Resonance

Chapter 15. Reinsertion

  Angel led us back through the grand entrance hall and past the grand staircase, through an archway where we took a left. Aha, I thought, so it is a wing and not a separate building, and soon we were back in the marble lobby with the portraits of the academic types.

  Angel took us up the stairs to a door down the hall from Nicholas Durwood's. She knocked, and Jean opened the door, in her white lab coat but without clipboard this time.

  "Here they are for reinsertion," Angel said, then turned to shake Shep's hand. "Nice meeting you," she said. "I'll probably see you when you get back."

  Jean shook Shep's hand and said, "I'm Jean. You're Shep—I've already met Mitch," and ushered him into the room.

  I stuck out my hand to Angel, figuring we were doing the handshake thing in public, but she grabbed my arm above the elbow with her left hand, put her right hand on my shoulder, stood on tiptoe, and leaned in to kiss me.

  I put my free arm around her and cooperated enthusiastically.

  "See—" she started, but it came out funny and she got pink and had to clear her throat and start again. "See you when you come back." She didn't say "probably," I noted.

  "Looking forward to it," I said.

  "Mitch?" Jean called. I went into the room looking back at Angel, who gave a little wave and hurried toward the stairs. I turned and saw that we were in a sort of combination hospital room and lab, with a couple of gurneys and on one wall a bank of machines, where a young blond guy was fussing with switches, dials, gauges, and digital displays.

  "What are you grinning about?" asked Shep. I just kept grinning.

  "That's Alan," said Jean. Alan turned around and blushed and raised a hand in greeting. "He'll be helping with the reinsertion. Over here." She pointed us to two cubicles. "Your stuff is in here, Mitch, and yours is in that one, Shep. Just leave what you have on now in there—it'll be returned to your rooms for when you get back."

  I went into the cubicle and discovered the clothes I'd had on when we left the lake, all clean now. I changed, really regretting that I couldn't keep the boat shoes. They would be here when I got back, I thought, and when I got home, I could buy the ones I'd seen.

  I emerged about when Shep did. He was fingering the front of his t-shirt, which had apparently been pretty torn up, because somebody had sewed it back together on a sewing machine, using stitches about a quarter of an inch long and parallel to each other, so the rows of stitches were like lines of ridges. It made a kind of crooked, abstract pattern on the front of his t-shirt.

  "I was sort of expecting invisible reweaving," he said. "Weren't you?"

  "I guess so," I said. I admit, I was sort of surprised at the primitive quality of the repair, compared to the highly advanced technology of everything else in the TSA.

  "Come lie down here," said Jean, pointing us to two gurneys. "Now, when you get back you will be slightly and briefly disoriented—not badly, because you're going back to your own world. I'm actually going to put you on the ground next to the vehicle, instead of in it—it would be kind of difficult in Mitch's case and pretty much impossible in Shep's anyway, to put you inside the car.

  "You'll go back, I'm putting you back, about four seconds before you've left, so that there won't be a gap between departure and arrival, but because of the disorientation you'll probably be groggy for several minutes and won't notice any overlap. If you do, if you are awake and aware and see—yourselves, just stay where you are and count to four, and then you'll be the only you in that time line."

  As we lay down, a door in the side wall opened, not the door to the hall, and Nicholas Durwood appeared.

  I sat back up and said, "Hi, Nick. Nick, this is Shep," and then lay down again. "Shep, this is Doctor—almost-Doctor Nicholas Durwood."

  "Hello, Mitch, how do you do, Shep," said Nick. "Almost doctor, but doctor enough to give you your injections." He filled a syringe and came toward us.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "A very tiny dose of the same thing they give you to relax you before surgery," he said. "It's easier for us to insert you—or, in this case, reinsert you—if you're sort of semi-conscious. It's also easier for you—you're not all nervous and apprehensive."

  "What if you're nervous and apprehensive about needles?" asked Shep.

  Nicholas stopped. "Are you?" he asked.

  "Not really," Shep admitted. "I just like to know what's going on."

  "What's going on is your reinsertion," said Nick, "during which you will be slightly out of it for approximately two minutes. It's a very small dose."

  "Did we have it when we came?" I asked. "Because I don't remember."

