Parasite (Parasitology) (14 page)

“Yes. Better a bit of imaging skew than a lot of vomiting barium on everyone’s shoes. Besides, this is all a formality. Now eat up.”

That was all the permission I needed. Sherman stood by while I drank the rest of my juice and stuffed cookies into my face. The room slowly stopped its spin. I wasn’t back to normal—blood sugar doesn’t bounce back that fast—but I was close enough to pick up my bag and get out of the chair without pitching forward onto the floor. Sherman still moved to take my arm, steadying me until he was sure I wasn’t going to fall.
He didn’t let go. Instead, he looked quickly around, like he was checking to see if we would be overheard.

Once he was sure that we were alone, or as alone as it was possible to be in the bowels of SymboGen, he leaned closer, and murmured, “You’ve got to stop dozing off during tests that are supposed to be upsetting, Sal. It’s not normal, and you and I both know they’re watching you for signs of not normal. You don’t want to give them the ammunition that they need.”

I blinked at him, feeling that old familiar alarm beginning to coil around my spine. “The ammunition that they need for what? I thought we already determined that I was just unnaturally relaxed, not suffering from low blood pressure or a fainting disorder.”

Sherman didn’t say anything. He just sighed and let go of my arm, turning to start toward the door back to the hall. After a moment’s indecision, I followed him. Sherman was one of the closest things I had to a friend at SymboGen, but the company was still his employer, while I was a girl who should never have been allowed behind the wheel of a car. If it came down to them or me, his loyalty was already given.

The normal swirl of medical and laboratory personnel filled the hallway, their greetings and chatter making further conversation impossible. Sherman had probably timed it that way, to avoid me asking any more awkward questions. I dogged along at his heels, hugging my bag against my chest, until we reached the next lab, where I was handed a plastic cup by a technician I’d never seen before and directed, firmly, to the nearest bathroom. Very firmly: Sherman led me there and pushed me inside before closing the door behind me.

It’s funny: for a company that made its fortune off a genetically modified tapeworm, the people at SymboGen could be awfully prudish about basic bodily functions. The first few times I had to take a urine test after they took out my catheters, I just dropped my pants and filled the cup right in the middle
of the lab. I stopped doing that once it was explained to me why it was inappropriate, but they still acted like there was a chance I might start peeing on everything the first opportunity I got. They were the ones who asked for the urine sample. It’s not like I volunteered it.

There are times when I truly regret not remembering my childhood and the normal human socialization that I have to assume came with it. There are other times when I am frankly glad to be free of all the baggage. Everybody pees, especially when they’re ordered to do so by lab techs.

As soon as the cup was full to the line on the side, I capped it firmly and placed it in the small alcove designed for that specific purpose. Apparently, urine was viewed as so powerful that it could even contaminate shelves through plastic if not properly contained. Once that was safely done, I washed and sanitized my hands before knocking on the bathroom door. “You can let me out now,” I said. “I’m done.”

“Are you quite sure?” asked Sherman. I was relieved to hear the teasing note in his voice. I was forgiven for pushing him before. “Maybe you’re still intending to have yourself an extracurricular widdle.”

“Widdle?” I asked, laughing. “Oh, you
so
made that one up.”

“Don’t test me,” he recommended, and opened the bathroom door. As in Dr. Lo’s lab, the technician had vanished. Sherman saw me looking around for him and clapped a hand down on my shoulder. “Paul couldn’t abide your radiance, my dear. He fled before he could be blinded.”

I sighed. “The new guys still think I’m a freak of nature, huh?”

“To be charitable, Sal, you
are
a freak of nature. You survived the unsurvivable, you recovered from the unrecoverable, and you fall asleep when you’re having blood drawn. People who don’t know you like the rest of us do just don’t have a frame of
reference for you, that’s all. And they have work to do. Your appearance is good for
hours
of overtime.”

“Shouldn’t that come with a little light conversation?”

“You’ve come a long way in your understanding of human nature,” said Sherman. “You’ve farther yet to travel. Including, if my memory serves me right, down the hall to the radiology lab. Let’s fill you up with delicious barium, shall we?”

“You’re so good to me,” I said sourly, and followed him back into the hall. Just another day at SymboGen, where there’s no test too small, or too invasive, to run on a captive audience.

S
herman passed me off to Chave, who dragged me to the accounting department to be grilled about my receipts, which looked exactly like every other batch of receipts I’d ever brought in for them to review. Medications, vitamins, physical therapy sessions, the usual. The only thing that actually should have caught their attention was the bill for a new grain heating pad—technically a “household item,” and thus a questionable expense—but they waved it off without comment, choosing to focus instead on the number of times I’d been to see the chiropractor since my last visit.

Eventually, they freed me back into the halls of SymboGen, and Chave delivered me back to Sherman, who was flirting with a receptionist I didn’t recognize. The receptionist pouted when Chave called Sherman away, but hid the expression quickly.
Smart. I wouldn’t have wanted to attract Chave’s attention when I didn’t have to.

“She’s all yours,” said Chave, waving me toward Sherman. “Get her an ultrasound and make sure she’s in the cafeteria at one. Beyond that, I don’t care what you do.” Then she turned and stalked away.

Sherman watched her leave, waiting until she was out of earshot before sighing longingly. “That, my darling Sal, is a woman who needs an infusion of fun in her life. Possibly accompanied by a pitcher or two of strawberry mojitos.” He clucked his tongue. “Anyone that tightly wound is going to be a tornado when they finally let go. Imagine being the lucky bloke—or bird—on the receiving end of
that
storm warning.”

