BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (2 page)

I couldn’t look away from his eyes. A spiderweb of black, swollen veins pulsed around them. Like leeches.

Something was very wrong.

“It’s not him,” I whispered, backing into Joe, overtaken by a deep sense of unease. “It’s not him. It’s a lookalike.”

“What’s that?” said Joe, nudging me forward.

Chills crawled up my skin. “Take me away, it’s not him,” I pleaded, now sobbing into Joe’s uniform, my voice too weak to hear. “It’s a lookalike.”

My father’s unfocused eyes travelled across my face like a blind man’s, not really seeing me . . . not a flicker. He didn’t recognize me.

The realization stilled my heart.

“Blaire-bear, is that you?” he said, and his voice did what the sight of him couldn’t. My anxiety melted away. I took in his withered body, bent over the desk, broken, and my heart lodged somewhere north of my esophagus.

“Daddy!” I ran forward to fling my arms around him.

With surprising strength, he clamped me in a bear hug, and I caught a whiff of him. Like ash. My fingers dug into his shirt, and I longed for him to brush back my hair, touch my face. Anything.

Instead, he sat me on his lap at arm’s length, as if scared to touch me, and his eyes explored my face for the first time.

“You’re gorgeous,” he whispered, a tear sliding down his cheek. “I couldn’t have imagined you more perfect.” His grip on my shoulders weakened, though, and I noticed he was trembling. “Listen to me, Blaire. Do not speak until I finish. I don’t have much time.”

“Where’d you go?” I whispered.

He held my gaze. “I do not have amnesia, though it will seem that I do,” he said. “It will seem that I am not as you remember, and I am sorry for that.” He lowered his palms from my shoulders and gripped my hands. “These police officers tell me I have been gone for eleven months,” he said. “This is not true
—
”

“Daddy, where’d you go?” I mumbled.

“Blaire, you have to listen to me,” he said. “I never
vanished . . .
you
vanished.”

“No, I’ve been right here, waiting for you.”

“I couldn’t find you, Blaire-bear. I couldn’t find you. You were four when it happened, when you disappeared.”

“You have to wake up now,” I said. “You went away, I stayed here.” Tears stung my eyes. My hands found the edge of the desk for support. Through my palms, the cold metal leached the life out of me. The wall to wall acoustic tiles, my soul. He couldn’t be crazy . . . he
couldn’t
.

“Blaire,” he whispered, struggling to hold his gaze steady, “you have to listen to me; you are the one thing that doesn’t belong.” He gestured around us. “None of this is real.”

No.
I fixed my gaze on his. I had to wake him up. “Daddy, it is real . . . you have to remember . . .
please
—
”

Before I could say more, though, his face paled, and he dropped me to the floor. His eyes darted to the one-way mirror, and he raised a shaky finger.

Joe stepped forward. “Mister Adams, I think we should get you to a hospital.”

My dad clutched his stomach and keeled over, his eyes wide. Then he vomited blood. His body spasmed, jerked, as his stomach worked to turn him inside out. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could only watch in horror, my insides cold and frozen.

The officers rushed to his side.

My dad retched again, and from somewhere, warm liquid spattered my face.

“Get an ambulance!” Joe said. “We need an ambulance.”

***

In the trauma wing of Scripps Memorial Hospital, doctors shouted orders behind a curtain, their Rockports squeaking on linoleum. I shivered out in the hall, face buried between my knees. The world circled like a carousel. I focused on the sounds of activity, and counted each bleep on the heart monitor.

“Intubate the airway,” one yelled.

“It’s no good, his lungs are filling too fast. We need to turn his body.”

My father gurgled, coughed. Red splattered the curtain.

“Give me suction.” Silence, followed by the sound of a tube slurping up liquid. “Got it. Positive pressure now.”

I had already lost him once.

If only he could be okay, I prayed. If only he could be okay, we would drive home together.

We would begin patching up the last eleven months. It could still go back to the way it was.

The ECG pulses spiked, then raced double-time. My father’s heart rate.

“He’s going into V-tach,” said a nurse.

