident. “Well, fuck me sideways. I don’t get these readings at all.”

It was always a little shocking when your small, grandmotherly doctor said “Fuck me sideways.” He rubbed his head, wondering if he was still dreaming. If he slapped himself, would she have him committed? “So… why I am here? I mean, if I’m all right….”

“We had to determine that. You did pass out. Besides, I wanna figure this out.” She lifted a page on the clipboard, scanned it, and then shrugged again. “I’m gonna give up, though. Life’s too short. Besides, I know you’ll wanna get out of here as soon as possible. So what I want you to do is give me the weekend.”

Lost. He felt totally lost and at sea and drugged without actually being drugged. What was going on here? “Are you speaking in riddles, or am I actually brain damaged?”

“I want to check you into Willow Creek this weekend,” she continued, as if he hadn’t actually said anything at all. Willow Creek was an infecteds-only hospital, the one where Paris spent a week recovering after he first met him. “I want to run a full battery of tests: PET scan, MRI, EEG, all the acronyms. It’ll just be me and a couple of trusted assistants.
Scientific American
won’t get their greedy little hands on you.”

“I’m on a case. I can’t do this weekend. Why the hell do you want to poke and prod me some more? Didn’t you do that enough when I was a kid?”

“Sorry, but you’ve grown up and adapted far beyond my comprehension. I can’t wrap my head around it. I feel like a moron, quite frankly.”

He grabbed onto the only word that really alarmed him. “Adapted? Meaning what exactly?”

She shrugged with her hands again, less violently this time. “Haven’t you noticed? Evolution takes thousands of years, millions, but you’re making it look like a lazy idiot. You’re adapting to your new situation, Roan, just like you adapted out of having a viral cycle.”

“That isn’t possible.” Was that why he'd started changing without realizing it the other night? Was he starting to adapt? That was insane. Bodies didn’t work like that—the virus didn’t work like that.

“Isn’t it? You’re the impossible man. The virus shouldn’t have incorporated into your DNA the way it did, and from there it’s just been an avalanche of impossibilities with you. Do I really need to point out that most virus children are ten years dead at your age? Or that all infected have viral cycles, except you? Come on. I think we’re both too old to dick around. You are a….” She didn’t have the word.

“Freak?” he suggested.

“Hybrid,” she replied with an evil scowl. “If you were at all an optimist, we could say you were the best of both worlds.”

“My mother was a human and my father was a virus,” he replied sarcastically. Before she could tell him to knock it off, he held up the IV line. “So what’s this, then, if I’m fine?”

“Fluids. You were dehydrated and, believe it or not, mildly malnourished, and probably exhausted considering the way you slept. You’ve got to remember the way your metabolism changes even during partial shifts. It’s playing holy hell with every system in your body. You probably need ten hours sleep on days of change, and fuck knows how many calories, maybe ten thousand or so. You can’t act like it’s just a normal day, because it’s not.”