Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

“Give me another effort. I think you’re close.”

“A fingerprint. A PIN number. I really don’t know.”

“Actually, you’re very close. Not bad at all. It’s biometrics, but it’s not a fingerprint. The camera is real, so I’m betting on facial recognition.”

“Do you think it’s really Tara’s face that has to be recognized, though?” They were on a narrow stretch of the peninsula now, Penobscot Bay looming to their left, the sea gray-green under the massing clouds, a tower of battered lobster traps stacked high on a weathered wharf.

“Smart question,” he said, and his voice softened in a way that made her think he hadn’t considered the possibility before. “Is Tara the key that opens the lock, or is she a ruse? And if she is...” He let the sentence drift, then said, “I think she’s the key. Smart play by Oltamu, if I’m right. Tara Beckley would have been anonymous to anyone who took the phone. She was a stranger. That’s quite brilliant, really. The problem is that she stopped being a stranger that night. But he wasn’t counting on that.”

Abby didn’t speak, but that didn’t stop the kid from talking. It seemed nothing would stop the kid from talking. He liked conversation, and he liked to watch people. He reminded Abby of some demented dentist, poking and prodding, testing nerves, coaxing a reaction.

“I wonder if he told her what he was doing,” the kid mused. “Was she just a face, or does she know something? If he was feeling urgency... maybe Tara knows a lot more than we think.”

“Too bad she’s gone,” Abby said.

“Don’t rush to judgment on that. I received an encouraging update on her condition this morning.”

Fuck, