Tainted (17 page)

“Paul.” I stuff my phone back in my pocket. “We discussed running some blood tests to see if we can determine what’s causing your…” psychotic mood swings “…blackouts. And since your mom has been calling at random times and we don’t want her angry, Paul’s decided to come here.”

“Good,” she says. Then her tough façade crumbles. “I can’t keep going on like this, wondering if it’s going to happen, wondering why it did.”

Paul arrives about thirty minutes later. He looks incredibly out of place in a regular house. Science, medicine, sterile environments suit Paul much better than carpet, gas fireplaces and throw pillows.

“Hi, Emma,” he says. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Hopefully these samples will help us figure out what’s going on.”

The four of us follow him to the spotless, fussy dining room, where he has Em sit at the table, with her arm propped on the tabletop. The blood draw kit opens to display rubber gloves, alcohol wipes, a compression strap, four unmarked vials, bandages and a Vacutainer, the large needle meant to accommodate the blood vial.

Quiet, and complacent, Emma does exactly as Paul instructs, and then, when he’s packing the vials into secure compartments, she says, “My uncle was in the Army for years. His favorite saying was ‘hope is not a method’.”

Paul tapes a bandage over the needle site on her arm. He covers her hand with his and holds her gaze. “Your uncle,” he says, “was a very smart man. I swear I will I solve this riddle.”

How can I doubt him when he treats my girlfriend like this? He’s real and here and caring.

Blond hair slides forward when she nods. “Thank you.”

Bree flicks a look at the wall clock. “My parents will be home soon,” she tells Paul.

“Understood,” he says. He hands the kit full of blood vials to me while he shoves his arms in his jacket.

“I’ll come to Ascension,” I offer when I give it back. “I can help you run the tests.” And make sure he doesn’t alter them, or anything else.

“Not necessary.” Paul rests a hand on my shoulder for a moment, then zips his jacket over his lab coat. “I don’t trust the lab anymore. I haven’t figured out how, or who for sure, but Ascension has been compromised. I will be dropping these off at an independent lab that I’ve hired. They are precise, thorough, and no one owns them. They are also discreet.”

And I will be unable to monitor what they do, or where they send the results.

Smooth skin and knitted yarn envelopes my hand when Emma winds her fingers in mine. She doesn’t bother to disguise her fear when she asks, “What about tomorrow?”

“I will be there,” Paul promises. “I will run diagnostics on all the equipment and the formula beforehand. Nothing will go wrong.”

If he’s not involved.

Bree fidgets. Jason shoves a hand through his hair. A delicate shudder ripples through Emma. She’s scared. I can read it in her expression, taste it in the air between us. She knows what will happen, though, without the formula and electric charge. The fade will accelerate until my victory over death is undone, and so is she. Em nods to Paul and offers him a weak glimmer of a smile.

“Then we’ll see you tomorrow,” I say, and cinch Emma tight to my side.

Cold air rushes in when he pulls open the front door, then Paul sweeps out and leave us.

“Well,” says Bree, “He’s not as weird as I thought he’d be.”

“Weirdness is subjective.” Jason says. “The guy kind of reminds me of an undertaker.”

Emma’s grip on my hand tightens, and she sways where she stands. Instead of letting me slip an arm around her, she tightens her hold, stands straighter and tilts her jaw up. Death might’ve beaten her once, but my brave sweet Emma is not letting the fade win. A shiver runs through her, though her body feels warm like it does when she’s tired.

Bree, a barometer to Emma’s emotional and physical state, glances our way. Her eyes take Emma’s locked stance and Bree’s bottom lip turns down. She says, “After dinner, we are going to bed early.”

Relief washes over Emma’s face in a visible wave.

“So,” Bree continues, “I think it’s time for you boys to get moving. We’ll go with the standby ‘shopping’ excuse tomorrow.”

“Need a ride?” I ask Jason, and hug Emma to me. “I didn’t see the Bronco out there.”

“Yeah.” Jason shrugs into his Carhartt coat. “I’m not sure that damn Ford will ever run well again.”

Emma may be tired, she might be worried about her sanity, but the girl knows where my pockets are and how to get my blood pumping by putting her hand in one. She slides her fingers in, slight pressure on my leg, fingers sweeping closer to the inside seam the deeper they go. Then she hooks my key ring and pulls the keys out. She tosses them to Jason, who snorts a breath and says, “Some things will never change.”