  "You did. Shep wasn't conscious. Actually I think you may have fai—passed out just before you were injected, but we did it anyway, just to be on the safe side." He smiled. "All right?"

  "All right," I said, and Shep shrugged and said, "Okay."

  He gave me a shot first, a tiny pinprick.

  The next thing I remember is, I felt really good, the way you do for about thirty seconds when you've had just one swallow too much to drink, or the way you feel when you wake up without the alarm after plenty of deep sleep on a vacation day.

  Then I noticed I was lying down, outside, looking up at leaves that were letting the occasional sparkle of sunlight through. Then Shep was beside me. First he wasn't, then he was—no transition. But I was still feeling good, so it didn't seem weird or anything.

  I slowly remembered the lab and the injection and where we should be now, and then I turned my head and looked over at the tree trunk, and there was Uncle Will's little MG, wrapped around the other side of it. I was so totally unworried about that, or anything really, that I just turned my head back and lay there some more, feeling fine.

  "Mitch?" Shep sounded a lot groggier than I felt, but at least he was talking.

  "Yeah?" I said, and went on, "We're back. Car's over there." Then I remembered he hadn't seen it yet. "Don't be too shocked when you look at it. Remember, we're both okay." I decided I sounded less groggy than he did.

  In fact, I decided I felt like sitting up, so I did, slowly. I wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my chin on them. I felt fine—not the dopy wonderful way I felt when I first came to, but normal fine. Shep lay there a little longer, still pretty out of it. I don't think he'd even looked at the car yet.

  After a while, I started wondering what we should do. It was nice sitting there, but we had to get home.

  "Shep," I said. "I'm going to get my duffel out of the trunk and get my phone and call 911, okay?"

  "Oh," he said. "Yeah. Okay."

  I was just getting up when I heard a siren, faint in the distance but getting louder. I sat back down. "Guess I won't have to," I said.

  "What do we tell them?" asked Shep, still lying down but somewhat less groggy.

  I shrugged, even though he couldn't see me. "The truth?" I suggested. "Only we leave out the part between getting run off the road and waking up here."

  "Right," he said, and at that point a black-and-white stopped on the road above us, and a trooper got out and approached down the slope.

  He stopped, hands on hips, and looked at the car, then over at us. "We just got a 911 call that a car had gone off the road here. That would be accurate?"

  "Not exactly," I said. "Or anyway not the whole truth. Three guys in an old red pickup ran us off the road."

  "Uh-huh. The caller was pretty agitated," the trooper went on. "Seemed to think somebody had been hurt pretty bad. Were you two the only ones in the car?"

  He had to know we were, unless some very small person had been curled up in the miniature space behind the seats.

  "Yes, sir," I said.

  He stepped closer to the car and looked through the window and got very still. Finally he straightened up and looked at us again.

  "Whose blood is that?" he asked, cocking a thumb toward the car.

  I had no clue what to say, but just then Shep sat up.

  "Blood?" he
said, in this totally bewildered voice, and looked over at me and then down at himself.

  According to the accident report, which I saw later, it was at this point 2:17 p.m. I would not at that moment have considered it even a remote possibility, but we were home in time for dinner. They sure didn't want us to leave the police station, but of course they had to let us call our folks. Dad and Uncle Will got there much faster than I would have expected, even with Uncle Will driving.

  While Uncle Will was being persuasive with the police, my dad said he wanted to check us both over quickly. Shep and I looked at each other, and at the same time we pulled off our t-shirts.

  Everybody stopped talking. Uncle Will recovered first. "Where did you get the scar, Shep?" he asked, and Shep proved to me that he'd been acting before and was good at it.

  "Scar?" he said, and looked down at himself. His jaw dropped. "My God," he said, and touched it sort of gingerly with the tips of his fingers. He looked around at all of us. "What happened to me?" he asked.

  Then the police really didn't want to let us go, but as Uncle Will told them, there wasn't anything criminal about surviving an accident or having a scar. Besides, they knew who we were and where we lived and could come find us at any time.

  "I'd think it would be a better use of your time to look for the pickup that ran them off the road," he told them.

