Brainstorm Read online

  That description certainly fit Hal. Only he was always restless.

  “Just like Hal,” she said when he looked up at her. “And that other girl in ─ I forget where she worked.”

  “Tamara. In personnel. I don’t see how Hal’s or anyone else’s disappearance has anything to do with me. they probably ran off together like the police said. At any rate, I have this theory I’ve been tumbling around with. That maybe I don’t have a brain tumor after all. And maybe I’m not really going crazy. Or at least …” Now it was his turn to glance around to see if anyone was listening. “At least, if I am going crazy, there’s a logical explanation. And really, these news stories don’t fit in or explain anything that would help.”

  “Theory?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded and was about to explain when a commotion behind them got in the way.

  “No!” they heard a man’s voice shout. They turned around as did most of the people nearby. His voice was that loud and commanding.

  It was one of the men with the deathly pale face and dark circled eyes. He was standing up. Thrashing the air around him with his arms. “No!” he shouted again.

  The second shout brought a male orderly into the room. By this time, the man’s thrashing arms had knocked down a man who had stood to help him. And the helper had fallen onto an elderly woman who cried out in pain.

  “Code white,” a voice from the room’s loudspeaker said. “Code white in emergency. Code white. Code white in emergency.”

  The thrashing man began to make his way to the front of the waiting room. The orderly met him after he had gone several feet. Then everything became bedlam. The thrasher began shouting incoherently, lashing out at the orderly who was joined by two other male orderlies. The melee that followed saw the once sleepy emergency ticket holders erupt into shouts and desperate gestures of escape. It took all three men to restrain the thrasher, but only after all of them had fallen across some waiting room chairs and ended up on the floor. By the time they had subdued the man, several police officers had entered the room.

  The police handcuffed the man behind his back. Then lifted him to his feet.

  Vicky was watching the officer with the same fierce looks as the other people in the waiting room. It was strange, she thought. As soon as the thrasher had been handcuffed, he became docile. Almost comatose. For when the officers lifted him up, the man didn’t appear to be able to stand on his feet. It took an officer on either side to walk, drag him outside.

  Drugs, she decided.

  That’s why she hadn’t noticed Connie. She had been so caught up in the drama. And seeing the man being taken out of room by the police, she had had the awful thought that that could have been Connie. He could have been the man who had lost control if he had had one of his episodes in public. Was that how he had behaved?

  She hadn’t noticed him. Hadn’t realized that Connie wasn’t beside her. They had stood up together. Moved to one side to avoid the thrasher coming towards them. Most of the people around the violent man had retreated to the back of the room. When she did realize he wasn’t there, she searched the front of the room by the triage booths and then scanned the people at the back. She couldn’t see him anywhere.

  “All clear, code white,” the voice out of the loudspeaker proclaimed. “All clear, code white.”

  The people who had gotten out of their seats began to sit down again. Anxiously she examined each one of them, thinking that at any moment, Connie’s face would appear. She looked in the direction of the exit door. Even went to the door and then outside. The police car was there, its lights flashing. But no Connie.

  Back inside, she scanned the waiting room again. Still no Connie.

  That didn’t seem like him. Abandoning her in the middle of the man’s freak out. Why would he do that? She couldn’t answer the question. Even if he had had one of his episodes, she thought he would have been too incapacitated to go far.

  Then her concern became annoyance. For leaving her like that. Actually, more than annoyance. Anger. Maybe he was losing his mind. And here she was caught in the middle of it. That’s not where she had wanted to be. Not where she had imagined she would be working alongside Conrad Brinkley.

  18

  Dark. Darker. Then darker still.

  A black pool of what seemed like spots entered Connie’s vision. Or head. He wasn’t sure which. When the thrasher had begun to fight with the orderly, that’s when his vision began to have these dark spots. Random spots. Floaters. (Another episode?) They obscured his vision when they came together to form larger spots. Then blocking out much of the light and what was happening in the waiting room. He had stepped to one side, a few feet from Vicky. He had the feeling that it wasn’t his eyesight clouding up but some projectile coming towards. That’s why he had moved away. Then ducked. Instinctively. He thought of Vicky. Of her becoming a target. And moved farther away from her. To save her. If it was to strike anyone, he rather it be himself.

  He darted to the back of room with all the fleeing people, ducking when he thought these spots were about to hit him. And when that didn’t change what seemed like their trajectory, he ran into the men’s room. No longer thinking rationally. Fear and flight had pushed intelligence aside.

  Now the spots were firmly joining together to form one large spot. Glowing if blackness could glow. Pulsating and bubbling like ooze from a tar pit. He went into one of the stalls. The way a cornered animal tries to find a hiding place from its attacker. Shivering with fear. With the certainty that this thing or blob was going to strike him at any moment.

  And that’s how he might have remained. Reduced to being the prey to some unknown projectile about to strike him. And either the vision would cease. Or he would cease. He collapsed onto the floor and waited. Waited, arms hugging his knees, insensitive to how that hurt his sore wrist. For unlike the other times he had been assaulted with these visions ─ these episodes ─ he could summon up no resistance.

