The Zen Gene

by Mains, Laurie

  When Tyler touched his shoulder he jumped. Startled by the sudden touch he jerked away defensively. He had not heard him walk up behind him and he was shaking from the scare. His nerves were shot after all that happened and he bent over and vomited on the lawn.

  “Tyler you scared the shit out of me,” he said trying to catch his breath.

  “Where is Andrea?” Tyler said.

  It was then he noticed the boy was naked and shivering in the chill night air.

  “Andi is at the hospital,” he said

  “To visit Daniel?” he asked.

  For a moment he was confused and did not know what he was talking about but then he remembered Daniel was the injured soldier’s name. It seemed like that happened a long time ago; since the blow to his head he was having trouble concentrating and keeping the details straight.

  When he went to see Andi he inquired about the soldier and learned that the Sergeant died of his injuries. He didn’t think this was the right time to tell Tyler that. What he needed was to come up with some way to explain to him what had happened to his mother.

  How could he tell the boy she is not visiting the Sergeant but is herself injured and in critical condition in the ICU? He could viscerally recall the sickening thump of the impact of her head hitting the floor and it made his stomach ache. At the instant her head hit the floor he was certain the force of the blow had killed her.

  He sat with her in the ICU until they made him leave but the whole time he was there he talked to her. He read somewhere that people who are unconscious can hear and they will often respond to the sound of a familiar voice. The fact she suffered a serious brain injury was bad but an injury was better than the alternative. She was alive and he could work with her and help her to recover.

  It was entirely the fault of the police SWAT team that she was injured and they compounded the damage by not believing it when she suffered blackouts and fainting spells while they interrogated her. When she collapsed and lost consciousness and they could not wake her they realized she was not faking and reluctantly called in paramedics who rushed her to the Emergency at Victoria General.

  The attending physician examined her and called Dr. Sing the neurologist and when he saw her he immediately admitted her to the neurology ward. When he spoke with Dr. Sing he would not give an opinion on what further damage it caused her by not immediately receiving medical attention but the angry look on the Doctor’s face told him what he already knew.

  “Your mom is hurt Tyler. She is at the hospital because she got…. hurt,” he said.

  “What got hurt?” he asked.

  “Her head, her head hit the floor,” he said.

  “Why?” he said.

  He considered his words before he answered and decided there was no point in lying to him.

  “The police hurt her,” he said.

  He could not keep the bitterness from his voice or the tears from forming in his eyes.

  “The same people who did this to your home,” he said, gesturing to the yard, “hurt your mom.”

  “Why did they do it?” he asked.

  He shook his head. He could not answer. He didn’t know why the police acted in the violent and destructive way they did. He supposed some of them believed anything that might involve terrorism gave them license to act like terrorists themselves. There was nothing useful he could say to him about why his mom was hurt because it amounted to nothing more than brutality and indifference. He noticed Zen standing in the shadows and looked over at her and smiled.

  “Thank you for taking care of Tyler,” he said and then remembered the ruined book in his hand. He threw it on the ground and walked over to where she was standing.

  “Andi has been hurt. She has a concussion, a head injury,” he said to her. “I came from the hospital and she’s unconscious. The Doctor said her brain has swollen from the impact when her head hit the floor. I don’t know what will happen. The doctors don’t know if she will recover,” he said.

  “You need to come inside,” she said. She turned and led him into her house only turning on one dim lamp in the living room and locking the door behind them. She had all the windows covered and it was dark and cave-like inside the house. She led him to the couch to sit down. She asked Tyler to get dressed and when he left the room she sat on an old armchair which matched the couch next to the unlit fireplace. She commented he looked awful; his face was black and swollen with one eye shut completely. There was a fresh scab covering an ugly gash on his cheek.

  “I’ll make some tea,” she said. He listened to her banging around in the kitchen and he was comforted by the normalness of the sounds. He sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap and it occurred to him he was likely experiencing some kind of shock in response to all that has happened. She came in and put a cup in front of him along with a pot of steaming tea.

  “What do you take?” she said.

  He thought about it and couldn’t remember how he liked his tea and the fact he couldn’t remember confused him. Where did this bit of information go he wondered as he searched his mind, but it was not there to be found.

  “Clear,” he said.

  She poured a cup for him and one for herself. He held it to his lips and sipped.

  “Can I ask you a favour?” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Can I lie down on your couch for a few minutes?”

  ***

  He woke the next morning with a start and for a few terrifying moments he did not know where he was. Only after the vision in his good eye cleared did he notice Tyler sitting across from him. He sat up and immediately regretted it because his head and face began to throb. He was holding his head in his hands when Tyler stood up and came over to him and held something out to him.

  His eye was not focused enough for fine details but he did not need to see it he recognized it from the frame. It was the photo of him and Andi at Niagara Falls. Zen came in the room and handed him a mug of black coffee and he took a sip.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  He nodded and took another sip of his coffee and then he put it and the photo down on the coffee table.

