NORTHPORT, NEW YORK
Laura managed to put off telling Rick about the ikhar until they reached the VA hospital, but couldn’t hold out any longer. If she couldn’t trust him about this, she couldn’t trust anyone.
“You know the friend I visited here yesterday?” she said as he pulled into a parking spot.
Her voice sounded as shaky as her insides. She clasped her hands to stifle the tremor that had started. It had to have worked—had to.
“Something wrong?”
“I sneaked her a dose of the ikhar during my visit.”
He jerked upright in his seat. “What? How—?”
“It came Tuesday.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I’m saying it now.”
He unlatched his door. “Let’s go. I’ll walk you inside.”
“I thought you didn’t—”
“This is different—way different.”
She sat there. She’d been dying to know all day, had wanted a firsthand look, and now the moment had arrived. So why was it so hard to get out of the car?
Rick opened her door, took her hand, and helped her out.
“You still don’t believe, do you.”
“It’s hard.”
“I know,” he said softly. “I know.”
He took her arm as they crossed the parking lot and held the front door for her.
“Just follow my lead,” she whispered as she slipped past him into the lobby.
She didn’t recognize the receptionist at the desk—maybe twenty, short-short black hair, tiny stud above her left nostril—but noted the odd spelling on her nameplate: Gale.
“Hi. I’m Laura Fanning. I was volunteering here yesterday and forgot my reading glasses.”
Out of the corner of her eye she caught Rick’s raised eyebrow but didn’t acknowledge it.
Gale smiled and said, “I’ll check the lost-and-found box.”
“If I left them anywhere, it would be in Emilie Lantz’s room.”
The receptionist froze. “You visited Emilie yesterday?”
“Yes. I read to her once or twice a week.”
Gale looked agitated. “How—how was she when you left?”
“Same as always.” Laura put on a puzzled look to hide her growing excitement. No doubt about it: Something had happened. “Is anything wrong?”
“No … yes … no. I mean, she’s cured!” Her words came in a rush. “Okay, I shouldn’t say she’s cured because nobody’s said she’s cured yet but what else can you call it? They found her walking up and down the hall outside her room this morning screaming for everyone to come see!”
Laura had to lean against the counter for support. Yes!
“Standing? She couldn’t even hold up a paperback when I left her.”
“I know, right? Yet she woke up completely cured. It’s a miracle!”
Miracle … how many times had she heard that word in the past couple of months?
“Can I see her?”
Gale checked her computer screen. “She’s on her way to radiology. They’re running scads of tests on her. You know—MRIs, labs, the works.”
I’ll bet, Laura thought.
Disappointment dampened her elation. Though it should have been enough to know that Emilie had been cured, a part of her needed to see her on her feet. But she hid it.
“Okay, I’ll come back later.”
“Don’t you want me to check for your glasses?”
“They can wait.”
Laura suddenly wanted out of here. But as she turned toward the door, an unfamiliar voice rang through the lobby.
“Laura! Laura!”
She turned to find a grinning Emilie being pushed down the hall in a wheelchair by an aide. She motioned to the aide to stop. And then she levered herself to her feet.
“Can you believe it?” she cried, grinning as she stood with spread arms. “Can you fucking believe it?”
“Oh, god!” was all Laura could manage before her throat locked.
And then she found herself hurrying down the hall as Emilie stumbled toward her. They wrapped their arms around each other and both began to sob.
Finally Laura broke the clinch and wiped her eyes. Had to appear clueless …
“Emilie … what … how?”
“I don’t know! Nobody knows! And you know what? I don’t care!” She laughed. “Maybe it was that apple juice you gave me yesterday!”
No, no, no! Laura didn’t want her even joking about that. Be cool. Go with it …
“Well, I … I left the bottle for you. If that’s it, maybe you can spread it around to the other patients.”
Another laugh. “Maybe I will!”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said the aide. “I’m supposed to have you in radiology.”
“Okay, okay.” Emilie squeezed Laura’s hands. “We’ll have to get together after I get out of here.”
“Yes, def,” Laura said, knowing she couldn’t let that happen. She might let something slip.
