“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember anything else.”
“All right, Elissa.” He smiled at her, his face friendly, relaxed. “You’ve done extremely well. I know it must seem extraordinary to have to tell me all these details. But trust me, the more data I have, the more helpful the diagnosis I can make.”
She smiled back. In her lap her fingers uncurled. Until this
moment she hadn’t realized she’d been sitting with her nails digging into her palms.
Dr. Brien tapped the keyboard once more, then glanced back up to Elissa. “Oh, one last thing. If you don’t know, it’s no problem. But if you do, then, again, it’s just very helpful data that we can use.”
“Okay.”
“In the hallucinations, do you register what you’re wearing?”
“Wearing?”
He smiled again, exactly the same warm, reassuring smile. “What our dream selves dress themselves in says a lot about our state of mind. You might put yourself in something you were wearing in real life, or something that doesn’t quite fit. Sometimes outfits end up incomplete, or unusual—embarrassing.” He chuckled a little. “Trust me, even if you were wearing nothing at all, you wouldn’t be the only person who’s dreamed that.”
“Oh. Okay. I . . . no, nothing weird. Pants, I think. Like . . . yoga pants? Pale—I don’t know if they’re white or just a light color. And a T-shirt, the same color . . . I think.”
“Right. So you were wearing that again in your last hallucination?”
The memory came back, a flash opening up the details in her brain. She’d been running in the dark, keeping to the shadows, knowing her clothes would help conceal her. Knowing too that she’d never have made it this far if she hadn’t gotten hold of them, thankful all over again for that careless staff member who’d let her off-duty clothes snag on the edge of her locker, who hadn’t checked to make sure the door was properly shut . . . .
She hadn’t been wearing the light-colored clothes edge of her thumbnail., c. She’d
been wearing black. Black pants, and a long, hooded top she’d pulled up over her head.
Elissa looked up to tell him and saw him watching her, waiting for her answer. He was still smiling, but the smile was slightly rigid, as if he were deliberately holding on to it. And there was that sharpness in his face again, a look as if she were giving him numbers and he were adding them up—some to make the sums he’d expected, and some he hadn’t.
She didn’t lie. Never, really. Not to her parents, not to doctors. But now, all of a sudden . . . Obeying an impulse that came too fast to think it through, she kept her gaze steady and held her hands still in her lap, making sure not to make any guilty, betraying movements. “Yes. That’s what I was wearing.”
“Thank you, Elissa.” He made a couple more key taps, then flicked his hand up, opening another page. “Right. Having looked at all your test results and the reports your own doctor sent me, and hearing how your symptoms have escalated, I think it’s very clear we’ve gone beyond the stage of being able to treat this with medication. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward a little, put his hand on the desk, palm down, as if he were reaching out to comfort her. “Now, didn’t I tell you not to worry? We’re going to take a more permanent approach, Elissa.”
He twisted the screen around, tapped a key, and an image sprang up.
“Look. There’s an abnormality
here
.” He glanced at her, smiling. “Don’t worry, it’s not cancer or anything like that. This is an area that, in the vast majority of people’s brains, is mostly inactive. On this map you’d see it as a gray area.
Here, though, see these fine lines? That’s a sign that, in your brain, this area has become very
over
active. Probably because of the stimulus of a hormone surge, as your other doctors have mentioned. I won’t confuse you with too much science”—he smiled again—“but basically this area links to memory, imagination, dreams. It’s grabbing a whole lot of external data—TV, movies, bits of current news, things you might not even notice you’re taking in—and turning them into a kind of ultravivid loop playing in your head. And the more it plays, the more it forces a physical response from your body. Hence the pain. It’s like the pain you think you feel in dreams, but it’s so vivid it’s actually having an effect on you physically. Does that make sense?”
He gave her an expectant look, eyebrows slightly raised.
It did make sense, but . . .
My clothes. Why did he want to know about my clothes?
“Elissa?”
She jerked back from the questions repeating silently over and over in her ears. He was explaining how he was going to make her better, for God’s sake. She needed to
listen
. She nodded. “I’m sorry. Yes, it does.”
