What's Left of Me (13 page)

He smiled, like he thought it might be reassuring. Addie didn’t smile back. I felt the scream bubbling in our chest even as our lungs seemed to collapse, our airways crumbling shut. Dr. Wendle took our shoulder and started forcing us toward the machine, grunting with the effort. “It’ll only take a moment, Addie. Don’t be silly.”

“No,” Addie said. “I can’t. I—”

“You can,” he said.

“I
can’t—
”

I hesitated. The machine winked wicked black eyes at us.

I said.

“Addie,” Dr. Wendle said.

she cried, small and white in the corner of our mind.

She didn’t need to tell me. But I begged Addie to listen anyway, hoping against hope that if I said it enough times, I’d believe it, too.

Dr. Wendle’s lips moved, but neither of us was listening.

I said.

Addie hesitated, then echoed my words.

The mouth of the machine yawned gray and silver. A white tongue lolled down the middle, crinkling slightly as Addie sat down.

I said as she lowered us onto our back.

The last bit was imperative. She’d stopped several times already.

Dr. Wendle leaned over us and adjusted some kind of white arch thing until it curved a few inches above our forehead.

“You’re good?” he said. “Comfortable? Lie very still. You won’t feel anything at all. I promise.”

Just hurry,
I thought. Just please, please, please hurry and get it over with.

Addie said. Tiny, trembling.

The top closed, slowly sealing off the light. Soon, all that remained came from the opening by our feet. There was a click, then a louder click. The lid was shut. We were trapped.

Darkness. Our rough breaths. Our drunken heartbeat. I tried to curl myself up as small as possible, tried to hide from whatever this machine was using to probe our body, our mind. I wasn’t here. I wasn’t here. I didn’t exist.

Addie screamed

Our arm smacked against the side of the box. Panic surged up our throat, bubbled into our mouth. “Let me out—”

I said.

“Please don’t move,” Dr. Wendle called, his voice muffled. “I can’t take a good reading if you move.”

Our fist pounded against the horrible, crinkly paper bed. Whispers of fear escaped our lips. I gave up on trying to disappear, on trying to hide. I couldn’t, not with Addie so terrified, not when she needed me.

Her fear clashed with mine. But mine was smaller. I was used to being paralyzed.

I said, holding her, hugging her, hiding her from our terror’s long talons.

Our hands trembled. I kept talking, wrapping Addie in the warmth of my words.

Addie said.

So I did. I told her about the time we climbed our old apartment building’s fire escape and pretended we were chimney sweepers. I reminded her of the summer we went fishing and fell in the lake. I picked out all the happy memories, the ones shining through the tangled weeds of all our years in and out of hospitals. The free weekends. The days our parents were happy. The time we spent with our brothers, before Mom and Dad started worrying what effect an unsettled child might have on them. Before Lyle’s own illness set in.

Slowly, shakily, our fists stilled. Tales from our shared life wove around us, their edges softened and worn by frequent use, their taste mellowed by the passage of the years. I spun them one after another until, an eternity later, there came a pop—a click—and Dr. Wendle’s voice: “There. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

A hand touched our arm. We jerked upright, our eyes flying open, squinting from the sudden assault of light.

Mr. Wendle smiled at us. “All done,” he said. If he noticed how hard we shook, he made no comment, only waved us up and said, “Out you go. The results will take a little while. In the meantime, go ahead and change back.”

We stumbled to our pile of clothes. Pulled the curtain half closed before sinking down, our shoulders hunched, our head bowed, our cheek against our knees. It was a long time before we stopped shaking. Blind fingers fumbled with too-tight knots. There was no one to help, and our shoulders ached by the time all the laces were undone.

Addie massaged our neck with one hand and reached for our clothes with the other. She couldn’t quite grab everything at once, and the skirt almost slipped from our grasp. Something clattered to the floor. She looked around our feet, but there was nothing there. Had we imagined it?

A red flash in the corner of our eyes.

Ryan.

A wave of longing surged over us. We needed to see a familiar face. I wanted to see
him
.

Addie scrambled into our clothes, jammed our feet into our shoes, and tumbled from behind the curtain. Dr. Wendle was typing something into the computer with one hand and pushing at his glasses with the other.

“I need to use the restroom,” Addie said.

“Out the door, turn left, then left again,” he said without looking up. “Actually, I should take you—”

“I’ll be fine,” Addie said, and darted out the door. The chip in our hand blinked on, off, on off on-off onoff.

But Ryan was nowhere to be seen.

A pair of nurses chatting in the hall glanced at us before returning to their conversation. They wore the same gray-striped uniforms and had their hair pulled back in identical buns.

Addie said, looking right, then left, then right again.