  "Red pickup?" said the first trooper, the one who'd come to the scene. "Turned out of Peebles Road? Three guys in it? We know who they are. Besides, I think I recognized Tony Ray's voice on that 911 call."

  While we were reading over and signing the printout of our account of the "incident," Uncle Will called Booth's Body and arranged to have the MG towed. Then he called the insurance company, and then he said, "Come on, boys," and headed for the door. We followed him, and nobody stopped us.

  Shep and I sat in the back, and once we were back on 471, I said, "Dad, Uncle Will, there's actually more to the story. And it's kind of a long story."

  "Is it a story Jean and your mother should hear too?" said my dad after a minute.

  "Yes," I said. "I mean, we were planning to tell all of you."

  "We'll have to," said Shep, "to explain the scars and all. There isn't any reason to keep it a secret."

  "if it's long," said my dad, "you probably don't want to tell it more than once. Why don't we pick up Jean on the way and all go to our house? I'll phone Mona and tell her to expect a crowd for dinner."

  We were actually home before five. And it was still Thursday, that was the weird part. And Mom had already made a big pan of her famous white lasagna—veal and mushrooms—planning to freeze most of it. She got a loaf of homemade ciabatta out of the freezer and added more salad to the bowl. Like I mentioned, she's totally unfazed by unexpected guests, in fact she likes company.

  So at five we were sitting out on the porch, the six of us—Cammie was out—with drinks. Shep and I were having vodka and tonic, and boy, did it taste good. Dad and Uncle Will and Aunt Jean were drinking vodka on the rocks, and Mom was drinking some weird French liquor, I think it was Lillet. Dad had asked us to keep our t-shirts on for the time being, and all Mom and Aunt Jean knew was that there'd been an accident, but Shep and I were fine.

  "So," said my dad when we were all settled, "now we'd like to hear the full story of what happened." Uncle Will got out a pocket notebook and a mechanical pencil, I guess to take notes.

  I talked for nearly an hour, Shep helping me by reminding me of things I'd left out, although we both left out Simon. When I got to where Shep woke up, I let him take over and tell the final part. Uncle Will wouldn't let anybody interrupt, he said we should tell it all first and then people could ask questions. He said he was going to write down his questions and offered pencil and paper to anyone who wanted it.

  "And then we heard sirens," Shep finished, "and the law showed up and took us in for not being hurt, and Dad and Uncle John came and got us."

  There was a silence.

  "I have a comment," said my dad, "not a question. Neither one of them looks nearly as tan as I'd expect after almost a week at the lake, and I think Mitch has put on some weight—he's not as skinny as when school let out."

  "I wasn't skinny!" I objected. "Just a little stressed from exams. But we can check that. I weighed myself last Friday before we went to the lake." I went up to the bathroom and got on the scales.

  When I got back, fastening my jeans, I announced, "Five pounds, a little more. I stripped—with clothes it was over seven."

  "Of course you could have put that on at the lake," said Dad thoughtfully, "but you don't gain that easily and it's more than I would have expected. Not exactly legal evidence, and not that we need any confirmation of your story, but every little bit helps. All right, who has questions?"

  "Let's take our questions to the table," said my mom. "Dinner's ready. John, you can open the wine. Mitch, you light the candles. And Jean, you could toss the salad while I get the lasagna out of the oven. I've set the table in the dining room instead of on the patio—less buggy."

  "Wait," said Aunt Jean. "I want to see—William's scar." It was not a request the way she said it. After a moment Shep got up and pulled off his mended t-shirt.

  "Oh, Shep," said my mom and put her hand over her mouth. Aunt Jean didn't say anything, but she got kind of green and sagged over sideways in her chair. My dad was right there, getting her head down between her knees and telling her Shep was fine, she could see for herself that he was fine.

  Finally she sat up, and her face was only a little paler than normal. "How do you know, John?" she said, and she sounded really angry. "How do you know? He could have all sorts of terrible—terrible—internal—injuries," and she started to cry. My mom went over and started patting her.

  "I've examined him," said my dad soothingly. "He's fine. But I had already planned to take both of them in to the hospital tomorrow for X-rays and maybe a CAT scan and MRI for Shep. We'll make absolutely sure that he's one hundred percent all right, don't worry."