They exchanged waves as Emilie was wheeled away; then, all wobble-kneed, she returned to the lobby. Without waiting for Rick, she hurried out the door and across the parking lot. She was aware of him close behind her but more aware of the pressure building in her chest. The door locks popped as she approached the pickup, but before she could climb inside, she burst into tears.
“You okay?” Rick said as he came up beside her.
She nodded and waved a hand for him to give her a moment, then leaned against him and sobbed. His arms went around her and she clung to him. And kept clinging after she’d regained control. It reminded her of that night in Kirkwall when they’d both had too much to drink. Where would they be now, relationship-wise, if they hadn’t been interrupted? As much as she liked the clinch, she finally pushed away.
“Sorry.”
“No apology necessary.”
“I’m not usually this emotional. It’s just…” Her throat tightened again. “It’s just so wonderful to see her on her feet … cured.”
Rick stared at her. “After all you’ve seen, you’re still surprised?”
Good question. She’d witnessed two impossible cures back to back in the Stony Brook PICU, so why had Emilie’s hit her like a runaway train?
“Well, the ikhar could’ve spoiled in transit.”
A dubious look. “That really it?”
“I mean, the possibility was in the back of my mind.” Way back. “Okay, I admit it: I can’t help it. There’s no question that it works and yet I can’t wrap my mind around the reality of it. All science and reason says it can’t work, and yet it does.”
A wry smile. “Well, if it’s gonna cause you such torment, maybe you should just flush the next dose down the toilet.”
“You know damn well that’s not going to happen.”
“I do. But more importantly, how are you going to keep it secret?”
“By changing the places where I volunteer. I’ve got months to find my next ‘patient.’”
“Just be careful,” he said, his tone now grave. “Someone connects the dots, life as you know it is over. If people think you have a supply of the real panacea—and once that thought gets in their heads, convincing them otherwise will be damn near impossible—they’ll hound you to the ends of the earth.”
The truth of that made her stomach crawl. Because Marissa would be involved as well. But she couldn’t discard a panacea. Too many desperate people out there …
“I’ll be careful.”
“Great. And meanwhile…” He tilted his head back and thumbed his nose at the sky.
She had to smile. “That’s for the vast, cool, unsympathetic intellects out there?”
“You got it.”
Early on she’d dismissed Rick’s wild theory that sapience was so rare in the universe that it attracted attention—the wrong kind. As a result, humans had become the playthings of “intellects vast, cool, and unsympathetic”—a phrase he’d snagged from H. G. Wells. He claimed the panacea—the ikhar—had been created by these intellects to throw a monkey wrench into all of humankind’s concepts of a knowable universe by breaking all the rules.
Ridiculous, right?
But that blithe certainty had been turned on its pointy little head. After seeing the ikhar cure a raging viral meningitis, a cardiomyopathy, and now end-stage MS, she had to wonder if maybe it had truly originated, as Rick put it, outside.
Like a little blue crab dropped into a tropical fish tank.
Laura had yet to buy totally into Rick’s scenario, but just for fun she mimicked his gesture.
Rick gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Way to go. But ‘intellects, vast, cool, and unsympathetic’ is kind of unwieldy, don’t you think? They need a handy acronym, so I’ve settled on ‘ICE.’”
“ICE … meaning?”
“Intrusive Cosmic Entities. They even have a theme song.” He hummed a stuttering bass line.
“That’s not…?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, nodding. “‘Ice Ice Baby.’”
Laura couldn’t help laughing. She never knew what to expect from Rick.
“Feeling better?” he said.
“I wasn’t feeling bad. Not really. Just a lot of pent-up emotion. When Clotilde said she’d be sending me an occasional dose, I never realized the burden it would carry. It means every so often I can dramatically change the course of a life for the better, provide a future where there wasn’t one. The responsibility is … daunting.”
“Yeah, but Clotilde knew what she was doing. She chose a healer.”
“Some healer. One who works with dead people.”
“One who’s been hiding behind dead people. Time to enter the land of the living.”
Which was just what she intended to do.