Interference

by S. L. LUCK

  Sylvia pulled herself up and considered the doctor and her son, the people intent on her incarceration. There was a fog in her head that she tried to push back, but it wouldn’t entirely go away. She clenched her teeth, needing to say what she had to say before sleep took her again. “I’m a grown woman and I can decide for myself what’s best for me. What about home visits? Tammy Giroux had them when she was in that accident. Why can’t I do the same?”

  A vein in Troy’s jaw pulsed and he faced her with annoyance. His tongue slid over his teeth and when he finally spoke, his words were short. “You’re right, Mother. You do have a choice, but I’ll worry if you’re alone again. Do you want to make me worry, Mother? Is that what you want?”

  Sylvia’s jaw shuffled left and right as though she were weighing a great decision, testing the taste of it. “Well, I … of course not, Troy. You know I don’t like you to worry. I was just thinking it would be good to try, you know, since I’m still young.” Her eyes went to her son, who appeared troubled. Troy’s brows knit together, and his mouth pouted the way it would for as long as she could remember. His beautiful baby face was no gift of his father’s, it was of Sylvia and Sylvia’s mother and grandmother.

  Presently, that smooth-skinned, radiant face drew her in and dismantled her resolve the way it always did. The fog was heavier now, and her son was closer. The combination of the two drained what remained of her strength.

  She said, “But I’ll try it for you, Troy. It might be okay if I try it for a little, just a little, and then if I don’t like it, I can go home, right, Troy? Does that sound okay to you?” She held her breath, waiting for him to speak.

  Troy fingered the sharp line of his jaw, considering her proposition. After a time, he said, “It’s your choice, Mother. If this is what you want, I think it’s the right thing to do. Try it out and see how you like it. I’ll make sure the house is ready if you decide to come back.” As he kissed the top of her head, she inhaled the scent of his soap and of his expensive cologne and wondered where he had come from and where he was going.

  It was when Dr. Tanti cleared her throat that Sylvia realized the other woman had not left the room. “I’ll check on you again tomorrow, Mrs. Baker, but I was wondering if I can see your son for a moment in the hall?”

  “Go ahead,” Sylvia said to Troy. “I’m getting sleepy anyway. You’ll come back later?”

  “Sure thing, Mother,” he said, advancing to the brighter lights of the corridor.

  Sylvia saw his profile, lean and angular, against the backdrop of the light and was again struck by his beauty. The beauty that she and his father Adam had made forty-one years ago. That she wasn’t a grandmother yet was of no concern to Sylvia because, looking at Troy and the way Dr. Tanti smiled up at him and the way the passing nurses glanced at him, grandchildren would come, and she still had many years to enjoy them.

  She smiled as the air around her grew heavier and her limbs, dead and alive, fell into a peaceful stillness. For a time, she watched her son in the doorway and before Sylvia closed her eyes, she thought she recognized an exchange of phone numbers.

  5

  Greg Huxley was exhausted. In all his years as an attending physician at Garrett General, he’d gone without sleep, gone without lunch, gone without showering for the better part of a day, sometimes two, but he had never delivered the news of so many deaths to so many families in such a span, all before noon.

  Shortly after sunrise, the bodies had rolled in. They came in ones and twos, until additional ambulances were dispatched from Sarnia and London, when they came in a dozen at a time. Most were dead on arrival; the others had been intubated and defibrillated. Their limbs were tied into tourniquets, necks were braced, and displaced parts were gathered and hurried into coolers, few of which were assigned to the correct owner.

  Almost all victims had drowned in the river. Some had their pulses return weakly after hands and mouths and machines manically worked life back into them. But even after the great effort, the pulses eventually faded away in surgery rooms, in hallways, in screaming ambulances, on the riverbank. In addition to the thirty-three bus passengers who had so far been recovered, two men and one woman who had dived into the water to attempt a rescue had also died, caught on the tangle of metal below the surface. Further rescue attempts by locals were then swiftly thwarted by Chief Dan Fogel, who ordered an immediate perimeter and called in OPP’s dive unit to locate the seven missing passengers. All in all, the worst mass casualty the city had ever experienced.

