Brainstorm Page 11

  “Okay. Here’s the deal. We’re going to take the stairs. And … well. Then I want to show you something.”

  He still couldn’t look at her. Not so much for emotion’s sake. More because he felt like someone who was about to tell a lie. Like if she looked into his eyes, she could tell he was about to tell a lie. So best not to say anything more. Except, “Come on.”

  He opened the door and went into the stair well. She followed and nearly bumped into him. He had stopped suddenly. He had a déjà-vu impression. Only the “already seen” wasn’t some vague memory. He could feel actually feel the sensation of those shrieks coming at him. He wanted to run but he stood firm. This has got to stop, he yelled at himself. No matter what, he was going to make it stop.

  “Are you all right?” His face had turned so pale. She thought he was about to faint.

  “Come on.”

  16

  Connie paused halfway down from the eleventh floor. On the landing between the floors. The stairs leading to the tenth-floor door were parallel to those going up. You had to walk a 180 on the landing to face the door. He didn’t want to do that. Didn’t want to look. He’d let Vicky. That’s why he had brought her along. If the door looked normal and he hadn’t done what he thought he had done, he wasn’t going to let his imagination be the first to see that.

  “Okay,” he said neither looking down the stairwell or at Vicky. She had no idea what he meant because for several seconds, he didn’t add anything to his “okay.” And if she hadn’t been so worried about him, she would have blurted out the cliché comment: Is this some kind of game? But she sensed that whatever he was up to ─ if it was a game of sorts ─ it was a serious one. She could feel his agitation.

  He nodded in the direction of the stairs going down. That seemed to convince her she should continue. And she did. Hesitantly. Looking back at Connie until he disappeared from view. Half expecting to find a body on the landing below. Or something equally horrible. He had appeared so upset to go down there.

  He held his breath as he listened to her footsteps. He had his own “half expecting” to consider. For now, he was back in his prey/flight mode. Expecting to hear those shrieks again. To hear Vicky’s cry among them. Ready for the lights to go out. For the dark to envelop him.

  “Connie!” she yelled. He froze. He couldn’t hold his breath at the sound of her voice because he was already holding it. Instead his heart beat so fiercely, he put his good hand on his chest afraid he was having a heart attack.

  “Connie, we better call security,” she said coming up the stairs. Taking them two at a time. “Someone’s seems to have broken into the building. Or into the floor below. The door’s been busted open.”

  Okay, he told himself.

  So now that she had proved it wasn’t a hallucination, he could deal with what he believed happened to him in a rational manner. Brain over emotion. Thought over reaction. Theories over paranoia.

  That should have been how he felt.

  But that’s not how he felt.

  His face grew pale. His eyes vacant. His body rigid. His breathing, once the air in his lungs escaped with a gasp, rapid like a runner’s.

  It was shock. That’s what he was feeling. The same shock he had felt on the bridge. Only it wasn’t third-person shock. It was for himself. It was the jolt of knowing some awful truth. And the shock of not understanding what “awful” or “truth” meant.

  The feeling of being watched was one thing ─ especially when there was always no one there. But this other thing was more frightening because it was real. What he had torn away from the door. How could he have done that?

  These thoughts pounded his brain like a headache. Brought him to his knees. Just as he had collapsed on the bridge. “Connie!” he heard Vicky cry out. He could feel her hand on his shoulder, but when he looked up into her face ─ tight with anxiety ─ it took him several seconds to speak. “There’s very little truth in the ‘awful truth’,” he said. He raised his hurt hand. Tried to. Grimaced as he did so. “This is all the truth I got.”

  “My god, Connie.” She knelt beside him. “Please tell me what’s wrong with you. What’s happened to you? How did you hurt your hand?”

  For a moment, he gazed at her face. Not really seeing it. His mind darted from one unreal episode to another. From one real event to another. Did the unreal and the real have anything in common?

  Vicky had no idea what was happening to him. But she could see the pain in his eyes. She sensed ─ she knew it had nothing to do with his injured wrist. She reached a hand out. Touched his cheek and gave it a soft caress. Now not hesitant to show how she felt towards him.

  He took in the caress like a salve had been applied to his injured self. He put his hand on hers. “Thanks. I needed that.” He began to stand but his legs were shaking from that jolt. She helped him up.

  “You must think I’m constantly drunk. But I’m not.”

  “I know you’re not drunk.” Each searched the other’s face as if they were looking for some ultimate truths. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”

  “No. I brought you down … I wanted you to see that door. And you did.”

  “Yes? I don’t understand.”

  “I want to explain.” His sore wrist suddenly spasmed. “Oh, shit. This damn wrist.”

  “We should get you to a doctor.”

  “Yes. First, one more thing.” He started down the stairs. “I can do this,” he mumbled to himself. “Truth or consequences.”

  She came after him. Swiftly. Afraid to leave him on his own even if she didn’t know why she was afraid. When she caught up to him, he was standing in front of the door. A hunk of metal in his hand. The door handle attached to something else. Some jagged metal with bits of foam core sticking out.

  “You see this?” he said, once again breathing deeply. “I did this. I tore this off the door.” He let it drop. “Let’s get out of here.”

