Interference

by S. L. LUCK

  Suddenly Adhira’s mouth was very dry, and she took another sip of water so she could speak. “Have we blocked the area off?”

  “Just finished,” Huxley reported.

  Adhira pressed her knuckles to her lips, her mind turning over all the possibilities of what could go wrong. “Could the power fail?”

  “Nothing’s impossible, but they don’t believe so,” Abe said.

  Adhira frowned. “I don’t know about this.”

  “The generators are working,” Huxley reported.

  “We can’t compromise the safety of hundreds of patients for the well-being of one.”

  “I can’t remember a time when you didn’t at least try to keep a patient alive,” Huxley remarked.

  “That’s not fair.”

  Papers fluttered across the desk as Huxley threw his hands up. “She’s going to die, Adhira. You want to be the one to tell the city that they’re going to lose their only survivor? Be my guest.” His mouth clamped shut.

  Doctor Nkosi, generally more reserved than Doctor Huxley, glanced at his co-worker and, on this occasion, attempted to engage his rational side by slipping a hand over Huxley’s shoulder and squeezing it. “None of us wants that,” he said gently but firmly, then turned to Adhira. “We’ve already run this by Cliff. We have his approval as long as we unanimously agree that this is the right course of action. That’s why we’re here. If you feel our solution puts too much risk on the hospital, then we have to accept that. I, for one, wasn’t so sure myself, but I am also not an electrician. I had to remember that we wouldn’t ask an electrician into the operating room, just as they wouldn’t seek our advice for wiring a building. I know it’s an impossible decision, but its one we have to make. If we don’t try, Anabelle Cheever will die. The way they described it, the solution sounds like it could work, so I am willing to meet the absurdity of the situation with an equal resolution.” He sat back and waited for Adhira to respond.

  “Cliff actually agreed to this?” she asked. Both men nodded.

  Adhira’s eyes went to the ceiling as she sought an answer that wasn’t of the earth. Nothing up there presented itself while she stared, so she sighed heavily and set her eyes back on the other doctors. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but how exactly do they suggest we hook our patient into a bank of car batteries?”

  11

  The weekend street was filled with the uninhibited energy of Garrett’s school children enjoying their first snowfall of the season. The morning flakes that came softly were by afternoon eddying around ankles, over curbs, through fences, across windshields, and melting on the tongues of small open mouths.

  Sarah Cardinal, having just urinated on her ninth pregnancy stick of the last four months, carefully set her test on a folded piece of toilet paper and eased her apprehension by sitting on the bathroom counter to watch the outdoor festivities from her second-floor bathroom window. She wound her hair through her fingers while a group of children rolled the makings of a snowman across the inner courtyard of their townhome community. Beside this, smaller children were sweeping snow angels into the ground while yet another group, joined by three teenagers, were erecting what looked to be dueling castles. Twice she went to look at the stick but held back to avoid the disappointment she knew would surely come.

  A snowball hit the glass in front of her face and Sarah flinched, nearly falling from the counter. Outside, her husband stood with a bag of groceries in one hand and a snowball in the other. He waved up at the window and whirled around to huck it at their neighbor’s eight-year-old son. The boy brayed with laughter and then Jesse was surrounded by five, eight, thirteen kids blasting him with ice rockets from his ankles to his cheeks. The platoon disbanded giddily when Jesse calmly set his groceries down and, with his arms over his head, rushed at them, kicking up snow. Even from the distance, Sarah could have sworn his eyes were wet when he looked up at her before entering the house, and she reflected that they may be the only happy tears he would cry today.

  How they wanted a baby. They hadn’t been trying long, only six months or so, but somehow they’d both naively thought it would be easy and that they would be pregnant overnight. After many nights and many days, however, Sarah and Jesse were still just Sarah and Jesse. Last week, she had even sought council from Elder Nikonha, who reassured her that she was fertile and that she would have more than one child. Jesse also regularly sought advice from their elders, and when Sarah conveyed Elder Nikonha’s assurance, he told her that he wasn’t worried because the Elder had told him the same thing. Now, as she heard Jesse setting his keys on the entrance console, Sarah silently prayed their Elder was right.

