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The Queen’s Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, Earth
August 2nd, 2036
Terry watched out of the robotic taxi’s wide window as it turned off H1 and onto Ward Avenue. He was full of conflicted emotions and unable to concentrate. Twenty-four hours ago he was having lunch with his aunt at Café Du Monde in New Orleans. Warm hot chocolate and beignets. His phone had beeped a text message. His father was on the way back from the arctic, and there was a ticket waiting for him to catch the next flight to Hawaii. His mother. He couldn’t think.
The cab turned onto South Beretania Street. The multiple towers of the Queen’s Medical Center came into view, and the cab beeped an announcement that the destination was less than a minute away. He grabbed his bag. Most of his stuff was still in New Orleans. His aunt had packed an overnight bag and a few things, and got him to the flight just in time.
The cab turned into the hospital drop off. Dad was waiting as the door swung open. “Mom?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“She’s alive,” his father said.
Terry grabbed him around the waist, hugging him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried for any reason other than pain. Emotions overwhelmed him, and the tears came. “Dad,” he bawled.
“It’s okay, Terry,” he said, stroking Terry’s hair. The cab beeped for attention. “Just a second,” he said and gently detached. “I need to pay the cab.”
Terry let go and stood on the sidewalk, shaking and trying to control his emotions. He wiped snot away with his sleeve as his father used his new ID card to pay the fare. The cab closed its door and rolled away. His father turned back to him. He tried to smile, but it didn’t really work. He held out a hand. “Come on, Son, let’s go.”
Terry took his hand, and his father picked up the daypack. They went into the massive hospital.
Inside, there were hundreds of people, all doing their own thing. Adult visitors moved about on unknown missions. Occasionally children accompanied them. A few looked at him. Sometimes they were curious, sometimes they looked afraid.
His dad took him to an elevator, and they went up to the 22nd floor. Terry noticed the floor was labeled Intensive Care. The elevator rose in what seemed like slow motion to him. When the doors opened on the 22nd floor, he felt as if he was in a dream, walking along the white halls and black floor, holding his father’s hand.
“You’ve gotten taller,” his father said almost idly.
“Aunt Wilma said over a centimeter,” Terry replied robotically.
They reached the end of the hall, where a nurse’s station was.
“Here to see Madison Clark,” his father said.
“Family?” asked the woman, a nurse dressed in a red uniform.
“Yes, I’m Matthew Clark, her husband. This is Terrence...I mean Terry, our son.” He held out the new ID card.
The nurse examined the card—his Universal Account Access Card, which everyone called a Yack—and handed it back. She reached into her desk and gave him two yellow cards with clips. He gave one to Terry and clipped the other to his shirt. The card said, “Visitor.” Terry mechanically clipped his on as well.
“This way, sir.” Another nurse had arrived and was holding open a door with “Authorized Personnel Only” written on it in red. His dad took his hand again, and they followed the nurse.
This hallway was lined with windows and doors. Each window showed a small room on the other side, and machines, but Terry was too short to see more than occasional people or doctors standing in the room. It was all just images to him. He was walking in a nightmare.
They turned into a room about halfway down the corridor. The door closed behind them. There was a bed inside, and on it was his mom, though it was almost impossible to see her under all the hoses, wires, and other apparatus. Machines stood on metallic stands, others were mounted to the walls, and all were hooked to her body. Rhythmic beeping was audible constantly, and bellows moved up and down, reminding him of the old film villain, Darth Vader.
His dad stopped next to the bed. A woman stood there, a tablet computer in her hand. She was examining one of the machines and making notes. “Any change, Doctor?” he asked.
“No, Dr. Clark,” she said, shaking her head. “No better, but no worse, either.”
Terry let go of his dad’s hand and reached over to touch his mother’s. There was a needle in the back of her hand, with clear fluid running through it into her body from a bag suspended on a hangar. Some kind of machine beeped there, adding to the endless cacophony of beeps, whirs, and buzzes. The hand was cool to the touch, cooler than he thought it should be.
“Momma?” he asked.
The doctor and his dad looked down at him, and he began to cry again.
* * *
The room was private, like an office, but there was just a small table with several chairs around it. The doctor he’d seen was sitting on one side of the table; Terry and his dad were on the other side.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” the doctor said to Terry. “However, I’ll leave the details to your father for explanation. I just wanted to tell you we’re doing everything we can.”
“Will she wake up?” Terry asked.
“We don’t know,” the doctor admitted. “Her brain is injured. We’re giving her the best treatment we can. It will be another week or so before we can see if she’ll regain consciousness.”
The doctor went on for another minute with more technical details for his dad. Terry listened with half an ear until the meeting was over. He knew a little about the accident from the conversation with his father.
On the way to the airport, his father had gotten through to Terry on the phone, and they’d talked for five minutes. There’d been an accident while they were diving in the arctic. His mother had been hurt, badly. He was with her in Honolulu, and Terry was to fly back immediately. An hour later he was getting on the plane at New Orleans International Airport.
They were back in the intensive care waiting room. It was smaller than the big ones Terry saw in hospitals. Only a few people were sitting in the chairs and couches. Nearby a woman was sleeping, a young girl using her lap as a pillow to sleep, as well.
“Okay,” his dad said once they’d found a quiet place. “Let me tell you what happened.”
He spoke in quiet words so nobody could hear or be disturbed by what they might overhear. “We set up operations in the arctic with a previously identified pod of humpback whales. Your mom and I were both in the water, swimming in specially-made drysuits for the arctic water. We were attached to a submersible, cruising along next to the bull male whale. We’d been trying to talk to him for weeks.
“Over and over again we dove with the pod, following along behind the manned submersible like being towed behind an airplane. We tried everything we could think of. The translator was working perfectly, communicating in the humpbacks’ language of moans, clicks, and wails. Only they wouldn’t respond.
“Finally, we had staff at the institute talk to the bottlenoses and ask them to send a message. Bottlenose dolphins had been seen with humpbacks, though rarely. Maybe it would work? We didn’t know. The dolphins called the humpbacks “Dreamers.” They did as they were asked.
“So we played the dolphins’ message. First in the humpbacks’ language, and then, when nothing happened, in dolphin. The bull looked directly at us for the first time. Your mom and I were surprised, of course. It was a breakthrough. Then the bull turned suddenly and sped away. When it did, the whale’s flukes slammed into the submersible, shattering the hull.”
His dad paused, looking down and taking a couple of breaths. Terry’s eyes widened as he tried to imagine the huge whale smashing a submarine like a toy. Then he remembered his mother and father had been tethered to the sub. His father was taking again.
“It was an accident, everyone agrees. Your mom wouldn’t want the blame to fall on the whale. He merely wanted to get away from us. When you’re 20 meters long and weigh more than 60,000 pounds, anything as small as a Human submersible is almost too tiny to notice.”
He paused again before continuing, “Two people died in the submersible, probably instantly. The crushed sub was sinking. We’d been connected to the submersible by tethers and our air supply. Mine were cut by the impact. Sheer luck. I was knocked silly, but I floated to the surface. I don’t remember, but the support ship picked me up immediately.”
“What about mom?” Terry asked.
“She was pulled down with the sinking sub. The rescue divers got her loose, but not until she’d been without oxygen for nine minutes.”
Doc had taught Yui and him a lot about what happened when you were without oxygen for just a few minutes. Nine minutes was a long time. The world record was something like 20 minutes, but his mother wasn’t a trained athlete. She’d been unconscious. He’d also learned as little as 6 minutes could cause brain damage.
There wasn’t much more to talk about. They sat in the waiting room for a time. Terry saw a reporter on TV talking about his mother. They had a picture of her, along with the rest of the family. It was a celebration at the institute several years earlier. The caption said, “Marine Scientist Injured, Several Dead.”
Eventually his dad stood and stretched. “Let’s get you home,” he said.
“I want to stay here,” Terry insisted.
“The doctor said it could be days.” Terry stared at him. “You can come back tomorrow.”
Terry thought about being defiant, then despite himself, he yawned. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go home.”
* * * * *
