The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange

by Anna Ferrara

  I sat up and looked around at once.

  I was still on the stack of bricks I had been sitting on since morning. Nobody but Gemma was on the second floor of the construction site with me. The environment was much brighter and hotter than I remembered it to be though.

  “They’re in the basement,” Gemma whispered. “Ten or twenty of them. I saw them come in through the gate. They went right for the basement. They have guns like the ones the guards at Wonderdrug had the day we escaped.”

  Rifles? That didn’t sound good at all. I looked at the sky around us and decided it was probably mid-day.

  Only mid-day. We hadn’t even had lunch yet!

  Paul told Gemma we could each have a can of tuna for lunch which meant she wasn’t going to be back anytime soon; we were on our own with the soldiers! Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Would they take us back to Wonderdrug if I told them we needed help or would they just jail us for trespassing right away, I wondered.

  “How are we going to get away?” Gemma asked.

  I didn’t know. But that wasn’t my concern at that point. The more pressing question was... Did I want to get away? I really should have figured it out earlier, before I gave in to sleep, I realised.

  There was no place to hide on the second floor or any of the floors above; no walls, no rooms, just wide open empty spaces with thick cement pillars running through the slabs of cement that made the floors. If the soldiers were already in the basement, they likely had the gate—our only route of escape—blocked as well, which meant the choice of whether to stay or go had already been decided for us. Perhaps a more constructive use of time would be to think of how we were going to convince the soldiers to send us back to the Wonderdrug Psychiatric Centre without legal prosecution?

  “Why don’t we try jumping over the fence from the third floor,” Gemma suddenly said, to my surprise. There was seriousness and determination all over her face—something I never thought I’d ever see. “It’s not all that far away, right? Come on, let’s give it a try.”

  Before I could decide whether or not to agree, Gemma was already climbing the cement stairs that led to the third floor two at a time, on the tips of her toes. She seemed way more desperate to get away than I was and I didn’t understand why. How was it that the Wonderdrug Psychiatric Centre, with all its security and comforts, could be less appealing to her than living in a dusty construction site?

  The third floor was much higher and windier than I remembered it to be but Gemma hadn’t been wrong.

  At one corner, the slab of cement that was the floor stuck out more than it did anywhere else and was really close to the wooden, barb wired fence surrounding our construction site. The gap between that part of the floor and the fence was approximately seven feet wide—not impossible to cross—but the drop after the fence certainly wasn’t for the faint of heart. Down below, there was a hard concrete pavement.

  Bones would be broken if we fell on that, for sure. Not a problem for me if the whole CRO and superhuman regenerative abilities thing was real, but also possible death and permanent disability for me if it wasn’t. I could be screwed if we jumped and Gemma would be screwed no matter what.

  “Why don’t we just explain our situation?” I said to her as we stood by the edge analysing the impossible. “Maybe they’ll be sympathetic? I mean we are patients, right? Most people treat patients decently, don’t they?”

  To my surprise, Gemma frowned and said, “No.” A spark of fire that had never been in her eyes before suddenly appeared. “It’ll be really hard to get out again if we go back now, Lane. I haven’t gotten sick yet so I’m not wasting this chance. Let’s do this, come on!”

  “Are you sure?” I said, but she never heard me because she had already taken many steps backwards and was staring at the edge with her hands flat, knees rocking and eyes intensely determined.

  The drop would kill her, that was all I knew. She doesn’t realise how dangerous the world really is! She doesn’t know how the world really works! I watched her lift her knees high and sprint towards the edge. I felt a gust of wind swoosh across my face as a blur of black, grey and yellow passed me and I screamed. “Gemma, no!”

  She didn’t listen. I picked my feet up and sprinted after her like a competitor in a race. I managed to grab her just as she reached the edge and pushed my feet off the floor just seconds after she pushed off too.

