Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (3 page)

“I don’t know, but I’m really worried about you!”
I know this is nothing but crazy Jori talk, but it still
 upsets me. Paranoia is usually a pretty selfish thing. I, for
 one, have never been paranoid about anyone else’s safety.
Only my own.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Really.”
“You won’t. I heard her on her cell phone with Dr.
Buckley, getting impatient. She was  spinning her bracelets.
Then she started pacing in her fancy shoes.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. I’m not so good with time.”
Neither am I. A day is as a week is as a month. I used
 to scratch little hash marks on the wall next to my bed. I
 counted them every day to remind myself how long I’d
 been here. But then they switched my room and I lost track.
“Are you sure it was Dr. Buckley she was talking to?”
“I’m sure.”
“But why would she be on the phone with him when
 she could just talk to him in person? And besides, I don’t
 think cell phones work here.”
“Satellite phones work here. Maybe that’s what she
 had.”
I’m surprised by this. I wouldn’t expect Jori to know
 what a satellite phone is. I’m not even sure I do.
“Sarah, if you’d heard her, you’d believe me. She said
 to Buckley”—and here Jori uses a different voice, with a
 southern accent—“‘This is not what we agreed to. You’ve
 got one more chance to get rid of our little problem before
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I take care of things myself. And if I have to do that, you
 can be sure that you’ll be drumming up research funds by
 starting a lemonade stand, because I’ll make sure no one
 gives you another penny. Ever. Again.’”
The details of the story make me nervous, but I try not
 to show it. “Okay, Jori. I promise I’ll be careful.”
Jori squeezes me around my waist. “Good. I don’t want
 anything bad to happen to you.”
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to me, either. Or
 you.”
I pat her on the back and put my head against hers. We
 sit for a moment, baldness to baldness, silent.
“Sarah?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to leave here?”
Do I? I know I should want to leave. I should want to
 embrace this brand-new future, my clean slate free of the
 trauma, loss, misery, anger, and pain. But it’s not that sim-
 ple.
“I don’t want to be here,” I say, “but I don’t want to be
 out there, either.”  
“Yeah. Me too. I wish there was a better here or a better
 there to pick from.”
Jori’s nurse returns. Seeing us—and, more to the point,
 seeing Jori calm—pleases her so much that she smiles at
 me. I’m not often on the receiving end of smiles. I mean,
I’m sure Larry smiles at me, but I’ve never seen his face, so
 that doesn’t count.
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I get back into the wheelchair, and the nurse thanks
 me quietly, almost reluctantly. Before I go, Jori rushes me
 again.
“I almost forgot.” She reaches into her bathrobe pocket
 and then opens up her palm, revealing a handful of jelly
 beans. “Nurse Lemontree gives me these if I don’t make
 any trouble.”
She picks up a red jelly bean and holds it up. I know
 what she wants. She wants to see me do my trick. I wink
 at her.
“Ready?” she asks.
“I’m ready.”  
“Anywhere?”
“Anywhere.”
She tosses the jelly bean into the far corner of the room.
She thinks she’s thrown it out of my reach, but I put one
 foot on the coffee table, then another on the arm of the
 sofa, and I hop into the air, twist, and catch the jelly bean
 in my mouth, landing softly on the cushions, sideways.  
“Amazing!”
It’s a silly, worthless talent, but I never miss. I think I
 might have been a seal in a former life.
Jori hugs me. I put my arms around her tiny frame. It’s
 like hugging a marionette.
I’m eager to get away. Five minutes of Jori is all I can
 take right now. I wave good-bye to her just as Steve reap-
 pears, huddling for warmth over his coffee mug like it’s a
 campfire. The poor guy is freezing.
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I guess I am, too. That must be why I’m shivering.
Once I’m finally back in my room, Steve helps me into bed
 and then dims the lights. He hovers for a moment, and I
 wonder if he’s waiting for a tip.
“Try to get some rest. They’ll get you fixed up next
 time. As soon as this storm blows over.” He puts his hand
 on my head, gently this time. “Someone will bring your
 dinner tray in a little while.”
“Thanks.”
He winks and points at me. “I’ll see if I can pull some
 strings and get you two pieces of that key lime pie.”
“That would be great. Thanks, Steve.”
“Take care now.”
As soon as he walks out of the room, I sit up and turn
 my body away from the security camera’s steady gaze, hop-
 ing it looks like I’m just adjusting my blankets. I examine
 the plastic bag in my hand at last. It holds three clear gel
 capsules along with a piece of paper. On one side of the
 paper are instructions:
Take one pill at a time, at 24-hour intervals.
24 hours exactly.
Remain still after taking.
