Tabula Rasa

by Kristen Lippert-Martin

“Take care now.”

  As soon as he walks out of the room, I sit up and turn my body away from the security camera’s steady gaze, hoping it looks like I’m just adjusting my blankets. I examine the plastic bag in my hand at last. It holds three clear gel capsules, along with a piece of paper. On one side of the paper are instructions:

  TAKE ONE PILL AT A TIME, AT 24-HOUR INTERVALS.

  24 HOURS EXACTLY.

  REMAIN STILL AFTER TAKING.

  I turn the paper over and see there’s something more. The handwriting is hard to make out, but it says,

  FOR WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE, BUT NOT WHAT WE MAY BECOME.

  Okay.

  I should probably wonder what the pills are for, who gave them to me, why. I know the medical staff would disapprove of me putting an unknown medicine into my system. It might cause a setback.

  I reread both sides of the note. Someone wants me to take these pills. Someone wants to help me.

  I pop a pill into my mouth without another thought.

  CHAPTER 3

  What did I expect?

  Something. Something more than disappointment.

  I lie in bed for a long time. Whatever the pill is supposed to do, it isn’t working. After an hour or so, I get up.

  No sooner am I upright than it hits me.

  A memory. So fast and furious, I understand why I’m supposed to remain still. I fall to the floor as the room seems to expand and contract around me, like I’m in the middle of a camera lens trying to focus.

  Worse, this isn’t a memory. It’s more like a reenactment, and I’m not prepared for the intensity of it.

  I’m hanging in the air, my legs swinging freely. I’m high up. So, so high!

  Whatever I’m holding on to is swaying. Some piece of machinery. It groans as the metal contorts in the wind. The hood of my jacket is lifting up around my ears with every gust. I feel my hair lashing my cheeks. I should have pulled it back into a ponytail before I started climbing.

  I can just make out the faint sounds of the city below. Taxi cabs. Trucks. Everyone so eager to get somewhere. That’s what’s so thrilling and horrible about the city—all those layers of urgency working against each other.

  New York City.

  I look at the lights spread out across the city. This is my starry sky. So what if I look down at it instead of up? It’s just as beautiful to me.

  I’m hanging from a construction crane poised beside a half-completed skyscraper. I must be a hundred feet in the air. My arm is hooked over one of the metal struts. I can stay here for a while so long as I don’t look straight down. If I do, I feel the pull of it—the seduction of falling. All I have to do is let go.

  But I can’t give in. I need to finish what I’m doing. I need to tie this banner onto the arm of the crane. It’s a message. I want the whole city to see it.

  My face is wet with tears, tears from the wind in my eyes and the pain in my chest, but I do what I need to do. I finish, and I know I shouldn’t, but I look down and feel it right away. That something that teases me and tells me it knows everything in my heart. It knows the strain of these last few months. Come to me, it whispers. It’s so hard not to listen. So many things would be solved if I just let go. What’s the difference, really? Forgetting is the antidote for every problem.

  Let go, it says.

  But I hold on.

  I’m back in my hospital room, hyperventilating. I put my head between my knees and try to slow my breathing and heart rate, but it’s like trying to calm a charging bull with soothing words. Inside my head is the strangest sensation, like there’s something dripping, melting. It isn’t painful, but it isn’t pleasant, either. I wonder if something has gone wrong. All that drilling they do—maybe I’m bleeding. Maybe my cerebral fluid is draining away. Maybe taking that pill was a really bad idea.

  Too late now.

  I stand up, but I’m too dizzy to walk. I force myself to do it anyway. As I lurch toward the door, I stumble and fall hard onto my hip. I wonder why no nurse has come in. The camera in the corner is on. Surely they’ve seen me fall, but no one comes to help.

  That’s when I notice something odd under my bed. Clothing. And shoes. No, not shoes—boots. Big, heavy work boots. All I ever wear are hospital gowns and socks with little no-slip rubber pads on the bottom. I’ve hardly even seen regular street clothes in months. Everyone here is either in a hospital gown or a white medical coat and scrubs.