“It’s pretty confusing, I know! I’ve given you the most basic explanation, but obviously there’s more to it than that. Now, what we’re going to have to do is perform a relatively minor operation. It
is
brain surgery, so in a sense it can’t be minor, but I can assure you that with my team you’ll be in the worse than clhibest possible hands. Of course, there is risk involved, but we keep it to an absolute minimum. What we’re going to do is use a very accurate laser to kill off some of the brain cells in this area, toning down its potential for activity, as it were. If you’ll look at this image . . .”
He explained it well, with carefully chosen, unalarming graphics illustrating his words, but it all came down to the same thing: He was going to open her head and burn something out of it. And now that she’d had a minute to gather her thoughts, it
didn’t
make sense. She
didn’t
understand. She understood the procedure. But the pictures in her head . . . surely if they’d come from random data she’d picked up all the time, they’d vary? Why, in the dreams, was she always someone else—the
same
someone else?
And why did he want to know about the someone else?
“All right, Elissa. Do you have any questions?”
Oh, but
hell
. It
had to
make sense. He was the
doctor
, for goodness’ sake. What did she know about the brain and how it worked?
She shook her head, then, collecting herself, answered politely. “I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Okay, then.” He smiled at her, flicked the display away, and tapped the toolbar to bring up another display, this one scrolling pages of text. “This is the agreement, Elissa. Your parents have already given consent, of course, via your normal doctor, but at your age we need your consent too. I suggest you have a quick read of it, make sure you’re comfortable with everything.”
All at once Elissa was freezing cold, stiff in the chair. As if she’d just heard the words for the first time, she heard them repeating in her head.
Surgery. Brain surgery
. And:
There is risk involved. Relatively minor . . .
Only relatively
. “If—if I sign it—”
“If you sign it today, we can get you admitted in just four days, on Monday—”
She interrupted him before she even knew she was
going to open her mouth. “Four?
Four days?
”
“Yes. We’ve got an opening, so I’ve provisionally booked you in. Tomorrow’s the last day before spring break, isn’t it? You’ll be out of school for a week? So you won’t even need time off. And the sooner we can get it over with—” He stopped, watching her face. “Elissa, you realize your condition is deteriorating? I don’t want to alarm you, but I can assure you we don’t want to leave this even as long as another week.”
His eyes remained on hers, his expression open, his eyebrows drawn together in a concerned frown. Part of her wanted to make him tell her more.
What’s the risk? How much risk?
But part of her seemed to cower, hands over her ears, not wanting to know. After all, what choice did she have?
“I— Okay. I’m sorry. I just . . . It’s so soon.”
Mrs. Ivory reached out and put a hand over Elissa’s. Elissa turned more important”rt her hand over, held on with a desperate, tight grip she couldn’t manage to relax.
“I know,” said Dr. Brien. “But like I said, the sooner we can get this over with the better, right?” He pulled a slim tablet from a slot on the desk and handed it to her. On its screen the same text showed. She scrolled down to the bottom of the document. Her name was already inserted under a dotted line, waiting for her signature.
“You read that through now, all right? Can I offer either of you a drink?”
Elissa shook her head, politeness forgotten, scrolling back through the document. It was all a jumble, medical and legal stuff she hadn’t a hope of understanding. She knew all the stuff about never signing something you didn’t understand. But her parents had already signed—there were their digi-sigs, next to the space for hers—so it couldn’t be anything bad,
and she’d never understand some of the language, even if she tried all day, and she was keeping the doctor waiting . . . .
Why did he want to know about my clothes? Why does it matter?
Oh, for God’s sake, Lissa
. After all this time, someone was saying he could make her better. Not
maybe
, not
probably
, not with the stupid drugs and treatments and sleep machines that hadn’t ended up doing anything, but with something real. Surgery. Like the way they cured cancer and appendicitis and the injury from that time Bruce hurt his leg playing antigrav-ball. A real treatment, a treatment that was going to work—that was going to make her normal.
She scrolled to the bottom of the document and signed it.
Elissa Laine Ivory
.
