by Stephen Cox
‘I trust Nurse Fell,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t trust Hooton. Tell her he died.’
‘I thought Bradshaw had more stomach for the job,’ Jarman said, ‘but he’s still getting flashbacks from the mother’s death. We’d better keep him out of it too.’
Pearce tutted. ‘This is absurd. We can’t possibly make it work. And if the boy gets better, what then?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ Jarman said.
Molly felt a hope wriggling inside her, not yet ready to be born.
Pearce drew herself up to her full five foot three inches. ‘You’ve both taken leave of your senses. We need more staff and a proper scientific team. If you don’t trust the government, Dr Jarman, at least bring in people you can trust.’
‘No,’ Molly said, surprising herself, ‘he’s fine here with us. I’ll need to see this place in the annex.’
Jarman looked at Pearce as if willing her consent. ‘Pfeiffer’s lying,’ he said, from nowhere, with loathing. He got a map out of his white coat pocket, folded any old how, and thrust it at the nurses. A big finger tapped a streak of blue. ‘That fence they’re building? It goes around Two Mile Lake as well. It’s not for keeping people out of the crater – or not just that. They must want the mother’s spaceship. She told me it was so badly damaged, it might explode at any minute. That’s why they want an evacuation plan.’
‘What’s the lake got to do with it?’ Molly said.
Jarman grimaced, a tough, humourless smile. ‘I heard Pfeiffer talking to his flunky about diving, so I guess Cory’s mother hid their spaceship in the lake, maybe even booby-trapped it. What do you think Pfeiffer will do with an alien vessel? He’ll try to make a weapon out of it. Would you trust a man like that with Cory?’
Even Pearce hesitated.
‘We’re running out of time; Pfeiffer’s going to hear about the fifth floor sooner rather than later, so we need to stage his death and hide him,’ Jarman said. ‘Us three and the new nurse, Fell. That’s all.’
‘What about Sheriff Olsen?’ Molly said suddenly. He’d been brutal, the way he’d nearly broken that protester’s wrist, and the boy had turned out to be the Mayor’s nephew, brought along to take notes.
‘We don’t need Lars,’ Jarman said. ‘I’ll tell him the boy died.’
*
That night they moved Cory to the observation suite. Molly, thinking of the boy’s mother, wept real tears for her colleagues, lying fluently to keep her little patient safe.
Now she read by Cory’s bedside, a broken-backed novel she’d found in the storeroom. Cory was sleeping at last, after a difficult day of fever coming and going. She’d promised Gene she would come home, but her eyes grew heavy. Sleeping on duty was unforgiveable, but she could rest her eyes, just for a moment . . .
Molly dreamed the dream she’d had in the worst of times, when Grandma, all yellow and etched thin as a skeleton, had died in the drab clinical room in the crowded hospital. For a week, young Molly had watched the person she’d loved so dearly ebb away, confused from the drugs and eaten up by the thing inside her. Sometimes Grandma dying turned into the pain on the ladder, when her hand was yellow with paint and red with blood.
The dream was so familiar and yet nothing could strip it of its horror. This time it became Meteor Day. Black rain was falling and Gene’s hands had been burned off. She needed to find him, because no one else could tie the bandages right . . . Gene had no arms left to hold her . . . how could he play his guitar for her? And this test would be her final nursing exam and she didn’t have the right uniform. Old Sister King would fail her.
And there was Cory: wide-eyed and reaching out his hands. Molly never remembered dreaming smells before, but the air was thick with his unmistakeable scent, and disinfectant, and human sweat, even the tang of the disgusting cigars that clung to Dr Jarman’s clothing.
She took Cory’s hand and walked out onto a warm beach of sharp green sand towards sunset and a dark sea. The sun went down in impossible colours on a little lagoon; there were translucent sails out on the water, green forested mountains rising steep from the sea and the air was thick with salt and spice and musk.
