by Dima Zales
With a curse, Mira slams closed the Gameboy, signifying her defeat, and glances in the direction Sara is coming from.
“Hello, Mrs. Goldberg,” Bert says, getting ready to leave.
“Hi Bert,” my mom says. “And you must be Mira?”
“Hi, Mrs. Goldberg,” Mira says uncomfortably.
“Please call me Sara,” she says. “You too, Bert, how many times do I need to ask you?”
“Sorry, Sara,” Bert says sheepishly.
“Nice to meet you, Sara.” Mira attempts to smile at my mom. “Bert and I were just about to go look for a doctor, to see when Darren is getting his X-ray results.”
“Thank you.” Sara gives Mira an approving look. “That’s very thoughtful. Let me know if they give you any attitude.”
Great. I picture a scenario where Mira is arguing with my doctor, and then, after sufficiently pissing him off, she unleashes my mom on the poor guy. If disgruntled restaurant workers spit in your food, can you imagine what an upset doctor might do to you?
“If they give us any attitude, I will crush their servers,” Bert says.
“Albert, you will do no such thing,” my mom says sternly. “People could die.”
“I’m sure Bert was kidding,” I say, giving my friend a warning glare. He probably wasn’t.
“I will keep him in line, no worries, Sara,” Mira says with a smile.
“Good, thank you,” Sara says, apparently satisfied.
As my friends give me the Gameboys and walk away, I realize with amazement how calmly my mom has been behaving. Was it Mira’s attitude that calmed her so?
“Sweetie, what happened? You were shot. Does it hurt?” The barrage of questions begins as soon as Mira and Bert are out of the room, and I curse myself for the jinx. My amazement was clearly premature.
I go into a new variation of the story. In this one, Mira is a new friend who happens to live in a bad neighborhood. The shot was just a fluke, the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I like Mira. She’s smart and very pretty,” my mom says when she stops her verbal version of hyperventilating. “And she clearly cares about you. But you should have her visit you in the city instead of the other way around. It’ll be safer that way.”
I now understand why the freak-out is not as bad as I expected. I think the fact that my mom found me with a girl—something she’s been nagging me about for ages—trumps my getting shot in her twisted version of reality.
“Sure, Mom. It actually just so happens that Mira and her brother will be moving anyway,” I say.
“Good.” She pats my knee. “Let me know if you need suggestions for safe neighborhoods.”
“Okay, Mom. Where’s Lucy?” I say, trying to change the subject.
“Your mother will be here soon. She just texted me. Kyle dropped her off at the hospital entrance and is parking. She’ll be here in a moment.”
I’m actually a tiny bit worried about Lucy coming here. I hope she doesn’t play detective with me. She sometimes can’t help it.
I keep those concerns to myself, though, and say instead, “Okay. In the meantime, there’s something I want to ask you . . .” I pause, thinking about it, and then I decide to just blurt it out. “What were the last names of my biological parents?”
Sara looks taken aback for a moment, but recovers quickly. “They were the Robinsons, and your biological mother’s maiden name was Taylor,” she answers readily.
The Robinsons. So Jacob was indeed asking about my father, Mark Robinson. Does that mean my father was a Reader? Maybe even part of that specific community? I make a mental note to try to learn more about this. Maybe I can find a reason to chat with Jacob again, or ask his daughter Julia about it when she recovers. Perhaps I can even talk to Caleb, as scary as that option sounds. Also, Mark worked with my mom Lucy and Uncle Kyle. I can try to pump them for information—though, of course, they don’t know anything about Readers and Pushers.
I see Sara wave her hand at someone, and it takes me out of my thoughts.
Following her gaze, I see Lucy approaching.
“How are you, kiddo?” Lucy says when she gets to my bed. “What happened?”
I tell her the same story that I told Sara and how I don’t yet know the details but that my friends are trying to get a doctor, or someone, to pay attention to us. As I talk, I can’t tell if she’s buying it. Lucy is like that; you don’t know what’s on her mind when she doesn’t want you to. Must be a detective thing. However, as I learned over the years, the mere fact that she’s hiding her expression signifies trouble.