  17

  Rain pelted Connie’s car. Wind battered it as if it were trying to break in. He and Vicky were parked in front of the emergency doors. Vicky was in the driver’s seat. They had been sitting there for several minutes.

  Connie had been silent on the ride over to the hospital. His good hand holding onto his sore wrist every time the car went over a bump. Vicky had let him be silent. She hadn’t wanted to prod him in the state she believed he was in. On the point of some kind of breakdown. Hadn’t she read somewhere that mental patients could sometimes possess superhuman strength? She said nothing during the trip. Still didn’t say anything after she had pulled up in front of the emergency doors and Connie had made no attempt to get out of the car or to speak. Her hands gripped the steering wheel while she waited for what he was going to do or say. And the longer he remained silent, the more she tightened her grip. As if all the tension she felt was being directed into the wheel.

  Connie felt no tension. He had left all that behind in the stairwell. He was thinking. Had been thinking while she drove. Trying to make some sense out of everything. To piece together the puzzle pieces that didn’t fit. So, he wasn’t feeling tense. And he was surprised, when he finally looked over at Vicky, to see her face knotted up with emotion. Surprised, too, in a very “Connie” way to realize that she was still there. He had been so into himself with his thoughts.

  He could do that. Mentally isolate himself whenever he was working on a coding problem. There could people all around him, talking to each other and even to Connie, without him being aware of anyone but himself.

  “Sorry,” he said, thinking how self-centered he could sometimes be.

  Vicky nearly jumped from the sound of his voice. She had been thinking, too. And had gotten used to the silence between them. She turned to him with her brightest smile. “Sorry? What for?”

  He didn’t answer at first. He was thinking. “Okay,” he said. Then he took several deep breaths.

  When he didn’t go on, she said: “Shouldn’t we go in?”

 
“Yeah. In a minute.”

  He felt safe in the car. Maybe it was because she was with him. Maybe because she was just another human being that seemed normal. When he began to describe what had happened to him in the stairwell, he felt calm. Not at all threatened by any unseen spirits or watchers. Not even threatened by the look of horror on her face. He could do this, he thought, in between burst of description. Deal with what was happening to him. Work out what it was.

  Vicky had a harder time working out what it was. His description of what had happened to him ─ what he thought had happened him ─ gathered up her breath. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. There just had to be an explanation for what was happening to him. He didn’t seem like someone who was cracking up. If she had been concerned over what he had told her before, now she was frantic with wanting to keep him safe. Something in his brain must have triggered the hallucinations. “Have you ever taken drugs?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Well, you know. When you were younger. In college. I guess they could cause some kind of flashbacks. Maybe that’s the reason.” When he didn’t answer, she added, “I guess.”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest ─”

  “No, that’s okay. I thought of that. The only trouble is, I never did anything stronger than dope. I knew a doper once who had had a bout of paranoia. But ─ well, first, I haven’t smoked in years. It dulls my edge, such as it is. And second, this is way beyond ordinary paranoia. And anyone, dopers don’t rip doors apart.

  More silence passed between them.

  “Yeah.” She tried to smile away the doubts that lingered in the car. “Well, people can do extraordinary things when they have to. Like a parent lifting a car that’s on top of their child. I read about that once.”

  He was looking at her face. Examining it. She was looking down at her hands. “You’re not like your sister, Megan.”

  “What?” She reacted to what he said by giving him a hard stare. If he had known her better, he would have recognized her jealous eyes. “What do you mean by that? Why were you thinking of my sister?”

  “Actually, I was thinking of you. Of how normal you are. Compared to what I remember what Megan was like. You don’t have any artifice. What you see is what you get.”

  “That doesn’t sound much like a compliment.”

  “Oh, from where I’m sitting, anything that seems normal is a compliment.”

  Normal, she thought. She didn’t want to be normal. At least to him. She wanted ─

  “You know,” he interrupted what she was about to say to herself. “I thought about the super-human thing I did. Unfortunately, that doesn’t tell me anything I already didn’t know.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No. You see, I could have been so freaked out about what I thought was happening to me. Hell, I was more than freaked out. So that gave me a giant boost of adrenalin. That doesn’t prove anything except I’m still either crazy or have a brain tumor.”

  “Well, we’re here.”

  “Yeah, we’re here.” There wasn’t any enthusiasm in his voice. “Okay. I guess I’ll see if they can mend this broken body of mine. And … maybe they can throw in a brain scan to boot.”

  But he still didn’t move to get out of the car. He had gotten used to the pain of ignorance. Of not knowing what was happening to him. What he would feel like when he got a real diagnosis ─ that’s what frightened him. He couldn’t apply the old adage: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Because it was “broke.”

  Vicky could see the uncertainty in his face. At least she was here to hold his hand. For whatever good that would do.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said as if he could read her thoughts. “I’m beginning to feel really isolated.”

  “You shouldn’t. I’m not the only one … the only one who cares about you.”

  “I don’t know about that.” He was thinking of Evie. “Well, I guess I’ll go in. Meet me in the waiting room after you park the car.” He opened his door.

