“Has the angel been talking with you?” asked John Grampus.
“Not about this.”
“Have the carpets been talking to you?” asked Karen. “Any voices at all?”
“No.”
“Why did you attack Maggie Formosa?” asked Dr. Sundae.
“I don’t remember that I did. I only remember feeling sick that morning, and almost passing out.”
“Do you think you could have been possessed?”
“I suppose anything is possible, Dr. Sundae.”
“Jemma,” asked Vivian, “what do you think is happening?”
“I don’t know,” Jemma said. Vivian frowned, because Jemma was supposed to give a more detailed answer. Vivian had a theory that would require a PET scan for validation, something about enhanced activity in the parietal cortex. Jemma, feeling more and more persecuted as the questioning continued, though everyone, even Dr. Sundae, and especially Dr. Snood, was interrogating her with the utmost politeness, lapsed sullen. The hungover feeling she’d had since Rob had awakened was lifting, the sleepy, pliable state giving way to a need like horniness, but absent of lust. She wanted to burn again.
Word came a few hours after Jemma and Pickie were dismissed that the Committee had formally requested that Jemma refrain from any more extraordinary manifestations until further study had been accomplished. A series of tests was scheduled, Vivian’s PET scan among them, to begin in the morning. Dr. Snood, Dr. Tiller, and Emma were constructing a randomized double-blind trial, to begin within the week, in which they planned to compare Jemma’s efforts, provided she could make them again, with conventional therapy in low-risk, low-acuity children. Jemma, meanwhile, was excused from all clinical duties, assigned the impossible task of devising a way to blind herself in the study. She retired to the call room, to hide from eyes struck by the rumor of wonder, and faces not empty of fear. Everywhere she went, people turned to each other and made murmuring noises that sounded to her distant ears like bracka bracka bracka. “What does it mean?” people asked her, like she should know. “What does it mean?” asked John Grampus. He caught her — literally, reaching out to nab the edge of her yellow scrub gown as she passed by him where he sat on the ramp, sitting on the ground with his knees to his chest, his back to the balustrade, and a big purple hat pulled down over his eyes, as if he was at siesta. “She never mentioned anything like this to me.”
“It was a surprise to me too,” Jemma said, tugging at her gown.
“Sometimes I close my eyes and I can see the whole place, every secret room and every potential space, all laid out in my head like a 3-D blueprint. And some days I thought I could see the time laid out just like that, another blueprint, but unfolded across the days to come.”
“I thought she never told you what was next.” One fierce tug and the gown came free of his fist. Now she could run away, but she stayed a moment more.
“It’s not from her,” he said. “I used to think it was from Him.”
“What’d you see?” she asked, squatting down now next to him.
“Shuffleboard and codes and people dating.” He shrugged. “Who are you, though, that you did that?”
“Just another third-year med student,” she said. “Just another moron.”
“What else can you do? What else can I do?” He pushed his fingers at her in an abracadabra gesture.
“It’s all pretty weird,” she said.
“Worse than weird,” he said, and drew his hat down farther over his eyes. “You can go now,” he said. “Don’t come complaining to me when you start to feel used.”
“I don’t… I’m not… I don’t even understand… Oh whatever,” she concluded, and continued on, in a sort of huff, and the next time somebody pinched at her clothes — Ishmael saying he just had to talk to her — she offered the first excuse that came into her head (I have to pee), pulled away, and powered down the ramp, head down now, until she got to her room. Jeri Vega’s mother was outside her door.
“You’ve got to come upstairs,” she said.
“I’ve got to pee,” Jemma said, and now it was true.
“Right now,” the lady said. She’d been eating red licorice while she waited. A string of it still dangled from her mouth — somehow it made her look even tougher than usual — and she held a braided whip of it in her hand. “She needs you.”
“I’m not allowed,” Jemma said.
“Bullshit. The sun’s not allowed to shine? Are we not allowed to breathe? Is this place not allowed to float? Come on. Right now.” She held out her hand. Jemma ducked around it, put her back against her door, and her hand on the doorknob.
“I’m not allowed,” she said. “And anyway I couldn’t even if I tried. I don’t understand it at all — it’s so very strange, Ms. Vega. Not right now, I just can’t. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry but now I’m going to go inside. Goodbye.”
Ms. Vega was drawing back her whip hand as Jemma turned the knob and backed through the door. She heard the soft blow fall. “Get out here you stupid bitch,” Ms. Vega said. “Don’t tell me that shit you stupid bitch. I can tell a lie when I hear one. What kind of monster are you, you stupid bitch?”
“Lock the door,” Jemma whispered to the angel, so no one can get in. “Give it the special.”
“It is already done,” said the angel. Jemma stepped backward, all the way to the toilet, and sat down.
Rob was not even with her. He was still in the PICU, still monitored though quite thoroughly well. She imagined him sitting up in bed in the too-small hospital gown printed with frolicking puppies and kittens. “I kind of like it,” he said, when she offered to go replicate something that would fit better. “Size Prader-Willi — it almost fits.” He’d smiled at her, and then his expression had fallen back into the one he’d been wearing since she woke him up. Jemma had never seen someone look so consistently bemused before. He’d heard how she described herself as his fiancee while he was asleep, and argued that this constituted an acceptance of the proposal. Over and over and over she denied it.
She imagined him with her, seeking to summon him. She outlined a space for him in the air, drew his reclining shape, arms above his head, and thought she could see the pillow denting a little in anticipation of his head. Let it be… now! she thought, and whispered, imagining the puppy and kitten gown settling empty to the bed in the PICU as his body, reduced to arcing energy, or drifting mist, was transported to reconstitute itself in front of her eyes. It did not happen, but she felt a surge, a wave in her belly, that she knew was fire seeking egress. She looked out into the room, up to the window; still filled with blue sky. She was waiting for dark.
“I am born,” she said quietly. “I grow up. My brother dies my parents die my lover dies the world drowns I get pregnant I develop miraculous healing powers.” It made no more sense when spoken aloud than when spoken in her head. Why not Rob, or Vivian, or Dr. Tiller, or one of the parents, or one of the patients; why not Josh Swift slouching greenly down the halls and restoring health to all his fellow-sufferers? Why not Pickie Beecher, kung-fu baldy? He was already… eldritch. She held up her hands, palm toward palm, a foot apart, and let a green flare pass between them.
She opened up her mind, imagining an uncovering as slow and massive as the opening of an observatory dome, seeking to make herself receptive to the answer, and asked her questions again, and tried to conceive of the mouth that might speak the answer. She lay there waiting, hearing nothing, watching the window darken, blue into deeper blue, until it was the very color of Rob’s eyes. Then it was time.