“The pulse . . . check the pulse.”

“Nothing.”

“Defib paddles. Give them to me. Two hundred fifty joules.”

I whimpered.

“Clear
—
”

The jolt nearly made my own heart stop. The ECG went silent, then beeped intermittently.

“V-fib.”

“Another shock.”

“Clear
—
”

The second jolt made my eardrums pop.

The heart monitor flatlined, and the ER doctor cursed. “Start CPR,” she said. “Nurse, check the leads and turn up the gain on the ECG. We need IV epinephrine.”

The heart monitor never beeped again.

***

For a long time, nothing pried into my haze. Eventually, a doctor stepped out from behind the curtain, scrubs soaked in blood, her face grim.

“Blaire, I’m Doctor Elaine Johnson.” She helped me to my feet.

“Is he okay?” I said.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to resuscitate him,” she said. “We’ll be doing an autopsy, of course, but the medical examiner doesn’t get in until next Monday, and he’s pretty backed up right now. It might be a while before we have answers. With your permission, I’d like to run a quick MRI on the body before they take it down to the morgue. I think I know what killed him.”

***

The leather-bound scrapbook opened with a crinkle on my bedroom floor. Everything I had collected up until now on my father’s disappearance
—
the newspaper article published in
The San Diego Union-Tribune
, missing person ads, police reports. My tears hit the seams and spilled off into the carpet.

Dr. Johnson had assured me she would get back to me in the morning with the cause of death. Answers, when there had never been anything but questions.

Before he vanished, he had been sick. According to him, it had to do with his work. Asbestos poisoning . . . or radiation sickness. I remembered the same symptoms he had exhibited tonight, almost a year ago: coughing up blood, vomiting.

Now we could add amnesia and delirium to that list . . . and schizophrenia. He barely recognized me. I sniffled and flipped to a large picture I had taken of him, grinning, his eyes crinkled with laugh lines.

Daddy.

The photo sent a painful jolt through my body and left me throbbing. I winced, slammed the binder shut, and sprawled out on the floor in a fetal position. My chest rose and fell, terrifyingly hollow.

In the first few months, I had been convinced
—
no matter what anyone told me
—
that it was rare for someone to disappear like he had, right into thin air. Not unheard of, just rare.

In retrospect, my father’s case was typical. The police didn’t solve nearly as many crimes as they let on; they simply didn’t have the funds.
Most
cases were unsolved.

Ever since his disappearance, I ran constantly, daily, pushed my body to the breaking point to keep the hole inside plugged with endorphins.

I got by.

I did well in school, even. I was popular, I was getting over him. Just like he would have wanted.

But nothing could have prepared me for tonight . . . for losing him all over again. Scabs that had taken a year to heal had ripped off in a second.

Bluish gray dawn seeped through the blinds into my bedroom, the color of cold. I shivered, the chill from the night finally soaking through my clothes.

I should sleep.

Tomorrow, I would learn the truth. Dr. Johnson would have the results of his MRI, which would probably point to a work related illness. As for where he had been all this time, I now knew exactly where I could find that information.

His diary.

Chapter 2

I took school
off the next day for funeral preparations and went to the police station to pick up my dad’s diary.

“Still in evidence, kid. We’ll let you know when you can pick it up,” said Joe.

“I kind of need it now,” I said.

Joe hefted his feet onto his desk, kicking a stack of manila folders to the ground to make room for them, and fixed his beady eyes on me. “There something you forgot to mention last night about that diary, sweetheart?”

“My father’s dead, Joe. Those are probably the last words he ever wrote.”

“Well, you got to be patient. I got a couple techs on it now.”

“No, you don’t,” I sneered. “All you have to do is hold it up to a mirror. I showed you yesterday.”

“Blaire, your daddy didn’t write you a bedtime story, okay? It’s evidence. Besides, we’re not even sure it’s his handwriting.”

“Just out of curiosity,” I said, crossing the line for sure, “what
are
you sure of?”

