Amanda's Story

by Brian O'Grady

  “Yes, Colonel,” they said in unison after most of them had returned to an attention posture.

  Amanda looked at their young faces and realized with a start that she recognized at least four of the ten by name, and another three looked very familiar. She must have met them a month ago during her many trips back and forth from the CAT scanners and procedure rooms. She was surprised by how intensely familiar they were. “Mr. Lambert just became a father—about six weeks ago?” she asked the muscular red-haired young man to her left.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said with surprise.

  In her mind she saw a pretty, young red-haired woman who had yet to fully lose her baby fat, and then a small bundle of baby wrapped in a blue blanket with hair the color of new carrots. “A boy, right?”

  “Yes again, ma’am.” He looked even more surprised.

  “Mr. Lambert, I am only a few years older than you and if you keep calling me ‘ma’am’ I will be forced to reveal how you get little Carl to go back to sleep.” A vision of Cameron Lambert singing “I’m a Little Teapot” while acting out the lyrics with his newborn son in his arms burst before Amanda’s eyes. She felt light-headed, and while the chorus of male voices assailed Cameron Lambert she grabbed the door jam to steady herself. “Colonel, thank you for showing me the way, and everything else that you did on my behalf.” The words were flying out of her mouth, and only after she heard them did she understand them. An image of Bennett arguing with a man who could only be Nathan Martin, the man who had lied to her weeks earlier, now filled her mind. “I need to lie down,” she said, turning away quickly enough that Bennett reached for her arm. A small burning sensation ran from his touch up to her shoulder, and she reflexively recoiled.

  “Whoa, sorry, Mrs. Flynn. I didn’t mean to grab you so roughly.” He hadn’t grabbed her roughly, and he knew it, and now she knew it. A strange and familiar sensation seemed to pour through her body.

  She began to shake as images and voices flooded into her mind faster than she could make sense of them. She stepped away from the officer, who watched her back down the hall, his arm partially raised. “I’m all right, Colonel; just a little dizzy. All this activity after a month of isolation,” she explained unconvincingly.

  She picked a door and slipped inside, maintaining eye contact with Bennett, holding him in place. She locked the door and quickly checked her arms for the lesions, and then stripped off her clothes and searched the rest of her body. Finding nothing, she began to dress. The déjà vu feeling that had overwhelmed her in the recreation room was beginning to pass, leaving clarity in its absence. She had experienced it before. She had been lying in a dirty cot in Honduras, watching her father and brother walk past her, as an eerie sensation overwhelmed her. She wasn’t free of the infection; she hadn’t miraculously beaten it. It was still with her, hiding in her brain.

  “In some people it has a bimodal course, resurfacing after a short interval.” They were her words as she described the infection to one of Martin’s minions over a month ago. Soon—minutes, hours, maybe a day—the blisters would return, the madness would intensify, and she would die. She was a danger to everyone around her. It was possible she had already infected the colonel, and through him everyone else in the recreation room. She opened the dorm room door and found the hall empty. Voices, laughter, and life poured out of the rec room, but she turned the other way and stole her way back to the hated cell. She opened the outer airlock and a faint rush of air brushed back her hair. She paused, went back to the control room at the top of the stairs, and found a phone exactly where she knew it would be. A shiver of déjà vu struck again. The phone had a dial tone, and on an impulse she dialed Lisa and Greg Flynn’s number, but an automated voice immediately warned that outgoing calls were not allowed. She tried zero and after a second a male voice answered.

  “Operator.”

  “This is Amanda Flynn,” she said in a rush.

  “Yes, Mrs. Flynn?”

  “I need to speak to Colonel Bennett; he’s in the hematology lab.” Once again the words were out of her mouth without conscious thought or awareness of their origin.

  The phone began to ring and then a voice answered. “Hematology.” It was the same disinterested tone that she had experienced since arrival, and its normality almost made her cry.

  “I’m looking for Colonel Bennett,” she said quickly.

  “Just missed him, by about two seconds. Oh, how about that? Here he comes again. Sir. Sir, it’s for you, I believe that it’s Mrs. Flynn.” She heard the phone exchange hands.

  “Colonel, I need to see you in Control Room Seven.” Once again she had no idea where her thoughts originated. The words were being squeezed out of her brain without her permission or control.

  “Control Room Seven?” He sounded confused. “I’m not sure where that is, Mrs. Flynn.”

  “I don’t know either.” An edge of panic filled her voice. “The room above my cell, with all the monitors.”

  “Okay, now I’m with you.”

  “Come alone,” she added before hanging up and cutting off his question.

  Two minutes later, she heard his soft footfalls, and then he appeared at the doorway. Amanda had slid one of the black leather chairs against the console, as far from the door as possible. “Don’t come any closer. I need to be back in isolation.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because it’s coming back; the infection.” He stared at her, waiting for clarification. “I know I don’t have any of the blisters, but I have everything else.” She held her bare arms out for his examination.

  “Nor do you have the virus in your blood or any of your tissues, Amanda.”

