Wake Up Missing (7 page)

“Well, hopefully it doesn't come to that. We're close. The new genes are establishing nicely in the Perkins boy, and he shows no signs of tumor growth. We did the implant last night, and everything's progressing as it should.”

Tumor growth . . . The Perkins boy . . .
That had to be Trent, the kid from breakfast.
New genes?
Sarah said he was different from before. And what was
the implant
? Thoughts fired like machine guns in my head. There was no time to pull them together.

“Much better, yes. We're moving ahead.”

The mama osprey called again, and I opened my eyes. She was circling overhead. I don't think she trusted either of us on this roof.

“We'll finish with the next two kids and then speed things up—do Phase Two and Phase Three together—for the new ones. They're good candidates for the procedure so it should be fine. . . . I told Gunther we need to move on this. I'd say . . . what's today, Wednesday? Figure by Monday, we'll have four more subjects undergoing the change.”

Change?
It wasn't how most people would describe treatment for a concussion.

“Okay. Sounds good.”

Unless . . .

“Yeah, I will. Bye.”

What if . . .

I stayed on the roof while he walked back to the door and climbed down the stairs, and I felt it in my body, more than thought it.

What if Sarah was right?

And something at I-CAN was horribly, dangerously wrong.

“I want to call my mom.” I knocked on the half-open door and blurted the words at the same time. Mom fixed everything. She could fix this if something was wrong or, more likely, bring me back from my crazy ideas and remind me everything was okay.

Dr. Ames put down the MRI scan he'd been studying. “How come, Cat? You feeling okay?” He tipped his head, looked at me from across his desk, and my throat got all tight. He couldn't have known that I was on the roof. I'd waited until he finished his conversation, until he was gone, and then counted to a hundred to make sure he wasn't coming back.

“I'm fine.” I wasn't really. I was hot and thirsty and dizzy and confused and . . . “I'm homesick. I need to talk to my mom.”

“Of course. You know you can call home anytime.” He smiled, handed me the cordless phone from his desk, and motioned to the chair opposite him. “Have a seat,” he said. “I need to finish reviewing these scans. Pretend I'm not even here.”

I dialed with shaky fingers. What could I say? Something felt wrong. But I couldn't explain what—I didn't know. All those bits of conversations . . . My head hurt, and I couldn't pull them together to explain, and I couldn't even
try
to do that with Dr. Ames sitting across from me.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Cat, honey! Everything okay?”

Dr. Ames looked up from his papers for a second. Could he hear her side of the conversation, too?

“Yeah . . . fine.”

Why was my chest so tight? What
was
it I'd heard up on the roof? He had called our treatment “the change,” but so what? Fixing something broken was changing it. Suddenly, the phone seemed heavy in my hand, and I felt like a whiny little kid. “Everything's fine, Mom.” I was being ridiculous, sucked into Sarah's nervous theories. And I didn't want to worry Mom. “I missed you today, is all. It's good to hear your voice.”

It was. I took a deep breath. Whatever Dr. Ames was talking about on the roof, there had to be an explanation. He was a
doctor
who'd spent his whole life working to help kids like me.

Another snatch of conversation drifted through the mess in my head.
If she dies here . . .

But this was a health clinic where some kids had serious injuries. As scary as it was to think about, it made sense that not all of them would be okay. My head injury wasn't like that, though. I was going to be fine. Better than fine.

“Cat? You still there?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“So, how are the Florida birds?”

“Great. There are . . .” I was going to tell her about the osprey babies, how they looked like little dinosaurs, but if I did, Dr. Ames would know I'd been on the roof. “I love watching them in the pond from my window.” Dr. Ames drifted back to his papers. “Anyway, I'm settling in and wanted to say hi. I'll let you get going.”

“All right. Love you. I'll talk to you soon.”

“Love you, too. Bye.”

I handed the phone back to Dr. Ames. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Everything okay?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

Maybe it was.

I took my binoculars and headed to the pool. Quentin waved to me on his way inside. “Time for another MRI. I'll catch you at lunch.”