  He stood now in the lone survivor’s hospital room, praying she remained stable, hoping to give at least one family some good news. Huxley himself had repaired the fracture in her skull, and he watched her now as the ventilator moved oxygen into her lungs, the steady push of air through tubes something he’d grown used to over the years. Although surgeries like these were usually dispatched to larger hospitals out of Toronto or Hamilton, her condition when the paramedics had brought her in required immediate attention. Huxley’s steady hands had guided him well during the four-hour surgery, masterfully locating and extricating segments of the girl’s depressed skull. How she would fare, he didn’t know, but the fracture was relatively small, and the girl’s pupils reacted swiftly to his light out of surgery, so he was optimistic; exhausted but optimistic.

  Huxley observed the girl’s eyes again, relieved when the green fringe of her irises bloomed large as her pupils constricted. The nursing team had done a fine job cleaning her up. Her freckled skin was mostly rid of blood and dirt, save for a small purple-black patch beneath a thicket of red hair they hadn’t shaved. Their lone survivor, a symbol of resilience, a symbol of hope, had to survive, and Huxley was determined to ensure she did.

  Though it was late and he was tired, so very tired, Huxley would stay at the hospital tonight in case he was needed. He yawned, looking over Anabelle Cheever’s chart one last time. It wasn’t in his nature to touch patients outside of professional attention, but he did so now, reaching for Anabelle’s hand, maybe to squeeze his strength into her, maybe so she knew that she wasn’t alone. This small body was the city’s hope, and Huxley felt compelled to extend the support of fifteen thousand others through the touch of his fingers.

  When Huxley took her fingers between his palms, a sizzle of pain tore into him as though he’d been shocked. He recoiled, wondering if one of the machines had somehow polarized the girl. Again he reached for her and again the same pulse ran through his skin.

  He hailed the nursing staff, and soon there was a flurry of activity around Anabelle. Machines were checked, tubes were studied, and connections were examined, all the while zinging and stinging the working hands any moment they touched her.

  “Something’s wrong,” Huxley said to his team.

  “But she’s not in distress, Doctor. Her vitals are good, responses are good. Unless it’s the equipment, I don’t know what to tell you. Let me just—” The ICU’s head nurse put a stethoscope to Anabelle’s chest and gasped at the prickle to her ear. “She’s electrified!”

  Huxley frowned. “Impossible. We just worked on her. This didn’t happen when she was in surgery.” His fingers worried through his grey hair, then he pointed to the five other beds in the unit, where patients unrelated to the bus crash recovered. “Examine the other patients and equipment and get someone from maintenance here. We’ve got to figure this out. Someone stay with her, but don’t touch her unless absolutely necessary, understand?”

  Three nurses nodded back at him, then Huxley ran to the nursing station, where he sped through a litany of numbers and explained the situation. Moments later, neurologist Dr. Adhira Tanti appeared, along with cardiologist Dr. Abebe “Abe” Nkosi and laboratory technician Jennifer Bailey.

  At once, Abe strode to Anabelle’s bed, readying his stethoscope. “You know that what you are suggesting is impossible, Huxley?” Abe regarded Huxley as if he were mad. Huxley himself suspected that Abe was not so far off.

  “Of course it’s impossible, but i
t’s happening anyway. See for yourself,” Huxley said, gesturing to Anabelle. “But be careful.” He stepped back.

  Abe’s eyes went to Dr. Tanti, their shared look full of disbelief. With a shrug, the doctor placed the stethoscope against Anabelle’s chest. “Ah!” he cried, flinging himself away from the patient in a mad scramble that knocked Anabelle’s monitor and IV pump. His glasses fell to the floor. “Impossible! This can’t be, Huxley. This can’t. Her organs would malfunction. Her heart would fail. In her condition, the girl would die.” Abe’s hands went to his bald head, sliding down to the thick pads of his dark cheeks as he considered the mystery of the situation.

  Dr. Tanti plucked Abe’s glasses from beneath the supply cart and handed them to him. “You okay?” she asked.

  Abe nodded and examined Anabelle’s monitors. “Thank you, doctor, I’m fine. Just an unexpected shock. Our patient, though, I don’t know what to make of this. Look at her readings. Heart rate, good. Blood pressure, systolic a little low but not especially concerning. Oxygen, in normal range. Respiration, good. Vitals and ECG, otherwise healthy. How curious.” He thought then to touch the monitor, figuring the contraption would be electrified as well, but it wasn’t.

