Come and Find Me

by Hallie Ephron

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Apartment door left open? Purse left on the backseat of her car? Diana burst into the apartment. A quick glance told her Ashley wasn’t in the living room or kitchen.

  She closed the door and attached the chain lock. Ran to the closed bedroom door and pushed it open. Inside, it was dark and smelled like steamed gym socks. She could just make out the bedcovers mounded over what looked like a body.

  “Ashley?” she said, creeping closer.

  Ashley’s blond hair was all that was visible. Her BlackBerry was on the floor by the bed, still on, apparently where she’d dropped it. A pile of clothes was on the floor.

  Thank God! Diana fell to her knees by the bed, overcome with relief. She’d been girding herself for another impossible loss.

  She turned on the bedside lamp. Ashley winced. She was pale, with dark circles under her eyes. Diana slid her hand under the covers and pulled out Ashley’s arm. She pressed her fingers against Ashley’s wrist. The pulse was strong and steady.

  “Ouch!” Ashley pulled her hand away.

  “Sorry, hon,” Diana said.

  Ashley opened one eye. Then the other. She shrieked.

  “What?” Diana said.

  Ashley just pointed at Diana’s head. It took a moment for Diana to realize what she was going on about.

  “So? I’m a blonde.”

  “I guess. You cut it yourself?” Ashley’s eyes widened farther still. “You’re here? How . . . ?”

  “Don’t you remember? We talked on the phone. Fifteen minutes ago. I said I’d come over.”

  “You drove?”

  “I can, you know,” Diana said. “I even have a driver’s license.”

  “Sure you do.”

  Diana ignored the sarcasm. “Are you okay? I’ve been so worried.”

  “My head.” Ashley touched her forehead and grimaced. “Jesus, this feels like the mother of all hangovers.”

  The old Superman theme started playing.

  “What the hell is that?” Ashley asked.

  “It’s a bird, it’s a plane . . .” Diana said, offering Ashley her BlackBerry. “It’s your phone.”

  Slowly, painfully Ashley raised herself on one elbow and stared at the cell phone, which was lighting up neon blue.

  “Don’t you remember?” Diana raised the cell phone the way the improv participants had saluted the hotel. “Copley Square?” She looked at the readout. “Lucky you. It’s Mom.”

  “Don’t answer it. I’ll call her Monday.”

  “Ashley, that’s next week. It’s Tuesday already.”

  Deep furrows formed in Ashley’s forehead as her eyebrows came together.

  The phone rang again. Diana answered. “Hi, Ma.”

  “Diana?” A pause. “Did I call you? Because if I did, I didn’t mean to.”

  “You called Ashley. I answered the phone. She’s”—Ashley shook her head a little too vigorously and winced—“not feeling too well. She’s hungover.” Ashley rolled her eyes. “Or something.”

  “Or something?”

  “She’s fine. Really. She’ll call you back, okay? Tomorrow?”

  After a few more back-and-forths, Diana managed to get her mother off the phone. By then, Ashley was sitting up in bed.

  “It’s Tuesday?” she said. “How could that be? Where have I been?” Diana heard the distinct note of panic in her sister’s voice.

  She took Ashley’s hand. It felt cool and dry. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to reach you. I was here yesterday and it looked as if you’d come back. Do you remember coming back to your apartment? Picking up your mail? Changing your clothes?”

  Ashley shook her head and raised her hand to wipe away a tear that trickled down her cheek.

  “Hey, don’t cry.” That’s when Diana noticed the mottled bruise on the back of Ashley’s hand. “What’s this?”

  “How’d I get that?” Ashley asked.

  Diana ran her fingers gently over the tender spot, right where veins branched. “I don’t know.”

  “I . . . I don’t know either.” Ashley shook her head and winced again.

  Diana stood. She handed Ashley her purse. “I found this in the backseat of your car. You parked in one of the visitor spots in front of the building.”

  “I didn’t. I never park there.”

  “Well, someone parked your car there.” She set the purse in Ashley’s lap. Ashley just stared at it. “You want to check that everything’s still there?”

