Christmas break was a few days away. Maybe he'd drive out to Windham County and try to cheer her up.
"For Christmas? I won't be leaving until next Friday."
"The twenty-third? Our break starts the sixteenth. Why so late?"
"Well, I'm working on this project. I can get overtime if I stay, and I thought if Tim comes back I ought to be here."
Matt resisted the impulse to say that's crazy, that if Tim's old man finds him in Vegas, he'll bring him straight back to New Hampshire.
"You're going to hang around an empty campus?" He hated the thought of her being alone in a deserted dorm. "You think that's a good idea?"
"It's not empty and you sound like my mother."
"Sometimes mothers make a lot of sense."
"I just got off the phone with her. She's got one of her 'feelings' and wants me to come right home."
"Is that so bad?"
"Do you have any idea how quiet a farm gets in the winter?"
"How about I come visit you down there?" he found himself asking without thinking.
"No, Matt. You've got better —"
"What's better than visiting an old friend who sounds like she needs a friend."
"That's nice of you, Matt, but really, I'll be busy in the lab and there's not much to do around this part of Maryland if you aren't working. I appreciate it, and I'll be fine. And I promise to call you as soon as I get back home. Then the three of us can go out together and catch up."
"The three of us?"
"Sure. Tim will be back by then. He's got to be. He wouldn't stay away through Christmas."
"Right," Matt said slowly. "Sure. The three of us. That'll be great."
I hope you're right, Quinn, he thought as he hung up a few minutes later.
The phone rang almost immediately. Matt didn't recognize the voice at first.
"Matthew? This is Lydia Cleary. Quinn's mother."
Why on earth was she calling? She sounded upset.
"Hi, Mrs. Cleary. I was just talking to Quinn."
"Oh. That's why your line was busy. I was speaking to her earlier and she says she's going to stay down there next week."
"She told me."
"Matthew, you've got to get her home. Something terrible is going to happen to her if she stays there. Just like it happened to that friend of hers."
Cold fingers did a walk along Matt's spine.
"What do you mean, 'happened' to Tim? Tim took off for Las Vegas."
"I don't know about any of that. I just know something bad's happened to him and the same will happen to Quinn if she stays down there. You know how stubborn she is. She won't listen to me."
"She won't listen to me, either."
"Maybe if you go down there, Matthew. Maybe she'll listen to you then and you can bring her back. I know it's a lot to ask..."
"It's not a lot," he said, trying to soothe the growing agitation in her voice. "Not a lot at all. I'll leave as soon as they cut me loose on Friday."
"Oh, thank you, Matthew." She sounded ready to cry. "I'll be eternally grateful for this."
He eased himself off the phone, then sat there, wondering, feeling uneasy. Her sense that something had 'happened' to Tim rattled Matt. And she was so convinced the same was going to happen to Quinn. Superstition, of course, but still...
Matt decided then to leave for Maryland Friday afternoon without telling Quinn. He'd catch her by surprise and work on her all weekend. By Sunday he'd have her packed up and ready to go.
In a few days he'd have Quinn home safe and sound. But what about Tim? He wished he could do the same for Tim.
Tim, old buddy, where the hell are you?
*
Tim existed in a timeless space of boredom, rage, and terror. Sometimes he slept, and dwelt in a nightmare in which he had no body. Sometimes he was awake, and dwelt in a nightmare in which he could not feel his body.
The staff took good care of that body. Three times a day, every shift, his limbs were put through their ranges of motion to keep the joints limber and prevent contractures. He was turned back and forth, his position changed every few hours to prevent pressure ulcers in his skin. And whenever they were in the ward, all the nurses spoke to him constantly, like girls talking to their dolls.
And that was what Tim began to feel like. He couldn't feel, couldn't reply, couldn't move on his own. He was a giant Ken doll.
Despite all the care, he was afraid for his body. What had they done to it? Had they scorched his skin? Was he now a burn victim like the others? He felt nothing. If only he could feel something—even pain would be welcome—he might know.
And Tim had begun to fear for his mind. Imprisonment in an inert, mute body was affecting it. Every so often he would feel his mental gears slip a few cogs, would catch his thoughts veering off and have to reel then in from wild, surreal tangents filled with giant, floating syringes and stumbling, mummified shapes. He knew one day—one day too soon—those thoughts could slip their bonds and never come back.
Focus. That was the only thing that kept his mind in line. Focusing on movement, on brief, tiny increments of victory over the drug that crippled his nervous system.
He'd learned to recognize the signs that his previous dose of 9574 was wearing off. Mostly it was a tingling, beginning in his fingertips and toes and spreading across his palms and soles. When the sensation came he focused all his will on his fingers. Sometimes he was positioned so he could see them, but many times he wasn't. He didn't let that stop him. For most of the day, his hands didn't exist. But when the tingling came, it told him where they were, and then he could locate them, focus on them, make them the center of his world, and demand that they obey him.
Tim couldn't be sure, but it seemed to him that the episodes of tingling were lasting longer, starting a little sooner before each new injection. What did that mean? Was he building up a tolerance to the drug? Was his liver learning to break it down faster? He'd read that the liver could "learn." When a new substance was introduced to the bloodstream, the liver's job was to break it down and dispose of it. At first it would metabolize the substance slowly. But as the substance made more passes through the liver, the enzymes within the hepatic cells adjusted and became increasingly efficient. That was why a teetotaler could get tipsy on a single glass of wine while a drinker might down half a bottle with little or no effect: the teetotaler's liver has no experience breaking down ethanol but it's routine for the drinker's.
Tim knew he had a good tolerance for alcohol—always had. Maybe that indicated an especially efficient liver. Maybe his liver was learning new ways to clear the 9574 from his blood, and getting a little better at it every day.
He clung to that thought. It wasn't much of a hope, but at least it was hope. And he needed all the hope he could muster. His hands were tingling now. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, so he couldn't see them. But he knew where they were now. There was another sensation today. A dull pain on the outer aspect of his left thigh. He ignored that. It was his hands that concerned him. He focused on them, concentrating his will...
"Is Number Eight awake?"
That voice. He knew that voice!
"Yes, Doctor."
Alston. Dr. Arthur Alston. Tim wanted to roar the name, wanted to spring up and hurl himself at his throat, but all he could do was lie here and feel the growing tingle in his hands.
"When's he due for his next dose?" Alston's voice said.
"Not for another twenty minutes."
"Give it to him now. I've got a little debriding to do here, and I don't want him twitching."
Suddenly Dr. Alston's face loomed over him. He was wearing a surgical mask and cap.
"Hello, Brown. I'm terribly sorry it had to come to this, but you gave me no choice. This, by the way, is the last time you'll be referred to by your name. From now on, you're the John Doe in bed eight. Don't look for rescue from the Ward C staff. These nurses have been hand picked by the Foundation. They don't know your real name, but they do know you're not one of our usual burn victims, and they know you're here because you're a threat to the Foundation."