Turnabout (5 page)

“Great,” Melly muttered. “I’m going to be a hot commodity in about fifteen years.”

“Would you like to see your selections?”
the computer screen blinked at her. She hit
Y.
When the list of names scrolled out in front of her, she picked one at random.

“Sound, please,”
the computer prompted.

Sighing, Melly turned the speakers back on.

The screen showed a curtain opening.

“Have we got a family for you,” boomed a male voice.

A couple stood on stage, waving.

“Hi! We’re the Burnham-Toddy-Smythe-Wallaces!” the man said. “We have over seven million dollars in assets!”

“Oh, brother,” Melly muttered. She zapped the Burnham-Toddy-Smythe-Wallaces and tried another choice. Two more beaming faces appeared on the screen.

“I’m Louis!”

“I’m Rachel!”

“We believe in the fellowship of humankind, and we believe it is our duty to raise a child to respect himself in the godhood of the world—”

Melly scrambled to get rid of Rachel and Louis as quickly as she could.

Sixty families later she was sitting with her face buried in her hands, the computer screen swimming with antique-style screen-saving fish, when Anny Beth strolled into the room.

“Hi,” Anny Beth said. “Found Ozzie and Harriet yet?” It was a reference to an ancient TV show, one that had been on in their first lives. Neither of them could remember that, of course, but there had been reruns at the agency.

“Ozzie and Harriet died a hundred years ago,” Melly moaned. “At this point I’d take Al and Peg Bundy over anyone in there.” She pointed to the computer screen.

“
Married . . . with Children,
” Anny Beth said. “Cool. I thought I was the only one who watched that historical garbage. Can I be the wisecracking, dim-witted sexpot daughter?”

“Be my guest,” Melly said. And then she burst into tears.

“Hey, hey,” Anny Beth said. She patted Melly’s shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll find someone.”

“I don’t know if I’m crying for me”—Melly sniffed—“or the world. How can any of those people think they deserve a child?”

“They’re desperate,” Anny Beth said. “Desperate people always get weird. Don’t forget that. And
people who don’t have kids yet have no clue what it’s really like—remember?”

“I don’t remember having children anymore,” Melly said stiffly.

“Oh, right. I was the one who got pregnant at fifteen. Anyhow, are you convinced now that this is crazy? Why don’t you come down and have lunch with me? I’ve got an hour before my next class. And don’t you have to baby-sit this afternoon?”

Melly nodded. “But I’m not giving up. Maybe the answer is to find someone we already know, someone around here. The Rodneys are okay.” They were the family she baby-sat for. They lived across the street.

“You’d trust them?” Anny Beth gave her a hard look.

Melly shrugged. “I don’t know. If I got to know them better I might.”

“You think the agency would let you tell them?”

“They couldn’t really stop me, could they?” Melly asked.

Anny Beth grinned. “Now you sound like me!”

Melly blew her nose and reached to shut down the computer. Just then the computer announced, “You have mail!” and the screen-saving fish melted into an icon of a revolving letter.

“Stupid junk mail,” Melly said. She clicked the letter open, then reached for the delete button. “All those stupid ads—”

“Wait!” Anny Beth had already read the message over Melly’s shoulder.

Melly looked at the screen and instantly froze. The words glowed in terrifying green:

“Seeking information about Amelia Lenore Hazelwood, born Amelia Lenore Hibbard, April 21, 1900, in KY, possibly died December 15, 2000, in OH.”

“Oh, no,” Melly breathed.

One of the men saw it on TV first. Mr. Johnson started pounding on the nurse call button and the volume control button at the same time, and screaming out what everyone later figured out was, “One of us! One of us!”

The nurse arrived in time only to hear, “—the woman carried no identification. Police are searching missing persons reports. Anyone with information please call the number at the bottom of the screen.” But, like Mr. Johnson, the nurse got a clear glimpse of the face on the screen: It was definitely Mrs. Swanson.

By the next news cycle a half an hour later everyone was assembled in the meeting room, staring at the four TVs the nurses had wheeled in. Amelia figured it was force of habit, because that was mostly what they did at the agency, have meetings. Certainly Dr. Reed and Dr. Jimson hadn’t summoned anyone this time. They rushed in at the last minute, as one of the anchorwomen chuckled, “And we’ve got a strange story out of Bedford Hills tonight. . . .” A mug shot of Mrs. Swanson appeared above the anchor’s head, and the attendants turned down the volume on the other three TVs.