Sarah was sprawled in a deck chair. I wasn't going to say anything about what I heard, but she took off her sunglasses to look at me. “Where were you just now?”

“On the roof.” My heart sped up. “I went up to see that osprey nest.” I pointed to the tree. The mama bird was back at her post now.

“Oh.” Sarah sounded disappointed. “I thought maybe you decided we should check things out.”

“Like what?”

“Like what happened to Trent.”

I sighed. “Is he really that different?”

“You have no idea.” Her eyes filled with quick, shiny tears.
She swiped them away and leaned in closer to me. “Quentin doesn't even know this, and I really don't want Ben to know, but we were kind of . . . going out, I think.”

“Going out where?” The clinic wasn't exactly full of places to have dates.

“Not going anywhere, but like . . . getting to be boyfriend and girlfriend. At least I thought we were. I told you how much fun we had in the cafeteria—I don't care if Ben thinks it's dumb—it was
fun
, and it felt good to finally laugh here. And then the other night, we were sitting on the dock talking after dinner. He told me about Jason, his little brother who has Down syndrome, and how he was teaching him how to play basketball, and then he put his hand down kind of on top of mine, and I thought it was an accident, but then we were holding hands.” She sighed. “And then he wasn't around the next day.”

“Until breakfast this morning?”

“Yeah.” She shook her head. “And you saw him there. It was like he didn't even know me.”

I wasn't going to tell her. But bits of conversation from the roof kept bobbing to the surface in my brain.

If she dies here . . .

Undergoing the change . . .

If I said it out loud, sorted it out, maybe it would make sense. There had to be an explanation.

So I tried to explain what I'd heard on the roof. It came out in mismatched phrases and all out of order, but I tried to remember the important parts. I told her about the snatches of conversation I'd heard coming from Dr. Gunther's office, too.

Sarah's eyes got huge. “See? I
knew
something wasn't right.
We have to find out more. We need to—” She stopped talking and craned her neck, looking across the pool. Ben was over on the lawn playing ladder golf by himself. Dr. Gunther was shuffling toward the airboat, where Sawgrass Molly waited to take him into town or somewhere. Out here, the river was the only road.

“Where's Quentin?” she asked.

“He's got an MRI with Dr. Ames before lunch.”

“That's perfect.” Sarah stood up and pulled on a big T-shirt over her swimsuit. “Come on. Dr. Ames will be busy with the MRI for a while, and Dr. Gunther's leaving.” I followed her gaze down by the dock. Dr. Gunther climbed into the airboat and settled on a seat. Molly waved to us as the engine growled to life, and they started down the river toward town. “Let's go,” Sarah said.

“Go where?”

“Dr. Ames's office!” Her dark eyes danced. To her, this was some big adventure, like sneaking into the other team's locker room.

“What do you think we'll find?” Part of me was sure we wouldn't find anything, sure that I must have heard wrong or misunderstood. But part of me was afraid—terrified—we'd find evidence Sarah was right . . . and something was wrong.

“I don't know. We'll just”—she waved her hand through the air—“we'll do what they do on those TV lawyer shows and poke around his computer. Come with me. If nothing's going on . . . if we're wrong about that—”

“If
you're
wrong,” I corrected her.

“Fine.” She tossed her towel over her shoulder and tapped her foot, waiting for me to stand up. “If
I'm
wrong, then at the
very least, maybe we'll get to read some juicy e-mails from his girlfriend or something.” She grinned.

“Eww!” I got up and followed her, laughing. It helped me pretend, all the way down the long hallway to Dr. Ames's office, that we were really there to snoop for juicy e-mails.

“Shoot.” Sarah jiggled the door handle. “It's locked.” She hopped down the hall to the next door, already ajar—“But this one's not!”—and pushed it open. The room was warm, the window open again, and afternoon sun reflected off Dr. Gunther's nameplate on the desk. I stepped inside and paused. My stomach twisted.

“Sarah, maybe this isn't a good idea.” I tried to make light of it. “I mean, think about Dr. Gunther. Who would write
him
juicy e-mails?”

“Ha!” She slipped behind the desk.

“Seriously, what if they catch us?”

“Dr. Gunther's going to be gone a while; you don't get anywhere fast in the swamp. And Dr. Ames must be settled in the lab by now.”

“What if he comes back?” My own voice echoed in my ears. Pain was building behind my eyes. Just a little, but I knew another headache was coming. I squeezed my eyes shut.

When I opened them, Sarah was poking at the computer on Dr. Gunther's desk. “Let's see . . . ,” she said, clicking the mouse.

Even with the window open, Dr. Gunther's office smelled like an old man—all stale breath and antique books. I walked to the window and took a deep gulp of fresh air. I couldn't believe I'd broken into this office with her. All I'd wanted was to come to
the clinic and get better. What if we got caught? And sent home? I'd have headaches forever. I'd never get my old life back. “Sarah, this is dumb.”

“Hold on. I want to see what's here.”

I leaned against the shelf under the windows, and my eyes fell on the huge frame of butterflies on the wall.

Aunt Beth and Kathleen gave me a butterfly field guide when they took me to tag monarchs last year, and I recognized one of Dr. Gunther's butterflies as a blue morpho. Next to it was an even bigger butterfly, with a bright yellow body and shining green-blue-black wings. Aunt Beth had pointed that one out to me in the book—the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing—because it's endangered.

“That big one's gorgeous,” Sarah said, glancing up from the computer.

“It's rare, too,” I said. “I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be protected.”

Sarah walked past the butterflies to some framed photographs closer to the door. “Whoa! Look at Dr. Gunther in this one; he used to have actual hair and not that bad comb-over.”

The photograph showed a ribbon-cutting ceremony for I-CAN four years ago, when it first opened. I recognized the front entryway. Dr. Ames was there, standing next to some older guy in a three-piece suit. He had the scissors for the ribbon cutting and must have been important. Dr. Gunther stood across from them, a strained look on his face. Sarah was right; he did have more hair back then.

I turned back to the butterflies too fast and felt so dizzy I had to reach out for the wall. “Sarah, let's go.”

“Come see this first.” She hurried back to the desk and turned the computer monitor toward me.

Dr. Gunther only had three folders next to the hard drive icon on his screen: Video Feed, Subjects, and Research.

“This Video Feed folder is full of dated video files.” Sarah clicked on one from earlier this week, and a grainy image of the empty swimming pool appeared. Insects buzzed and a bird screeched—an osprey, it sounded like. Some little bird landed on one of the lounge chairs. “Security cameras or something. Not exactly great TV,” Sarah said, clicking on a different date.

There were more video feeds from the pool area and the hallways.

“Oh!” Sarah suddenly looked horrified. “What if there are cameras in our
rooms
!”

“They couldn't do that.” I clicked on a few more, then looked around the office. “The cameras aren't hidden or anything. Look. . . .” I pointed to one in the corner. And then I froze. “That means it's recording us right now.”

Sarah held her breath for a second, then waved her hand at the camera. “Nah, we're fine. We have security cameras at my school, but my friend Claire's dad is the principal, and he says no one ever looks at the video unless there's a theft or vandalism or something.”

That made sense. I took a deep breath and clicked open another video file. This one was of Ben on a treadmill, Dr. Ames at his side like a coach. “He's started exercise therapy already? I thought Dr. Ames said we had to wait a few days for Phase Two.”

I felt a twinge of jealousy. I was following all their rules; how come Ben was getting faster treatment?

Sarah shrugged. “They must think he's ready. His chart thing said low risk. Let's look at this one.” She moved the cursor to the Subjects folder. Inside were two subfolders: Past and Current. Inside the Past folder were dozens of files—probably more than a hundred—arranged in alphabetical order. Sarah opened the first one. It was full of MRI images and data for someone named Jenna Aberdeen, whose last scan was dated four months ago.

“She must have been a patient,” Sarah said.

“Who got better. And went home. Sarah, maybe we're overreacting. Maybe—”