“And the pictures?”
“White masks. A machine. A huge machine, much bigger than the others. And wires. They were putting wires into my head. Something . . . my hair, I think it got burned. There was an awful smell.”
The smell had still been in her nostrils when she’d come around, making her feel sicker, making her think for an insane moment that her hair had really burned, although when she’d put her hand up to it, it had been soft and undamaged.
“So with this one, the pain was worse than before?”
“Yes,” she said, not wanting to think about it.
“All right.” He tapped in the last bit of information, nodding a little at the screen as if he’d been doing sums that all added up the way he’d expected. “This was yesterday. And you’ve had nothing—neither pain nor pictures—since?”
She started to agree, then stopped. She hadn’t thought before—after that awful pain nothing could have had anything like the same impact, and she’d been thinking of them as dreams, anyway . . .
“I did have another picture. Last night.”
Dr. Brien looked up at her, a sudden movement. “Last night?”
“Yes. I— Do you want to know about it? I don’t know if—”
“Yes.” An infinitesimal pause, then: “Please, Elissa, if you would.”
Something about it—the swiftness of his response, the quick jerk of his head as he’d looked at her—trickled discomfort through her. Suddenly she didn’t want to tell him about anything else. Especially not about the dream.
Which was dumb. She’d already agreed with herself to tell him everything that might be useful, anything that might help him fix her.
“I . . . Okay.”
It had started with something that was neither pain nor picture. A feeling of heat, of electricity in her hands, of brightness exploding like fireworks in her head. A half-familiar feeling, which she might have dreamed before. But this time it had been like a focused firework explosion, a feeling that she’d summoned it, that it was hers to control. Then a sensation of directing it outward. Of restraints breaking off her wrists. Of triumph.
And then the fire.
“A fire?” His voice was unexpectedly sharp. “Where?”
“In a building. A big building—like a hospital. Or a school, I guess.” Like she had earlier, she thought, Why does it matter? It’s a hallucination.
“All right. And you were?”
“I was running away from it.”
His fingers tapped briefly over the keyboard. “So, a building on fire, and you were . . . escaping it?”
“Yes.”
“And this dream, it was vivid, like the other ones you’ve described? It wasn’t what one might call a normal dream?”
“It was vivid.”
And it had been. If she shut her eyes she could still see the flames licking up halfway to the pitch-dark sky. She could still conjure up the memory of people fleeing, screaming, of herself running barefoot over rain-wet grass, fighting fatigue like darkness that swelled inside her head. Locking her hands into the wire loops of the fence, pulling herself up and up, knowing the electricity was off and yet having to force herself to keep hold of the metal. Dragging off her hoodie to put over the barbs at the top, still catching her arm on a wicked spike, the adrenaline racing through her veins meaning she scarcely felt the pain. Thinking that after all this time, she’d managed it, she was out, she was free.
When she’d jerked out of the dream, out of sleep and up into full wakefulness, she’d been exhausted, the aftermath of a headache lingering like poison fumes in her head, the smell of smoke still in her nose. As if this dream too had left bruises, but bruises inside her head rather than on her body.
She couldn’t bear to say all this to Dr. Brien, though. She described the dream baldly, leaving out the details, the smoke that had smelled of chemicals and hot metal, the feel of the cold grass under her feet. The feeling, wonderful and terrifying, of triumph. Of freedom.
He obviously felt she was telling him plenty, though. He listened intently, his eyes on her face, fingers racing over the keyboard.
Next to Elissa, her mother sat very still, hands locked in her lap.
“Is that all?” asked Dr. Brien. “The dream ended there? When you’d climbed the fence?”
“Yes.” The links had cut into her hands, she remembered. And halfway down the other side, her foot had slipped and she’d fallen, landing with a skull-shaking thump on the ground outside the fence. But that was where the dream had cut off short. She remembered nothing else.
“Nothing else? Nothing later?”
“No.”
“Not even which way you turned?”
Which way? The unease rose now within her, like cold water creeping up through every vein. He couldn’t need to know that. Okay, he’d explained the significance of his questions, but he couldn’t possibly need to know which imaginary way she’d turned after she’d escaped an imaginary building and climbed an imaginary fence.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember anything else.”
“All right, Elissa.” He smiled at her, his face friendly, relaxed. “You’ve done extremely well. I know it must seem extraordinary to have to tell me all these details. But trust me, the more data I have, the more helpful the diagnosis I can make.”
She smiled back. In her lap her fingers uncurled. Until this moment she hadn’t realized she’d been sitting with her nails digging into her palms.
Dr. Brien tapped the keyboard once more, then glanced back up to Elissa. “Oh, one last thing. If you don’t know, it’s no problem. But if you do, then, again, it’s just very helpful data that we can use.”
“Okay.”
“In the hallucinations, do you register what you’re wearing?”
“Wearing?”
He smiled again, exactly the same warm, reassuring smile. “What our dream selves dress themselves in says a lot about our state of mind. You might put yourself in something you were wearing in real life, or something that doesn’t quite fit. Sometimes outfits end up incomplete, or unusual—embarrassing.” He chuckled a little. “Trust me, even if you were wearing nothing at all, you wouldn’t be the only person who’s dreamed that.”
