The Experiment

by John Darnton

  By the time Jude had turned off the ignition, she was already out of the car, bounding up the metal steps, using the banister to take the steps two at a time. She stopped suddenly halfway up and looked at her hand, holding it up to the light to get a better look at the thick red substance that was on it.

  Then she continued. She got to the door just as Jude reached the bottom of the staircase, and she rushed in, flicking on the light switch. She disappeared from view, but Jude knew that she had made some kind of horrible discovery. He knew it from the long, loud cry.

  He raced up after her and saw her standing there, in the middle of the room, stricken, her mouth still open. She lifted one hand and pointed vaguely in the air, a gesture that took in the entire room—the tousled bed, the clothes lying about and the pale yellow walls, smeared with blood.

  ¨

  Skyler awoke in a haze to a strange, sterile room, all in white, and felt as if he were floating somewhere close to the ceiling. Although he was in fact drifting toward consciousness, he had the opposite sensation—he believed he was falling asleep. Not just asleep but dreaming, and not just dreaming but having a nightmare.

  He looked out through a filter of white gauze; everything was blurry and unconnected to him. Sounds were muffled. People moved slowly, as if they were underwater, and talked gobbledygook. They were adorned in sparkling white uniforms, which caught the light and seemed to shimmer. A woman gliding soundlessly around the room had a halo of light brown hair underneath a little white cap. That particular detail arrested his attention, and he tried to marshal his strength and to focus.

  For a dreadful thought had formed itself, it was so frightening that he wanted to abandon the nightmare right away, but the more he began to feel he was awake, the more terrifying the whole situation became. He did not want to come to and discover that the room was really there, that everything was really happening. Because the nightmare was that he was back on the island—in the basement of the Big House, in the operating room.

  Why else would he be lying in bed like that with doctors around him?

  Doctors! The mere thought was enough to send a jolt of fear up his spine.

  He told himself to move a foot as a test. He did, and he felt the ankle joint bend, the curl of the toes, the movement of the sheets. He was not asleep. This is really happening to me!

  The haze was slowly lifting now. He was beginning to see more clearly. Above him were ceiling tiles. He could see their joints and dots. A long white curtain hung down and cut the room in half. There in a corner was a blabbering television set, hanging from the ceiling.

  Where am I?

  A nurse had her back to him; her elbow was moving as if she was writing, and now he could see the bottom of a clipboard. She lowered it and turned toward him—so he quickly closed his eyes and froze, feigning sleep.

  He could feel her bending over him—he could smell her breath, like almonds.

  "Are you awake? Are you awake? Can you hear me?"

  Her voice had a strange accent, one he had never heard before.

  "Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your eyes. Do you speak English?"

  He played possum.

  "Habla inglés? Español?"

  He didn't move a muscle. He kept his eyes closed, trying not to squeeze them too tightly, and he made an effort to keep his breathing steady. It was hard to do—he wasn't sure he could stay perfectly still much longer—because he had an overwhelming desire to pull back and protect himself.

  What is she doing?

  Luckily, she moved away; he heard her footsteps retreating toward the foot of the bed, and he risked opening one eye. Her back was turned again. Her skin was light brown, and she was wearing a crisp white uniform.

  Another blurry figure entered. A man, it seemed.

  Skyler closed his eyes and wanted to leap out of bed and to cry out: Who are you? Where am I?

  "He didn't come to yet?" It is a man.

  "No." That strange accent again. "His signs are improving, but he's unresponsive."

  "Damnedest thing I've ever seen. Ambulance brings him in, no idea who he is, no ID. And on top of that, he's acting crazy."

  Now Skyler began to feel things, a constriction on his chest, a weight on his right arm, which was lying on the bed out of his field of vision. In the distance he could hear other sounds, the canned laughter of a television show, the murmur of voices, and something else—something he had never heard before. It sounded like a series of blips and beeps.

