The Pandora Project (3 page)

Paige
,
my mom calls into my head just to let me know she is close.

At the same time my phone vibrate
s and I pull it out of my purse. It is a text from my mom. I read it and show it to Lexi, trying to act nonchalant. “My mom is checking me out. John it was nice to meet you. I hope you like it here.”

“So far…so good,” he smiles and gives me a meaningful look, I don’t want to read anything into it, but I do.

I start to get up right as an office aide c
omes up to me with my check-out slip. I wave to my friends and head to my locker to get my things. I meet my mom in the parking lot by my car.

She wave
s,
Don’t say anything, we will talk at home.

I wave back, tr
y to smile and climb into my car, knowing all the while that my life is spiraling out of control.

Chapter
2

As Doctor Andrew Cox swivels in the leather office chair to take a second look at the specimen sitting under the microscope, his phone buzzes in the pocket of his lab coat. Not bothering to pause his examination, he scans the text.

Contact made.
No determination. Looks promising.

Even after seventeen years of receiving similar reports, he c
an’t help but feel a rush of adrenaline and the hope that this could be the one. Unable to concentrate on the task at hand, he pushes away from the lab table and holds his phone in both hands. Drawing in a large, steadying breath he responds:

Keep me informed
.

Not that he need
s to remind them, if any of the peons in his employ dare to keep something from him they would promptly be disposed of. Since giving direction of some sort is expected, he deigns to issue mundane commands.

One family, one girl.
After years of research and trial and error, he had created the one crucial piece to bring all his work together. He knew she was different, the elevated temperature was the first sign…if only he had recognized how different a little sooner, he could have saved himself years of waiting. To be deterred for so long by someone so common is unpleasant to say the least. He should have known they would have been difficult, their devotion to the unborn child was one of the reasons he had been able to ramp up the experiment; they were desperate. Just as he planned it.

Confident the time
is drawing near for his plans to come to fruition, he pockets his phone and returns to his microscope, allowing a small hint of hope to enter his cruel heart that this could finally be the one.

Chapter 3

D
riving up to my house I notice Dad’s Accord is in the driveway and it hits me that things are worse than I imagined. Mom is waiting for me just outside the garage door and she puts her arm around me and walks me into the house. Knowing it will annoy her, I throw my keys on top of the dryer and toss my backpack and purse in a corner. My mom gives me a look but doesn’t say anything out loud or in my head. Yep, things are bad. So bad she is willing to give up this perfect opportunity to yell at me about picking up my stuff.

Dad is rifling around in our strong box pulling out money and different sorts of identification.
“Are we going on a trip?” I ask, thinking it’s the best way to get the ball rolling.

Dad looks up and shoots me a look that is at the same time loving and guilty.
“I think it is time to move on, Beautiful, don’t you?”

Move on?
Is he crazy? Just this morning I had marveled at John’s ability to adapt and knew I couldn’t start my senior year somewhere new. “No! Of course I don’t! Can we talk about this?”

Mom moves between Dad and I to put herself literally in the middle of the conversation.
She holds her hands up on both sides, pleading silently for us not to argue. Dad looks at her expectantly, “What did you hear?” he asks a little more gruffly than I am used to. Oh, yeah. He is stressed.

“Surprisingly, little.
” Dad and I both draw up short, wondering whose side it puts her on.

“
We do need to discuss this. Shall we?” She points down the hall to my dad’s office. He had it soundproofed on the pretext that if he had any patients visit the house it would give them the privacy they deserve and he can speak freely without violating any HIPAA rules. Of course it is really so we can have family discussions without any fear of being overheard. We have rarely had to use it for such serious conversations, but I know what is about to happen is going to be big.

The thought of moving and leaving the only life I have ever known almost makes me physically sick, but it also
reiterates how much my parents have given up for me. When they discovered my “gift” they gave up all that they knew and loved to raise me somewhere safe, somewhere they could hide how peculiar our family is. I think of the ones we have lost and I think of the horrors that could await us if our unique talents fall into the wrong hands.

As Dad closes the door securely behind him, I lie down on the cushy
brown leather couch that lines one wall of the office. Mom sits in the matching leather chair and Dad takes a seat behind his desk. He looks so official sitting there behind the oversized oak desk with his diplomas, certifications and awards framed on the wall behind him. That’s another thing he’s given up for me, his real life, his real name that should be there for the whole world to see.

He folds his fingers behind his head and lets out a sigh
while leaning back as far as the chair will allow. “Where do we start?” he asks as he reaches his hands over his head and refolds them in front of himself. I think this is how he would look if he ever had to deliver bad news to a patient and their family.

“First of all,” Mom begins, “All I heard was a million different ways to ask about your gloves,” she says, looking at me and nodding her head toward my hands.

“I was surprised he never asked during our lab today.”

Dad
’s jaw drops, clearly not liking that I have already had interaction with the new kid in town. He shakes his head, “Wait, wait, wait, back up. Tell me everything that happened for you today and then I will do the same.”

I rehearse back to him every detail of my conversation with John.
Of course, I don’t mention that I might have the beginnings of a crush or my desire to run my fingers through his hair, I love Mom and Dad but certain things they just don’t need to know. Both Mom and Dad listen intently and nod their heads to show they’re thinking about everything. The slight upturn to Mom’s lips tells me she heard more than I wanted her too and annoys me more than it should.