She ran down the hall, our eyes flying between our palm and the people around us, searching for a familiar face.

Red white red white red white red white red.

Shoes squeaked against tile. We careened around the corner and nearly slammed into someone coming the opposite way. He cried out, dropping a pile of folders. Papers scattered across the floor. White on white.

“Sorry—” Addie said. She kneeled and snatched up a sheet of paper before it slid too far away.

“No problem.” The man laughed and bent down, too. “What’s the hurry?”

“I was looking for the restroom,” Addie said.

He laughed again. “Go on, then. I’ll be fine.”

“No, I’m okay,” Addie said. We didn’t meet his eyes.

“Whose kid are you?” he said as we gathered the remaining manila folders and sheets of paper. Our eyes caught a glimpse of a black-and-white brain scan on one of them, then a name. There was another scan and a different name on the sheet under it.

“What?” Addie said.

“Aren’t you someone’s kid?” the man said. “Someone’s daughter, I mean?”

She shook our head.

He frowned. “No?”

CORTAE, JAIME
read the paper beneath our fingers.
HYBRID
. Two scans were pasted side by side, looking almost identical except for a black patch marring the one on the right. Each scan had a date scribbled below it. One was from about a week ago. The other was today’s. Below the dates was some text—
Age: 13, Height: 5
'
, Weight—

The man jerked the sheet of paper away before we could read any more.

“You’re not a patient, are you?” His voice had lost all traces of laughter.

Addie hesitated. The man snatched up the remaining papers and stuffed them back into his folders.

“I’m just here for a checkup,” Addie said. “Mr. Conivent, he—”

“Why are you in street clothes?” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?”

I said.

“We were just with Dr. Wendle,” Addie said quickly. “He—he did a scan thing on us.”

“On us?” the man said.

Addie blanched. “Me and another kid,” she said. “He’s going to be worried if I’m gone too long. I—I’ve got to go.” We jerked around and hurried back in the direction we’d come, ignoring the man when he called after us, praying no one would make us stop. No one did. Addie darted around the corner and pressed our back against the wall, our eyes closing for a moment before snapping open again.

I trembled.

Us.

Addie had said
us
.

The last time Addie had referred to ourself as
us
aloud, we’d been in single digits. We’d still promised each other nothing could ever, ever come between us. It had been me and her against the world.

I said softly.

Addie said.

But I heard the waver in her voice.

Fifteen

I
t wasn’t hard to find Dr. Wendle’s lab again. All the doors were clearly labeled; we just had to follow the numbers back.
What if we don’t go back?
I wanted to say. What if we found that elevator again and rode it back down to the first floor? What if we just walked right past the receptionist, the guard at the door . . . But I didn’t say anything, because then what?

Better to stay. Stay and do as they asked and wait, because Dad was going to bring us home. He’d promised.

Besides, we needed to find Hally and Ryan. We couldn’t leave unless we knew they were safe.

Addie was just about to open the door to Dr. Wendle’s lab when we heard the voices.

“. . . she had her vaccinations . . . shouldn’t be a problem . . .”

“There have been . . . before . . . when doctors get the prescription wrong or the kid is just . . .”

Addie stilled. Then, slowly, she pressed our ear against the door. One voice belonged to Dr. Wendle. The other to a woman. Both spoke too quietly for us to pick out more than a few words.

“. . . still the cog-phy test . . . more effective sometimes . . .”

“ . . . es, but only in the latter stages. When . . . can’t tell . . . there’s al . . . chan . . . at . . .”

The woman’s voice dropped even more in volume until we could barely hear it at all.

I said, even as a part of me warned that this was too much of a risk. We shouldn’t be trying to eavesdrop—we should be trying to be the perfect patient.

Gingerly, Addie pressed down on the handle and pushed inward an inch.

“There isn’t much we can do until we have all the test results,” Dr. Wendle said.

“No,” the woman said. “We’ll have to wait.”

A pause.

“You weren’t able to make it to this one, right?” Dr. Wendle said. “Have you heard anything yet? About how it went?”

There was no reply for a long moment. Then: “Better than the others.”

Dr. Wendle laughed, then trailed off when the woman didn’t join in. He cleared his throat. “Well, of course. But that doesn’t mean much. It won’t be enough for the review board, surely.”

“No.”

“There’s still time. And there are plenty of other avenues we’re still exploring. Eli’s doing much better now, isn’t he? I was thinking of putting him on Zalitene starting this week. It might help with his episodes, and—”

“He was a sweet boy,” the woman murmured.

“What?” Dr. Wendle said. “Eli?”

“No,” she said. “No, I meant . . .” Heels clicked across the floor. “I better go. Send me the girl’s file when the results are final.”

