“Tell me about it.”
“So, you don’t know?” Edmond asked, a little surprised.
“I’m the patient, not the doctor.”
“Yeah, but you let him just put stuff into you that you don’t understand?”
“I ran out of options.” The three of us were quiet. We were all way too familiar with running out of options.
“I think it has something to do with differentiated stem cells.” I pulled the phrase right out of my dream.
“Oh yeah. Stem cells are cool,” Edmond said. I doubted he knew much about them. But they did sound cool. Or at least they’d been in the news a lot. “Was that on the website?”
Goth sat up and let his legs hang off the bed. “Sure, I think so.” I had the feeling he was lying, mostly to make himself feel better, the way I had.
“So, the treatment has something to do with growing new cells?” Edmond looked at Goth then at me.
I shrugged. “I dunno.”
“I can see how growing new cells would help cancer. Like for your immune system maybe,” Goth pondered. “But my disease is genetic. And Edmond’s is kind of structural. How would new cells help us?”
“Maybe it’s about growing healthy new cells to replace your sick ones,” I guessed. That would teach me to pick phrases out of random dreams.
“But we’re sick in different ways.”
I shrugged. “You know, my mom was the one who found this place. I was too sick to ask a lot of questions. What did it actually say on the website?”
“It was a lot of medical talk and even that didn’t say much. It was like they wanted test subjects but didn’t want to give much away,” Goth said.
That actually made sense. It was in keeping with the whole secrecy thing.
“Dr. Harry found me. My sister made a ‘Save Edmond’ website. She used my baby pictures. It kind of went viral. I only agreed to do it because I thought it would get me a girlfriend or two. Instead, I ended up here.”
Something began to make sense. The Godwin Institute wasn’t about cancer, but it was about terminal illness. Dr. Harry had been doing something with the two old guys who’d been here and then disappeared, and the little girl, too. If there even was a little girl, I mean, I dreamed her. Right?
But if there was a little girl, she’d obviously been very, very sick. Had Dr. Harry tried to cure her and failed? Was that what happened with the old men? He’d given them Property Five and—
No, wait, there were Properties One through Four. Is that what he’d used on them? Property Four? Or Three? And now that Property Five was working, Dr. Harry had looked for subjects like me, young and terminal. He was changing the formula and the subjects. It had been a long time since I’d had a science class, but that didn’t seem like good science. You weren’t supposed to change more than one variable at a time.
“I did google Dr. Harry,” Edmond said. “But all I found was some stuff on life extension. Did you know there’s a whole magazine about life extension? And a secret society?”
I didn’t know, but it made sense. The world was full of people who wanted to live forever. My bet was that most of the stuff out there was just about being super healthy. Dr. Harry, though, had something that might really work. It was a hard thing to believe, but—weird dreams aside—I was beginning to.
TWENTY-SEVEN
That afternoon, I was almost finished with my stem cell/antibiotic/and whatever else treatment when Goth said, “I’m going to go have a cigarette or two.” He tipped his head in a way that meant he wanted me to come with him when I got unhooked.
Edmond stood up a little too quickly and sat right back down, “I’ll go with you. And maybe we can check out the other ward.” He threw in a lascivious wink. “See if any babes—”
I cringed. The whole point was to go some place Edmond wasn’t.
Goth said, “Yeah, um, aren’t you supposed to begin your baseline testing soon?”
“I’ll just tell Nurse Margie where we’re going.”
“That’s not a good idea. She’s going to know you’re going out to smoke. That will get you a ten-minute lecture. I’ll be back inside before she’s done.”
“But I’m not having a cigarette. I’m just tagging along to see if the ladies have arrived.”
“She won’t believe you. But, hey, go ahead and give it a try.”
Edmond obviously wanted to go but couldn’t if Goth wasn’t going to be with him every step of the way. He was in bad shape and knew he needed someone with him to lean on or pick him up if he face-planted. “Maybe I’ll go later. The tests are important, huh?”