  “Do you have anything for pain?” he asked.

  She got up and left the room and he could hear a cupboard opening. The whole time Tyler never said a word. He simply sat down again and continued to watch him.

  When she came back with two pills she dropped them onto his open palm. He washed them down with coffee. He eased back on the couch and rubbed his temples.

  “Okay where should we start?” he said.

  “Are you a good guy or a bad guy?” she said.

  He could not help laughing which was a mistake because it made his face hurt. Her question was asked without a trace of accusation or prejudice. She was so innocent in her directness that his heart went out to her. It was obvious to him she was protecting Tyler and she wanted to know if he was a threat or if she could trust him. She sat beside Tyler on the arm of his chair and they both looked at him waiting.

  It was odd having these kids openly challenge him. Although he did not detect anything in Tyler’s gaze he saw wariness in hers. It occurred to him only the young could ask a question like that and actually expect an honest answer. The truth was, at the moment, he did not know if he was good or bad. He knew his intentions started out good but, so far, everything he touched had turned out bad.

  It was not a question of blame or guilt exactly there were forces working against all of them which were beyond his control. What he was mostly feeling was responsible for not being smarter about things. He left his tidy academic life and been thrust into the middle of all this and he had to admit his performance was less than stellar.

  He knew there were a lot of things he should have done differently. At the very least he should have anticipated the police response to what they might find on Tyler’s computer. If he was thinking proactively he would have insisted they all get out of town and hunker down until things cooled off but he was way
behind the curve.

  If he was less of a lab weenie and more of a man he would have anticipated all of this and Andi would not have been hurt. The police never gave them the opportunity to say anything before they were attacked, beaten, and arrested. Until it happened to them he had not known that the police regularly acted that way and he realized what a sheltered existence he led up to now.

  They kept him locked in isolation and spent hours grilling him and wearing him down. They threatened all kinds of possible charges against him and he would normally have cooperated but he was angry at what they did to Andi. He did not speak to them other than to tell them all to go to hell. He was glad he kept his mouth shut because when his lawyer showed up it only took her a few minutes to completely blow all their charges out of the water.

  He remembered how calmly she listened to their evidence and when their lead inspector, Maerks, finished outlining the charges against him she smiled indulgently at him and let them wait a full minute before responding.

  He watched the discomfort this caused them as the locus of power silently shifted away from them based solely on her icy demeanor of confidence and dismissive efficiency. They were obviously wary of her from past encounters and that made him feel much better. When she began to speak he listened raptly as she refuted all their charges as unprofessional indefensible fantasy. She let them roast in their own juices for another full minute and then posited her own much more plausible explanation as to why there was virus information on Tyler’s computer.

  “Tyler Worthy is sixteen years old,” she said.

  She let this statement steep for a moment and he watched two of the cops shift uncomfortably in their chairs.

  “He was collecting freely available data from those august terrorist organizations, the World Health Organization, Health Canada, and the NIH in the US,” she paused again and drew a deep breath which spoke of their extreme ignorance. ”because he was building a computer game,” she said.

  She said this while staring at them wide eyed and slowly shaking her head. She wore on her face a look so damning and dismissive he imagined she must have practiced it in front of a mirror to perfect that blend of disgust and sympathy for their simple mindedness.

  The disgust was for the pathetic police assertions unsupported by any physical evidence and the sympathy was for the Crown Council who might be assigned to try these idiotic charges in court.

  He was impressed at how quickly and completely she removed all the breathable air from their side of the interview table. Not one of the men sitting across from her would look at her let alone attempt to counter her assertions.

  It was clear that in their haste to nab a possible career boosting “bio-terrorist” they overlooked a more likely scenario for why this information was on a teenager’s computer. He could see by their blank faces they simply never thought of it. This was one of those situations where something obvious was missed and the truth, when it was revealed, was painfully embarrassing. Her scenario along with the complete lack of corroborating evidence for their charges sank them. He could see it mirrored in the unhappy expressions frozen on their faces.

  “Gentlemen please inform your legal counsel I will be contacting them shortly to set a date to discuss damages and reparations for the grievous injuries and wanton destruction of private property. Clearly Dr. Mann and Ms. Worthy have suffered greatly both physically and mentally as a result of your agency’s egregious misjudgment and the ensuing precipitous actions your agents undertook against them.

  As it happens I will be lunching tomorrow with Superior Court Justice Roberts. You may recall he is the Justice you convinced to issue the search warrant for this debacle. I do hope, for all your sakes, that you did not mislead him in your application. I am certain he will be very unhappy to learn of the life threatening injuries Ms. Worthy has sustained as a result of the actions of your officers. Will that be all, gentlemen?” she said.