“You guys catch up, and I’m going to go try to find Mira and Bert,” Sara says and walks off without giving me a chance to respond. Did she pick up on Lucy’s lack of expression also? The idea of her joining the doctor search is the very definition of overkill. If someone is not back here in a few minutes, I will be extremely surprised. Images of lionesses killing gazelles and bringing the bloody carcasses to their fluffy cubs spring to mind for some reason.
“Okay, now tell me what really happened,” Lucy says as soon as Sara gets out of earshot.
My mom the detective. She’s the reason I can usually lie so well. As a kid, I had to take my lying game to stellar levels in order to fool Lucy. I’m usually very smooth at it, but that’s when I’m not worried about head wounds and don’t have secret societies I have to keep quiet about.
“I didn’t want to worry Sara,” I say. “So I simplified things a bit, that’s all.”
“I gathered as much.” A slight smile appears on Lucy’s face. “Spill it.”
“The short version is that some Russian mobsters want my friends dead. Before you ask, I truly have little idea as to why. Suffice it to say, these same people might’ve murdered their family first.”
“What are your friends’ names?” Lucy says calmly. She’s acting as though I tell her about attempted assassinations all the time.
I give her Mira and Eugene’s last name and everything I can recall about their parents.
“I’ll look into it,” she says, writing something in a small notebook.
She can actually find out quite a bit. She still knows people in the organized crime division, including my uncle Kyle, who’s probably on his way up here as we speak. But it’s doubtful she’ll be able to help much. The Pusher who’s behind all this, according to my new friends, would be beyond a regular detective’s capabilities.
“Just information, Mom. Please don’t go after anyone,” I say and finally get a full smile out of her.
“You sound like your mother,” she says. “You don’t need to worry. I’m in the white collar division for a reason.”
“Someone reported a gunshot wound?” an unfamiliar male voice says, and Lucy and I look up to see a stocky policeman approaching. Great. The staff at this hospital can’t be bothered to get me my X-ray results, but they managed to file a report about my wound.
“It’s all right, Officer,” Lucy says, pulling out her badge and showing it to him. “I’m already on it.”
The policeman immediately turns around and departs, muttering something under his breath about incompetent Coney Island nurses, and I suppress a chuckle. There are certainly benefits to having a detective for a mom.
“There you are.” My uncle Kyle enters the room at that moment. “How’s the injured soldier?”
Uncle Kyle is not my biological uncle, obviously. He’s not even my adoptive uncle. He’s Lucy’s coworker. However, he’s played the role of my uncle since I was little, and I’m used to thinking of him as such.
“Hi Kyle,” I say, sitting up so I can shake his hand. It’s our thing. We don’t hug—we shake hands.
“Kyle, I’m glad you’re here. I want to check on this doctor situation,” Lucy says. “Please stay with him.”
“Of course,” Kyle says. “Give them hell.”
And Lucy joins the doctor hunt, which I would find comical if it weren’t for the fact that Mira is involved in it, too. Havin
g Lucy there is literally bringing out the big guns—though I doubt she’ll draw her weapon on the medical staff. At least not unless they really piss her off.
“I heard there is a girl involved in this shooting,” Kyle says, winking at me. If there’s one thing I always liked about Kyle, it’s his lack of smotheringness. He doesn’t ask me how I got shot. He probably isn’t all that worried about me. And there is something refreshing about that.
This attitude of his has served me well over the years. There are tons of fun, albeit unsafe, things a boy wants to do but needs adult backing to actually do. For example, Kyle is the reason I know how to hold a gun. It’s the result of a secret trip we took to a shooting range. To this day, my moms still think we went to the New York Aquarium and would probably still retroactively give Kyle a beating for taking me to a shooting range instead.
