Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  It doesn’t work like that either. You’re not fighter pilots: Night Fighter, calling Red Baron. Come in, Red Baron, he mimicked. Zeroes at twelve o’clock. Roger that, over and—

  “Out,” she said. “I mean it.”

  I was just kidding. Listen, Briddey—

  “No. Go away and don’t talk to me again.”

  Fine. But before I do, you need to know—

  “No. There’s nothing you can tell me that I’d be remotely interested in hearing.”

  She snatched up her pillow, wishing she could throw it at him, and pressed it tightly to her ears. Trent! she called. I need to make contact with you. Now! Where are you? And, in spite of C.B.’s having mocked her: Calling Trent. Come in, Trent. Over.

  Nothing, not even a flicker, and certainly not a sense of happiness, unaccountable or otherwise.

  It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet, she told herself, and sat up to look at the panel behind her bed, hoping there was a clock on it somewhere, but there wasn’t. She wished she’d asked Dr. Verrick if she could have her phone back so she’d know what time it was—and so she could text Trent and ask if he’d felt anything.

  She debated asking the nurse for it, but in spite of Dr. Verrick’s claim that he’d been here for his morning surgeries, the floor still had that middle-of-the-night feel, and after what had happened earlier, she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself. You could ask C.B. what time it is, she mused. He’s got a wristwatch.

  But you aren’t supposed to be talking to him, she thought. You’ll just have to wait till the nurse comes in. And in the meantime focus on forging her pathway. Trent, can you hear me? I love you, she called over and over, listening intently for any sign of contact.

  She didn’t hear anything—not Trent’s voice or anyone else’s, not even an announcement over the intercom—for what seemed like hours. And then she must’ve dozed off again, because the floor was suddenly full of noise—voices, wheels, the clatter of equipment and trays, and a heavenly smell of coffee. Which meant it was breakfast time, and someone was bound to be in soon.

  But no one appeared. Not even C.B. Maybe his voice was a side effect of the edema, she thought, gingerly feeling the bandage at the back of her neck to see if the swelling had gone down. Or maybe all of her calling to Trent had corrected the problem. In which case she needed to do it some more while she waited for someone to bring her breakfast.

  No one did. What felt like hours went by before anyone came in, and then it wasn’t a nurse, it was a lab technician there to draw blood. “Is this one of the tests Dr. Verrick ordered?” Briddey asked him.

  “Yes,” he said, checking her ID bracelet against the order.

  “Do you know what other tests I’m supposed to have?”

  “No. You’ll have to ask your nurse.”

  “Oh. Can you tell me what time it is?”

  He twisted his latex-gloved wrist around to look at his watch. “Seven-oh-eight.”

  Good. She still had eight hours to connect with Trent before he started wondering what was wrong. If she could make contact with him before then…

  “Small poke,” the tech said, and stuck her finger.

  Or if Trent could make contact with her. Dr. Verrick had said the initial contact might be one-way.

  Maybe Trent’s already connected with me, she thought. If he had, he’d have texted her. She needed her phone. “Would it be possible for me to have my phone?” she asked the lab tech.

  “I’ll check,” he said.

  “And can you find out if I’m supposed to get breakfast? I haven’t had anything to eat since my surgery yesterday.”

  “I’ll check on that, too,” the tech said, stripping off his gloves and throwing them away. He started to wheel the cart out and then stopped. “You’re not going to take off while I’m gone, are you?”

  Which meant the hospital had as efficient a grapevine as Commspan, and everyone on this floor already knew about last night. I hope that doesn’t mean Trent does.

  “No, of course I’m not going to,” she said.

  “I’ll be right back,” the tech said.

  He wasn’t, but he’d apparently relayed her request to the on-duty nurse, who came in and said, “We’ll get your phone for you. Is there anything else you need?”

  “Yes,” Briddey said. “I had a question. I understand the EED connection sometimes doesn’t last—”

  “That won’t happen to you,” the nurse reassured her. “You haven’t even—”

  “I know, but if it did wear off, how long would that take?”