  "If I had to bet, I'd say it's a violent reaction to some new kind of narcotic. Whatever it is, I hope it's not widespread. That's all we need. A new drug plague." He sounded vaguely disgusted. "The crap people put into their bodies these days."

  The man and the woman walked in a huddle to the door and left.

  Skyler sat up. He felt a tug on his chest and looked down. There were wires attached to him, held on by white tape, and extending across the white cotton bedspread. And next to him was a contraption, a silver pole on wheels standing close to the bed, and attached to it was a large plastic bag—it looks like blood—and here was the truly scary part: the bag of blood was attached to a tube and the tube flowed down and was attached to him! He could see the red liquid moving down the tube and disappearing underneath a bandage. He raised his arm and the flow lessened.

  It's going right inside me.

  His eyes followed the wires, and he gathered them up in his left hand and lifted them, holding them high. They curved down and then up again and led to a machine. It had two green-tinted screens, across which white lines danced and squiggled in reputing patterns. It was the machine that was emitting the blips and beeps that had suddenly sounded loud.

  He tried to calm himself. You are not on the island. You've seen the operating room of the Big House, and it doesn't look like this. You are someplace else.

  He tried to recall how he had gotten here, what had happened just before. But he could not remember anything. He had been in the motel room, he thought. He tried hard to remember but could not; he saw Tizzie's face, then Julia's.

  He knew he was losing it. He felt panic rising. He told himself he shouldn't give in to it, but he couldn't help himself—it was like a wave that started inside him and then moved outside. It grew all the time so that it became huge, as large as the room, and it turned against him, threatening to come crashing down upon him. Those doctors, those nurses, the uniforms.

  I have to get out of here!

  He pulled the wires violently, ripping them across his chest and felt the flesh tearing. The sounds! The pulsating blips merged into a continuous monotone, then turned into a high-pitched whine. Beeeeeep!

  He grabbed the tube and tugged. It didn't give, so he picked at an edge of the bandage and tore it off—and looked horrified at the glass needle puncturing his vein. The whining continued. Beeeeeep! He grabbed the needle and pulled. It came spurting out, and now blood was pouring out from everywhere, from his vein and from the tube, suddenly flopping about like a loose hose, spraying red fluid everywhere, on the white bedspread, on the floor, on his arm, his chest. The sound seemed deafening.

  They'll hear it! They'll come!

  So he had no alternative but to flee. He leapt out of bed—he could see he was wearing some kind of pajama bottoms—and tried to stand, but suddenly he was feeling weak, very weak, or was it that he couldn't find his footing?—that he was sliding on the blood? He went down hard and landed on his rump. Then he lay for a moment on the floor, where he could see under the bed the feet rushing in and hear the sound of excited voices. He felt arms lifting him up, placing him back on the bed, people holding him down, those uniforms again and those faces, pushing in too close. A hypodermic.

  A sudden quick pinch in his upper arm.

  "There, that ought to do it."

  The hands were still holding him down, but they seemed to be pushing, too, so that soon he found himself at the bottom of a well, sinking under the weight of the water. It turned everything blurry,
the faces, the white cap. It muffled the sounds. He was going under, back to his dream, back to his nightmare.

  Maybe he was, after all, on the island, in the basement of the Big House. Maybe—it was his last thought before he succumbed to unconsciousness—maybe I've never really left it!

  Chapter 23

  Jude and Tizzie burst into the emergency room just as a young man with black hair and a scarred complexion was being treated for a knife wound. He was drunk and struggling, and it took two nurse's aides to pin him to a dressing table while a doctor swabbed the wound, blood covering the fingers of his latex gloves.

  They had reached the hospital in no time flat, once the motel owner had calmed down enough to tell them what had happened. Scared out of her wits when Skyler had staggered into the office, bleeding on the reception desk and then collapsing on the floor, she had yelled at them as soon as she saw them.

  "Your friend almost died," she said. "Turned out he cut himself. But he's sick, too. How could you leave him alone all day?"

