Remember (2 page)

I gaze down at my hands, covered in blood with something yellow. My knees soaked up even more yellow than my hands. What is this yellow stain made of? I hunt for the source, inspecting the room and locating a row of two bottles filled with a yellow liquid that leaked onto the floor. A few lie down across the tabletop. This must be the stuff.

I hear a loud steady tone, familiar, but hard to pin down. What is that sound? It comes as a surprise to me, flat-line. The EMT’s jump into a flurry of activity. They franticly try stabilizing her.

“Just follow the procedure. Get one milligram of epi, GP.”

“You got it, Coop.” They slide their hands past each others.

Coop injects epinephrine into Dr. Mekova system. “Clear!” A blue light hovers over Irena's body as she goes stiff and relaxes. The rhythmic heart beat sounds reignite. She’s stable, again.

“Her blood pressure is dangerously low, I’m going to increase the fluids,” Coop says

“I’ll get the stretcher.” GP says. A stretcher enters through the arch. It has a black slab base with hundreds of legs supporting a column to a neatly tucked narrow stretcher bed.

Two people stroll into the room, stationing themselves next to the arch with the presence and attire of security (black on black suits). It isn’t that unusual. Why are they just loitering there? The paramedics use a backboard to move her up to the stretcher. Coop starts rolling Dr. Mekova onto one side. Apparently, she doesn’t have a spinal injury.
GP lowers the stretcher all the way down.

Coop lifts one edge of the board, the other end follows, and he slides her onto the stretcher with ease. The EMT’s pack up all their stuff into their geometric backpacks and security stays behind. The best time to get ready to leave presents itself. I go out into the hall, head for the restrooms to wash my hands. This works well. The yellow stains just needs extra scrubbing. The matching stains on my clothes don't come off, despite trying everything possible. I go back into the carefully arranged office (back to normal, three rows of twelve desks) for my notepad, dig around in the drawer searching, until someone approaches my desk. I find the Security Agents right in front of me.

Thurs 8/31/17 8:15 p.m.

“W
e’re going to ask you some questions about the events of the night. Is that okay with you?” the Agent on the right asks. Both of them seem exceptionally fit with low heart rates and breathing rates.

This makes next no sense. I just saved her life, so I humor them for now.
“No problem.”

“What is your full name?” he continues. A list of his questions appears to his right, in mid-air.

Really, don’t they already know this stuff?
“Conor Abby.”

“Sorry, we forgot to say our names. I’m Agent Michaels and this is Agent Davidson. Don’t mind him.” Name tags and badges appear floating above their left shoulders. Michaels nods to his partner. “He’s always on the phone." Davidson stands solemnity with his eyes closed. "Please detail the series of events that led to you calling 911, this evening.”

This seems like protocol. The phone call makes me a little suspicious there is something more.
“I was just working late. I finished putting away some supplies in the warehouse. Dr. Mekova asked me to get her some files from the archives. I did just that. I came into the office space to get my pad and headed home. I found Dr. Mekova bleeding and unconscious. I subsequently called 911.”

“Was anyone else in the office, except you two?” Agent Michaels asks.

They must have the footage by now. They are fishing.
“I’m not sure. The warehouse is across the hall. Even if someone was here, I wouldn’t have known about it. I didn’t see anyone else. You’ll have to check the security logs to be sure, though.”
Why doesn’t Agent Davidson just get off the phone? Isn’t Dr. Mekova important enough for his full attention?

“When did you last speak with Dr. Mekova?” Michaels questions me.

“Just at 7:30 p.m. she called me about a data retrieval.”
I need to bug out, gracefully.

“Can I check your call history?” Michaels holds out his hand.

Might as well.
“Here it is.” I swipe my hand past his. This transfers data between people with full documentation.

“Yes, I see.”

A list of phone calls from me and my tech appears to his left. I twitch at sudden movement from Davidson. He aims his weapon at me, a ring of light around his wrist. What is going on?