  “I’ve only ever heard of it happening once, and that was after four months.”

  Which was not soon enough to help.

  “And that wasn’t a patient of Dr. Verrick’s,” the nurse said. “Don’t worry. That won’t happen to you. And yes, you can have breakfast, but not until after your tests.”

  Then I hope they do them soon, she thought. I’m starving.

  But no one entered her room for what seemed like another hour, and then it was only an orderly to mop the bathroom.

  That’s another reason I hate hospitals, C.B. said. When you need them, they don’t come, but when you just want to be left alone, they’re all over you, jabbing you with needles, sucking your blood, waking you up to give you sleeping pills—

  “Go away,” Briddey said. “I’m trying to connect to Trent.”

  So I take it that means you haven’t? Your “Night Fighter calling Red Baron” routine didn’t work?

  “Not yet,” she said stiffly, “but it will. If you’ll stop talking to me.”

  Don’t you even want to hear what I found out about this telepathy thing? I’ve been up all night doing research.

  “What did you find out?”

  That you were right, there’s no such thing as telepathy. At least according to Wikipedia, which as we know is always accurate. It said there’s no scientific proof that direct mind-to-mind communication exists.

  When will I ever learn? Briddey wondered. “Go away.”

  There’s such a thing as hearing voices, however, C.B. went on, and that can be caused by temporal-lobe damage, brain tumors, sleep deprivation, hallucinogenic drugs, tinnitus, or insanity. And speaking of insanity, they did a study where they had people with no history of mental illness tell doctors they were hearing voices—no other symptoms—and they were all immediately diagnosed as schizophrenic and hospitalized. Which is no surprise, considering the main cause of auditory hallucinations—Wikipedia’s name for it, not mine—is schizophrenia.

  But this isn’t a hallucination.

  That’s what all the schizophrenics say. Including Joan of Arc, who several modern psychiatrists have decided after the fact had schizophrenia.

  “But don’t schizophrenics hear horrible voices, telling them to harm themselves and kill people?”

  Usually, though Joan didn’t. Her voice told her to save France, and she seemed to have been on quite friendly terms with it.

  “But that’s different,” Briddey said. “She thought she was talking to God.”

  Nope, an angel, C.B. said. Not God.

  “My point is, her voices weren’t real.”

  Joan thought they were. She talked about them quite matter-of-factly, and her guards testified that they heard her having perfectly sane-sounding conversations in her cell, speaking and answering exactly as if someone was there. Which didn’t stop the psychiatrists from declaring her nuts. So it’s a good thing you didn’t say anything to Verrick last night. And I wouldn’t say anything to Trent either. An institutionalized girlfriend wouldn’t help his chances of moving up in the company.

  “Go away,” she said. “And do not talk to me again.”

  I’m just trying to help. I’d hate—

  Luckily, at that point an orderly came in with a wheelchair to take her down to X-Ray, or she’d have lost her temper completely, and for the next hour she was busy having X-rays taken of her lungs and then her skull. They obviously hadn’t b
elieved her when she told them she hadn’t hit her head on the stairs and were worried about her mental state, so it was good she hadn’t told Dr. Verrick about hearing C.B.’s voice, much as she hated to admit that C.B. was right. But that didn’t mean he was trying to help. Or that he hadn’t made up his so-called research.

  I need to get out of here so I can do some research of my own, she thought, waiting impatiently to be discharged. But she had to wait for the X-rays to be read and then for a technician to do an EEG and for someone else to read that. “And Dr. Verrick wants to do a CT scan,” her nurse said.

  “Of my brain?” Briddey said, unable to keep the panic out of her voice.

  “It’s a routine procedure,” the nurse began, but Briddey didn’t hear the explanation. She was thinking, They’ll find out about the telepathy. I’ve got to get out of here!

  “C.B.!” she whispered the moment the nurse left. “They’re going to do a CT scan.”