“This won’t,” Em breathes, her words brushing my lips.

She pulls me to her mouth, gives me a sweet kiss, then flings both arms around me and clings to me like I might disappear. I exhale, and she sucks in my breath. I would breathe for her if I could. She breaks off the kiss and I agree, “This will never change.”

Even if I always feel guilt for what I made her into.

Even if part of me will always feel unwanted because she cried out for Daniel.

Even if it hurts us both, I love her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Snow flits through the icy air despite the clear, polar blue skies of Friday morning.

“Record freezing temperatures,” Grandpa said this morning, jabbing his finger at today’s page in his almanac. “Better leave the faucets dripping today, Judy. We don’t want the pipes to freeze.”

Gran’s only response was to twist the faucet handle on the kitchen sink, opening the tap enough for the water to stay moving through the pipe.

“Says here this next week will be a doozy,” Grandpa continues. He lifts a gaze full of warning from the page to me. “Blizzard of the century, possibly worse than the Winter of ’78.”

His words, the expression in his eyes, stick with me on my way to Ascension Labs. The blue skies make Grandpa’s worries seem like lies, until you open a door and step out into biting air. Even with my skewed temperature senses, it’s damn cold. Poor Emma must be freezing. I would take her away somewhere warm, but her mother would simultaneously birth kittens and let loose the dogs of war if I tried.

Fine snow dusts Ascension’s gates. They glitter in the hard sun, jaws opens and waiting. Only Paul’s car is in the parking lot when I pull in. To save the lab’s sensitive equipment, we’re doing my procedure in the morning, Emma’s in the afternoon.

The power company must love us.

A knife of apprehension stabs into me. I want to trust Paul, need to right now. I bury my face in my collar when I step from the Acura. Snow makes crunchy, squeaking noises beneath my shoes. Breath fogs in front of my face. Frigid air slithers through every crack, nips at my nose. The building blocks the wind, a brief respite from one misery leads to another. Despite the good this lab produces, its evil leeches out from its core. Paul said, after my father died, that I was being groomed as the public face of Ascension and had been kept from the darkest truths. I don’t know the worst of it – I don’t think I ever want to.

“I’ll buzz you in,” Paul says before I can push the button on the intercom panel.

Good. Then I don’t have to take my hand from the safety of my pocket and put it into the cold.

A metallic click issues from the doors. I use my elbow to ease it open, then duck around the edge into the antiseptic-scented warmth of Ascension. The ever present funk still lingers here, a brooding, almost cognizant sense of something “other”. On formula days, though, it’s different, more welcoming, patient maybe. When I’m wired into the computers, hooked up to one of the IVs, Ascension Labs exudes a sense of knowing – as if, with enough visits, I will become a worshipper at this shrine of ungodly miracles.

Paul meets me in the main hall. Act natural, I coach myself. He could be innocent. I hope he is. His clothes are rumpled, hair gone shaggy and in need of cutting: apparently his new state of normal. His fleeting smile is genuine.

“Hey, kid,” he says. “Ready?”

“Do I have a choice?”

We know I don’t. This is a game I play to dispel the complete surreal awkwardness of the moment. Paul, serious as always, sighs and looks like he wishes he could change things.

“Did you get the results of Emma’s blood tests?”

“Not yet,” he says, and polishes the lenses of his glasses. “I expect them shortly and will show you the minute they come in.”

“Unless I’m under.”

A slight tip of his head to the side. “Yes. Then right after.”

Paul administers a fast-acting, short-duration sedative to make the procedure more tolerable. My father kept me conscious the first few weeks, asking questions as though I was a sentient guinea pig. Paul convinced him that my consciousness hampered the full healing effects due to my body’s subconscious responses to apprehension.

I strip off my jacket and hang it on the rack close to the main laboratory door. My shirt comes off next and hits the counter near the bank of monitor screens. Even after weeks of this routine, Paul still has an expression akin to disbelief when he first looks at me. Then he flips into science lab geek mode, whips out my file and starts scribbling notes.

“Subject still shows advanced healing rates, even at the end of the weekly cycle,” he mutters. “Perhaps healing is not dependent on concentration of formula in the system? What affect will it have on aging?”