  She had called an ambulance and that had led to an unwelcome visit by the cops, and then a battery of questions and papers to be filled out—all of it complicated by the fact that she knew nothing whatsoever about her guests other than the names scrawled on the register. That Jude had paid for the rooms in advance—in cash—was of particular interest to the police.

  But once the owner looked at Tizzie and read the distress on her face, she softened, going so far as to offer them a cup of coffee from an automatic percolator perched upon a bookcase. Tizzie had declined and took the directions instead, while Jude grabbed a fresh shirt and pair of pants.

  Now, in the emergency room, they tried in vain to get the attention of the doctor. Tizzie cleared her throat.

  "Excuse me," she said, loud enough to carry over the muffled grunts from the drunk, whose head was being pressed into the table by a bent elbow.

  "Sorry, we're busy right now," the doctor shot over his shoulder. "You shouldn't be in here anyway."

  Through a pair of swinging double doors, they found a nurse's station and asked if a man had been treated with a hand wound.

  "Couple of hours ago," replied a nurse, punching a keyboard and searching a computer screen. "Here it is. 6:20 p.m. Admitted 7:10. No identification. We couldn't get a name out of him. So we listed him as John Doe."

  She looked up and studied Jude. "Your brother, huh?"

  Jude nodded.

  "Thought so. You can go visit him if you want. Room 360—that's on the third floor, elevator down the corridor to the left."

  They started to go.

  "Wait a minute," she said. "I need a name. Address. Information on health insurance."

  "We'll be back, settle it all up," said Jude, escorting Tizzie away by the elbow. "We've got to see him first, make sure he's all right."

  The elevator door opened, and they ducked inside.

  The door to Room 360 was closed. They opened it quietly and slipped inside. The room was dim, except for a night light above the closest bed, which was empty. Beyond was a drawn curtain, and behind it they could hear the piercing rhythm of a heart monitor. Tizzie went first, walking quietly and peering around the curtain.

  Skyler was fast asleep.

  His right hand was bandaged, a plastic blood bag was hanging from a stanchion and feeding a tube that went into his arm, and an oxygen tube was clipped to his nose. On the bedside table, the monitor chirped and sent its green blip dancing across the screen in waves.

  "Doesn't look like the kind of guy who would trash a motel room," said Jude.

  Tizzie approached the bed and took Skyler's good hand in hers.

  "He must have been scared to death," she said. "What do you think is wrong?"

  "Who knows? Raised on that island, there are probably all kinds of diseases he's never been exposed to. He could have anything."

  Jude put his palm on Skyler's forehead, which did feel slightly feverish.

  "The cut he did to himself," he continued. "There was a broken glass in the bathroom sink and a lot of blood. He probably panicked when he saw it, freaked out and ran outside."

  He looked in the corner where a pair of Skyler's pants—Jude's, actually—lay crumpled on a chair. They had bloodstains.

  "It must have been hard on him," said Tizzie. "You know how much he hates doctors, how much they frighten him—all those memories from his childhood."

  At that moment, as if on cue, in walked a young man, nattily dressed, with a friendly-looking, freckled face. He put out his hand.

  "Dr. Geraldi. I'm glad to see our patient here has visitors. We don't know anything about him. Not even who he is."

  They shook hands. The doctor looked searchingly at Jude.

  "Yes," said Jude. "We're related."

  "Brothers."

  "Yes."

  The doctor looked at Skyler and, with a quick tilt of the head, summoned them outside into the corridor. They followed him to an office, where he gestured for them to sit down.

  He peppered them with questions: Skyler's age, medical history, recent symptoms. Any known drug abuse? Any signs of strange behavior? They provided him with as much information as they could, which was little indeed, but they told him nothing about Skyler's true past.

  Dr. Geraldi kept shaking his head.

  "I've just never seen anything like this. I don't know what it is."

  "He's lost a lot of blood," offered Jude.

