Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2) (13 page)

“Nathan has admitting privileges at the hospital where he works,” I said slowly.

“Yes, and that hospital is in San Francisco, and everyone there knows him.” Dr. Cale shook her head for the second time in under a minute. A look of deep regret transfused her features. Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better. “We’d be arrested before we even managed to get you on the table.”

“So what, then? I can’t just stay here and try not to get upset about anything. The sleepwalkers are getting worse. That sort of makes staying calm impossible.”

“I’m going to need you to trust me.”

I stared at her. “That’s what I’ve been doing since I called you.”

“No, Sal. You’ve been playing at trust, but what I’m about to ask you to do… you need to be absolutely sure that you believe I have your best interests at heart. Otherwise, we can wait. See if the crisis passes. Those blood vessels should hold for a while longer.” Dr. Cale looked at me, regret fading to leave her face a featureless mask. “I can’t say for how long.”

“Then I guess I have to trust you,” I said, trying to sound more sincere than I felt. I didn’t know if I would ever really trust Dr. Cale, but I didn’t have any options left—not unless I wanted to die. Choosing to live meant choosing to trust her, whether I wanted to or not. “Let’s open the broken doors all the way.”

Dr. Cale nodded. “I’ll set things up,” she said, and turned her wheelchair and rolled away, leaving me alone and wondering what I had just agreed to let her do to me.

T
he plan was simple enough on paper. Fang and Daisy—another of Dr. Cale’s employees, a parasitologist by trade, before she had left SymboGen to work with Dr. Cale on the
D. symbogenesis
issue—both had admitting privileges at the nearby John Muir Medical Center, a vast, sprawling hospital complex where no one could be sure of knowing absolutely everyone else. They would sneak me into an unoccupied operating theater, program the machines that handled microsurgery to deal with the weakened blood vessels connecting to my brain, and keep watch while the surgical tools took care of the job. Fang was a licensed neurosurgeon, and both of them were blazingly loyal to Dr. Cale, for reasons I didn’t yet fully understand.

There were a lot of things that could go wrong with this plan, starting when we left the bowling alley and progressing from
there. What if someone at the hospital recognized me? What if someone at the hospital recognized
Nathan
? He’d given speeches on parasitology at hospitals all over Northern California, and he didn’t usually attend random brain surgeries.

Not that there was any chance of his staying behind at the bowling alley. Even if I’d been comfortable with the idea—which I wasn’t—that wasn’t something he was going to agree to. His discussion with his mother had lasted less than five minutes, escalating in volume until everyone in the lab could probably have heard them. Her part of the conversation had consisted of reasonable arguments and rational cost/benefit assessments. His had consisted almost entirely of variations on the word “no.” I had snuggled down in my narrow cot, listening to the soft thudding of the drums in my ears and smiling a little. It was nice that Dr. Cale didn’t get
everything
she wanted.

I was still in that cot a little over an hour later when the sheet was pulled aside, allowing Nathan into my tiny, semiprivate room. “How’s your head?” he asked.

“Not too bad,” I said. “Did your mom put sedatives in my IV drip? The drums haven’t been as loud since I’ve been here.”

He nodded. “She did. Don’t worry; I’ve looked over your chart, and they won’t interfere with the surgery. We’ll be able to get you put back together tonight, better than new, since this time you won’t have a hidden time bomb in your skull.”

I smiled slightly. “You’re freaking out, huh?”

“Just a little.” He raised his hand, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. I raised my eyebrows. He spread his fingers farther apart before giving up and spreading his hand wide. “Okay, a lot. It’s been a long night, you know? First we’re fugitives, and then you’re having your arm ripped open, and then you’re passing out again—and suddenly that’s a good thing, since without all the fainting, we might not have looked
at your MRIs closely enough to realize what was going on inside that head of yours before it was too late.”

“ ‘I like it when you lose consciousness’ is just what every girl likes to hear,” I said blandly.

“Hey.” Nathan walked across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Try ‘I like it when you survive’ on for size, okay? We’ve come too far for this to be what ends things. Mom’s people are good. You know Fang from SymboGen, and I know Daisy.”

I blinked. “You do?”

“I do.” He nodded. “She went to grad school with me, believe it or not. I had an enormous crush on her for about a year, before I met her boyfriend, who is basically what you would get if you gave a grizzly bear a shave and a Brooks Brothers suit. But he’s a very nice man, and they got married a few years ago. I sent them a toaster for their wedding. I don’t know why people always put toasters on their registries, but they do, and I just wanted to buy one for a change.” He sounded oddly wistful as he talked about the toaster, like it had somehow become the symbol of a simpler time. We had to survive the tapeworm uprising, because otherwise, who would he buy toasters for?

