S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (23 page)

Jessie turned to him, frowning. He shrugged.

The nurse gave the three of them the once-over. She looked ready to argue, then apparently decided it wasn't worth the trouble. “Kids,” she huffed. “Fine, whatever.”

She pulled a V
ISITOR
badge from a basket on her desk and handed it to Jessie before scanning her Link. “Pin this to your shirt. Mister Casey is in room eleven. But you two,” she said, leveling her eyes and her finger at Kelly and Eric, “you'll have to wait here. That is, unless you're
all
engaged to Mister Casey. No? Then have a seat over there. And keep quiet.”

Jessie gave Eric a warning glance, then went in. The nurse muttered to herself about children being “too young to get married.”

Jessie knew to expect Reggie's parents in the room, though she didn't know what she'd say to them. In a way, she felt responsible for what had happened. It hadn't been she who had provided the gear, and it certainly hadn't been her sabotage, yet she was just as guilty because she'd refused to listen to him when he told her something was wrong with it.

Another thought came to her as she made her way slowly down the hall: If Kelly's plan was to get rid of the Gameland survivors, then Eric was also in danger. But why would Kelly do it?

Witnesses.

She pushed the thought away and entered the room.

Reggie's parents were standing by the side of the bed, their heads bowed and their arms around each other's waist. They looked up when Jessie walked in, but they didn't seem surprised to see her. In fact, they didn't even seem to recognize her.

“I'm so sorry,” she whispered, and she crossed to the other side of the bed.

The anger pouring off of them was palpable, but Jessie didn't get the feeling it was focused at anyone in particular. It was more like a smell that hung around them, leaking from their pores, as if they'd been breathing it in for years and years and it had become a part of them.

The sense of giving up reminded Jessie of Ashley's grandmother, of the hopelessness she'd carried around with her those final days of her life, right before she was conscripted.

A nurse came in and whispered something to the Caseys. Jessie watched discretely as she tapped on the screen of a tablet and showed it to them. They nodded, then turned and followed her out, leaving Jessie alone with Reggie.

The head of the bed was raised, and a pillow was tucked under his head. An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. An intravenous line snaked from a bag of clear fluid and disappeared beneath a bandage in the crook of his arm.

Jessie moved closer to the head of the bed and looked down at his face. A whole range of feelings roiled inside of her: fear, sorrow, guilt, worry, pain. A sense of blame so strong that she felt crushed by it. Her knees weakened and she trembled. She wished this nightmare would just end.

His skin was surprisingly warm to the touch. She didn't know why she'd expected it not to be.

“I'll fix this,” she promised. “Kelly will fix this.”

The smell of medicine and antiseptic clung to Reggie. A bag dangled by Jessie's ankles, partially filled with golden liquid. Memories stirred inside of her, images she'd much rather have forgotten forever: the makeshift hospital room inside the old terminal at LaGuardia, her pulling out her own urinary catheter.

She shuddered at the visceral memory, at the rancid taste of the rubber catheter on her tongue as she bit through it to deflate the balloon anchoring it inside of her body. The desperate terror she'd felt. The need to try and escape.

The movie slipped forward: flashes of the fight with Nurse Mabel, bashing her head into the floor. The blood. So much blood everywhere.

The woman's broken body lifting itself from the floor.

“Reggie,” Jessie moaned.

There was a plastic chair at the head of the bed, and she sat down in it. The cushion wheezed asthmatically. Reggie slowly inhaled and exhaled. The shallow depth and slow rhythm felt almost suffocating to her. What dark visions was he having now? Where was his mind? Was it trapped inside the Player?

She took his hand in her own and rested her head on his knuckles. She closed her eyes and tried to empty both her mind and her heart of all those distracting things so she could focus only on him. But the nightmare images would not leave her alone.

After a few minutes, she stood up and walked out into the hallway. Only now did she become aware of how dimly lit the ward was. And quiet. Too quiet. The only sounds were the chorus of beeps and farts, soft footsteps, voices. The place felt like a wake. She passed a room where the television was on and she heard voices, the sudden loud bray of canned laughter. At least it wasn't on the Entertainment Stream showing reruns of
Survivalist
.

