Nervous System (The System Series Book 1)

by Andrea Ring

  He pauses and clears his throat.

  “And…Viv was innocent. She’d never been with a man before. And Dr. Sykes was making it an exhibition.”

  I shudder. I cannot imagine someone watching my first kiss, let alone anything more intimate.

  “The other Dwellers rallied around us. They refused to watch. But Dr. Sykes outranked us all, and in the military, you have to follow orders or there are consequences. So they brought blindfolds and earplugs, God love them. Dr. Sykes ordered them to take them off. Viv was pretty much resigned at that point, but I refused. They threw me in jail. I was there for twelve days when they injected Vivian with something that caused her to go blind. She wasn’t strong enough to overcome it. Dr. Sykes said he would make it permanent if I didn’t cooperate.”

  “So you cooperated,” I say, knowing Dad.

  He nods. “It was the worst and most wonderful moment of my life. Except for the day you were born.”

  

  The night air is growing cool, so we decide to move inside. We sit on the couch, and I prepare myself for an hour of TV before bed. Dad has already revealed so much that I don’t dare to hope for more.

  But he doesn’t turn on the television. He clicks on the floor lamp beside the couch and turns to face me.

  “So Viv and I were on baby-making duty. They made us try for a year and a half. Viv got pregnant eight times, but the pregnancies never lasted more than a few weeks. Her body attacked the fetuses like they were some kind of virus.”

  “Couldn’t she stop her body from attacking them?” I ask.

  “Dr. Sykes thought so. He thought Viv was aborting them on purpose, so he employed the same tactics they used on me in Boot Camp. He yelled, he threatened, he flattered her. He even claimed to set up a trust fund for the baby, with a million dollars in it. None of it mattered. Viv could not carry my child.”

  “Why didn’t you run away?” I ask.

  “We thought about it. But where would we go? Neither of us had much money. Little family. And I think both of us were still awed by the military. I mean, you see it in movies. They have resources. Scary surveillance. We figured there was nowhere we could go to hide.”

  “So what happened?”

  “So one day I show up, and Viv’s not there. She was required to sleep there, in case she was pregnant, and they gave me a small apartment a few blocks away. The other Dwellers told me they’d sent Viv away in the middle of the night. No one knew where. Dr. Sykes said we had failed our experiment and were already re-assigned. They sent me to Coronado.”

  “The SEALs,” I say.

  Dad nods. “I tried to find her. I scraped as much money together as I could and hired a private investigator. I spent all my downtime trying to talk to anyone who worked in the medical center, anyone who might have knowledge of Viv. But no one knew where she was. The investigator came up empty-handed. I never saw her again.” Dad rubs his face in his hands. “I still look. I’m still looking. I don’t know if you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I want you to know, I never gave up on her.”

  That’s the kind of question I would have liked to ask Dr. Rumson. I think about what he might say. “Did Mom know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I think you’re doing the right thing. You cared about her. You wonder if she’s okay. I think you have to keep looking.”

  Dad smiles sadly. “Thanks for that.”

  I nod. “So you went off to the SEALs?”

  “Yep. Five years with them, and I finally got to travel. The work was exciting, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I hated what they’d done to me and Viv, and I still carry that bit of hatred around with me, but I also got to see the good side of our military. The honorable side. I believe in it. Do you think…I’ve always done my duty. I love my country. I’ve lived the last twenty-two years torn in half.”

  “You could think of it like I think of school,” I say. “Sure, I support education. It’s very important, and for most kids, public education fits the bill. But in many ways it drags me down. It will never be right for me, and in many ways, it dooms some kids. But I don’t think I would ever say education is a bad thing.”

  Dad smiles. “You’re so like your mother. Me, I’m black and white, right and wrong. It’s hell for me to live in shades of gray, and that’s been my entire adult life. Mom had a way of just…rationalizing. Not making excuses, but understanding nuance.”

  “How did you meet her?” I ask.