  From the bottom of the stairs, Jesse called to her. “Got your ice cream,” he said. “But I wouldn’t eat it until after we get back or you’ll be cold all day.” Quick steps led him to the top of their small condominium, where he found Sarah sitting on the bathroom counter. He kissed the top of her head and pointed out the window. “You should have joined us out there.”

  She squinted her eyes shut and thrust the pregnancy stick at him. “You look at it. I can’t.”

  Jesse saw the stick in her hand. “Again? We’re going to go broke with the amount you spend on those things. This is the third one this week, Sarah.” He plucked the test from her fingers and looked at it. “Remind me again what we want to see.”

  “Two lines,” Sarah blurted. “You know it’s two lines, Jesse. Don’t be like that.”

  Laughter rumbled up Jesse’s throat and he pinched her big toe to make her open her eyes, but she squeezed them shut. “You sure you want to know?” Jesse teased.

  “Only if it’s good,” she told him. “If it’s not, then throw it out the window at one of those kids.”

  “That’s a terrible thing for a mother to say.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Also terrible.”

  “Jesse, will you just—” And then she realized what he’d said. Her eyes sprung open. “Did you say mother?”

  “Maybe I did.” Jesse smiled. “But how will you know if I throw the test outside?”

  “Give it to me,” she ordered, reaching behind his back.

  He held her, wrapping himself around her flailing arms. He kissed her neck, stroked her head, and nodded their answer into her.

  “A-are you sure?” Sarah stuttered against Jesse’s chest, and then he put before her eyes the two lines they both had been hoping for.

  She thought momentarily of taking another test just to be sure but remembered she had used the last of tests in the bulk pack she’d purchased. She would get her doctor to confirm the pregnancy after the weekend, but she knew she would never really be content until their baby was in her arms. When Jesse released her, she saw that his face, like hers, was wet.

  From a drawer below where she sat, Jesse took a hand towel and wiped his face, then dabbed Sarah’s cheeks. He said, “I knew Nikonha was right. Nothing to worry about but a baby. Now we have about twenty minutes before we have to pick Johnny up. Should we try again, just to be extra sure?” He nodded toward their bedroom.

  Twenty-two minutes later and with color flushing their cheeks, they were in their car, progressing slowly from the moderate tenements, past the snow-covered off-leash park, over two sets of train tracks, and onto the unplowed beams of the Novadale Bridge. An oncoming car, travelling too quickly onto the bridge, slid momentarily into their lane but Jesse feathered the brake pedal and managed to stop while the other car corrected its path and passed them with an apologetic wave from its driver.

  Sarah admired Jesse’s control, knowing that her own instinct at one time would have been to press the brake too fast or veer toward the guardrail. The responses she had previously employed during traffic duty resulted in three damaged cruisers at the beginning of her career. Thankfully, her previous chief, Tom Widlow, had seen past her nascent defensive driving tactics and, rather than fire her, invested heavily in driver’s training. As they passed the bridge, Sarah remembered her fo
rmer boss with gratitude and put her hand to her stomach as she looked out over the departing river. Soon they were at Johnny’s apartment building. Here, too, children were scampering over snowbanks, diving into newly erected fortresses, dodging snowballs, rolling their bodies over fresh surfaces.

  Jesse pulled into the visitor parking area and called his brother. After a time, he hung up and dialed again, scowling at Johnny’s balcony. “I’ll bet he’s still sleeping,” Jesse grumbled.

  “This late?” Sarah said, spying the time on the radio. 2:02 p.m.

  “I told you he didn’t want to come.”

  “Maybe he’s in the shower.”

  “Hungover, more likely.”

  Sarah patted his shoulder. “Give him a break. He’s still young. We were like that, too, remember?”

  “We were never as bad as he is. You know, I don’t think he cares about anything.” He sighed, and then a snowball hit the windshield. Beyond the sliding splat of snow, Johnny grinned.