Aliens just like Cory played by the dozen, adults and children running and chasing and splashing in the shallows, proper purple people without furry heads. Cory ran off to those he knew. Against that unbelievable sky, silver craft like birds rose into the heavens and were gone. That evening star was a city in space. His mother flew those little ships, but today, she wasn’t flying; she and Cory were playing.
There were no words, but none were needed. Cory’s bright love for his mother filled Molly, along with less familiar feelings and images and sensations. Later there would be fires and ring-dancing and juicy hot food: four types of shellfish, baked in their shells, all good, but Cory liked the rough-shelled green ones like fists best of all.
A wind blew and the images became confused; now she was in a fever-dream, a boy’s-eye view of the hospital room and the strange giants who stank. Cory was terrified and in pain, his chest and head hurt and he wanted his mother, but she was dying. He could feel her even through the wall, and soon the screaming would return, a tearing pain beyond imagining. The images changed, like a hand brushed through a reflection, and Molly was floating in a maze of green corridors . . . a burning light . . . the pain in her chest tightened, stabbing over and over . . .
Molly jerked awake in the chair by Cory’s bedside, her heart thundering, sweating and afraid. The boy was twisting and turning, moaning.
‘There, there, Cory, Molly’s here,’ she said, laying her hand on him, ashamed to have slept. She ran a basin of cool water and wiped his face and chest. Somehow, she had entered his dream, feeling his memories as vividly as if she’d been there herself – but that was impossible, wasn’t it? How could she have been there, seen memories she couldn’t possibly know?
Water, she thought. He’d be reassured by water. When he was a little better, she’d bathe him.
Cory became a little cooler, a little calmer. Acting on instinct, Molly got onto the bed beside him – it was unprofessional, she knew, a breach of procedure, but like any human child, being held calmed him . . . How strange she looked to him, and how odd she smelled.
‘Where have you come from, sweetie-pie?’ she said aloud. ‘What terrors have you seen?’
CHAPTER 7
May
After he was moved, Cory was better for a few days, although he tired quickly. He learned their names, and useful words: food drink yes no bedpan. No-no diaper. Too hot, too cold, going-to-throw-up. Sing, stay, hug, pleeese.
Then his fever returned with a vengeance, as if it had learned to overcome the alien drugs.
That evening, when Peggy Fell arrived, she told Molly, ‘Go to the canteen, get some hot food.’
Molly picked up that Peggy was trying not to smirk, but she was too tired to process it. ‘It’s okay, I’ll stay. Couldn’t you bring the food up?’ Even as she spoke, she recognised how selfish that sounded.
‘Molly, go, for heaven’s sake! I’ll cover.’
She walked through the deserted annex and down the corridor to the canteen, which was closed, and half-dark, and there was Gene, in his second suit. She needed to persuade him to buy another, one not so out of fashion. He’d covered a Formica table with their second-best tablecloth and set a candle in the middle, next to some sprigs of blossom in a little vase. Her favourite soda had been poured into a crystal glass.
Molly was flooded with guilt. She’d cried off a rock-solid date with him yesterday.
Behind him stood Janice in an apron, grinning.
‘The best table in town,’ Gene said, getting up.
‘Idiot,’ she said, glad, kissing him. He wore the bright green plaid tie she’d bought him as a joke, and a badly ironed shirt. ‘Hi, Janice.’
‘I thought I’d come to you,’ h
e said. ‘We’re dining on the famous Henderson meatloaf.’
Janice brought two plates piled with meat and gravy and greens. ‘Careful, it’s hot. And there’s cheesecake and fruit for dessert. I’m off. You lovebirds have fun. Although if I don’t get a long coffee soon, Molly, I am going to report Dr Jarman for abduction.’
‘Thanks,’ Molly said, meaning it, but worried; her friends were getting pushier too.
Now they were just Gene and Molly and she took his hands gently, to see how they were healing. She guessed they’d always be scarred: marks of courage.
‘Sorry,’ she started. ‘I was looking forward to it, so much, but something came up.’
‘Well, again . . . I was pretty hacked off,’ Gene said. ‘But you know, our heroine, saving lives, et cetera, et cetera. As long as you’re okay.’
