Was it alive? Corey thought. Did it have a voice, and what was it thinking now, laying in the dark among thrown away paper and empty soft drink containers? Did they talk among themselves, the tiny voices, the thrown away, knowing the recycler would pick them up soon?
“Good day, ma’am,” the waste bin announced in her inner ear when Corey touched it.
She snatched her hand back.
A voice mail awaited her in the office. “I’ve had a cancellation, so we can schedule your procedure for tomorrow if that would be convenient,” said her doctor. “If you don’t mind, a couple of interns have expressed interest in observing. Your condition really is quite fascinating.”
The night nurse came in from Stella’s room. “She’s gone under for the last time. Another coma,” she declared as she put on her coat. “I’d give her twenty-four hours, tops.”
Corey felt her shoulders drop, a physical unleashing, as if the muscles had died. “No.”
The nurse buttoned her coat, her face a closed door. “We knew it was on the way. She was used up.”
When the nurse left, Corey sat in her chair, her hands resting limply on her legs. She realized she’d been staring at them for some time, when a thin keening voice echoed in her ear. Not words, just a long howl of grief and loss, but so quiet she thought at first it might be a subconscious sound, a part of her imagination.
She found the pencil in the bottom drawer, but instead of the length she’d left it the day before, it had been sharpened down to its last inch. There was almost more eraser than pencil. From end to end, it didn’t reach to both sides of her palm.
“What happened?” she said.
The sobbing continued. It would be so easy for her to block it out. A simple adjustment and the pencil would no longer be able to talk to her. Harlow could do it. He walked through a world of tiny voices screened to silence. But she didn’t. She waited until the cries settled down.
Finally the pencil gasped, “Crossword puzzles.”
“Huh?”
“All night, crossword puzzles. The nurse writes and writes and writes, then resharpens. Always, always resharpening. I’m a splinter away from annihilation.”
“Toss him in here,” said the trashcan.
“No, don’t,” said the pen from the desktop. “The pencil’s a good egg. Do you know there’s a couple thousand jokes stored on his chip? And he makes up new ones all the time.”
“My pencil makes up jokes?” Corey rolled the wood between her palms.
“I have skills,” said the pencil. “I have other interests.”
“Well, let’s hear one.”
The pencil hesitated. “Okay. How about this? Did you hear the joke about the pencil?”
Corey shook her head and then said, “No.”
“Never mind. It’s pointless.”
The pen snickered.
Corey looked at the pencil incredulously. “That’s terrible. I can’t believe I listened to that.” She put it on the desk and stood.
“Maybe this one will be better,” said the pencil. “Where do pencil vampires come from?”
Corey picked up the pen and put in her blouse pocket, then moved to the doorway between her office and Stella’s room.
“Pencil-vania,” the pencil said across the distance.
If anything, Stella appeared even smaller than she had yesterday. Her mouth hung open; her chest was still. Corey stepped toward her, then Stella gasped and sucked in a raspy breath.
Red lights flashed on the medical sensor. Electrolytes dangerously low, read one display. Blood oxygen dangerously low, read another. Brain patterns indicate serious distress, reported a third. Corey tapped the communication interface. Hospital contacted and no heroic measure order confirmed said the note. Stella’s heartbeat pinged forlornly from the medical sensor.
Corey’s hand quivered when she touched Stella’s forehead. “Where are you, Stella? Where’s the seat of your consciousness now?”
But Stella couldn’t process the question. She heard the words without sorting them into meaning. Colors pressed in on her, and sounds, and the shape of smells, all confused and muddled. This is death, she thought. I can fight it, if I can just find myself. So she moved as best she could through the forms and notes and blustery textures that batted against her. I’m dying! My mind is collapsing upon itself. She could see an abyss around her. A sucking blackness just beyond the chaos on every side. Maybe I’m already dead! She tried moving her hands, but she couldn’t feel them. She felt nothing at all. A tumbling. A falling down. An endless repetition of glassy ringing like crystal wind chimes behind cotton walls.
Stella would have wept if she could, but she fought instead. If I can grab something. If I can center myself, all will not be lost. And the ringing continued. Was it a voice echoed and transformed? Was it the sluggish firing of her last brain cells like a Fourth of July sparkler nearly gone dead?
Corey sat beside the old woman’s bed for an hour. Each life sign’s graph slid slowly down. The pulse barely twitched every couple of seconds, sounding its tiny tone. The pause between them was excruciating. Even Stella’s smell seemed stale, as if she’d already passed on and had gone bad.
Finally, after Stella’s dying sounds became a background noise, the door to the outer office opened, startling Corey out of her chair, but Stella didn’t move when Harlow came into the room, his hands jammed into his pockets, and his always careless hair waving across his forehead.
“Last call, isn’t it?” he said. “I’d better get those papers signed or we’ll be postmortem, and what a mess that would be.”
“I have to talk to you,” Corey said. “It’s important.”
He smiled. “I know you liked Stella, but she’s gone now. You’ll get a severance package and a good recommendation. Don’t worry.”
Corey blinked. For a second what he said didn’t make sense to her. The blood rose to her face, and for an instant it was if he was breathing on her again, warm and tense, a half beat from the end.
“No, it’s not that. I’m pregnant.”
Harlow moved to the other side of the bed. “I suppose we’ll have to return all this equipment. Do you know if it’s rented, or did Stella buy it?”
Corey’s hands rested on the back of the chair by the bed. She could feel the sweat on her neck. Harlow was looking at Stella’s interface box on the wall behind her head.
“I’m pregnant,” she said again.
“Bad timing, that,” said Harlow. “But you’ll come up with another job in no time. You could delay delivery if you want. All the better companies give you a few months either way. A buddy of mine and his wife didn’t take delivery for sixteen months because he got cold feet.”
“No, Harlow, you don’t understand. I’m pregnant. Me. I’m physically with child.” She pressed her hand against her stomach. “There’s a baby in here. Your baby.”
He blinked back at her, then his brow furrowed. “I didn’t order a baby. I haven’t even deposited anywhere.”
“In me, you did, the old-fashioned way. It’s not supposed to happen, but we’re going to be parents.”
Harlow didn’t speak.
“I thought you should know,” said Corey.
“You’re pregnant?”
The pen piped up in Corey’s ear. “I told you he was an idiot.”
“And he chews pencils,” said the pencil from the other room.
“It’s in you? Like a parasite?” Harlow’s nose wrinkled as if he’d smelled something distasteful. “What a bother.”
“My doctor wants me to make an appointment.” Corey’s hands covered her stomach that still felt flat and familiar. “Soon.” She felt as if she were playacting. A real pregnant woman wouldn’t feel so… so normal. Maybe she could just shake her head to wake up. Stella wouldn’t be dying. Harlow would wait for her at her desk for long talks, his lovely eyes locked on her own. She’d still know the long anticipation of his fingers on her top blouse button, toying, toying, toying, and always a second away from committing.