“Yeah, they are,” I said. “Missing them would be a bad idea.”
Goth shrugged and left. Edmond and I stared at each other. After a long bit, during which my IV stand beeped to indicate it was done, Edmond said, “He doesn’t like me, does he?”
“I don’t know. Why wouldn’t he like you?”
“People don’t like me.”
That made me feel like shit. I didn’t like him much. I doubted Goth liked him, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to know it. “You just got here. He doesn’t know you well enough to not like you.”
He perked up. “Yeah, that’s right. Maybe he’ll like me later. Maybe if I give him some tips on how to attract the ladies.”
“That might do it,” I said. It wasn’t even close to truthful, but I didn’t think it was my place to explain how wrong Edmond was.
Nurse Margie came in. She unhooked me from the IV and told Edmond it was time for him to go upstairs. He had to lean on her before he was even halfway across the ward. Still, he managed to huff out the question, “Are there any nude beaches nearby?”
“Oh, how would I know that?” Nurse Margie said, as though she’d never imagined anything remotely sexual. That was clearly untrue since she’d mentioned her son several times. She’d had sex at least once.
I waited as patiently as I could for them to leave. Then I waited a bit longer. I didn’t want to catch up with them as they climbed the stairs. My heart was pounding harder than it had in weeks. I would have thought it was the treatment I’d just had, but it wasn’t. It was Goth. We weren’t going to be able to do anything in the ward that night, but maybe we could find somewhere outside to mess around a little. Or a lot. That was the thought that had my heart going. And certain other areas tingling. I made a mental note to never tell Dr. Harry about the tingling in those other areas.
When I couldn’t wait any longer, I got off the bed and shuffled out of the ward. The front desk was empty, of course. Nurse Margie was busy delivering Edmond to Ray’s incapable hands. I could almost hear their conversation, Nurse Margie introducing Edmond, Ray and Edmond grunting at each other. Or did I actually hear it somehow? I pushed the thought away. I didn’t care. I slipped down the hall to the back of the building. Once I was in the solarium, I stopped and looked out the windows.
The girls had arrived, I could hear them chattering in their ward. Edmond would be thrilled. They were asking each other questions about the treatment, wondering who else was here, talking about Dr. Harry. One of the girls thought he was attractive for an older man. I thought he had been attractive once, but now he was just an old guy who couldn’t manage to trim his beard or iron his clothes.
Edmond would freak-the-f-out. They were girls. I was pretty sure he’d like them no matter what they looked like. But would they like him? I didn’t think so. I suspected he was right when he said people didn’t like him.
I focused on the backyard, trying to see where Goth had gone. I didn’t see him anywhere. I decided to slip out and run over behind the double-wide. He might be somewhere out there.
Quietly, I slipped out of the solarium. Running through the calf-high grass, I hurried around the double-wide until I was climbing up a ramp onto a weathered wooden deck. Goth wasn’t there. I searched the back of the property and didn’t see him. He wasn’t near the pond or the raised gardens or the woods at the back. So where was he? Had he gone into th
e woods?
A fly buzzed around my head. Annoying and really freaky. I wondered if something in the treatment I was getting attracted them. Like maybe I had too much glucose in my system and reeked of sugar. Knowing I couldn’t stand on the deck long, I turned and studied the double-wide. That’s when I noticed the sliding glass door was open about six inches.
Ah, Goth must be inside.
I pushed back the screen, then the glass door and stepped inside. The place smelled musty and unused. I stood in a large kitchen with an attached dining area. An old wooden table with a couple of mismatched chairs was crowded up against the wall. The kitchen was bare, an empty space where the refrigerator should have been, with naked counters and an empty pantry next to an electric range that might be older than I was. I stepped into the living room. It was large, with nothing but an uncomfortable-looking sofa sitting in the middle of the room facing the wall. The randomness of the furniture suggested the place had been there when the Institute purchased the front building. And probably long before that.
