River: A Novel (49 page)

 At the
front desk, the nurses were hustling around, filing and answering phones, when
we approached. I felt intense relief when one of them made eye contact with us.
All my fears of being an apparition vanished with her fleeting look.

 “May I help
you, dear?” a woman with a nametag stating
Mary
asked. She appeared
seasoned and good natured, but worn-out.

 “Can you
tell me if Daniel Thaskey is here?”

 Mary’s eyes
widened before scrunching together behind her glasses, but then she shook her
head a little, as if dismissing a thought. I looked down at my sodden toe shoes
with panic and prayed he wasn’t in the psych ward. Taking in our little group,
the nurse finally threw her hands up, and then splayed them out on top of the
desk, saying, “You
are
here to take him with you, I hope?” 

 A little
nutty sounding, it sounded as if she were asking us to take him back to the Mother
Ship. Depending on Dan’s condition upon arrival, this was an entirely plausible
assumption.

 “Um, yeah,”
I answered with a glance at Asher, who shrugged.

 “Oh, bless
your hearts,” Mary praised us as she looked upward, thanking the heavens before
swiveling her chair to a computer. I thought I heard her mutter,
“
Pain
in the buttinski
,”
but could’ve been mistaken.

 She merrily
directed us to a room a few floors up, in a different wing. Dan must have been
well known for the nurse at the information desk to have recognized his name,
but then again I wasn’t terribly surprised. Because he had been comparatively subdued
in River, I‘d almost forgotten what he was like, here. I inhaled a deep breath,
trying to calm myself down in the elevator while remembering the horrid sight
of Danny and Petra trapped in the ice. Petra and Nanette were next on my list
of people to find.

 “This is so…
odd,” whispered Asher. I wondered if he’d finally acknowledged that he’d been
brought back to life and was now stuck in a different dimension, with me as his
tour guide, of all people.

 “What’s
that?” I asked, pretty sure he would say
just
everything
.

 “Things are
so much the same, but completely different. And I feel the same, but… not.” He
sounded as though he was trying to figure out his metaphysical predicament right
then and there.

 “Yeah, I’m
familiar with the feeling.”   

 “It must
have been much worse for you, waking up in River.” I was glad we were basically
alone in the elevator, not only for this conversation, but for the look he was
giving me. Gwen had been so still and soundless that she seemed miles away from
us. “And then, what happened, what I did to you… when I could’ve helped you.” Asher
bowed his head down, anguished.

 “Now hold
on a minute,” I began to protest, though was disrupted by the doors opening to
the floor where Dan’s room was located. “We’ll talk about this later, but you
need to know that you didn’t do anything to me—nothing bad, anyway.” Frustrated,
I took his arm when we walked into the hall with Gwen following. Asher’s lips
were pressed tightly together, forming a straight line. He didn’t believe me. “Later,
I’ll prove to you how extremely…
well
I am.”

 I was about
to continue on how healed and completely fine I was, excluding the wretched survivor’s
guilt, when I saw the number for Dan’s room. It was a private luxury suite
,
of course
.
“There it is.”
 

 Walking
into the room was akin to walking through Dan’s place, pre-Travis. I could see
why the staff could be particularly annoyed; he’d taken over the joint. The
walls were covered in his trippy artwork, various musical instruments were strewn
about, and there was an area that resembled a make-shift bar. Even his little gong
and Zen garden had taken up residence in a corner, along with several comically
large glass bowls. Illegal incense perfumed the air. The only thing missing was
Danny.

..................

“Elodie,” Asher
whispered again, and I vaguely registered that he had been talking to me. He
was asking me what was going on. I also realized that I felt bad, because I had
no answer for him.

 As if in a
dream, I moved toward her. Lying there, hooked to beeping machines, eyes taped
shut. She was asleep… or maybe something else.

 
The scars
on my hand came into sharp focus when I reached out to the sleeping form. With
no forethought, I was suddenly at her bedside. Without consent, I moved the
sheet slightly to the side of her left knee, and all the air suddenly gushed
from my lungs. The pink scar I squinted at was lighter than the last time I’d
seen it, in exactly the same place, but from a different vantage point. Other noises
started to filter back into my ears when I zeroed in on the ventilator
puncturing her throat, which evenly pumped the oxygen I desperately needed just
then. The beeping monitors clashed like cymbals. Very conscious of it, I felt
my eyes blinking, trying to get the image to change as if it were a distorted
funhouse mirror: disturbing and very, very wrong.

 Someone was
beside me. His arm became heavy upon my shoulder, though I was unable to
look away from her face. Gravity
had reappeared, and I felt as if I were stuck in a tar-pit.

 “What is
this?” I whispered, uncertain if Asher had heard me until I felt his arm
tighten and pull me close. My body twisted awkwardly when my legs wouldn’t
budge. 

 We stood
there for a long time before I finally noticed something. Blinking rapidly, I
inched forward to study the fuzzy lines. I had to be positive. The heart
monitors. There were two.

 Before I could
breathe, there was a light crash behind us, followed by a muffled curse in
a familiar voice.

 Asher and I
turned simultaneously. Danny was gaping at me, standing in a pool of ice.