Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  “I won’t. I don’t particularly want anybody finding out about this either. Half of Commspan already thinks I’m psycho. I don’t want to give them any more ammunition.” He looked down at her. “You haven’t told anybody else about this, have you? Your nurse? Or the people who brought you back to your room?”

  “No—”

  “Good. Don’t. And I think I’d better go before somebody sees me.” He started toward the door and then came back over to the bed. “My jacket,” he reminded her, taking it from around her shoulders. “You don’t want Trent asking you where you got it.”

  “You’re right,” she said, even though she’d just begun to warm up. “Thank you for—” But he was already gone.

  C.B.? she called silently, but he didn’t answer.

  At least I don’t have to worry about him telling Trent, she thought, hugging her arms to herself. He wanted to keep this a secret as much as she did. There’d been genuine relief in his voice when she’d said she hadn’t told anyone.

  Why? she wondered. In spite of what he’d said, she couldn’t imagine him caring whether people thought he was crazy. And he hardly seemed the type to have a girlfriend…

  Footsteps were coming down the corridor. She hastily turned off the light, lay down, closed her eyes, made her breathing shallow and even so they’d think she was asleep, and waited for the nurse or the aide or whoever it was to turn on the light.

  They didn’t. They came into the room and straight over to the bed. “Turn back your covers,” C.B. whispered, and reached to uncover her himself.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she whispered furiously, grabbing for the covers and pulling them protectively up to her neck. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but—”

  “I’m thinking I brought you a blanket,” he said. “And I’m thinking I heated it up in the microwave, so it needs to be next to your body.”

  “Oh,” she said. She pulled the tail of her hospital gown down to cover her legs and then pushed back the covers, and he spread the blanket over her.

  It was wonderfully warm. She stopped shivering the second it touched her. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, pulling the rest of the covers over her. “In spite of the fact that you thought I was trying to attack you.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Yes, you did. I can read your mind, remember?”

  “How can I forget?” she said bitterly. “Do you think there’s a chance this…?”

  She stopped. He was looking toward the door, his head angled to one side as if he’d heard something. “Is someone coming?” she whispered.

  “No, but I’d better go before they do. Listen, we’ll talk about this in the morning and figure out what to do,” he whispered, and after another quick look in both directions, slid out the door. In the meantime, you get some sleep, he said. And no more running around.

  I won’t, she thought drowsily, snuggling into the warmth of the blanket. I plan to stay under here forever. And It really was nice of him to get it for me. He’s not so bad.

  Exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you, C.B. said out of nowhere. Like I said before, you could have done a lot worse. You could’ve connected with somebody who didn’t know where the blankets were.

  Or where the microwave was, she thought, burrowing deeper into the blanket’s warmth. Now go away. You said for me to get some sleep, but how can I with you yammering at me?

  You’re right, he said. Good night. See—I mean, hear—you in the morning.

  Oh, I hope not, Briddey thought, and then worried he’d heard that, too. But he didn’t answer, and she thought she detected a difference in the silence, as if he’d gone away.

  If only she could make him go away for good. And what was she going to do if she couldn’t? If she told Trent, he’d think she was in love with C.B. But if she lied and said she wasn’t picking up anything, Trent would think the EED hadn’t worked.

  Though Trent wouldn’t be expecting them to connect till twenty-four hours after the EED, so at least she had a little time to figure something out. But twenty-four hours from when? The time her surgery—or Trent’s—ended? Or the time they came out of the anesthesia? Her surgery had been scheduled for one, and Dr. Verrick had said it took an hour, so two o’clock tomorrow afternoon was the earliest the twenty-four-hour mark could be.

  Which means you’ve got till then to think of something to tell Trent and till rounds tomorrow morning to decide whether to tell Dr. Verrick. Because it was obvious the nurses had decided not to wake the doctor up and get him out of bed at this hour, or he would have been here already.

  And maybe by morning this will all be fixed, she thought. The edema will have gone down, and C.B.’s voice will have disappeared. And even if that didn’t happen, the blanket was wonderfully warm, and things were bound to seem less hopeless in the light of day. If I can just get some sleep and C.B. doesn’t interrupt me again, she thought drowsily, and heard footsteps.

  They were coming straight toward her room. Go away, C.B., she said, but it wasn’t him.

  It was Dr. Verrick. “Hello, Ms. Flannigan,” he said. “Now, suppose you tell me what’s been going on.”

  “It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.”

  —JEROME K. JEROME, The Idlers’ Club

  “Dr. Verrick!” Briddey said, scrambling up to a sitting position and then remembering she was supposed to move the bed up instead, which was good. She had nearly blurted out, “What are you doing here?” Finding the controls and maneuvering the bed up to the proper angle gave her time to change it to “I didn’t think you’d still be here so late.”

  He looked at her sharply and then smiled. “Not late. Early. I have a pair of EEDs scheduled for six. A surgeon’s day begins at the crack of dawn, you know.”

