What's Left of Me (12 page)

Addie said.

What were our parents doing now? We’d flown west, so it was later in the day back in Lupside. They’d be up by now, probably. Had they even slept last night? Or had they stayed up the way they used to sometimes before our childhood appointments, emerging from their rooms the next morning looking like ghosts?

What had they told Lyle?

Addie said.

I started to speak, but she interrupted me, words bursting from her like bubbles—fragile, transparent.

It was a moment before I could reply.

The wall between us was crumbling down, down, down. Her emotions washed over me, a sea of worry and fear and . . . guilt.

I said.

Addie sighed. The last fragments of her wall swirled away in eddies of some emotion I could not name.

she said.

I said. What else could I say?

“Ah, there he is,” the flight attendant said, interrupting our conversation. Relief seeped into her voice, tucked itself into the corners of her smile.

Mr. Conivent parted the crowd with his brisk steps and stiff shoulders. Neither Devon nor Ryan was in sight.

“Thank you,” he said to the flight attendant, then turned to us. “You’re ready?” Addie nodded. “Wonderful. Let’s go, then.”

Addie slung the duffel bag over our shoulder and followed him out of the food court, walking in the shadow of his fine leather shoes.

Addie said.

Fourteen

A
driver met us at the curb outside the airport, opening the door to a sleek black car much like the one Mr. Conivent had used in Lupside. Addie climbed into the backseat, holding our duffel bag tight against our chest. Other than a quick, murmured sentence or two, Mr. Conivent and the driver didn’t speak to each other, and neither said a word to us.

We stared out the window as the foreign landscape flashed past. At first it was just highways, broader and busier than the ones at home. A city shone in the distance—a proper city, with skyscrapers gleaming silver and gold in the morning sunlight. But eventually, we left the city and the highway behind. By the time we reached the clinic, we hadn’t seen another building in ages. The land here was untamed, and the sun had baked the life from all the plants, leaving the trees stunted and the grass barely green.

In contrast, Nornand Clinic of Psychiatric Health loomed over a wreath of shrubbery and trimmed green lawns, a silver-and-white oasis in the desert. Three stories tall, the building was full of strange angles and enormous panes of glass, all reflecting the light. Addie and I stared as our car pulled into a parking space up front. Other than two men doing some sort of maintenance work on the roof, the building looked deserted.

The air here was dry, no trace of the humidity that had plagued us back home. But it was just as hot, and Addie squinted as we got out of the car.

All traces of the sweltering summer day disappeared as soon as we entered Nornand’s lobby. Here, the air was cool enough to make us shiver. Mr. Conivent headed for the front desk, and Addie glanced at the security guard standing nearby before following after him.

The receptionist checked Mr. Conivent’s ID, then nodded and motioned for us to continue to the elevators. I wanted to ask Addie to check the coin in our pocket, but didn’t dare. There were too many eyes here, too many windows, too many shiny, mirrored surfaces reflecting our every move.

Flat green and yellow flowers carpeted the elevator. There was a mirror in here, too; instead of one man and one girl, there were double of each. But the mirror helped. It made the already good-sized elevator seem even more spacious. Our heartbeat quickened anyway.

Mr. Conivent pressed the button for the third floor, and our stomach dropped as the elevator lurched up. As kids, we’d jumped whenever the elevator at the shopping mall started or stopped, feeling the split second of weightlessness and its parallel moment of double gravity. It had distracted us from the fact that we were stuck in a small metal box.

A bell dinged. The elevator slowed to a stop. I didn’t whisper to Addie,
Hey, let’s jump.
Instead, we stood very still and very straight until the great silver doors slid open and Mr. Conivent stepped out.

The long, white corridor stretched to infinity on both ends, lit by row upon row of fluorescent lights. A faint scent of disinfectant clung to every surface like death to gravestones.

A nurse in a gray-striped dress bustled toward us. “Speak of the devil,” she said, smiling, and waved forward a delivery boy standing behind her. “I was afraid I’d have to make him wait.”

The delivery boy couldn’t have been more than two or three years older than we were, with an impressive but lanky height. He carried a small brown package in one hand and held out a clipboard for Mr. Conivent with the other. He also kept staring at us. Just quick looks at first, then more brazenly when Mr. Conivent bent down to sign the papers on the clipboard.