  They watched as Jesse’s little brother, knapsack in hand, dusted up snow while he made his way to their car. In the periphery, a young mother who had been building a snowman with her children stopped rolling long enough to admire Johnny. She smoothed back her hair, blinking at him while her children cried for her to keep rolling, keep building. Sarah laughed. Jesse rolled his eyes as Johnny got into the back seat. New flakes of snow clung to Johnny’s shoulder-length hair and he shook it, spraying the back of Jesse’s neck. “Merry Christmas,” he joked.

  “Did you bring the tape?” Jesse asked without preamble, swinging out of the parking lot and onto Simon Avenue.

  “Tape, hammer, pliers, three pairs of scissors, zip ties, stapler, gloves. Dad wanted me to bring the staple gun too, but I told him we wouldn’t need it,” Johnny said, settling his wide shoulders against the seat.

  He smelled faintly of alcohol, as they’d suspected he would. Johnny gave everything he had to everything he did: school, work, women, amusement. There was nothing mediocre about him and no matter how much Jesse tried to steer his brother into respectable adulthood, Johnny wouldn’t be hurried. He would do everything his own way or no way. While he sat in their backseat bragging about his latest exploit in which three women tore one of his shirts trying to count his abs, Sarah wondered which portions of the Cardinal genes their baby would inherit.

  “Whatever you didn’t bring, I’m sure Dad will,” Jesse said, because their father always remembered whatever they forgot. Keys, school assignments, examination dates. The boys relied on his memory as they grew from toddlers to teens, and depended on it even more as men, though it was now Johnny who benefitted from it the most. It was their father who didn’t need a reminder to chauffer their car-less son to and from work, to and from pleasure. It was their father who purchased Johnny’s gifts for their mother, whatever the occasion, and it was their father who reminded Johnny when and where he was expected for interviews—thanks to which he was never late. That same memory would come in handy today, when he joined his sons at the fairgrounds to oversee the construction of their entry for the annual parade. This year they were assembling a pie-making scene with three bears, two beavers, and a moose. Johnny himself had shot two of the bears, which his father was bringing in his trailer, along with the rest of the animals.

  In his rear-view mirror, Jesse spied a scratch near Johnny’s chin. He touched his jaw, remembering their time at the hospital. “That still from the other night?”

  Johnny nodded. “Fuckers got me good. Yours heal up yet?”

  “Almost all gone. I didn’t get it as bad as you. Make sure you put some ointment on that, okay? Or you’ll end up in the hospital too. Cat bites can kill you.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “I’m serious.”

  The brothers brooded while Jesse drove. The sky had become white with snow; wind folded it over the road, onto the sidewalks, bunching it up on the shore of the Callingwood River beside which they now cautiously moved.

  “Did you get their test results yet?” Johnny asked.

  “All came back clean. Not a single one with rabies. No toxoplasmosis. No infections of any sort. Same thing with the birds. Still waiting to hear from the city on the water samples, but besides the change in weather, I can’t figure it out.”

  “So you won’t need me then?” Johnny’s eyes slipped away from the front seat to his phone as he messaged Cassandra, one of the women he’d been with the night before.

  “Do you have something better to do?” Jesse said, and immediately felt Sarah’s eyes on him.

  The silence in the car was heavy. Jesse knew his brother would rather mooch off their parents than work. The good people they were, they indulged his whims without protest, but Jesse couldn’t permit him to take advantage of them any longer. He was about to say as much when Sarah’s mouth fell open and she pointed at the river.

  “The water,” she gasped. “It’s … gone.”

  Past Sarah’s pointing finger, the brothers looked west where the water of the Callingwood River had seemingly evaporated. Once submerged weeds, now limp against the riverbed, lay as flat as rocks among air-gasping fish that flailed as they searched for water. Where snow collected, gathered, amassed on the streets and in the fields, here it was absorbed into the earth the moment it landed. The draining was sudden and fierce, for they had not remembered it this way yesterday, nor earlier when Jesse passed the river on his way to pick up Sarah’s ice cream. This was new. Like the birds. Like the cats. Like the bus crash. Their city was going to hell—or was already there.