  Shep was sitting next to me on the wicker couch, and I heard him sigh, very softly. Then he got up and went over to Aunt Jean. He squatted down next to her chair, put a hand on her arm and one around her shoulders, and started whispering to her. Mom went back to the kitchen, and Dad backed off too and went to open the wine.

  I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I could see the looks on Aunt Jean's and Shep's faces. I watched him, soothing her and gentling her and then teasing her a little, making her smile, finally leaning in to kiss her cheek and whisper something in her ear. I watched her, angry and weepy and upset, letting herself be petted and fussed over, clinging to him.

  I realized that Shep actually had a very hard life, compared to mine. I suddenly felt so sorry for him, and I thought again how glad I was that I had my parents and not his, and I was filled with sympathy for him, and love, and I almost thought that if he was gay and had a, well, a crush or something on me and really wanted to—

  "Mitch?" called my mom. "Candles?" I got up and lit the candles.

  The dinner was great. I don't think anyone noticed that I'd gotten kind of quiet, because in between the questions Shep was doing his sparkling life-of-the-party thing and making everyone laugh. Aside from lots of questions about the return trip and the project, none of which we could answer, the dads mostly wanted to know technical stuff about the TSA that we also couldn't answer, and the moms were mostly all "Are you sure you're all right?" and "Did they really look after you properly?"

  After dessert—melon and strawberries—and coffee for the ones that wanted it, Aunt Jean and Uncle Will got up to go home. Shep and I looked at each other, and we both knew that we didn't much feel like going our separate ways yet, and we both knew that there was no way Aunt Jean would let Shep stay over.

  So I went over to Mom and put an arm around her and gave her a squeeze while I turned and said, "Aunt Jean, do you mind if I invite myself over to spend the night? Mom, do you mind?" I knew she did, but she u
nderstood, so I squeezed her hard again and gave her a kiss and picked up my duffel, which was still by the door.

  "Do you have extra shoes in there, Mitch?" asked my dad.

  "Flip-flops," I said.

  "If you don't want to wear those tomorrow, take some others," he told me. "I want you—and you too, Shep—to put everything you take off into a big plastic bag and bring it when you come to the hospital tomorrow. I'll see if we can't get some tests done on your clothes while we're checking you out."

  "I'll phone Ed Collman at the Clarion tomorrow," said Uncle Will. "Just to make sure they don't do any excessive speculating."

  I hadn't even thought of the papers, which was probably a good thing, because I would have worried about it, and now I didn't have to. When Uncle Will takes care of something, it's taken care of. Dad also, come to think of it.

  And it was taken care of. There was a photo the day after on page three of the local section, four columns wide, showing the car wrapped around the tree. The headline said "Local Men Unhurt," and the story was very low-key, that the car was totaled but we were "miraculously unhurt," and that the police were searching for another vehicle that had been involved in the accident. Nothing about the blood.

  To skip ahead a little, they didn't get anything off our clothes. Dad's tests and X-rays showed that Shep had been really torn up inside and also had a fractured skull, and that my arm had been so badly broken that it was amazing that I had no stiffness or loss of mobility.

  Early the next week, Dad and Uncle Will took Otis Wurtz, the sheriff, to lunch at the country club, which I think he enjoyed. I don't think any overt pressure was put on anybody, but I think they made their view clear to him, which was that Shep and I were okay, so even though there was no explanation for the blood—which had oh-so-unfortunately been hosed out of the car at Booth's as soon as they towed it in, so could no longer be tested to see whose it was—or for what Tony Ray and the others thought they'd seen, Dad and Uncle Will were just fine with the situation.

  Wurtz is no genius, but he's not stupid. Since nobody had been hurt, he decided it was a good idea to just leave things the way they were and not confuse the public or the insurance companies with extraneous (and inexplicable) facts, like blood and scars.

  The kids in the pickup had owned up and were so grateful that they weren't going to be charged with vehicular homicide or something that they certainly weren't going to go around telling anybody what they'd seen. What they thought they'd seen.

  The insurance said the car was totaled, and Uncle Will didn't feel like rebuilding it again, so he took the insurance money and got himself a Porsche. But that was later.