  “She can’t deliver that magnitude of current. If anything, it’s one of the other machines. Have you tried disconnecting her and going manual?” Dr. Tanti asked Huxley.

  “Not yet,” Huxley said. “I wanted your opinions first.”

  The lab technician stepped forward holding her kit. Her eyes narrowed. “Have you tried wearing gloves? Maybe that would help.”

  Huxley scratched his chin. “It’s worth a shot.”

  “Grab me a small, please Melissa,” Dr. Tanti instructed the ICU’s head nurse. “I’d like to try.”

  The nurse hurried away and returned with two pairs for the doctor. “Just in case,” she said nervously.

  Adhira accepted the gloves with a reassuring nod. The fit was snug, but twice she worked her fingers into their chambers and snapped the material at her wrist. As Huxley, Abe, the lab technician, and the nursing staff looked on, Adhira said, “There doesn’t seem to be any issue from the machines, otherwise you would have been zapped when you touched them, Abe, but let’s start there.” She reached for the monitor and tapped it quickly. Getting no reaction, Adhira placed her palm on the side of the machine. “Nothing here,” she reported to the group of onlookers.

  Next, Adhira tapped Anabelle’s IV pump, then her ventilator, then her catheter, receiving no response from any of the equipment. With pinched fingers, she squeezed Anabelle’s IV line and felt nothing. Slowly, she went to the girl’s head, where Adhira put two gloved fingers to the outside of her surgical bandage. Current raged through Adhira’s fingertips, up the tendons of her wrist, along the muscles in her arm, her shoulder. Adhira shook violently, unable to remove herself from the shock until she was pulled away by Huxley, who gasped when he touched her.

  Though she was a practicing Hindu, Adhira often fell into Christian cursing. “My God,” she said to them. “What is this? How can this be? Huxley? Abe? The girl is electrified. What … what do you make this?” Her head spun toward the other doctors, then to the nurses, then to the lab tech.

  “Someone call for me?” Morley Sanders, Garrett General’s maintenance engineer, hastened into the room with his toolbox, breathing heavily from too many cigarettes and too many pounds. He wiped his forehead, blinking at them. Without pause, Huxley relayed Anabelle’s condition to Morley, whose pinched face registered confusion, disbelief, and finally shock. He said, “Well, now, that can’t be right. The patient can’t be permanently electrified; we’re good conductors of electricity, but to produce a continuous charge of that magnitude is impossible. The bed, though. Maybe there’s a loose wire hitting it somewhere. Have you looked?”

  The group searched. Eyes went behind the bed, over the monitor, around every light, every outlet, every cable.

  “Nothing, huh?” Morley slid his tongue beneath his bottom lip, squinting at Anabelle. At length, he asked, “Mind if I see for myself? I got to tell you, I feel kind of silly about this. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to see what kind of shock we’re talking about here. It might help me figure out where it’s coming from.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” Abe said, crinkling his nose at Morley’s outreached hand.

  “Maybe with thicker gloves?” Dr. Tanti suggested, ignorant to the concepts of electrical study.

  Morley said, “It can’t be that bad, or she wouldn’t still be here. I’m no doc, but her monitor doesn’t scream danger to me. If you let me just …”

  As Morley reached forward, Huxley captured his arm. “Three of us got the zing of our lives when we touched her. I can’t let you do this.”

  “What do you expect me to do without knowing what it is I’m supposed to be doing? Look, you’ve warned me, so you’re covered. I’ll sign anything you want, but I can’t help you unless I locate the source. She might not be it, for all we know. Maybe it’s the bed. Maybe it’s not, but you’ve got to let me see what we’re up against before I go calling my guys about it.” Morley puffed out his chest, feeling them discharge their collective superiority at him until he threw his hands up. “How am I supposed to help her then?”

  Dr. Nkosi peeked at Huxley, whose reluctance was obvious. He said, “It’s not safe for anyone to touch her but she’s going to need care. We simply cannot care for her in this state, so we need to figure this out. The girl will die if we don’t.”