  "No, that's not it. He's got a mean little cut there on his hand, but that's not the main problem. I'm using the transfusion to give him urokinase."

  "What's that?"

  "It's for thrombolytic therapy."

  "What?"

  "The heart."

  "Are you telling us he had a heart attack?"

  "That's just it—it's hard to say. I'm not really sure."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Certainly some of the presenting symptoms were there—nausea, dizziness, pallor, shortness of breath and, of course, chest pains. At least from what I could gather. He was hysterical when he was brought in, by the way. I took an EKG—it showed Q waves. That's another sign."

  "But you're not sure?"

  "No. AMI is common in older people, but someone his age—"

  "AMI?"

  "Sorry. Acute myocardial infarction. A narrowing of coronary artery from atherosclerotic plaque formation—it's just not... well, common. You say he's twenty-five?"

  "Yes."

  "But when I look into his eyes, I can already see some signs of calcification. That leads to cataracts. Has he reported any blurring of vision?"

  "No."

  "And you say there's no history of heart trouble in your family?"

  Jude squirmed. "Not that I know of."

  "Well, you would surely know it. People don't just carry on."

  "No, of course not."

  Dr. Geraldi gave a wan smile. "But there are other symptoms I don't understand. It's as if his whole body is fighting off some raging infection, but I can't find what it is. I took a quick look at his blood and it's... it's just strange. I'll know more tomorrow—maybe. I've ordered a complete workup on it. In the meantime..."

  "What?"

  "We'll carry on with this."

  "Will he be all right?"

  "Oh, I think so. I see an improvement already in his vital signs. We may give antihypertensive and cholesterol-lowering agents, maybe antianginal drugs. I'd just like to know what it is. The symptoms are confusing."

  "Will it reoccur?" she asked.

  "It could. I can't rule out that possibility. You're sure he never had anything like this before?"

  Jude shook his head no—but he was hardly sure at all.

  "Well, I just can't say. I wish I could tell you there'll be nothing to worry about. Of course, it could be some obscure virus. These things happen, you know. They appear out of nowhere, make you sick as a dog for a while and then disappear."

  That evening, Tizzie and Jude unwound over dinner at the Big Bull Steak Hou
se. The table they were shown to contained dirty dishes, and a Mexican busboy came carrying a plastic bin to take them away. Jude engaged him in conversation; they talked in Spanish before the place settings were laid.

  Jude asked for a J&B as soon as the waitress brought them water, and another when they placed their order. Both drinks came quickly and did their work; before he had taken his first forkful of meat, he was feeling no pain. Tizzie was abstemious.

  Skyler's illness cast a cloud over the dinner. But still, for the first time in weeks, they talked openly. No more secrets or unfinished sentences or long silences.

  Amazing what honesty can do, Jude thought. And it did something else, too; as he looked across the table at her in the flickering candlelight, at her strong chin, her blazing eyes, her rounded shoulders, he realized how much he wanted her and how long it had been since they had slept together.

  He reached across the table and she took his hand.

  "I know how hard this is on you," she said.

  He smiled.

  "It all seems to fall on your shoulders. You're the one who figures out what to do, who plans ahead... you're the one who keeps us going." She looked him in the eye and added: "I want you to know that I see that."

  She patted his hand—not a good sign, he thought.

  She looked away and was silent, and he tried to imagine what she was thinking.

  "I can't imagine another person looking like you," he said abruptly.

  He had hit the mark. She leaned forward.

  "Neither can I. That's what so strange about this whole thing. All your life you think you're unique... and then you learn there's somebody out there who looks just like you—or at least a lot like you. Somebody who maybe thinks like you do, feels what you feel. I would have given anything to meet her and to see... I don't know..."

  "What?"

  "I don't know. Everything. What I'm like from the outside. How I strike someone else. How I might have been different. What I would have been like growing up under totally different circumstances."

  "I don't think you would have learned any of that. She wouldn't have been like you—you more than anyone should know that."