“Oh. Okay. I . . . no, nothing weird. Pants, I think. Like . . . yoga pants? Pale—I don’t know if they’re white or just a light color. And a T-shirt, the same color . . . I think.”
“Right. So you were wearing that again in your last hallucination?”
The memory came back, a flash opening up the details in her brain. She’d been running in the dark, keeping to the shadows, knowing her clothes would help conceal her. Knowing too that she’d never have made it this far if she hadn’t gotten hold of them, thankful all over again for that careless staff member who’d let her off-duty clothes snag on the edge of her locker, who hadn’t checked to make sure the door was properly shut . . . .
She hadn’t been wearing the light-colored clothes. She’d been wearing black. Black pants, and a long, hooded top she’d pulled up over her head.
Elissa looked up to tell him and saw him watching her, waiting for her answer. He was still smiling, but the smile was slightly rigid, as if he were deliberately holding on to it. And there was that sharpness in his face again, a look as if she were giving him numbers and he were adding them up—some to make the sums he’d expected, and some he hadn’t.
She didn’t lie. Never, really. Not to her parents, not to doctors. But now, all of a sudden . . . Obeying an impulse that came too fast to think it through, she kept her gaze steady and held her hands still in her lap, making sure not to make any guilty, betraying movements. “Yes. That’s what I was wearing.”
“Thank you, Elissa.” He made a couple more key taps, then flicked his hand up, opening another page. “Right. Having looked at all your test results and the reports your own doctor sent me, and hearing how your symptoms have escalated, I think it’s very clear we’ve gone beyond the stage of being able to tre
at this with medication. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward a little, put his hand on the desk, palm down, as if he were reaching out to comfort her. “Now, didn’t I tell you not to worry? We’re going to take a more permanent approach, Elissa.”
He twisted the screen around, tapped a key, and an image sprang up.
“Look. There’s an abnormality here.” He glanced at her, smiling. “Don’t worry, it’s not cancer or anything like that. This is an area that, in the vast majority of people’s brains, is mostly inactive. On this map you’d see it as a gray area. Here, though, see these fine lines? That’s a sign that, in your brain, this area has become very overactive. Probably because of the stimulus of a hormone surge, as your other doctors have mentioned. I won’t confuse you with too much science”—he smiled again—“but basically this area links to memory, imagination, dreams. It’s grabbing a whole lot of external data—TV, movies, bits of current news, things you might not even notice you’re taking in—and turning them into a kind of ultravivid loop playing in your head. And the more it plays, the more it forces a physical response from your body. Hence the pain. It’s like the pain you think you feel in dreams, but it’s so vivid it’s actually having an effect on you physically. Does that make sense?”
He gave her an expectant look, eyebrows slightly raised.
It did make sense, but . . . My clothes. Why did he want to know about my clothes?
“Elissa?”
She jerked back from the questions repeating silently over and over in her ears. He was explaining how he was going to make her better, for God’s sake. She needed to listen. She nodded. “I’m sorry. Yes, it does.”
“It’s pretty confusing, I know! I’ve given you the most basic explanation, but obviously there’s more to it than that. Now, what we’re going to have to do is perform a relatively minor operation. It is brain surgery, so in a sense it can’t be minor, but I can assure you that with my team you’ll be in the best possible hands. Of course, there is risk involved, but we keep it to an absolute minimum. What we’re going to do is use a very accurate laser to kill off some of the brain cells in this area, toning down its potential for activity, as it were. If you’ll look at this image . . .”
He explained it well, with carefully chosen, unalarming graphics illustrating his words, but it all came down to the same thing: He was going to open her head and burn something out of it. And now that she’d had a minute to gather her thoughts, it didn’t make sense. She didn’t understand. She understood the procedure. But the pictures in her head . . . surely if they’d come from random data she’d picked up all the time, they’d vary? Why, in the dreams, was she always someone else—the same someone else? And why did he want to know about the someone else?
“All right, Elissa. Do you have any questions?”
Oh, but hell. It had to make sense. He was the doctor, for goodness’ sake. What did she know about the brain and how it worked?
She shook her head, then, collecting herself, answered politely. “I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Okay, then.” He smiled at her, flicked the display away, and tapped the toolbar to bring up another display, this one scrolling pages of text. “This is the agreement, Elissa. Your parents have already given consent, of course, via your normal doctor, but at your age we need your consent too. I suggest you have a quick read of it, make sure you’re comfortable with everything.”
All at once Elissa was freezing cold, stiff in the chair. As if she’d just heard the words for the first time, she heard them repeating in her head. Surgery. Brain surgery. And: There is risk involved. Relatively minor . . .
Only relatively. “If—if I sign it—”
“If you sign it today, we can get you admitted in just four days, on Monday—”
She interrupted him before she even knew she was going to open her mouth. “Four? Four days?”
