“What’s the big deal, Harlan? You said your noon appointment cancelled.”
Harlan glared at Charlie then called to Emily in calm, professional tones, “You okay in there, Miss Burton?”
Her voice echoed out of the tube. “Feels like I’m in a washing machine.”
“Me and Harlan are going into the booth, Em.” Charlie said and grabbed her big toe.
“Hey!”
“We’ll talk to you from in there.”
“’Kay.”
Charlie followed Harlan into the dim monitor room. Several screens flickered in stand-by mode. Harlan sat at the console and motioned for Charlie to close the door. His laid back professional demeanor evaporated. “The big fucking deal, you twat, is that I could lose my job for something like this.” He leaned forward and whispered as if someone would hear them through the walls. “I know I owe you man, but I don’t wanna’ get fired. Why can’t you just make an appointment like normal people? You got insurance.”
One of the monitors reflected a curved blue square on Charlie’s head. “That’s right, you do owe me,” he said. “Stealing morphine’s an even bigger deal than stealing time on an MRI.”
Harlan winced at the deed spoken, as if naming it could somehow transport him back in time to that supply closet, sweating and desperate. Charlie saw it in his friend’s face and softened. “I didn’t turn you in then because I knew you could kick it.” He put a hand on Harlan’s shoulder. “And you did. Now, I need your help, man. This girl might have something wrong with her that can’t wait for an appointment.” He sat back and gave the grin of a high stakes gambler. “Besides, you know as well as I do how hard it is to find a qualified imaging tech. You could get caught shooting a porno flick in that tube and probably just get a reprimand in your file.”
Harlan raised an eyebrow. “That,” he said, “would look really cool.” He sighed. “All right, man. Let’s do this then.” He flicked a toggle and spoke into the microphone that sprouted from the console.
“Hear me okay, Miss Burton?”
Her voice came through a hidden speaker. “Call me Emily,” she said. “Miss Burton makes it sound like I’m in trouble or something.”
Charlie smiled. She sounded cool. “Not too tight in there?” he asked.
“It’s kind of soothing really.”
“Good deal,” he said. Better her than him, then. You couldn’t pay Charlie enough to get into an MRI. It wasn’t his claustrophobia—that was actually pretty light—it was the banging. When those magnets fired up they went off like little cannons. The mixture of noise and the confined space would throw him right over the edge into hysteria. He’d seen it happen a time or two with patients. So bad in one case that a woman in for an arterial-cardio scan had gone into arrest from the fear. Without ever being loaded into the muzzle himself, Charlie knew it would be true of him as well. It might not be his heart that blew, but something in his mind sure as hell would.
Harlan was busy flicking switches and tapping a keyboard. Charlie could feel a low thrum start up in his gut. Somewhere under the floor panels and in the walls, lightning bolts were being harnessed and fed into huge magnets. The field they generated would allow them to look through Emily’s flesh. Sometimes Charlie wondered if they, people, already knew too much.
“Okay, Emily,” Harlan said. “We’re ready to roll. The magnets are going to make a hell of a racket, but you’ve got to stay as still as you can.”
“Okay,” she answered, the excitement of this strange experience juicing her voice.
“If things get too intense, just call out,” Charlie said.
“Relax, babe,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
Babe. Charlie was glad it was dark in the booth. He could feel himself blushing.
Harlan initiated the scan and the magnets started knocking. He sat back and flicked off the mic. “So,” he said as if they were at a ladies garden party, “have you set a date?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“She’s pretty hot, man.” Harlan was quiet a moment, adjusting a knob on a monitor. “Gotta’ love those hospital gowns.”
Charlie whapped him on the shoulder. “Shut up, dude!” But he was smiling. “Yeah, she’s really something. She actually corrected me on a Star Wars quote last night.
“Ooh, keeper,” Harlan said without a trace of sarcasm.
“I’m beginning to think so too.”
Harlan waited a beat. “What do you think might be wrong with her, man?”
