by Ginger Scott
TRIAL 41: MORPHEUS MEDICAL TESTING ON COMATOSE PATIENTS
I push on various links for our names, and each delivers tables and charts with heart readings, blood levels, motor skills, reactions. The first few sets all look the same, then suddenly everything gets really different—across the board. My heart rate spiked around the time I killed a man. So did Justin’s. Kellen’s stayed the same, but when he was shot—when I shot him—there’s an enormous drop in everything. And then his charting just . . . stops.
I fall back on my ass, holding my own charts in front of my face. Mine continue for several days beyond the boys’, but huge swings occur on a regular interval, almost as if something happens to my body every four hours, like clockwork. It’s almost as if I’m fine, and then suddenly . . . I’m not.
Like someone, somewhere else maybe, is drugging me.
We’re lab rats.
I have to tell them. I open a note on the tablet and type out my thoughts. It comes out as a scattered mess, but if they find this, they’ll know what I mean when I write “We are being tested on. I don’t know where they are keeping us. These charts are the effects of drugs.” I’m too weak to get back to my feet, so I crawl through the glass with my chart and the tablet in my hand, my hands and stomach and knees ripping from the glass, still sharp even like this. By the time I get to the locker wall, I’m able to reach just high enough to leave my chart inside Justin’s space, right by the remnants of peeled-away sticker.
My only chance is that somehow, wherever they are, the boys will dream.
Dream, and come looking.
I have to get back to where Justin left me, in case he comes looking there. I just . . . need . . . to rest . . .first.
34
Villain
(Justin)
Nobody is here for me. Well, Sal is here but that’s because where the hell else is he going to go? He got fired from his job at the clinic. I guess that all happened right after the accident, part of some bust.
Huh. I’ve been through hell but I was spared being arrested. Some silver lining.
Eighteen, and left for the state to pick up my medical bills . . . maybe. Or I’ll get slapped with some delinquent shit, get reported to creditors, come up with a payment plan that won’t work. I can’t even get Gia out of that hellhole now. Maybe being with me is no better.
It’s almost the top of the hour, which means the nice nurse will be on shift. I think her name is Nicole. She’s about half the age of the other woman, and she seems to like her work all right. She brings me things that aren’t on the menu, so, food that actually looks like food. I had to send Sal to the cafeteria for breakfast. He brought back a pack of those little chocolate donuts. I guess I can see why those aren’t on a diet conducive to healing, but fuck were they good.
Sal’s been snoring for the last hour. He found a way to wedge two of the chairs together to make a bed of sorts, if you can call something that requires a grown-ass man to dangle his legs over the back a bed. Maybe Sal comes from just enough shit to make that contraption comfortable; he’s been sleeping hard in that thing. I think he has apnea, though. Sometimes he almost chokes from his snoring. First few startled me, but now I tune them out.
I don’t think I’ve slept since I woke up to the real world. It’s hard when people come in to check on you every hour, putting blood pressure bands around your arm, temperature wands in your ear, new doses of who-knows-what in your IV line. I doze, maybe, but that’s it. I want to sleep—I’m desperate to. It’s the only way I think I can get to her.
I need to get to her. I put her here.
Kellen and I have tried and failed to get to her room five times. We expressed concern for noises we said we heard (we don’t hear shit, and that’s the problem). We’ve rushed the room and been dragged out—claimed pain med-induced delirium for that one. I got Sal to undo a vent last night to see if there was a way through the duct system. Fucker broke the ceiling. And my attempts to be King like I was in my dreams are met with nothing but laughter and pats on my head as if I’m some child.
The familiar squeaking of Kellen’s loose wheel hits the hallway. He’s making another round. His walks don’t quite kill him like they did at first, but he’s still as slow as a wounded moose, whatever that means, but he says it all the damn time. He has a certain cowboy charm. All of the nurses let him chill in my room for a while because of it. Even the mean one gets a little softer when he throws out some dumb phrase. When he drops in, we pretend we like to watch TV together, but it’s only on so we can talk without people listening. I figure we’re either paranoid for a good reason or actually becoming delusional from our hospital stay.