I said
.

But Addie didn’t budge. Our hand was clamped to the door handle, our ears straining to catch every word.

I shouted.

Addie lurched into the room, clutching the door to keep from falling. The woman cried out and stumbled backward. We stared up at her, matching her face with her voice. She was younger than we’d expected, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties. A pale woman with ash-brown hair and wide hazel eyes.

“Are you all right?” she said, tugging at her lab coat to smooth it out. The surprise disappeared from her face as neatly as the wrinkles from her coat. Without it, she looked suddenly older.

Addie nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. I—um, fell, and—”

The woman pulled her lips into a polite smile.

“I got lost,” Addie said. “I was searching for the bathroom, and I must have taken a wrong turn because I kept looking for this room and—”

“Well, you’re very smart to have found your way back,” the woman said. The detachment in her voice knocked Addie from her babbling. Our face smoothed over, our expression becoming nearly as distant as hers.

“. . . I just knew the room number, that’s all.”

“Addie, right?” the woman said. She held out her hand, and after a second, Addie placed ours in hers. Her grasp was dry and cool, her smile closed-lipped and brief. “I’m Dr. Lyanne.”

“Nice to meet you,” Addie said automatically.

“Where are you supposed to be headed?” said Dr. Lyanne.

“I don’t know,” Addie said. She looked at Dr. Wendle, who hadn’t said a word this entire time. Dr. Lyanne followed our gaze.

“Ah, well,” Dr. Wendle said, clearing his throat, “I’ll need a little longer with these results, and we won’t be ready for the cog-phy until after lunch. Until then, she . . . well . . .” He paused, and our stomach growled in the bubble of silence.

All eyes turned to us. Our face heated.

Dr. Lyanne frowned. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

Breakfast? We’d forgotten all about breakfast.

“No.”

If I hadn’t known better, if it hadn’t been such a preposterous idea, I would have sworn the woman just barely kept from rolling her eyes. But Dr. Lyanne was the picture of professionalism in her black A-line skirt and dark blue blouse.

She muttered something under her breath, so low and so fast we couldn’t catch it. Then she took our arm and guided us toward the door. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”

“You aren’t taking her to the other children, are you?” Dr. Wendle called as Addie followed Dr. Lyanne into the hall, trying to match our feet to the woman’s brisk steps.

Dr. Lyanne spared a glance behind her as the door swung shut. “Why not? She’ll end up with them anyway.”

“When can I call my parents?” Addie said as we hurried after Dr. Lyanne. Unlike the nurse, she didn’t check to make sure we were keeping up.

“Later, I’m sure,” Dr. Lyanne said. “It’ll be taken care of.”

We turned down a hall that looked much like the last. Nornand was a maze of white corridors. Our black skirt and shoes were like splotches of ink on a clean canvas.

“This is the way to the Ward,” Dr. Lyanne said. “You’ll always be accompanied in the hallways, so it’s unlikely you’ll ever get lost, but it’s good to have a general sense of the layout just in case.” She pointed down another hallway without even looking. “Over there’s the locker rooms, where the kids shower and get ready for bed. The Study room is in the opposite direction, but I’m sure someone will take you there later.”

“I was—I was told I’m only supposed to be here two days,” Addie said. “So I don’t really need to . . . I mean, I’m going home soon, anyway.”

Dr. Lyanne slowed, like she was ready to turn and face us. But at the last moment, she quickened her pace again. “Well, no harm in knowing. This whole wing of the clinic is dedicated to hybrids, but—”

She stopped walking. Addie almost slammed into her.

“What—” Addie said, then snapped our mouth shut as she saw the gurney round the corner.

We’d seen plenty of gurneys before, nameless people sliding past us in crisp, white beds, IVs drip, drip, dripping into their veins. Mostly frail old men and women—papier-mâché people who trembled with every breath.

The boy in this gurney was not papier-mâché. He was small and young and brown-eyed, staring upward at the ceiling as the nurse wheeled him across our path.

Dr. Lyanne made a soft, strangled noise. It lasted only a second before she muffled it. But it was enough to draw everyone’s attention—ours, the nurse’s, and that of the boy on the gurney with the bandages around his head. And it was enough for me to pick out the name buried in the cry.

Jaime Cortae?

Everyone else turned to Dr. Lyanne, but Addie couldn’t stop staring at the boy. He didn’t move, but his eyes met Dr. Lyanne’s for just one moment, and then he looked away. Jaime Cortae. Thirteen. Two scans. Two dates.

Two dates. Two scans of the same thing, but different. Jaime Cortae and a bandage around his head and the two scans of his brain—

Two scans.

A
before
and
after
shot.

And just like that, the world fell away.