No longer able to cope, Carol ran away to New Mexico, taking her young son with her, and breaking the hearts of the grandparents who had provided every comfort imaginable for the both of them. They went to both the courts and the police, but because Carol was now eighteen and not their child, they were told that there was nothing they could do. It was eight years before they would see Blake again. By then, he was a haunted young man, covered in evidence of the physical abuse he had suffered. Again, their hearts were broken, but they welcomed Blake into their lives with more love and kindness than the scarred child had ever known.
Blake got up from the hammock and approached his grandparents. His grandmother smiled and told him that dinner would be ready in a few minutes. His grandfather told him about a school of whales he had seen a few miles off the coast that morning. The warm, comfortable feeling Blake had felt upon seeing them faded. None of this was real. He was reliving a moment from his past. His grandparents had no way of knowing he was still alive. For that matter, Blake didn’t even know if they had ever been informed of his death. He couldn’t imagine his mother would have thought it necessary to contact them.
Renee had the right idea, he realized, as the scene around him faded. Despite the constant threat of danger, it had been too easy for Blake to accept that this half-life, this lucid nightmare, was all he had. But he was wrong. Complacently accepting his role in this experiment was selfish. He had to escape, if for no other reason than to see his grandparents once again and thank them for all that they did, and all that they had tried to do.
He found Renee in the empty void of her mind, staring intently at the network of synapses and nerve endings as if the answers she sought would surface from the tangle of gossamer threads. She hadn’t noticed him enter her mind and jumped slightly as he reached out to take her hand in his.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Blake apologized.
“That’s okay,” she said with a weak smile. “Are you…” She trailed off uncomfortably, unsure about how to approach everything that had just happened.
“I’m better. Sort of, at least,” he said with a sigh. “Is it bad that I don’t know how I should feel?”
“I think that’s normal. If… if you want to talk about it… I’m here,” she stammered. “I don’t know how much help I can be, but I’m a good listener.”
“Thank you,” Blake half whispered, half choked, and put his arms around Renee for a brief hug, but pulled back a moment later. He thought about his misstep earlier and felt slightly awkward, so he put his hands in his pockets and looked out at the webbing of her mind. “So, what are you looking for?” he asked as casually as he could.
“I’m not sure,” she answered, stealing a brief look in his direction. “Answers, I guess.”
“A way out?” Blake prompted.
“I… don’t know,” she stammered, unable to meet his eye.
“I want to help,” Blake said in a rush, startling her.
“Help?”
“I know what I said earlier,” he pressed on. “But I think you’re right. We can’t stay here. It’s not fair for your parents and my grandparents to be grieving for us when we aren’t really dead. We need to find a way out and I want to help.”
Renee’s stomach twisted into knots as images of Blake lying in the hospital bed once again bombarded her mind. Would he still want to escape if he knew what difficulties faced him? He deserved the truth, of course, but Renee didn’t want to think about how much she’d be hurting him if she did reveal what she had seen.
“Renee?”
She hadn’t realized she had spaced out until she felt Blake’s hands on her shoulder, steadying her. Her own hands were clammy and she was trembling slightly. She took a deep breath and plastered on a smile that she hoped didn’t look as fake as it felt.
“Sorry. I guess I kind of zoned there,” she said. As she spoke, a lush, exotic landscape sprung up around them. Behind them, rolling hills of vibrant green rose up toward the sky. In front of them, the green grass gave way to rocky bluffs, where choppy waves of deep blue crashed into the shore.
“Renee, what are you doing?” Blake asked cautiously.
“Ireland,” she said with a blush. “At least, this is my interpretation based on what I’ve seen in books. My dad’s Irish and I’ve always wanted to go, so…” she trailed off with a nervous laugh and turned to walk toward the cliffs to put some distance between them.
“Renee,” Blake said firmly, taking her hand to stop her from walking away. “Stop this.”
“Stop what?”
“This act,” he said with frustration. “You’ve been looking for a way to escape for months. Why now, when I bring it up, are you trying to avoid the subject?”
Renee’s mouth went dry and her heart pounded, but Blake had a right to know the difficulties they faced.
“You might want to sit down,” she said with a sigh.
Blake followed her to a spot overlooking the sea below and sat down in the velvety grass, bracing himself for whatever bad news she was about to deliver. At least she picked a beautiful location, he thought as he looked around.
“I don’t know if you realized what happened, but when I called for help, I was actually awake,” she explained. “Well, technically Randy was awake, but since I was occupying his mind, I was the one who they were actually addressing.”
“That’s why you were trapped?” Blake asked.
“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “The doctors woke him up to tell him he failed. I called out to you when I realized they were about to kill him. At first, I thought I might just pop back into my mind, but no, I was really dying. But anyway, that’s not important,” she said in a rush, dropping her eyes to the blade of grass that she nervously twisted between her fingers. “While I was awake… I… I saw you.”
“You mean… you saw my body?” Blake asked. Renee nodded. “Did you see yourself as well?”