  But it’s not the crack of dawn. It’s the middle of the night. Or was it? She wished she had her phone so she could see what time it was. It was impossible to tell from Dr. Verrick’s appearance. He looked as impeccable as he had yesterday.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  That’s a difficult question, she thought. If he didn’t know about her running off she should just say, “Fine.” But if he did, she needed to give him some kind of explanation—

  No, you don’t, C.B. said. Rule Number Two of Lying is “Never say any more than you absolutely have to.”

  Shut up. “I still feel sort of drowsy,” she said to the doctor. “And…um…”

  Dr. Verrick leaned forward expectantly.

  “Drugged,” she said carefully. “A little disoriented.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Dr. Verrick said. “It’s a common after-effect of the anesthetic.” He picked up the laptop to look at her chart. Which very probably contained a notation on her having run off.

  “Have you seen Trent yet?” she asked to divert him from it. “How’s he doing?”

  Dr. Verrick gave her an even sharper look, and she felt a jolt of apprehension. What if something had happened to Trent? That would explain why he hadn’t answered when she’d called to him—and what Dr. Verrick was doing here in the middle of the night. Everything C.B. had said to her about brain damage and ending up a vegetable came flooding back to her. “Is Trent all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “Yes, of course,” Dr. Verrick said, and the surprise in his voice sounded reassuringly genuine. “I saw him just after he came out of the recovery room, and he was doing very well. Now let’s see how you’re doing.” He pulled a stethoscope out of his coat pocket, listened to her heart and lungs, took her pulse, and then had her lean forward. “Any discomfort?” he said, pressing lightly all around the incision.

  She shook her head.

  “Good,” he said. “It looks fine. There’s a little edema, but that’s normal. Any dizziness?”

  “No.”

  “Nausea?” he asked, taking her through the by-now-familiar litany. “N
umbness? Tingling?”

  She answered no to all of them.

  “Nurse Jordan reported you experienced some confusion when you got out of bed to use the bathroom.”

  I knew it. They told him.

  “She said you went wandering off down the hall,” Dr. Verrick said. “What happened exactly?”

  That depends on what my nurse said. Had she told him about her pulling out her IV and being found in the stairway or just that she’d wandered off? C.B.’s wrong that being able to read minds is a terrible idea. Right now it would really be helpful.

  “I don’t remember exactly.” She frowned as if trying to reconstruct her actions. “I remember getting out of bed…and somehow I ended up out in the hall…”

  “Where were you going?” Dr. Verrick asked. “Were you trying to get to Mr. Worth?”

  Why didn’t I think of that? Briddey wondered. It would have made the perfect excuse. She’d been worried about Trent and, in her drugged state, tried to go find his room. She wondered if she could still get away with it.

  No, C.B. said inside her head. Don’t try it. The First Rule of Lying is to stick to one story.

  Go away, she said.

  I’m just trying to help. Not being able to keep their stories straight is what always trips liars up. They tell one person one thing, and another something else—

  Shh, she said, but he was right. She’d already told them she’d gotten lost looking for the bathroom. And Dr. Verrick was looking at her curiously. “No,” she said. “When I realized I was in the corridor, I tried to get back to my room, but I must have gotten turned around somehow and was going the wrong way.”

  “And that’s what you were trying to do when you went down the stairs—find your way back to your room?”

  “Yes. I know it isn’t logical. It was like a dream, where what you’re doing makes sense at the time, but it doesn’t really.” Which accounted for her having been in the stairway, but what if they’d told him about the hospital’s getting a phone call telling them where she was and saying she was trying to get down to the lobby? How was she supposed to explain that?

  You don’t, C.B. said. You plead ignorance. But I doubt if the nurses told him. It would make them look too incompetent.

  Let’s hope you’re right.

  Dr. Verrick was frowning at her again. “The stairway’s a considerable distance from your room for merely getting turned around,” he said. “Are you certain you weren’t running away from something?”

  “Running away?” she echoed, hoping Dr. Verrick wouldn’t suddenly decide to listen to her heart, which was going a mile a minute.

  “Yes.” Dr. Verrick looked at her chart. “You told one of the nurses you thought a man with a knife was hiding in your room.”

  “Oh, that,” she said, trying to keep the relief out of her voice. “I had a dream, that’s all. I was still pretty groggy.”

  Dr. Verrick didn’t look convinced. “A patient’s initial experience of contact with the partner’s emotions can be a shock, and the first reaction is often to flee.”

  Or to accuse him of bugging their room, C.B. said. Or of being a ventriloquist.

  Briddey ignored him. “Initial contact?” she asked Dr. Verrick. “I thought it took at least twenty-four hours after the surgery for the first contact to occur.”

  “It actually takes longer than that—twenty-four hours after the patient comes out of the anesthesia.”

  Oh, good, Briddey thought. Then I have till three o’clock tomorrow afternoon to connect with Trent.

  “But before that occurs, there can be fleeting, fragmentary contact, and the time for that varies considerably, dependent upon the patient’s sensitivity and the intensity of the emotional attachment. I’ve had patients experience momentary contact as early as twelve hours after surgery, which is what might have happened to you.” He checked the chart. “Yes, you reported the man with the knife just after the twelve-hour mark.” Which still didn’t account for her having heard C.B. right after she came out of the anesthetic.

  Not necessarily, C.B. said. You heard the man. It depends on the intensity of the emotional attachment.