  Ashley pushed herself up and rummaged through the bag. Found her wallet and checked the billfold. Sifted through the magazines and file folders. She drew out an oversize mailing envelope.

  Ashley looked baffled. She tore open the seal and pulled out some papers. The top page was a form labeled IN-PATIENT RELEASE.

  “Can I see that?” Diana said. She recognized the mother-and-child logo of Neponset Hospital. It had been one of Gamelan’s earliest clients.

  Ashley handed her the sheaf of papers. The form on top began:

  Patient Name: Ashley Highsmith

  Ashley had been released from the hospital in this condition? What had the doctors been thinking? And why hadn’t someone called her? She was Ashley’s emergency contact.

  Diana scanned the rest of the page. “According to this, you were checked in to the hospital on Friday night after eleven. Checked out yesterday morning.”

  Ashley’s eyes widened. “Was I sick?” She rummaged in her purse again and came up with a compact. She opened it and looked in the mirror. “Am I sick?”

  “You look fine,” Diana said, even though Ashley looked far from it.

  She examined the rest of the hospital documents, trying to penetrate the thicket of charges. “They gave you blood tests. A CT scan. Echocardiogram. Intravenous therapy.”

  Ashley stroked the bruise on the back of her hand. “So this—maybe it’s from an IV?”

  “Here’s a doctor’s card. You can probably call and find out.” Diana showed her a business card stapled to one of the sheets of paper. “And look, this is an FAQ on trypanosomiasis.”

  “What?” Ashley’s hand flew to her throat.

  Diana read down. “It’s a kind of sleeping sickness.”

  “Sleeping sickness? But how . . . ? Isn’t that something people get in Africa?”

  “You weren’t in Africa.”

  “Duh.” Ashley felt under her chin, like she was looking for swollen lymph nodes. Then she let her head fall back onto the pillow. “I may look okay but I feel terrible. Like my head is packed with wet wool.”

  “Apparently you had the nonlethal variety. This says you might be somewhat disoriented for a few days. Your sleep can be disrupted for up to two weeks. It’s important not to get dehydrated.” Diana went into the bathroom, filled a glass with water, and brought it back. She handed Ashley the glass. “How on earth did you manage to contract sleeping sickness?”

  Ashley sat up and took a sip. “How? Well—” She set the glass down and sat up taller. “Maybe from a hotel guest? I ran a wedding at the hotel. Last weekend. The bride was from Nigeria or South Africa, I can’t remember which. Or . . . on the plane? I read about how airplanes harbor all kinds of lethal stowaways. Rats with bubonic plague.” That thought seemed to perk her up considerably. “Disease-infected spiders. All it takes is one, hiding in one of those blankets.”

  “There are no more blankets.”

  “There are in business class.” Ashley finished off the water.

  “Ashley, what’s the last thing you remember?”

  Ashley sank back against the pillows and squeezed her eyes shut. “I remember . . .” She opened her eyes. “Dumping Aaron.” She smiled.

  “He called to apologize.”

  The smile grew broader. “He did?”

  “Do you remember Superman?�
��

  Ashley’s brow wrinkled. “Coming out of the hotel window. And a man came up to me.”

  “Ashley, this is important. Did you recognize him?”

  Ashley looked confused. “His face was kind of covered.”

  “Do you think it could have been Aaron?”

  “Aaron?” Ashley considered it. “No way. I’d have recognized him. This man, he acted like we were old friends. He thought I was—” She broke off the thought, her jaw dropping as realization kicked in. “He called me Nadia.”

  “Of course. You were registered as my avatar. Ashley, do you have any idea what happened next? I’ve looked at videos taken during the improv event and it looks as if you walked off with that guy who approached you. You might have gotten into a car with him.”

  “All I remember is being downtown. Superman’s in the air. That guy’s got his arm around me, which is kind of freaking me out. Then . . .” Ashley touched her upper arm. “Then . . . then nothing. It’s like the movie just stops. Except for nightmares.”