I end with, “What has you so upset?
How much of this did you already know?”

“Pretty much all of it.” He responds.
“Jeff Sullivan walked into the clinic this morning and laid out the same story, almost verbatim. He mentioned that he has a son who was starting school today and who also happens to be a senior. It seemed too pat, too rehearsed, too convenient.”

“Or we are just being a little paranoid,” I mutter.

I am rewarded with a disappointed look from both parents. “I know you are only seventeen, Paige, but do we need to go over how dangerous you are? Do we need to remind you of what we have lost or what is at stake?”

I can’t help the tears that come to my eyes.
I know he is just reminding me of the seriousness of the situation, but I feel ashamed.
I am not a monster
…even if my father makes me feel like one. It is not like I can control what I am, it is more their fault than it is mine. I look at the hurt on my mother’s face and know she heard my thoughts.

The
ir only fault is they have always loved me too much. At eight weeks pregnant my mom went in for a regular ultrasound and they found a large tumor in her uterus. Surgery didn’t work to remove it and most of the doctors advised a medical abortion. Mom wouldn’t even consider it, like I said, she loved me too much and she didn’t even know me yet.

My dad knew a specialist, a pioneer in the field of treating pregnant women with cancer.
When my parents subjected me to radiation treatments for her cancer, they had no idea what they were creating. The doctor warned that there could be serious complications and damage to the baby. My parents thought they would be dealing with blindness, mental handicaps, deformed limbs; problems they could overcome with the love they already had for me. No one could have guessed the real complications.

The first couple weeks of my life I was handled with kid gloves, almost literally.
No one directly touched me because they weren’t sure how the radiation might have affected my immune system. They were concerned that my body temperature ran consistently at 102 degrees and the temperature in my hands was always a couple of degrees higher than that. None of the doctors wanted to call much attention to my condition because they were all afraid of malpractice for allowing the unorthodox treatments to happen in the first place.

My parents were the only ones who ever touched me
without gloves in those first couple of weeks. After a couple of days in the hospital, it was ruled that constant fever seemed to be the only side effect of the radiation and I was deemed fit and ready to come home. Dad had taken a couple of weeks off, shuffling his patients to other doctors in his practice, and we all went home to celebrate the first weeks of our life together as a family.

My parents doted on me constantly; hugging, kissing me and loving on me as much as any newborn deserves.
They got used to my temperature and would joke that they would have to move to a colder climate if they wanted to be able to hold me. My mom tells me how I loved to place my hand on their cheeks as they held me. Mom would wonder what I was thinking or dreaming about and Dad would think about how glad he was that he was a doctor and would always be able to take care of me.

We think it is those thoughts and my desire to touch them that made all the difference. After a couple of days, Mom started to see visual images in her head.
They would be of her or dad and always from my point of view. She started to hear my dad without him saying a word. It quickly became evident that she could hear our thoughts. She was amazed and horrified.

She went to our neighbor’s house to see if her power extended to those outside of her family, and sure enough she could hear everything, clear as day.
She wasn’t able to go out in public because she was too quickly overwhelmed with all she heard.

Dad was confused and unable to come up with any theories as to why or how this was happening.
He knew in his gut it had something to do with me, but wasn’t quite sure what it could be, and he didn’t seem to be affected at all. He became more and more confused until his mother came to visit. Of course she wanted to see her only grandchild and was overjoyed the first time she held me.

I put my little hand right on her cheek and she began to cry.
Soon she was sobbing hysterically and would have dropped me if Mom hadn’t been right there to whisk me out of harm’s way. Grandma ran shrieking for the door of my nursery, trying to get away from me, screaming, “No, no!”

Dad caught up to her
and tried to calm her but he could barely restrain her. He finally gave her valium so she could calm down enough to talk. She sat in a chair rocking back and forth with her eyes closed and refused to have me in the room with her.

“What happened?” Dad asked in the calmest voice he could muster given the hysteria of his mother.

With tears trickling slowly but steadily down her face, Grandma answered, “I was looking down at my beautiful granddaughter, thinking about what a bright and beautiful future she has in front of her and how happy I am to be a part of it, when she touched me. As soon as her fingers made contact, everything changed. Now all I can see is death. She will be the end of us all.”

Her eyes cleared and she finally looked right at Dad, “Please make the visions stop.
I can’t stand to see what she will bring. How could your baby do this?” she practically screamed the last part as she once again broke down.

Dad had to give her a sedative and laid her on the couch.
Mom has told me repeatedly that she held me in her arms and cried. She had no idea what was going on but there was no way she would let anything happen to the baby they had worked so hard to bring into the world.

Dad says that is when he started to understand what I could do.
He went back into Mom and put my chubby hand right up against his face…and nothing happened.

That night, Grandma
took her own life. Whatever she saw was too horrible for her to deal with. She was the first one we lost and I know it is always her that he is referring to when he talks about what we have lost.

Dad’s new talent became evident when Mom went in for her first post-partum check-up.
She was still being treated for the cancer and the doctor’s were pretty sure it would be bad because she had taken time off from her treatments for my birth. However, when she went in, she was given a clean bill of health. In fact, the doctors were amazed at how healthy she was. Everything was perfect, except there were still trace amounts of low level non-ionizing radiation. They thought it could be residual from her treatments and set up follow-up appointments for her.