My Delicate Destruction: Book One of the Wolfegang Series (7 page)

It didn’t take long for Friday to arrive, as if the days were hours, and the hours were minutes. It was Friday morning, and I still didn’t feel prepared for what I was about to go through.

Mom woke me up early and had me get dressed. I was starving, but I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything twenty-four hours prior to the procedure. I felt scatterbrained. It took me forever to find a pair of clean socks that matched. I finally found a pair and finished getting ready. Then I headed to the kitchen.

When I came out of my room, Kris was sitting at the kitchen table with his head lying in his arms.

Driving to the hospital and checking in was a blur. All I remember was meeting Kevin in the waiting room, holding his hand so tight I thought he might lose circulation, and the nauseated feeling.

I sat in that tiny room with my mom, brother, and Kevin. My arms slid around Kevin’s neck, and I rested my head in the crook of his shoulder, breathing in his smell.

“Kevin?” I whispered.

“Yeah baby, what is it?”

“It’s going to be two years.” I didn’t want to open my eyes because I knew all I would see was his pain. I wanted to lose myself in his warmth, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the time we had left.

“I know.” His voice was quiet.

I felt desperate and afraid. He held me and kissed me softly. I pushed back tears. I didn’t want anyone to see me cry.

“Katerina, there’s nothing to be afraid of. I will be there when you wake up, when you are all healthy again.” Kevin stood up. “I’m going to go. They are going to call your name soon, and I want to be strong for you, but this is hard.” He pulled me to him and hugged me. “I love you,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He kissed me breathless and then walked out of the room, out of the hospital.

As I watched him leave, my heart broke a little with the weight of maybes. My smile was sad, as much as I tried to hide it. For right then, I would believe him. I needed to believe him.

My mom touched my arm. “They’re going to call our name shortly.”

“Is Dad coming?” I asked.

She looked away and started picking at her nail. “I don’t know. I called him this morning, but he said he had an important meeting. He’ll come if he can. You know he loves you.”

No, actually, I didn’t know that since he was never around. I looked away but didn’t say anything. Instead, I watched Kris; he was playing his Game Boy, something he had since we were little. He seemed completely oblivious to the world around him. I could hear the Super Mario Bros. theme song. It seemed almost absurd in the current circumstance. I smiled. My twin was so weird, but he could pull it off with style.

Finally, a blonde nurse called us in.

If my observation was correct, she was checking out my brother. Annoyed, I followed.

“All right, Mr. Anderson, I need you to take off your clothes. The nurse in the exam room across the hall will take your vitals, and Miss Anderson, you’re in this room.” I looked in, and there was a giant man in scrubs waiting for me. I swallowed and stepped in. The door slammed behind me, much like in a horror film.

I stripped to my underwear and stepped on the scale. “One hundred and twenty pounds,” he announced. Then he had me stand against the wall. “And five-foot-eight.” He got my blood pressure and temperature next. I hated that tingling feeling you got when the stupid band squeezed your arm. He also had me sit on the exam table with the annoying, crackly paper that sticks to your butt and had me breathe in and out as he listened to my heart and lungs with the cold stethoscope. I hated hospitals. I was glad to put my clothes back on.

I walked out and found my brother waiting for me in the hall. “Have fun?” I asked. He glared back at me. He hated doctors more than I did.

We were told to wait where we were for Dr. O’Leary. We waited for about ten minutes before he decided to show up carrying our patient files. I could tell which one belonged to Kris because it was a couple of inches thick.

“All right, follow me,” he said, his voice full of false cheer.

I tried hard not to laugh in his face. It’s not like we were going to get ice cream or something. Kris stepped on my foot as I made a weird choking noise in my throat, him barely containing his own laughter.

I had this knack for laughing at the most inappropriate times. But laughing was better than crying, and all the stupid emotions swirling around inside of me were going to make me do one or the other.

The doctor just gave us a smile and a nod as if we were crazy people who needed to be placated. He turned and led us down the hall to the elevator. Our mom followed behind us like a lost puppy.

The elevator doors opened, and we stepped in. There wasn’t any elevator music, just silence. It was kind of eerie, to be honest. I glanced over at Kris. He was fidgeting a lot, shuffling his weight from foot to foot while Mom continued to pick at her nails. She refused to meet anyone’s eyes. She looked like she felt bad, guilty that our dad wasn’t there.

The doctor pressed the button with B2 next to it. Great, we were going to the second level basement. In my library of Hollywood horror flicks, the basement was always bad news. As if the first basement wasn’t bad enough, we were going to the second one. It seemed to take forever to get there too.

Finally, the doors opened, and I practically jumped out. My mild claustrophobia mixed with my fear had made me feel like I was suffocating in there. Kris strolled out like he owned the place. Mom followed on the tails of Dr. O’Leary’s coat with a look that gave me the impression that she thought we were all going to be assaulted.

It was well lit though. There were no flickering lights or sounds of dripping water. The only thing that gave away that it was a basement were the exposed pipes, but everything else looked like the rest of the hospital. The walls had a thick coat of white. That, coupled with the white linoleum, gave the scenery that sterile feeling. It didn’t smell like antiseptics though. It smelled almost fresh, like the chemicals hadn’t had time to take hold of everything.

