Crosstalk (9 page)

This is crazy,
some rational part of her brain told her.
You just had surgery. Yanking out your IV and wandering off could be dangerous
.

But that's exactly what C.B.'s counting on
, she thought,
that I'm stuck where his sound system is,
and pulled the needle out.

It stung less than she'd expected, but it bled copiously. She pressed the surgical tape back in place to stop it, put her arm into the robe's sleeve, switched the light off so a nurse wouldn't come in to see why she was awake, and felt her way cautiously over to the door, hoping she wouldn't crash into something.

She didn't, but it took her forever to reach the door, and when she opened it, the sudden light from the hall dazzled her. She put her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare and looked cautiously out into the hall. No nurses or orderlies were in sight, and most of the doors were shut or nearly so, with no light showing from inside. She'd been right about it being the middle of the night.

She listened a moment and then started down the corridor, grateful for the railing along the wall. The corridor made a turn just after the next room. If she could just get past that…

She wished she had her slippers. The tile floor was freezing. And the back of her head, where they must have gone in for the surgery, felt strange. Not painful.
Not yet,
Briddey thought, and tried to go faster.

“Nurse Rossi,” a voice said out of nowhere, and Briddey looked wildly around before realizing the voice had come from the intercom. “Please report to the nurses' station.”

Briddey stopped, listening for responding footsteps, but she didn't hear any. Nurse Rossi must be in some other corridor. Briddey started along the hallway again. She hadn't expected walking just a few steps could take so much energy. And take so long. By the time she reached the turn, she felt as though she'd run a marathon.

It's okay,
she thought, looking carefully around it.
You only have to go a little bit farther.
Just past the next room on the right was a waiting room with chairs and a sofa. If she could make it there, she could sit down.

But that meant crossing the hall. She wished she'd brought the IV-stand along to hang on to. She tottered across, grabbing onto the wall for support, and saw to her horror that the back of her hand was completely covered in blood.

The bandage hadn't held. She dabbed at the blood with the tail of her robe and then gave up.
You can stop the bleeding when you get to the waiting room,
she told herself.
Right now you've got to—

Get to the waiting room?
C.B.'s voice cut in.
Where are you? Why are you out of bed?

Oh, God,
she thought, looking up at the ceiling tiles. He'd bugged the corridor, too.

What are you doing in the corridor?
he demanded, and his voice was just as loud and clear as it had been in the room.
You just had surgery
—

Go away!
she said, looking desperately around. If he'd bugged the corridor, he'd have bugged the waiting room, too.
I'll have to go down to the lobby,
she thought.

Lobby? C.B. was shouting at her.
What the hell do you think you're doing?

Going somewhere you haven't managed to bug,
she said, stumbling past the waiting room door toward the rooms beyond it.

I told you, I didn't bug anything. Briddey, listen to me. You need to go back to your room—

And your bugs and speakers and microphones? No, thank you.
There had to be an elevator around here somewhere that she could take down to the lobby.

Briddey, you've got no business running around the hospital in your condition. Jesus, if I'd known you'd react like this, I'd never have…You need to tell me where you are!

Why? So you can come bug that, too?
she said, walking faster, determined to get out of range. But that made her dizzier, and the feeling at the back of her head went from tightness to pain.

A light blinked on above the door just ahead. That meant the patient inside had pressed the call button, and a nurse would be coming to answer it. She had to get out of here. But to where? She still couldn't see any sign of an elevator.

“Nurse!” a woman's voice called from the room, and Briddey heard footsteps coming from the direction she was headed.

I have to hide,
she thought desperately, and hurried past the room the patient had called from toward the next one, trying to ignore the dizziness and C.B.'s voice in her ear, saying insistently,
Tell me where you are. Please.

If she could just reach that next room, she could hide inside it till the nurse passed.

“Nurse!” the woman called again, and the intercom barked, “Dr. Black, please report to the nurses' station.” The approaching footsteps speeded up to a run, and Briddey lurched over to the room's door.

It wasn't a patient room. A sign on the door read
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY,
which meant it was probably a nurses' lounge. Or a storage closet. But she had to take that chance. She opened the door.

It was a stairway, leading down. Briddey slipped inside, pulled the heavy door almost closed, and then stood there keeping it from closing all the way, afraid the noise of its shutting would attract the approaching nurse's attention.

The nurse shot past the door and along the hall until she was out of sight. Briddey stood there a minute longer to make sure the nurse was out of earshot, listening to the voice on the intercom repeat, “Paging Dr. Black,” and then let go of the door.

It closed, cutting off the sound of the intercom in mid-word, and she was glad she'd waited because the door made a loud clank as it shut.
Good,
Briddey thought.
That means I'll be able to hear anyone coming in. And I can take these stairs down to the lobby
.

She started down the stairs. It was even chillier in the stairwell than it had been in the corridor, and the cement steps were like ice to her bare feet. She had to grip the freezing-cold metal railing to keep from falling, and she was getting dizzier by the moment. There was no way she could make it all the way down to the lobby.

But you don't have to,
she thought. Since the sound of the intercom had cut off as the door closed, the speakers C.B. had hidden in the hallway wouldn't reach down here. She tottered down the last few steps to the landing, and eased herself to sitting on the second step above it.