  I know, he said, his voice maddeningly calm. Don’t worry. It can’t see what you’re thinking. It only shows hematomas and tumors and things like that, abnormalities—

  “And you don’t consider telepathy an abnormality?”

  Not the kind a CT scan can see. To look at brain function, they’d need to do an fCAT or a cortical MRI. All this’ll show them is the brain itself and whether you’ve got intracranial bleeding or a blood clot or something. There’s no way they can find out about the telepathy.

  “You’re positive it won’t show our neural pathway?” she asked, and heard Trent say clearly, “What about our neural pathway?”

  Oh, thank heavens! Briddey thought. We’ve connected!

  Nope, wrong again, C.B. said, and she looked over at the door. Trent was standing there, looking quizzical—and not at all like someone who’d just had surgery. He was wearing khakis and an ironed shirt, and his blond hair was neatly combed. Even the bandage at the nape of his neck was neat. “Trent!” she said, putting a hand up to her own bed-rumpled hair.

  “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, coming in. He looked curiously around at the other, unoccupied bed, at the empty bathroom. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Nobody,” she said, trying to straighten her hospital gown. “I was just…” How long had he been standing there? If he’d heard her say “You’re positive it won’t show our neural pathway?” what could she say to explain that?

  Nothing, C.B. said. I told you, explanations—

  Go away, she hissed. “I was just thinking out loud,” she said to Trent. “About our—”

  “Hold that thought,” Trent said, putting his phone to his ear. “Hello?…Who is this?” He held it out to look at the screen. “Hello?”

  “Who was it?” Briddey asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, replacing the phone in his shirt pocket. “You were going to—” His phone rang again. “Sorry. Yes, Ethel. What is it? When does he want to meet?” A listening pause. “Yes, ten will work. I’ll be back by then. Thanks.”

  He hung up. “That was my secretary. Hamilton wants to meet with me again.” He came back over to the bed. “Sorry for all the interruptions. You were about to tell me why you were talking to an empty room.”

  “I wasn’t. I was—”

  What are you doing? C.B. shouted in her head. Don’t—

  Go away, she said, and to Trent: “I was talking to you. Dr. Verrick said calling to you out loud would help establish our neural pathway.”

  “And is it?” Trent asked eagerly. “Helping? Have you felt anything?”

  “No.”

  His shoulders slumped in disappointment. “You’re sure?” he asked. “I was hoping one of us would have felt something by now.”

  “Dr. Verrick said it takes at least twenty-four—”

  “I know,” he said impatiently, “but I need—” He stopped, looking chagrined. “I’m sorry. It’s just that connecting means so much to me.”

  “To me, too,” Briddey said. You have no idea how much.

  “And Dr. Verrick’s nurse said she thought we might connect sooner than the average couple because we got such high scores on the battery of tests. She said Dr. Verrick expected us to have a deeper, more intimate level of communication than most couples experience.” He frowned, seeming to notice Briddey’s hospital gown for the first time. “Why aren’t you dressed? Don’t tell me they haven’t discharged you yet. I’ll go see what the holdup is.”

  “No,” Briddey said, reaching to stop him. The last thing she needed was for him to find out about last night from the nurses. “They have some more tests they want to run before they send me home.”

  “Why?” Trent said, instantly alarmed. “Did something happen with your EED? Some kind of complication?”

  That’s one word for it, C.B. said.

  Go away. “No,” she said to Trent. “Everything’s fine. I love the roses you sent. They’re absolutely beautiful.”

  But Trent refused to be distracted. “If everything’s fine, why do they need to run tests? And what kind of tests?”

  If she told him a CT scan, he’d really think something was wrong, and she couldn’t think of any benign-sounding tests. “I don’t know,” she said.

  Bad idea, C.B. said.

  “You don’t know?” Trent said, pulling out his phone. “I’m calling Dr. Verrick.”

  Told you, C.B. said.

  “No. You can’t call him,” Briddey said, and then for the life of her couldn’t think of any reason why.

  He’s going to be in surgery all morning, C.B. prompted.

  “He told me he was going to be in surgery all morning,” Briddey parroted.