“Freeze! Put your hands above your head! Easy! Now, move towards the wall,” Agent Davidson commands.

I execute his commands and stare back at them. Why are they doing this? They force my hands forward, down, and together. Michaels rolls a metal bar off his fingers onto my wrists, where it dimples down the middle and surrounds my wrists, leaving a gap I can't get my hands out of. I'm handcuffed and off to jail. What?

“You are charged with the attempted murder of Dr. Irena Mekova. Anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney, if you can’t afford an attorney, one will be provided to you. Do you have any questions on these rights?” Davidson says with authority.

“Do you have any questions?” the other Agent says.

“No.”

Mon 10/5/17 3:51 a.m.

W
alking in through the industrial-designed door, passing over the id scanning arch, reaching up to my forehead for a quick itch when something forgotten returns. Security wants me in for a new badge and posterity pic, some mundane ritualistic occurrence right over there at the guard's station. On my way, a few sips halve my remaining third cup of lukewarm coffee. Norm as the badge says, parses the screen before him for my id scan, relevant data, and why I should stand before him. The mute Norm points to a lighted X just beyond the faux stone securities desk. A blinding flash of light averts my gaze with the classic id pic's grimace.

Someone trapezes back and forth over the security scanner, each time flashing bright red sans alarm, until the gate arch engages green, the pacer crosses over, and approaches the stone faced counter alongside me. A hand on scapula tells me this person — whoever he is — knows me, but I haven't seen his visage yet. I turn to Brian Whalen, the glassless math geek, college roommate, the always confidence of someone born with good looks, cleft chin, meaty eyebrows, the remembered mane trimmed to something corporate worthy, a bow tie with the black suit on white, a briefcase, and a bear hugger (familial trait). There it is. My face blushes with the blood rush from a breath dislodging bear hug.

I wait over, by a couple of sunk-in chairs festooned over the lobby, while Brian sorts his badge issues, drinking the dredges of the bitter waker-upper, and plotting the incidence vector for a cup tossed into the open garbage, toss, and yes. Next, dispossess myself of this grey messenger bag and wait for the approaching Brian. He settles within the low-slung chair opposite, assuming a similar crouched position, rid his black combination briefcase onto the equally low table. Then the reason for the wait.

"Brian, last I heard, you were in academia. What happened?"

"Well C, it just wasn't working out. Everything just stagnated after the first year or so. There just wasn't that much there for me anymore."

That still deviates form who Brian is, the existential one, and the perpetual idealist magniloquent scholar. There a memory comes across of Brian's, always with me as the subject. He's probably getting something from me, regrets and maybe rationalizations. The same things I quest to know. His college girlfriend, now wife of one child, laid out on a breezy fall day, in a yellow blue flowered dress under a cream waistcoat, marred with a line of blood matching a mid-thigh laceration, head tilled back almost over possibility, and sharply at that, bent along one spot, eyes staring to me situated at her back, crying, moving mouth devoid of all sound, and her hand in mine. Her hand, chilled to the bone and sweaty, throbs in my hand with life-giving pulse. A slow inexorable deterioration follows, circumvented, really forestalled by squeezing onto her clammy hand. Each time again results in a desperate journey to rescure the febrile beat to life, always there, but generally assumed. The fear, guilt, debility, panic, and fear of losing her push everything else away. The spectrum from blue through red flashes across my face, cold light, lacking any warmth. And I'm back with Brian.

He just stares across at me in disbelief from what he received.

"Brain, how's everything else, otherwise?"

"Everyone is great. Lizzie, our three-year old defines overzealous in terms of practical anything. Meagan enjoys the city."

"Well, Brian I'm nowhere near as put together. About the only thing set is work, at this here quant."

"C, it'll be a big change from non-Euclidean topography in relation to EM, G, and QFD."

"Later, Brian"

"Later."