  “We’d just gotten home from Iraq, and I thought we’d be going back pretty quick, but we got new orders. My team was returning to the Middle East without me, and I was sent to the medical center. It was the last time I really thought I’d see Viv again. I mean, I didn’t want to go back to the Attic, but it was our only connection left. I was sure she’d be there.” He pauses. “You know, hope is not a good thing.”

  “It can be,” I say.

  “Not in my experience. I’d built up so much hope, I floated in on it. And, of course, Viv was not there.”

  “No news?” I ask.

  Dad shakes his head. “Dr. Sykes said that he had determined that I couldn’t have a child because Viv was a Dweller. Something about our chemistry didn’t mix. So he ordered me to continue with the SEALs, and find a girl to impregnate. He gave me five years.” Dad shifts on the couch and curls his legs underneath him. “I met Mom at the grocery store on Coronado. She was on vacation with her family. We married ten months later.”

  My eyes sting and I blink. “Did you love her? I just need to know that you loved Mom, that she wasn’t just another experiment to you.”

  “You are not just an experiment to me,” he says. “You are my life, Thomas.”

  “That wasn’t the question. I don’t care about me. I’m asking about Mom.”

  Dad hangs his head and leans his chin on his hands. “I loved her. But I couldn’t let myself feel it or it would have interfered with my job every time I left her. I shoved it down and locked it away. Only when I was back with her could I allow myself to feel how much I cared for her.”

  It is an honest answer, and makes sense with what I know of their relationship. When Dad was gone, he was cool. Aloof. Often impatient, and never given to long phone conversations or whispered endearments. But the moment he would step off a plane and into her arms, he belonged. He did love her. I wonder how I could have doubted it.

  I wipe at my eyes. “She loved you, too,” I say, and Dad barks a laugh.

  “The greatest mystery of all.”

  “No. What happened to Dr. Sykes?”

  “Retired. Florida, last I heard. A senator found out about the Attic, probably knew about it all along, but he used it as a platform for his campaign. Medical research reform, or some bullshit like that. Good riddance. The Attic became a much different place without him.”

  “So you still go there?”

  “On and off. They’re doing amazing research. When you’re older, I’ll take you.”

  “Really?”

  Before Dad can reply, we hear the front door open and voices laughing.

  Dad smiles at me, as if to say, “Here we go.”

  The group enters, Grandma leading the way, and we see that she has brought along the other couple, a fit man in slacks and a polo shirt, and his much younger wife, blonde with too much make-up.

  “Michael! Come meet my friends,” Grandma says.

  I stand up to greet them, expecting Dad to do the same. I turn to him, hold out my hand to help him up, but the look on his face makes me take a step back. He has sighted an enemy.

  “Michael,” the fit man says with a nod.

  Dad glares. That’s a description of what he’s doing, but it doesn’t give Dad enough credit. Dad is ripping the man’s throat out with his eyes.

  “You’re not welcome in my home,” Dad growls out.

  The man sighs. “I respect that. But I’d like to speak with you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Grandma gasps. “Michael, what is g
oing on?”

  Dad turns his head to her and bares his teeth. “You brought him into my house.”

  “Who?” Grandma asks. “My friends?”

  Dad untucks his legs and stands. “Dr. Raymond Sykes.”

  Grandma opens her mouth, but no words come out. “No. Surely…no.”

  Everyone turns to “Ray.”

  “Your mother doesn’t know who I am. This is not her fault.”

  “But you knew who she was,” Dad accuses.

  “Of course.”

  “Ray, you know Ruthie’s son?” Sharon asks.

  Ray turns to the group, as though he is used to leading. “I really must insist on a private talk with him. Will you excuse us?”

  “Ray, what’s this all about?” his wife says, clinging to his arm. He gently untangles himself.

  “I’ll explain it later. Please. This is very important. A few moments is all I ask.”

  The woman who must be Dinah, though confused, nods. Sharon takes her arm, and the three of them retreat to the kitchen. Grandma turns on Ray.