  “You’re wrong; it’s in my head, in my brain. I’m seeing things and I hear voices in my head. I’m saying random, crazy things. This is how it starts; you start seeing things, then you lose control of what you’re saying, and then you lose control over everything. I’ve been through this before. I watched my dead brother and father walk right in front of me when I was in Honduras, and when we were up here earlier I watched you and that other doctor, the one who lied to me—Martin —arguing in this room. Almost exactly where you’re standing now.”

  “And that’s what has you worried?” He sat in one of the two remaining chairs.

  “I saw Cameron Lambert dancing with his baby singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot.’ I didn’t even know his name was Cameron.”

  “That surprises me. He was one of your escorts when Doctor Martin was having you tested. He reported that you were very friendly.”

  Amanda tried to remember, but everyone looked the same in an isolation suit. “I never saw him dance or sing.”

  “I’m not saying that you did, and I don’t think that you actually saw Dr. Martin and me arguing in this room or any room. You were isolated from human contact for over a month in a tiny room with limited intellectual freedom, and that came directly after watching thirty people die and being trapped with their bodies, alone, in a jungle, surrounded by armed men. And let’s not forget what happened to you last year.” He sounded very reasonable, but Amanda remained completely unconvinced. “Okay, how about this: I divulge a secret that Dr. Martin and I were not on the same page, and then you meet face to face a man you had been friendly with a month earlier who is bursting with pride over his newborn son, and your brain goes to work. Your mind simply added color to the picture that others gave you; you didn’t create it.” Amanda’s features began to soften. “I doubt this is the virus, or any serious mental affliction, but if it makes you feel safer to be downstairs, then stay downstairs.”

  “I saw this very room in a hallucination,” she confessed. “And the one downstairs; I saw them exactly as they are. I even saw these chairs.” Her voice rose and she didn’t know if she was angry or terrified of the implications.

  “Amanda, you walked through this room when you arrived. I was right beh
ind you, and then we walked down those stairs, through the observation room, and into the isolation room.”

  She suddenly felt very foolish. He had answers for everything, and they made far more sense than hers. She dropped her head into her hands but didn’t cry. She was so humiliated; the only saving grace was that he was the only one who knew, and that he viewed her breakdown as an anticipated event. “I am so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be. In fact, I applaud your strength. After all you’ve been through, if your biggest problem is a little cerebral confabulation you are one special lady.” He nodded his head. “I think we’ll keep this conversation between us. If Dr. Martin finds out, he’ll want to do a brain biopsy next.”

  “If it’s okay with you, I’ll stay here tonight.”

  “It’s going to take some time for your mind to adjust, and learn to feel safe again. I see it a lot in my world.”

  “Post traumatic stress syndrome.”

  “I think that’s a reasonable diagnosis. The only difficulty in your case is trying to figure out which one of your traumas triggered it.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and a part of her wanted to give him a hug, but another part strongly resisted.

  “I do need to tell you that I won’t be around as much. Dr. Martin and his crew are taking over the day-to-day operations. I’ll still be here and I’ll check on you from time to time.”

  Her heart dropped. She trusted the colonel, and despite the fact that she had only met the man once, she didn’t trust Martin. “He’s the one keeping me here.”

  “He’s the one that has been directing your care,” he said evenly, but Amanda sensed a deep well of darker emotions. “I really don’t think there’s much more to do with you anyway. I’m guessing that you’ll be going home soon.” He stood, preparing to leave. “I hope when all this is over I have the opportunity to see you under different circumstances, Amanda.” He smiled and Amanda blushed.

  “I think I would like that, Colonel.” He was more than twice her age, but that didn’t seem to matter. She simply felt comfortable around him, and for now that was good enough.

  CHAPTER 19

  Amanda stared at the ceiling, and as the hours slowly passed the hope and trust she had placed in Colonel Bennett’s assessment began to fade. She had seen him several times in the past seven weeks, and had talked with him several more; his simple, unassuming demeanor radiated a quiet confidence that in ordinary circumstances she would find very comforting and reassuring. She rolled onto her side as MONA whispered in her ear that these were not ordinary circumstances. Bennett’s reasoning and logic were impeccable in the warm daylight hours, but in the cold dark of the night—when the impossible not only became possible but likely—reasoning and logic, no matter how impeccable, were no comfort.

  Alone in the cell, the voices were blessedly distant, but a single repetitive hallucination irritated her like no other. Each time she closed her eyes, her mind seemed to float through the walls of her cell and glide unseen through the dark corridors of Tellis. Like a kite without a string, she drifted at the whim of an unseen breeze, aimlessly floating. At first the disembodiment was a curious and enjoyable distraction and reminded her of the rare occasions when she drank to the point of intoxication. She wasn’t much of a drinker but had in her earlier years enjoyed just enough excess to realize that it was not the life for her. She hated the loss of control and the unreliability of mind and body, and that was the major difference with this experience. If she opened her eyes she immediately snapped back. No vertigo, no nausea, just a quick trip out of her cell—the perfect hallucinogenic experience. Only now she was tired, closer to exhausted, and the tedious trips that never went beyond the darkened rooms of the Tellis Medical Facility were preventing her from getting any sleep. Their novelty had worn off, and the unbidden ghostly trips were fast becoming irritating. Unlike the previous hallucinations, which were always intimately associated with an individual or a specific location, these were completely devoid of meaning or purpose. They retained the strangely hyper-real sense that the previous visions had, just not their significance.