Mistake. Her thin hospital robe provided her no insulation from the cold of the cement, and she instantly began to shiver.
This had better work,
she thought.

She opened her mouth to call to him and then closed it firmly and shut her eyes.
C.B.?
she thought at him.
Can you hear me
?

No answer.

I
knew
it,
she thought.
You are going to be so sorry you did this. I'm going to tell Trent, and he's going to—

Briddey?
C.B. said in her ear.
Thank God! Where are you? Are you all right?

No,
she thought.
No!

I'm on my way to the hospital,
he said.
I'll be there as soon as I can
.

“Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?”

—J
AMES
T
HURBER
,
The Thurber Carnival

Where are you?
C.B. asked, his voice impossibly clear, impossibly close.
Are you still in the hall?

Briddey pressed her fingers hard against her ears to shut him out, knowing with a sick certainty that it wouldn't work.

Tell me,
he begged.
Did you go down to the lobby?

She buried her head in her hands and sat there in the icy stairwell thinking,
It's true. C.B.'s really inside my head. But how can he be? There's no such thing as—

We'll worry about that later,
C.B. said.
Right now you need to tell me where you are so I can get you back to your room.

And she must have thought,
I can't make it back,
because he said,
That's okay. Don't cry. Just stay there. I'll take care of it.

“I'm
not
crying,” she said indignantly, but that was a lie. Tears were running down her cheeks. She swiped at them with the back of her hand.

Everything'll be okay,
C.B. said.
I promise.

How can it be?
she thought.
I'm connected to C.B. Schwartz,
and started crying all over again.

The door above her banged open, and an orderly shouted, “Yes, she's here!” followed by a horde of medical personnel shouting orders and saying, “How the hell did she get all the way down here? Don't you people ever check on your patients?” and “My God, we'll be toast if Verrick finds out!”

Dr. Verrick! Oh, no, if he told Trent—

They bombarded her with questions—“Did you fall?” “Are you sure?” “Did you hit your head?”—and knelt beside her to check the back of her head and her bandages.

“You're positive you didn't stumble and hit your head?” one of the interns asked her, touching her cheek. His fingers came away smeared with blood.

That's from my wiping away the tears,
she thought, and looked down at her hospital gown. It was bloody, too. “I didn't fall,” she said. “That blood's from where I pulled out my IV.” She showed them the back of her hand.

The intern took hold of it. “And why did you do that?”

“I don't know. I…,” she said, trying to think of a plausible reason, but he didn't really seem to expect one. He was already listening to her heart and ordering the nurse to start a new IV.

She did, swabbing the blood off the back of Briddey's hand, which only made it look worse. The skin was badly bruised. By the time the nurse had examined it, decided she needed to put the IV in the other hand, and gotten it started, Briddey was completely frozen, and her teeth were chattering.

“Go get her a blanket,” the intern told a very young-looking nurse's aide. “And something for her feet.” He turned back to Briddey. “Look right here,” he said, pointing at a spot in the center of his forehead, and shone a light in each of her eyes in turn. “Do you know where you are?”

“Yes,” she said. “In a stairway in the hospital.”

“Do you remember how you got here?”

Yes,
she thought,
I was trying to get away from the bug C.B. put in my room,
and waited for C.B. to protest.

But he didn't. And he hadn't come racing down the stairs, in spite of his saying he was on his way. He hadn't found her; the orderly had, and that could have been because her nurse had come in to check her IV and seen she was missing. In which case C.B.'s talking to her in the stairwell could still have been part of an anesthetic-induced dream.

Or something worse. What if during the surgery Dr. Verrick had cut a nerve he wasn't supposed to, and C.B.'s voice was the result of hemorrhaging or injured neurons or something? He'd tried to warn her about complications, but she hadn't listened, and now here she was with brain damage.

The intern was looking at her worriedly.

“Yes, I remember how I got here,” she said, and knew instantly that she'd made a mistake. It meant she'd yanked out her IV and come down here on purpose, and his next question would be “Where were you going?”

“I mean, I remember getting out of bed…,” she said, “and then…” She frowned as if trying to recall. “I guess I must have gotten turned around looking for the bathroom and thought this was the door to my room…”

But the intern didn't look satisfied with her answer. “What was in the lobby?” he asked. “When your boyfriend called, he said you'd called him and mentioned something about the lobby, and he was afraid you might try to go down there.”

The nurse nodded. “He said he was afraid you might have tried to take the stairs.”

It isn't the anesthesia or brain damage,
Briddey thought.
It's real. And so is telepathy.

She supposed she should be relieved she wasn't brain-damaged or hemorrhaging, but this was even more of a nightmare. And if she let this line of questioning go on, her nurse was going to remember that she didn't have her phone and couldn't have called anyone. And that her boyfriend was here in the hospital, recovering from an EED, too, and phoneless, and then it
really
would be a nightmare.

“It's a good thing he told us to check the stairs,” the nurse was saying, “because hardly anyone uses them. Why did you—?”

“I don't know,” Briddey said, reaching unsteadily for the intern's arm. “Oh, dear, I guess I
am
feeling a little dizzy.”