Charlie recalled the SUV, upside-down and spinning across the pavement toward them, sparks flying; the lamp on the nightstand imploding, the nightstand itself floating then flipping end over end across the room as if tossed by a giant; Emily’s huge grin and laughter; the fluttering of her hand.
“Charlie?”
“Yeah, sorry, man.”
“The machine’s the eyeballs, but I’m the one doing the seeing.” Harlan pointed at a shrinking horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen. “It’s counting down while the computer compiles the first set of images. What am I looking for?”
Charlie blew of long puff of air over his lower lip. “Um, I guess anything out of the ordinary.”
“So, what, like the evidence of alien tracking devices or a partially digested twin?”
“Okay, okay.” Charlie squinted at the screen, the bar was almost gone. “Just concentrate for now on vascular irregularities, pin-prick hemorrhages, clotting.”
“She been complaining of headaches?”
“No, but her hand’s been shaking a lot.”
“That could be any number of things, man.”
“I know. That’s why I came to you.”
Harlan looked at Charlie. “You ask her about drugs?”
“It’s just one hand.”
Harlan crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that supposed to mean something?”
“I dunno’, man. I just… It’s not drugs. I know that much. Or if she does use, the shaking doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“You’re not telling me something.”
Charlie set his jaw. “You’re right. I’m not.”
Harlan threw his hands up. “Fine, Charlie. All I’m saying is that this might not be the best procedure.”
“Why?”
“If her motor neurons are acting funny it could be something vascular. Do you know if she has a history of stroke in her family? Aneurysm? Have you thought about an iodine drip and a PET scan?”
“Let’s see what we get from this first.”
The computer chimed and the timing bar on the monitor turned into a tiny hour glass. It spun for a moment and an image burned into the screen.
“The hell?” Harlan said. “That can’t be right.”
Charlie leaned forward. “What are we looking at?”
“Nothing, it’s like she’s not even there.”
* * *
EMILY STARED AT the recorded image of her MRI scan. Her lower body was visible—a geological study of her musculoskeletal system, the rivers and deltas of her circulatory system—just not her head. Where her brain should have been laid bare, was a ring of white light. It reminded her a little of the pictures she had seen of a solar eclipses. She turned to Charlie. In the darkened control room the light from the computer monitor made his eyes complicated. “What does this mean? Is it broken?”
“Harlan says it’s not the machine.”
Harlan sat forward, using a pen to point at the screen. He was being careful not to look at Emily. “The rest of you is showing up fine. And I ran a system check not twenty minutes before you guys got here. I had a cancellation,” his throat clicked. “So, I had the time to, um, you know, to do that.”
Emily smiled. She felt bad for Harlan. She didn’t need any special powers to know that he was freaking out a little. She looked him over: the mussed hair, the Day-Glo orange Chucks. Harlan hadn’t been holding things together all that well before Charlie brought her through the door.
“So, you know, it�
�s not the machine.”
“Okay,” Emily said. “What do you think it might be?”
“I think it’s you.”
Charlie looked at the floor. “Yeah, man, that much is pretty clear. Listen, though, do you think you could flesh that out a little bit?”
“Jesus, Charlie. I don’t know.”
“Hazard a fucking guess, Harlan.”
Emily reached down and squeezed Charlie’s hand. He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Sorry, Harl.”
Emily glanced at Charlie.
He nodded.
“Harlan,” she started, “you’re scared.”
He sat back. “I’m a little wigged out, yeah but…”
“No,” she stopped him. “I know you’re scared because I can feel it.”
“Okaaaaay.”
She knew where this was going and let it play. “I’ve got telepathic empathy, Harlan. I can read your emotions.” She grinned. “Also, it looks like I can do telekinetic stuff now, too.”
Harlan looked at Charlie for help, but his friend, who usually made such solid decisions and who would never fall in love with a patient from the psych ward, was staring at the floor and trying not to smile. “Oh,” Harlan said. “I get it. You’re fucking with me.”
Emily laughed. “Yeah,” she said and winked.