  I shake my head and then tap it hard, like I’m trying to get some wonky remote control working again. I crawl across the floor and then press myself down onto my belly so I can reach the clothes under the bed.

  How did these get here? Why did these get here? It’s a pair of pants and a dark green hooded sweatshirt. The pants have grass stains on the knees. I immediately stand up, pull my hospital gown over my head, and begin to dress. The pants turn out to be huge, but there’s a belt, which I tighten to the last notch. There’s no shirt, so I put the hoodie on over my bare chest. I push my foot into one of the boots. Loose but usable.

  I wad my hospital gown into a ball and throw it onto my bed. I check all the pockets of the pants and find something else: one of those magnetic cards the staff uses to open doors. It’s white with a rainbow holographic E.C. on it, whatever that stands for.

  Suddenly, a series of sharp pops makes the floor quiver. I don’t know what could have caused that sound, but my instincts shout at me, Get out of here now!

  My instincts don’t seem to understand that I’m in a locked hospital ward and getting out is impossible. But I go to the door and pull it anyway.

  It opens.

  I can’t believe it. I stick my head out into the hallway and look back and forth. I see no one and hear nothing, so I walk out of my room, and after a moment, I realize there’s no reason to hide. It’s not just the hallway that’s empty; it’s the whole ward. How is this possible? Where are the nurses? They haven’t abandoned us all and gone home because of this storm, have they?

  That’s when I hear the pulsing beat of a helicopter. The windows rattle as it gets closer. It hovers right above the building for a solid minute before moving away.

  I walk up to the nurses’ station and look around. Mounted on the wall above the desk are a dozen video monitors, but only three are turned on. One of them shows the coma kid in the room diagonally across the hall from mine. I knew about him because I once heard Nurse Jenner make a joke about how he was her favorite patient. Never gave her a bit of trouble.

  Another monitor shows a guy in bed with an IV. I’ve never seen him before.

  The last monitor is focused on an empty bed. Mine.

  Are there really only three of us here?

  I pick up a remote control for the video monitors and start pressing buttons. Somehow I make the pictures on one of the monitors shift like a slide show. The screen displays various sights around the compound. I see the outer exercise yard. Snow is starting to accumulate on the benches and paths.

  Next, there’s a panoramic shot, blurred by the storm, and I can just make out the main hospital building from a distance. There are a few other places I don’t recognize. It’s like watching the universe expand.

  And look at that! A sleek black helicopter is landing outside. The rotors come to a quick stop and fold up like some kind of mechanical insect.

  The windows shake once again as the helicopter that was hovering over the roof descends. It moves slowly, following the contour of the building like it’s prowling for something, looking into all the windows.

  The next image that comes up on the monitor is startling and eerie: a small group of people rushing somewhere, frantically falling over each other as they run. That’s when I notice the familiar pattern of marble tiles on the floor—a mosaic of the rising sun.

  That’s the main lobby.

  I go to the window and look through the blinds. The helicopter is now twenty yards away, a couple floors up. It begins to move off, and I think it’s leaving, but then the nose turns toward t
he building. Seconds later, there are three quick blasts of fire, followed by a whistling sound.

  I’m able to think the word rockets just as they hit. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  Ceiling tiles and light fixtures rain down on me. Clouds of dust explode from every direction. The cracking and breaking seem to go on endlessly. I hear another series of three explosions—three more rockets—this time on the wing opposite mine. That’s Jori’s side of the fourth floor.

  I scramble under the desk. The windows have popped and sprayed glass pellets everywhere. The ward doors swing open slowly, like the building’s been turned sideways. I stand and then walk slowly to the stairwell, but seconds later, I’m on my hands and knees again as another explosion buckles the floor. The watercooler tank tips over, and I hear it glugging as it rolls away.

  What was once my hospital room is now a ragged hole, and through this opening I watch the helicopter as it turns and rises. Once it moves away from the building, I rush toward the coma kid’s room. Why? This is stupid. How can I save someone in a coma?

