Real

by Merrell Michael

  When he was wheeled out front to the taxi that smelled faintly of vomit he saw the cameras out front. News vans promoting different affiliates were parked in a rough semi-circle, extending trails of wires that led from vans to hefty looking cameras, while a few anchors stood where the shot would serve those best to report on the tragedy that had occurred earlier. For a minute he wondered if the anchors would rush over to the taxi, in the manner of paparazzi chasing a starlet, but when the taxi pulled away unheeded he realized that was not the case. The anchors had already recorded their bit, live at the scene, and would not be interested in a single patient. There were probably laws against that sort of thing.

  Back in the condo he sat in the sofa and fell asleep contemplating whether or not to turn on the television. He awoke with a start only two hours later, when the clock on the DVR read five fifteen AM. Instead of attempting further sleep he opened his patio door and let the ocean breathe in on him from the beach. He felt a twinge of pain and took one of the pills from the bottle that the nurse had given him. The sunrise was beautiful as all sunrises are, made more so by the way the red came up over the ocean and filled the sky slowly, peeling back the black like a layer of dead skin. When it rose enough to illuminate the room he remembered the laptop.

  Of course, that was the key. The laptop. Whatever harm had been done to Lena could be undone, if only he could write it that way. She was his creation, after all, fashioned from his words. All he had to do was type in

  Lena was not hurt

  And it would be so. His control over her extended to her body, the thing Jesse had made him do with the lactation proved it. He could type it in, and it would be so. He got up stiffly and staggered over to the dining room table where the laptop was permanently stationed. In the spot where it normally sat there was an outline of dust, and in the exact center lined up neatly was a small piece of white plastic, with one of those magnetic stripes used for credit cards. Sam picked it up and turned it over, reading the name and social security number of the friend that had tried to kill him.

  Sam put Jesse's military ID in his pocket, and then remembered that he had to go to the police station later that day, and stuffed it in the bottom of a sock drawer. He had started to sweat for some reason, and felt like he might throw up.

  There was no guarantee that whatever made Lena real was tied explicitly to the laptop. There might be a good chance that he could simply write on a piece of paper (or a new computer) whatever he wanted to have happen, and that would be it. But he suspected that wasn’t the case. The more he thought about it, the more he figured that the entire thing had to do with the file on that computer. The Lena file, with everything he had written about her over the weeks they had spent together since Sam made her real.

  Then there was the question of where the computer was now. Had Jesse destroyed it? Had he hidden it somewhere? If the answer was no to both those questions, it was undoubtedly in the hands of the police right now. And if Jesse had browsed anything even remotely questionable, after stealing the computer, that was it. It would become evidence and then gone. Sam's house phone rang, startling him, and he answered it.

  "Hello."

  "Look." Sam's agent said. "I just want to say, first of all, that I get you guys were friends, and I'm sorry for the whole thing. These tragedies, these things happen sometimes."

  "Okay."

  "I heard the news, obviously. I'm sure you did too. Don’t you live close, or something?"

  "On the beach." Sam said. "Walking distance." In fact, he had chosen to walk to the pier the previous night, with his car still in the parking lot.

  "Where you nearby?" The agent said. "I mean did you hear...."

  "I was there." Sam stated.

  "Oh wow."

  "Yeah. Back from the hospital last night."

  "Really."

  "Yeah."

  "That is really unfortunate."

  There was an awkward pause on the phone, and Sam could hear the agent licking his lips. Finally he said. "I know this sounds bad." He said. "And I just want you to know, that, I do feel for you right now. And I respect your situation."

  "Okay."

  "But, and I mean, as your agent, I have an obligation to let you know, you really have a fantastic situation here." Sam could hear the excitement leaking out of his voice. He saw the man for what he was, then. A leech and nothing more. There was something here that could mean money, and that was what the agent had called for. He took the phone away from his ear and stared at it like a foreign object, and considered throwing it back on the receiver. Instead he put it back to his ear, hearing the agent call out him name, "Sam? Buddy, are you still here."

  "I'm still here."

  "Okay, look." The agent said. "You wrote a book about this guy, right? I mean, I know, it was about themes, and the military, and everything, but this guy-"

  "Jesse."

  "This guy Jesse, he appears in the book by name. I mean, you use his name, first and last, and everything."

  "I guess I did."

  "You did! Believe me, I've checked. And people love this kind of stuff. That true crime, why they did it stuff. It sells, buddy."

  "It does?"

  "Bet your ass it does. When it’s something big, like it is right now, on all the networks, it sells. Yeah, it'll cool off in a little bit. If we let it. But the thing about it is, we can tie in the veteran angle. Veterans are suffering, so many homeless, that kind of thing. Now, I've thought about it, and we can’t play it up to much with the victim, because no one likes the shooter as the victim, that kind of shit pisses people off and gets you sued. But still, I think we've got something here."

  "What do you need me to do?" Sam asked.

  "For right now? I can get you an interview on a local network. Just really simple stuff, who are you, who was he, what happened."