  But as he waited for some final denouement, he grew calm. Not the calm of surrender. His fear and flight brain began to recede behind rationality. As did his sense of fear. His need to escape. Both seemed unreasonable now because he knew without knowing how or why. Without even knowing he knew. He knew that he hadn’t been pursued by this dark vision. He knew that it was he. He was the pursuer.

  When that realization came to him ─ suddenly, like an intuitive epiphany ─ he had an astonishing sensation. Though no words floated in his head, he had the impression he was attempting to communicate with this globular blackness. That it had been he who had sent out a projectile of inquiry. A beam of his intelligence wanting to connect to this dark apparition that had been pursuing him. Stalking him. And he had connected!

  Still with no words to frame the moment, he concentrated on making this connection. Waiting for some sync. For the other end of this connection to acknowledge him or to communicate something to him.

  He waited. Not so much holding his breath as holding his senses. No speech. No sight. No hearing. Not even touch. Unaware of sitting on the stall’s floor. Or even where he was. He waited until communication was made.

  When it came, it was brief. A momentary flash of connection. He felt a slight tingling in his head. Then a shiver that strangely didn’t come from within himself. But from this blackness. All wordless but still unmistakingly a communication. And what was astonishing, once Connie’s brain was able to formulate words. What was so astonishing was that this fear and flight that had pursed him into the restroom. That he thought had pursued him. That had made him shiver with horror. Hadn’t been his fear or flight. Not his at all. It had come from this blackness. That’s what the communication said. It had only been mirrored by his emotions.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Come on. We got to get out of here.”

  Connie was standing behind Vicky. Outside. In the covered emergency drive-through. When he had left the restroom and realized she wasn’t in the waiting room, he had gone outside. She had been talking to an a
mbulance driver. Asking her if she had seen a description of Connie.

  His voice startled her as it had in the car. Only this time, she had no smile for him.

  “Where in heaven’s name have you been?”

  “Is this your friend?” the ambulance driver asked her.

  Connie took Vicky by the arm and began to lead her away from the driver. He didn’t like the suspicious look the woman was giving him. “Come on. Let’s leave.”

  “Leave!” she protested and wriggled her arm out of his. “Why did you leave me like that? And what about your wrist?”

  “Come on. I’ll explain in the car.”

  “In the car! What about your wrist?”

  The driver was still giving him suspicious looks. “What did you tell her about me?”

  “Oh.” She glanced back at the woman. Gave her a shrug when she realized the suspicion that she could see on her face was for both of them. “Nothing,” she lied to Connie. Actually, she had gone into some detail describing some of Connie’s episodes to the woman. She had been that convinced that he had had another seizure and had run away from hospital.

  She let him lead her away. Feeling both reluctant to go with him and guilty for talking about him to the driver. And any alarm she might have felt because of him (Connie was losing his mind and dragging her into his insanity) disappeared when he let go of her arm.

  “Come on,” he urged her.

  “But what are you going to do about your wrist?” She still had residual fear for him.

  “There’s a walk-in clinic on Waverly. They have a lab attached. I should’ve thought of that before.”

  “You should’ve thought to tell me where you were going. Why you were running off. Right in the middle of all that. I would’ve never done that to you.”

  “I know. I would’ve if I could’ve. Come on. I’ll explain in the car. Or at least, I’ll try to explain.”

  They walked the rest of the way to the car in silence. Both of them ignoring the constant falling mist or the fact that their hair was beginning to become wet. Vicky couldn’t help herself from giving him annoyed, side long glances. He ignored her looks. He was thinking. Rearranging the puzzle pieces of the last few weeks. They were finally coming together. Forming a picture that he had begun to suspect but hadn’t believed in. Until now. Until what had happened in the bathroom.

  She still had his keys, so she unlocked the car doors. “Do you want me to drive?” He was standing in front of the driver’s door. Force of habit but she didn’t see it that way. The glass half full anger she had been feeling bubbled up to its rim.

  “Do I want to what?”

  “For me to drive?” She reached out the keys to him.

  “Yes. Sorry. I was thinking.” He walked around the front of the car to the passenger door and got in.

  That hadn’t reduced her anger. The way he seemed to assume that she was there to help him. Only there to help him and nothing else. When she got in, she closed the door with such force, the car shook.

  Connie didn’t notice. Either her anger or the loud clunk of the car door.

  He thought. She fumed.

  “Okay,” he said. He stared out the windshield. At a row of parked cars covered in droplets as if they had been perspiring.

  “Okay, what?”

  “I think I know what’s been happening to me.”

  “What’s been happening!” she was having trouble swallowing the anger she felt towards him. He was supposed to take her in his arms now. Ask her for help. But he didn’t.

  “I think I know.” He suddenly winced when he tried to move his injured hand.

