S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (24 page)

“How long?” Jessie demanded.

The doctor blinked, acting like she didn't understand.

“
Kelly!
” Jessie screamed. White flinched in surprise. “When did it start?”

A sigh and a shrug. “I started seeing Kyle about four years ago, and—”

In her muddled state, Jessie misheard. “Kelly was fourteen four years ago!” she cried. “What kind of pervert are you?”

“
What?
” Doctor White pushed back in her chair. Her eyes opened wide with sudden understanding, and a bubble of laughter erupted from her mouth. She raised a hand to hide it but was too late. “Oh dear. I think we've both made some terrible assumptions. Maybe we should start over.”

Jessie still wasn't getting it, and the doctor's amusement was only making her angrier. “Stop mocking me!”

“No, no. I'm not! I'm sorry. I've known Kyle —
Kyle
, Kelly's brother — for almost five years. I've been his doctor, not Kelly's . . . .” She gestured uncomfortably. “I'm not your husband's secret lover. Oh dear. I'm so embarrassed.”

“I don't find any of this funny.”

“I know, and I apologize. It's just a shock. Please, let me explain.” She sighed, and the laughter drained rapidly from her face, leaving only tiredness. “I first met the family, including Kelly, four years ago, when I was brought on to consult in Kyle's medical case. Such a horrible tragedy, really. It should never have happened.”

“You're not making any sense. What does Kyle have to do with you and my husband sneaking around?”

“Please, sit down, dear. This might take a while.”

She pushed herself out of the chair again and walked toward the door. She was several inches shorter than Jessie, and she paused as she came astride her. Laying a tentative hand on Jessie's elbow, she said, “Let me get you something to drink. I'll explain everything. I promise you it's not what you think.”

† † †

The spacious office was sparsely furnished— a small wooden desk, like a lonely island floating in the middle of a barren sea, three chairs (all old and not very comfortable looking), a dented metal filing cabinet beached crookedly in one corner. A stunted fern resting in a pot beneath the window, the only oasis of green in the drabness of the entire office.

Shelves lined an entire wall. They were colored to match the ceiling, but the glossy white paint had yellowed with age and was peeling. A cluster of faded print books huddled drunkenly against one another on the bottommost shelf, looking forlorn and forgotten. The undisturbed dust on them suggested they hadn't been touched in years. Only specialty books and collector's editions were printed on paper anymore. For the most part, reading material was published in digital format. Professional journals, medical references, would almost certainly be available solely on the streams.

Knickknacks, equally as anachronistic, lay strewn about in the remaining spaces, like flotsam on the shore. A small snow globe was the lone occupant of an entire shelf. Sealed inside of it was a different skyline of lower Manhattan than the one Jessie held in her mind; some of the buildings in it, she knew, hadn't existed in over forty years. Even the plastic snow settled onto the bottom felt whimsical. One shelf up: a battered toy gondola, like the ones she'd seen in books being poled around the now-sunken canals of Venice. And next to it: the replica of a spire, some of the white paint worn off of the corners, showing the dull gray of the underlying plastic. Jessie recalled a vague memory that it once commemorated the first president of the old United States.

Relics from places which had disappeared in this woman's lifetime.

Jessie sat and folded her hands onto her lap, her head still swimming from confusion.

It's not what you think.

But if not an affair, what then?

The doctor returned several minutes later, just as Jessie was beginning to get restless. She gently closed the door a second time and handed Jessie a cold bottle of water. With a quick exhale, she settled back into her seat behind the desk.

“I hadn't expected to be having this conversation with you so soon.” Her eyes flicked to a pair of framed photographs which occupied an empty corner of the desktop, their backs facing outward.

On the opposite corner sat a human skull, cream-colored and shadowed by the grease of countless fingers. The holes of its eyes stared hollowly out at Jessie, and its hideous grin showed a mouthful of jagged yellow teeth. One was missing from the lower jaw. Someone had stuffed a wadded piece of tissue into the empty socket. The top third of the cranium had been sawed off with a fine blade and was now canted open on a hinge. Jessie wondered what she'd see if she looked inside.

Candies?

“And certainly not under these circumstances, anyway.”

Jessie barely heard her.

The remaining articles on the woman's desk also harkened back to a forgotten time: a nondescript lamp topped with a faded New York Giants football lampshade. A homemade wooden name block with the words S
ISTER
A
NNE
W
HITE
, M.D. burned into it, and underneath, in smaller letters, S
ISTERS
OF
M
ERCY
H
OSPITAL
. There was also an antique device which she recognized as a telephone, the grandfather to their Link communication devices. Along the bottom edge of it was a row of clear plastic buttons; the second one was missing.

She turned her eyes back to Doctor White and finally registered what the woman had said a moment before. “I'm here now, so talk.”

The doctor nodded, leaned back. The game had begun; Jessie had forced the opening move, and now it was the doctor's option to set the tone. “Listen, Jessica,” she said carefully. She rested her elbows on the coffee-stained blotter and leaned forward. “I know you went to Citizen Registration today.” It was as much a question as it was a statement. “You didn't get a new implant, did you?”

That's why she was staring at your neck.

And on its heels:
No sense in lying about it. She already knows the answer.

“They couldn't replace it.”

There was just the barest of twitches in White's face, a signal that the answer held some significance for her.

“I suspected as much when I spoke with Kelly,” she said. “But I needed to hear it from you.” She rubbed her hands over her cheeks, as if they were cold and she was trying to warm them. “When Kelly told me you'd gone—”

“No!” Jessie shouted. She slammed her palm on White's desk. The teeth in the skull rattled and the lid clattered shut. “Tell me what's going on! I want to know who you are and what you and Kelly are doing to me.”

Doctor White nodded. “Okay. You're right, and I will explain. But first, I need to ask you something about Kyle. How familiar are you with his condition?”