“This woman appeared at the home of prominent attorney Morton Swanson this evening, claiming to be his mother, Louise Swanson. The real Mrs.
Swanson died several months ago. This woman created quite a disturbance. . . .”

The next view was video of Mrs. Swanson beating her fists on an imposing front door and screeching, “But I’m going to live forever, Morty! You never have to worry about losing me!” Then that scene was replaced by one of a reporter thrusting a microphone at a man in a tuxedo.

“You can only imagine the shock,” the man said. “My mother was the dearest person on earth to me. And then to have that . . . that banshee claiming to be her . . .”

The reporter nodded sympathetically. “Did the impostor bear any resemblance to your, uh, deceased mother?”

The man frowned. “Well, she was old,” he said doubtfully.

Amelia gasped, along with half the rest of the room. How could he not recognize his own mother?

On the TV the anchor appeared again, explaining that the woman claiming to be Mrs. Swanson had been taken into custody and was undergoing psychiatric evaluation, particularly in light of her claims of immortality.

Amelia watched Dr. Reed go ghostly pale. The TV station cut to a car commercial, and Dr. Jimson turned the volume down. Everyone sat in stunned silence until Mrs. Flick rolled her chair over to Dr. Reed.

“Why are you just standing there? Aren’t you gonna go tell them people she ain’t crazy?” she demanded.

“I-I-I don’t know,” he stammered.

“Well, she ain’t, is she? If she’s crazy, we all are,” Mrs. Flick said, looking back at the rest of the crowd. Then people began to mutter, “Not me!” and “What’s she mean?” But no one spoke loudly because they were all waiting for Dr. Reed’s answer.

He sank into a chair beside the TVs and rubbed his temples.

“This is a problem I didn’t anticipate,” he said, almost as if speaking to himself. “I don’t know what to do. If I save her, I betray the rest of you. It’s protecting one person versus protecting forty-nine.”

People began squirming in their chairs. Nobody seemed to understand.

Dr. Jimson stood watching Dr. Reed coldly from across the room.

“Fifty lives,” she snapped. “We are responsible for fifty lives. You find a way to protect them all.”

“I-I don’t know,” Dr. Reed repeated.

Amelia felt like a little kid watching her parents fight. Except her father had been the strong one, not her mother.

Dr. Jimson threw up her hands. “I have had it with you!” she exploded. “What is this—you do one nervy thing in your whole life, and then you’re
paralyzed with fear forever after? We did this!” She swung her arm in a broad sweep that indicated the entire crowd. “These are our people, like it or not. And we have to take care of them all!”

She spun on her heel. Afterward everyone would debate about whether she would have really done it, stormed into the office, picked up the phone, and called the number on the TV screen. But Dr. Reed stopped her with a single question.

“Why don’t we ask them what they think?” He pointed at the crowd.

Dr. Jimson slowly turned around. But she didn’t move any closer to Dr. Reed.

“Fine,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Her words fell into silence. Amelia waited for someone else to speak. Of course it was Mrs. Flick who rolled forward.

“Maybe it’s just me,” she started, “but I don’t rightly understand what all the fuss’s about. What’s stopping you from just going and picking her up?”

“I’d have to explain,” Dr. Reed said weakly.

Mrs. Flick shrugged. “Just say you run a funny farm and she escaped.”

“I’d have to show ID,” Dr. Reed said. “Credentials.”

“Fake ’em,” Mrs. Flick said. “How close they gonna look? They’re probably dying to get rid of her.”

But nobody was watching Mrs. Flick and Dr. Reed anymore. Mrs. Swanson’s face had shown up on another TV screen, and now the anchor was clearly making an effort to look mournful. Dr. Jimson picked up a remote and turned off the mute button.

“—sad ending to the strange disturbance in a swank Bedford Hills neighborhood this afternoon. A woman claiming to be the mother of prominent attorney Morton Swanson stormed his home and had to be taken into custody. His real mother is dead—and now so, too, is the impostor.” The crowd’s collective gasp drowned out the anchor’s next few words. Then Amelia heard, “—committed suicide—” before her ears seemed to stop working. Before, when she’d thought she was on the verge of death, she’d done that a lot, shut out the outside world without even trying. She’d been living mostly in her own mind, in her memories. But she wasn’t on the verge of death anymore. If the doctors were right, she was on the verge of a new life, and she’d have to face whatever that meant. She opened her eyes—not having been conscious before that they were even shut—and looked around.

