“I’m more a Northanger Abbey or Persuasion fan myself,” Dr. Cans said. “Mystery and imagination. Hijinks galore.”
“I would have pegged you as more of a psychological thriller.”
Dr. Cans shrugged. “They have their place, like everything else.”
“But no self-help books.”
“No self-help books.”
Dr. Cans couldn’t tell if that appeased Amy or made her even more suspicious. But she was talking, so she would consider it a win.
They sat quietly for another moment, Dr. Cans idly twirling her pen between her fingers while Amy looked everywhere but at her. Finally Amy let out a sigh.
“Books then,” she said defensively.
“Books?” Dr. Cans repeated.
“You said that this is my time and we can talk about whatever I’d like. I’d like to talk about books.”
“We can talk books,” Dr. Cans agreed. She gestured around the room. “As you can see, I’m fairly fond of them.”
“I’ve never seen a doctor put real books in her office.”
“Real books?”
“Yeah,” Amy said. “Real books. As in, books people would actually read.” She glanced around. “You don’t have any books on leadership or personal improvement or coping. In fact,” she paused, looking around again, “do you have anything other than fiction in here?”
“I have my psychology books,” Dr. Cans said, pointing over her left shoulder towards a smaller case tucked underneath the window.
“Yeah, but those are medical books. They aren’t going to tell me to embrace my inner demons or meditate for spiritual and physical unity.”
Dr. Cans smiled. “Those sound like very specific examples,” she said. “I’ll assume you read them both somewhere before?”
Amy pointed towards her chair. “Right in this very chair.”
She narrowed her eyes on that last word, clearly waiting for Dr. Cans to tell her about the benefits of each of those recommendations. So she went another way.
“Do you have a favorite?”
Amy blinked, taken aback. “A favorite what?”
“A favorite book. Or author or genre or anything, really.”
She could tell she’d struck gold because Amy clearly had something to say. She seemed to reign herself in though, clamping down on whatever thoughts were swirling around in her head, going so far as to physically pull herself away, as far back into her chair as she could. Her eyes glanced to the pen and paper Dr. Cans was holding, and she came to a split second decision. Getting up, she walked to her desk, pulled open the top drawer, and dropped both the paper and the pen in and shut the door. Then she walked back to her chair, kicked off her shoes, and sat down, pulling her legs up under her like she was settling in for a good chat. Good thing she’d worn pants today.
“I don’t really have a favorite book,” Dr. Cans said thoughtfully. “I love Austen, of course. I’ve read them all.”
“Even Lady Shannon?” Amy asked.
Dr. Cans smiled at the attempt to catch her in a lie. “Yes, I’ve read Lady Susan. And I believe you’ll find it tucked in at the end of my Austens, seeing as it was the last published.”
“But the first written,” Amy added. “Of her published works anyway.”
“I keep most of my books here,” Dr. Cans said, segueing subtly to keep Amy just slightly off-balance. “I have a fairly extensive collection. You can borrow them, if you’d like. Something to read after curfew.”
Amy stiffened and Dr. Cans mentally cursed herself, acknowledging the mistake the moment it left her mouth. For a few minutes, Amy had been distracted. The moment she’d mentioned curfew, it brought her back to reality and she lost her.
“Something to read after curfew or something to keep me distracted and preoccupied after curfew?”
The timer on Dr. Cans desk went off and Amy stood. “I’ll pass, thanks. But I appreciate the party effort.”
She strode to the door and yanked it open before Barnes had the chance. “Better luck next time, doc,” she said.
The sigh was deep. It had already been a long day and she still needed to get through Andre. At least Amy hadn’t been angry enough to return the copy of Jane Eyre she’d snuck off the shelf last night. It was a small victory. Very small. It told her Amy hadn’t been put off permanently. If she had, she would have thrown the beat-up pocket edition back in her face. As it was, some part of Amy had listened. Not enough to make a difference, but enough to make a start.
Or so she hoped.
Chapter 12
“Knowledge is dangerous. Once you know something, you can’t get rid of it. You have to carry it. Always.” Samantha Shannon
Knowledge is power. Or knowledge is fatal. Both are true.
Which will be true for her?
***
Quincy
“So,” she said, swinging her legs up under her as she sank into the rickety old armchair Dave had pulled up in front of his desk. “Where do we start?”
Dave hadn’t wasted any time jumping on her new-found compliance and was eager to get started with the testing. He had persuaded Logan to keep to his self-imposed schedule and go on his nightly rounds shortly after dinner. Logan hadn’t been happy about it, but he had gone. Dave himself had yet to sit. In fact, he had yet to look at her. Quincy watched as he checked the water in the teapot he had boiling on the hot plate and added lemon slices to two chipped china tea cups. He gingerly laid a tiny bag of tea in each cup and then poured the boiling water, filling the dank basement with the smells of lemongrass and mint. He sat one cup in front of her and placed his beside his notepad before finally sinking into his own plush thrift store knock-off. The soft strains of smooth jazz filled the room and then, finally, he looked at her.
“There,” he said. “I almost feel like a doctor again.”