Harlan’s glasses slipped off his face. He caught them in a jumble of fingers and frames. He put them back on. “Shit.”
Even though he could feel the tremors starting in the hand he held, Charlie stifled a giggle.
“Harlan,” Emily said. “Do something for me.”
“What?”
“Put your hands out in front of you.”
He held out double middle fingers. “Like this?”
Okay, now she liked him. “Open the rest of your fingers,” she said. “Like this.” She held out her own hands as if ready to receive a load of firewood.
Harlan complied just in time to catch his glasses again. This time he didn’t put them back on right away. He turned them over in his hands, looking for something, a nearly invisible fishing line or something.
“Harlan?”
He didn’t look at her. He was still looking for the trick.
“Harlan.”
Emily yanked the glasses out of his hands without moving her own except to reach up with her left and pluck them from the air. Charlie was still holding her right hand, and now the tremors were hard enough to run up his arm. Emily reached forward to hand the glasses back to their owner. Harlan sat back, his face open and vulnerable without the specs.
“It’s okay, honey,” Emily said. “They’re not radioactive.”
Harlan still wouldn’t make eye contact with her, staring at the glasses instead. “You’re sure?”
“Not really. I mean, they’re not overly warm to the touch or anything.”
“C’mon, Harlan,” Charlie said. “Get it together man. We need your help to figure this out.”
“This is. I don’t. This is.”
Maybe a little too roughly, Charlie held up Emily’s jangling hand. “Look at this. This happens every time she does a—a trick. I’m a little invested in her now and would like to know that she isn’t going to expire in the next few minutes, you get me?”
Charlie lowered her hand, gave it back to her. “Sorry,” he said. “That was really jerky of me.”
It was, but Emily understood. She’d fallen for a guy with a temper. She had one of her own and knew well enough that having a temper wasn’t what needed watching out for, it was what a person did with it. “It’s okay,” she said.
Harlan looked at them, their heads together. “Here,” he said. “Gimme’ those.” He put the glasses back on and turned toward the monitor. For a long time he was quiet, just staring at the electronic woman stripped down to her glowing nerves and bones. He took off his glasses again and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Harl?” Charlie asked after a time. “What do you think, man?”
He faced them and felt something in his chest open. Charlie had been a rock when Harlan had been drowning but not now. He was the one up to his neck. And Emily: she was broken and beautiful and powerful. Harlan hadn’t made it through medical school, the fucking morphine had seen to that, but that didn’t change the core of who he was.
“Primum non nocere,” he said.
Emily squinted. “Huh?” She looked at Charlie. He was smiling.
“What do you guys know about Bose-Einstein Condensates?”
They gave him a look that reminded Harlan of ungulates.
He pinched the bridge of his nose again. “I think this conversation is going to require massive amounts of caffeine.”
* * *
EMILY HISSED BACKWARD through her teeth. It was the strongest cup of coffee she’d ever tasted. Not bad, like good whiskey isn’t bad, sweet and clean in its way, but strong enough to thin paint. Harlan was watching her reaction from across the booth.
“Turkish. What do you think?”
She took another sip, could actually feel the tissues in her mouth inflate. “Painful. I like it.” She held her cup in both hands. The tremors from her recent showing-off were almost gone. “I think this stuff is actually chilling me out.”
Charlie raised his eyebrows. She got more and more interesting. They were sitting in a booth by the window of a coffee shop down the street from the hospital. A ray of dusty sun rolled through the glass and crackled in her hair. The heat was lifting her scent into the air and mixing it with the coffee. Charlie felt drunk all the time now. The voice of caution rose up in the back of his head. He told it to go to hell.
Harlan stared into his coffee cup. “You know I was reading recently about how the first practical quantum computers might actually be housed in coffee. Something about the way the atoms interact.” He smiled. “Instead of a computer monitor and a cup of coffee on your desk, you’ll just have two cups of coffee. One you drink and one you buy movie tickets and unravel the mysteries of the universe with.”
“Harlan,” Charlie asked, “the hell are you talking about, man?”