I turn the paper over and see there’s something
 more. The handwriting is hard to make out, but it says,  
For we know what we are, but not what we may become.
Okay.
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I should probably wonder what the pills are for, who
 gave them to me, why. I know the medical staff would
 disapprove of me putting an unknown medicine into my
 system. It might cause a setback.
I reread both sides of the note. Someone wants me to
 take these pills. Someone wants to help me. I pop a pill into
 my mouth without another thought.
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CHAPTER 3
 hat did I expect?
W Something. Something more than disappointment.  
I lie in bed for a long time. Whatever the pill is sup-
 posed to do, it isn’t working. After an hour or so, I get up.
No sooner am I upright than it hits me.
A memory. So fast and furious, I understand why I’m
 supposed to remain still, because I fall to the floor as the
 room seems to expand and contract around me, like I’m in
 the middle of a camera lens trying to focus.
Worse, this isn’t a memory. It’s more like a reenactment,
 and I’m not prepared for the intensity of it.
I’m hanging in the air, my legs swinging freely. I’m high up.
So, so high!
Whatever I’m holding on to is swaying. Some piece of machin-
 ery. It groans as the metal contorts in the wind. The hood of my
 jacket is lifting up around my ears with every gust. I feel my hair
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lashing my cheeks. I should have pulled it back into a ponytail
 before I started climbing.
I can just make out the faint sounds of the city below. Taxi
 cabs. Trucks. Everyone so eager to get somewhere. That’s what’s
 so thrilling and horrible about the city—all those layers of urgency
 working against each other.
New York City.
I look down at the lights spread out across the city. This is my
 starry sky. So what if I look down at it instead of up? It’s just as
 beautiful to me.
I’m hanging on to a construction crane poised beside a half-
 completed skyscraper. I must be a hundred feet in the air. My arm
 is hooked over one of the metal struts. I can stay here for a while so
 long as I don’t look straight down. If I do, I feel the pull of it—the
 seduction of falling. All I have to do is let go.
But I can’t give in. I need to finish what I’m doing. I need to
 tie this banner onto the arm of the crane. It’s a message. I want the
 whole city to see it.  
My face is wet with tears, tears from the wind in my eyes and
 the pain in my chest, but I do what I need to do. I finish, and I
 know I shouldn’t, but I look down and right away feel it. That
 something that teases me and tells me it knows everything in my
 heart. It knows the strain of these last few months. Come to me,
 it whispers. It’s so hard not to listen. So many things would be
 solved if I just let go. What’s the difference, really? Forgetting is
 the antidote for every problem.
Let go, it says.
But I hold on.
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I’m back in my hospital room, hyperventilating. I put my
 head between my knees and try to slow my breathing and
 heart rate, but it’s like trying to calm a charging bull with
 soothing words. Inside my head is the strangest sensation,
 like there’s something dripping, melting. It isn’t painful,
 but it isn’t pleasant, either. I wonder if something has gone
 wrong. All that drilling they do—maybe I’m bleeding.
Maybe my cerebral fluid is draining away. Maybe taking
 that pill was a really bad idea.
Too late now.
I stand up, but I’m too dizzy to walk. I force myself to
 do it anyway. As I lurch toward the door, I stumble and
 fall hard onto my hip. I wonder why no nurse has come in.
The camera in the corner of my room is on. Surely they’ve
 seen me fall, but no one comes to help.
That’s when I notice something odd under my bed.
Clothing. And shoes. No, not shoes—boots. Big, heavy
 work boots. All I’ve worn for months are hospital gowns
 and socks with little no-slip rubber pads on the bottom.
I’ve hardly even seen regular street clothes in months.
Everyone here is either in a hospital gown or a white medi-
 cal coat and scrubs.
I shake my head and then tap it hard, like I’m trying
 to get some wonky remote control working again. I crawl
 across the floor and then press myself down onto my belly
 so I can reach the clothes under the bed.
How did these get here? Why did these get here? It’s a
 pair of pants and a dark green hooded sweatshirt. The pants
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have grass stains on the knees. I immediately stand up, pull
 my hospital gown over my head, and begin to dress. The
 pants turn out to be huge, but there’s a belt, which I tighten
 to the last notch. There’s no shirt, so I put the hoodie on
 over my bare chest. I push my foot into one of the boots.
Loose but usable.
I wad my hospital gown into a ball and throw it onto
 my bed. I check all the pockets of the pants and find some-
 thing else: one of those magnetic cards the staff use to open
 doors. It’s white with a rainbow holographic E. C. on it,
 whatever that stands for.
Suddenly, a series of sharp pops makes the floor quiver.
I don’t know what could have caused that sound, but my
 instincts shout at me, Get out of here now!