  “If you know, why didn’t you stay in emerge? Why did you leave me like that? That man was out of control. I was right in his path. If it hadn’t been for the orderly …

  “We can go back there if you like.” Her anger finally registered with him. Though he was still staring out the windshield. “First, I want to tell you something. If you want to hear it. If you don’t, well ─ drop me here and you can be on your way. I’ll pay for the cab.”

  That stung. “No, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I was worried, that’s all. But you might have at least said something. Told me you were leaving.”

  “I might have … Look, can I just say what I have to say and then you can … Well, do whatever you want. You can either leave me here or drive me to the clinic.”

  “I don’t want to leave you here.”

  “Good. Okay?”

  She nodded and waited for him to go on. Anger now gone. Attraction taking its place. Even if he was still not looking at her.

  “Okay.” He took a deep breath. This was going to sound crazy, he thought. “I think I know what’s been happening to me. No don’t interrupt. Let me finish.”

  She was about to say that it didn’t matter to her what was happening to him. That she would always stick by him.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. But it seemed a pretty crazy idea. Which, considering I thought I was going crazy, gave the idea ─ this theory of mine ─ a certain wacky edge. If you’re crazy then what you think is crazy. Anyway. I thought that what I thought was too fantastic couldn’t be true. But now … well, I still think it’s fantastic, but also think it’s true.”

  Vicky was finding it difficult not to interrupt. So far he hadn’t said anything that made any sense. Certainly not why he had abandoned her when the thrasher guy was going berserk.

  “I had another episode. When the guy starting going crazy. That’s what I thought. That’s why I moved away from you. I had the sense that there something coming towards me. Ready to strike me. That’s what I thought. Only. Only, it wasn’t that. Wasn’t that at all.”

  He described what had happened in the restroom. What he thought happened to him. While she listened, Vicky was too upset to want to interrupt. For now, he really sounded crazy. That’s what he saw in her face when he finally looked at her.

  “I know,” he said to acknowledge how she felt. “You think I should be locked up.”

  “No ─”

  “Fair enough. I don’t blame you. But I’m not going crazy. And I don’t think I have a brain tumor either. Everything’s clear to me now. It’s the project. The DNA-RoboBiotics. That’s the cause of all this. And that’s what been niggling me for the last week or so. I just didn’t want to believe it because it’s too fantastic.” He looked out at the cars in the lot. At their sweaty exteriors. Inanimate objects, he thought. So much safer. More predictable than living things.

  Vicky still didn’t understand what he was trying to say. “Why do you think you’re not going crazy?”

  “Well, you see, there’s a mass of human tissue in the lab. That’s what we’ve been experimenting with. To try to grow human cells from the code we send it. We’ve injected a chip into it, not much bigger than a few cells. And we’ve been playing with our code for the last few months. With no results except we were able to make some of the cells divide. But that was it.”

  Now she was interested in what he was telling her. “And the rabbit? Everybody’s talking about the rabbit.”

  “Oh, that was just trickery. To give us more time.”

  “I’m afraid I still don’t see the connection.”

  “Well, the connection is this. Those human cells. They’re mine. They’re my DNA.”

  “Yours!” She didn’t like the creepy idea that came into her head. “And you think ─”

  “I think, for some reason, this ─ whatever you want to call it. This mass of human cells ─ my cells ─ is trying to communicate with me.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “Yeah. I know. Do you want to lock me up now or after I get this damn hand looked after?”

  She tried to smile at his sense of humor.

  “Well, if I’m right. Then this dream that I keep having. It’s some kind of message of what these cells feel. In a sense, we’re keeping them prisoner. Locked up in a beaker.”

  “But that’s impossible.”
>
  “Well, if it’s impossible than I’m crazy or have a brain tumor.”

  “And the headaches?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe that’s when this ─ these cells are trying to communicate with me.”

  “And the violent sick stomach?”

  “Haven’t you ever had a bad headache and felt nauseous?”

  She had. “And the man who had disappeared? Describing the same hallucination you had?”

  “Well, maybe he had a brain tumor. Maybe what I experienced was a classic example. Classic for certain types of psychosis. For that’s what I think happened. When this thing, these cells tried to communicate with me, they messed up my sanity. The brain has certain ways of responding to ─ well, insanity. Maybe these hallucinations. The dreams. They’re just classic examples. I don’t think there’s any connection between this guy and me except that we were both experiencing some psychotic episode. I don’t think it’s worth worrying about.”

  But she did think it was worth worrying about. It was too much of a coincidence. “And the suicides?” she asked after a moment of worry. “And you also wanting to jump out of a window.”

  “The only connection I can think of is that, at that moment I was in the throes of depression. What I seem to feel when this thing tries to communicate with me. It’s feeling depressed, so I feel depressed. These other people. They must have been depressed too.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “Well, like I said. If it’s too fantastic, then I’m indeed crazy. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  Did she? “No. whatever’s happening to you, I don’t think you’re really crazy. Or there’d be something odd about you all the time.”

  He had to laugh at that. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Lots of people think I’m odd.”

  “Well, I don’t. I don’t think so.” But she was. Beginning to think so.