  Shut up.

  “Those initial, sporadic contacts may be felt by only one of the partners,” Dr. Verrick was saying, “and they can take a variety of forms—a momentary awareness of your partner’s presence or a feeling of being touched or a sense of happiness. Or more negative sensations. Fear or a prickling of the spine or a sense of being intruded on. Could you have been experiencing something like that?”

  Absolutely, Briddey thought.

  But the things Dr. Verrick was saying made her think that maybe she should tell him after all. He’d clearly had patients describe experiencing all sorts of unusual sensations after the EED, so hearing a voice wouldn’t be that much of a stretch. And if she told him, he might be able to tell her what had caused the misconnection and fix it.

  And tell Trent, C.B. said.

  No, he won’t, she said. He can’t. He’s a doctor. Physician-patient confidentiality means he can’t tell anyone else what we’ve talked about.

  But it won’t stop him from asking Trent a bunch of questions, which are bound to raise his suspicions. And even if they don’t, how do you plan to explain to Trent your having a second surgery?

  He was right. Trent would demand to know what was going on.

  “I’d like you to tell me exactly what you experienced,” Dr. Verrick was saying. “What did this man look like?”

  “He was big and hulking,” Briddey said. “With a bushy beard and a tattoo of a rattlesnake on his arm.”

  Good girl, C.B. said.

  “And messy hair.”

  Dr. Verrick looked up alertly. “Was it someone you recognized?”

  Now look what you’ve done, Briddey said. He’s suspicious.

  And whose fault is that?

  Yours. Shut up, or he’s going to figure out that I’m talking to someone.

  Have it your way, C.B. said. ’Bye.

  Dr. Verrick was looking expectantly at her. “You did recognize him, didn’t you?”

  “Recognize him? No…” She bit her lip and frowned. “Wait. Now that I think about it, there was a man with wild hair like that in a movie I saw last week. He was a stalker who…” She gasped. “Oh, my gosh, I just realized that must be where the dream came from, that movie. Even the knife was the same.”

  “That does sound to me like a post-surgical dream rather than an instance of contact,” Dr. Verrick said.

  Thank goodness.

  “And you haven’t experienced any of the other sensations I’ve described? A presence, an alien emotion, a feeling of invasion?”

  “No, none of those.”

  And she must have sounded convincing, because he nodded and said, “Everything else looks good. I want to run a couple of tests, just to make sure, but you should be able to go home today. And in the meantime, I want you to work on establishing a connection to your partner.”

  I’d like nothing better. “How do I do that?”

  “By visualizing him and reaching out to him emotionally. The EED has created the potential for a neural pathway for the feelings between you, but you’ll need to make it. You do that by speaking to him. Say: ‘Are you there? I love you!’ And call his name to direct your emotion to him.”

  Why didn’t you tell me that before? If I’d known I was supposed to call his name, none of this would have happened. “You said a pathway. You mean like a path through a forest?” she asked, imagining a faint woodland trail that became clearer and easier to follow each time you traveled it.

  “No,” Dr. Verrick said. “It’s more of a feedback loop. Each signal you send will be reinforced by the one he sends back to you, exponentially strengthening the connection with each circuit till it becomes permanent and exclusive.”

  Which means I had no business talking to C.B. like I did, Briddey thought.

  “Keep sending whether you receive a response or not,” Dr. Verrick instruct
ed. “They’re often too faint to detect at first.” He shut the laptop. “Do you have any questions?”

  Yes, she thought. But I can’t ask you any of them. “No,” she said.

  “If you think of anything, or if you experience something which you think might be contact but you’re not certain, feel free to call me. Here’s my number,” he said, and handed her a card. “I’ll put a rush on those tests so we can get you home.”

  He left, and she leaned back against the pillow, exhausted. Thank goodness that’s over, she thought, and he came back in.

  Her heart began to pound, but he’d only returned to tell her he’d scheduled the tests and that she was to use her call button if she needed to get out of bed. “And I want you to rest,” he said. “Your body needs time and assistance to heal. The best thing you can do is get lots of sleep.”

  No, the best thing I can do is establish a feedback loop between me and Trent, she thought. And stop reinforcing the one I have with C.B. She needed to connect to Trent and send signals along that pathway till it was stronger than the one she had to C.B., and her connection to him withered away.

  It doesn’t work like that, C.B. said.

  How do you know? she retorted, and then remembered she shouldn’t be reinforcing their connection and said it aloud.

  Because Verrick was wrong about the whole “time to establish neural pathways” and “initial contact being fragmentary and sporadic” thing, C.B. said. You and I’ve been able to talk perfectly since the minute we made contact, and it wasn’t any twenty-four hours after surgery. So why would he be right about this?

  “Because he’s an expert. He’s done hundreds of EEDs, and he knows a lot more about brain function than you.”

  Yeah, well, that’s a matter of opinion. In the first place, neural activity—

  “I don’t care. I’m not talking to you,” she said, wishing there was a way to hang up on him.

  See, I told you, telepathy’s a terrible idea.

  “Go. Away.” She turned determinedly onto her side. Trent, I love you, she said into her pillow. Are you there? Come in, Trent.