  It’s hard to climb over the fallen debris, but I make it to his door and see a huge beam lying on top of the kid’s bed, across his chest.

  I spin and run, searching from room to room as the snow blows into the hallway, melting instantly. Finally, at the end of the hallway, I find the guy I just saw on the monitor. He looks to be in his late teens. A bunch of tubes are connecting him to an IV and a catheter. His thickly muscled arms, chest, and neck are covered with tattoos, some of which have been “scrubbed” off with a laser. That’s another thing they do here.

  I count half a dozen incision scars on his head, and there’s one that’s freshly stitched. He also has what might be a bullet wound scar just below his collarbone. I lift his arm and try to tug him off the mattress. He’s rock-solid dead weight, and I know there’s no way I can carry him.

  I put my hand over the kid’s heart, feel his chest rise and fall. Something about him is familiar to me. Like I don’t know him specifically, but I know people like him. I pull his IV out, make the sign of the cross on his forehead, lips, and chest. It’s all I can do for him, and I’m well aware of how pathetically little it is.

  I run out the door, slip on the wet floor, and land on my tailbone. That’s when I hear them. There are people in the building. People who shouldn’t be here. I know this because they’re making a lot of noise, stomping up the stairs rather than running for cover. I look down at myself—the boots, the clothing, the passcard. Someone’s trying to help me. Why? Maybe because someone else is planning to hurt me. Maybe Jori was right after all.

  Jori.

  I run past the nurses’ station toward her wing, my boots crunching against the gritty layer of concrete that’s popped off the walls. Each wing has a set of security doors, and when I reach the ones leading to Jori’s side of the floor, I have to let the handle go because it’s so hot. Dropping to my knees, I try to look underneath the door. I smell smoke … and something else.

  Tear gas.

  Up until this moment I had no clue what tear gas smelled like, but I don’t really need that much training. It feels like someone just jammed a blowtorch into both my eyes and down my throat.

  I pull the neck of the hoodie up over my mouth and nose. I’ll have to get to Jori a different way.

  I listen at the stairwell door. The people who were just coming up the steps have opened the door to the floor below. I wait a second until they’re gone and then go down two floors, thinking I might be able to loop back around and use the stairs on the opposite end of the floor to go back up, but when I pull the door open at the second floor, I instantly regret it. Two men in black-and-gray military camos turn and fire at me. I let go of the handle and drop onto the floor as bullets rip into the metal fire door.

  Sliding down the handrail, I practically fall the rest of the way to the first floor, bursting out of the stairwell into smoke and mayhem in the main lobby. An injured nurse, dragging one leg, is moving toward the front door, trying to stay behind the huge potted palm trees next to the ceiling-high windows. I dive behind the security guard’s desk and find I’m not the only one taking cover there. There are two others.

  Make that one other. One of the physical therapists is there. Dead. That leaves a nurse I’ve never seen before. She’s completely rigid and her eyes are unblinking. If she weren’t breathing so rapidly, I’d think she was dead, too.

  I feel the prickly sensation of adrenaline in the tips of my fingers. My mouth fills with metallic-tasting saliva. Someone speaks. It could be a man or a woman. Whoever it is sounds like one of those computer-translator thingies. Like a voice you’d hear on a GPS. Robotic. Jerky. Not human.

  “We are here for Sarah Ramos. She is sixteen years old. Tell us where she is and we will leave.”

  Behind one of the potted palms I see Steve crouched down. I make eye contact with him. He mouths, “I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head violently because I know what he’s about to do.

  He stands and points. “She’s there. Behind the desk.”

  I stare at him in terrified disbelief. Two hours ago he was promising me extra pie, and now he’s betraying me? He hangs his head, pulls his scarf practically over his face, perhaps out of shame. I can see he’s genuinely sorry.

  When they shoot him, I can’t say I feel the same way.

  CHAPTER 4

  A hurricane of hot metal sweeps toward me. The windows behind the guard’s desk collapse in on themselves. Through sheer luck, I’ve crouched down behind a filing cabinet and I’m not hit, but the gunfire is so loud I can hardly hear anything for a full ten seconds after it stops.