She could see her brother sitting alone under the bright lights of the reception area down the hall past the nursing station. He was sipping from a cup of coffee, probably from the vending machine she'd noticed in the elevator lobby on their way in. His eyes were cast down as he checked his Link. The remaining chairs were empty.

As she drew closer, a hallway opened up to her left and she heard the sharp, raspy sounds of a whispered argument. In the darkened window of an empty room, she could see Kelly's reflection, his back toward her. The other person was out of sight. Kelly kept pushing himself away from the wall he was leaning on. He'd gesture agitatedly with his hands as he spoke, then lean back while the other person replied. The whispers rose and fell, sounding like old, dead leaves tossed against the curb by the autumn winds.

Jessie hugged the wall. She approached the corner slowly, fully aware that the nurses in the station up ahead would see her if they stepped out. They'd wonder why she was acting so suspiciously. Thankfully, nobody did.

Kelly was speaking: “ . . . told me she couldn't! Well, she did!”

“Shh! Keep your voice down.” A female speaker, one Jessie didn't recognize. She sounded angry, too. Jessie only caught a few words: “ . . . unlock . . . destroy . . . .”

She crouched down and leaned close to the corner, edging her way forward. A Link pinged in the nurse's station and her heart jumped; she could hear the low murmur of someone talking, but no one entered the hallway.

The woman: “ . . . everything, honey.”

Honey?

Kelly: “I said no more secrets!”

Secrets? Is Kelly having an affair?

Kelly: “I have to tell her the truth! She deser—”

Woman: “The truth? And what, sweetie, do you think is the truth exactly?”

Silence.

Jessie frowned reflexively. She didn't like the way this woman was talking to Kelly. She didn't like her calling him sweetie or honey. But even more, she didn't like the condescending tone of her voice.

Woman: “Look, I know you're scared. You should be. If this gets out, then we could lose everything, and—”

Kelly: “I told you no more. I want to end this. Look at me. I'm a hypocrite. You made me this way!”

Woman: “Shh! Listen, honey—”

Kelly: “Stop calling me that!”

A soft cough. Rustling of fabric. The sound of shuffling feet.

Woman: “I need you to talk to her. Find out exactly what happened today. Can you do that?”

What the hell is going on?

Kelly: “No. I'm going to tell her everything.”

Woman: “Kelly, wait.”

Kelly: “No, I said I'm done! That's it!”

Woman: “Think about what you're doing!”

Jessie sucked in her breath and pressed herself tight against the wall just as Kelly emerged from the hallway. He rounded the corner going the other way and headed toward the waiting area. He didn't look behind him, didn't see Jessie. The woman was leaving, too, but her footsteps receded down the hall in the opposite direction.

Jessie slipped around the corner and spotted her as she disappeared into a stairwell at the far end of the corridor. As quietly as she could, Jessie hurried after the woman and caught the door before it latched shut.

The woman went down to the third floor and exited. Jessie tiptoed down the stairs, hitting the landing as the fire door slammed shut with a bang below her. The echo ricocheted off the walls. She waited a moment before pulling it open and sticking her head out. The woman was only a few yards away, using a passkey to enter another room. Jessie quickly ducked back.

Kelly's involved with someone who works here?

She leaned her head against the cool concrete wall and closed her eyes.

Could this day get any worse?

When she had asked him who he was speaking to the other day after school, he told her it was the hospital. Jessie had sensed the lie; it had bothered her until that evening. Until she'd pinged that number on his Link. But now she knew that the truth of his explanation had disguised a lie.

She just never thought it would be another woman.

One by one, she ticked through her list of options. There didn't seem to be very many. And none of them was very appealing at all.

‡ ‡ ‡

The sign on the door read: A
NNE
W
HITE
, M.D.

Jessie knocked.