Joe dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward. “Now you listen good, sweetheart. We got a backlogged forensic lab, there’s no evidence of wrongdoing, we don’t have a suspect, and we just don’t have the manpower right now . . . And I have too much damn paperwork.” He swept his arm across his desk, dumping another stack of papers to the floor.

“Joe, I’m not asking for your help. I’m just asking for the diary.”

“Sweetheart, I have other cases. I don’t have time to babysit you.”

“Stop calling me sweetheart.” I said. “That’s what you call your wife.”

“No, I call that one
woman
.” He leaned back again, and this time slowly drank me in from head to toe.

I felt my lip curl, and I flattened my skirt so it covered as much of my thighs as possible. After he was through ogling me, I wanted to squirm out of my own skin. Or take a shower. “You pig.”

“As in chauvinist pig or cop pig?” he said, clearly fond of both nicknames.

“Just give me back my dad’s diary.”

“No can do.”

I sighed in exasperation. The harder he resisted, the more convinced I became that my dad had written down everything.

For my eyes only.

Joe continued to scrutinize me across his desk. “You know something we don’t, Blaire?”

“You’re the cop, Joe. You’re the one who’s supposed to know something.”

“I could use you on my side, right now, Blaire.”

“You make that pretty unappealing.”

“You’ll have it back in two weeks. Tops.”

“At least let me look at it. I’ll Xerox it and give it back, I promise.”

“All kinds of paperwork I’d have to fill out for that.”

“Then start filling. That’s my father’s property, and as his sole heir, it belongs to me now.”

“You’re welcome to contact your lawyer,” he said, yawning. “I’ll be happy to have this discussion with him.”

***

Joe Paretti might have said no, but as I had learned again and again throughout my sixteen years,
no
was actually code for
try harder
.

Outside Joe’s office I moseyed up the hallway away from the station’s exit. I needed to find the rookie officer I’d seen last night. If I remembered correctly, Joe had asked him to scan the contents of the diary. I could at least get the PDF emailed to me, right?

Farther down the hall, I peeked inside an open office. Empty. I opened another one and got waved out by an angry detective on the phone.

No good. There were too many offices. Then again, patrol officers didn’t have offices, did they? Only detectives got the offices.

My suspicion was confirmed a moment later when I found the rookie inside a cubicle in the bullpen, filling out paperwork.

“Got any leads?” My voice startled him. I stepped into his cubicle, which barely fit both of us, and peered over his shoulder, my hair brushing his biceps.

When he saw me, he did a double take and straightened up. “What
—
nah, these are just Administrative Hearing Requests,” he said, rifling through the quarter inch pile of folded, coffee stained forms.

“Sounds really impressive,” I said.

He puffed out his chest. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

I set down my purse. “What are the hearings for?”

The rookie coughed and cleared his throat. “These would be for . . . ah, parking citations.”

Parking citations. While my dad’s kidnapper and killer walked loose. I scowled. “Do you guys have anything else on my dad?”

“Nothing new,” he said. “Last I heard, Paretti’s still looking into a former employer. Setting up a surveillance camera, I think.”

“Who?”

“A fellow by the name of Charles Donovan. Runs a high-tech interior design firm down in Morena. Labs, hospitals, that kind of thing.”

I nodded. My father’s work had been in interior design and construction. Joe had mentioned the guy before. I trailed my finger along the desk, noting the rookie’s keys lay an inch from my hand. Without really thinking, I pulled out my own keys and played with them. 

“So . . . remember that diary he had last night?” I said.

“Sure do,” he said.

“Can you email me a copy?”

“Well, I didn’t actually make a digital copy,” he said. “I just used our copy machine to reverse it.”

That was stupid. But of course it wouldn’t be that easy. I laid my keys on the officer’s desk, right next to his. “Did you happen to read it?”

“Glanced at a few pages, didn’t really make any sense to me.”

“What did it say?”

“It’s just over in evidence,” he said. “I could see if they’re done with it, if you want?”

Bingo. I cranked up my doe eyes. “Would you please?”