Jessie clenched her fists. Her patience was frayed. “I know he was born with some kind of wasting disease.”

“Idiopathic degenerative syndrome,” White replied, nodding. “The term idiopathic is a convenient way of saying we haven't found a cause. Except . . . .”

“Except what? Are you saying you do know what's wrong with Kyle?”

Another nod. White checked her Link. “I think Kelly should fill you in on the specifics. I just needed to know the level of your understanding. And there isn't time for everything.”

She scratched her cheek and leaned forward. “I want you to know something, Jessica. What Kelly has done — what I've asked him to do — he had no choice. I made him do it. So whatever doubts you might be having about him, whatever suspicions and anger you're harboring, they should be directed at me, not him.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because deep down, with every fiber of your being, you know that Kelly loves you. He has always loved you. Even I can see that. He is a good man and he would never hurt you, not if he had a choice.”

“If he loves me so much, then why would he let anyone come between us?”

“Because he wants to protect you.”

Jessie hated this woman. She hated that White presumed to know Kelly better than she did. She hated that she assumed to guess what was in her own mind. And she hated that she was at least partially right. But most of all, Jessie hated her because she found herself badly wanting to believe her.

She studied the doctor's face, hoping to see if she was lying. From living with her grandfather, Jessie had learned a lot about reading people. She knew that certain nervous tics could betray deceit. The doctor held her gaze. There was no blush to her cheeks, no telltale constriction of the pupils or turning away. She leaned toward Jessie, her arms outstretched in a posture of earnestness, exposed and vulnerable. She certainly wasn't acting like she was lying.

You can't be sure about anything anymore. You've been wrong about people in the past.

“You've seen how protective Kelly is with his brother.”

“We're not talking about his brother.”

“He cares just as much for you as he does for Kyle. He'd rather die than to see either of you hurt.”

“And yet, strangely, the things he's done have hurt me. Terribly.”

“No, Jessica, it's your own actions which have brought you pain.”

“
Bullshit!
Don't you fucking insult me by saying this is all my fault!”

“You have the luxury to make your own decisions. Kelly hasn't had that choice.”

“You keep saying that! How could he not have a choice?” Jessie spat. “We always have a choice.”

“Not this time. Not when the alternative is allowing his brother to die.”

And then Jessie understood. White was blackmailing Kelly.

Remember, you were prepared to do the same.

Her hatred for the woman ballooned.

“Why?” she asked.

“The file on your Link. The photo.”

Now it was Jessie's turn to be surprised. “How did you— What the hell is it?”

“It's information.”

Jessie launched herself out of the chair and leaned over the desk. She thrust an accusing finger at White's face. “Who do you work for? Is it Arc? The Southern States Coalition?”

The doctor flinched. “Heavens! You do go straight for the jugular, don't you.”

“Tell me!”

White took in a deep breath. “You are right to ask about them, as they're the two biggest players in this game. But, no, I don't work for them.”

“The government then.”

She shook her head. “They've been a puppet of Arc's for a long time. But Arc and the government are engaged in a fight that's only tearing our country apart.”

Jessie shook her head in anger. “You've told me nothing! What is this thing on my Link? Why is it there? Why did you make Kelly put it there?”

“The files on your Link contain the results of years of scientific research, the collective knowledge of everything we know about Reanimates. And even a little about ourselves, the living. It's information that certain groups would kill to get access to.”

“If you're not with the government or Arc or the Coalition, then who? Tell me now, damn it! Who are you working for!” She pulled out her Link. “Or I'm pinging my brother!”

“Wait! Okay, but you have to calm down, Jessica.”

“I don't have to do anything! You say you're Kyle's doctor and that you know what's wrong with him, but you won't tell me what. On the other hand, you're using Kyle to blackmail Kelly, threatening to kill him if he doesn't do what you want.”

The doctor flinched. “I never threatened to kill Kyle, Jessica.”

“You've got exactly ten seconds to make me understand, or, swear to God, I will ping my brother.” She held the Link up so the woman could see she was serious. Her thumb hovered over the connect button.

The lump in Doctor White's throat bobbed and she nodded.

“First, tell me who you're working for,” Jessie slowly said. “Give me a name.”

“I think—”

“I don't give a rat's ass what you think!” Jessie screamed. “
WHO?
”

“Your father.”

‡ ‡ ‡

She's lying.

Jessie stared in stunned silence at Doctor White's upturned face, eyes flicking over the blush on the woman's cheeks, the furrows between her eyebrows, the redness of her lips.

The hospital intercom chimed over their heads. Muffled words filtered through her shock, but her mind couldn't process them. In that moment, there was only rage. She knew White was lying because her father had been dead for years.

“I met him a long time ago,” the doctor explained. “Just once, and very briefly. He saved my life.”

Jessie barked out a laugh of disbelief. “You've obviously got him confused with someone else. My father was a monster.”

“Interesting choice of words.”

“If you knew what my father did, you wouldn't think so.”

“You're probably too young to remember much about the Long Island outbreak.” Doctor White's eyes unfocused as she recalled the distant memory.

“I was five,” Jessie spat. “I remember enough. I've read the reports.”

“Lies, mostly, if you're referring to the official record.” White flicked her fingers dismissively to the side. “I was there, Jessica, on the island. My family was there. Such horror, death everywhere, the infection spreading like wildfire. The Army was— They were shooting anything that moved. It didn't matter if you were healthy or not. We were caught, my family and I, trapped. That's when your father helped me escape.”

Jessie plucked the name block off the desk and raised it over her head, ready to bash it into Doctor White's skull. The woman watched impassively. She didn't make a move to defend herself.

“You're lying,” Jessie said. “My father died three years
before
the outbreak. There's no way he could've saved you.”