“I think we have very different ideas of what makes a fun evening,” I said.

“Probably so,” Sherman agreed, and turned to lead me back toward the elevator. “Have a good day so far?”

“No worse than usual, and I guess I’ll call that a win.” I sighed. “I just keep reminding myself that I don’t have to do this again for six months. It helps me get through the day.”

“That’s good.” The elevator doors slid open. Sherman waited until they closed again before saying, casually, “Word is that Banks is trying to hire you on for the research department. Can’t imagine you’d be too thrilled about that.”

I stared at him. “Just how good is the rumor mill around here? We only talked about that a few hours ago.”

“Nothing happens in a vacuum, especially not when you’re talking about a company this size.” Sherman looked at me thoughtfully. “Are you going to take it? You’d be around here a good bit more. But you wouldn’t have to worry anymore about whether you’d have another emergency. It might take a bit of the edge off.”

“Yeah, and I’d be on site when I cracked from the pressure of all those eyes looking at me all the time. That would make it
so
much easier for them to get me into a nice padded room.” The elevator dinged, signaling our safe return to the subterranean domain of the scientists. “I’d rather worry a little now than freak out a lot later on.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” said Sherman, and stepped out of the elevator. I followed him, and together we made our way to the dressing room outside the ultrasound lab. “You get changed; I’ll go make sure the science mooks are ready for us.”

“You got it,” I said, and slipped inside.

The ultrasound machine surrounded me like a huge, comforting hand, holding just tightly enough that I didn’t need to be afraid that I would somehow lose my grip on the surface of the world—that gravity would fail or an earthquake would mysteriously flip the building upside down and send me plummeting into empty space. I could move, to a degree, crossing or uncrossing my arms and ankles, but for the most part, I was safely confined. I raised one hand to check that my rebreather was solidly in place, and closed my eyes.

Some people apparently found full-body ultrasounds invasive and claustrophobic, and would go to any lengths to avoid them. I had the opposite response. If I’d been able to trade all my other tests for additional time in the ultrasound chamber, I would happily have done so. According to Sherman, that was one more reason for the company technicians to view me as a freak of nature.

The full-body imaging department at SymboGen consisted of two different sections: the MRI room and the gel ultrasound room. I had undergone both at one time or another during my visits to SymboGen, and the gel ultrasound was definitely my favorite of the two. MRIs meant lying on my back for up to an hour while the machine took its snapshot images of my body, trying not to move as my weight seemed to press me deeper and deeper into the metal bed. There was no padding in an MRI tube; that might interfere with the readings.

People who found MRIs claustrophobic apparently freaked out completely during gel ultrasounds, which required a rebreather and that the subject’s eyes remain closed for the duration. The techs would even glue them shut for you if you asked them to, to make sure you wouldn’t give in to the urge to look around and see what was happening. After you were fully prepped and inside the tube, it was flooded with a bioresponsive plastic gel modeled off the biological structure of slime mold. It was hypoallergenic, nontoxic, and as harmless as possible.

Gel ultrasounds were infinitely more comforting than MRIs. I relaxed, slowing my breathing as I allowed myself to go totally limp.

There was a clicking noise in my left ear just before the head technician’s voice came through the side of my rebreather: “You ready for us, Sally? Clench your left hand for ‘yes.’ ”

I obediently clenched my left hand. I liked the ultrasound technicians. They were nice, although they treated me with an odd reverence. I had asked Sherman why that was once, after a particularly relaxing session in the ultrasound chamber. He’d laughed and replied, “Because, my sweet Sal, you are the only person ever to fall asleep in their gooey torture chamber. They think you’re either bloody insane, or that you’ve got balls the size of boulders.”

“What do you think?” I’d asked.

“I think it’s a little bit of both.”

I smiled around my rebreather at the memory, and allowed the last bit of tension to seep out of me as the ultrasound whirred to humming, buzzing life. My breathing slowed further once the humming began. The sound set up minute vibrations through the liquid, faint enough that they didn’t interfere with the machine’s readings, but strong enough for me to feel them eddying against my skin. It was like being at the center of my own private tide pool.

At some point, I drifted away, down into the dark, which reached up to claim me like a lover, folding itself around me and pulling me into itself. I didn’t fight. I was safe, I was surrounded and safe, and nothing was ever going to hurt me again.

I didn’t dream. Not there in the ultrasound tube, with the warm gel buoying me up and the sound of the machine lapping against my skin. Instead, I just drifted, and dozed, and let the world pass by around me.

It was gravity that brought me back: the strangely wrenching sensation of gravity reasserting itself as the gel began draining out of the ultrasound tube and my body settled down onto the hard metal bed of the machine. I managed not to start squirming, but it was hard. This was always the tricky part, keeping still until I was given the clearance to start moving again. Move too soon, and I risked either dislodging my rebreather and giving myself a lungful of plastic gel, or opening my eyes and getting an eyeful of the stuff instead. It wouldn’t actually hurt me, but it could make breathing—and seeing—remarkably uncomfortable for a short period of time.

“You all right in there, Sally?” asked the voice in my ear. I responded with a very small nod, feeling the motion set up waves through the remaining gel. The level was still dropping, faster all the time; it was around my ears now. My exposed skin felt overly tender, and the air was cold after the comforting warmth of the gel. I shivered, despite trying not to.