Which made me wonder, What were they doing with it? Were they doing anything with it? As I walked down the hallway to the bedrooms, I discovered that yes, they were doing something with the trailer. The first bedroom I encountered was small and filled with file boxes. They were using the double-wide for storage. That made sense. Why put old files into a basement when you could put them into a nice, dry bedroom?
Then, I noticed the door to the next room. It was steel. Galvanized. The kind used for a walk-in refrigerator. It was weird, completely wrong. It didn’t belong there. I’d only ever seen that kind of refrigerator in movies. I tried to remember which movie, but I drew a blank. Something scary with co-eds in a dormitory and one gets trapped inside the walk-in refrigerator. Of course, it must not have been that scary since I reached out to open the door to the refrigerated room.
But before I could get the door open, Goth spun me around and pushed me against it… kissing me. His lips were hot, deliciously hot. Is kissing always like this? I wondered. Is it always so scorching?
Oh, God, I didn’t care. He was kissing me, and it was like a sunny afternoon, like being touched by the sky. He pushed his tongue into my mouth and explored. I was barely breathing, hardly wanting to breathe. His hands roamed over me, every bit as curious as his tongue. My heart jumped, paused, and then seemed not to land.
I wondered if that feeling was what love was like. Waiting for your heart to beat again. Tentatively, I rubbed my hands across his shoulders. I touched the hair on the back of his neck. I entangled my tongue with his. Doing some exploring of my own. Discovering.
And still my heart didn’t beat.
Goth pushed into me, trying to get even closer. I couldn’t help worrying about my heart. Behind his back, I took my left wrist into my right hand. With my thumb, I tried to subtly search for a pulse. I didn’t find one. Could that be right? Could I not have a pulse? No, it couldn’t be because that would mean…
I pushed Goth away. I must have had real worry on my face because he said, “Are you okay?”
“I think my heart stopped.”
“Wow, that’s really romantic.”
“No, I think my heart stopped. Really.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
We hurried back to the main building. Goth huffing, his arm around me. I kept checking my wrists for a pulse and not finding one. I felt sluggish, as though I was moving in slow motion. My feet and ankles felt tighter and heavier with each step.
Goth kept giving me sidelong glances. I probably should have just said I didn’t feel well and left it at that. My heart hadn’t stopped. I was still standing, still walking, so it couldn’t have. Why had I said something that stupid?
When we got to the nurse’s desk, I said the more rational, “I’m not feeling so good.”
“What’s wrong?” Nurse Margie asked.
“He said his heart stopped.”
“Obviously, his heart hasn’t stopped.” She tried not to break into a smile when she said that. She looked closely at me, expecting a practical joke or a hypochondriac, instead seeing someone very sick. “You don’t look too good, though.”
“I don’t have a pulse.”
“They’re not always easy to find.” She reached out a hand to take my wrist. Moving her fingers around, she searched for my pulse. She didn’t find it. Kept trying. Still couldn’t find it.
She told Goth to take me into the examining room. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.” I was pretty sure she meant to comfort herself with that. She couldn’t find my pulse. Of course there was something to worry about.
Goth and I went into the examining room. It looked pretty much as it had the last time I was there: neat, orderly, sterile. It was the kind of room where you should feel safe but usually felt anything but. Like a good patient, I got up on the examining table.
“I think I died the first night I was here.”
“Bae, you don’t seem very dead to me,” Goth said.
“No, um, I…” I was tongue-tied for a moment. He called me bae. That was so…sexy. “Um, I mean, I died for a minute or two. I had this kind of vision of myself on the ceiling watching everything as it happened. And then I sort of jumped back into my body.”
“So that’s why you think your heart stopped? Because it has before?”
I nodded. He got a concerned look on his face then looked away for a moment and when he did he said, “Oh, man, your ankles.”
I lifted them up in front of me so I could see them, pulling up my pajama bottoms at this same time; this pair was a deep blue plaid. I’d been wearing an old pair of corduroy slippers most of the time I’d been sick. My ankles and feet had turned an angry eggplant purple. That wasn’t right.