“I caught Nicole here in the hallway with your tray and talked her into chaperoning me for my lunchtime walk.” Nicole here. She swoons at the flirty way he says that.
“You just want to nab my French fries,” I say, working to sit up. I’m more mobile than he is. No FALL RISK bracelet on my arm. I do have an orange band that reads FLIGHT RISK, though. Kinda feels like maybe I’m under arrest. Hmm.
“It’s true,” he says, leaning into her. She giggles. She fucking giggles. “I am a sucker for French fries.”
Nicole moves my dining table closer to the bedside and takes the lid off the tray. It’s nowhere near gourmet, but it resembles a proper hamburger and a plate of fries. I note the extra helping, too. His charm, it really works.
She winks at us both, mostly him, then leaves us alone with my door propped open. I flip the television to the usual daily run of sports highlights and Kellen takes a handful of my fries once he lowers himself into the visitor chair.
“You’re grunting less. Must be healing,” I observe, taking my burger in two hands for a big bite. My appetite is normalizing. I wonder when I’ll get to go home. I look at the orange band on my arm while I chew.
“I think I’ve gotten used to the pain. When I really think about it?” He presses his hand into his side a little and his face turns a shade of green. “Nope, not healed.”
I push the plate of fries closer to him.
“Eat up, then. You can fill in the bone gaps with potatoes.”
He laughs, but he does take my offer, eating a handful all at once. I watch him chew, his square jaw almost drawn that way, a decent beard growing in, meaty build to his shoulders and chest.
“You know, it’s kinda funny that you’re not the football player. You totally look the part.” I take another bite, then discard the rest of my burger. It doesn’t taste right tonight.
“I guess. I suck though, man. I mean, like, I suuuuuck.” He shakes his head and chomps down another handful of fries, glancing at the quarterback throwing on the highlight running on the TV. “Like that move, whatever he did there?”
“He scrambled.” I smirk because wow, he’s really just a cowboy. “It’s just running, dude.”
“I guess, but . . .” He stops, finishing his bite then gesturing to the TV. “That’s like running with a whole army chasing after you. And then you’re supposed to throw something on a dime. Nah, I’m good with horse riding.”
I stare at him with my mouth hung open until he notices.
“What?” He shrugs.
“Unreal,” I say, chuckling.
A genuine easiness is happening between us. I’m not sure whether it’s our circumstances or there’s a real connection, but I think at this point Kellen may be my best friend. And I think I might be his.
“Oh, I forgot.” He leans to his right, reaching into the pocket of the scrubs pants he’s wearing. Thank God they gave him pants. I’ve seen way too many angles of this dude in the last few days. He reaches toward me with a loose fist.
“I asked Nicole if we could have some extra salt.” His eyes drill into mine, a short flicker to clue me in, and I open my palm to take this “salt” into my own hand. I keep what I’m pretty sure is a decent sleeping pill hidden in my palm until I can casually move my hand under my blanket but in a place I can see. Part of my side work means I have a
knack for recognizing meds. This here is generic zopiclone. And a decent dose. It should do the trick.
“You think maybe we can get to her?” I fill my plastic cup with water from the pitcher, and quirk the bendy straw as I bring the cup to my mouth, popping the pill in from my palm in one smooth movement.
“I think we’ve gotta try,” he says, reaching for my water glass. I pass it over and he performs the same drill, palmed pill in the mouth and a big gulp to follow. “Down the hatch.”
“Cheers,” I say when I take back the glass.
We sit in silence for about ten minutes until our eyes feel heavy. Kellen breaks it up with a raspy chuckle, and I can’t help but ask.
“What’s funny?”
His head falls to the side and he cocks a brow at me.
“Sonny Heaton.” He smirks and I get it—she was a player in both of our dreams. Girl was hot.
