33
Beyond the sealed windows of the hospital, a sea of stars stares back at us. Fireflies, fire bombs in the skies. I am the bomb now. Once the sun rises, I boom. There will be cops around us. Asking questions. Entering our faces on their wanted lists. We will be in so much trouble we will have to cooperate. Even if the world isn’t really ready for that. If we don’t, General Creep will suck our brains, and that coward Dr. Lambrechts will enjoy life as a rich man after turning people into warriors with no will. Yay.
One way or another, my skills will be used to hurt innocent men, women, and children. One way or another, my skills will be used to hurt innocent men, women, and children. One way or another, my skills will be used to hurt innocent men, women, and children.
A curse. One I imposed on us all when I broke the promise I made to my dead mother and the immortals. “I don’t teach men,” I told them. I lied. Now the ire of the heavens is claiming revenge.
“Feeling better, honey?” says Mrs. Lee behind my back. I almost forgot about her.
“You’re the one who needs to get better, remember?”
“I am remembering.”
“Good.”
“No, I am remembering some things, honey. I remember them taking me. Outside that funky place you were at. Then they were dragging me out of a truck. You were there. Oh my god! They shot at you!”
She pats my chest and I give her a calming smile. “What is going on?” She asks before her eyelids collapse again. “Dammit,” she slurs, “I can’t remember…anything.”
I tell her to relax. To let go so she can get better, but she seems determined to resist the urge to doze off. “How ‘bout your f’end, any news?”
He’s gonna be operated on, I tell her. “May be happening as we speak.”
“Is he your new boyf’end?”
My cheeks get warm, and I know I am blushing again. “No, just a colleague. We have…a connection.”
A single naughty chuckle, and she’s back. Incredible. She says she remembers the connections she had when she was my age. “I was pretty like you one day, you know? And Berkeley was a wild place…” We exchange tender half-smiles and hold hands.
“How about your other boyfriend? The doctor you went outside? What? You think I didn’t see?” My eyes turn to the night outside again. Don’t want to talk about it, but she insists, “You gonna deny an old lady in a hospital cradle her daily dose of gossip?”
“Tsc…I think Jason is starting to change his mind, Mrs. Lee. Maybe there’s a future for us after all.”
“Hoo,” she says, as a true Chinese would say, “So he’s the one you think about for the future. I knew it! Does the other one knows he’s just a connection?”
“He does,” I say, trying to end that silly chat, but she doesn’t stop. Where’s the button to increase her meds and make her shut up?
“And why are you the only one here, hon? The second-place dude, he doesn’t have a family?”
Strange. After hours meandering through his brain, I don’t have that answer. In fact, I know very little about Simon. I stand up and walk toward the window. It’s late. 10 pm. I close my eyes for a few seconds, focus. Open them again. In my reflection in the window, I see a yellow light trying to form around my iris, then fading again.
He’s still out there, I know.
Behind my back, I hear a click on the door. As if someone was trying to get in. But no one does. And before I could check, a muffled voice says, “Attention third floor.” Speakers, from everywhere. The voice carries on, “All doors will be locked for a few minutes for the monthly hallway sterilization procedure. In case of emergency, call your nurse and ask for assistance.”
Odd. Never heard of sterilization procedures before. The door has been locked indeed, I check. What’s up with the world insisting on locking me in? And how about Simon?—I can’t stay there. It was a simple procedure, Jason promised. Thankfully the bullet didn’t hit anywhere too threatening. As the new assistant surgeon, he was going to do it himself. Two hours later, however, there’s still no word. Did he try to call? Damn, Simon, why did you have to get rid of my phone?
I reach for the old phone on the side table. The nurse may have access to some sort of status of the ongoing procedures. But the handset is silent. I try every button. Dead.
Mrs. Lee snores and, with her eyes shut, gives a giant grin, likely from the comfort of a morphine dream. Would she mind if I took her phone? She won’t. I comb through her purse. Damn, Simon had told her to leave it at home. I make a mental note to talk to Jason about it. He’ll say he doesn’t get into management matters, but I bet this one will cause a lot of unnecessary stress.
Unless…what if this is all a lie and the government found us already? What if a camera identified us like Simon was afraid it would? Or one of those nurses called the police? I head to the window. Downstairs, no sign of trouble. Stop being paranoid, Yinyin. It’s not just the police though. It’s the circumstance. Being trapped, with no communication, on a night like this. Ridiculous, I know. You learn to fight, to beat people twice your size and face thugs with knives and shit, just to panic when you’re stuck in a room without a phone. Shifu would slap me on the forehead for this. This isn’t like when the internet went blank, however: a few hours ago, someone shot at me.