She said something banal and took a mouthful. She found she was hungry.
‘Boy or girl?’ Gene said.
She blinked.
‘You only get like this when there’s a kid involved,’ he said. ‘Some tragic case. I bet you’re the only nurse working these crippling hours. It’s not fair.’
She was frightened to say it was a child, because other questions would follow. He might find out she was on special duties, not on the fifth floor. With her drinking and his infidelity, honesty mattered in their marriage more than ever.
Last time she got over-involved with a patient, Gene had said some tough things. ‘I’m not adopting a dying one,’ he’d told her, and at first she’d raged, until she realised he wasn’t being callous; he was worried about her, about what might happen if things went wrong.
How did Gene and Cory fit together?
‘Gene, I love you. You know I can’t talk about some things at the hospital.’
He looked at her for a long, long time. ‘You’re working with Dr Jarman, right?’
She nodded and moved a potato onto his plate. Gene was always scrawny, no matter how much he ate.
‘Something doesn’t add up with the official “radiation” story.’ He plucked a thick grey book from his case.
Oh heavens, he’s going to give me a lecture.
‘Dr Jarman says the evacuation plan is just common sense,’ she tried.
‘Not like Jarman to be tied up with the military.’
‘You know I can’t talk about these things . . .’
There was so much she could say, and so little she was sure about. Molly opened her mouth to say something, she wasn’t sure what, but she heard the creak of the canteen door, and footsteps behind her. She turned and looked over her shoulder and there, coming towards them, was Pfeiffer’s go-for – Tyler, she thought – and a soldier. Why? Her stomach roiled, like on a fairground ride. Were they looking for Cory?
‘Uh . . .’ the scientist said.
‘This is private,’ she said, as coldly as she could. She needed to call Peggy, in case this was a search. Or maybe they’d been betrayed. Maybe the army already had him.
Pfeiffer’s flunky blinked as if baffled.
Gene said, ‘The canteen’s closed. We’re just using a table. Francine’s might be open, or O’Reilly’s on Second.’
‘I’m looking for Dr Pfeiffer.’
Molly had seen the odious man an hour back, lambasting the hospital’s director, although she had no idea about what.
Gene kept chewing, and Molly tried the smile she used on difficult patients. ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve no idea.’
Gene picked up another roll as their interrogators left. ‘Jeez, those two really spooked you,’ he said once the door had banged shut. She thought she’d hidden it better. ‘Is that the Dr Pfeiffer? There’s a story in the New York Times today on this radioactivity nonsense.’
‘Oh, he’s been here once or twice, showing off. Horrible man – a real nuisance.’ She wanted an afternoon in bed with Gene, him playing her a new song – but what she needed was to go back to Cory, to check that he wasn’t worse.
‘Jarman’s got you working on the plan,’ he said, ‘and for some stupid government reason, it’s secret.’
Molly looked at him and felt her heart sink. They owed each other honesty, but she’d promised she wouldn’t tell Gene. And if she said it was a sick child, he would ask a thousand questions; last time she’d got fixated, he’d wanted to see the child himself.
Knowing he would leap to the wrong conclusion, she said, ‘I can’t tell you everything I do at work, Gene.’ She felt so guilty.
‘I trust you not to do something stupid. Well, come home.’
‘Not tonight – no one can cover. We’ll see each other tomorrow.’ Although how she would make that happen, she didn’t know.
Disappointment reigned on Gene’s face. ‘The next time, I’m going to walk into Jarman’s office and complain,’ he said. ‘You’ll make yourself ill at this rate.’
An image haunted her, blazing like a fire in the night: the little boy had lost his mother. Cory needed what every child did, someone who would put him first. The idea kept returning, unbidden: why couldn’t she adopt him, strange smell and odd face and all?
Cory tired easily, but he soaked up words. Molly thought she could pick out expressions from the way he used his ears and his eyes and those tentacles. He liked being bed-bathed. And he could flute the opening chords to eight Earth songs now. ‘Mollee sing, Mollee sing.’