She gave him a funny look. “Doctors spend a lot of time making tea and setting the mood, do they?” she asked wryly.
“This one did,” he answered, amused by her take on it. “When I ran my own practice, I always found the best way to begin with anyone was to talk. And the best way to get someone to open up is to set them at their ease.”
Dave seemed wistful as he thought back on his earlier days.
Better days, you mean.
Quincy picked up her cup and took a tiny sip, mindful of the steam still billowing from it. Not bad. “Is tea going to help me feel better about all of this?”
“Not at all,” Dave said easily, shaking off his sense of nostalgia. “Nothing is going to make this better, Quincy. Nothing but time. And knowledge.” He took a drink from his own cup and grimaced. “I realize we both prefer coffee. Maybe I should have skipped the ambiance and went with the tried and true.”
“I don’t know,” Quincy mused. “I actually think it’s quite nice.”
It was. There was something about the music and the drink and the quiet that was very soothing. It made her feel more comfortable about what was coming.
“Well, that’s kind of you to say.” Dave was nothing if not gracious. “And in keeping with my old way of doing things, I’d like to start off by just talking.”
“Logan said with Jones that you ran tests to figure out what was wrong with him.”
“I did,” Dave agreed. “After we spent several hours getting to know each other and I had enough information to define the possible parameters of his disease. I need the layout before I can experiment,” he said.
“So everyone is a little different,” Quincy summed up. “What worked for Jones won’t work for me.”
“Precisely.”
That did make sense. And she supposed he’d want to hear everything firsthand, but then again, she’d already been here for several weeks. Surely Logan had filled him in on everything already.
“Yes, Logan did give me a rundown of your road trip antics,” Dave said mildly, apparently guessing her thoughts. “But his impressions aren’t yours. I need to hear it from your perspective.”
&nb
sp; “That’s what I was afraid of.” She sighed. “Where do you want me to start?”
“How about we start small,” he suggested. “Let’s just talk about daily life. Eating, sleeping, your daily routine.”
“You already know I don’t sleep,” Quincy pointed out.
“But I want you to tell me about it,” Dave said. “Tell me what it’s like. When you say you don’t sleep, do you mean you don’t sleep very soundly? That you sleep off and on, or that you only sleep for a few hours at a time?”
“Sometimes, if I’m really lucky or if I’ve had a killer migraine, I’ll sleep for a couple of hours. Mostly though, I doze for a few minutes here and there between thoughts.”
“In between different thoughts?” Dave repeated. “Are these thoughts about things that happened during the day or about things you need to do tomorrow?”
“No,” Quincy said, then corrected herself. “Well, sometimes. Mostly though, they’re random little bits. Sometimes they’re related, but mostly it’s a jumble - useless facts and information that come from the books I read or the shows I watch or even the conversations I overhear.”
“Hmm,” he mused. “Almost like a data dump. Tell me, is that what it’s like during the day when you’re completely awake?”
Quincy thought about it for a second. It was something she’d never considered before. “Sort of. When I’m awake, I’ve got other things to focus on, so even though I sometimes get sidetracked with random information, it’s more like the pressure in a tea kettle or the white noise that comes from a broken television. I can usually shove it to the back of my mind. I know it’s there, but I can function and deal with other things. At night, there’s nothing to distract me from all the noise.”
“You said it’s like pressure,” Dave repeated, latching onto the word. “Is that pressure painful?” he asked.
“Not really painful,” she said slowly. How to phrase it? “More like a pressure cooker. The pressure is always there, see,” she explained. “No matter where I go or what I do, I can feel it building. The longer I push it away, the more exhausting it becomes, until it finally explodes.”
“And then pain?” Dave guessed.
“And then pain,” Quincy agreed. “You’ve seen the headaches. You’ve been witness to that disaster.” She’d had a particularly painful one about two weeks into her stay. Logan had seen it before, but it had been the first for Dave.
“Hmm,” Dave agreed vaguely, nodding his head thoughtfully. He scribbled something quickly in his notebook without looking down. Neat trick.
“Let’s talk about your headaches for a minute. You said you usually sleep well after having a migraine?”
“As well as I ever do. It’s the only upside to the migraines. At least I get to sleep for several hours. I’m not sure it’s worth it, but I take what I can get.”
“How often do these migraines come?” Dave asked.
“The really bad ones? Not very often.” Quincy thought it over for a second. “Every few weeks, maybe?”
“I’m not sure ‘every few weeks’ qualifies as not often,” Dave said, quirking an eyebrow. “What about the not-so-bad ones?” he asked.
“Every few days. Sometimes every day,” she answered. “At least with those, I can down some ibuprofen, some caffeine, and soldier on.”
“How do you sleep after those?” Dave prodded.
“The same as I sleep every other night,” she said.
Dave made another note on his notepad and then looked up, gazing over her head as an idea took him. “I wonder…,” he said, fading off as he chose to do his wondering silently.
Quincy didn’t bite. Whatever he was wondering, she’d rather he keep it to himself until he knew for sure.