In the corridor, I hear steps rushing. Multiple people. Crap. No, wait. Someone wails. Of course, there would be an emergency, geniuses. It’s called panic.
How did we do this before we had phones and Google all-day everyday? Oh, yes, we found people and asked. I wonder who is on duty today? I yell at the door. “Hey, do you guys have a phone I can borrow?”
They ignore me. I wait. Brain doesn’t feel well. Need some candy, I think. None in Mrs. Lee’s purse. The stretcher seat is comfortable. I lay my back for a second of rest, blink very slowly. When I open again, the door is open. How long has it been? It doesn’t matter. I rush to the nurses’ desk. Lights are off, seats empty, all monitors dark. “Excuse me? Anyone here? Can someone call Dr. Sonderup for me?”
Not even an echo responds.
Someone left a cell phone plugged in the outlet. But no signal. Then steps. Fast and devoid of any rhythm. The sound grows louder. And louder. A young nurse presents herself from behind the wall. Her hair is a mess; she’s panting, sweating. Never seen her. I hide the phone in my back pocket.
“Hi, I’m looking for info on a patient….”
She inspects the large screen turned away from me, drops a few rapid clicks. “Sorry, there’s been a problem. All our systems went down after this weird…this floor procedure and I got locked in a patient’s room.” The young woman digs her nose back into the screen. “I can’t find the other nurses to ask what…have you seen my phone?” she asks.
“I haven’t, sorry. Now calm down. What’s your name?”
Mona, she says. “Nurse Mona. Mona Morrow. Mona, Morrow. You can laugh, everyone does. But I swear, I don’t know what’s going on here. I was reading a patient’s report when…I don’t like this. None of this. I don’t. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be saying any of this. But I have a little daughter at home. I don’t like what’s happening here.” She is spiraling out of control, so frantic I have to hold her by the shoulders and shake her a few times. She stops. Pale and bug-eyed. Breathing through her mouth. Probably hyperventilating
“Ok, Nurse Mona Morrow. Breathe,” I say. “What’s the name of your little girl?”
“Rachel,” she says.
“Ok, Mona Morrow. This is going to be fine, and after your shift, you will go home like you do every day and will wake up your little Rachel to send her to school, Ok? Everything’s going to be all right. I promise. Now, tell me what happened.”
That’s when all the lights go off and she shrieks so loud my ears start to ring.
She apologizes. The yellow glow of the emergency lights turns on. She continues, rattled. Says there may be a message somewhere. About the blackout. In the system.
In emergency situations, nurses are trained to show calm. Like flight attendants.
“He’s operating upstairs, right? Fifth floor?”
The nurse nods very fast.
“A syringe!” squawks a voice behind me.
The nurse jumps in her seat. “What was that?”
“My friend,” I say. Mrs. Lee. She must need something. “I’ll go check on her. Will let you know if I need anything.” She has too much on her plate already. When I’m back in the room, however, Mrs. Lee is passed out again. Good. It gives me time. I rush. Stolen phone…no signal. Hallway, to the left. At least I know the place. The elevator is at the end of the building, they must have generators here. I press the “up” button. It doesn’t work. “Down” doesn’t either. Shit. The stairs. Find them, Yinyin. The silence is pure, absolute, chilling. Makes my skin bump like a chicken. I don’t like what’s happening here any more than Nurse Mona Morrow does.
Without the white noise of the power, the hospital is a ghost town. You could hear someone walking in slippers, if there was anyone. And I do hear. Toc, toc, toc…the sound bounces off the beige walls and the ugly-patterned linoleum floor, then echoes back at me from every direction at once. A red light points to stairs around the corner. I charge. Noise is coming from there. What is it? Faster, Yinyin, faster. The corner. Three steps. Two. One. Turn!
I hit something, scream. A hand squeezes my shoulder and I leap back, hands up, fighting stance wincing for a kick. The creature turns her phone’s flashlight onto her own face. Dr. Mehta. The fake Tigress. “Claudia,” she says. “I was looking for you.”