“Perhaps next time, I could just ask Dr. Wendle to sign,” the nurse said. “Or even Dr. Lyanne—”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Mr. Conivent said.

The nurse nodded, but we saw that only in the periphery of our vision. Addie was too busy staring back at the delivery boy. His eyes were a cold, clear blue, like a doll’s eyes.

I said.

Addie said.

But she was looking away even as she spoke. She’d spent too many years fighting to avoid attention. Old habits are hard to break.

“Oh, hello,” the nurse said, as if noticing us for the first time. She was pale and thin. The corners of her mouth crinkled with a smile. “How are you?”

“Good,” Addie said.

Mr. Conivent had taken his package from the delivery boy and was already turning away. “Put her in a room for tonight, please, but bring her to Dr. Wendle first.”

“Certainly,” the nurse said. “Come on, dear. What’s your name?”

“Addie,” Addie said.

“Well, come along, Addie.” She moved down the hall in the opposite direction, away from Mr. Conivent.

Addie followed her, our bag thumping against our thigh with each step, a shock of red in the midst of Nornand’s silver and white. What would the delivery boy tell his friends, I wondered, about the pale-faced girl in the rumpled school uniform?

What would he say about us, locked in here, when he’d long since gone home?

We walked and walked and walked through the long halls. Nornand wasn’t as busy, it seemed, as the hospitals we’d visited as a kid. There were a few nurses chatting in doorways, and once we saw a man in a white doctor’s coat swish past, but that was it. No people in plain clothes waiting anxiously outside examination rooms, no mothers or fathers or adults of any kind other than the nurses and the doctor. No patients. Except for us. Once, Addie dared a peek at the chip in our pocket, but it was cold and dead.

Finally, the nurse stopped in front of a door labeled
347
in small black letters.

“Dr. Wendle?” she said, knocking.

There was a shuffling sound before a voice called back. “Yes? Come in.”

She opened the door and hustled us inside. “This is Addie, Dr. Wendle. Mr. Conivent just brought her in.”

Dr. Wendle was a short, sturdy man with a dark-brown comb-over that Addie might have snorted at any other day. He squinted at us through thick-framed glasses before jumping up from his desk. His lab coat flapped behind him.

“Oh, yes, yes,” he said, shaking our hand. His eyes flitted over us: our face, our hands, our legs—like we were some new archaeological find. “Mr. Conivent told me to expect you.”

I wished someone would tell
us
what to expect.

The nurse tried to take our bag, and when Addie resisted, smiled indulgently. “I’ll put it in your room for you, dear. It’ll be safe. Don’t worry.”

She gave one last hard tug and the bag slipped from our hands. We teetered, off balance. Without the bag, I felt small and exposed.

“Come,” Dr. Wendle said as the nurse left. “Pull up a chair.”

We looked around and saw nothing but a tall metal stool that squealed as Addie dragged it over. Dr. Wendle settled into his own seat, smiling. The tall-backed chair dwarfed him. “I wanted to ask you a few things before we began our testing.” He adjusted his glasses and leaned forward. No preamble. No
How was your flight? You must be tired. Where are you from?
Just an eagerness in his eyes that made me feel like the moth the second before the pin goes in. “First, how have you been dealing with Eva?”

Addie jerked backward. “What?”

“Eva,” he repeated, his smile dimming a little. He tapped one of the dozen sheets of paper sprawled across his desk. “It says here you had a lot of trouble settling—didn’t until after your twelfth birthday, am I correct?”

Addie didn’t nod, didn’t speak, didn’t even move, but the doctor seemed to take her silence as agreement.

“So, it’s been about three years. Honestly, I can’t believe things have gone on this long. But what can I say? People get lazy, officials get lax, or . . . well, anyway.” He steepled his hands. The smile grew again. “So, here’s your chance. Tell me. How have you been dealing with Eva?”

I should have been ready for this. The scene with Mr. Conivent last night should have prepared me for anything. But my name on Dr. Wendle’s tongue still sent waves of nausea swirling through me.

“No need to be shy,” he said. “This is all strictly confidential.” His thick lips strained now, fighting to keep their curve beneath his mustache.

Our stomach lurched.