“Yes, there is a girl. If you stick around, you might meet her.” For some reason, I’m hoping that he does. Since when do I care what Kyle thinks?
“I’ll try,” he says, smiling.
“I have something here that you might be interested in,” I say, reaching for the Gameboys.
When I was little, Kyle was my go-to video game partner. For all his faults, I’m thankful for the hours he spent playing Mortal Kombat with me. Ripping his head off, literally—well, the head of his character at least, via the Fatality move in that game—is one of my favorite childhood memories.
“I haven’t seen these before,” he says. “Is there a way to make it less blurry?”
Kyle and his lack of technology know-how. I’m forced to teach him how to turn off the game’s built-in glasses-free 3D effect. That’s what he calls blurriness. It’s a sacrilege to not see this game in 3D, but I’m not about to get into a verbal fight with him. A virtual game fight will have to suffice. Once the 3D is off, he chooses his character—Donkey Kong, who happens to be a tie-wearing giant gorilla. I myself go for the cartoony variation of Link, my usual princess-saving character.
As he did when I was a kid, Kyle plays cheap. He chooses a move that works and repeats it over and over. In this case, it creates the rather funny effect of a dancing gorilla.
As I’m about to execute a cunning plan of attack, Kyle’s phone rings.
“I have to take that,” he says, pausing the game.
He picks up the phone. As soon as whoever is on the other line starts talking, Kyle’s expression turns somber, and he walks away from my bed. Must be detective business.
I make myself busy by exiting the fighting game and checking to see if I can get onto Wi-Fi in this place. That would let me buy more games if I’m bored, which I’m bound to be when everyone leaves. Assuming I need to stay here, which I hope I don’t.
“I have to go,” Kyle says when he comes back. He looks upset. “Something urgent has come up.”
“Aren’t you Lucy’s ride?” I ask.
“Yes, but she’ll have to cab it. This can’t wait.”
“See you later. Thanks for stopping by,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment.
As he leaves, I realize that boredom might come sooner than I anticipated. Wi-Fi is a no-go, though at this point, given my experience with this hospital, I’m not surprised.
Luckily for me, the fighting game has a mode where you can fight the computer, so I start playing.
* * *
I’m in the middle of a particularly nasty fight when I realize my bed is moving.
I look back and see a woman in a white coat pushing it.
“Where am I going?” I ask. “And who are you?”
“The doctor wants to have a private conversation with you,” says the woman in a monotone while continuing to push the bed. “I’m your nurse.”
I try to process this information. Why would a doctor need to take me to a private room to talk? How bad is the news he wants to give me? Or did my family and friends cause such a ruckus that there is going to be a ‘tell Darren off’ session?
We don’t end up going far. There is a little office room to the side of the large hall. The nurse closes the door and starts preparing some kind of medication.
“What are you doing?” I say, trying to sound calm. I’m afraid of needles, and the stuff she’s prepping looks to be a shot.
“Just something for the pain,” she says.
“I don’t need anything,” I say. “I’d rather have the pain I have now than the pinprick of a needle.”
She approaches me, smiles, and takes the cable that goes from my IV to my hand. She unplugs it and connects it to the syringe she’s holding.
“See, no shot,” she says.
“I still don’t want the shot until you tell me what’s in it—”
Her pressing the syringe cuts me off.
My heart rate picks up.
Did she just give me a shot after I explicitly told her not to? Why would she do that?
Suddenly, a wave of warmth begins to spread though my body, causing some of my worries to dissipate.
No, something is not right. I force myself to think through the happy, comfortable feelings spreading through me. It’s beginning to be difficult to care, but with a herculean effort, I make myself worry again.
Maybe she wants to steal your organs, I tell myself, trying to come up with the scariest scenario.
Time seems to slow down for a moment, and then the noises of the hospital disappear.
I find myself lying in bed next to my other self, and I’m overcome with momentary relief.
I made it. I phased into the Quiet.
My head is now completely clear of whatever she gave me, and I’m determined to figure out what the fuck just happened.