I want to apologize for the scream but refrain. Won’t give her the pleasure. In the half-darkness I can still see the yellow eyes I remember so well. Without Jason around, though, she drops the charm, the sinuosity of her moves, the warmth of her voice. The bitch is cold. Should have kicked her indeed, then blamed the instincts. Too late. Someday…
“Your boyfriend, Claudia. There has been a problem.”
I freeze. Is she talking about Simon? Or Jason?
“What happened?” I ask.
She places her hands over my shoulders. A compassion so fake it doesn’t even try to convince. “He didn’t make it. Sorry.”
Simon?
Her nods cancels all sounds and I want to cry, to hit her. But I can only stare at her robotic figure and ask myself what kind of person would say it like that.
“You mean…he’s—”
She nods again and I feel my hands shake. First a little, then so much my entire body bounces. No, it can’t be! Jason said it was…“I’m sorry,” Dr. Mehta says, cold. My skull tingles, my fingers freeze, my chest can’t open. I need air. I need some air! I look around. No doors. The world spins. No windows. Please!
But there was nothing.
Just the most oppressive silence.
And darkness.
And death.
Why do the immortals need to punish others for my sins?
From the deepest shadows, my eyes flash—to the Monkey Valley in Wudang. Around me, the spirits of the river rise in swirls, ready to climb the mountain and be reborn in the Heavens as water dragons. Though, this time, they wait. Filtered through the mist and the leaves, the soft sunlight reveals a body resting between me and a majestic feline. Simon O’Dell. He looks so peaceful and gentle like that. The Tigress approaches me slowly, firm; her cold yellow eyes locked into mine. Two feet from my face, she stops—her breath smells like incense. Then she roars. So loud, the waves push me back and the trees shake in fear. Yet, I don’t hear a thing. I try to tell the Tigress I am so sorry, but the silence, so heavy and deep, pushes my words back into my throat. I am going to faint, or puke, or melt. Behind her menacing stripes, Doctor Mehta watches my struggle like a predator does to a meal she’s not in the mood to eat. Not this time.
“He asked me to relay a message,” she says.
We’re back. The hospital and its stench of death. What message? Tell me!
“It wasn’t your fault.”
It wasn’t? I escaped the bullet that hit him!
A raging cry erupts from my throat and splashes all over the floor. My fist hits a wall and a trash can flies to my kick, spilling its toxicity all over the floor. The trash and vomit mix in mud full of anger and loss. Anyone else would have jumped. Not Dr. Mehta. Not her and her superior Tigress manners. Instead, she slowly turns away, departs toward the darker side of the building.
“Wait!” I call. “I want to see him, Simon. I want to talk to my bo—to talk to Dr. Sonderup.” I beg her to tell me where to find Jason but her unaffected poise remains. Her long fingers press the upward button. There’s no elevator, bitch. I tried. Yet, to my surprise, the doors open. The elevator engulfs her, and leaves me there, standing alone.
How did she…? What do I do now? Do I contact anyone? Practicality numbs grief, Shifu used to say. But I never faced death in this country. Should I call Dr. Lambrechts? I taste vomit in my mouth again. Head waves, I’m gonna fall. The wall, I throw my back against it and let it slide all the way. Jason, I need to talk to Jason. Mona Morrow’s phone, I remember. I still have it. No signal. Just me, the echoes, and the yellow lights staring at me. Like Simon’s eyes when we were linked. Is that you, Simon? Is this your ghost watching me? On the ceiling, a spot camera. No, it’s not Simon.
Dr. Lambrechts! I stand in my most defiant posture and yell at the mechanical eye: “You fucking dragon cunt. Can you hear me?”
The words bounce through the walls. Nobody protests. Whatever made everyone disappear must be his doing too. Him and the creepy general who thinks he can submit the world to his fucking will. Not me.
“Can you hear me, Dr. Lambrechts? Your buddy Simon! He’s dead. Fucking dead! Because of your fucking contract! Your shitty little project! How could you? He…worked with you…for fifteen fucking years! Can you hear me? I’m sure you can, assshole! And you better run. Cause I am coming after you!”
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
The ground continues to wave and this time a medicine cart and the I.V. hanger hold me upright. Am I going crazy? I feel lightheaded, confused. Brain is foggy, drained. Need some oxygen. Glucose. Only thing I know is: Simon is gone. And I am at fault. I drop myself on the floor and let out a cry of sadness and fury.
It’s me and the mechanical eye. And I am going to kill that fucker.