“She come from your head, or mine?” I ask. I can hear my voice starting to fade. Sleep is coming. Real sleep.
A sloppy laugh leaves his lips and he rubs his palm over his face before leveling me with another stare.
“She was my babysitter when I was six.”
We hold the silence and let that fact marinate for a few seconds before quietly laughing it away.
“How cliché,” I tease. He nods then glances out to the hallway.
“I should be heading back. See you on the flip side,” he says, working toward standing. He gets the IV stand to my door by the time I’ve hit the call button and I hear Nicole catch up to him on his way to his room. The next thing I know, I’m waiting for him to jog down the driveway of his parents’ home while I pick him up for school in some car I’m fairly sure I stole.
Yeah . . . I’m dreaming.
35
Cowboy
(Kellen)
It’s taken a little awake time to find clarity, but I now know the fucker my dream father is based on. Leland Nash is the guy who tried to buy out our land. He’s a developer, with big plans, and super dirty ties to important people. We happen to own a prime piece of real estate that sits adjacent to some major windfall he just acquired in a state trust land swap.
Apparently, someone wants a casino. He wants to build it, and add two eighteen-hole golf courses to the ticket. The amount of time you can keep a course open is, well, let’s say not ideal for good business. But some types always get what they want . . . until they run up against Jim McCoy.
My dad, the real one, can be a stubborn SOB. A loveable one, but stubborn as shit. He’s been holding off Leland Nash for nearly a decade. Mom’s death last year, though, left him with a little less spirit in his fight, and good ole Leland, he’s been smelling blood.
In this world, though, Leland is someone else. He might hold the role of Dad here, but like I said—I have clarity. My dream dad is the only thing standing in the way of me leaving this house and getting into some weird-ass El Camino Justin has idling at my curb. I’m not about to take another lecture on why I should attend a Big Eight or Twelve or fuck . . . Eleven? Why do they all have to have numbers?
Leland opens his mouth to lecture, and I pick up a sock from the laundry bin on my bed and shove it deep into the asshole’s mouth. I don’t stick around for the protest, and when he trips chasing me down the stairs, I don’t bother to check whether he’s okay. I hope he’s not—for my dream mom’s sake. She’s not really anyone, maybe some leftover warmth I feel when I think about my real mom. Whoever she is, she doesn’t deserve this jerk.
I slam the door behind me and trudge through the snow-covered lawn. Winter is really here now. I wonder if there’s snow outside the hospital.
“What’s with this ride?” I pull the heavy door open and scope out the woolen-covered seat I’m about to sink into. “Christ.”
“I know. It just sorta appeared. Or rather, I appeared in it. I don’t even know, just get in,” he says.
I climb inside and pull the door closed with some muscle. If anything, I feel pretty safe in this thing. We’re not going to have to endure any dream accidents, just the aftermath of our real one. Still, I put my seatbelt on. I’ve felt too many things in these dreams; I don’t want to break anything new.
We speed off, the back end fishtailing enough to make the tires smoke, and when I turn back from looking over my shoulder I notice that Justin and I are wearing the same smirk.
“Yeah, that was a’right,” I say.
He laughs out once, hard, then holds a fist over to me to pound. I do. I feel pretty good that he doesn’t want to shoot me anymore.
Because we’re both dreaming, and it’s noon, and we drugged ourselves pretty good to make this happen, everything that was always a little weird gets way weirder. The road to our high school becomes a toll highway with pay booths every mile. I scrounge every nook and cranny in this tank of a car but we’ve run out of cash. As we approach the next toll, Justin floors it. Alarms sound as we race through, breaking a wooden barrier that shreds in our wake.
It’s the second time I look over my shoulder in awe of his driving. It’s also the second time I reach over to pound his knuckles with mine.
We get to the school and find an empty parking lot. I’m guessing it’s a Saturday. Or maybe a snow day because this white stuff is coming down pretty good.