Chapter 12
I get up and look at myself. My frozen self’s pupils are tiny, like pinpricks. This must be the effect of whatever drug she gave me, as her own pupils are the normal black circle one would expect in a well-lit room.
Fleetingly, I note the bandage around my head; it looks as ridiculous as I thought, but that’s not what I care about right this moment. I’d be willing to walk around Times Square bandaged up like a mummy, if that would help me get out of this predicament.
I notice that not only do I feel free from the drug she gave me, but the pain from my wound is also nonexistent, as is always the case in the Quiet.
I walk over to the woman and look through her pockets.
She has a real-looking hospital ID, which is a good sign. She’s an RN named Betty March. That’s encouraging to some degree—she knows about drugs and how to deliver them. But surely they aren’t allowed to force something into someone’s veins under these circumstances.
Time to do a little Reading, I decide, and touch her temple.
* * *
“Your boyfriend will be seen soon. Please go back and wait,” we say to the girl who’s been pestering the staff.
I, Darren, realize that this is a memory in which we just spoke with Mira. She’s without Bert or my mother, which means this memory happened a while back. Whatever I’m looking for in Betty’s memories—and I’m not yet sure what that is—happens later. I decide to experience every moment from here to the present to make sure I understand why she did what she did.
As the memories go by, I develop a healthy respect for the nursing profession. It’s tough. Finally, I get to what I think I need. She’s in the ladies room at the time.
We’re sitting on the toilet, and time stops. There are now more of us in Betty’s head.
The feeling I have is the same as the one I had in the head of that Russian gangster, the one controlled by the mystery Pusher. I feel the presence of another mind—a spooky apparition that has no gender or identity. It’s just a feeling that there’s someone else here.
Like before, the Pusher starts giving instructions. This time, though, as I follow the instructions Betty is getting, I feel a chill overtake my disembodied mind.
‘Walk up to Darren Wang Goldberg,’ is accompanied by mental images of where my bed is located and what I look like,
plus a desire to help a person in need.
‘Take the patient to a private room,’ is accompanied by mental images and instruction that the doctor wants to have a conversation with the patient. A conversation that is likely going to upset the rest of the people in the room.
‘Administer 10mg of morphine by injection,’ is accompanied by images of a patient suffering, doctor’s orders, and a warning about a patient who’s confused and who might resist the shot.
‘Forget the injection,’ is the next instruction, and it is accompanied by a feeling of blankness. Of emptiness. A Zen-like state of not thinking about anything at all and being at peace.
‘Take the pillow, place it on the patient’s face, and hold it there.’ This macabre instruction is accompanied by a whole mental story. In this story, the person Betty is to smother has been begging her to do this for years. He’s suffering terrible pain that even drugs can’t make better. Incongruently, feelings of hatred for the patient are also introduced. The Pusher’s instructions seem to say that this is the person who beat Betty and put her in the hospital, the monster who killed Betty’s little boy.
Although somewhat in shock, I manage to think of how interesting it is to witness the way Pushing is supposed to work. I mean, when I tried it, I did it intuitively, using only a very basic example of this Pusher’s work. This is much more subtle. Much more sick. If Betty does what she’s instructed to do—and I have no doubt that she will—it will be proof that Pushers truly can make a person do anything they want. The justifications given don’t even need to make complete sense. Just some hook into the person’s mind is all that seems to be required. Just provide any rationale, and the victim does what you mentally force them to do.
Morbidly fascinated, I let the memory unfold. With precision, Betty carries out each instruction the Pusher has given her. As Betty performs each task, she seems to genuinely believe the instructions and the back stories the Pusher provided. When I asked her where she was taking me, she was convinced that I was going to speak to the doctor. She wasn’t being deceitful at all. What I find particularly frightening is that each step of the way, she seems to have only a vague idea of what happened previously. It’s a lot like a dream in which things seem to make sense, but don’t upon awakening.