  We sailed through the air, arm in arm, with our legs wide open like ballerinas leaping in a dance. We floated two feet away from the protruding cement floor, then four feet, then six feet and at last, eight feet, right across the barb wired wooden fence under us. I swung my body towards Gemma’s as gravity wrenched us towards the hard-looking grey ground and did my best to stay under her.

  I heard a loud thud and many cracks when my body made contact with the unforgiving concrete pavement. Familiar hot pain shot through my back, left arm and both feet. I heard Gemma cry out in pain—and perhaps, surprise—too.

  A woman screamed in the distance. A man shouted, “West side! Targets escaping!”

  I craned my neck back and saw, upside down, a tiny man in a dark blue armoured uniform, with a black helmet on, running towards us with a rifle in his hands. I looked to my right and saw Gemma holding on to her wrist with her face scrunched up in pain. I tried to sit up but realised I no longer could. I had lost all feeling in my legs, yet again.

  This was it for me. “Gemma, if you can, run. Now!”

  Gemma opened her eyes, saw both me and the man in uniform, and jumped up at once. She looked terribly confused. “What are we going to do, Lane?” she asked. Other than her limp-looking hand, the rest of her body looked fine. She was standing like any other normal, healthy human being would and could even pick up the muesli bar which had fallen out from my pocket onto the ground.

  I grinned because I knew I was the reason Gemma was fine and it felt kinda good. Somehow. I have no idea why. “Forget me. Go! Run! See the world! Have the time of your life!”

  The man in the dark blue armoured uniform yelled at us to stay where we were.

  Gemma looked up at him then down at me and nodded. “Sorry, Lane, and thank you!” She picked her knees up and ran like her life depended on it.

  And I guess, maybe, it really did.

  The man in uniform didn’t go after her. He jumped right over me and shot me in the arm. “P-eight-seven acquired,” he said as if talking to a radio somewhere on his person.

  I didn’t feel anything hit me. The excruciating pain in my back was all I knew as those familiar patches of black began creeping in front of my eyes all over again.

  Before I passed out fully, I dug out the piece of yellow chalk I had been carrying in my pocket and drew a small heart on the pavement when the man in uniform wasn’t looking. I added a ‘d2’ right behind the heart too.

  I did it for Paul. After everything we had been through together, I thought she deserved a proper goodbye.

  Chapter 27

  6 August 2033

  When I opened my eyes again, I found myself staring at familiar blue skies, white fluffy clouds and green hills. One closer look, one sniff and I knew exactly where I was.

  I was where I didn’t mind being. At last. Best of all, nothing had changed. The paintings were the exact same ones I remembered. The bed and pillows under me felt and smelled just as clean as I remembered. The VRM entertainment system and its virtual reality headset were both in the exact same places I last left them. The layout of the room—treadmill built into the floor, the bar table with its lone stool, two white armchairs around a side table in front of a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf full of books—was completely the same.

  A familiar creak sounded on my left.

  I knew where to look and what to expect the moment I heard it. I knew the door on the left would open and a doctor would walk in. I couldn’t help but wonder if Dr Clark would be the one walking in. If I could see his face again, see him move again in the flesh, it w
ould mean everything was still fine and dandy, wouldn’t it?

  The door opened. A man in a white lab coat, shirt and tie walked in but he wasn’t Dr Clark or even anything like him. The man who walked in was much older—he had a full head of white hair—and he was African-American. Other than the thin-framed metal glasses he wore over his large black eyes and the black tablet he held in his hand—exactly like the one Dr Clark used to hold—he had nothing in common with the man I had been praying I would see.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Thompson,” the elderly African-American doctor said with a smile that suggested a church-going habit and general decency. “It’s time for therapy.”

  I stared at the wrinkles on the sides of his kind black eyes and felt a thick wave of wistfulness wash through me. Those words, Dr Clark used to say as well, but he never would be saying them again, would he? He was dead and it was all because of me. The fourth person dead with me in the vicinity. How often did that happen to other people?