  The woman lying next to me is staring up at the ceiling with lightless eyes. I hear the sound of boots making their way through a field of glass and debris.

  Another hail of bullets flies over my head. How many bullets do these people need to kill one girl?

  I hear a woman’s voice. “Have your people put their guns down.” Her voice seems to curl around every word. It’s soft, Southern, sweet.

  The computer voice responds, “Hold your fire until my signal.”

  “My signal, darling. My signal. Let’s not forget who’s in charge.”

  They take their time coming to check on me. I guess they figure that no sound and no movement might be proof in itself. I reach across to the dead woman next to me and put my hand on her chest. After wiping her blood onto the side of my face and neck, I sit as still as I can, open palms resting in my lap.

  “Is she dead?” the Southern woman asks hopefully.

  It’s Hodges. I know it is. I’ve never heard her speak before, but I hear her bracelets jingling on her wrist.

  The guy with the gun leans over the top of the guard’s desk. He looks down at me, and I know he can only see the top of my bald head.

  “I think.”

  Hodges sighs dramatically. “We didn’t come all this way and spend all this money to think we killed her.”

  The soldier hops over the counter of the guard’s desk and lands with one foot on the body next to me. He’s offbalance as he reaches down and tips my chin up with the still-smoking muzzle of his rifle. I feel my skin blister but force myself to stay limp.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Dead.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?” Hodges asks.

  He pulls his glove off with his teeth and reaches down to put his fingers on the side of my neck. When his hand is right next to my face, I bite him as hard as I can and bring one of my boots up into his crotch.

  As he doubles over, I grab the hand that grips his rifle and squeeze his finger, firing toward the ceiling directly above where his fellow soldiers and Hodges are standing. She screams as the overhead lights explode. I also hit one of the sprinkler heads, or maybe the line that feeds them, because water suddenly pours down. I’m soaked within seconds.

  I slide on my stomach across the wet, glass-strewn floor and dive through the window behind the desk. That’s when I realize that I’ve miscalcu
lated. I knew we were on the first floor; I just didn’t realize that the first floor wasn’t necessarily the ground level.

  I fall fifteen feet and land smack on my chest and face. My jaw snaps shut and my teeth close onto my tongue. I spit blood and touch my front teeth, shocked that they’re still there. I don’t move right away. Not until I look up and see a man with a gun leaning out from the window, getting ready to fire down at me. Then I move real fast.

  I roll toward the building and tuck myself flat against the wall. The jutting overhang of the upper floor gives me six inches of cover at most. As bullets dive into the ground near my feet, I scramble clumsily along the wall, then lose my balance, smacking my head against the rough granite wall in almost the exact spot where the insert came loose from my skull. The pain is blinding, but I keep going.

  I’m so cold I can hardly get my body to work. I think my wet clothes are starting to freeze. The cold obliterates every thought in my head, and my need to get away from it overpowers every other instinct, even my urge to flee. I try every door I pass, but none of them budge.

  Looking over my shoulder, I wonder when one of those soldiers is going to track me down. I shove my hands into the front pockets of the hoodie, but the wet fabric gives no warmth. I feel something, though. Something small, plastic, rectangular.

  The passcard!

  Maybe I can find a place to hide, some little mouse hole or a cabinet under a sink somewhere. The police will come eventually. You can’t attack a hospital and expect to get away with it.

  Not unless you attack in the middle of a blizzard. And the hospital is in the middle of nowhere. And help couldn’t arrive even if it wanted to.

  There’s a sudden, painful heaviness in my rib cage, and it tells me that I’ve hit the dark truth. I’m on my own, stranded here, and no one is coming to help me.

  I close my frozen fingers around the passcard and continue running along the side of the building until I come to a huge garage bay door. There’s a magnetic card reader on the wall, so I zip the card through it and immediately wish I hadn’t. The door rises, incredibly slowly and incredibly loudly. I might as well have sent up a flare to let the soldiers know where I am.