The Ones We're Meant to Find(26)
MIZUHARA, KASEY, intoned the copterbot as they lifted off the ground. HOME LOCATION, CONFIRMED. YOU WILL BE TAKEN TO THE HOSPEL ON STRATUM-10.
The unit complexes diminished beneath them, hedge-maze-like as they rose to the undersky of the overhead stratum. An aperture opened—in that stratum and every subsequent one. The copterbot shot through the eco-city like a bullet. Celia would’ve loved the thrill—had before the crash that claimed their mom and the Coles’ lives. Kasey, less traumatized but also less accident prone, hadn’t seen the appeal then and couldn’t see it now. The ache in her throat spread, gripping her chest. She was out of the copterbot the second it landed, already walking toward the hospel before remembering Actinium.
“Go,” he said when she turned back to him in painfully obvious afterthought.
“Your hand—”
“Needs to be seen in Emergency.” He tilted his head to the side entrance labeled URGENT. “We can reconvene outside.”
Fine by Kasey. Moral support didn’t stitch wounds. He’d live without her. But was it too reptilian of her to accept his plan on the spot? She should at least pretend to care, to ask him—
“I’ll be fine.” Actinium cleared his throat, looking away as Kasey stared. “If that helps.”
Yes, it did. She nodded at Actinium, and strode on. The automatic polyglass doors parted for her. The hospel lobby, with its parquet floors and hanging ferns, was styled much like the Coles’ own unit. They were its founders, in case one couldn’t tell from the wall banner commemorating the upcoming anniversary of their passing, or the sign-in bots stationed along the lobby perimeter. Designed in compliance with the Ester Act, the bots were clunky, their faces featureless and therefore impossible to confuse with any of the human nurses, who attracted incoming patients with their smiles. Not Kasey. She approached the bots first, only to learn that walk-in-appointment scheduling required personalized communication beyond the bots’ authorization levels, forcing her to turn to the reception desk, where three human nurses sat. The air above their heads was unranked. Kasey’s rank was gone too, when she checked. Puzzling—her Intraface labeled the lobby as public domain—until Kasey saw the brass plaque atop the reception desk.
PATIENT CONFIDENTIALITY IS A HUMAN RIGHT
YOUR PRIVACY MATTERS TO US
Patient confidentiality, for all intents and purposes, had killed Celia. Anger flared, hot in Kasey’s throat. It must’ve scorched her voice when she requested to see Dr. Goldstein, because the smile dimmed from the middle nurse’s face. “Reason for visiting?”
“My sister.”
The nurse waited, then sighed when Kasey didn’t elaborate. “Confirm your ID by looking at the red dot please,” she said, swiping a holograph across the reception desk.
Kasey did as she was told, transmitting her rank, name, and residence via retina ID. The system approved her. Her Intraface downloaded Dr. Goldstein’s soonest appointment slot and suite number. She was good to go.
“Wait,” said the nurse, then reviewed Kasey’s info as well. Seemed to defeat the purpose of a secure retina feed, but Kasey kept that thought to herself. Maybe this was the extra attention people craved, so she said nothing. Did nothing as the nurse paused, mid-review.
And tapped the nurse to her left.
It all happened in a matter of seconds. The micro-conversation (It’s her—Who?—Kasey Mizuhara) conducted in a whisper, barely audible to the human ear, but human ears weren’t what Kasey was worried about.
Like clockwork, the first reporter holo-ed in, alerted by the geolocation alert on Kasey’s spoken full name. A dozen others followed, the public domain lobby a field day while Kasey, stuck in the flesh, couldn’t log out. The elevator bank, labeled as private domain by her Intraface, was her only escape. She made for it, cutting through the semitransparent horde.
“Kasey! Kasey!” Thankfully they couldn’t touch her—but then a question grabbed Kasey by the throat. “How are you feeling now that they’ve found the boat?”
She didn’t stop moving—didn’t change her outputted speed or expression.
The press excelled at extrapolating.
“KASEY MIZUHARA, LAST TO LEARN SISTER’S FATE,” one enunciated as others blinked at her, snapping pictures with their Intrafaces, still snapping—just from a distance—when Kasey reached the elevator bank. She punched the UP button. The elevator arrived. In the privacy of its enclosure, she opened her Intraface. Fifty-five new messages, mostly from Meridian. None from David; didn’t mean anything.
Kasey launched her daily news app. The headline glowed across multiple feeds.
BOAT WASHED ASHORE LANDMASS-660, BODY REMAINS MISSING
She waited to feel something, but felt nothing and realized this:
The boat did not matter.
The boat was inanimate.
The body did not matter. Found or missing, it’d be inanimate by now too, all because of the doctor in Suite 412.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Goldstein said after Kasey barged in, half an hour earlier than her appointment but he’d been seeing no one else. “A shame, what happened to your sister.”
“Why didn’t you treat her?” Kasey demanded.
“Ah.” Dr. Goldstein seemed to visibly shift gears, confusing Kasey. She’d thought they were on the same page. “I’m afraid Celia didn’t authorize disclosure to family members.”