  “How are you feeling, Miss Thompson?” the African-American doctor asked. His voice was full of bass—way deeper than Dr Clark’s—and his accent sounded Southern.

  A little sad, I thought but I didn’t want to say it. I checked my body—wriggled my limbs, stretched my back and tilted my neck all ways—so that I would have something else to talk about. I watched my legs move and realised the excruciating pain I remembered feeling in my back was now gone. I could move just fine and felt just fine. What did that mean? Had Paul been right about me having superhuman regenerative abilities? Or had another long recovery period simply passed without me knowing?

  I sat up and stared, first at the blue gown I was in, then at the African-American doctor who was waiting patiently for an answer. “How long was I out for?” I asked. My voice started out a little croaked but smoothened itself out by the time I was done with the sentence.

  The African-American doctor cocked his head to the side and frowned a little. “What do you mean?”

  I frowned in return. “What year is it? What date?”

  “2033. 6 August.”

  God, really? For sure? “What happened to Dr Clark?”

  The African-American doctor’s white eyebrows jumped. “I don’t understand your question.”

  “Did he stop coming to work one day? Was his body shipped back to elderly parents in a different state? What?”

  The African-American doctor blinked a few times then looked away as if suddenly abstracted. “Who then do you think I am, Miss Thompson?” he said.

  “I don’t know. We’ve never met.”

  He looked up and right into my eyes and said, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t personally know a single person who was a doctor and was pretty sure none of my elderly African-American male acquaintances were anything like him. The only way I could have sort of known him was if he had been a member of The Gentlemen’s Dinner Club whom I might have passed a few times without noticing. Was he?

  “I am the only Dr Clark around here, Miss Thompson. I think I’d know if there was another.”

  Dread fizzled in the pits of my stomach then bubbled and rose up towards the rest of my body. I laughed in his face.

  “You don’t remember?” he said.

  That question again? I kept on laughing. Louder this time.

  Black Dr Clark made me sit in the white armchair white Dr Clark used to get me to sit in during therapy. He brought me a glass of water from the bar table and held out a clear plastic box in front of my face—the very same plastic box white Dr Clark used to hold out to me, the very same plastic box I took four pink pills out of while at white Dr Clark’s apartment. I saw that the compartment containing pink pills had been opened.

  “Please, take two, Miss Thompson. I promise you’ll find yourself thinking more clearly after you do.”

  Are you sure? The last time I took four, I woke up in a taxi, traumatised and confused as ever, and ended up chopping a stranger’s hand off. “I think I’m fine.”

  “It’s not a request,” he said in a firm yet benevolent manner. “I need to make sure you get better and if you’re not going to comply I’m going to have to use other means to get you medicated. So please, Miss Thompson, just take two.”

  Okay. It was clear I wasn’t going to have much of a choice in the matter so I did as black Dr Clark ordered. The water went down my throat, cold and refreshing. I have to say, I did feel that little bit more alert once I downed the pink pills.

  “Thank you.” Black Dr Clark took the seat across me and fished out a stylus pen from his pocket. “Why don’t you try describing the Dr Clark you remember? Maybe we can find out who he really is that way.”

  The stylus pen he had in his hand looked exactly like the modish one white Dr Clark used to hold, I realised.

  I pursed my lips. “He was nothing like you. Spoke differently, smelled different.” I took a deep breath and checked if any headache might be coming on. Nope, none. My head felt fine. Black Dr Clark smelled like freshly squeezed lemons. Comparatively pleasant. “He was just a totally different person. Not like anybody else I know.”

  “Hm. How then do you explain why he’s not here now?”

  A familiar crawly sensation came over my skin as I recalled Dr Clark’s corpse, missing a hand, sitting on the white blood-stained carpet in his apartment. “Death,” I mumbled.

  Black Dr Clark raised his eyebrows so high, his entire forehead seemed to rise like a raised stage curtain. “Death? How did he die?”

  “Paul shot him.”

  “Paul? Where from?”

  “Here. Paul Rafferty. She was a patient the other Dr Clark introduced me to.”

  “Paul Rafferty? You think Paul Rafferty’s a woman?”

  The stupefaction on black Dr Clark’s face made me suddenly very uneasy. “Yes?” I thought about Paul’s breasts, curves and soft skin, and the way she once made my heart jump. Only women ever did that to me so if I did feel that way around her that must mean she was really a woman, right?

  “Isn’t Paul a male name?”

  “Yes. But her mom chose it.” I shrugged because... what else could I do?

  Black Dr Clark nodded, scribbled something into his tablet then scratched his temple. “What if I told you, Miss Thompson, that the Paul Rafferty I know of is... male. Would you believe me?”

  I laughed and began to feel a little sick. “I don’t… I don’t know. She bought female clothing when we were out there so, seems very female to me.”

  “Out where?”

  I stared at him, felt my heart bang against my ribs, felt my nausea grow, and decided not to say another word.

  “Hm.” Black Dr Clark turned his attention to his tablet and scribbled furiously in it. “Did Paul have curly red hair, brown eyes, a large frame?”

  “Yes... and no. She didn’t have—” I frowned. “—a large frame.”

  Black Dr Clark looked up and smiled. Sympathetically. As if I deserved a smile as sympathetic as that. He clasped his huge black hands together and said, “I hate to tell you this, Miss Thompson, but the Paul Rafferty I know, the one who matches that description, is most certainly male. And… he’s a convicted murderer. He came by Wonderdrug once for a psychiatric assessment and whistled at every single woman he passed. Even the ones being wheeled in on stretchers. That could have been how you came into contact with him.”

  My frown grew tighter and I found myself without words.

  “And, there’s something else…”

  What? I thought but said nothing.

  “We don’t have evidence of you going out with him, ever. He lives in jail so I doubt he would have been able to go shopping with you. Especially for women’s clothing.” Black Dr Clark chortled heartily, as if he found his last sentence the funniest thing in the world, but I didn’t find it funny at all.

  “It’s what I remember,” I said in the gravest of tones.

  Black Dr Clark cleared his throat, wiped his grin off hi
s face and nodded at once. He instantly looked a whole lot more professional. “I know, I’m sorry. Look, Miss Thompson, this is precisely why you should never stop taking your medication. This might come as a shock but you need to understand that you’ve just come out of a long and, clearly, very vivid psychotic episode. Frankly, you haven’t been anywhere since you got here. You were right here yesterday and the day before that and all those days before that too. You were never out shopping with Paul Rafferty or anybody else and I’m absolutely certain you never shot me in the head.”

  Oh? Suddenly, I found myself wondering why I even thought Wonderdrug would ever make me feel better. It seemed every time I spoke with any one of their doctors, I found myself sicker than I ever imagined I could be.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Arden Villeneuve,” I heard myself say. “Is she alive?” White Dr Clark said I did something ‘terrible’ to her, didn’t he? If she were dead or injured, that would mean Room 103 really happened, wouldn’t it?

  “The movie star? Yeah, why wouldn’t she be? I saw her in the news yesterday, opening a new mall in Africa with her husband. She looked more alive than either of us do now, I think.” He chortled again but quickly stopped himself when he caught sight of the look on my face.

  I stared at him. “What’s my name?” I asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My first name. What is it?”

  Black Dr Clark cleared his throat and looked a little uncomfortable. “Your name is Blaine, Miss Thompson. You are Blaine Thompson. Why do you ask?”

  “Is Lane Thompson dead?”

  He inhaled sharply. “Yes. Do you miss her?”

  “Was there a diary? Did she leave me her diary?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to see it. Show it to me.”

  He didn’t move. “You don’t remember?”

  “No, and stop with that phrase.” My voice came out low and dangerous. “Just tell me where her darned diary is. Please.”