Godspeed (9 page)

“Wait!” I cried, as he lowered me, still dressed, into the water. “The gown. It's silk. It'll be ruined.”

“Worry not. It's an ancient thing. It is but a small, noble act to sacrifice it to spare the feelings of a lady.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I shuddered as the heat of the water met my skin, but quickly sank into it, almost too far.

“Careful,” he warned. “If we get those wires wet, it will cause serious damage.”

I was puzzled by his tone. He spoke as if he knew this was a certainty.

His every motion as he cared for me (gathered up a pitcher and bowl with which to wash my hair, fussed around as my arms hung slack over the edges of the large tub) indicated that he had a great deal of experience at tending an invalid's needs. Through whose care, I wondered, had he gathered such hard-won experience?

The soothing scent and soap in the bath seemed to draw the sadness from my body in waves. I tried to ignore the sound of his sighs as he shampooed my hair, but I knew that more of it was breaking off in his hands than was staying where it belonged.

The time went by all too quickly, peacefully, without conversation. Every so often I'd open my eyes and watch as he tended some part of me with skill and speed: trimming fingernails, applying suds-laden cloth in small, intricate circles to cleanse the skin around the incisions.

When finally all was done, he drained the tub and rinsed me with seemingly endless pitchers of fresh warm water for good measure.
At the end, he held a towel up before me and I managed to free myself of the wringing wet dressing gown, shedding my second skin and leaving it at the bottom of the tub.

He averted his eyes from my body as much as he could as he handed me the towel. He waited patiently for my weakened arms to do the best they could with raising it to dry myself before finally he helped me slide into a much warmer, heavier robe.

He cracked the window to allow the steam to escape just enough that he could wipe its residue from the mirror. He helped me into a chair beside it, and after he was certain I was truly dried off, he fetched the box and reattached me to it.

I shuddered as the energy first spiked back through the wires into my heart. I could feel my strength dwindling in the time it had been gone from me, and I wondered if I would ever be able to live again a life free of the pain that it caused.

I stared blankly at my expression in the mirror. Schuyler stood behind me, brush and comb at the ready but additionally, there was something else in his hand — a pair of shining, silver scissors.

“Before I take this away,” he said, indicating the towel he'd wound around my head, “be prepared. You know that the treatments have exacted a price.”

I nodded. My determination to deny any trace of vanity melted away in a river of tears the moment I saw what he meant.

My skin of course took the worst of the damage but it became abundantly clear just how much my hair had also suffered the wrath of the energy's course through my body.

The strands had broken off at his slightest touch, especially at longer lengths. It appeared charred beyond redemption well above the level of my shoulders—at varying points even as high as the lobes of my ears.

Even more curiously, I had developed a wide streak that shone an almost eerie golden blonde in the light, a stark contrast from the deep brown shade I had inherited from my father. This alteration cut a swath through my hair across my forehead in a fashion that made Schuyler shake his head and then tilt it in curiosity at the same time.

“Remarkable. You look as though the very hand of God itself came down to gild you with light. The effect is quite striking.”

I was convinced he was only trying to be kind, to distract me from the shears in his hands as he prepared to take them to my faltering locks and cut their life and suffering short.

It was unheard of for women in our polite society to be seen that way, to wear their hair cropped nearly as short as a man's, and in my case, shorter than Schuyler's was. I knew though, that there was little choice.

As he began to cut away, I closed my eyes. A tear trailed down my cheek, but not for the reason he assumed.

“Your eyes are enormous. You're going to look lovely with this most innovative style. Very modern.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. I brushed the moist tracks from my cheek but was not so easily able to dispel the thoughts that had prompted them.

I became transfixed; staring at my reflection in the glass as I watched one section after another of burned and broken hair fall to the floor, and wondered what my father would say now if he could see what I had become.

C
HAPTER
12

MY WAKING HOURS WERE FEW
in the weeks that followed. A routine of sorts was established in which little was said, by either Schuyler or the doctor, about the continued state of my health.

Each day when morning came and one of them arrived to wake me, they still seemed nervous upon entering the room until I turned upon my bed and looked up at them with vivid, living eyes.

Days, and then weeks, blurred one into another as I slept most of them away, my body desperate for restorative rest to help repair all the damage done to it.

On the good days, I could spend most of my time attached only to the thing Godspeed referred to as ‘the box’. On the worst, I would have to be carried back to the laboratory. Though I had often wondered exactly where it was, I was always just far enough from lucidity in those moments to determine its location relative to my room in the attic.

At times, when the laboratory was at its quietest, I was certain that I heard disembodied voices; conversations, laughter, sometimes even music. Sounds completely irreconcilable to my surroundings. I had no idea if they were real or imagined, but every time I heard them, I wondered if they were those distant voices of the afterlife calling to me again as they had before, urging me to just give up my fight and return to them, to stay.

Every day and often at night, at the oddest of hours, Doctor Godspeed went through his paces, hooking the wires that led to my chest up to this form of machinery and that. He tested me, took
readings and it seemed took stock of the contents of my soul at the same time.

Each time he did so, I grew increasingly anxious to understand the intricate workings of his mind, and more so the heart, that powered both the form and the psyche of this utterly brilliant being.

On one particular late afternoon, it seemed that my internal inquiries, though I tried to conceal them from his uncanny intuition, had become all too easy for him to detect.

“You have an expression of curiosity in your eyes,” he said, after he'd set the listening scope aside again. “Is there something that you want to ask me?”

There was so much that I wanted to ask him that I didn't know where to begin. I wanted to know everything about him in the finest detail. I wanted to know about his family and upbringing. I wanted to know about his experiences with schooling and his decision to go into the field of medicine as a profession. I wanted to know why he didn't seem to have any sort of everyday practice that one would expect of a physician of his obvious talent.