“So, should I climb up on the table, Igor?” He snorts a response. He’s not the assistant in this horror movie – Paul is the scientist. I climb onto the cold metal when he waves at the table. “Should I plug in my own leads? How about my IV?”

“Would you like me to read you an ancient Romanian lullaby first?” Paul shoots back.

“Hey!” I say and reach for the wires. Paul bats my hand away. “My mother read those to me, thank you.”

“Who do you think gave her the book?” As soon as he says it, a flash of regret darkens his eyes. And reminds me why the greater part of me still yearns to trust him.

Playful banter dies. I lie back, and cross my arms over my stomach where they are easy for Paul to coat with sticky pads, monitor wires and the IV I hardly feel when he inserts it. His face is open, the love he obviously felt for my mother not hidden. My heart kicks out a painful squeezing beat and the monitors react. Paul glances at the readout, the physical representation of the tumult of emotions bashing me from inside.

“Relax, son,” he says, inserting the syringe with the sedative into the IV tube, and depressing the plunger. I think I smile, try to tell him it’s good that he loved Mom, but my face feels like its sliding off my skull. “See you on the other side.”

My eyelids drop and the darkness swallows me whole.

No, Dad! WAIT!! The pain. Guts hollowed out, filled with fire. I’m dying.

…black…

Mom?

Tickling on the edge of my empty forever. A tingling.

Dead again.

A flutter. White heat. A girl? Electricity. Building, building, building. The flutter becomes a beat, the heat fills my forever. The girl becomes my forever. Sizzling under my skin, air in my chest, warmth in my veins, blood is the life.

Screaming wild pulsing life.

“Emma!” I yell. I snap to sitting, with such a jerking motion Paul grabs the end of the table to keep it from pitching over.

“She’s not here,” he says, voice ringing with pity.

“I know,” I groan. “I can’t help it.”

“It’s OK.” What else could he possible say after witnessing that? The hair on Paul’s arms stands when he pulls the tape and electrodes off my skin. “Was it the same experience?”

“Every time.” I tug my shirt over my head, and slide off the table. “It’s
exactly
the same every single time.”

What will Emma feel? What will she see? How could I doom her to suffering her death and resurrection every seven days? Maybe I have become my father.

Everything in me buzzes with energy. My hair is also standing on end. Paul hands me a comb and walks to the monitors. He rips the read-out tapes off, folds them and tucks them inside the folder. “The system will be back up to executable levels in an hour. I’m going to check the fax in my office and look for Emma’s lab reports.”

“OK. I’m going to go find some food.”

“I bought you a few chicken sandwiches. They’re waiting for you in the employee’s lounge.”

Definitely not the behavior of someone guilty of something heinous. Still, after Paul saying Ascension has been compromised, I’m hesitant about touching something that’s been out left out of sight. “Is it safe?”

“No one else has been here all day. All doors have remained locked, and I’ve been watching the surveillance feeds,” he answers from the mouth of the hallway, “and I bought the sandwiches on my way here.”

“Thanks, Paul.”

The lounge is not exactly comfortable. A table and four chairs, cabinets, a fridge and a microwave. In the middle of the table, with the handles tied, sits a plastic bag holding four takeout meals from an upscale healthy eatery by Paul’s house. On any other Friday, I would descend on the bag and devour them all. Today I hesitate. Questions are hard enough to swallow. Plus, I know Emma will be staring, too. I take out two sacks of sandwiches and “baked” fries, leaving the other two for Emma.

I rest my arm atop the table when I sit, and eat with my left hand. It will slow me down, and maybe give my stomach a chance to realize its full. This way, too, I can watch the dog’s bite marks recede. Tingles burn under the surface, reds and blues fade. With one meal gone, I pull out my pocket knife and use the tiny scissors to snip the knots off the stitches. The friction leaves burning tracks in my skin. Those will heal soon, too.

“Nice,” Jason says suddenly behind me. I spin to see him in the door. “What do you do for an encore, swallow swords?”

“Isn’t that a circus thing?”

“I’m pretty sure I saw someone do it at the Ren Faire,” Bree says when she comes around the corner.

I stand, and they part for me; they both know nothing will keep me from Emma when she comes around the corner. Then Bree steps forward and swipes breadcrumbs from the front of my shirt. “Appearances,” she admonishes me.