Resonance - J. B. Everett (best novels to read for students TXT) 📗

and pushed her inside.

 

He saw it with new eyes as she scanned the tiny square of space. The single gurney, the orange light shed by one of the standard space heaters, his duffle bag tossed into the corner, open with scrubs and one pair of jeans flowing out of it and across the once neat line of shoes that sat beside the bag. The countertop covered with squared stacks of folders.

 

Jillian laughed. There wasn’t much energy behind it but it was an honest sound. “I would have known this was yours, it looks just like your desk back home.” With that final statement she shed her jacket and crawled onto the gurney he had lowered to a normal bed height. For a few minutes they were quiet while he hooked her up to every available machine and set the alarms. When they were finished she adjusted covers while he grabbed folders and lowered himself into the uncomfortable chair in the corner.

 

He had been awake as long as she had, longer even, and his eyelids blinked in slow rhythm. The paperwork would keep him alert. But it was Jillian that kept him up. She rolled over, adjusted the covers, curled up in a fetal position, and rolled back. His own head lolled as he started to drift off, only to be pulled back by the soft rustle of Jillian’s feet touching the ground. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

 

He didn’t say anything, just watched while she unsnapped electrodes and wires and slid back into her jacket and shoes before padding off into the daylight beyond the tent walls. Looking around he realized that it was very light inside the tent. But he couldn’t be upset that she had stretched her awake time by another half-hour.

 

He dozed while she was gone, but jerked awake at the sound of the Velcro ripping. Without a word she slipped out of shoes and jacket and into wires and tubes and slid back between the covers, and began her restless tossing again.

 

His breathing evened and he felt himself slipping, just as her voice cut through. “Jordan. Wake up.”

 

“Huh?” He used his legs to push himself upright and run his fingers through his hair. The daylight was the same shade and angle as he remembered it - only a few minutes had passed.

 

“Get up here. You’re falling asleep in that chair and I can’t.” She held out her hand and waved him toward her.

 

It wasn’t an invitation of the sort he wanted. It was Jillian, ever practical. But the thought wasn’t unwelcome. “It’s narrow, I can’t have you rolling out.”

 

“So put up the baby bar.” Even as she said it, she pulled the release catch, tugging at the side rail. He reached out and, snapped the smooth metal easily into place. The back rail was already up, where he had left it to prevent him from rolling against the tent wall and thinking in his sleep that it was more solid than it was.

 

The only option left was crawling up from the foot of the bed, and he made his way while Jillian shifted and adjusted the covers.

 

Within moments he curled behind her and draped his arm across her waist, waiting for her to protest. She didn’t, just softly leaned back against him, probably completely unaware that he liked it. But she didn’t curl into him because she wanted to, there just weren’t other options in the tiny space.

 

With a few deep breaths he slipped off, consciousness growing frayed at the edges of his vision. Before he lost all contact he thought he felt Jillian’s body relax, and he prayed that it was sleep.

Chapter 27

Becky stood just behind the first row of mourners, draped in her best black. Her parents and Brandon stood beside her, having shown up just to show up. They were using any excuse to see her these days, even Jillian’s funeral.

 

Her eyes skimmed the crowd. The Brookwood women formed a solid front on the other side of the gleaming casket, Jillian one of only two family members they had lost. All this ascension talk had been most difficult on the families that lost one or two. How could they say that their loved ones had been among the damned?

 

They hadn’t even been able to visit Jillian while she’d been awake. They lived on a mountain just north of the Georgia border and had been iced in the entire time. They had spoken to her on the phone once or twice but it was all that they had managed. Of course, they had gotten a warm front, just in time to throw the first dirt at their daughter’s funeral. Sometimes God seemed cruel.

 

Behind the Brookwoods, under the shade of a tall oak, David lingered at the edges. He had been at the edges since Jillian had died yesterday. The funeral had been put together quickly, with the mortuaries running at full speed and processing body after body. Not all of them got a full funeral. There simply wasn’t the time or resources. There were talks of mass graves for the unclaimed at the morgues. But no one would hear of it.

 

The bodies would have to stay in the coolers until the religious right and wrong had a service for each of the damned.

 

Jillian was important though. And her funeral got precedence, just like Jordan’s had. Becky had attended it, too, just like she had attended so many others.

 

She hoped this would be the last, at least for a good long while.

 

The preacher said the final words, not even looking to his scriptures. He had the whole thing memorized by now. And he read it like he had done this twenty times already this week. He probably had.