Justin kills the engine and pockets the keys as we both get out and walk up the long rows of steps that lead to the main entrance. Film room to the left, library to the right—nobody here.
“Weird, right?” Justin notices too.
“I half expect some evil incarnate to leap from one of the manholes, the cover flying at us to knock us out while the monster eats our souls. You?” I hold the main entrance door open for him, and he stops in his tracks, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking up at me.
“I wasn’t thinking any of that . . . until now. So, thanks.” He walks through and I slap his back.
The hallways are dark and as abandoned as everything else around here. The roads were busy until we got to this place, which ratchets up my suspicion levels even more. We wander in different directions, checking out every hallway and open room we can find. We end up meeting in the counselling area, staring at the demolished office, with broken glass and a desk that looks as if a rabid animal had its way with it.
“You think this was her?” I ask.
Justin’s quiet. He steps forward and scrutinizes the open window frame, inspecting every inch for something that maybe feels . . . off. Not that all of this isn’t off.
“You ever notice how hospital rooms, they kinda look like this place?” He steps into the office space and kneels down, picking up a few crumpled pages from the floor.
He’s right. I make a slow turn where I stand, and I can match up almost every little bend, corner, and path with something I’ve walked in that hospital wing over the last few days.
“Dead on exact,” I say.
“Yup.” He stands and walks over to me, a stack of papers in his hand. “These are our files, yo.”
I take the pile from him and read through the familiar notes. It’s Ms. Esher’s scribbles about my dreams, about the place I go and how I feel when I’m there. Under that are a few pages of reports on my overall health. It’s not anything I haven’t seen in here before. She was always pretty open with me in our meetings . . . in my dream. She’s a little vaguer in the real world where she’s a real doctor.
“You see anything weird with the lockers?” I glance up from my reading and follow the path he’s walking. All of the lockers are flipped open, each of them empty.
“Looks like maybe a drug raid or something,” I say.
“Yeah, but that . . . that one right there is mine,” he says, pointing to the one locker missing its door completely. Another stack of papers is leaning sideways inside, almost as if it was propped up like a picture and meant to be seen—to be found.
“Maybe that’s your report?” I jump over the broken glass to catch up to him, and by the time I move in behind him, he’
s already filtering through the pages and handing them to me one at a time over his shoulder.
“She left these. She wanted us to find them.” His voice is more confident than I’ve heard it in days.
“You think?” I try to make sense of each report he hands me, but everything looks sorta the same. Until suddenly, it . . . doesn’t.
“Wait, what’s this?” I pull one of the charts about me out and trace the line with my finger, following the dips and valleys like a rollercoaster.
“That’s your heart,” he says, tapping the echocardiogram label at the top. He hands me another form with his name on it, and the graphs are almost identical in some places, others not at all.
“What does this all mean?” I study the other pages, noting lab results, blood samples and oxygen ranges. My weight, what the hell? I somehow lost eleven pounds.
“It means someone is doing some pretty bad shit to us. All of us.” He turns and holds out a tablet, Dominica’s charts pulled up as if they are waiting to be found, a bold note digitally slapped to the top: We are being tested on. I don’t know where they are keeping us. These charts are the effects of drugs.
Where our lines zig and zag, hers fall and even out. And there is a pattern with hers that seems so regular—as if she’s getting better, and then suddenly . . . she’s not.
“Is this her heart?” I look up, but Justin has already walked out of the building. I hold on to the tablet and chase after him.
“She’s dying, Kellen. That means she’s fucking dying. We all were at one point. And nobody was ever trying to save us.” He runs, slides over the hood of the car to get to the driver’s side, and throws open the door. I waste no time and get in on my side. I continue to look through her charts while he drives, not even caring where he’s taking us.
“She’s right. You know what these sound like?” It takes him a while to answer, and when I glance at him, his jaw is clenched and his hands grip the wheel with so much force that the veins in his arms are blue and protruding.