On TV the anchor had moved on to a new story, something about a fire in the bad section of the city. But no one was paying attention to the TV. Everyone looked as if a bomb had been dropped in their
midst. Up at the front Dr. Reed had his face buried in his hands and was weeping. Amelia wasn’t used to seeing men cry. It disturbed her. If he couldn’t stop himself, she wanted someone else to lead him away, make him do it privately. After a long while Dr. Jimson went over to him, but all she did was lay her hands comfortingly on his shoulders. Dr. Reed began burbling, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault—”

“Don’t say that,” Dr. Jimson said. “You kept her alive longer than she would have lived otherwise—”

“But the way she died, by her own hand, feeling betrayed . . .”

Dr. Jimson nodded, as if agreeing on his guilt. Everyone sat in silence for a long time, listening to Dr. Reed cry. Then Mrs. Flick spoke up.

“Reckon it won’t do Louise any good now,” she said. “But seems like you’ve got some explaining to do to the rest of us.”

Dr. Reed nodded but was too choked up to speak right away. Afterward, when Amelia asked Mrs. Flick how she’d known Dr. Reed was hiding something, she said, “Honey, I’ve seen a lot of guilty men in my day. And he was acting the guiltiest.”

Dr. Reed blew his nose and began talking. “I lied,” he confessed softly.

“Speak up!” someone yelled from the back.

“I lied,” he repeated, his voice louder but not
stronger. “I lied to all of you, and I lied to Dr. Jimson and all our research assistants.”

“So we’re not going to live forever,” someone grumbled. “Should have known.”

“No”—Dr. Reed raised his head—“I didn’t lie about that. It’s true enough, as far as I know. It’s just that I only gave PT-1 to one bunch of lab rats before I gave it to you. I didn’t get FDA approval for this experiment. This is totally illegal.”

“So?” Mrs. Flick asked.

Dr. Jimson bit her lip. “They don’t understand,” she told Dr. Reed. “They’re not scientists.” She turned back to the crowd. “There are certain, uh, protocols that must be followed for experiments on human subjects. Things to protect you. We have to be as sure as possible that an experiment is likely to be beneficial, not harmful. I won’t go into all the details, but only testing a drug on a hundred lab animals before introducing it to humans is akin to”—she glanced at Dr. Reed with an unusual show of compassion—“plotting murder.”

“Aw, don’t be so hard on yourself, Doc.” It was Mr. Johnson. Somehow the excitement had made him more articulate. “We was all going to die anyway.”

Dr. Jimson shook her head. “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Rules are rules. And in this case there were lots of ethical issues that needed to be worked out.”

“But you signed on too.” Amelia couldn’t see how Dr. Jimson could be innocent if Dr. Reed was guilty. “Weren’t you worried about those ‘ethical issues’?”

“I gave her extensive fake documentation,” Dr. Reed said without looking up. “I convinced her I had all my ducks in a row—”

“And I was eager to participate in the most momentous scientific experiment of my lifetime,” Dr. Jimson admitted. “I’m guilty too.”

“We hadn’t figured out what your lives would be like as you unaged. We didn’t think about the need to keep secrets from your families. We didn’t think about what could or couldn’t be revealed to the media,” Dr. Reed said.

“I don’t get it,” Mrs. Flick said. From all the puzzled expressions in the room, Amelia thought Mrs. Flick spoke for everyone. “You didn’t know any of us from Adam. Right? It didn’t matter to you if we lived or died. Why was you in such a dad-blamed hurry?”

“My grandmother—” Dr. Reed choked up again. “My grandmother was dying. She was very dear to me—I couldn’t not try to save her. . . .”

Everyone looked around, as if wondering why Dr. Reed’s grandmother hadn’t claimed kinship before. Dr. Reed answered the unspoken question.

“She died anyway,” he said softly. “There were
originally one hundred of you. But no one pulled through who had had certain types of health problems—a history of stroke, heart disease, and diabetes, among other things.”

It was hard not to get sucked in by the grief in his voice. But there was too much else to figure out to take time feeling sorry. Amelia looked around, wondering if everyone was as confused as she was. Her brain hadn’t had such a workout in years, if ever. Only Mrs. Flick looked up to ask another question.