  “Connie, there’s just one other thing. I don’t know if it means anything or will help in all … this. It’s something I looked up.”

  “About me?”

  “No. I’ve just been doing some searching and I found a few more news articles. News stories. They … well, I don’t know.”

  “More missing people with strange dreams?”

  “Not exactly, but, yes, in a way.”

  “Okay. Well. You can show me inside. Unless I have another psychotic episode, I have a feeling we’ll be waiting a long time to see anyone.” He started to slide out of the car and then suddenly put his hand to his head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, nothing. I think. I hope. These damn headaches. I just had a stab of one. But it’s gone now.”

  “You should tell the doctor about them.”

  “Yeah.” He tried to smile when he looked at her. A brave smile. But he couldn’t quite pull back his lips far enough. She seemed so normal. So real. Not at all twisted up with hallucinations and headaches. “You had better call Marlene and tell her where we are. Here,” he reached into his coat pocket and gave her his phone. (She had helped him on with his coat before they had left the building.) “She’s under Mother Hubbard in my contacts.”

  The waiting room was crowded, and no one looked happy to be there. Parents with their children. The aged in wheel chairs or sitting on a chair, their younger relative, friend or caregiver as chaperone by their side. All had sallow faces. All in need of some modern medical cure, except the caregivers and drivers. And a few ─ three men, a woman and a young girl ─ who looked like they were beyond any medical cure. Dark circles around their eyes that so contrasted to their pale complexions, all they needed were red noses to make them look like some scary clowns.

  Connie noticed them first. The dark circled ones. After he had taken a number and sat down. They reminded him of the young punks in his building’s lobby. Must be something going around, he thought.

  This was the second time he had been in emergency. That’s why he knew to take a number. The first time, a year or so ago when he had sliced his fingers instead of the onion he had been cutting up, he and Evie had waited for nearly an hour until some good Samaritan had told them you had to take a number to see the triage nurse. You could be dying, but you had to take a number first before they would resuscitate you.

  “Have you seen anyone yet?” Vicky had rushed in through the revolving doors with that sense of relief that a caregiver has delivering someone to emergency. Finally, the person’s illness was no longer only their responsibility.

  Connie flashed his numbered ticket but kept his sarcastic smile to himself. “Now, we wait.”

  “Didn’t you tell them it was an emergency?”

  That did deserve a smile. He pointed to a digital display. He gave her his ticket. It read “94.” The display read, “Now serving 61.”

  She handed him back the ticket. “Does it hurt? Your wrist.”

  His good hand was holding it in his lap. “Only when I laugh. I know. Bad joke.”

  “How’s your head?” Despite the relief she felt now that they were in the hospital, she couldn’t stop worrying about him.

  “It’s okay, I guess. You didn’t ask me how my psyche was, though.” That also deserved a smile.

  “That’s good. Your head. And your psyche.” She wanted to be encouraging. To help in any way. But a “but” lingered in her thoughts. She handed him the manila envelope she had been carrying when they had left the building. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with … you know,” she added, looking around the crowded room.

  “What is it?” He started to open up the envelope, but one good hand couldn’t do it alone. And when he tried to add his injured hand to the foray, he clenched his teeth in pain.

  “Oh, sorry. Let me.” She took out two sheets of paper. Printouts of newspaper articles. “You know, you should just go up there and tell them you need to see a
doctor.”

  “Yeah?” Her innocence when it came to the world of emergency room treatment deserved another smile. He began looking at one of the printouts. “What’s this?” He read the headline of the article: “Record number of suicides in Metro.” He scanned the story. Suicides up nearly 300 percent over last year. And another marked increase of last year over the year before. It broke them down by method and time of year.

  “Gruesome stuff,” he told her.

  “Yes. I don’t know if it means anything. It just seems more than a coincidence. Look at the most common … uh … way of dying.”

  He looked at the data again.

  “You see? Over half were from falls. Jumping …” She glanced around herself to see if anyone was listening. But if the young boy beside her was any example ─ he had his head bent over, holding it in his hands ─ people had more urgent things to consider than eavesdropping. “And look at the time of year. As the story said, usually suicides are clustered around certain dates and times of the year. Christmas. New Years. Spring and summer rather than winter. But look at these figures, most happen throughout the year. Not clustered at all. That’s especially true for the people who …” she hated talking about this in such a brazen way. After all, hadn’t Connie told her that he had wanted to jump out of his window? “… especially for those who leapt to their death.”

  “Well, I don’t see how this connects to me. It doesn’t say here that anyone had any crazy dreams.”

  “But what about the missing person story I showed you?”

  “Yeah. That’s sort of weird. But … I don’t know.”

  “Well, read the other story. Tell me what you think.”

  She was a nice kid, he thought. Maybe more than nice. He’d humor her. But. What was happening to him wasn’t going to be explained by some black ink on white paper.

  “Where have all the people gone?” was the headline of the other newspaper article. He scanned it. It was about missing persons. “An epidemic,” the police chief was quoted as saying. And he had a theory, too. Spring. When a young man’s and young woman’s fancy turns to thoughts of greener pastures ─ running away from their old life to something better. Spring made people restless. Restless people did crazy things.