“No,” She said hoarsely and swallowed the lump in her throat before continuing. “But I didn’t have to. Blake, if we do manage to get out, I… I don’t know what that’s going to mean for us. Your body is…”
“Weak.” He finished for her, lying back in the grass with a devastated sigh. “And there’s a strong possibility that I’m paralyzed.”
Renee nodded, hiding the tears that were forming behind the curtain of her hair.
“There’s always physical therapy,” he suggested with forced optimism. “And you haven’t been wasting away as long as I have. You might be able to help me. You’re pretty athletic.”
“Blake, it’s still been months,” she reasoned. “And we don’t know what the accident did to me.”
Blake sat up and reached out, putting his hand on Renee’s cheek.
“Do you want to stay trapped in here forever?” he asked. Though he spoke quietly, there was a sense of desperation in his voice. Renee tried to turn away but Blake leaned in closer. “Do you?”
“No,” she said at last, her voice a barely audible whisper.
“Then let’s do this,” he whispered back with fierce determination. Drawing away, he stood up and offered his hand to Renee.
“Do what, the impossible?” Renee asked warily as she stood, but Blake put a finger to her lips.
“After everything we’ve done so far, I’m officially outlawing that word.”
Chapter 21
“Do you feel anything?” Renee asked as she used her hands to bridge the connection between Blake’s mind and his damaged nerve endings.
“Nothing,” Blake replied with a sigh.
“What about now?”
“Still nothing.”
“Darn,” Renee cursed, getting up to move to another part of Blake’s mind. She was determined that there had to be a way to repair the damage from where they were.
“I still don’t think this is going to work,” Blake muttered, looking down at the broken and decayed nerve endings with disgust. He hated the knowledge that his physical body was weak and
useless. He desperately wanted Renee to be right, but he wasn’t as convinced as she was that the solution would be as easy as fixing a broken strand of Christmas lights. Besides that, he didn’t think there was any point in trying to cure his paralysis until they found a way to escape and so far, neither had come up with a solution to that dilemma.
“It’s got to,” Renee said, failing to keep the frustration out of her voice as she picked up one of the dead strands and examined the broken end. “I wonder if we can regrow the nerves.”
“Out of what?” Blake asked, getting up and moving to where she stood.
“Well, out of… nerve, I guess,” Renee said with a shrug. “We regrow skin when we get cut, right?”
“Scar tissue isn’t exactly regrowth,” Blake informed her with a glance at the map of scar tissue on his forearm.
“I guess you’re right,” Renee said sheepishly, kicking herself for not thinking before she opened her mouth. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Blake said dismissively, looking past Renee into the expanse of his mind. “What is that?” he asked, pointing to a blindingly bright nub at the end of one active nerve.
“I’m pretty sure this is where the dead nerves once connected to your brain,” Renee explained, moving closer to examine the area. “There’s a lot of activity right here, but it isn’t going anywhere. The dead nerves can’t connect because the endings are broken. Hang on. I have an idea,” she said and reached past him.
“Be careful!” Blake cautioned, but Renee’s sudden movement caused him to lose his balance. He took a step backwards and tripped over one of the dead filaments. As he tried to steady himself, Blake’s hand came down on one of the brightly lit live nerve endings. He tried to pull away, but a jolt of electricity shot up his arm, freezing him in place.
Suddenly, the world went dark and Blake felt as though he was being sucked up through a large vacuum cleaner. For a brief moment, he panicked, thinking he had just killed himself with his own clumsiness, but seconds later, he found himself lying on his back with his eyes shut tight. He realized that he must have just shocked himself when he tripped. After all, he had just touched his own brain and he was pretty sure that wasn’t something anyone was ever meant to do.
Blake tried to sit up, but found that he could not. In fact, he couldn’t move at all. It felt as if he was being held down by heavy weights. As he tried to open his eyes, he noticed that even his eyelids seemed to weigh a ton.
Blake? What happened? Renee’s voice echoed in his head.
He tried to open his mouth to answer and found that he couldn’t even do that.
Can you hear me? Blake? Renee’s voice became more desperate.
At last, Blake managed to open his eyes and realized that something was wrong. He was lying on his back, staring up at a flickering fluorescent light attached to the ceiling above him. The walls were institutional gray cinder blocks and there appeared to be no windows. Other than the buzzing hum of the fluorescent lights, the room was dead silent. Using every ounce of strength he could muster, Blake turned his head a fraction of an inch to the side and froze, realizing exactly where he was.
Her long, silky hair was gone, shorn completely off to accommodate a number of electrodes that were plastered to her head and an angry red knot of scar tissue marred the otherwise smooth skin on her forehead. Her face was certainly thinner and her usually rosy cheeks were devoid of color, but other than that, Renee looked as if she was simply taking a peaceful nap.
Oh my god. Renee, I did it… I’m- Uh oh!
Blake’s thoughts were cut short as he suddenly heard the sharp staccato sound of footsteps and they were getting closer. A beeping noise that he hadn’t noticed before was steadily growing stronger. It only took him a second to realize that the increasingly frequent beep matched the rhythm of his hammering heartbeat. He tried to control his breathing, but it was no use. The beeping just became louder and more insistent.