He was halfway out of his seat when he cursed under his breath. “Forgot. We need an evidence release form. I’d need to get the sergeant to sign off on that.”

“We could go ask him together?” I offered.

“No, no . . . I’ll go ask,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll go ask.” He squeezed by me and collided with a lump of a man in the hallway.

“I’ll save you the time. The answer’s
no,
” said Joe, thwarting my second attempt to get the diary. “I already told her she couldn’t.”

“Of course not, detective.” The rookie slipped back into his chair, red in the face. “I guess we can’t,” he muttered.

Joe’s angry gaze flicked to me. “Time for you to go, sweetheart,”

“Whatever.” I pretended to grab my own keys, but grabbed the officer’s instead. I tried to slip past Joe, but his meaty fingers closed around my arm.

Caught.

“I’ll walk you out,” he said. More like forced escort, but I wasn’t complaining. I allowed myself to be led to the door, exhilarated and nervous about what I’d just done. I had stolen a policeman’s keys.

This was getting out of hand.

“Hey, Blaire!”

The other officer. I froze, guilt reddening my face. I couldn’t pull it off. Even if I claimed I accidentally grabbed them, he would know I was lying
—

“You forgot your purse.”

I stared dumbly, hardly believing it. After I retrieved the purse, trembling, Joe jerked me back around and hussled me toward the exit.

“Next time you want to talk to an officer,” he growled, “call in ahead and make an appointment. With
me.
”

On our way out, I couldn’t help but notice the sign over one of the hallways leading away, marked
Evidence
.

Then Joe shoved me out the door and almost sent me sprawling. “Besides,” he said, “you’re supposed to be in school right now.”

I was about to retort something awful, but my phone vibrated in my pocket.

It was Dr. Johnson calling.

***

A few minutes later I arrived at the hospital, no diary, still prickling from my encounter with Paretti.

“Is there someone else I can talk to?” said Dr. Johnson, seeing I was alone. “Your mother, perhaps?”

“She died when I was little.”

“You poor thing. Do you have a legal guardian?”

I shook my head. “I’m an emancipated minor. I filed a petition with the state.”

“You’re a brave girl.”

“Well, I had a court appointed guardian for a while, but she was verbally abusive and had a drinking problem. By the time we sorted it out in court, I was already sixteen.”

“That’s frustrating,” she said.

“Yeah . . .” I nodded. “So you know why my dad died?”

“I do. I think you’d better come into my office.”

Her computer screen already showed the MRI scans, black and white cross sections of my dad’s ghostly body parts, each one dotted with brightly glowing spots.

“An MRI is kind of like an X-Ray,” she said, “except it shows us tissue, not bones.”

I stared at the monitor, mesmerized.

She tapped one of the slides with her pen. “These white areas indicate severe hemorrhaging in your father’s stomach tissue, and his lungs . . . we’re also seeing some intestinal perforation.” She clicked to another image. “And here we’re seeing brain contusion and intracranial hemorrhaging.”

“Hemorrhaging . . . what is that?”

“Essentially he died from internal bleeding. Whatever happened to him, I’m amazed he survived as long as he did. He was pretty chewed up inside.”

I choked on my next words, but managed to get them out. “What do you think happened to him?”

“This kind of widespread internal damage typically has one of two causes,” she said. “One is blunt trauma. A fall from two or three stories would do it . . . or a car crash.”  

“You think he fell?”

“It’s possible. However, with blunt trauma there should be external signs. Bruising, broken limbs, torn skin . . . none of which he had. All the damage was inside.”

“So . . . it wasn’t a fall?”

Dr. Johnson closed the MRIs, clicked out of the program, and faced me. “Blaire, was your father on any medication?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, “but he could have been on something work related.”

“That’s okay if you don’t know. Our blood analyzer is being serviced right now, so I’ve sent his blood over to the Institute. Not sure if it’ll go through, though; they’ve really been dragging out this quarantine exercise. Either way, I think it’s possible we’ll find anticoagulants in his system.”

“Is that why he was acting strange?” I said. “Because of drugs?”

