“What?” Mrs. Sigsby asked. “What did you say?”
Stackhouse shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry. That came into my head—”
“Yes, yes,” Hallas said. “There are a lot of… uh, shall we say loose transmissions in the air today.”
“I know what it was,” Stackhouse said. “I had to get it out, that’s all. It felt like…”
“Choking on food,” Dr. Hallas said matter-of-factly. “The answer to your question, Mrs. Sigsby is… nobody knows.” He tittered and touched the corner of his mouth.
Just get me out of here, she thought again. “Where is Dr. James, Dr. Hallas?”
“In her quarters. Not feeling well today, I’m afraid. But she sends her regards. Hopes you’re well, fit as a fiddle, in the pink, cetra-cetra.” He smiled and did the Shirley Temple thing again—ain’t I cute?
8
In the screening room, Kalisha plucked the cigarette from Nicky’s fingers, took a final puff from the filterless stub, dropped it to the floor, stepped on it. Then she put an arm around his shoulders. “Bad?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“The movie will make it better.”
“Yeah. But there’s always tomorrow. Now I know why my dad was so butt-ugly when he had a hangover. How about you, Sha?”
“Doing okay.” And she was. Just a low throb over her left eye. Tonight it would be gone. Tomorrow it would be back, and not low. Tomorrow it would be pain that would make the hangovers suffered by Nicky’s dad (and her own parents, from time to time) look like fun in the sun: a steady pounding thud, as if some demonic elf were imprisoned in her head, hammering at her skull in an effort to get out. Even that, she knew, wasn’t as bad as it could be. Nicky’s headaches were worse, Iris’s worse still, and it took longer and longer for the pain to go away.
George was the lucky one; in spite of his strong TK, he had so far felt almost no pain at all. An ache in his temples, he said, and at the back of his skull. But it would get worse. It always did, at least until it was finally over. And then? Ward A. The drone. The hum. The back half of Back Half. Kalisha didn’t look forward to it yet, the idea of being erased as a person still horrified her, but that would change. For Iris, it already had; most of the time she looked like a zombie on The Walking Dead. Helen Simms had pretty much articulated Kalisha’s feelings about Ward A when she said anything was better than the Stasi Lights and a screaming headache that never stopped.
George leaned forward, looking at her across Nick with bright eyes that were still relatively pain-free. “He got out,” he whispered. “Concentrate on that. And hold on.”
“We will,” Kalisha said. “Won’t we, Nick?”
“We’ll try,” Nick said, and managed a smile. “Although the idea of a guy as horrible at HORSE as Lukey Ellis bringing the cavalry is pretty farfetched.”
“He may be bad at HORSE but he’s good at chess,” George said. “Don’t count him out.”
One of the red caretakers appeared in the open doors of the screening room. The caretakers in Front Half wore nametags, but down here no one did. Down here the caretakers were interchangeable. There were no techs, either, only the two Back Half doctors and sometimes Dr. Hendricks: Heckle, Jeckle, and Donkey Kong. The Terrible Trio. “Free time is over. If you’re not going to eat, go back to your rooms.”
The old Nicky might have told this over-muscled lowbrow to go fuck himself. The new version just got to his feet, staggering and grabbing a seatback to keep his balance. It broke Kalisha’s heart to see him this way. What had been taken from Nicky was in some ways worse than murder. In many ways.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll go together. Right, George?”
“Well,” George said, “I was planning to catch a matinee of Jersey Boys this afternoon, but since you insist.”
Here we are, the three fucked-up musketeers, Kalisha thought.
Out in the hall, the drone was much stronger. Yes, she knew Luke was out, Avery had told her, and that was good. The complacent assholes didn’t even know he was gone yet, which was better. But the headaches made hope seem less hopeful. Even when they let up, you were waiting for them to come back, which was its own special brand of hell. And the drone coming from Ward A made hope seem irrelevant, which was awful. She had never felt so lonely, so cornered.
But I have to hold on for as long as I can, she thought. No matter what they do to us with those lights and those goddam movies, I have to hold on. I have to hold on to my mind.
They walked slowly down the hall under the eye of the caretaker, not like children but like invalids. Or old people, whiling away their final weeks in an unpleasant hospice.
9
Led by Dr. Everett Hallas, Mrs. Sigsby and Stackhouse walked past the closed doors marked Ward A, Stackhouse rolling the trolley. There were no shouts or screams coming from behind those closed doors, but that sense of being in an electrical field was even stronger; it raced over her skin like invisible mouse feet. Stackhouse felt it, too. The hand not busy pushing Maureen Alvorson’s makeshift bier was rubbing his smooth bald dome.
“To me it always feels like cobwebs,” he said. Then, to Heckle, “You don’t feel it?”
“I’m used to it,” he said, and touched the corner of his mouth. “It’s a process of assimilation.” He stopped. “No, that’s not the right word. Acclimation, I think. Or is it acclimatization? Could be either.”
Mrs. Sigsby was struck by a curiosity that was almost whimsical. “Dr. Hallas, when’s your birthday? Do you remember?”
“September ninth. And I know what you’re thinking.” He looked back over his shoulder at the doors with Ward A on them in red, then at Mrs. Sigsby. “I’m fine, howsomever.”
“September ninth,” she said. “That would make you… what? A Libra?”
“Aquarius,” Heckle said, giving her a roguish look that seemed to say You do not fool me so easily, my lady. “When the moon is in the seventh house and Mercury aligns with Mars. Cetra-cetra. Duck, Mr. Stackhouse. Low bridge here.”
They passed along a short, dim hallway, descended a flight of stairs with Stackhouse braking the trolley in front and Mrs Sigsby controlling it from behind, and came to another closed door. Heckle used his key card and they entered a circular room that was uncomfortably warm. There was no furniture, but on one wall was a framed sign: REMEMBER THESE WERE HEROES. It was under dirty smeared glass that badly needed a dose of Windex. On the far side of the room, halfway up a rough cement wall, was a steel hatch, as if for an industrial meat locker. To the left of this was a small readout screen, currently blank. To the right was a pair of buttons, one red and one green.
In here, the broken thoughts and fragments of memory that had troubled Mrs. Sigsby ceased, and the fugitive headache which had been hovering at her temples lifted a bit. That was good, but she couldn’t wait to be out. She seldom visited Back Half, because her presence was unnecessary; the commander of an army rarely needed to visit the front lines as long as the war was going well. And even though she felt better, being in this bare round room was still flat-out horrible.
Hallas also seemed better, no longer Heckle but the man who had spent twenty-five years as an Army doctor and won a Bronze Star. He had straightened, and he had stopped touching his finger to the side of his mouth. His eyes were clear, his questions concise.
“Is she wearing jewelry?”