It did the trick. The intern stopped asking questions and started giving orders, and they got her up the stairs, into a wheelchair, and back to her room in record time. The floor nurse and the nurse's aide helped her into a clean hospital gown and then into bed.

She was still shivering. “I'm so cold,” she murmured as the nurse smoothed the covers over her.

“No wonder,” the nurse said. “It was like a freezer in that stairway.” She hung the new IV bag on the stand. “As soon as we finish here, I'll get you another blanket.”

“You're lucky your boyfriend called,” the nurse's aide said. “You could have been down there for ages. We didn't even know you weren't in your room.”

The nurse glared at her. “Go get a blanket,” she said sternly.

The aide scuttled out. As soon as she was gone, Briddey said, “You don't have to tell Dr. Verrick about this, do you? I was dopey from the anesthetic, and I got confused—”

“That's what your boyfriend said when he called,” the aide said, reappearing in the doorway, sans blanket. “He was
so
upset. He said if we didn't find you immediately, he was going to tear the hospital apart.”

“I thought I told you to go get a blanket,” the nurse said.

“I don't know where they are.”

“They're in—never mind, I'll show you in a minute.” She reached for Briddey's chart.

If she looks at it, she'll see I had an EED and realize my boyfriend must have had one, too.
“Could you get me that blanket now?” Briddey asked plaintively. “I'm so
cold.
”

“Right away,” the nurse said. “Now, your call button's right there.” She clipped it to the sheet by Briddey's hand. “Call if you need
anything.
You promise you won't run off again while I'm gone?”

There's nowhere to go
, Briddey thought hopelessly.
Wherever I go, he'll be there, inside my head.
“I'll stay put,” she said. “I promise.”

“Good,” the nurse said, and went out, but seconds later a student nurse came in, ostensibly to refill Briddey's water jug but obviously to check on her, and a minute later a different intern came in to ask her the same questions the first intern had, followed by an orderly with a mop.

But no nurse's aide with a blanket, and her teeth were starting to chatter again. “Could I get a blanket?” she asked the orderly.

“I'll tell your nurse to bring you one,” he promised and went out.

I thought they'd never leave,
C.B. said.
Are you okay?

“Yes, no thanks to you,” she said, and then glanced anxiously at the door. If someone came in and caught her talking to herself, they'd definitely call Dr. Verrick.
Go away,
she said silently.
You've caused enough trouble
.

Look, Briddey, I'm really sorry. If I'd known my talking to you would spook you into taking off, I'd never have—

Gotten an EED?

What?
C.B. said blankly.

It's the only explanation. When did you have it done? Right after you found out Trent and I were going to do it?

What? Why the hell would I have an EED? I was the one who tried to talk you out of it, remember?

That could have been a trick to throw me off. So I wouldn't realize you were getting one, too.

Oh, right,
he said sarcastically.
I thought, Having a hole drilled in your head so you can exchange warm fuzzies is a great idea! I think I'll get one, too.

“No,”
she said, speaking aloud in her anger. “To keep me from—”

The student nurse who'd filled her water jug popped her head in the door. “Did you need something?” she asked.

She must have been stationed outside my door the whole time to stop me from bolting again,
Briddey thought.

Which is an excellent idea,
C.B. said,
since you clearly can't be trusted to take care of yourself.

And there went the last shred of hope that it was a bug, because the student nurse gave no sign that she'd heard C.B. at all. She was looking at Briddey with concern. “Are you all right?”

No,
Briddey thought. “Yes,” she said. “I was trying to find my call button. Can you find out what happened to the extra blanket they were supposed to bring me?”

“Oh, sure,” the student nurse said, and disappeared.

Nice save,
C.B. said the moment she was gone,
but from now on you probably shouldn't talk to me out loud
.

I don't intend to talk to you at all,
she said.
I can't believe you did that
.

Let me get this straight,
he said.
You think I found out about you and Trent having the EED and decided to steal a march on him? How exactly am I supposed to have done that when Dr. Whatzisname's got a waiting list as long as my arm? And when? I saw you this morning at Commspan
.

You could have raced over here and paid some patient to let you go first, or…
A horrible thought struck her. What if he'd told the doctor
he
was Trent? That would explain why she couldn't hear Trent, because he'd never had the EED at all, and C.B. was talking to her not from Commspan but from right here in the—

Are you kidding?
C.B. said.
Hospitals are really big on making sure they're operating on the right body part, let alone the right person. Or do you think I stole his ID, too, and tied him up in my lab, all so I could have a surgery I told you was a terrible idea? And, anyway, aren't you forgetting something? Doesn't a couple have to be emotionally bonded for the EED to work?

If you're trying to say we're emotionally bonded—

I'm
saying
, according to what you told me about the EED, it wouldn't have done any good for me to get one unless—

Shh,
she said.
She's coming back with my blanket.

She can't hear me, remember? Or you. Unless you forget and start talking out loud again
.

It wasn't the student nurse. It was the resident on duty, accompanied by yet another nurse. “I understand you took a little hike tonight,” the resident said jovially, looking at her chart. “Any ill effects?”