A shadow crossed in front of the light and Blake braced himself, realizing that he was about to come face to face with his captors. Would they simply send him back under or would this be the end? Even with the adrenaline that must have been coursing through his system, Blake still didn’t have the motor coordination to raise his hand, let alone escape.
There was another rush and Blake felt as if he was falling, once again plunged into darkness. As his consciousness slammed back into his body, he felt the heavy weight lift and realized he was back inside his mind, lying in a tangled heap with Renee’s arms around him, breathing heavily.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Renee gasped with a sigh of relief as she pulled away.
“Wha… what just happened?” he asked in a ragged voice.
“When you touched your mind you just sort of froze in place,” Renee explained. “You wouldn’t answer me, so I tried speaking directly in our mind. When your answer got cut off, I took a chance and dragged you out of there. Where were you?”
“I… I woke up.”
“Really?” Renee’s eyes grew wide at the implication. “That’s great news!”
“Not exactly,” Blake said, holding up his hand. “First of all, you weren’t kidding. I’m not just weak, Renee, I’m pathetic. I could barely open my eyes and moving my head was a herculean effort.”
“Yeah, but that’s because you haven’t moved in two years. If you keep going back, you can strengthen your muscles by trying to move.”
“That’s the other thing,” Blake said, cutting her off before she got too optimistic. “They knew I was awake. You pulled me out just in time.”
“How?” Renee’s face fell in disappointment.
“A heart monitor, I think,” Blake answered. “I heard a beeping and it got louder when I started to freak out.”
“So… maybe if we’re calm, we can go back without drawing their attention,” Renee suggested.
“That’s probably easier said than done,” Blake informed her, but Renee was already up on her feet, standing in front of the door to her mind. He gave her a wary look. “Oh come on.”
“What? How am I supposed to know if this works until I try it for myself?” she argued.
“The doctor is probably still there,” Blake reasoned.
“But if I know what to expect, I shouldn’t set off their alarms,” she countered. “Come on.” She held out her hand. With a sigh of resignation, Blake took it and allowed her to lead him through the door to her mind.
“Okay,” Renee said, taking a calming breath as she stood in front of the webbed matrix of her mind. “I think I have an idea.” she turned to Blake and took his hands, wrapping them around her waist so that he was holding onto her from behind. “Whatever you do, don’t let go of me,” she instructed as she reached out and grabbed the nearest tendril.
Blake didn’t have time to voice his objection before Rene went completely rigid in his arms.
Renee? He called out with his mind.
I’m here, she called back once the weird squeezing sensation stopped. That wasn’t very pleasant, was it? I felt like I just got squeezed through a toothpaste tube.
Renee opened her eyes and blinked against the sudden brightness of the fluorescent lamps overhead. Like Blake, she suddenly felt very weak, though she was able to move her head with much more ease than he had. The first thing she noticed was that she was now on Blake’s other side. He was so close that if she reached out, she could touch his hand. She would have, if it wasn’t for the fact that the second thing she noticed was the doctor who stood over him, clipboard in hand, staring intently at his face as if trying to understand what had just happened. Renee recognized him as one of the doctors that had tried to kill her just days before while she occupied Randy’s body. As soon as the startled gasp escaped her lips, Renee knew she had made a mistake.
Blake, get me out!
Renee squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that the hammering of her heart hadn’t caught the doctor’s attention.
“What happened?” Blake asked as she fell slack in his ar
ms.
“The doctor was still there,” she explained. “He startled me and I didn’t want to get caught.”
“Was he doing anything to me?” Blake asked, suddenly panicked.
“He was just staring at you,” Renee assured him. “It was the dark haired one anyway.”
“Does that make a difference?” Blake asked with a snort.
“Kinda,” Renee said with a shiver. “He doesn’t freak me out as much as the blonde guy.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Blake had noticed as well, both from his own interactions with the doctors and in Randy’s memories, that there was something more sinister about the blonde doctor. The dark haired one at least seemed to treat it as a job. The blonde acted more like he was enjoying making them suffer.
“That should be plenty of time. I’m going back,” Renee said after a moment.
“Are you crazy?”
“Blake, this is it,” she said with urgency. “This is our chance to escape. If I’m strong enough, I’m getting us out of here.”
“Right now?”
“Well not right now,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I mean, if I start unhooking us from the machines it’s going to draw some attention, but we need a plan. We need to keep an eye on them, find out what their schedules are. They have to go home some time, don’t they?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Blake said cautiously. “Maybe there’s more than just the two we’ve seen.”
“Well there’s only one way to find out,” Renee said and reached out toward her mind one more time.
This time, she cautiously opened her eyes part way, looking both left and right. Satisfied that there was no one in the room, she opened her eyes fully and looked around. She and Blake were the only patients, but there were two additional hospital beds on the other side of Blake. She didn’t see any cameras, but that certainly didn’t mean that they weren’t hidden.
Kind of Like Life Page 15