  “What kind of nightmares?”

  Ashley shuddered. “A long worm tracking slime up my arm. Headless talking Ken dolls.”

  “So you don’t remember being in the hospital? Getting a CT scan? Getting released this morning? Driving your car back?”

  “None of it.” Ashley picked up the sheaf of hospital forms and shook them at Diana. “Four days, I was out of it. Sleeping sickness! Go figure.”

  A half page of paper fluttered to the bed. Diana picked it up. “You’ve got a script for Ambien here.”

  “More sleep. Just what I need.” Ashley put her hand to her chest. Then her stomach. “Know what? I think I’m hungry. Starving, in fact. And what is that smell?” She sniffed her own armpit and made a face. “You think I can take a shower?”

  “You feel up to it?”

  Ashley swung her legs out of bed and Diana helped her stand.

  “Whoa,” Ashley said, holding on to Diana’s shoulder.

  “Want me to go in with you?”

  Ashley gave her a horrified look. “Just give me a minute.”

  Ashley steadied herself. Finally she pushed Diana away and headed for the bathroom. Diana started after her but Ashley put up her hand. “I’m okay. Really, I’m okay.” She left the room, crossed the hall, and shut the bathroom door behind her.

  Diana put the hospital forms together and straightened the pile. She clipped the prescription to the top. Its letterhead read COMPASSIONATE CARE MEDICAL, P.C. with an address in Boston’s Back Bay. The list of physicians included Dr. William Kennedy—the doctor whose business card they had. But the physician’s signature scrawled at the bottom was not Dr. Kennedy’s. Instead, it began with what looked like initial caps P and D, followed by B and an indecipherable wavy line with squiggles. Diana skimmed to the top of the page where the partners names were printed. The only name the signature even vaguely resembled was Pamela David-Braverman, MD, known to her friends in OtherWorld as PWNED.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  While Ashley showered, Diana spread out the hospital forms on the bed. It would take more than paperwork to convince her that Ashley had spent four days in a hospital recovering from an exotic disease.

  She pulled out the doctor’s business card and dialed his number. The call was picked up without even a single ring.

  “Compassionate Care Medical Associates,” said a woman’s recorded voice. “Our hours are weekdays from nine A.M. to five P.M. If this is an emergency . . .” Diana left a message, pretending to be Ashley and asking for the doctor to call. She left her cell-phone number and hung up.

  She set the card aside, picked up the prescription form, and examined it. It was dated Monday, yesterday, probably written in the morning when Ashley had been supposedly released from the Neponset Hospital. Later in the day, Pam had been running her forum, its banner FIGHT BACK. LIES KILL. There was more than a little irony to that.

  “The signature on the form wasn’t all that legible, but the initials P and B were clear. She Googled Pamela David-Braverman, MD. Back came thousands of hits. She’d been an activist for handicap rights at NYU Medical School. There were news articles about demonstrations and petitions she’d organized to get the teaching hospital to adapt equipment to the needs of physically handicapped physicians. Her nickname had been “Hell on Wheels.”

  Diana found plenty of links between Pam and Cambridge City Hospital. Lots of mentions of her in connection with the Spaulding Rehab Center and the Fund for Science, Honesty, and Morality. She also found the home page for Compassionate Care Medical, P.C., with Pam’s name listed along with Dr. William Kennedy and three other physicians.

  If Diana had saved the access codes to Neponset’s systems, she could easily have checked whether Pam was one of their attending physicians. But it was standard practice, part of Gamelan’s contract with every client, to obliterate from their systems every bit of information and every copied file when a project ended. Overwriting the data from a completed project was time-consuming, but it was a ritual Diana had diligently followed from day one.

  GROB had offered to help. Would his “special access” get her answers?

  The pipes thunked as the shower turned off. It would be at least another fifteen minutes of blow-drying her hair and getting dressed before Ashley emerged. Diana opened a session in OtherWorld and activated Nadia. While she waited for her home office to rez, she checked to see if GROB was in-world.