 

Jillian’s family stepped back away from the hole in the ground, the light reflecting off the tears in their eyes as they turned to go. There was no reception planned - no time, no group of friends, simply this spot in the cemetery with too many shiny new stones and too many unmarked graves, waiting for the stone-cutters to catch up with demand.

 

As the mourners parted, David made a tiny salute to her and turned away to duck into his car. He had a flight back to Chicago. He had booked it for yesterday evening, but Becky had convinced him to stay for his lover’s service.

 

She wondered now if he was fleeing because Jillian wasn’t here, or if he really didn’t care. Becky wasn’t stupid; she wouldn’t put either option past him. There was also the vague possibility that he had killed her. If you could call it that. He might have set her free on the other side.

 

But Becky didn’t know. She couldn’t speculate. So she simply smiled and watched as the black car pulled away from the curb at a sedate pace. He was only a block away before he spun the tires and high-tailed it out to the airport; even from here she could hear the rubber squeal.

 

A hand touched her arm. “I’m so sorry about your friend.” Her mother’s voice came over her like old quilts.

 

“She’s in a better place now.” Becky said the words, the same ones everyone said, but she believed in a way she never had before. “So are Melanie and Aaron.”

 

Her mother offered only a tight nod, to say ‘thank-you, but no more’.

 

Becky wouldn’t take that though. “Mom, Aaron and Melanie are together.”

 

“Of course.” The hand patted her on the arm while her mother visibly disengaged from the conversation.

 

“Mom! Listen to me.” She took a deep breath and let it all fall out. “When Jillian would go into a coma, she would be awake somewhere else. With Jordan, her lab partner. And she said a little girl hacked her way into the CDC phone lines convincing the staff that she was a Doctor Sorenson.”

 

Her mother blinked, still not comprehending, still not wanting to. But Becky pushed, her mother was made of sterner stuff than this. “She talked to Jillian. Mom, it was Melanie. Jillian and Jordan drove out to the house and picked up the notebooks I left behind. They saw Aaron and Melanie.”

 

“When?” Finally she had her mother’s attention. Rapt green eyes, so like her own, fixated on her daughter.

 

“Three days ago.”

 

“But they were already-”

 

“There. Mom, they’re not here. But they aren’t dead.”

 

She felt the cold seep in as she watched her mother’s spine stiffen and shield her from belief. The disconnect was more powerful now, now that she had less siblings to fall back on. Her mother turned away. “That’s just silly.”

 

This time it was her hand that grabbed at her mother’s arm. But she wasn’t gentle. She didn’t follow the dictates of society. And she didn’t care. “It’s not silly, it’s true. Jillian described Aaron and the house to a T.

 

She said Melanie decided to go to the biology magnet even if it meantriding the short bus. How would she have known?”

 

Her mother’s face took on the worried look of the convinced.

 

“It’s true Mom. They’re just somewhere else.”

 

“Then why aren’t they here? Why did God split up a good family?” A glaze of tears threatened at her mother’s eyes, and suddenly with that acceptance Becky knew what to do. Even though she didn’t know she’d been deciding.

 

“God split up a lot of good families, Mom. I don’t know why. But we’re together and they’re together.

 

Aaron moved home to be with her.” She sighed. “And I’m moving home, too, Mom.”

 

“Rebecca!”

 

Arms were thrown around her with a joy that took her off balance. It made the other mourners stop and stare. But only for a moment. Things were odd these days and funerals were a dime a dozen. Black was getting a lot of wear, and a happy outburst at a funeral wasn’t something to be too surprised about.

 

“I may not move into the house. But I’ll be close.”

 

Her mother’s smile curved up, holding all the wishes a parent could have for a child.

 

“I’ll see if I can get grants from the CDC to study the species here. Or maybe go back to the University.

 

See if Warden is still there or not.” Her mouth pulled up in a resigned grin.

 

If he was, she’d handle him. She had more clout now, maybe even some recognition.

 

She hugged each member of her family, then each member of Jillian’s. She told them the same thing: that Jillian was in a better place. But she didn’t elaborate. They looked like they wouldn’t want to hear it. Like they all had sticks up their asses. Then she sent up a little prayer asking forgiveness for her thought. And followed it with a second prayer that the sticks be removed, before turning to catch the car that was heading back into Oak Ridge.

 

Three scientists shared the midsized sedan with her. In the same tasteful gold that all the CDC cars had been. She declined a front seat and spent the short trip to the center of town staring out the window at the landscape she knew so well - the patches of brown along the hillsides, the organic shapes of the Appalachian mountains rising up against the backdrop of too-blue sky.

 

And sure enough, even though no visible clouds rolled in, the color changed quickly and surely to grey during the