Brian departs, leaving behind his briefcase. I burden the messenger bag over one shoulder, the rumored man purser being me, and add his mini-legal-sized-suitcase. "Brian!" He just waltzes across the lobby at speed, stops, and searches for who called his name, while I eat away at my ETA. He locates me at a mere 3 feet away, where I stop, lower the brief case (sic) the remaining 6 inches to the floor, and slide it across with the outside edge of my left shoe's sole.

Brian shakes my hand. "Looking forward to work under the same corporate overlords, C."

"If we're not careful, we could become one of them."

Brian looks surprised. He retrieves a red knife handle from his pocket, switches out the blade and brings it over our hands, then he seizes. His knife arm flings out, launching the knife. Amidst violent contractions that send each muscle stiff and jumpy, his knees buckle and pull me forward with him. His hand pops off with a red impression. I just grab his briefcase, tuck it under an arm, and grab his abandoned knife, all after scanning the empty lobby.

I skedaddle out into the dwindling sidewalk. People walk all around while I head north beside the empty street — all in pastels, green, yellow, red, blue, violet, and orange. The people ferrying umbrellas dominate with a few unprepared and drenched into black stained coal miners — clothes and all. The rain falls down in little black rivulets suspended from the heavens, black rain today. The pastels remain mostly unblemished, except near the street and sidewalk, where footsteps and vehicles would splash up. I just continue soaking up the rare drop or two. All my fellow walkers weep tremendously, like spigots turned on within each eye, releasing not a steady drip, but a laminar flow exuding hence from the entire lower eyelid just brimming over. This viscous outpouring stains a triangular swath following the contours of body and cloth.

Around the corner and the next block up, a dirty yellow cab picks me up for a trip home.

(—)

I disembark at a glass fronted lobby of immense double-width doors. Inside the vestibule, meter high copper planters sustain floating lilies and the like, surrounding every wall excluding the elevators framed with stainless steel panels and the other set of doors opposite. I call the elevator with the electronic ping, wait for my ride, enter, and leave on six. A walk to the end of the hallway — past the doors leads me to my apartment. I deposit my keys, bag, and rain dappled coat by the door, liberating the knife and briefcase.

I scan my apartment for anything out of place, not that I'm expecting it. My set of four chairs and a couch (all royal blue) form the usual half-pentaform facing an ordinary sidebar. Only a push down on the top shows it to be a raising tv stand, hiding the complexities of components below sight.

A narrow interstice leads to an inch or 2 thick slab of frosted glass cantilevered on a tied up bundle of steel pipes stood on end. The black grease stained metal dining chairs serve host to black covered cushions. The black-trimmed straw-printed-and-colored rug underlay this eating ensemble.

On back, the beech cabinets contrast the piecemeal, random dark and light pattern of knotted and clean bamboo. A dark marble of almost black — veined in yellow and purple covers these said cabinets. I probably neglected the beech trim framing man-sized mullions on the three glass walls, dividing the apartment in two at the top of the doors' height and segmented at 3 meter increments all around. The culinary grade appliances dwarf the standard kitchen fare with a twelve-burner, fold down broiler, pot-filling faucet, double-wide fridge with a sliver of a freezer, small dishwasher of course, and garbage chutes scattered around. The electrochromic windows are actually one contiguous pane bent at sharp 90 degrees on the edges and bends.

On the left, the solid bedroom doors hinge open from the remaining wall of trimmed glass. I ferry the briefcase onto the puce sheeted bed on a Japanese wide-edged bed elevation mechanism which requires kneeing into and rolling out of. I turn to the windows for the stair-stepped buildings down to the river, a quarter-mile away for some clue to the combination. A pain just then torments my left belly of such severity — I brace myself against the dresser. My thoughts dwell on what Meagan will never do again. Climb a flight of stairs under her own power. Feel her husband's hand in hers. Heft up her daughter now and hug her in the future. Never being alone for even a moment further in her life, constantly forced company upon. My crying might be from the tremendous pain or tremendous sadness or inability except now to feel. The tears dry out and the password is one-three-seven-one-three-seven. Our shared dorm room number times two as if he expected all these happenings.