Lost time, p.8
Lost Time, page 8
And that’s how the next phase of my life begins.
∞
Shannon waves at me and bounds across the park, her backpack and blond ponytail bouncing. She plops down in the grass in front of my wheelchair and shrugs off her schoolbooks. “Hey, Mr. C. ’Sup?”
Ever since I found out that Isabel was dead, I haven’t had a minute to myself. After Lucy administers my grueling morning workout, I shower—which is a luxury around here, and one that I appreciate—and then I help her out around the clinic: folding laundry, washing dishes, and doing other simple tasks. I eat lunch in the cafeteria with the D-2s, and afterwards Becky wheels me out to the park during recess, ostensibly to “get some fresh air.”
I spend the afternoons looking through old internet reports on Doomsday and reading what passes for the news now. Lani picks me up for dinner at six, after which I spend the evenings helping the D-1s with math and science homework or teaching folks how to program a computer—Shannon being my best student.
The nights are still long and painful, but I feel like all my wounds are healing.
I set down my book and wave. “Hi, Shannon. How was history class?”
“Same old, same old,” she says, slightly out of breath. “I don’t know why they make us learn about old white guys. It’s not like it matters now. Who cares about a bunch of dead presidents and their failed wars?”
“You got me there,” I say. “Any news on your petition to get a dog?”
“No, but Mom says she’ll vote in favor. She thinks having a dog in the Bub would be good for us. And Madders says they have a pregnant lassie in the Golden Gate bubble. He promised he’d fly up there to pick up a puppy if the Bub votes yes!”
“You mean a collie.”
She wrinkles up her forehead. “Collie?”
“Lassie is a dog’s name. Not a dog breed.”
“Yeah, sure, Mr. C. Lassie, collie, whatever. She’s the only one of her kind, so there’s not much sense in calling her a breed, now is there?”
I chuckle. “You’re absolutely right.”
“They bred her with a Herman Shepherd from the Ashland Bub, and they’re calling the puppies sheplies.”
I don’t bother to correct her. “That sounds doggone good.”
She laughs. “I’ll have to tell Mindy that one.” She hops up and moves my wheelchair six inches to the left. “You’re s’posed to stay in the Octagon, Mr. C, otherwise you won’t get any benefit from the sunlight, and you need calcitriol—you know, vitamin D—for your bones to heal properly.” She looks up at one of a dozen transparent areas of quartz on the dome and then down at the circle of light on the grass. When she’s satisfied that I’m exactly in the middle, she plops back down in front of me.
“Do you know what happened to your father?” It’s something I’ve been meaning to ask Lani but haven’t gotten up the nerve to ask. “Did he not make it inside a bubble?”
“Oh, Mom never talks about him, but I think he died around the same time as her accident. In any case, I don’t think she minds being single. She has me and Lucy and the Millers, and with her work at the hospital and the classes she teaches, she doesn’t have much time for anyone else.” She steals a glance at me. “Except maybe you. And you know she’s never been carded...”
“Right.”
Her face lights up. “Hey, did you hear that someone in Japan is looking for surviving cats so she can store their DNA and maybe even breed some kittens? Mom says the gene pool isn’t large enough to sustain a population, even if there weren’t resource issues, but I think she’s wrong. Someday we’ll figure out how to go back Outside, and then we’ll open the vault in the Rockies—and the one in Norway too—and reconstruct a whole world full of lions and tigers and bears.”
“Oh my!” I add. “What’s in the vaults?”
“They’re gene banks, silly. Some buff scientists put them together when things started to go pudding. Mom says they have multiple copies of every kind of mammal, and enough human genotypes to repopulate the whole earth.”
Isabel’s project. Mierda, maybe she did manage to save mankind.
Shannon gives me a worried look. “You okay, Mr. C?”
“Yes, Shannon, I’m fine. Just thinking about all those creatures that landed in the pudding.” I take a deep breath and let it out, missing Iz. “Maybe someday you can conjure up a jaguarundi for me?”
“Sure thing.” Her face falls a bit. “If I knew what it was…”
“It’s a small cat from Costa Rica. You could probably find a picture of it on the net. It’s very clever, resourceful, and cute—just like you.”
She blushes. “As soon as I find a photo of a jaguarundi, I’ll draw you a picture—to remind you of home.”
My heart skips a beat. “That would be awesome.”
She bites her lip. “I know I should have told you sooner, but I let Jake and Tommy—and Jeremy too—sign my card. Mom says I have to wait until I’m twenty-five to decide on which one first, and by that time you’ll be like fifty—so I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t wait for you.”
“Of course not,” I say with a smile. “They all seem like nice guys, and I’m sure they’re looking forward to practicing with you.”
She looks relieved.
“But,” I say. “I hope we can still be friends?”
“Of course, silly!” She tosses a handful of grass at me. “And you do know that Mom has the hots for you, right?”
Her assertion makes me uncomfortable, and I shift in my wheelchair.
“It’s true, Mr. C. You and Mom make a great couple, and she doesn’t mind at all that you can’t walk or don’t remember anything.”
“Good to know,” I say to fill the silence. “So, did you decide on your final project? Last I heard, your mother had vetoed your idea to breed rats for pets.”