  She sat composed and impatient with a slight but unmistakable look of dismissal upon her face as she looked across the table. No one on the other side spoke. They sat restlessly for a few moments then folded their papers and closed their file folders and each one rose from the conference table and filed out of the tiny room.

  He sat holding his breath and vibrating with jangled nerves on the chair beside her as she began to put away her papers. He drew a whole breath and turned his head to her to ask what to do now but she stopped him with a tiny shake of her head and a wink.

  Her meaning was clear: Do not speak. Relax and wait. She was right. It was less than five minutes before the door opened and a smiling information officer, one who was not part of the interrogation team, stepped into the room and announced he was free to go.

  When the officer attempted to engage Melanie in dialogue starting with an apology to both of them for the misunderstanding she held up her hand like a stop sign and without looking at him said, “Save it.”

  They walked out onto Nanaimo Street a few minutes later into a light evening drizzle and it felt wonderful to be rained on. They did not talk much when they got in her car and she dropped him off at Victoria General Hospital with a promise he would call her when he found Tyler.

  Darth Vader

  He looked at Zen and Tyler sitting together and he sighed. They looked like many young couples, handsome beyond the mere fact of their youth, each one attractive alone but more so in the combining.

  “The first thing you need to know is Andi is at Victoria General Hospital in the ICU. I went to see her last night after the police released me. She is very ill. They are keeping her in something the nurse called an ‘induced coma’. That is something neurologists do to stop further damage to her brain from swelling. I believe she would benefit greatly if you and Tyler went to see her. She is unconscious but she would likely be aware of your presence,” he said.

  Zen was nodding slowly but Tyler never said anything. He continued, “The other thing I need to tell you is…” he paused, his voice faltered thickened with emotion, “Tyler, I am your father.”

  He watched the boy’s eyes but there was no change, no emotion, not a flicker of surprise. He simply stared at him with a blank expression. It was Zen who reacted to the news.

  “Are you kidding?” she said.

  Her voice and face were full of wonder and shocked surprise.

  “No, I’m not kidding. Andi told me just before all this happened,” he said.

  His eyes fell upon the silver framed photo on the coffee table and he picked it up and handed it to her.

  “Is that you?” she said. “I wondered why Ty had this. He brought all his science junk over but this was the only thing he brought that wasn’t about science,” she said.

  “Yes, that is Andi and me a few years ago,” he said.

  “Where was this taken?” she asked

  “Niagara Falls,” he said.

  She looked at his face and then back at the photo, “It’s sort of hard to tell,” she said.

  She was looking at his older battered face trying to match it to the photo. Then she looked at Tyler’s face and back to the photo.

  “I guess you do look a bit like Ty,” she said. Tyler was watching her examine the photo but otherwise he seemed disengaged from the back and forth of the conversation.

  He had not had time to think about it much since all this started and he examined the boy’s face in profile. He saw something of his father’s face in the angles. There was something about the mouth and the way his eyes were set in the skull.

  “I only found out myself a few days ago,” he said again.

  “You mean Andi never told you?” she said.

  Her eyes went wide with surprise clearly shocked by this detail.

  “No,” he said

  “Why not?” she said.

  “I don’t have the answer,” he said.

  “Was this in Montreal?” she said.

  “No. We were in Toronto attending university and she simply took off one day without saying anything to
me about being pregnant,” he said.

  He was aware they were talking as though Tyler was not sitting right there in the room with them. Zen seemed to sense he was uncomfortable talking about this with Tyler not taking part in the conversation and she directed her next question to him.

  He was impressed with her caring and intuitive nature. It was unusual at such a young age. It was an odd thing to be thinking about but he was glad Tyler had her as a friend or maybe they were more than friends. She did not seem particularly abashed that he was outside naked when they found him. It told him something important about her values and priorities and obviously Tyler was a priority for her. As his father, though that concept still felt odd, it was heartening to know this about her.

  “What do you think, Ty? Dr. Mann is your father. It’s like in Star Wars,” she said.

  She spoke brightly trying to relate this news to something he could relate to but then she thought about what she said and added, “Well, maybe not exactly.”

  Her face turned red when she realized she compared him to Darth Vader. There was a pause in the conversation then Tyler looked at her and said,

  “Does that mean you are my sister?”

  They looked at each other and started laughing and Tyler joined in though he was not exactly sure what they were laughing about.

  “So what do you think, Ty?” she said.

  She was excited by this surprising news. In all the years they knew each other the subject of who his father was never came up. The one time she heard her mom and Andrea talking about it, they were drinking wine and aside from tears and generally disparaging comments which seemed to apply equally to all men, she heard nothing specific about his father.

  She knew Tyler was born in Montreal but that was all. She did not know Andi changed her name from Worthington and she was only peripherally aware that she did not communicate with members of her family back east.