  “Do you have gloves with you, Morley?” Adhira asked. “I wonder if a different material will work.”

  Morley dug into his toolbox and presented to them a pair of mechanical gloves. “They’re more for light electrical work, but seeing that they’re thick and your gloves didn’t work, maybe I’ll give these a try.”

  The doctors exchanged looks. Huxley’s shoulders sagged. “Are you sure about this, Morley?”

  “Hell, no, I’m not sure about this, but we’ve got to try, don’t we? If I can just figure out where the source is, then we can help her.” He drew on his gloves and, under their watchful eyes, approached Anabelle’s bed. Morley led with his pinky finger, lowering the thick bulb of his knuckle slowly toward the footboard. Like a striking snake, he touched the metal so quickly his arm was a blur to their observing eyes. “Nothing wrong here,” he reported to the doctors, now testing the headboard, now siderails, now the mattress itself. He let out the air he’d been holding, sensing that the doctors were pranking him.

  “Careful,” Abe warned as Morley’s index finger drew toward Anabelle’s wrist.

  Morley pulled back once, twice, feeling ridiculous for doing so. He dared not look back, for he knew the doctors were waiting on him. Instead, he swiped the sweat from his brow and leaned closer still.

  “Well,” he quavered, “here goes nothing.” Morley tapped Anabelle’s wrist.

  Lights surged in the room, brighter and brighter until the overhead tubes shattered in a great spray of glass through their covers and onto the people below. Glass flew into the lab tech’s eyes, onto Dr. Nkosi’s head, and onto Huxley’s cheeks, where shards pricked him like needles and drew a saddle of bloody dots across his nose.

  Though covered in glass, Anabelle remained unresponsive. Bleats of terror and cries of pain swept through the sterile environment, and soon other cries in other rooms were wakened throughout the unit. Monitors shrilled. Nurses ran to their patients. But the doctors stood, looking at Morley in a heap on the ground.

  6

  The wail of an alarm clock woke Dan Fogel. He hammered the thing quiet at least three times before the motel’s reception rang him for his scheduled wake-up call. Then he rubbed his tired eyes and groaned to the bathroom, where he fell asleep on the toilet for another twenty minutes with his shorts around his ankles. It was his cellphone that woke him next. However tired he was, twenty-three years of police work ingrained in him the obligation to answer, at whatever time and during whatever circumstance. He
pulled his shorts up, splashed cold water on his unshaven face, and toweled his hands on his way to the bedside table. “Fogel,” he coughed into the phone.

  “Dan? You up?” Constable Sarah Cardinal’s voice was muffled by the clatter of voices, the clicking of keyboards, and the ringing phones.

  Dan picked the alarm clock he’d battered from the floor and spied the time. “I’ll be there in twenty, Sarah. Hold them for me, will you?”

  “Will do, boss,” she said. “I’ll have your coffee ready.”

  His shower was too quick, and the water was too cold, but Dan let it wake him and prepare him for another awful day. Yesterday, he hadn’t even had his first sip of coffee when the gates of hell opened and unleashed its terrible fury onto his city. Forty-two dead and another barely alive. He sighed into the water, then took some into his mouth, drinking, until at last he turned the water off. He wrapped a towel around his waist and turned. The man looking back at him was old now, with dark hollows under his eyes, and deeply grooved skin on his forehead, on his cheeks. The grey hair, once passable for the suave fringe of a cool hipster, was now like that of an unkempt fisherman, lost long at sea.

  Before Brandy slid him the divorce papers, Dan had healthy color to his cheeks. He was lean and well-kept and turned as many heads as his team arrested. Now, after two months in the Sunset Motel and copious amounts of greasy takeout, the man in the mirror looked pudgy and nauseated.

  He slid a comb through his hair, wondering what Brandy was doing. If she was still waking to Shane, or if she had moved on to another man with the intent of incapacitating him too. Dan rolled his shoulders, stretched the tension from his neck, and dressed quietly, wishing Tom Widlow were still alive and still chief and could handle this for him. Tom’s death of lung cancer six months before lavished a sorrow on the department so deep, Dan still hadn’t recovered. How to heal an ailing team from the loss of one of the greatest leaders of all time? Dan didn’t know; he only knew that he could never fill the footprints Tom left.