  “How could you? You befriended me. I trusted you!”

  Ray nods. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Grandma stands there helplessly, but Dad laughs. “Don’t listen to him. He’s the serpent. Ask him to show you his forked tongue.”

  Grandma gathers herself and looks at Dad. “Would you like me to call the police?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Dad says. “He’s in our home. If I have to shoot him, we’ll just call it self-defense.”

  Grandma shoots Ray one more murderous look and takes my hand. “Let’s go,” she says.

  Dad and Ray head out the back door to the yard. As soon as we’re in the kitchen, I tell Grandma I’m going to my room. I leave my light off and creep to the window. I slowly slide it open.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Dad spits out.

  “You look well, Michael,” Ray says.

  “Cut the bullshit and get to the point.”

  I hear Ray sigh. “I’d hoped to break it to you gently, but I see your feelings about me haven’t changed.”

  Dad is quiet.

  “I know where Vivian is.”

  I hear Dad suck in a breath. A chair leg scrapes on the concrete. He must have sat down.

  I hear paper rustle. “St. Joseph’s Hospital in Wichita, Kansas. She’s in a coma. Has been for almost twenty years.”

  “What? Why?”

  Ray sighs again and starts to pace. I can hear his clipped footsteps on the patio.

  “She was pregnant when they took her away. I didn’t want to separate the two of you, but my superiors thought it best. They thought you were encouraging her to abort. So they put her in a drugged coma, sent her to our facilities in Bethesda, and kept her under.”

  Dad coughs. “She had the baby?”

  “Yes. A girl. They tried to reverse the coma after delivery, but Vivian did not respond. I tried to get her transferred back to us, but they refused. She was eventually transferred again, this time to Virginia. I lost track of her after that.”

  “I have a daughter,” Dad whispers.

  The emotion in his voice makes me start to cry.

  “The address is on that paper. She’s in Los Angeles. A grad student at UCLA. She’s like you, Michael.”

  “You’ve met her?” Dad says threateningly.

  “No. But I found out she’s been monitored her whole life. They put her with a military family in D.C. It’s just luck that she ended up out here.”

  “What does she know?” Dad asks.

  “That she was adopted. That her mother died after giving birth. That her father died a war hero.”

  “So I’m dead,” he says.

  More metal scraping on concrete. “I only found this out a few months ago. They called me in to consult on a few cases, and somehow I ended up looking at Vivian. The new doctor didn’t realize I was originally involved. Apparently, Vivian’s been shuttled around quite a bit.”

  “You can go now,” Dad says.

  “I…I am sorry for what happened. I never meant for things to turn out this way.”

  “Get out.”

  A few seconds later, I hear the back door creak open. I close my window and lie on my bed.

  I have a sister.

  Then I bounce back up. I open my closet and pull out a red nylon duffel bag. I pack it with underwear, socks, t-shirts and jeans. A jacket. I don’t know what Kansas weather is like. I add an umbrella. A picture of Mom. My sketchpad and a set of colored pencils. I sit on my bed and wait.

  Dad comes in about an hour later. He looks at my over-stuffed bag and sighs.

  “You want to come with me,” he says, leaning on the doorjamb.

  “Please. I know…would you have taken Mom if she were still alive?”

  Dad sighs again and leans his back against the wall.

  “No. I wouldn’t have lied to her about it, but I wouldn’t have taken her.”

  I hate him a little bit for that.

  “Do you still love Vivian?”

  “I feel…responsible for her. She doesn’t have any family, well…no one that would be looking out for her.”

  “What about your daughter?”

  “You mean, do I love her?”

  “No,” I say. “What are you going to do about her?”

  “I’d like to find her someday. Not now. One thing at a time.”

  “Do you love her?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, Thomas,” he says. “I don’t know her. But she’s my daughter, and I’ll try.”

  I nod. “Please take me with you. I can’t take…I don’t think I can take you leaving again.”