“Yes?” came the reply.

Jessie took a deep breath and released it. She dropped her hand slowly to her side and forced her knuckles to uncurl. She tried to stay calm, reminding herself that she was just here to talk.

The pounding of her heart echoed the sound of her knocks.

What are you doing? What do you hope to accomplish by confronting this woman?

I need—

What? Closure? Revenge? What was she doing wasting her time here?

An explanation. Why is Kelly doing this to me? Does the file on my Link have something to do with it?

And who the hell is this bitch?

“Hello?” Doctor White called. “Is someone there?”

“It's Jessica Daniels,” she croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again: “I think you know why I'm here.”

Nothing but silence for several seconds. Then a chair squeaked. The door beeped, and the latch clicked open. “Come in.”

Jessie's first thought upon pushing the door open and looking in was:
She's so old
.

Doctor White appeared to be in her mid-forties. Her once-blond hair was now mostly gray and it had started to thin out on top. Jessie could see the paleness of her scalp where she parted it. Deep lines on her face converged at the corners of her mouth and eyes— laugh lines, except there was something about her, an air of sadness which suggested that she didn't laugh very much. Her eyes were shiny green, sparkling. Her lips had been painted a modest dark red.

Jessie's second thought was:
Old, but still pretty.

There was an air of dignity about her which Jessie immediately resented.

The woman shifted slightly in her seat, then stood up. Her gaze swept past her to the door, which Jessie had left open. After Gameland, she didn't like being in tight places with strangers and no easy exit.

“Would you like some tea? Coffee?” She gestured at one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

Jessie shook her head, though she very nearly sat down.

The encounter wasn't going as she'd expected. She'd come in here as the woman's challenger, to accuse her of having an affair with her husband. (In some faraway recess of her mind, she heard herself thinking this and almost laughed at the absurdity, the frivolousness of such a thing in light of the seriousness of everything else going on.) And this woman was supposed to be shocked and embarrassed at having been found out. She should be panicking, defensive. Instead, she just seemed resigned, as if she'd been preparing for this encounter for a long time.

Maybe she has.

Doctor White stepped away from her chair and skimmed the corner of the desk. She moved surprisingly fast, while not appearing to be in any hurry. As she brushed past Jessie, the displaced air slipped its cold fingers over the back of her neck. With it came a trace of perfume, overwhelmed by the sharp tang of antiseptic. She heard the door handle rattle and a bubble of panic rose inside of her.

She's running!

But Doctor White was still there, staring as Jessie turned. She quickly averted her gaze and returned to her chair. The soft shush of her shoes on the carpet and the quiet whisper of her lab coat swishing were the only sounds she made.

“I hope you don't mind,” she said, clearing her throat. “It's best if we have this conversation in private.”

Jessie watched her, resisting the urge to put her hand up to the back of her own neck, to hide the bandage that she remembered wasn't there on the exposed skin that hadn't been violated by a scalpel earlier that day. The room suddenly felt too small.

“Kelly warned me that you knew. How much did he tell you?”

“He told me nothing!”

“Then how did you figure it out?”

Jessie didn't answer.

“He begged me for permission to tell you sooner.” White shook her head. “I tried to impress upon him that sharing this knowledge with anyone could be disastrous. Especially to you. But I'm afraid my attempts to impress upon him the gravity of this matter fell mostly on deaf ears. I couldn't give him the openness he wanted, so I had to limit what he knew. He doesn't realize how much is at stake.”

“You're the one who doesn't know how much is at stake!”

“I do.” It wasn't a challenge. It was simply a statement of fact.

Jessie coughed, as if that might clear the confusion muddling her mind. “How long have you . . . ,” she began, but couldn't finish. Her jaw locked and refused to open.

The woman's eyes flicked over Jessie's face, assessing her, gleaning all she could before speaking. “Please, won't you sit down?”

“I'd rather not.”

Doctor White shrugged, spread her hands on her desk, palms up, and raised her eyebrows, as if to ask, “What next?”