“You mean I haven’t told you yet?” Her face lights up. “I’m working on fixing the old KRMs, you know, the Kirk-Hudson rebreather masks!”
“That sounds exciting.”
“Yeah, when I first told Mom, she was all ‘What a great idea, Shannon!’ and ‘Won’t that be fun to investigate?’” She shrugs. “But she doesn’t think I’ll actually come up with anything useful.”
“Perhaps she was just trying to protect you?”
“From what? Gluing my fingers together?”
I laugh. “You do have a point.”
“We have tons of KRMs in storage—more than enough for everyone in the Bub.” She sits up straighter. “And I plan to fix them all.”
“Wow. If the masks are all broken, how did you rescue me?”
“Using a biosuit, of course.” She sits up straighter. “But we only have a few of those, and you have to have special training to use one.”
“What if something went wrong in the bubble and everyone had to evacuate?”
“Well, we’d smush people into emergency habitats—but those don’t have much food or water, and you can only use them once.”
“Yikes. Sounds like you need to fix the rebreathers ASAP.”
“Or possibly sooner. Madders—he’s the man who actually invented the KRMs—told me he once stayed Outside for three whole months while sealing the Lou. That’s the biodome in St. Louis.”
“Mierda. Why didn’t anyone try to fix them?”
“Everyone just assumed the filters were too old. I remember people who wore masks Outside started dropping like bugs, and as you can imagine, the news spread pretty quick. There were even some places that didn’t have biosuits, and they couldn’t go Outside anymore.”
“Oh, my.”
“And besides, masks are really hard to test.” She pantomimes breathing through her hands and then choking to death.
“Got it.”
“Madders forgot about them until I got the idea to do some testing, and he said there were tons of masks at Dulce Base, so maybe I could fix all of those too, and we could send them to the guys stuck inside.”
“Good idea.”
“Anyway, Madders was going to talk to the Kirks about it, but I don’t want their help. Mom says that Kirk woman didn’t do anything with the original mask. She just slapped her name on it so she could look important.”
“Sounds like our friend Mr. Kirk found himself the perfect woman.”
“He did? She doesn’t sound very nice to me.”
I shake my head. “I was just kidding, Shannon.” Sort of.
She gives me a strange look. “Have you met Mr. Kirk?”
“Nope, never had the pleasure.”
“Well, I may get to meet him soon. I’ve applied for an internship at C-Bay. That’s the biodome on the East Coast where they have the biggest university and the best hospital.”
“How would you get all the way to the East Coast?”
“Duh. In an airplane. Once I’m old enough, I’m going to fly to C-Bay and figure out a way for us to live Outside—people and animals. Maybe if you and Mom get married, you could come live there too.”
I laugh uncomfortably. “I already promised to marry someone else, Shannon.”
She crosses her arms and looks up at me, her jaw set. “But if you didn’t get married, then it doesn’t count!” She glances up at my face and then flushes. “Oops. That didn’t come out right. Mom says your girlfriend is, um, well you know...” She studies the grass around her feet.
“Yeah, I know.”
She takes off her sweater and stuffs it in her backpack. “I’m always putting my toes in my mouth. I try to say the right thing, but the words don’t come out right.”
“It’s okay, Shannon. I know you meant well. Your mother’s a wonderful woman, and I’m very glad I met both of you.” I swallow. “But I’m not ready for anything serious right now.”
“Well Mom said you’d be running like a marathoner—whatever that is—in a month or two, and it would be good for you to find someone else to love.”
That one catches me by surprise, and I don’t have a ready response.
She doesn’t seem to notice. “And she said your boy parts work just fine too.”
Lani appears from behind me. “What was it that I supposedly said?”
Shannon jumps up and grabs her backpack. “Hi, Mom. I was just telling Mr. C about the puppies in GG.”
Lani looks at me, her eyebrows raised, but doesn’t comment.
“Is it okay if I take him back to his room?” Shannon asks in her best cherub voice. “I’ll make sure Becky knows he’s there.”
The doc glances at me and I nod.
“Okay,” Lani says. “But don’t be late for your afternoon classes. If you’re going to be an engineer, you’ll need to know calculus.”
“I’ve got it covered, Mom. I’m not a bimbo.”
“Shannon Malia Kai!”
“Oops,” she says under her breath. “Sorry, Mom. Of course I’ll be on time. Thanks for reminding me.”
“Apology accepted.” Lani glances over her shoulder at me. “I’ll be by in an hour to check on you, Mr. C.”
“Oh, you’ve no need to worry, Dr. K. Shannon has been taking very good care of me.” I wink at Shannon, and she grins.
Lani stands with her arms crossed, watching Shannon undo the wheel lock and turn the chair around. As Shannon pushes me back across the park, I hear Lani mumble, “Boy parts, ko’u akole.”
Chapter 12
Lani: Suit Yourself
I knock on Diego’s door and then walk in, forcing down my apprehension. It’s high time he got back to living his life.
He looks up from his laptop and smiles at me. “Hey, you. You’re early, but I’m not complaining.”
I realize that the cuts on his face have finally healed, and he looks even more handsome now—particularly when he smiles.