“Sorry guys, I’m still a little wigged by all this, but I’m also turned on about it.” He looked at Emily and blushed. “I mean—not like that, is what I mean.” She smiled with her eyes over her coffee. Okay, maybe he was a little like that. “What I mean is that I’m really curious now.”
“You have an idea about what’s going on with the MRI, right? You think it means something, the way it wouldn’t work with Emily.” Charlie said.
“Yeah, I do.”
Emily sat forward. “You mentioned something about speakers before and Einstein?”
Harlan laughed. “No, Bose-Einstein condensates.”
“I’ve always been more of a Bang and Olufson man myself.” Charlie said.
Emily grabbed his knee under the table and gave it a good squeeze. Charlie barked and thrashed. The coffee mugs rattled.
“Hey!” Harlan grabbed his mug and cradled it. “Careful, dude. I don’t go into your church and fuck with the sacrificial wine or whatever.” He took a sip and focused, the caffeine just beginning to quicken him. “Okay, let’s forget Bose-Einstein Condensates for now and start with something a little more basic.
“You guys know what quarks are?”
“Electrons and stuff like that, right?” Emily said. “The little bits that make up atoms.”
“Just so,” Harlan said. “Now, in comes Mr. Einstein. He figured out that once a pair of quarks is synched up, that if you switch the state of one, the other one also switches at the same time. It’s called entanglement. It can happen over infinite distance with no time passing.”
“Wait,” Emily said. “How’s the possible?”
“Just what Einstein thought. He ended up rejecting his own theory. You know that whole quote about how God doesn’t play dice with the universe? That’s Einstein’s and he was talking about entanglement.”
“That’s cool.” Emily said. “Forgive me for sounding a little
like Strawberry Shortcake and all, but it’s kind of magical.”
Harlan gave her a grin and for a moment she realized something about him. Past whatever head trash he was still carrying around, Harlan was beautiful.
“Do you have a girlfriend, Harlan?”
Charlie smiled out of the side of his mouth and looked at his friend. Harlan’s pasty skin burned. He focused on the sugar and sweetener packets. “Not at present, no.”
Emily nodded. He would before too long with a grin like that. “Okay, go on,” she said, waving a hand at the table top display. “This stuff is really neat.”
“But it can’t work,” Charlie said. “Information can’t just move across that much space without any time passing. Even if you did it at the speed of light it would take years for the one quark to like know that the other quark had switched.” He reddened. “I don’t like it. And anyway, what’s all this have to do with Emily’s MRI?”
Emily shot Charlie a sideways glance. Interesting that he could accept the fact of her empathy and telekinesis, but be so thrown off by an intangible scientific theory. It was really bugging him, too. She could feel it pulsing off him in jagged waves, sea water mushy with melted ice pack.
Wait a minute. She could feel him. Was the wall of white noise coming apart? Was she getting used to it, adapting? She closed her eyes and listened. The roar of New York and its multitude rushed up and over her, ten million hearts, but none distinguishable from another. She was still safe. Then how was she feeling Charlie? Emily opened her eyes and sneaked a peak at a young Asian woman with streaks of blonde in her hair at a table across the room. She was reviewing her check, her eyes flat, just another cup of coffee. Emily stretched and was doused with a shock of tension. The woman opened the Smurfette lunch box she used for a purse and Emily’s eyes popped with dry worry. The woman pulled out a crumpled five dollar bill and left. As she rushed past Emily and through the door, she wafted shame like rank perfume. Emily couldn’t tell exactly what the woman’s deal was, but she’d felt emotions like that before around money.
Emily pulled it back in and sighed. She was adapting, but not in the way she feared. She could still pick up the emotions of other people, but now it was a matter of will. The white noise was still keeping her mind busy enough that she had to concentrate to really feel anything outside of her own emotions. She looked at Charlie. She must have just been naturally curious about his feelings and stretched without thinking about it. She’d have to watch that. Other than just not wanting a head full of other people’s hearts she was beginning to think it was kind of rude.
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