“How long do you think Logan will stay away?” Quincy asked suddenly. She was starting to get nervous. Talking about herself was making her uncomfortable and Logan’s overabundant enthusiasm would only make it worse.
“Oh,” Dave said, coming back to the present. “I sent him out on a supply run. If he was just patrolling, I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist popping in and you seemed uncomfortable enough without his enthusiasm. I thought some privacy might make it easier for you.”
“And he let you?” she asked incredulously.
Dave laughed. “He did. In fact, it was partly his idea. Logan can be … aggressive,” Dave said, “when he has a goal. And right now, helping you is his goal. But he has a good heart.”
“Oh, I know,” Quincy said. “He tends to wear it proudly on his sleeve.”
“He does,” Dave agreed. “And not just because of how he lost Jones. His life is full of abandonment and loss. And yet, he hasn’t let it make him jaded. It’s made him kinder. More compassionate. He’s a good man.”
“Yes,” Quincy agreed. “He is all of those things - kind, compassionate…and definitely aggressive.”
Dave laughed. “Indeed.”
“What kind of supplies?” Quincy asked.
“Construction,” Dave answered.
One of the things that had really endeared Dave to Quincy was his ability to keep up with her tangents. Despite Logan’s many admirable qualities, that wasn’t one of them. She’d throw a random topic at him and it would take him two more questions to catch up. It was a pitfall of being single-minded. Dave was more flexible.
“Building blueprints show there’s an empty space on the other side of that wall,” Dave said, pointing towards the far end of the basement. “The space above hasn’t been leased in years and with the two of you sparring almost daily now, I thought the extra room might come in handy.” He took another sip of his tea. It had grown cold as they’d talked and he grimaced in spite of himself. “If we knock that wall completely out, we can increase the living space and still have room for your roughhousing.”
“Logan calls it training,” Quincy said absently. Then, “And that space will be important when there are others.”
One of the reasons she’d agreed to come was because Logan said there were others like her and that she could be part of the mission to help them. Yet there had been no mention of that in the weeks since she’d been here.
“Precisely,” Dave agreed quietly. “I haven’t forgotten them, you know,” he said after a moment.
When Quincy looked at him in question, he went on. “The others. I haven’t forgotten them. I know it must seem like that sometimes.”
“You’re busy,” she said. It sounded lame in her own head, but what else was there to say?
“That’s not it at all, nor should it be.”
He sat his cup down on the desk in front of him, took off his glasses, and pressed his thumb and finger against his eyes.
“We don’t have a place to start.”
“What do you mean?” Quincy asked. She pulled her legs up into the chair, folding them under her, happy to shift the attention away from her own issues for a little while. It gave her space to breath.
“The people I had identified as potential patients have either died or disappeared. You’re the only one we’ve been able to get to in time.”
“But there has to be a trail. Camera footage, phone records, something?” There had to be something. People only disappeared without a trace on television, right?
“Maybe there is,” Dave agreed. “But we don’t have access to those things. We aren’t law enforcement. And I’m not even technically their doctor. I have no legal right to request any information on them.”
Quincy nodded. “That is a tough one,” she said. Inside, though, she considered the problem. All they’d really need was a hacker. And it just so happened-
“But back to the topic at hand,” Dave said, and Quincy sighed. She’d much rather think about hacking servers and tracking missing people. At least those were both tangible problems.
“With sleep patterns like that, your brain is active almost 24 hours a day. That’s an extremely dangerous way to live. Or it would be-”
“If not for my impossible super brain?” s
he asked helpfully.
He laughed out loud. “That is one way to put it,” he agreed, “but not quite accurate. What your brain does is improbable, but certainly not impossible. You see, Quincy,” he said, really warming to his topic, “our brains are normally only equipped to process a certain amount of information before taking a break. I would posit that your brain is absorbing all of the information it receives. Put simply, you’re taking in more data than you were meant to process.”
Something opened up in her stomach, something that felt wide and deep and empty. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
“One of the things we need to figure out,” Dave said, narrowing his eyes like he wanted to say something but didn’t know if it would upset her, “is exactly how much information you’re processing and what your brain is doing with the data once it has.”
Quincy blinked, trying to clear the haze that had descended around her. She heard what Dave had just said but it sounded … funny. Off, somehow.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” she asked, shaking her head.
“I think you take in information through whatever source is available - eyes, ears, nose, even your skin. All of your sensory organs are working with your brain to deliver input to the source, similar to how an antenna sends radio waves to a tuner to be converted into audio signals.”
Dave was watching her very carefully as she tried to piece together what he was saying. “So my ears, or my eyes or nose or whatever, send whatever info they pick up on to my brain and, instead of tuning out what it doesn’t need, my brain converts it all into signals, useless information and all?” she asked, trying work her way through it.
“You store it all,” he said, looking grim, “and your brain subconsciously pulls it back up whenever it’s needed.”
She wasn’t sure why he looked so serious all of a sudden.
“That’s a good thing though, right?” Quincy asked. Because how could knowledge be bad? She could now count on both hands the number of times having that storage of seemingly useless knowledge had saved her life.
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