Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

David out to the tent.

 

He was clenching his jaw by the time they arrived. Wheeling him inside, her eyes darted to Jordan, lying right where she’d left him, not bothered by any of this. Leaving David on the metal gurney, she went about setting up.

 

Jillian stole bedsheets and cut them into strips. She lined up shots of pain medications and muscle relaxants.

 

She administered the doses and braided sheets while she waited for them to take effect. She ignored all the protocol about asking David what he wanted. She would fix him as best she could.

 

He could sue her later. Besides there were surely sunshine laws to cover malpractice during mass human extinctions.

 

When the dosing had done its job, Jillian shifted him to the mattressed bed pushed into the corner by Jordan’s, and warned David what she was doing just moments before she tied him to the frame. She palpated his hip and wished for an x-ray. But with a deep breath of acceptance she diagnosed that the pelvic girdle was broken. Without a team and an anesthesiologist, all she could do was bind it, and they’d have to re-break and re-set it later.

 

With great care Jillian bound his hip as best she could and she went so far as to tie his knee to the bed, thinking she could stabilize it and still be able to reset the tib-fib. She explained as she went. And David was a good soldier, stoic and cooperative, following all her suggestions no matter how bizarre. So she looped a sheet carefully around his foot and ankle and pulled with all her small might, and accomplished nothing.

 

“What did you do?”

 

With lips pressed together in disappointment and thought, she turned back to her patient.

 

“In your language I believe it would be expressed as ‘jack shit’.” She turned away to think.

 

Then tried again. The third time she applied pressure by hanging back on the sheet, the weight of her borne completely by his lower leg, hoping to stretch it far enough that she could settle the snapped bones back into their rightful places. Her feet climbed, both leaving the floor, and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to set his bones before she dislocated her own shoulders from the effort. But at last she managed enough pull and she felt her strength overcome the tension of his muscles and let the bones slide.

 

The hard part was in letting his leg slip back together gently. She couldn’t afford to have them snap back into place and splinter or jam or, god forbid, miss and slide past each other again, causing more muscle tearing and tissue damage as they went. So her strength drained as she fought for control, and with a last sigh she realized the muscles were no longer fighting her. The bones had found each other again. She could let go.

 

Stopping to breathe for a few minutes, she make a quick makeshift splint then set about replacing Jordan’s IV bag. It was non-exerting work. David’s shoulder would have to wait, she didn’t have even that simple procedure in her right now. Plus he was so doped up, it wasn’t like he would know.

 

Jillian stayed clinical. She went to the cafeteria and fetched a few bananas, bottles of juice, sandwiches, and even a few cookies. With arms full, she wound her way through the slumbering tents back to David and Jordan.

 

David asked how the penguins were doing.

 

“Fine.” She didn’t look up. From the penguins question and the slightly slurred quality of speech the man was either seeing the birds or believed he was at the north pole.

 

Jordan didn’t say anything. Just quietly submitted to the hand she laid palm down across his chest to be sure that he continued breathing.

 

Turning back to David, she rolled him, taking advantage of the muscle relaxants. With careful explanations that he ignored, Jillian educated him about the procedure. But the medications were working better than she had expected. He was of no help whatsoever. He agreed to everything, but couldn’t even sit still. Worse, he tried to help - insisting on turning, sitting, and generally being a nuisance.

 

She promised him a cookie if he stayed still, and that, of all things seemed to work. But it didn’t stop him from mooning at her like a lovesick calf.

 

“You know you’re beautiful.”

 

What do you say to that? If you say ‘no’ he’ll just go on. “Yes.”

 

“Can I touch you?”

 

“You have no idea what you’re saying.” After she popped his shoulder into place she fitted him with a sling and proceeded to adjust it. Leaning over him she added an extra Velcro strap, thinking that goofboy might just do something stupid if he wasn’t tied down.

 

“I know exsactly what I’m sssaying. This medissine just took away my concerns about sssaying it.”

That was interesting. “What were those concerns, David?”

 

“That jou would slllap me.” His tongue sounded thick, but that would pass as he sobered up. As would this.

 

“You know, I think that was a good concern. – Hey!” She smacked his hand away from her butt, thinking that maybe a good slap was warranted. If she didn’t leave a mark he’d never know better.

 

“I feel this way about you all the time.” A conspiratorial look on his face, he leaned far enough forward to risk falling off the gurney, which was the last thing she needed. God, the man was a danger to himself.

 

“Yeah, well why don’t you talk it over with the penguins?”

 

Confusion. Blessed confusion. He tried to gesture with his disabled arm, and seemed even more perturbed that it didn’t move. “Where did they go?”

 

“They’re visiting the back of your eyelids, David. You have to lie down and close your eyes for a long time.

 

The penguins will …” This had to be good … “peck you when it’s time to open your eyes.”

 

“Yeah.” He nodded, in complete agreement before slowly laying himself back. Closing his eyes carefully, he waited for the penguins.

 

If he hadn’t been the last man on earth, she would have laughed. Instead she went outside looking for another gurney, and hauled it in. Keeping her gaze close to the ground, Jillian ignored the suits and med staff that were still visible in white and black against the grass. Those she hadn’t moved yet. They would have to survive another night. She was exhausted.