  Dad crosses to my bed and sits beside me. He hugs me tight.

  “Catch some sleep. We leave for Wichita in the morning.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Grandma doesn’t argue this time about going with us. Frankly, I am surprised that I didn’t have to argue more. Dad would most likely have an easier time of it without me.

  Maybe he just needs the company.

  We board a plane at John Wayne Airport bound for Dallas. There are no direct flights to Wichita. I try to compose myself and not be a bother to Dad, but the anticipation of the flight has me bouncing in my seat. I’ve dreamed of getting back up in the air for years. And this time, we’ll be flying over the Heartland. Wheat fields as far as the eye can see. Amber waves of grain.

  I’ve only been on an airplane one time before, and that was five years ago. We flew to Florida to visit Grandma, and I begged Mom and Dad to take me to Walt Disney World. They said it wasn’t worth it, since we lived fifteen minutes from Disneyland, and I argued about all the things that were different in Orlando from Anaheim. I didn’t win the argument, but that was sort of the point—I really wanted to go to the Kennedy Space Center and see the space shuttles, and I figured that if I argued for something bigger, they’d give in and take me on the smaller outing.

  They did.

  I have a photo of the three of us that Grandma took, beside a retired shuttle. Mom’s holding me on her hip, looking up at Dad. Dad’s smiling at the camera with his arm around her waist. And I have my fist pumped into the air, my face frozen in mid-shout: “To infinity and beyond!” I’d cried.

  We spend our flights mostly in silence. Dad’s thinking pretty hard, I can tell. I’m thinking, too. I’m trying to remember what I know of comas. Precious little, unfortunately. Something about a coma is our body’s response to extreme trauma. Advanced healing can occur while a person is in a coma. But a twenty-year coma? Few people have ever come out of that, and most of those for only hours or days. Even if we can get Vivian to wake up, she might not stay awake. Her muscles will be atrophied. Her memory will be impaired. Nothing about the news of her fate is good.

  But something tells me that Dad is not hoping to walk out of the hospital with her. He is done with hoping and wishing. He wants to see her. He probably wants to touch her. Maybe he wants to kiss her creamy lips on
e last time.

  I wish he would tell me what he’s thinking, so that I could set my own hopes appropriately. Because even though I’ve been warned, and I’ve seen the evidence of how hope and high expectations can lead to disappointment and misery, I still can’t help myself. I want Dad to be happy. I thought about it all last night, about him and Mom, and him and Vivian. This is a chance for Dad to gain closure for something that’s been an open wound for twenty years. I cannot deny him that chance, not even in my heart. I want him to have the fairytale ending. Silly, I know, but true nonetheless.

  As we descend for our landing in Wichita, I gather enough courage to at least broach the subject.

  “So, Dad, what’s the plan?”

  He looks momentarily startled, as though he’s forgotten I am sitting beside him.

  “Well, Grandma booked us a rental car and a hotel near the hospital. I suppose we should check in there first. Are you hungry?”

  My stomach is growling angrily at me, but I ignore it. “Nope. I vote we go straight to the hospital.”

  Dad just looks at me.

  “You’ve both waited twenty years. I think our stomachs can stand a few more hours.”

  “Thomas, I…” Dad looks at me helplessly, and I know what he wants to say.

  I lace my fingers through his. “She won’t look the same, you know that. She won’t be able to speak to you. Hell, the doctors might not even let us see her. I think we need a story.”

  “A story?”

  “Yeah, like a cover story. Only immediate family will probably be able to see her, and we can claim to be her brother and nephew, but we don’t have any proof of that. You’re going to have to prove you know her. Did you ever see that movie, Overboard, with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell?”

  Dad finally cracks a smile. “Kurt told the doctors that Goldie had a birthmark on her thigh as proof that he was her husband.”

  I nod. “Yes. Does Vivian have any birthmarks?”

  “No. But she has a tattoo on the back of her neck. A heart.”

  “That should do it,” I say.