  She returned to staring at the ceiling, wondering if this bland hallucination represented a change for the better or a further unbraiding of her mind. Her eyes began to close and once again she felt the lightening of her mind as it prepared for another meaningless jaunt through the halls. She abruptly sat up, and in a bid to stay awake forced herself to analyze the situation. Something was affecting her mind; that much was clear. Colonel Bennett assured her that it was nothing more serious than PTSD, and the educated, rational portions of her mind agreed. After all that she had experienced, some transient mental instability was to be expected. Only her id ruled the rest of her brain, and it was awake and restless. It whispered in MONA’s voice that no matter how illogical or impossible, she was still infected, and the situation was deteriorating, not improving.

  She tried to reject the idea. It has been almost two months, she thought.

  A virus can stay dormant for years. Varicella will present with chicken pox, and then decades later return as zoster, and the shingles, MONA countered.

  Both of those primarily involve the skin, she countered right back.

  Herpes Simplex starts as a cold sore, but in some people returns as a virulent medial temporal lobe encephalitis that most die from, and those who survive are usually impaired.

  She had remembered this very fact weeks ago but quickly put it out of her mind; apparently MONA had found it. This new virus, EDH 1, as it had been christened, had more than a passing similarity to Herpes Simplex I. Both presented with a rash. A cold sore was nothing more than a rash in the lining of the mouth, and, in an unfortunate few, the virus attacked the inner portions of the brain—centers that were intimately involved with the creation of memories, and when disturbed were capable of producing vivid and recurrent hallucinations. No one survives Herpes Encephalitis without treatment. It was a weak response but the only one she could think of.

  At this point we are the only one to survive.

  Bennett says they can’t find the virus in my blood or tissue. She clung to this one thought like a shipwreck victim clings to a log.

  That doesn’t mean it’s not there, or hiding in the nerves or in the brain.

  It was the logical counter to her one best hope. MONA had developed abilities beyond her usual Middle-Of-Night-Angst. Tired of the argument, she closed her mind to MONA and surrendered to the fatigue. Her eyes closed and her mind drifted away, at first through the corridors of Tellis, and later into the oblivion of sleep.

  ***

  She awoke with a start; it took a few seconds for her to recognize her familiar cell. She could hear voices through the open airlock and felt several more in her sleepy mind. During the short night, she had traded the hallucinations for the voices. She slipped out of bed and attended to her personal needs. Like every other morning, she found a new set of surgical scrubs and toiletries in the cubby next to the airlock. She ducked behind the curtain and began to dress. Modesty may be the first victim of hospitalization, but her mind was dark this morning and she didn’t have the slightest desire to indulge the lonely fantasies of the men around her. She finally pulled back the curtain as Nathan Martin ducked his head under the airlock’s seal.

  “Good morning,” he said, and immediately she doubted whether it was “good” or “morning.” He was of average height and slight build and was not, by any standards, an attractive man. He wasn’t repulsive; just, like his height, he was average. His dark hair was thinning on the top and streaked with grey. Amanda guessed him to be in his late fifties. “I hoped you slept well.” He was amiable, but her mood darkened even further. He pulled one of the two plastic chairs from a corner and sat without a word. Amanda edged closer to the bed and decided to remaining standing. “We met several weeks ago, I am …”

  “Nathan Martin. I know who you are. You are the person who is
keeping me here.”

  “It’s really not that simple. We just don’t know if it’s safe to release you back into the population.” He crossed his legs and she noticed how well he dressed.

  “But it’s safe for you to breathe the same air I breathe and to sit five feet from me.”

  “Fair enough.” He nodded casually, as if his contradiction was of no real concern. “With your permission I would like to run you through some of the tests that we performed earlier. Just the interviews at first. Perhaps we can jog something loose that will shed some light on what happened down there.” He smiled and it invoked a strong desire in Amanda to knock out a few of his perfectly straight white teeth. That way he couldn’t lie through as many.

  “And if I decide not to give you my permission?” Her eyes narrowed, reducing extraneous visual input as she focused on her visitor. He was lying, and it wasn’t just what he was saying; his demeanor, affect, and body language were all false. She couldn’t identify his tell, but her subconscious mind had picked up on it and was preparing for a confrontation.

  “I think that with your complete participation we will be able to get you home sooner.” Once again his words were warm, his smile friendly, and his face completely relaxed.

  I don’t believe that you have any intention of letting me go home, but I do believe that you are an accomplished liar. She wondered if there was any benefit to giving voice to her thought. As the moment stretched, his smile slowly faded but didn’t quite disappear. He watched her, waiting for a sign or an answer, and she knew that she had been correct. No matter how much she participated, he was going to do everything in his power to keep her.

  It’s his eyes, she thought. The steady gaze of an accomplished liar. He was going to make her disappear. No one outside this facility knew that she was still alive, and even the people who had taken care of her these past seven weeks were being replaced.