Lost in La La Land(62)

Like a coward, a villain, I never told them about la la land. I never told them who I was. And with no one to care for Lana, or about her, there was no one asking questions.

She was a crazy woman, just as her ex-husband had declared her to be.

And all the guilt of her situation rested on me.

She would live out her life in la la land, lost forever, and I would be stuck with the bill. Only I would never have the amount needed to cover it.





Chapter Twenty-Eight


Palm Springs, 2030



I sat in the window, watching the gray day as the rain came down.

Her reflection and mine were so close, our eyes almost matching in the lost stare we both had. Her gown was the difference. That and the gauntness of her face.

Lana sat in the chair, permanently gone. The dose of nanobots was in her, letting her live, freeing her, taking over her brain.

Her mouth was slack and her eyes dead, her skin gray and her nails peeling. Her lips were chapped and if you looked closely enough, they moved. She whispered to you the secrets of where she was. She told you of what she’d done that day, and she let you into the most intimate of moments. Sometimes a flush hit her cheeks or her lips almost puckered.

In her eyes, the day and nights moved at a pace she dictated.

In the real world she withered, sitting in front of a false window where it always rained and it was always gray, neither awake nor asleep, just gone.

It broke my heart to see it, to feel the lifeless touch of her hand in mine.

But at the same time, I told myself, she wanted this. She wanted this end. She wanted her family and her life there.

The real world was lost to her.

Lana Delacroix had climbed the icy banks of the shore, saved by the man who would be swept away seconds later. She met his eyes as he bobbed once, just above the water for a second. She saw the lifetime they might have shared slip away with the freezing muddy water. In that instant, he’d pulled her with him. He’d taken her heart, her whole heart, with him to his icy grave. He’d saved it, protected it in heaven.

But Lana was not like me. She could live without a heart.

She coasted and floated and acted like a person.

She married someone her parents needed her to.

She bought shoes and perfume and had sex, never making love.

She lived as a shell in a half life, already a robot when the nanobots found her.

They had brought her back.

They alone gave her the life she had witnessed once in a flash, before it was taken.

And now Lana sat, alone, truly a robot.

In the reflection of the window, I saw it all. Me here, me sitting next to her. Not holding her hands, but slumped in my seat as well. In one version of this tale, this cautionary tale, we matched, she and I.

My hospital gown was baggy and my hair was thinning. My skin was pale and my heart missing. The spark in my eyes, the one that suggested I had thoughts and feelings and hopes, was gone.

I too sat, staring out at the gray world, the one where it was always raining and cloudy.

I too saw the world passing by in the flecks of my eyes as I lived in my mind, a host to a whole world. A world with a real moon, stars, and sun and a son, daughter, and husband—a whole galaxy living inside the flecks in my eyes.

This was my nightmare. A ghost I had brought out of the machine with me.

Every time it rained, I checked, to ensure I wasn't in the machine. I wasn't sitting in front of the rain wall in the hospital with Lana, lost in the dreariness of it all.

There was always a chance that I’d gone in and this world was a figment of my imagination.

And I wondered what I would want.

I contemplated the syringe in my bag, the one that linked to the tablet next to it. The one that would bring her back.

The one that would ease my guilt.

I could wake her up and she would be forced back to the land of the living, and she could choose how she lived or died.

She wouldn’t be a slave to the games played with her mind, the games she was playing.

It would ease my guilt to know she was alive and whatever harm fell upon her was her choice.

I reached into the bag, touching it, feeling the cold glass of the siren’s holder, and I contemplated for the longest second of my life.

I glanced back at Lana once more, putting the syringe back at the bottom of my purse.

“I am so sorry, Lana. I want to wish we’d never met.” I blinked a single tear and stared out at the rainy day once more.

The selfish truth was that had I not met Lana, I never would have found my heart again. It would still be lost in la la land, buried. I’d had to crawl through the levels of hell to find it; punish myself enough for everything that I’d fucked up, to dig it up from the ashes where I’d left it. But now that I’d found it, I didn't entirely regret sacrificing her to have it back. For the truth in all this, was that I was the evil queen and she was the sleeping princess.

Had I not joined her in the trip to rock bottom, I wouldn't be clawing my way back up to the land of the living.

But she would be different too. Maybe alive. Probably not. But Gilda would be.

Gilda.

Pushing it all away as a cold shiver of self-hatred crossed my body, I squeezed her hand once more before letting go and getting up.

I walked for the door, taking my guilt with me and leaving her the freedom she had so badly wanted. If my peace of mind over what I’d done to her couldn’t be gained through time and healing, it certainly wouldn’t be gained by bringing Lana back.