I wanted to know exactly why he came and went in great secrecy, as if living away from the world on purpose, in hiding.

I realized, though, that any one of these questions could jeopardize the fragile trust we had begun to build, so I restrained myself. I could only hope that I would find the answers in time, if I observed him closely enough.

“Come now, no questions?” He began to disconnect me from the machines, which indicated that he was satisfied I was stable, at least for now. “If you do not venture forth with any, perhaps I may be inclined to start asking them about you.”

Believing there wasn't much about me to tell that could possibly interest him, finally, I spoke. “I'm curious about Mr. Algernon.”

“Schuyler? First of all, he would bristle if he heard you call him ‘Mr. Algernon.’” He instantly relaxed a little, as much as I had ever seen him relax, when he saw that the conversation was turning away from either one of us present. “What do you want to know?”

“Does he make a habit of rescuing young women in distress, or am I an oddity?”

“A little of both,” the doctor replied, enigmatic as ever. “Schuyler is a singular sort of person. Artist. Dreamer. Much in the way his father was. At least he seems to have inherited the same business savvy, and so he managed to keep the shop going after his father left this life.”

“The shop. I think I remember him mentioning it, but I cannot remember when.” There were many things I could not quite remember. “Is it nearby? Exactly what is sold there?”

“Ruby Road Art and Antiquities,” the doctor replied. “That's the name. He sells the wares of almost every artist in town, save his own.”

“You say that the business was in his family?”

“Yes. A love of art is something Schuyler inherited from both parents. In fact, most of the paintings that you see hanging in the red room in his residence were painted by his father.”

I had a vague memory of my first conscious moments in Schuyler's loft and now understood his reaction to my interest in the paintings.

Another question formed in my mind, one that I couldn't believe I hadn't asked earlier.

“Where, specifically, am I now?”

He moved swiftly over to a large machine across the room and began turning dials and levers, making himself look busy though I clearly saw that the main power switch to the monstrosity was in the ‘off’ position. I had unnerved him, but he was by no stretch of the imagination ready to admit it.

“In my laboratory.”

“But how did I get here?”

“I brought you here.”

I sighed. Clearly, I was going to have to be much more precise in my line of questioning.

“Where is the laboratory in relation to Ruby Road Art and Antiquities?”

He huffed a much different kind of sigh than I had. “I see there is little point in trying to deceive you. Very well. What I am about to tell you is a matter of great confidence. If you reveal the location of this facility, its security will be compromised. It will mean, more than that, I can no longer give you the treatments that are keeping you alive. It will have serious, dangerous repercussions for others as well.” He turned back toward me and looked me dead in the eyes. “Can I trust you?”

“I have trusted you with my life, sir. You can trust me with the truth of my location.”

He considered a moment, and then nodded.

“All right.” He stepped back, toward the closest door, and opened it. “If you leave by means of this corridor, and take the stairway up to the first floor, you will find yourself at the heart of Ruby Road Art and Antiquities. Up one level more, second door on the left,” he continued, “and you would be in the red room of Schuyler's apartment.”

So, that was the reason that Schuyler could so often and so quickly summon Quinn when needed; the building that housed the laboratory and his residence were one and the same. That brought another question to mind, one which had only one logical answer.

“And my room is in the attic of Schuyler's residence.”

“Exactly so.”

It was little wonder to me now that both Quinn and Schuyler had done so much to conceal the minimal distance between the locations from me for so long. My mind wandered to the possibility that the
greater consequences
he spoke of, if this place were exposed, meant that he had patients besides myself to care for. In fact, I considered it completely impossible that I could be the only one he'd care for. He was far too driven, and, I was absolutely convinced, too good a man to turn away others who surely must have come to his attention; and in so doing silently begged his aid, whether they asked for it outright or not.

My thoughts tumbled through my head like waves in a maelstrom, bubbling and foaming so that they could not be contained or controlled. “The boy,” I blurted.

A single one of Quinn's strong brows elevated. “What boy?”

My face instantly took on what little color it could, considering how hard my heart had to work to circulate the blood through my body. I knew better by now than to try to feign ignorance or attempt deceit. Perhaps I could yet choose my words in such a way as to prevent him from blaming the boy for my knowledge of his existence. “I saw a boy, once, in the house. He did not speak to me and quickly vanished from view, but I have wondered about his presence here, and the fact that I have never seen him again.”

For a moment my pulse skipped; I realized he could catch me in my attempt to reframe history if there was no reason the boy would have been in the house, since in truth the boy had found me in the laboratory before I'd ever been taken to that attic space to stay.

“Careless,” Quinn muttered. “Someone must have been careless, if you've seen him. Still, I suppose there is no reason to conceal you from each other further, now that it appears…” His voice trailed off. He reached over and procured one of his leather books from the edge of the desk, pulled a pen from between its pages, and began scribbling.

“Doctor?” I prodded. His continued inattention began to irritate me, for it did not afford me any further answers to my questions. “Now that it appears?”

“That you will be with us for quite some time.”

My heart leapt so that I found myself breathless. Tears I could not contain sprung to my eyes, and I tried to blink them back. They were tears of conflict, of relief, and of terror. While it was reassuring to know that he had no immediate plans of turning me back out into the enormous, unfeeling world from which I'd come, I felt incalculable sorrow at the thought that I would eventually have to leave him. Ever.

He looked up for an instant and furrowed his brow, but just as suddenly he went back to his writing and his silence.

After I'd finally composed myself a little, I ventured again to speak. “No trouble will be made for anyone, will it? Because I saw the boy?”

He waved his hand with the pen still perched between his fingers. “There is little point in making an issue of it now. What is done is done. It was inevitable that you would see him sooner or later.”