  He was.

  She hesitated for a moment. She’d never invited another avatar, not even Jake’s, to her virtual office. A few typed numbers and a click later, she’d sent GROB its coordinates.

  She didn’t have to wait long before a chime sounded. She clicked yes, he could come in, and GROB materialized. He took off his mirrored sunglasses to reveal dark, deep-set eyes. He did a 360 as the person controlling him checked out her office. The “room” felt much smaller with him and his broad-brimmed Stetson in it.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly,” she said.

  “I’m afraid to ask.” She recognized his synthesized voice. “Your sister? Is she okay?”

  From the bathroom, over the hair dryer’s buzz, Diana could hear Ashley singing, “I will survive!” and doing a shockingly decent Gloria Gaynor imitation.

  “I found her. She’s turned up, back in her apartment, incoherent at first. She’s literally lost four days of her life. She had some paperwork that shows she was at Neponset Hospital for four days with trypanosomiasis. That’s sleeping sickness.”

  GROB whistled. “Sleeping sickness?”

  “Right. How likely is that? And the paperwork she came back with? It feels wrong. Like there’s a hodgepodge of tests that I doubt they’d have ordered. Of course I’m no doctor, but you offered to help and I’m hoping you can check it out.”

  “Sure. Neponset Hospital?”

  “I want to know. When she was admitted. When she was released. The names of the doctors who treated her. Anything that can be verified.”

  “Do you have the release form?”

  “Right here.”

  “Good. That makes it easy. There should be a case number somewhere on the top of the first page. Can you find it?”

  Diana read it off to him.

  “I’ll do a little digging and get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Are we talking minutes? Hours?”

  “Depends. But if I run into a problem I’ll let you know.” GROB held out his hand to Nadia.

  She wanted to make her avatar take it but she stopped herself. Touching meant linking, and she couldn’t risk losing control of Nadia. She wasn’t taking any more chances.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  His hand dropped to his side. “Friend?” The empty voice balloon over GROB’s head seemed to evaporate slowly.

  “Friend,” she said. Please, be a true friend.


  GROB hesitated a moment more, then vanished.

  It would be a while before GROB got back to her. Anxious and edgy, Diana listened for reassuring sounds of life from the bathroom while she checked through the stack of messages from Jake. In one dated yesterday, Monday afternoon, after Diana had fled her apartment, he said he’d submitted the proposal to Vault Security and left her a copy of it in their shared e-mail. A few hours after that, he sent her an update saying that Vault had received the proposal. Then another update, later that evening: initial reactions were positive but the company’s executives had a few follow-up questions. Was she available the next morning for a call?

  The next two messages, sent late into the night on Monday, had wanted to know if she’d received the previous messages. Then a message sent this Tuesday morning. “Never mind” was in the subject line. He’d been able to address their concerns.

  A final message had been sent an hour ago.

  RE: FOUND VOLGANET

  First Jake confirmed what she already suspected. Volganet was not in Eastern Europe. Their server’s time clock had been altered to make it look as if they were. He’d used satellite tracking, triangulating on their signal, and determined that they were actually located not far from Boston.

  His message went on:

  F*ING tapeworms. Parasitic scum.

  Two years ago, the three of them would have deserved precisely those sobriquets.

  His message continued:

  You were right. This is not the first time we’ve been hit by them. They’ve been onto us for weeks. Maybe more. I shut them out. Gave them a taste of their own. My bad.

  Inside for weeks? How many? Had the creeps behind Volganet been targeting their clients? Were they responsible for infiltrating her security systems too? Jake said he’d shut them out, but was it really safe for her to go home? Was it any safer to go back to Pam’s? She looked around Ashley’s apartment and shivered. Was it safe anywhere?

  Ten minutes later, a chime sounded, and she let GROB back into her virtual office.

  “Your sister definitely was at Neponset Hospital.” The electronic voice pronounced it Nep-on-set, like it was three words. “Admitted last Friday, released yesterday morning. You must be the Diana that your sister lists as next of kin.”