Consciousness hits me like a bucket of cold water.
“Hold still, my love,” croons the voice of a woman I don’t recognize. The bitter smell of hospital-grade disinfectant stings my nostrils. A twinge of pain in my left wrist makes me squirm, but my arms lie awkward and heavy. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Sophie.” The words stick in my throat. “Sophie. Um. Perella.”
“Good, Sophie. You’ve had a nasty bang-up, but just a moment longer and I’ll have you sorted.” Darkness creeps across my vision. Heavy and claustrophobic against a bright fluorescent glare.
My brain goes soft and crackly. The low whine of a heart monitor bleeds out nearby.
“Take a deep breath now, that’s it.”
When I come to again, she’s next to me, face drawn and tired, deep grooves of sadness around her mouth, but she smiles when she sees me staring at her. “You’re at the John Radcliffe Hospital. My name is Nurse Rew. Dr. Perig asked me to handle this for him, but don’t worry. I’ll have you stitched up right fast, love.”
The tip of her tongue touches her lips as she concentrates on a cut that runs across the underside of my arm. The skin around it is abraded, red like hamburger meat. “I told you not to look,” she says with a grimace. “You won’t like what you see here, now will you?” She cleans the wound carefully and then prepares to suture it closed. Nurse Rew’s fingers are heavily calloused but they move daintily as she works. The anaesthetic must have kicked in because I feel nothing but the pressure as she tugs at a curved steel needle. She ties off the knot and snips the thread with surgical scissors. “There you go. All better.”
My thoughts are loosely coiled. I don’t want to think about where I am, what I’ve done. I don’t know what I’ll say if she asks me.
“Listen. There’s something I must speak to you about, my love. We haven’t been able to locate your medical records so I sent a blood sample in for testing.” She touches my forehead with the kind of casual ownership you take over the body of someone you’re tending.
“You didn’t need to do that.” A long pause as I try to bring my sluggish brain to bear on the problem. “I was tested back in Toronto. A few months ago. They said I was negative.”
“Just to be sure then. With things as they are we tiptoe round the grave.” I can’t help looking down at her handiwork. Little black stitches zipper up a length of about four inches. She dabs them with a cloth to get rid of the blood. There’s more of it than I would have expected. She wraps a white gauze bandage over the stitches, tapes it in place.
“We’ll keep you for a few hours for observation.” I want her to take my hand again. The craving for contact is so powerful that I can feel pressure mounting behind my eyes. “With any luck, you’ll be just fine.”
I don’t believe her wavering smile. The blood is leaking through the bandage.
“Please,” I whisper, “can you call my mom?”
I’ve slipped into an almost trance-like state of waiting, but now a tense conversation beyond the privacy curtain jolts me awake.
“Where’s my daughter? I need to see her right now.”
“She’s just through here. But it’s important I speak with you for a moment first. Her blood wasn’t coagulating properly…”
“God, let me see her, will you?”
A moment later Mom teeters at the edge of the curtained area. Mascara from the day before darkens the creases beneath her eyes. She glances from monitor to monitor, then she comes to the side of my cot. “Sophie,” she says. “Oh god, Sophie. You’re okay. When the hospital called, I thought. I thought…” Her gaze snags on the bandage, the bright smear of blood on the sheet. The yellowy cloud of bruises near my collarbone where my body slammed against the seatbelt. “What were you doing?”
“I just couldn’t sleep. I wanted to take a drive.”
She stares at me. “Sophie…”
“I know it was stupid.”
“You shouldn’t be doing that. You haven’t passed your test. You shouldn’t be…” Her voice is dopey and leaden. I remember she took something, a sleeping pill. But despite that her eyes are two bright dots of panic. “You could have died.”
I know she’s right. I look around at the machines cast like a constellation around my bed. I wish I could hide. The monitors spill my secrets to the world: blood pressure too high, my heart is galloping.
I’m not okay, not by a long shot.
“Try to focus, Sophie. Please.”
Dr. Varghese touches me lightly on the shoulder, trying to be comforting. Mom is standing in the far corner, dull-eyed now and not talking. She has heard all of this before. We both have. The medical ID bracelet the nurse gave me feels unpleasant and alien around my wrist.
“I know we’ve talked about how JI2 operates, but it’s important that you understand, that you really understand, what this means for you…”
We tiptoe round the grave. Dr. Varghese’s doing that, isn’t she? She’s tiptoeing, trying not to scare me too much, not right away.