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Addie said. Our face was hot, our hands slick.

Dr. Wendle raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”

“No,” Addie said.

His mustache seemed to emphasize his frown. “You do realize, Addie, that once we test you, we’re going to know the truth. So there’s no point in lying now.”

“I’m not lying.” Somehow, Addie kept our voice steady. “I think there’s been a mistake.”

We sat in silence for a long while, our eyes intent on our lap, the doctor just as quiet as we were. Finally, he sighed and stood, as sullen as a boy promised games and given coal. “All right, then; if you insist.” He motioned for us to follow him out of the office. “I’m going to run a test or two,” he said without looking at us. “A brain scan, a cog-phy . . .”

Addie hurried after him through the corridors, struggling to keep up with his breakneck pace. We ended up in a laboratory, where Dr. Wendle started fiddling with a large, rectangular machine, squinting at the attached screen. It was the only thing in the room. Addie stood by the door, as far from the yellow-gray contraption and Dr. Wendle as she could be.

Finally, he turned and said, “Come on. Don’t be nervous.”

Our shoes hardly made a sound against the gleaming white tiles. Our hand was in our pocket, Ryan’s coin pressed against our palm.

“Stand there and don’t touch anything,” Dr. Wendle said. “I just need a second to set things up.”

The machine was longer than he was tall and stood almost five feet high. One of the narrow ends was open, revealing a hollow interior. Addie fidgeted beside it. She didn’t touch anything. Dr. Wendle seemed to take much, much longer than a second. An hour, at least. How else could we explain the hot, acid sickness burning through our stomach? The buzzing in our ears?

A low whirring started. Dr. Wendle pressed a few buttons, studied the jumble of information on the screen, and then finally looked up.

“All right. It’s just about done. I—you haven’t changed.” He blinked as if he’d expected us to magically know to do this, then scurried to the back of the room. “You can’t wear that while you’re being scanned.” He dug through a drawer and pulled out a long, white hospital gown. “Here, put this on.”

Addie took a step back. “What’s it for?”

“For being scanned,” he said, and pushed us to an adjacent room. The far corner was hidden by a thin blue curtain. “Now change. Quickly, please.”

Bronze rings scraped against a metal rod, zipping us up into the dim, phone-booth-sized compartment. For a moment, we didn’t dare move.

I said.

Addie obeyed. It helped a little, but we still undressed as quickly as we could. The hospital gown laced up in the back. We had to bend our arms at awkward angles to reach the strings.

“Almost done?” Dr. Wendle called.

Addie pulled aside the curtain, then bent to fold our clothes and set them on a metal stool nearby.

“Good,” Dr. Wendle said, pressing a button on the machine. “Just leave your clothes there. You’ll be changing back in a few minutes.”

The top of the yellow-gray machine eased open with a hum.

Addie froze halfway across the room.

“What is it?” Dr. Wendle said.

“Tell me—” She swallowed. “Tell me what’s going to happen.”

He gave us a strange look. “Nothing, really. You’re going to just lie down here”—he pointed to the machine—“and—”

“But the top,” Addie said. “The top will be open?”

“Well . . .” he said. “It’ll only be for a minute.”

She was already shaking our head and backing away. “No. No, sorry. I can’t.”

His hand shot out faster than we’d thought possible, thick fingers locking around our wrist. Our muscles hardened to stone.

“What—what’s it for?” Addie said, fighting for time. “The scan.” Our chest was so tight she could barely speak. “What’re you looking for in the scans?”

Dr. Wendle’s frown deepened. But he didn’t look angry. If anything, he looked slightly confused. “Brain activity, Addie, of course. You must have done something similar as a child. Less advanced technology, most likely, but the same idea.” He gestured at the yellow-gray machine. “This will let me know how bad the problem is.” His explanation continued, veering into terminology we didn’t understand and studies we’d never heard of.

I said.

<
No.
No, I’m not getting in that thing, Eva. I can’t.>

Dr. Wendle had released our arm, and Addie wrapped it around our body. We could hardly register what he was saying. Fear made our heartbeat rabbit-fast, our throat dry. Fear polluted each breath, thickening them until it was impossible to swallow.

“In the end,” Dr. Wendle said, “the more we know, the better we’ll be able to fix you right up.”