My first thought was “lividity.” In addition to America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway, my mom and I watched all the forensic shows and I now knew exactly what lividity was. It was blood pooling in a corpse after the heart has stopped. Obviously, that couldn’t be what was happening to me, though it definitely looked that way.
Just then, Dr. Harry flew into the room, Nurse Margie trailing behind him. Using his stethoscope, he checked the pulse in my neck, my chest, my wrists. Without looking up, he said, “Goliath, you need to leave.”
“No, that’s okay, I want him to stay.”
“It’s not up to you. Goliath, I said leave.”
He obviously didn’t want to go, but he had no choice. “I’ll be right outside.”
“I had trouble finding his pulse,” Nurse Margie said. “I’m sure it’s there, it’s just difficult to find.”
Dr. Harry pushed me down on the table, opened my pajama top, and slipped in the stethoscope.
“What’s happening to me?”
“Be quiet. I need to listen to your heart.”
I did as I was told. He stepped back and studied me seriously. “Remember to breathe.”
“I’m breathing.”
“Not often enough. Nurse, would you get out the defibrillator?”
Fear and confusion filled her face. “But—”
“Just do it.”
Nurse Margie hurried to get the defibrillator out of the cabinet. She rested it on the counter and stared at it a moment. “Doctor, you can’t use this on him. He’s not in cardiac arrest. Look at him—”
Dr. Harry pushed her out of the way, plugged the paddles into the machine and turned it on.
Trying to keep her voice low, Nurse Margie continued, “He’s conscious. He’s not showing signs of arrhythmia. Just because we can’t find—”
“Step outside, nurse.”
“No. You’re making things—”
“Out!”
Cowed by the volume of his voice, Nurse Margie ran out of the office. Dr. Harry set the machine and then grabbed the paddles and pressed them onto my chest.
“Isn’t she right? I mean, I’m awake so can’t be having heart—”
Dr. Harry hit a button on the paddle, and I was walloped with a bolt of elect
ricity that felt like I’d been tackled by a three hundred pound linebacker—if that’s actually what linebackers do, I really don’t know.
Anyway, I felt like I was in a kind of shock. It hurt even after it was over, but my heart was pounding against my rib cage like it wanted to get out. I took deep, ragged breaths because they felt good, deliciously good. The unpleasant burning smell in the air may have been coming from my chest. I looked down and saw two angry red spots where I’d been shocked.
“My heart stopped. Why? And why am I conscious?”
“Your heart didn’t stop. It slowed. Your pulse was barely perceptible, but it was there. You just needed a little shock to bring you back up to speed.”
He was lying. Nurse Margie said you couldn’t use that machine on someone who wasn’t in cardiac arrest, and I had the feeling she was right. Except she couldn’t be right. If my heart had really stopped, I’d have passed out. I’d have been unconscious. And that didn’t happen.
“What about my ankles?”
“Ankles?” he asked even as he moved down to them and pulled back the hems of my pajama legs. He was quiet.
“That’s lividity, isn’t it?”
“Lividity happens in corpses. You’re not a corpse. When your heart slowed, blood collected in your feet. I assume you were standing when the episode began?” He began rubbing my ankles, helping the blood work its way back into circulation.
I didn’t believe him. He was telling me parts of the truth but not all of it. So what was the truth? I was cold all the time. My body temperature ran much lower than it should. I didn’t have an appetite. I felt stiff. Sometimes I forgot to breathe. I smelled bad. My heart stopped, and I didn’t pass out. Blood pooled in my body. I attracted flies. An idea was beginning to form. One that made me feel numb. Number than normal.
“The night I got here, I died.”
“For a few minutes, yes. But I revived you.” He was still rubbing my ankles. It felt good.
“What’s in it? What’s in Property Five?”
He stiffened. “That’s proprietary information. I can’t share that with you.”
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