“Sometimes your blood might not clot properly. Or you might experience arrhythmia, your heart beating too fast. Most of the time these symptoms are benign and your body manages to sort itself out but if you’re under stress the symptoms could get worse.” Her eyes skim over my arm. A rusty smear has crystallized beneath the tape.
“How much worse?”
“I know what happened to your sister was terrible.” She touches my hand again but I pull it away. “Her case was different. You’re older, Sophie, and you’re healthy. Your body should be able to handle the condition better and we’re learning more about it every day.”
“You mean, you might have a cure?”
“We’re doing everything we possibly can to grapple with this.” A thoughtful expression crosses her face but it quickly disappears. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. But there are some things we should talk about it. We’re beginning to understand the effect JI2 might have on your brain chemistry better.” She sounds uncertain here. “There’s a chance it might affect your judgment, your emotions. Bear with me for a moment: Have you ever heard of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii?”
My gaze wanders, focuses on the chewed pen cap in her pocket. The stray threads on her sleeve.
“It’s not a bug exactly, but a parasite that causes changes in animal behaviour,” Dr. Varghese says. “The parasite is excreted by cats in their feces. After several days it matures and becomes pathogenic. Mice who consume it become more active, more likely to venture out into open spaces when in the presence of predators. Their reaction times are delayed. In essence, the parasite tricks the mouse into making itself vulnerable so it becomes easy prey for the cat.” She swallows. “We think that JI2 might have a similar sort of effect. It can change your response to frightening situations so you don’t get scared the way you should. You might feel exhilarated, or even happy in some cases. Reckless. We’ve learned that now.”
“We never had cats,” I tell her. “Just a dog. He died when I was younger.” I want to understand what she’s telling me about the mice. The mice who aren’t afraid of cats. Is that what happened to Kira?
That strange glint in her eyes, I saw it. Time and again I saw it but I didn’t know what it meant.
“Would my sister have felt the same thing?” A sick hiccup of laughter bursts out of me. I thought I was responsible for what happened to her. Mom glances up and there’s a terrible look on her face, a mixture of anxiety and shock.
“It’s possible,” Dr. Varghese concedes. “Kira sometimes talked to me about feeling different. Like she knew how she was supposed to feel. How people expected her to feel. But the extent of the changes seems to be different for every patient. With some, the symptoms are more severe but others may not notice anything different than, say, the shifts in mood you experience during your period.”
I’ve already felt the effects, haven’t I? That glowing sense of glee as my fingers slipped away from the steering wheel. It felt good to let go. The same way I felt when I decided to leave the house to get Kira.
“We’ll have regular sessions to monitor your condition and if there are any changes we can tackle them together.”
“You didn’t know all this before,” I say, wanting to provoke a rise. “And Kira…she died because of it. Maybe if you’d known then she’d still be alive. What else don’t you know?”
Mom makes a noise deep in her chest, a sort of nyehh-urggh like an engine starting up in January. “Please,” says Mom and now she’s talking to me. “I can’t do this. Not now. I’m so sorry, Sophie, but I can’t go through this again.” She’s staring at me. “You’re old enough, right? You can hear this on your own? You’ll be all right?”
“Charlotte, you should stay for her.” Dr. Varghese holds the clipboard in front of her like a shield. For the first time she’s flustered, but Mom is staggering to her feet.
“I just—can’t,” she says. Then she spins and vanishes beyond the privacy curtain.
Dr. Varghese thumbs a strand of dark hair behind her ear. Does it again.
“Tell me what happens after.” My voice is hard.
She blinks twice before she speaks. “It’s too early to have that discussion.” She can’t look me in the eye.
“I need to know.” Hot tears blur my vision. “What’s really going to happen to me after I die?”
“Let me be honest with you,” she says. Her voice has lost its professional polish. She sounds raw and uncertain. “Sophie, this condition doesn’t react the way a typical disease does. We still don’t know the full extent of the symptoms. But the post-mortem anomalies…” She sucks in a breath and shakes her head. “You need to know that it isn’t you. Whatever happens after it won’t be you anymore. It’s something else.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
“You have to trust me,” she says. Which isn’t an answer at all. Beneath the sympathetic exterior is a hard kernel of fear. She knows it isn’t just a Lazarus effect. She knows something is happening to them and whatever it is, it scares her. And I remember Kira’s body last night, her muscles beginning to twitch. My own wild hope. As far as I know Kira is still there, alone, but what if Dr. Varghese is right? What if it isn’t her coming back but something else?
“You couldn’t help Kira,” I say. I want to sound angry but my voice comes out small and frightened. What have I done?
“That doesn’t mean we can’t help you.”