Under the Knife(50)

They’d talked there by the door for fifteen minutes as the costumed crowd pressed around them. She was alone. It turned out she was as big a fan as he, had been since a teenager, but embarrassed to share it with friends and colleagues because she’d wanted to be taken seriously. He’d laughed and told her he understood, and that her secret was safe with him. He invited her to join him, his stomach turning somersaults, and she’d followed him back inside.

Finney’s status among the old-timers granted him special access to quiet, privileged places. That day, and the next few that followed, he’d brought Jenny to these places. They’d watched from the wings as groups of Hollywood actors appeared onstage before screaming throngs, mugging for the crowd, like British royalty waving from high palace windows. They’d wandered among the exhibits, and chatted with artists and writers in intimate VIP-only meet-and-greets. They’d shared their favorite stories and comics with each other, and talked for hours over long dinners.

And they’d fallen in love.

Through unspoken agreement, they’d never told anyone about the seed of their relationship. It was their secret: a shared connection that was (and always would be) theirs alone. He was sure that the others, the ones who had mocked him behind his back, would have snickered and sneered.

Comic books? Pathetic. And she seemed so normal. Just goes to show you can never tell, though. Can you?

He squeezed his eyes shut.

God, how he’d been pulled, helpless, to her life force, like a moth to light. He’d been carried along by blind devotion. It was exhilarating and terrifying, as if he’d been trapped on a tiny raft shooting down a white-water river.

He’d become a different person with her. Before Jenny, he’d thought of love as a biological construct, electrical impulses firing in the circuitry of the brain, neurons communicating through tenuous biochemical conduits in simple, reproducible patterns. She’d shown him that it was something much more. Something he was incapable of analyzing.

Or resisting.

He opened his eyes, wiped a tear from his cheek, and cocked his head to one side.

Something was happening.

The sound of the shower water had stopped.

He leaned forward and scooted his chair toward the desk. On his tablet, a new signal had appeared in the top right corner of the screen. Dr. Wu was using her phone, in which Sebastian had installed a tiny monitoring chip while she’d lain unconscious in the operating room.

He saw the number she was calling.

It made him want to smile.

But he still didn’t permit himself the satisfaction. He didn’t deserve it.

Not yet.

Instead, with a tap of a finger to the tablet, he opened his link to her brain.





RITA


Rita was in the shower, staring at the drain, thinking about nothing but the warmth of the water hitting her neck, when she realized she’d forgotten to call Darcy back.

Again.

She rapped her forehead gently against the tiles below the showerhead.

Dammit.

Finney was really messing with her brain. She couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. Darcy had called her to say she wasn’t feeling well—

Oh God.

She jerked her head up so that the jets of water were slapping her in the face.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

What had Darcy said?

I woke up with a horrible headache this morning.

And Finney had said: Ask her where her head hurts.

Her left side. Her left ear.

Just like Rita.

He’d done something to Darcy, too.

With new dread—

(don’t panic)

—she turned off the water, wrapped herself in a towel from a nearby hook, and stepped out.

Finney had been quiet since she’d returned to the women’s locker room. Not a word as she’d nibbled on a granola bar and a couple of ondansetron antinausea pills she’d scrounged from her locker; or when she’d announced she was going to pee and then hop in the shower, then removed her glasses and stuffed them in her locker before undressing. She’d taken her time, especially in the shower. Screw the drought. It was supposed to rain tonight anyway.

But she knew he was still there, listening. She could sense his presence. The air around her seemed heavy and electric, like before a summer thunderstorm.

The locker room was busier now. Surgeons and nurses periodically filed by her locker. She wanted to ignore them, wished she could crawl into a hole somewhere. But they all knew her, so she managed the obligatory smiles and hellos, scanning their expressions and wondering how many had already heard about her … situation. But none acted like they had.

She opened her locker, took out her phone, and dialed home.

“Checking on your sister, Dr. Wu?” Finney said in her ear.

Shut up, she thought back. She wondered how he knew what she was doing, with her glasses still tucked in the back of her locker under a spare pair of scrubs.

Monitoring my phone calls, maybe?

The line rang several times, then: “Hi, this is Rita. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now—”

She hung up and tried Darcy’s phone.

It went immediately to voice mail.

She took a deep breath.

Calm, lovely Rita. Stay calm.

She dialed home again.

“Hi, this is Rita. I’m sorry—”