by Melinda Minx
“He cheated me a few months back,” I say. “Greedy of him to do it again so soon. In a tournament, too. He should have known better.”
Kaufmann shakes my hand and heads toward the train station.
I hear a voice as soon as I’m alone.
“You Kaden Prince?” a guy shouts, walking up to me. He’s got an Eastern European accent.
I look to the other side, and I see two more guys lurking on the other end of the road.
“It’s Myers,” I say. “You my friends from Poland?” I ask.
“How you know that?” he asks. “And I know your real fucking name. I’ll use whatever name I want for you until you pay up.”
“I’ve got your money,” I say. “No need to throw me into the North Sea.”
“Getting a few billion isn’t so hard,” I say to Rose, still holding her hand. “After you get that first million, at least. It’s true that you need money to make money, and also that when you have money, it’s almost effortless. It hardly seems fair.”
I shrug. “I just wanted you to know, though...because I regret it sometimes. Everything worked out—but just barely. I got greedy, Rose. I didn’t realize what was really important. If I had made even a slight misstep back then, I’d be dead. My body would be frozen in the sea. I’d never have met you, and you’d never have woken up.
“This whole mess with Dr. Meiner is the last stupid risk I’m going to take. If every man only gets so much luck during his life, then surely mine is all used up. I’m just praying that it lasts me long enough to get through this next part. I just need you back, then I’m done breaking the rules. I’ll have everything I could ever want already anyway.”
She doesn’t respond, of course. I’ve been talking at her for over an hour, and I haven’t seen her eyelids so much as flutter, or her lips twitch.
I lean down and kiss her. Not because I think it will wake her up again, but just in case she can feel it. So she knows I love her and that I’m not going to give up on her.
18
Rose
I do dream.
Right as I fall asleep, I dream that Kaden tells me that he loves me. I remember last time thinking that his kiss waking me up was a dream, too, so I tell myself that maybe this was real. Maybe he did tell me that he loved me.
I feel myself slipping deeper away, and each time I jolt awake for a brief moment—though I can’t move my body—I catch fragments of dreams.
I dream that Kaden and I have a child together. It’s a boy, and I’m wide awake to raise him. I go to school, and Kaden takes time off work to watch our son while I’m in class. We both work hard to raise him together, and I end up getting a real job, even though I’m almost thirty when I finally do.
It’s one of those frustratingly vague dreams. I never see our son’s face, and my job is hazy and undefined. I just know that both things make me happy—and, of course—Kaden makes me happy.
I feel like Kaden is close to me. Maybe I just know he is. Either way, it helps me sleep and dream in peace.
19
Kaden
After a week or so of Dr. Meiner being my boss, he pulls me aside after work one day and talks to me in a low whisper.
“She’s told me to ‘pivot’ away from working on the device for Rose,” Meiner says.
“What?” I ask, feeling like a bag full of bricks was just swung into my gut.
“Dr. Bell,” Meiner says. “She’s breaking her promise to you. She said this is costing way too much time that could be better spent on other uses for the technology. As of Monday, she wants us to shift focus.”
“I’ll go straight to the press and—”
“And how’s it going to sound?” Meiner asks. “Dr. Bell is trying to apply the technology to diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s—diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide—but she’s the bad guy for not wanting to help three or four people instead?”
“But Rose is—”
“Rose is important to you,” Meiner says. “And to me, too...but I’m just telling you that your tactic of going to the press isn’t going to play out like you want it to.”
Dylan’s warning of ‘don’t trust Meiner’ rings through my head, but I find myself asking anyway. “What can we do then?”
He leans in closer, and his voice goes so quiet I can barely hear him. “The device can easily be repaired.”
“Which device?” I ask.
He sticks his index finger against his skull. “The one in her head.”
“Then why the fuck…” I hiss, “have we been dicking around for the past week trying to build a new one from scratch?”
“It would have been safer,” Meiner says. “We’ll have to remove the device from Rose, and repair it and re-insert it before patching her back up. It would have been ideal to make a new device and test it thoroughly—”
“Why the fuck can’t we remove it, spend a few weeks making sure everything is running perfectly, and then put it back in?”
“Because,” Meiner says, “getting it out of her will be a repeat of last time. We’ll have to steal her away, and—”
“Jesus Christ,” I hiss. “Cause that worked out so well last time, huh? Why the hell would you even be willing to do this, Meiner? You have everything you want right in your hands, why would you take such a huge risk to help Rose and me?”
He grins. “Because, Dr. Prince, I’ve become invaluable to Dr. Bell. Just like you used to be. She wouldn’t dare fire me.”
“That doesn’t explain it all,” I say, narrowing my eyes.
“I also feel guilty. I’m not a total monster. I want to do good by Rose—not so much by you. When I pressed the kill switch on her, I fully intended to wake her back up. I couldn’t just walk away from that.”
“When do we do it then?” I ask.
“Tomorrow night,” he whispers. “I’ve already made arrangements.”
When I get to the operating room, Meiner has already moved Rose there. There’s no fresh, unused wing of the hospital anymore, but we’ve forged enough paperwork that unless Bell is looking hard, it will look legit.