“Yes. We’ve got an opening, so I’ve provisionally booked you in. Tomorrow’s the last day before spring break, isn’t it? You’ll be out of school for a week? So you won’t even need time off. And the sooner we can get it over with—” He stopped, watching her face. “Elissa, you realize your condition is deteriorating? I don’t want to alarm you, but I can assure you we don’t want to leave this even as long as another week.”
His eyes remained on hers, his expression open, his eyebrows drawn together in a concerned frown. Part of her wanted to make him tell her more. What’s the risk? How much risk? But part of her seemed to cower, hands over her ears, not wanting to know. After all, what choice did she have?
“I— Okay. I’m sorry. I just . . . It’s so soon.”
Mrs. Ivory reached out and put a hand over Elissa’s. Elissa turned her hand over, held on with a desperate, tight grip she couldn’t manage to relax.
“I know,” said Dr. Brien. “But like I said, the sooner we can get this over with the better, right?” He pulled a slim tablet from a slot on the desk and handed it to her. On its screen the same text showed. She scrolled down to the bottom of the document. Her name was already inserted under a dotted line, waiting for her signature.
“You read that through now, all right? Can I offer either of you a drink?”
Elissa shook her head, politeness forgotten, scrolling back through the document. It was all a jumble, medical and legal stuff she hadn’t a hope of understanding. She knew all the stuff about never signing something you didn’t understand. But her parents had already signed—there were their digi-sigs, next to the space for hers—so it couldn’t be anything bad, and she’d never understand some of the language, even if she tried all day, and she was keeping the doctor waiting . . . .
Why did he want to know about my clothes? Why does it matter?
Oh, for God’s sake, Lissa. After all this time, someone was saying he could make her better. Not maybe, not probably, not with the stupid drugs and treatments and sleep machines that hadn’t ended up doing anything, but with something real. Surgery. Like the way they cured cancer and appendicitis and the injury from that time Bruce hurt his leg playing antigrav-ball. A real treatment, a treatment that was going to work—that was going to make her normal.
She scrolled to the bottom of the document and signed it.
Elissa Laine Ivory.
“Excellent.” Dr. Brien was smiling at her again, calm and pleasant, and her anxiety fizzled away. It was just paranoia, based on nothing but nerves and lack of sleep—and the fact that she’d collected even more bruises since she’d been at school yesterday, and she had no hope that no one would notice.
“So, Monday morning, yes?” He was talking mostly to her mother now. “I’d like you both here—and Mr. Ivory, if he’s able, of course—at eight. Now, before you go, how about those drinks?”
They had the drinks—a water for Elissa, a no-cal latte for her mother—and Dr. Brien and Mrs. Ivory talked about the current weather programs, the measures the city authorities had taken to contain the latest incidence of Elloran superflu, and a recent news story about how a couple had managed not only to have an illegal third child but also to somehow escape detection for an astonishing six years.
Some twenty minutes later she and her mother thanked him, said their good-byes, and went out to wait for the elevator to take them down to reception.
As the elevator descended, her mother put a hand out to touch Elissa’s arm. “Try not to dwell on it,” she said. “It’ll be over soon.”
At the touch, Elissa wanted to lean her head on her mother’s shoulder and sob. But it was bad enough she was going to be late for first period—and showing bruises that hadn’t been there yesterday. No way could she walk into class with red eyes.
She nodded instead, drawing herself tight as a protection against the tears that wanted to come.
They went out through the reception area and onto the wide, tree-lined shelf where the office stood. Chlorophyll-stained sunlight dappled the ground, and the pavement was sticky with the drops of lime
that had fallen from the leaves. This was the rich side of the canyon, with nothing but residential shelves above and below. There weren’t even any of the slidewalks that in the last five years had extended nearly everywhere within the canyon. People came and went by beetle-car, or by the private elevators that traveled in shafts inside the cliff, or not at all.
This doctor, he must earn a lot more than ordinary doctors. Well, he was a specialist, she knew that. But all the same, this whole setup, it was way out of their normal league.
Her heart was beating faster than normal. She felt it in the pit of her stomach.
“Mother?”
Mrs. Ivory had reached the wider area at the end of the shelf where the little beetle-car gleamed scarlet in the sunlight. Tiny drips of sticky lime speckled its domed roof. She pointed her key at it, and the sides sprang up to let them in. “Yes?”
“That doctor . . . Dr. Brien . . . Why did he want to know so much about my dreams?”
Her mother slid into the driver’s seat, then glanced up at her, eyebrows raised. “Sweetie, he explained. Every bit of data—”
“No, I know. But stuff about the clothes I was wearing? Which way I went? It’s just . . . I don’t get why he was asking all about that.”
“Lissa, really, it’s no good asking me how it all works. If I’d thought I was up to graduating at Dr. Brien’s level, I’d have stayed in medicine after you were born. I don’t have a clue about brain disorders—I don’t know why they need the information they do. But honestly, sweetie—get in, you’re already late—you can be sure if he was asking for information, it’s because he needed it.” She smiled at Elissa, reaching across to pat her knee before she started the car. “He wasn’t asking for his own amusement, you know!”
“Yeah. I know.”
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