The Rising(13)
Not him. He was breathing just fine, thank you. All that conditioning, all that roadwork. He could run five miles on a cool day while barely breaking a sweat.
How could he be looking straight up? Why did he feel so small, so weak?
“Hitse marwa vesu luvi…”
“Alex?”
A hand squeezed his arm.
“Alex?”
Someone calling his name.
“Open your eyes, Alex. Look at me.”
“Hitse marwa vesu luvi!”
His voice again, the words having no meaning to him.
“Alex!”
His arm was hurting now; someone was squeezing it so tight. Alex opened his eyes.
And saw the sallow-faced man at his bedside. Ridiculously tall, his head almost even with the ceiling, as if he were made of rubber and someone had stretched him out. His thin, knobby, skeletal fingers dug into Alex’s arm until the nails cut through his skin and the fingers sank inward, disappearing.
Alex gasped, a bright flash erupting before his eyes, the monitoring machines hooked up starting to beep and screech.
“Alex!”
When his vision cleared, the tall man had turned to wisps of black air wafting upward, the doctor standing where he’d been, clutching Alex’s arm with all of his fingers still showing. His parents jabbered away in Chinese, their words making no more sense than the strange language he’d heard himself speak.
“Let’s get you that CT scan,” the doctor was saying, his gelled gray hair looking chiseled onto his scalp. “Stat,” he added to a nurse standing nearby.
TWO
VISITORS
There is nothing permanent except change.
—HERACLITUS
12
A SPARK
SAM STEPPED OUT OF the California Pacific Medical Center elevator early Saturday afternoon and nearly collided with Cara, who was in the midst of a text.
“Oh, hey,” she said, barely slowing her thumbs.
“How’s Alex?”
“Great. Fine.” She hit SEND and spoke over the whoosh that followed. “How’s the test coming?”
“About that—”
“Don’t disappoint me, Sam,” Cara said, a sharp edge creeping into her voice. “Don’t disappoint us. I told everyone in the CatPack not to bother studying because I knew you wouldn’t let us down. You’re not going to let us down, are you?”
Sam felt her convictions turn to Jell-O as she stepped out of the elevator. “No.”
Cara hugged Sam lightly. “E-mail me later and tell Alex I said hi.”
“You just saw him yourself.”
The cab doors started to close. “You know what I mean,” Cara said, looking down at her phone again.
Sam turned and walked away, shaking her head. She found Alex’s single room all the way down the hall on the right and entered through the open door after knocking.
“You’re kidding, right?” Alex asked, propped up in the hospital bed with a disbelieving glare fastened Sam’s way.
“How do you know I didn’t just stop by to see how you were doing?”
“Because I recognize the textbooks through your backpack. How do you squeeze so much in that thing?”
“Practice, just like you.”
“Speaking of which…”
“What?” Sam asked him.
“My parents told me they saw you here last night.”
“I didn’t want Cara to be alone.”
“I heard she left after a few minutes, which would be more than she just spent with me.”
“It was after we heard you were doing okay, that you could move your limbs and everything.”
“I’m sure that was a great comfort to her.”
“Trouble in paradise?” Sam asked, playing dumb as she unslung the backpack from her shoulder.
“Maybe that hit last night knocked some sense into me. Was she always like this?”
“Only since first grade.”
“You think I’d be used to it by now.”
“Resigned, at least.” Sam eased the physics textbook from her backpack and laid it down on Alex’s bed. “Ready to get some work done?”
“I got wrecked last night, in case you didn’t know. I can’t work today. I’ve got a headache.”
“You felt well enough to visit with Cara.”
“That’s what gave me the headache. And I’m doped up.” Alex rolled his eyes, made himself look woozy. “See?”
She regarded the pouch feeding liquid into his arm. “Normal saline solution to keep you hydrated. Sorry.”
“Like you know everything.”
“More than you,” Samantha said. “That’s why I’m the tutor. Do you remember where we left off?”
“My head hurts. I can’t do this today. I had a CT scan.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“They shot me up with something.”
“It’s called contrast medium dye,” Samantha told him, brushing the wavy brown hair from her face. “It makes the scan clearer.”
“Know what it showed?”
“Something bad?”
“Nothing.” Alex smiled. “Turns out my head’s empty. No brain at all.”