Then I see a third person, Dr. Anuja Ravindra. Another woman I’ve never trusted.
“What the hell, Meiner,” I say, backing away from Ravindra as if she was a snake.
“We will save Rose, but I can guarantee you are going to lose your job, Dr. Prince,” Meiner says. “I need you to train Dr. Ravindra to remove and install the device.”
“Training my own replacement,” I say, shaking my head.
A cost I’d gladly pay ten times over if it means getting Rose back. “Alright, Anuja,” I say. “I know we’ve never gotten along, but you’re a good enough surgeon to do this. But pay attention, because we are not doing this again,” I say, glaring at Dr. Meiner.
“Agreed,” he says. I see his eyes wrinkle up into a smile, as the mask is covering his mouth.
I take a long look at Rose on the operating table. What we’re doing is a huge risk, but if I don’t take this chance, she may never wake up again. I remember the story I told Rose, and I promise her that this is the last big risk I’m taking.
We get to work. It feels almost like last time, but the stakes are higher now. She’s not just my patient, she’s the woman I love.
I talk through what I’m doing for Dr. Ravindra. Due to the small size of the device, the cut I make is much smaller than I would when performing normal brain surgery. It’s critical to get the spot right, though, and I show Anuja how to pinpoint the right region of the brain.
It takes hours, but when I get ready to peel back the skull, Meiner stops me.
He holds out a tray. “The kill switch removed all the bonds. It will just fall right out. We can’t have it shatter on the ground.”
As soon as the brain is exposed, I hear a clink as the tiny little device hits the metal pan.
I sigh in relief.
“All right,” I say. “How do you need me to help you with the repairs? Is there anything
I should do?”
“You’ve done enough,” a woman’s voice calls out from the doorway.
I spin around to see Dr. Bell. Oh, fuck.
“Maryanne,” I say. “We’ve...just let us finish. We’ve got this far, just let us finish, then you can do whatever you want—”
She snaps her fingers, and security rushes toward me. I hand the pan delicately toward Dr. Meiner. “Hide it!” I hiss. “You and Anuja have to finish...somehow—”
Meiner takes the pan from my hand. He holds it so gently that it’s as if the universe itself was inside, encased in delicate glass.
Once he’s taken it from me, he removes the device and puts it into a glass vial, then he secures the vial into a foam-padded briefcase. He snaps it shut.
“Sorry, Dr. Prince,” he says. “We just needed you to do the surgery, and to train Dr. Ravindra.”
Ravindra shoots me a pitying look, then forces herself to frown. Like a robot trying to mimic human emotion.
“You all set me up?” I ask.
Trust no one.
“Just fix the fucking thing!” I shout. “And let me wake her back up!”
As much as I want to hit and throw something, Rose’s brain is still exposed. All I can do is channel my rage inward, until it threatens to destroy me.
The guards grab hold of me, and I don’t fight them, afraid someone would hit Rose.
“You’re fired, Dr. Prince,” Dr. Bell says. “I should have done it a long time ago. Loose cannons sink ships.”
“So do shitty captains,” I spit. “And mutinous crew.” I stare Dr. Meiner down, but he just looks at me with an intense sadness.
They pull me away, and they don’t let go of me until I’m in my car. They even tail me until I’m off the hospital grounds.
I pay for Rose to get the best treatment. Dr. Ravindra patched her back up, but the device is gone, and Dr. Bell and Dr. Meiner’s team is working on Alzheimer’s applications now—not on finding a cure for Rose’s condition.
Dylan doesn’t go as far as telling me, “I told you so,” but the look on his face says it all for me.
I let Rose down. I let him down. I let everyone fucking down.
What else could I have done? Could I somehow have outmaneuvered Dr. Bell and Dr. Meiner? Maybe. I just keep coming back to the same problem: Dr. Meiner was the only one who could really bring Rose back. Was he lying about fixing the device? Maybe Dr. Bell just needed to get it out so she could reverse-engineer it for Alzheimer’s patients? It might be that it was not possible to repair the fucking thing, and Meiner had no intention of building a new one. He just told me everything I needed to hear to do the surgery again.
Maybe I never had a chance at all, and my promise to Rose was nothing but hollow words.
I put a $100 million bounty on research. If anyone has something they think can work, I want them to come to me.
I get a lot of visitors. Real researchers who claim they just need ten years of funding, quacks promising they can bring her back with hypnosis, and even spiritual healers who say that the power of crystal energy can return her to me.
It’s not what I need. I need her awake, and I need to keep my promise to her.
I even go to Dr. Meiner. Just like he came to me. I catch him getting into his car, and I grab hold of him.
“Killing me won’t bring her back,” Meiner says, frowning.
“Work for me,” I say. “I can pay you a lot more than Dr. Bell.”
“It’s not an issue of money, Kaden,” he says. “You lack the equipment, the personnel, the infrastructure.”
“I can buy all that,” I say. “It’s nothing to me.”
“You have a license for running a nanofactory?” he asks.
“What?”