“It’s very possible. I think your father’s death was the result of a combination of factors, medication plus some kind of bodily trauma.” The doctor paused. “There’s something else I wanted to tell you, Blaire. I doubt we could have saved him, but there is a reason our efforts to restart his heart failed yesterday.”

I glanced up, curious.

The doctor continued. “His heart’s on the right side of his body, not the left.”

“Huh?”

“He has what’s called Situs Inversus. It’s a congenital condition in which the major organs are found on the opposite side as normal. For example, his heart is on the right side instead of the left. It’s quite rare, about one in ten-thousand.”

“Is that why he died?”

She shook her head. “It’s just a curiosity. Like I said, all the major organs are reversed, so the relationship between them is unaffected, hence why inverted individuals are often left-handed, as your father was. But everything still works.”

Weird. “Wait
—
my father wasn’t left-handed.”

“No?” she said. “Forgive me. I just noticed the muscles in his left hand were slightly more developed than his right. Perhaps he did something at work that required an able left hand.”

“Yeah, because I’m left-handed,” I said. “I remember at dinners if we sat next to each other, our arms hit. We joked about it.”

The doctor placed her hand on my back and smiled.

“That left-handed thing . . . Situs
—
whatever it was
—
do I have that too?” I said.

“Only if your mother’s a carrier too. Very unlikely.”

“Doctor Johnson,” I began slowly, “why didn’t my dad recognize me? He said he hadn’t seen me since I was four . . . that
I
disappeared.”

The doctor smiled sadly. “In head trauma cases, it’s fairly common for people to only remember things from many years ago. Often, they’ll fill in the missing pieces with false memories. Just be grateful he still knew you.”

I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. Head trauma explained his behavior perfectly.

Unless, of course . . .

Before it was even fully formed, the question escaped my lips. “What if he had a twin?”

The doctor studied me, her eyes peering into mine for so long I started to fidget. “Blaire,” she said finally, “are you wondering whether this man is your father?”

“I know it’s stupid
—
”

She held up her hand to stop me. “It’s an honest question,” she said. “If your father did have an identical twin, I’m afraid that would be pretty difficult to sort out. However, it might be reassuring to rule out the alternatives. If you want to, we can run a DNA test.”

“I want to.”

***

“Still sure you want to do this?” said Dr. Johnson, stretching on a pair of latex gloves. She sliced open an envelope and emptied the contents of a DNA testing kit onto the counter. “It’s not always a happy discovery.”

“I need to know the truth, don’t I?”

Dr. Johnson didn’t answer. She peeled back the plastic from a thin, white toothbrush-like utensil. “Open wide.”

“What for?”

“We’re going to take a quick swab from inside your cheek.”

“Don’t you need to draw blood?” I asked, lowering my jaw to permit the tip of the utensil.

“Your DNA is actually inside every cell in your body,” her voice said close to my forehead. “We use the ones inside your mouth because we know they’re yours.” She scraped the inside of my cheek vigorously. “Unless you’ve been kissing a lot,” she added with a wink.

She withdrew the swab and bottled it in a tiny plastic container, and we repeated the whole process two more times.

“All done!” She dropped the three containers into a padded envelope and sealed that as well. “In three or four days, we’ll know whether he was your dad.”

It was too easy.

My dad always told me, if the question was too easy to ask, I wouldn’t like the answer. Only hard to ask questions got good answers.

“What will this show?” I asked.

“It’s a basic genealogy test. Essentially we’re comparing pieces of your genetic code with your father’s.”

“And if they don’t match?”

“Don’t worry. They will.”

“But just supposing,” I said. “What if they don’t?”

Dr. Johnson stripped off her gloves, her back to me, and tiny muscles tightened at the juncture between her neck and her jaw.

“There’s an explanation for everything, Blaire. Remember, a mystery is only a mystery until we figure out the answer . . . and we always figure out the answer.”

***

I left the hospital and trudged through the parking lot, my gaze sinking to the pavement. My father had died of internal bleeding.
Hemorrhaging
, as Dr. Johnson had called it.