“Excellent.” Dr. Brien was smiling at her again, calm and pleasant, and her anxiety fizzled away. It was just paranoia, based on nothing but nerves and lack of sleep—and the fact that she’d collected even
more
bruises since she’d been at school yesterday, and she had no hope that no one would notice.
“So, Monday morning, yes?” He was talking mostly to her mother now. “I’d like you both here—and Mr. Ivory, if he’s able, of course—at eight. Now, before you go, how about those drinks?”
They had the drinks—a water for Elissa, a no-cal latte for her mother—and Dr. Brien and Mrs. Ivory talked about the current weather programs, the measures the city authorities had taken to contain the latest incidence of Elloran superflu, and a recent news story about how a couple had managed not only to have an illegal third child but also to somehow escape detection for an astonishing six years.
Some twenty minutes later she and her mother thanked
him, said their good-byes, and went out to wait for the elevator to take them down to reception.
As the elevator descended, her mother put a hand out to touch Elissa’s arm. “Try not to dwell on it,” she said. “It’ll be over soon.”
At the touch, Elissa wanted to lean her head on her mother’s shoulder and sob. But it was bad enough she was going to be late for first period—and showing bruises that hadn’t been there yesterday. No way could she walk into class with red eyes.
She nodded instead, drawing herself tight as a protection worse than clhi against the tears that wanted to come.
They went out through the reception area and onto the wide, tree-lined shelf where the office stood. Chlorophyll-stained sunlight dappled the ground, and the pavement was sticky with the drops of lime that had fallen from the leaves. This was the rich side of the canyon, with nothing but residential shelves above and below. There weren’t even any of the slidewalks that in the last five years had extended nearly everywhere within the canyon. People came and went by beetle-car, or by the private elevators that traveled in shafts inside the cliff, or not at all.
This doctor, he must earn a lot more than ordinary doctors
. Well, he was a specialist, she knew that. But all the same, this whole setup, it was way out of their normal league.
Her heart was beating faster than normal. She felt it in the pit of her stomach.
“Mother?”
Mrs. Ivory had reached the wider area at the end of the shelf where the little beetle-car gleamed scarlet in the sunlight. Tiny drips of sticky lime speckled its domed roof. She pointed her key at it, and the sides sprang up to let them in. “Yes?”
“That doctor . . . Dr. Brien . . . Why did he want to know so much about my dreams?”
Her mother slid into the driver’s seat, then glanced up at her, eyebrows raised. “Sweetie, he explained. Every bit of data—”
“No, I know. But stuff about the clothes I was wearing? Which way I went? It’s just . . . I don’t get why he was asking all about that.”
“Lissa, really, it’s no good asking me how it all works. If I’d thought I was up to graduating at Dr. Brien’s level, I’d have stayed in medicine after you were born. I don’t have a clue about brain disorders—I don’t know why they need the information they do. But honestly, sweetie—get in, you’re already late—you can be sure if he was asking for information, it’s because he needed it.” She smiled at Elissa, reaching across to pat her knee before she started the car. “He wasn’t asking for his own amusement, you know!”
“Yeah. I know.”
The beetle-car lifted off the ground, the buzz of its propeller sending a vibration like a shiver through the seat and into Elissa’s back, then dropped away from the edge of the shelf into clear airspace.
“Mother . . .” The question hovered:
What if I don’t have the operation?
“What is it, Lissa?”
She couldn’t say it. The doctor’s voice echoed in her head.
Your condition is deteriorating. We don’t want to leave this even as long as another week.
“I’m just . . . It’s scary.”
Without taking her gaze off the glinting spiderweb of the intersection approaching beneath them, her mother reached
over and put a hand on Elissa’s arm. “I know, sweetie. If any of the other treatments had worked . . . But this is it. We have to take this one. You can’t live the rest of your life this way.”
The beetle-car connected with the intersection, locking on to the monorail. From the corner of her eye, Elissa saw the shadow of the prope worse than clhiller disappear as it folded itself into the upper dome of the car. Then they were down in the steel spaghetti of the upper levels of the city, other beetle-cars and skycycles clattering past them, pedestrian slidewalks sliding by underneath.