  "An interview."

  "Just for right now. But that piece will...I mean, it most likely will get picked up by one of the national syndicates. And if we can get you an interview with, like, an AM show, nationally?" The agent was breathing heavy. "That's a new deal, Sam." He said. "That's a big fat deal, for a tell-all memoir on how you survived the Santa Monica Pier spree killer. How you knew him for years, never would have suspected, all that stuff, high six figures, minimum. And, yeah, I know you might what to frown on this kind of, I mean, this lowbrow stuff, but it pays the bills. Normal Mailer did it and won a fucking Pulitzer. And he didn’t even really know that guy."

  Sam hung up the phone and screamed an obscenity at no one into the air. At that moment of anger something clicked in his head, a way forward, and he redialed the agent’s number. It was picked up right away. "Hey buddy?" Said the agent. "I thought we lost you there, for a second. Some kind of connection issue?"

  "I'll do it on one condition." Sam said.

  "What's that?"

  "I need a lawyer." Sam said, and told him about the cops.

  The lawyer was every bit what Sam expected. Pencil thin, well dressed, and overall ugly. He picked up Sam in a pricey import Sedan. On the way over he explained things quickly, taking his hands off the wheel at times to emphasize a point.

  "You’re not the subject of this thing." The lawyer said, "Otherwise they would already had a warrant. Or a SWAT team, which, I know, is a blatant overuse of power, and we could have handled that, but the cops love to use those things in these situations. I believe the fact that you were shot, by the alleged suspect, really makes things easier in a lot of ways."

  Sam asked the lawyer about getting to see Lena, and the computer.

  "The hospital parts easy." The lawyer said. "Because it doesn’t involve any kind of law, just administrative policy. I can make a phone call today, and talk to a few people, and get you in to see your fiancée- is it your girlfriend, or fiancée?"

  "Girlfriend." Sam told him.

  "I'm going to say fiancée." The lawyer said. "That makes things a little easier. And chances are, if, like you say, she doesn’t have family around, or an
yone else, the hospital will be looking for someone to foot the bill. Can you go down that route?"

  "I guess." Sam said, "If it takes that."

  "The computer's a lot more problematic." The lawyer said. "Its undoubtedly impounded as evidence. Probably had the hard drive and the browser history worked over. And then there's the problem, why did he have your computer?"

  "I don’t know."

  "And that's probably it." The lawyer said. "There probably isn’t a reason. But that isn’t very satisfying. What people want when bad thing happen, is satisfaction. That's the reason why the court system works. Something bad happened, and now something bad needs to happen back. To give meaning to the event. In reality things are mostly random."

  Sam was much more nervous in the interview room with the cops. There were two of them this time, the one from earlier and a shorter, fatter version of the same. This time they both gave their names, though Sam forgot them almost immediately after. They were much more nuanced with their questions, and the lawyer helped immensely. Whenever there was a difficult of possibly misleading question, the lawyer would intervene, usually by stating "my client" to begin with, and at one point, when the cops tried to get aggressive, the lawyer folded his arms and said coolly, "Do you want us to leave? Because I don’t believe my client has been charged with anything. He is here to fully cooperate." And the cop shut up and stared hate not at Sam, but the lawyer. When it was over and they walked out the front, the lawyer told Sam, "You need to call me if they ask anything else. Even over the phone."

  "Do you think they will?" Sam asked.

  "They might." The lawyer said. "It’s a big case. But I think they would have detained you already if there were any significant problems." He put on a pair of expensive sunglasses. "I didn’t want to ask about the computer in there." The lawyer said. "I thought that they might bring it up, and then I had something prepared, but it didn’t come up."

  "Is that good?"

  The lawyer shrugged. "It could go either way." He said. "I think the best thing to do is to treat the computer as stolen property. Call the police today, and report it stolen. You've obviously been through a lot, so it’s understandable not reporting it earlier. You can mention that you found the ID thing where the computer usually sits. If you don’t report it, it might make it look like you're trying to hide something, at which point complications might come up."

  "I really need it back." Sam said. "I mean, I'm a writer, I have a lot of important work on there."

  "That does make things a little easier." The lawyer said. "Assuming, of course, that the police have it. If it’s something you need to maintain your livelihood, I can put a little more heat on the matter. Issue an injunction or something. I don’t see you getting it back until after they comb through, but once that's over I think it should be okay."

  "Thank you."

  "Remember to call the cops when you get back."

  "I'll do it." Sam said. And he did.

  After the phone call to the cops, and the bored looking one who came over to take Sam's statement, Sam drove over to the hospital. Somehow he managed to luck out and arrive just on time during visiting hours for the ICU. A nurse opened the door, and he signed in on a clipboard at a desk. When he walked into Lena's room, a shiver of ice ran up the back of his throat.

  Lena was hooked to the bed by a variety of tubes and wires. Machinery around her beeped and whirred and hissed, and it was obvious that she was not breathing on her own. Her head was slumped to the side, in an unnatural way, and half her hair had been shaved off to deal with the head wound, leaving an ugly black row of stitches. It was the last thing Sam wanted to see. For a while he thought that it might have been better just to look at an open casket, with an attractively made corpse.