Dr. O’Leary took us down a few hallways and corridors with labs and offices on either side. When we reached the opposite side of the basement, it opened up into a large space with a few pods, monitors, cases of vials, lab tables, and other assortments of hospital equipment.

“Attack of the pod people,” Kris whispered in my ear.

I laughed, but there was a nervous tinge to it. The prospective consequences of what I was about to do hit me full force.

“The last three years of our experiments on animals have been one-hundred percent successful. We’ve created a new suit to maintain bodily functions and provide hydration and proteins while protecting the skin from the cold and possible frostbite.”

Good to know. I hadn’t thought about that. By the look Kris gave me, neither had he. Dr. O’Leary brought us to a corner where five people were standing around in white lab coats.

“Ms. Lawrence here will give you your suits and help you into them,” Dr. O’Leary told us.

The nurse led me behind a screen and motioned for me to take everything off. She had me step into the suit and then zipped it up. It stretched and then shrank against my body until it was a second skin. It zipped up the front so I wasn’t sure why she had to help me. I think it may have been the sensitivity of the suit because it looked like a latex wetsuit but felt like silk. How they managed that, I have no idea. She helped me into the boots as well, and they covered my legs all the way up to my knees. They felt like Ugg boots on the inside. Then the nurse put my hands into a pair of gloves that were made of the same material as the suit. It all fit perfectly. It almost felt like I wasn’t wearing anything. The nurse nodded that I was done and had me step out from behind the screen.

“Go, Lara Croft!” Kris catcalled and whistled.

I smiled sweetly at him and gave him the finger. He laughed at me. “Come on,” I said. “I want to see you get your ass in that tight little suit.” I crossed my arms and waited.

Ms. Lawrence smiled and motioned him to the screen. There was a small glint of excitement in her eyes. I rolled my eyes. Yet another woman to fall under the charm of Kristopher Anderson.

It took him awhile, but when he came out, I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I had to hold my sides. He looked so uncomfortable.

“You suck,” he pouted. The nurse openly stared. I’m sure she got an eyeful.

I turned around to catch my breath and saw the two people-sized pods. Immediately, I forgot about the nurse who was currently helping Kris zip up his suit again since he kept pulling at it like a child. That was what I was supposed to live in for the next two years. I suddenly couldn’t breathe.

Kris appeared at my side. Even though he could be a real jackass, he knew when I needed him, and I could always count on him to be there.

“We’ll be okay,” he reassured me. I knew he was right, but it was all so unreal.

Dr. O’Leary had his nurses get the machines ready. Another nurse came over to Kris and started attaching tubes, gadgets, and gizmos. It was a little unsettling.

A nurse by the name of Alice stuck a needle into the port of the suit and into my arm. She ignored my protest, an old hand at stabbing people it would seem. She led me over to one of the pods and had me get in. I didn’t like how pressed in I felt. It had glass panels that I could see through, and that helped, but I felt my chest getting tight and tried to remind myself to keep breathing. There was plenty of air. I could do this.

Alice started attaching the heart monitor and fluids to the needle. The pod was like lying in a water bed and felt like my own personal bubble. It almost felt nice until Dr. O’Leary stuck his head right over mine, scaring the living daylights out of me.

“Everything okay in there?” he asked.

I wanted to tell him not to ask dumb questions, but I held my tongue and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Fantastic!” He seemed excited that his pet project was finally reaching the culmination of all his work and research. I just loved being the guinea pig.

“Now, I’m loading up the computers to monitor your progress twenty-four-seven. Alice here is going to inject you with the drug Hope, and the anesthesiologist will put you under before we start the process for the suspended animation,” Dr. O’Leary said.

Hope. How ironic. Well, I did hope I wouldn’t die. I just smiled instead of saying something I probably shouldn’t. Alice strapped me down and proceeded to attach the tubes from the pod onto their designated places. As soon as she was done, she stepped back and pressed a button on the side of the pod so that it became perpendicular with the floor.

Now I could see Kris across from me. He grinned and waved. I smiled and waved back. I could feel my hand shaking, a sign I was progressively losing control of my fear.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. We would either make it together, or we wouldn’t come out of it alive at all. Oddly, that comforted me.

The anesthesiologist placed the plastic mask over my face. I could smell the sharp tang of the drugs as I inhaled. It made me woozy, and my head buzzed. The room started to spin, and I got dizzy, so I closed my eyes. The ringing in my ears got so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else.

Was I afraid to die?

Truthfully, there were worse things than death.

Headlines across the world covered the tragedy that would rock the country.

OVER 1.5 MILLION DEAD

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS LEFT HOMELESS

$200 BILLION LOST IN LOS ANGELES EARTHQUAKE

8.6 ON THE RICHTER SCALE

MORE THAN HALF THE CITY IN RUINS

EPICENTER LOCATED IN HOLLYWOOD

People grieved, but the citizens of Los Angeles rebuilt, bigger and better than before. Soon the tragedy was just another date in history and they forgot about those who died. Kristopher and Katerina Anderson were forgotten, and the UCLA Medical Center was abandoned and all research discontinued after the data was lost.