I was starting to be quietly convinced that the time of toasters was coming to an end. Nathan looked so sad that I didn’t want to come right out and say that, so I tried a less dangerous question: “Does he work here too?”

“Who, Daisy’s husband? No, he’s working overseas. He’s in telecommunications, I think, or maybe software engineering—something to do with computers.” Nathan shrugged. “Once you take the ‘bio’ out, I lose interest in technology pretty quickly. It’s my shameful little secret.”

“It’s not that secret.” I sat up a bit straighter on the cot. “Where are the dogs?”

“Adam has them. They both like him a lot. Beverly’s made
friends with half the staff, and Minnie’s been napping on every flat surface she could find. They’re going to be fine while we’re at the hospital.”

I nodded. “Good.” Carefully, I swung my legs around to point toward the floor. My feet dangled about a foot above the polished wood. “How are we getting me there?”

“Fang’s acquiring an ambulance.” Nathan said it with a completely straight face.

“Um, does ‘acquiring’ mean ‘stealing’?”

“I didn’t ask. I was afraid Mom would tell me.”

“You feared correctly,” said Dr. Cale, wheeling herself into the room. “Fang’s back, and Daisy has an ID badge for you, Nathan. I’ve got the admitting paperwork for Sal all prepared, and it links back to one of my less public identities, so if anyone calls to confirm that she’s a legitimate patient, I’ll be able to confirm. Fishy is altering hospital records as we speak. By the time you get to John Muir, you’ll have an insurance trail going all the way back to your first temp job.”

“Who’s Fishy?” I asked blankly. “Is that a person?”

“His name is Matthew, he’s a computer engineer, and he goes by ‘Fishy’ because when he first came to work for me, I had a Matthew and a Matt already in the office. He proposed using his old gaming handle, and I said it was fine, since it’s not profane or otherwise inappropriate. It’s easier to explain who’s been injured in the explosion when you don’t have to keep backing up and clarifying which of the five people with that name you
don’t
mean.” Dr. Cale’s tone was patient, but her hands locked together in her lap, tension showing in the way her fingers interlaced. “Once you get to the hospital, they’ll transfer you onto a surgical gurney. Now, Sal, it’s important you remember that you shouldn’t need to talk much, and it would be better if you didn’t, given the circumstances. You would normally be expected to answer questions before you could enter a surgical theater, but we’re shortcutting that process as much as
possible, and anyone who checks your charts should see that you answered the standard questions before you had to be sedated to prevent seizure.”

“Do people really try to have conversations with patients who are in the hospital to have their heads cut open?” I asked blankly.

“They’re not going to cut your head
open
, exactly,” said Dr. Cale. “Most of the work will be done by lasers and by machines no bigger than the head of a pin. It’s not the nanotech that we were promised when I was in school, but I’ll take it.”

“Mom,” said Nathan warningly.

Dr. Cale held up her hand. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I just got distracted for a second there. The actual incision won’t even be as bad as that bite on your arm, Sal—which we flushed with saline and stitched up while you were unconscious, by the way. It should heal much faster and cleaner this way. You didn’t lose that much blood, thankfully. The problem seems to have been mostly related to the impaired blood flow to your brain.”

“Um, thanks,” I said, resisting the urge to rub my wrist. “I guess what I meant was, am I really going to have to answer questions? I’m there for
brain surgery
. Even if there’s not a lot of cutting going on, you’d think that might mean nobody would ask me things.”

“Actually, it may mean someone stops you on the way to the operating theater to make sure you’ve consented to the operation, and that the operation you say you’re having matches the one on your paperwork,” said Nathan. The grim note in his voice startled me. I turned to frown at him. He met my eyes and sighed. “You remember how there are some aspects of my job that I don’t like to talk about? Well, this is one of them.”

“Organ snatching was the big hospital bogeyman twenty, thirty years ago, before we had implants that could secrete anti-rejection drugs,” said Dr. Cale. She made the sentence sound almost upbeat, like the thought of someone cracking
open her chest and scooping out her lungs was too funny to take seriously. “Now, of course, the rejection risk is lower if you have the right kind of implant readied. There are some people who have been using the anti-rejection implants as a form of preventative medicine—when their hearts finally give out from all their abuse, they already have the medication in place. It’s a terrible idea, of course, but I never thought that the implants should have been used for that purpose in the first place. Why—”

“
Mom
.” Nathan sounded more impatient this time. His interruption was accompanied by a glance at the old analog clock on the wall, where the second hand was busily ticking off our window of opportunity.