“To make sure you don’t produce a grey goo that would self-replicate and absorb all the matter on earth, or maybe you’d make a synthetic virus that would—”
“The fuck? Of course not, I’d just—”
“You can’t buy a license like that, Dr. Prince. Get everything set up, and then come back to me. If you have a lab I can work in, I’ll work for you.”
I buy a lab. I poach the personnel, and I start working on all the fucking licenses.
I buy more lawyers to cut through it all faster. And yet just like Meiner said, the license for the nano-tech is the hardest—almost impossible.
So I hire more people, make my operation more and more legit. It’s already been two months since Rose fell asleep, though, and even if everything goes perfectly, my lab won’t be operational enough for Meiner to take over for several more months.
The thought of giving that man a penny makes my skin crawl, but I’ll do what I have to do for Rose.
I get an urgent call from the hospital while I’m meeting with my team of lawyers.
“Yes?” I ask.
“She’s…” the nurse’s voice says.
“Is she okay?” I ask. “Tell me she’s okay.”
“She’s showing some signs of movement,” the nurse says. “She’s—”
I’m in my car in less than thirty seconds, and I race down the road. I’m by Rose’s side in just under ten minutes. All the nurses are smiling.
Dylan comes in just a few minutes after me. “Is she waking up?” he says, panting.
“It’s too early to say,” Dr. Kahn—Rose’s new doctor—says. “But we’ll watch closely.”
Her brows furrow, and Dylan and I hold our breath.
Her eyes start to flutter, and I go to grab her hand, but I stop myself. I’m afraid that if I touch her, I could somehow undo whatever is happening. Her waking up could be as fragile as glass, and I don’t dare interrupt it.
Her eyes open up enough that I can see their green hues, and then they shut again.
“She’s waking up!” Dylan shouts.
I guess he doesn’t see her waking up as a delicate piece of glass.
“Rose!” he shouts, even louder. “We’re here, wake up!”
“Shh,” I scold. “You might scare her back to sleep.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” he says.
The nurses urge us to step back, and they start monitoring all of her vitals. “Heart rate is increasing.”
Her eyes open again, and her lips part. Her eyes roll up and lock onto mine. I see her lips mouth my name, and I push through the nurses to be at her side.
I take her hand and squeeze. “I’m here,” I say. “We’re all here for you.”
I didn’t do anything. She’s waking up entirely on her own. There’s no device, and my lab isn’t even close to running yet. But I don’t care. All that matters it that she’s waking up.
Her hand squeezes mine, and I squeeze back. Her grip feels light, but it’s strong considering she just opened her eyes.
“I dreamt,” she whispers.
“Don’t try to talk,” Dr. Kahn says. “Take it easy.”
“We had a baby,” Rose says.
A baby. Wouldn’t that be something? I hadn’t dared to even think of something so amazing, not when she was asleep with no guarantee of her waking in sight. It still feels too early to hope. There’s no explanation for why she’s woken up, and who’s to say she won’t slip right back away?
I stay by her side, holding her hand tightly, until finally she starts to look fully awake.
“Can I have a drink of water?” she asks.
The nurses get her a glass, and make sure she only drinks a little bit.
“I’m getting deja vu,” she says. “I feel like this just happened...how long has it been?”
“Two months,” I say.
I see relief wash over her face. It’s longer than I promised, but much shorter than seven years.
“How do you feel?” Dylan asks.
“I feel…” she says. “Nauseous.”
I look back to Dr. Kahn. “Any idea?”
Kahn shakes her head.
“I need…” Rose says. “I need…”
She rushes out of the bed, and b
efore any of us can react, she runs out of the room.
“Where’s the bathroom?” she shouts back.
I run after her, but I get into the hallway only in time to see the bathroom door slam shut.
“Rose!” I yell through the door. “You shouldn’t get up so fast, we don’t know—”
I hear her vomiting through the door.
“Fuck!” I shout. “Dr. Kahn! Get us the keys!”
A security guard comes hurrying over with a ring of keys, but before he can even get the door unlocked, Rose opens it.
“I feel fine now,” she says, smiling.
I wrap my arms around her, squeezing her protectively against my body. “You can’t do that. We need to make sure you’re okay.”
“I know I’m okay,” she says, patting my back. “I can feel it.”
We get her back into bed, and she begrudgingly lays back down so we can run more tests.
The nurse starts asking her a series of questions, all of which seem irrelevant to me. I thought I’d hired the best doctors and nurses, but maybe I was wrong.
I pull Dr. Kahn aside and start asking her if she’s changed the medication. I’m looking for any change the staff could have made that may have triggered this.
The door opens, and I see an ultrasound machine being wheeled in.
“What the hell?” I ask. “Who authorized this?”
“Dr. Kahn,” one of the nurses whispers to her. “We think she might be pregnant.”
My jaw drops.
“Run it,” Kahn says.
“Pregnant,” I whisper, and I look over at Rose.
She smiles wide and says, her voice full of wonder, “Pregnant.” She touches her belly.
I sit by her side as they apply the gel to her abdomen, and the operator presses the ultrasound wand against her.
She flicks a switch, and we hear the thrum thrum thrum of a heartbeat.