Page 10 of The Undead

“I always try to,” she sighed, and gave me a quick kiss. She was gone in another minute, only the sound of the grandfather clock gonging soulfully in the silence and the distant roar of her Bronco pulling away. I was alone with my fears.

I went back to the bedroom and slathered myself in Deep Heating Rub, then prescribed myself a couple of ibuprofen for the pain. I lay there with pain tugging at every nerve in my body, closed my eyes, and willed myself to relax.

Darkness.

Daydreams.

“Sit down.” Adam offered softly, only it wasn’t an offer anymore. I felt blindly fir the chair—we were in his cubicle somehow—and lowered myself onto it. Adam remained standing, several feet away but menacingly near as he stared at me. He reached up and took his glasses off, folded them meticulously and laid them on top of the folders in his basket.

His face looked remarkably different without them. Leaner. No, older, perhaps, but certainly not as vague and harmless. His eyes had the cold glitter of smooth wet stones.

“What are you thinking?” he asked me. His voice startled me, but I couldn’t help but answer him.

“You look different.”

“I am different.”Adam looked at me another endless minute, then down at the floor He shook his head. I got the impression that he was troubled and tired. “There’s always somebody who sees, eventually. I don’t know why it has to be you, though.”

“Adam?” I whispered. He looked up again, and a cold stab of fear, agonizing in its intensity, shot through my body. I pressed myself back, gasping, against the cushioned back of the chair.

Adam’s eyes had bleached to the color of old bone. As I watched in dumb horror, they edged through the spectrum to red. Red irises, black pupils. They were not human eyes.

“You’re a well-read man, Mike,” Adam continued conversationally, with that cutting edge of weariness in his voice. “Remind you of anything?’”

I woke up crying out, clutching the cover in a grip so tight I was about to rip the strong cotton in two. I didn’t realize how painful that was until I unclenched my fingers and felt the blood rush back into the whitened tissues.

“Dreams,” I assured myself. My voice sounded like I’d been possessed by Fee Wee Herman. I cleared my throat and tried again, “Just dreams.”

No. I didn’t really think so, either.

I showered, shaved, and clothed my abused body in my traditional doctoring outfit: slacks, shirt, coat, and tie. There was a certain robotic determination in my daily ritual; I had to go on, and keep going on, because I couldn’t stand to think, to know. Better to fake it, as a psychiatrist friend once said, till you make it. I didn’t feel like a suit, but having a doctor at your bedside who dressed like he’s still going to med school part time doesn’t inspire patient confidence. Usually, Iliketies. Today, though, the collar felt like an iron ring, and even the ibuprofen hadn’t done more than knock the headache a couple of rungs down the pain ladder.

Some wit had left an anniversary cupcake in my locker. I downed it with my coffee and hoped it hadn’t been laced with strychnine or, worse, Ex-Lax. Prentiss charged into the lounge as I was carefully pulling on my lab coat; she headed straight for the coffee machine, the sure sign of a double shift in progress. She turned to me only after downing a full cup of the stuff.

“Good morning, Michael, glad to see you’re gracing us with your presence today.” Prentiss was black African, raised and educated in England; it still gave some of the good ol’ boys on staff a turn to hear that cultured, upper-crust accent coming from her. “A busy night, I see.”

I froze guiltily, and wondered what she knew. Jesus, I hated not being able to remember things! She blew gently on the surface of her second cup of coffee and smiled.

“Your eyes. Red as blood, Doctor. You might want to put some drops in them or people will think you’ve been carousing all night—which I heartily hope you were.”

“It’s okay. I’m on the Olympic carousing team. We’re doing intensive training.” Feeble, but passable. Prentiss groaned obligingly.

“I’m sure it’s paying off.” Prentiss smiled; she drank the second cup about as quickly as the first, then waved on her way to the door. “Ta. I’m off to prod some more expectant mothers.”

She paused in the doorway, looking at me strangely. I raised my eyebrows in silent inquiry and sipped my coffee.

“You might want to do something about those bags under your eyes, too. Looks like you haven’t slept in days,” she said vaguely, and ducked out. Everybody’s a critic.

Rounds went normally. I ended up having to cover for Eddings, who probably had an emergency on the fourth tee, and as a result I was way behind when the page called for me. I ducked into the nearest nurse’s station, scaring the hell out of a candy striper who was taking advantage of the relative calm to buff her nails, and dialed in.

“Dr. Bowman? This is Leland down in ER. I have a new admission that was labeled for Dr. Eddings and I understand you’re taking his rounds. Want to come look at her?”

“Sure. What’s the trouble?”

“You’d have to talk to Dr. Fikowski about that, he’s the attending …” A smart RN, one who didn’t know me except by name and wasn’t about to get on the bad side of the ER crew. “But he’s busy just now. Do you want to come down?”

“I’m on my way. Thanks, Leland—what’s your first name, by the way?”

“Why?” The question was frosty. It was evidently a new experience for her, which wasn’t surprising; Fikowski had been raised in the old-soldier school of medicine, which treated nurses as one step above an improperly prepared slide specimen.

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