She tried to imagine telling Gene . . . but how would she do it? Where would she start? Her stomach turned. What if her asking something so monstrous, so absurd, was the last straw? He’d leave her, find someone else. He often talked about cities on the Moon and mankind’s future in space, but to hide Cory from the world . . . She feared the practical, write-a-list-and-make-a-budget side of his brain would overwhelm the part that gazed up at the stars.
‘Dessert looks great,’ she said. ‘I’m just too tired to talk. I need to sort my hours.’
They needed another nurse on the team.
The stoical set to his jaw meant: no row, not tonight.
Gene kissed her, and she held him a little longer than she’d planned. ‘I love you,’ she said, then she turned away and walked briskly back to the hidden rooms. The little gang dare not leave Cory unattended. They all agreed Cory liked them all, but Molly was his favourite.
Beyond the door, Cory lay on the bed, hot and unseeing. She remembered a spaceship coverlet she’d seen in the Sears catalogue; maybe he’d like that.
‘I want to be your mom,’ she said into thin air. It felt crazy, saying it out loud, but good. ‘You need one and I want it to be me. I want you to eat again, sweetie-pie, use those weird little teeth. I want you to run and climb and swim.’
She dipped a cloth in cold water. Thanks to Jarman’s tests, they knew Cory’s proteins were similar to Earth ones. That didn’t prove he could eat Earth food, mind, so maybe this was all a waste of time.
She’d lied to Gene, but she couldn’t rebuild her marriage on lies. Gene or Cory? She did not want to choose.
*
Sister Pearce took a shift with Cory so Molly could have a day off, as much to placate Gene as anything. A hot bath followed by a delicious long sleep with Gene’s arms round her, then ‘just an hour, girls’ with Janice and Diane. Gene was brewing a big talk; she knew the signs. She wanted to put it off, just to be with him and not worry about Cory. She’d hoped she’d be clearer about what to do after some decent sleep.
Gene showed her the sight she had been avoiding. On Meteor Day, a massive fragment had ploughed up Founders Green, burning the grass and throwing up a crater wall as high as a man. That scorched chunk of iron was as big as two houses and their yard, its surface dark and rippled like some black frozen brain. The army had erected a wire mesh fence round the fragment and stationed a bored soldier on guard duty.
The sight of the fallen rock brought back the chaos and fear of Meteor Day. Molly l
ooked from the rock to the library and back; compared with the countless miles of space, those few hundred yards were a hair’s breadth.
‘I know,’ Gene said, although she hadn’t spoken.
Then they walked to the park where they had courted to see how the trees and the flowers were flourishing, turning their backs on the chaos of rocks from space. New scaffolding had sprung up along Main Street, the first signs that Amber Grove was healing. She tried not to react as a truckload of soldiers passed. All around them were strangers, tourists, lots of them, and cars parked illegally, displaying number plates from all over. Hippies were busking in the park and doing Tarot readings to pay for beer or drugs.
These people had come from all corners of the country and far beyond to catch a glimpse of the destruction Meteor Day had wrought. To them it was a wonder, but to Molly it was morbid and cruel, wandering around looking at the blackened fronts of buildings, the For Sale signs. Children played and people gawked: Look kids, you can see up north where the forests burned. That’s Main Street, where people died!
In the afternoon, Gene had on his ‘this isn’t going to be pleasant’ face.
Not now, Gene, thought Molly. Not today . . . Don’t spoil it.
‘It’s been good to see you,’ he started. ‘So, the day before Meteor Day, we agreed you would move back to normal shifts. But things have got worse, not better’ – as she opened her mouth, he held up a hand to stop her, determined to have his say – ‘and yes, I know it’s been terrible, but the hospital’s got those extra staff now, and Federal money coming. You know what happens when you overdo it, Molly.’
When her mood was up, she knew she could live with the grief. It was the darkness and the drink that could overwhelm her. ‘I’m doing the best I can—’
‘Molly, you can’t solve everything. You’re nailing yourself to the cross again. Don’t let Jarman work you to death . . . I’m going to go over his head and complain.’