“Sorry,” said Dr. Cale again. “As I was getting around to saying, Sal, people today carry expensive pieces of medical equipment with them at all times, and there’s a black market for that sort of thing. It’s rare, but not unheard-of, for someone to go in for a minor surgical process and wake up with their implant missing—especially if they have one of the extremely tailored varieties. SymboGen has done an excellent job of controlling supply and demand, making sure supply never manages to outstrip demand. Unfortunately, that means that if you need a new insulin source right this minute, or a worm that supplies anti-rejection medication, theft may start looking like your best option.”

I stared at her. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

“Thanks for freaking out my girlfriend, Mom, that was swell of you,” said Nathan. He stood, offering me his arm. “Come on, Sal. Let’s get you to the ambulance.”

“I don’t have any clothes,” I protested. Pushing away the covers had revealed that I was wearing nothing but a plain white hospital gown, the kind that tied in the back and left virtually nothing to the imagination. I didn’t mind that much—I’ve never been shy about nudity—but I had been told over and over
that it wasn’t socially acceptable to run around half clothed in front of strangers. Fang and Daisy counted.

“We’re going to a hospital,” said Nathan. “Not having any clothes is a good thing.”

“You’ll be fine,” said Dr. Cale. “Just tell anyone who asks you that you have problems with the veins in your head, and that Dr. Chu and Dr. Lee are going to fix it for you. If they press, tell them you don’t know how to pronounce what’s wrong. Daisy or Fang can take things from there.”

“What’s Nathan going to do?”

“Stand there being quiet and trying not to be recognized, while he remembers that I didn’t want him to go with you in the first place,” said Dr. Cale coolly, shooting a look at Nathan.

Nathan ignored her. “All right, Sal. Time for us to go.” He took hold of my IVs, wheeling them along. I was glad he was taking charge of that part of the trip. I would have snarled the tubes on something before we’d gone more than five feet.

Dr. Cale didn’t say anything as we walked away. She just watched us go, expression unreadable, hands still knotted white-knuckled in her lap. Then the curtain fell closed again behind us, and she was gone.

I leaned heavily on Nathan’s arm as we walked out of the semiprivate room and back into the main bowling alley. Most of the terminals were abandoned at this hour—it had to be almost midnight, and I wondered briefly whether that would make our “borrow a hospital operating theater” plan more dangerous. Probably not. My condition wasn’t immediately life-threatening, and if Dr. Cale was sending us to the hospital now, she had to have a reason. Maybe it was just “we’ll have more luck finding an empty room at this hour of the night.” Whatever her logic, I had made the decision to trust her, and now it was the only thing I could do.

Fang was waiting just outside the interior door, in the dark room where I had lost consciousness before. He looked me
thoughtfully up and down, from my bare feet to my tousled hair, and finally said, “You’d look good as a redhead. Consider that for when we’re done at the hospital.” He had a faint accent, although I couldn’t have said from where. “Come on, both of you. Daisy is outside with the ambulance, and we should move before someone stops to make sure that she’s all right. This would be like Al Capone being busted for tax evasion.” His smile was swift and tight, like he had just made a very funny joke but didn’t want to be the first one to laugh.

“You never talked this much at SymboGen,” I said. Now that I was up and moving, the sedatives in my IV were starting to hit me harder, making the world seem just a little out of focus, like a movie played on late night TV.

Fang smiled. “I needed to keep a low profile. Not so much an issue, now that I’ve been extracted.” He turned and walked toward the door to the outside, clearly expecting that we would follow. Nathan still had my arm, and Nathan
did
follow, leaving me with no choice but to do the same.

Normally I would have objected to being pulled toward a destination I had little to no say in, but normally I wasn’t under the influence of a really impressive assortment of pharmaceuticals. “Your mom is good at drugging people,” I said dreamily. My lips felt numb. That was sort of funny. They weren’t my lips—I’d stolen them from Sally Mitchell—so why could I feel them? I giggled. That was even funnier; it required the use of so many purloined body parts that I couldn’t even name them all.

I was still laughing when we walked out of the bowling alley and into the parking lot. An ambulance was parked right outside the doors, and a short, solid-looking woman with broad shoulders and buzz-cut brown hair shot through with ribbons of gray was waiting for us, one hand resting on a gurney.

“About time you guys got out here,” she said, casting a nervous look back at the ambulance. Its doors were standing open, revealing the clean white interior. “We have about an hour
before someone notices that the GPS chip on this baby’s been jiggered, so let’s get a move on, okay?”