  And he said the tests were just routine.

  “And he said the tests were purely routine for someone who’s had an EED.”

  No, no, no. I told you not to say any more than you have to.

  “They didn’t run any tests on me,” Trent said. He looked sharply at Briddey. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Yes, she thought, and it must have shown in her face because he said, “What is it, sweetheart? You can tell me.”

  I wouldn’t bet on it, C.B. said. Remember that guy who shot his wife, and that was just for failing to connect, not connecting to somebody else. And that’s if he doesn’t think you’re crazy. Remember that hearing-voices study.

  “There’s nothing I’m not telling you,” Briddey said firmly. “Everything’s fine, Trent. Dr. Verrick said so when he was in.”

  “Then why is he running tests?”

  He’s just being extra cautious.

  “He’s just being extra cautious,” she said. “That’s why he’s so sought-after as a surgeon, because he’s so conscientious.”

  “You’re right,” Trent conceded. “All the same, I think I’d better stay here with you while you have them.”

  No! Briddey thought. “No, you…this could take all morning,” she stammered. “You know how hospitals are. Things take forever. What about your meeting?”

  Trent already had his phone out and was swiping through screens. “You’re more important than any meeting,” he said without looking up. “And if something’s gone wrong, there’s no point in even having a—” He stopped himself, then went on more calmly. “I mean, I’d be so worried about whether you were all right, there’d be no way I could make a decent presentation.”

  “I am all right. Everything’s fine,” she said, racking her brain for a reason that would convince him to go. “There’s no need for you to stay. And if you cancel the meeting, Hamilton—”

  “Might think something’s gone wrong,” he said musingly, and then seemed to come to himself. “With the project, I mean. You’re right. We don’t want him to think that. I’d better meet with him. You’re sure you’ll be all right here by yourself?”

  I’m not by myself, she thought. More’s the pity. “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine. Go.”

  “Okay,” Trent said. “I’ll be back as soon as the meeting’s over and drive you home.” He starte
d out. “If you’re ready to go before then, just text me.”

  “I will. Oh, wait, I can’t. I don’t have my phone. I asked for it back, but—”

  “I’ll check on it on my way out,” he said. “Text me when you find out what tests they’re planning to do. And call me the moment you feel any glimmering of a connection, even if I’m in my meeting.”

  “I will,” she promised, “but my nurse said the swelling from the surgery has to go down, and the anesthetic—”

  “I know, I know, and it takes at least twenty-four hours, but I have a feeling we’re going to connect very soon.” He stopped at the door. “You’re absolutely sure you’re okay with my leaving?”

  “Yes. Now go. You’ll be late for your meeting.” The tech would be here any minute to take her for the CT scan, and if Trent found out she was having that…

  “You promise you’ll text me the moment—?” he began, and his phone rang again. “I’ve got to take this,” he said, and started down the hall, saying, “Worth here. What did you find out?”

  “Don’t forget my phone,” Briddey called after him, but he was already gone.

  I don’t think he heard you, C.B. said.

  Will you go away?

  Roger that, Night Fighter. Over and out, he said, and either he went away or at least shut up for the moment, though she was afraid he was still there. And right about Trent’s not hearing her.

  But a few minutes later an aide came in bearing her phone and a bouquet of violets. The attached card had two figures clinking champagne glasses on it and read, “Here’s to our connecting—the proof our love is real!”

  Oh, don’t say that, Briddey thought, wincing, and unlocked her phone.

  She already had two texts from Trent—“Have you had tests?” and “Any connection yet?”—and fifty-one from her family.

  She texted Trent, “Thank you for the beautiful violets!” and started through Kathleen’s messages. Half of them said, “Need to talk to you about Chad! Urgent!” and the other half were articles about EEDs gone wrong, including a TMZ exposé about a Match Made in Heaven star whose EED with a Denver Bronco had failed, which quoted her as saying, “I should have known the moment we didn’t connect that he was cheating on me. EEDs don’t lie.”