Interesting? Forget asking him to kill me. I wanted him to die.
His face disappeared from view, replaced by a large white paper, filled with row after row of block letters in alphabetical order.
“We’re going to try this the old-fashioned way, Lia. I’m going to point at the letters one by one, and you blink when I get to the one you want. Make sense?”
One blink.
“Do you know your name?” This from the idiot who’d been calling me Lia from the moment he walked in the room.
His stubby finger skimmed along the letters. I blinked when it got to L. He started again at the beginning, and I blinked at I. Again, A.
“Good, very good. And your last name?”
Letter by letter we finally got there. It was just so freaking slow.
There was more pointless trivia: my parents’ names, the year, my birthday, the president’s name, and all of it painfully spelled out, letter by letter, blink by blink. I’d waited so long to make contact, but pretty soon I just wanted him to go away. It was too hard. I didn’t let myself think about what would happen if this was it, all I would ever have. A white sheet, black letters, his stubby finger. Blink, blink.
“Now that you’ve reached this level, we should be able to move on to the next stage. It’s just going to take a little longer to implement. Is there anything you want to ask in the meantime?”
One blink.
The letters reappeared and his finger crawled along.
W. Blink.
H. Blink.
A. Blink.
T. Blink.
WRONG WITH ME.
Blink.
I could tell from his expression it was the wrong question.
“As I said, Lia, you’ve been in an accident. Your body sustained quite a bit of damage. But I assure you that we’ve been able to repair it. The lack of motive ability and sensation is quite normal under the circumstances, as your neural network adjusts to its new… circumstances. The pain and other sensations you may have experienced while you’ve been with us are a positive sign, an indication that your brain is exploring its new pathways, relearning how to process sensory information. It’s going to take some time and some hard work, Lia, and there may be some… complications to work through, but we will get you walking and talking again.”
He said more after that, but I wasn’t listening. I didn’t hear anything after “walking and talking again.” They were going to fix me. Whatever complications there were, however long it took, I would get my life back.
“Is there anything else you want to ask?”
Two blinks. After the second one, I kept my eyes closed until he went away.
The bed was mechanical. It whirred quietly, and slowly the ceiling tipped away until I was sitting up. For the first time, I could see the room. It wasn’t much, but it was at least a different view, a better one than the ceiling, whose flat, unblemished gray plaster was even less interesting than the black behind my eyes. It didn’t look like any hospital room I’d ever seen. There was no machinery, no medical equipment, no sink, and no bathroom. I couldn’t smell that telltale hospital mélange of disinfectant and puke. But then, I realized, I couldn’t smell much of anything. There was a dresser that looked like my dresser, although I could tell it wasn’t. A desk that looked like my desk. Speakers and a vidscreen, lit up with randomly flickering images of friends and family. No mirror.
Someone had gone to a fair amount of effort to make the place feel like home.
Someone was expecting me to stay for a while.
A horde crowded around me. Doctors, I assumed, although none of them wore white coats. At the foot of the bed, clutching each other, my mother and father. Although, to be accurate, only my mother was doing much clutching, along with plenty of weeping and trembling. My father stood ramrod straight, arms at his sides, eyes aimed at my forehead; an old trick he’d taught me. Most people would assume he was looking me in the eye. Most people didn’t pay much attention.
My mother pressed her head to his shoulder, squeezed him tight around the waist, and used her other hand to pat my foot, gingerly, like she was afraid of hurting me. Apparently no one had told her that I couldn’t feel her touch, or anything else. More likely she was in selective memory mode, tossing out any piece of information that didn’t suit her.
“We’ve hooked up a neural output line from the language center of your brain, Lia,” the squinty-eyed doctor said. Now that I had a better view, I could see that he was also short. For his sake—and mine—I hoped his parents had spent all their credit on IQ points. Because clearly, they’d spared little for anything else. “If you speak the words clearly in your mind, the computer will speak for you.” Then it was like the whole room paused, waiting.
Hello.
Silence.
“It might take a little practice to get the words out,” he said. “I wish I could tell you exactly how to do it, but it’s like moving an arm or raising an eyebrow. You just have to find a way to turn thought into action.”
If I could speak, I might have pointed out that I couldn’t move my arm or raise my eyebrow. And then thanked him for rubbing it in.
Hello.
Hello.
Can anyone hear me?
Is this piece-of-shit equipment ever going to work or are you all just going to keep standing there and staring at me like I’m
“some kind of total freak?”
My mother let loose a whimpery squeal and buried her face in my father’s chest. He didn’t push her away.
“Very good, Lia.” The doctor nodded. “Excellent.”
The voice was female, an electronic alto, with that artificially soothing tone you hear in broken elevators, assuring you that “assistance is on the way.” It trickled out of a speaker somewhere behind my head.
Hello, I thought, testing it. The word popped out instantly.
“Hello,” my father said, like I’d been talking to him. Which maybe I had. His eyes stayed on my forehead.
“You’re going to be okay, honey,” my mother whispered. She squeezed the foot-shaped lump at the end of the bed. “I promise. We’ll fix this.”
“Can someone tell me what’s happening?” the speaker said.
I said.
“How bad was I hurt? How long have I been here? What happens next? Why can’t I—” I stopped. “I’ll be able to move again, right? Walk and everything? You said I could. When?”
I didn’t ask why Zo wasn’t there.
“It’s been several weeks since the accident,” my father said. “Almost four.” His voice was nearly as steady as the computer’s.
One month trapped in a bed, in the dark. I’d missed three tests, a track meet, who knew how many parties, nights with Walker, hours and hours of my favorite vidlifes. A month of my life.
“Of course, you’ve only been conscious for the last week or so,” the doctor said. “And as I explained before, your brain needed this recuperation period to adjust to its new circumstances. Involuntary motion indicated the first stage had been achieved. We actually expected you to reach this point a bit sooner, but, of course, these things vary, and nothing can be rushed, not in cases like this. Given the severity of your injuries, you’ve really been quite lucky, you know.”
Right. Lucky. I felt like I’d won the lottery.
Or been struck by lightning.
“Voluntary control over the eyelids, that’s stage two. You’ll gradually achieve control over the rest of your body. In fact, you may already be started down that path. We’ve immobilized the rest of you for the moment, after your… episode. For your own safety. But when you’re ready, your rehabilitation therapists will work with you, isolating individual areas. Sensation should return as well, if all goes smoothly.”