  "Lena?" He asked. "Can you hear me?"

  She said nothing in reply, and made no indication she could hear. The machines continued their work.

  "I just wanted to say I'm sorry." Sam tried again, but there was still nothing. He stood for a few moments longer, unsure of himself. He thought that it might be a good idea to grab her hand, but both limbs appeared thoroughly covered in wires and tubing, to the point of reducing access. A nurse walked in and pressed a button or two on the machines. "What's wrong?" Sam asked, and she looked around, blinking suddenly, as if his presence were a sudden nuisance.

  "Are you the husband?" She asked.

  "Boyfriend." Sam said, "I mean fiancée."

  Sam heard the nurse say she was going to get the doctor out of the corner of his hearing, but he was sucked up in the moment of Lena's sickbed. When he was a child he suffered from night terrors frequently, all the way up until the age of twelve or thirteen, and there was one specific fear he had that occurred over and over again. He was laying on a cold metal slab, naked. He could not move or breath. Sometimes he would see the world from the perspective of his own eyes and sometimes he would see it as if he were floating slightly above, or to the side. As he got older these terrors grew worse, or more elaborate. He would imagine that he was on a coroner’s slab, when he realized what such a thing would be like, as a corpse. The feeling of panic remained with him to this day. Now, looking at Lena, all of that came rushing back to him, only instead of Sam on the slab it was Lena, sometimes he was her, and somehow she was him, but there was an undoubted feeling of connection. Vertigo overcame him suddenly, and he looked for a nearby chair. There was one in the corner, and Sam slumped into it and put his face in his hands, trying to hold his shit together the very best he knew how. The doctor walked in, and put a hand on Sam's shoulder.

  "I'm doctor Niels." He said. "Why don’t we talk outside?"

  "It can be a lot to take in at once." Niels said. "If you’re not used to it."

  "I'm okay." Sam said. They were standing by the nurse’s station, just down the hall from Lena's room. All the rooms in the ICU had glass fronts, so if Sam really wanted to, he could look back at Lena, and see everything all over again. He was trying his best not too.

  "How bad is it?" Sam said.

  "It’s not very good." Niels said, carefully. "She was shot twice. The bullet that went in her midsection- through her stomach, dislodged a fairly good sized portion of intestine. And I'm afraid the other wound is...more severe."

  "Her head."

  "When she was shot in the head." Niels said, "The bullet entered her skull, and followed the path around it, to the side. It didn’t actually pierce the brain itself. She's extremely lucky in that part. Its most likely the reason she's alive at all."

  "But she's not awake." Sam said.

  "Yes." Niels said. "Well, just because the brain wasn’t pierced, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t damaged. There was significant swelling to the right front hemisphere. We had to drill into the cranium to relieve pressure. And with any procedure involving a head injury, there are significant risks."

  Sam nodded.

  "It can go something like this." The doctor said. "She might wake up tomorrow, or a week from now. Or a month. Or, in some cases, she might not wake up at all. Then there's the very real possibility of mental impairment. And that has a whole spectrum to itself."

  The doctor talked some more, but Sam was no longer listening. It was all up to him from this point forward. He had to get the laptop back.

  Time passed for Sam like everyone else. He closed the curtains on the glass patio doors, overlooking the beach, that he would not see the pier. He sat down and forced himself to write, from time to time. Most of all, he simply waited.

  The interviews had come quite suddenly in those early days after the shooting. First the local network, like his agent said, and then the nationals, a little more slowly. He was on a fairly important daytime talk show, though he was not actually on it. In every case, much more content was said and given then what was actually put on the air. The airing made him seem like a victim of public mutilation. Which he supposed was true, in a way.

  The Black Terror movie was green lit into production, which surprised Sam quite a
bit, and he was put on the team to work further on the script. He was given a few names to write for, none of which he recognized. A foreign actor who had only starred in one independent production, and an actress best known for playing a girlfriend on television. Sam did most of his work from home, now, writing or re-writing the script by bits and pieces.

  More than once, he thought that he would have moved if given the chance. It seemed that everything he loved about California had turned against him. He could no longer look at the beach, the way he used to. The agent was right, there was a renewed interest in his book, but he really did not want to be associated with it. Jesse had been reduced to a generic photo on twenty four hour news networks that was picked mostly because it was unflattering. He was someone to hate publicly now. If there was an interest in his book it was only because people wanted to know about the villainous other, and get their kicks from imagining how close they could come to such actions. All the while maintaining their own supposed purity. But no one was really pure, or safe. Anyone was capable of anything. And Sam did not want to think about any of it at all.

  He visited Lena a few more times, bringing flowers or balloons from the hospital gift shop. He had never given her flowers before. Most of the time he sat in the chair in the ICU and scrawled a single phrase, over and over,

  Lena healed from her wounds and made a full recovery