False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(100)

He was one of the most attractive men I’d ever seen. I hadn’t grown used to how everyone was perfect in the city yet. I kept doing double takes as we went down the corridors of the hospital on our way here. It almost made me wonder if there were no humans in the city, and everyone was a robot. There were differences in height and some in weight (though nobody was too thin or too overweight), but everyone had unnaturally symmetrical features.

The doctor kept staring at where we were conjoined, but I guess he’d have reason to, considering what he was proposing. Everything we saw was new and strange. So shiny. I didn’t know how to describe any of it or what any of it was called. I missed my parents and wished they were here with us. Mana-ma must have realized what they’d done. How would she punish them?

“You have to go into surgery immediately,” the doctor said, cutting right to the heart of it (ha, ha). When he spoke, I kept getting distracted by the pretty curve of his lips, the way the blond stubble was just beginning to come in on his cheeks.

“What will you do?” Taema asked, evidently less blinded by his beauty.

A flash of emotion crossed the doctor’s face. Discomfort? It was gone before I could tell.

“How much do you know about life in San Francisco?” he asked.

I remember thinking it was a strange sort of thing to start with. I thought he’d talk about the intricacies of whatever he was going to do to us. Though it’s not like I knew what doctors did. I’d never met one before.

“Only a little,” I said.

“Well,” he began. “I have read up on where you’ve come from. It must feel almost as if you’ve traveled into the future.”

It sort of did, though I hadn’t really thought of it like that. We hadn’t seen enough of this new future yet.

We nodded noncommittally.

“There are no cases like yours anymore,” he said, and I could tell he was choosing his words with care. “The fact that you’ve survived in relatively good health as thoracopagus twins with rudimentary medical care is extraordinary. You therefore have a choice to make. We can operate and fix you, but the team I’m working with wish to separate you. Two separate hearts. Two separate bodies.”

I felt what little blood there was left in my face rush away. Separated? Of course we’d thought about it, but we’d never considered it a real possibility. My feelings were all tangled.

“The way San Francisco is now, you would perhaps find it very … challenging to remain together. People would not be cruel, necessarily, but you’d be stared at wherever you went. It would be difficult. Very difficult. I tried to convince them to let you stay together, if you choose, but they wouldn’t agree to it. And I can’t do it alone, not even with the help of drones. I’ll leave you to discuss, but there isn’t much time. We need to operate, and soon.”

He nodded at us and left, closing the door behind him.

“We have to do it,” Taema said.

“I don’t think we have to do anything.”

“The team won’t operate if we opt to stay together. They just won’t do it. But they won’t let us die, either. That doctor made it seem like a choice, but I don’t think it’s really a choice at all.” She saw through it all.

“Do you want to separate?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Not really. Or I wish we had more time to decide. We don’t. I do know I want us both to live.”

She made it sound so simple. “OK then.”

“Yeah?” She seemed as scared as I was.

We sat in silence, holding hands, until the doctor returned. We told him our decision. He seemed relieved—he could pretend it was our choice instead of taking it away from us.

The doctor explained what they’d do to us—give us new, mechanical hearts, restructure our sternums and part of our ribs and chest (despite everything, I still remember being excited by the thought of finally having proper boobs), straighten my spine because it was a little crooked. We didn’t have time to process it much, because they hauled us into surgery right away, put us under, and then I woke up alone.

I remember that part so clearly. I spoke about it with Taema, sometimes. How very wrong it’d seemed, to wake up and not have anyone else in the room. How alien. I couldn’t take the silence, so I’d worked myself out of the foreign machines and found my way to her.

We always find our way to each other. The first thing I did when I woke up from the surgery was find my other half.

This time, Taema will find her way back to me.





THIRTY-ONE

TAEMA

When I wake up, I think I’m in the Chair.

I thrash against the covers, crying out. The machines around me beep. I have the fuzzy, floating feeling associated with pain medicine. I realize that I’m not in a Zeal or brainload Chair, but I still can’t place it. Hospital? The last time I was in a hospital was ten years ago, when I woke up alone for the first time in my life.

I’m alone again.

Screens surround the bed, all of them showing different parts of me—my steady heartbeat, my blood pressure, my brain activity. An IV stands sentry beside me, pumping nutrition and fluids into my veins. I can’t sit up. I’m too weak. What happened?

I was shot.

My hand rises, hovering over my chest. I have bandages. I remember the bloom of pain, shooting straight through me, more painful than being hit by dream lightning.