Enough with the wishful thinking. The last time you let your emotions cloud your judgment, you ended up alone and pregnant.
“I have a surprise,” I say and hold up the sports bag I spent the day putting together.
“New legs?”
“Nope,” I say. “But something almost as good.”
He gives me the eyebrow, and I laugh.
“I had to guess your size, so I hope it fits.” I sit down next to him on a small sofa and set the bag on my lap.
“It looks perfect,” he says, the corner of his mouth rising, “but to be honest, I’ve never worn a sports bag before.”
“Very funny, Diego.”
He closes his laptop, sets it on the small coffee table, and scoots closer to me.
The soft scent of his aftershave reaches me, and I can feel the heat of his body next to mine.
Don’t go there, Lani. There’s no way he’s falling for you—not now, not ever.
I glance over at him, but he’s lost in thought, his gaze still on me.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Yep, just thinking. Thanks again for getting me the sofa. It’s perfect.”
“You’re welcome. Given that you’re stuck here until we get sector four repaired, I thought it might make things a bit more... homey.”
“So what’s the surprise?”
I rummage around in the bag and then hold up the swimsuit. “Voilà!”
He stares at it, looking like I just offered him three-day-old roadkill.
“It’s a bathing suit, Diego.” I try not to frown. “We’re going swimming.”
He wrinkles up his nose. “In a swimming pool?”
“No, in the bathtub.”
“Hah.”
I tap his arm. “The bones are healed, but the muscles have atrophied, so we’re going to start in the water.”
“Without any casts?”
“It tends to work better that way, Sherlock.” I get his wheelchair and bring it over next to the sofa. “Come on, time to try out those new legs.”
It takes a minute, but we manage to get him off the sofa and into the wheelchair without incident.
“You’re sure... this is a good idea?” He’s still breathing hard from the exertion.
“Positive,” I say, hoping I’m right. I pick up the swimsuit. “Will you need help getting this on? Once we get the casts off, I mean?”
“No, doctor.” He snatches it out of my hand and then holds it up. “Where I come from, this does not qualify as male bathing attire.”
“Well, beggars can’t be choosers. But if you want to go in your birthday suit, be my guest. I’m sure the rest of the biodome will be thrilled to get a look at your boy parts.”
“So how do you know about my boy parts?” he asks.
“Physician’s privilege.”
“Of course. Don’t want to tip your hand and appear unprofessional.”
“Are you implying that my interest in you is anything but professional?”
“Not at all. You’re the most selfless person I’ve ever met—and also the most secretive.” He puts the swimsuit back into the bag. “I’m just saying you should be careful. I may not have disfiguring burn scars to hide behind, but I’m still damaged merchandise.”
“Well at least we have that in c-common,” I say. “Except—as you so shrewdly pointed out—I look the part.”
“Shit.” He reaches out to me. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“So how did you mean it?”
He shakes his head. “It’s just that I hate being so dependent on you.”
“Because I don’t have a medical degree, or because I’m a woman?”
He shuts his eyes, the muscles in his jaw tight. “Lani, I do care about you—and not just because you saved my life.” He looks up at me. “And I am attracted to you too, perhaps more than you realize, but I’m not ready to jump back into a relationship.”
“Yeah? Who s-says I am?”
Chapter 13
Diego: Over My Head
Except for the two of us, the Rec Center is deserted. Considering how cramped the Bub is since people had to move out of sector four, it’s unnerving.
Like it’ll be when the biodome fails…
Lani leaves me alone in the men’s locker-room, and I spend five uncomfortable minutes impersonating a crippled snake attempting to get back into last year’s too-small skin. When it’s as good as it’s going to get, I wheel myself back into the lobby, hoping the important parts will remain covered.
Lani, who’s wearing a man’s button-down shirt over her one-piece bathing suit, holds the pool door open and then pushes me through. “I hope you don’t mind sandwiches for supper,” she says. “I didn’t want too many spectators, so I figured now would be a good time.”
“Ah. Good idea,” I say, still trying to shake off my embarrassment at the pasty white skin and flabby muscles where the casts used to be.
She rolls me backwards down a long ramp and straight into the pool.
“Shit!” I lift my arms over my head, trying to keep them dry.
“Don’t be a weenie. It’s not cold. It’s refreshing.”
“Refreshing, my ass.”
She laughs and steps around in front of me. She’s not wearing the shirt anymore, and for the first time, I can see the extent of the burn scars that cover the right side of her body.
Who or what did that to her?
I sit there like a bank teller facing Billy the Kid.
A door opens behind me, and I belatedly lower my arms into the water. A minute later, Lucy joins us in the pool. With Lani walking backwards, Lucy pushes the wheelchair forward until the water is up to my armpits, and then Lani lifts me out of the chair.
“Whoa!” I say. “I haven’t used my legs in months!”
“Believe it or not,” Lani says, “I’m aware of that.”
I glare at her, and she stifles a grin.
“Trust me?” she says and gestures with her head. “And Lucy is right behind you.”
Lucy steps around, a life jacket under her arm, and gives a parade wave. “Never lost one on my watch,” she says and starts putting my arm through the vest.