  A collective gulp bubbled from the car. Ahead, several vehicles had pulled over to gape at the river, and more than a few people were outside taking pictures with their phones. Whatever misery their city faced, the rest of the world would know within seconds.

  “What the fuck?” Johnny unrolled his window, but the lowering of the glass did not change the sight. As far north and south as he could see was the cadaver of Garrett’s longest and widest river, its grey-green insides now on full display, releasing its old life into the earth. Weeds hung over deadwood scatter like skin on old bones, and even the river’s many teeth, exposed in knockouts of shells heaped from its center to its sides, were lifeless. As the wind blew and the snow fell, the Callingwood River resembled a kilometers-long crater fringed in snowbank.

  Sarah took her phone from her purse and called Dan. To Johnny, Jesse said, “Call Mayor Falconer and ask her to meet us at the fairgrounds.”

  For once, Johnny immediately did as his brother asked.

  12

  Light sliced through Sylvia’s living room blinds, spotlighting the dust that had settled during her hospital stay in the small house she had enjoyed for over forty years. Now, as she entered her home for the first time in a week, she smelled the sourness of disuse and her stomach turned.

  She knew her return would be emotional, but the knowledge didn’t lessen the pain. She leaned on her cane, stepping inside while Troy impatiently grumbled behind her that he was cold. This visit had been hard won, for Troy had wanted to take her from the hospital directly to Southbridge where, he insisted, there were no memories that might make her yearn for home and set her recovery back. But she wailed in his car until the tympanic vibrations began to hurt them both, and Troy grudgingly relented.

  Sure, her own son might have threatened to toss her out of the car if she didn’t stop screaming, but Sylvia would use whatever faculties she had left to get what she needed. Her baby boy was her life, but he was also the source of all her difficulties, besides the stroke.

  Nothing between them was ever easy. Even in her fragile state, the tenderness expected by other parents from other children in similar situations was absent in Troy. He just didn’t have it in him. Where her friends’ grown children were helpful and thoughtful and supportive, Troy was unsympathetic and inconsiderate. His current behavior was not new. As a child, even with her adoration and Delmer’s, Troy had never been warm to them. What infant despised hugs? What toddler d
idn’t want to be tucked in at night or kissed on the forehead or coddled when sad or sick? Only Troy. Still, he was hers, and as he finally entered the house and went to the kitchen, disinclined to assist her up the stairs, Sylvia loved him.

  “We’re supposed to be at Southbridge in an hour,” Troy said, hanging his jacket on the back of a kitchen chair.

  “I won’t be long. I just wanted to see it. You’ll keep it for me until I come back?” Sylvia asked the question because although Troy had previously told her he was going to look after the house, she noticed that the hallway carpet was missing and that her collection of porcelain figurines was, by the look of the tape and paper on her side table, in the process of being packed into a box.

  “I can get you a good price for it, you know.”

  “You said, but as I told you I intend on coming back. This is my home, Troy, and I won’t be pushed out of it. A few months at Southbridge and I’ll be able to take care of it myself again. Then I’ll be out of your hair.” Of course, only half of her face said this. When she most needed to assert her independence, her words were muffled and weak.

  From the kitchen, Troy brought a glass of water which he drank as though he couldn’t speak without it. Sylvia watched the lump of his Adam’s apple pitch upward while he emptied his glass, then he set it beside her remaining porcelain ballerina and sighed. “I’m not sure you understand what it took to get you in there, Mother.”

  Only, Sylvia did know: not much. That Troy was well-connected was no secret, and he liked to remind her of this every time she requested something of him. He pressed upon her how important it was to not overuse his resources, but Sylvia had long suspected that her few requests required little more than a phone call, email, or text message. She knew that after twenty years in the high-flying legal stratosphere in Toronto, Troy got whatever it was he wanted and that only grudgingly did his comfort extend to her. Her flesh and blood looked down at her now, waiting for her to respond. She said, “I appreciate your help, Troy.”