My instincts don’t seem to understand that I’m in a
 locked hospital ward and getting out is impossible. But I go
 to the door and pull it anyway.
It opens.
I can’t believe it. I stick my head out into the hallway
 and look back and forth. I see no one and hear nothing, so
I walk out of my room, and after a moment, I realize there’s
 no reason to hide. It’s not just the hallway that’s empty; it’s
 the whole ward. How is this possible? Where are the nurses?
They haven’t abandoned us all and gone home because of this
 storm, have they?
That’s when I hear the pulsing beat of a helicopter. The
 windows rattle as it gets closer. It hovers right above the
 building for a solid minute before moving away.
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I walk up to the nurses’ station and look around.
Mounted on the wall above the desk are a dozen video
 monitors, but only three are turned on. One of them shows
 the coma kid in the room diagonally across the hall from
 mine. I knew about him because I once heard Nurse Jenner
 make a joke about how he was her favorite patient. Never
 gave her a bit of trouble.
Another monitor shows a guy in bed with an IV. I’ve
 never seen him before.
The last monitor is focused on an empty bed. Mine.
Are there really only three of us here?
I pick up a remote control for the video monitors and
 start pressing buttons. Somehow I make the pictures on
 one of the monitors shift like a slide show. The screen dis-
 plays various sights around the compound. I see the outer
 exercise yard. Snow is starting to accumulate along the
 benches and paths.
Next, there’s a panoramic shot, blurred by the storm,
 and I can just make out the main hospital building from a
 distance. There are a few other places I don’t recognize. It’s
 like watching the universe expand.
And look at that! A sleek black helicopter is landing
 outside. The rotors come to a quick stop and fold up like
 some kind of  mechanical insect.
The windows shake once again as the helicopter that
 was hovering over the roof descends. It moves slowly, fol-
 lowing the contour of the building like it’s prowling for
 something, looking into all the windows.
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The next image that comes up on the monitor is star-
 tling and eerie: a small group of people rushing somewhere,
 frantically falling over each other as they run. That’s when
I notice the familiar pattern of marble tiles on the floor: It’s
 a mosaic of the rising sun.
That’s the main lobby.  
I go to the window and look through the blinds. The
 helicopter is now twenty yards away, a couple floors up. It
 begins to move off, and I think it’s leaving, but then the
 nose turns toward the building. Seconds later, there are
 three quick blasts of fire, followed by a whistling sound.
I’m able to think the word rockets just as they hit. BOOM.
BOOM. BOOM.
Ceiling tiles and light fixtures rain down on me. Clouds
 of dust explode from every direction. The cracking and
 breaking seems to go on endlessly. I hear another series of
 three explosions—three more rockets—this time on the
 wing opposite mine. That’s Jori’s side of the fourth floor.
I scramble  under the desk. The windows have popped
 and sprayed glass pellets everywhere. The ward doors
 swing open slowly like the building’s been turned side-
 ways. I stand and then walk slowly to the stairwell, but
 seconds later, I’m on my hands and knees again as another
 explosion buckles the floor. The watercooler tank tips over,
 and I hear it glugging as it rolls away.
What was once my hospital room is now a ragged hole,
 and through this opening I watch the helicopter as it turns
 and rises. Once it moves away from the building, I rush
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toward the coma kid’s room. Why? This is stupid. How can
I save someone in a coma?
It’s hard to climb over the fallen debris, but I make it
 to his door and see a huge beam lying across the kid’s bed,
 across his chest.
I spin and run, searching from room to room as the
 snow blows into the hallway, melting instantly as it falls.
Finally, at the end of the hallway, I find the guy I just saw
 on the monitor. He looks to be in his late teens. A bunch
 of tubes are connecting him to an IV and a catheter. His
 thickly muscled arms, chest, and neck are covered with tat-
 toos, some of which have been “scrubbed” off with a laser.
That’s another thing they do here.
I count half a dozen incision scars on his head, and
 there’s one that’s freshly stitched. He also has what might
 be a bullet wound scar just below his collarbone. I lift his
 arm and try to tug him off the mattress. He’s rock-solid
 dead weight, and I know there’s no way I can carry him.
I put my hand over the kid’s heart, feel his chest rise and
 fall. Something about him is familiar to me. Like I don’t
 know him specifically, but I know people like him. I pull
 his IV out, make the sign of the cross on his forehead, lips,
 and chest. It’s all I can do for him, and I’m well aware of
 how pathetically little it is.
I run out the door, slip on the wet floor, and land on
 my tailbone. That’s when I hear them. There are people in
 the building. People who shouldn’t be here. I know this
 because they’re making a lot of noise, stomping up the stairs
 rather than running for cover. I look down at myself—the
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