 

It was the interrogation room of nightmares. Borne of too many cop movies. The light shone in his eyes obscuring everything else in the world.

 

He didn’t even remember the world. Just that there were questions.

 

Voices were asking him things he couldn’t answer. He pushed his arm up to shield his face, but it wouldn’t come. He was rewarded with a sharp pain every time he tried to lift it. And he couldn’t distinguish who was holding him down, who was speaking. Just the glare flooding his vision to the point of pain.

 

Jordan squeezed sore eyes tight to stop it, but the red glow permeated his eyelids, and snuck between every time he moved. The voice wouldn’t shut up. He made a noise, the sound was painful to his own ears but it reoriented him.

 

Gravity was down, behind him. He was on his back, in bed.

 

With each time he squinted, he recognized more and more in the blobs around him. The light was sunlight, not artificial. The voice was to his left. The pain was in his left hand.

 

He moved it, snapping it painfully against something metal.

 

The bedrail.

 

He moaned.

 

“Jordan!”

 

Her voice pierced the haze.

 

Jillian.

 

It was all he got to think before he felt her hands, soft and cool, on his arm. Her voice was asking for his open eyes. He tried to say her name, and was quite certain that he didn’t achieve it.

 

But she responded like he had. “That’s right, I’m here. It’s good to see you awake. I was getting worried.”

 

Don’t worry about me.

 

But he couldn’t form single words, let alone the whole thought.

 

It.

 

He’d had it.

 

And he’d woken up. The realization expanded his lungs to full capacity, to gasp in surprise at his own survival. With the dawning came the idea that he had to get his eyes open no matter the cost. He fought the burning and the low, shallow sound that accompanied the forced vision. But he waited. And the first blob came into focus.

 

It was David, on the gurney beside him who had provided the interrogation, and was still at it. “Abellard! You are about the last one up. Don’t worry, I kept our girl here company.”

 

Jillian’s voice cut through the haze, clearer than anything else around him. “Yeah, you weren’t much good as anything else.”

 

“Ooh, baby, that hurts.”

 

As did the banter that they shared when he couldn’t even see. But Jordan forced his eyelids wide, waiting while she became visible. Still a little fuzzy, Jillian’s smile was obvious.

 

Rapid blinks brought the world into sharp relief one painful frame at a time. The white of the canvas, bleeding in sunlight. The silver of the bed bars, used for children and the elderly. Or the comatose.

 

He considered asking to have them put down so he could feel human again, but the face that came into view was David’s and in a blink Jordan realized what was wrong. It looked like David had gotten in bad with the mob. “David?”

 

“Yeah?” David shrugged, with only one shoulder. “In your professional opinion I am fucked-up, huh?”

 

“What happened?”

 

Jordan missed the first part of the explanation, simply because he was shocked he had spoken and David had answered. Despite the feeling that his mouth was stuffed with moldy gauze, he was articulate.

 

“-down the stairs. The rest is pretty obvious.”

 

“Stairs?” He tried to lift his head, and it took a moment to realize the blue that had settled beside him was Jillian in her scrubs, her palm flat against his forehead holding him immobile.

 

“Don’t try to sit up yet.”

 

But he wanted to hear about these mythical stairs that had started wailing on David while he himself had slumbered on.

 

David pointed with his unslung arm, still dressed in doctors scrubs, although by now Jordan was sure that everyone knew he wasn’t a physician. “The last flight. I’d just woken up and was weak. I was trying to get to Jillian. And I slipped.” His finger gestured beyond the tents and Jordan recalled the long, tall stairwell that led up to the classrooms on top of the hill.

 

“You fell down the stairs?”

 

The world was undergoing a phenomenal change, the likes of which had not been witnessed by humans of any kind before. And David fell down the stairs?

 

Jillian’s voice added in. “He was basically useless. Which sucked because he and I were the only ones awake for two days. We came right out of it.”

 

His gut twisted, although in relief or fear, he was uncertain. “You were immune.”

 

“Well, we went under. I don’t know that I’d call it immunity.” Again she pressed her hand flat to him, this time across his chest, and it was embarrassingly easy for her to push him back down. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been trying to sit up. “I did blood tests out the wazoo… we’ve got nothing that I can find.”

 

The way Jordan figured it, if she couldn’t find the pattern, it didn’t exist.

 

Licking the roof of his mouth, he tried to ready it to speak again. But Jillian saw him and went into action. Propping the head of his bed slightly she pushed his pillow into place and handed him a small cup of juice.

 

Positively heavenly, it made up for the abrasion of the invalid treatment. If he’d been strong enough he would have told her to quit. But, well, that was the point wasn’t it?

 

After a second cup, he found his voice and spoke over the questions David was still asking.

 

“Who else?”

 

Her chest moved visibly. “Well …”

 

He could see the gears. She needed to find a place to start and that meant there was a lot.

 

“I can’t get Landerly on the phone. I think he’s under.” She busied her hands, drawing a dose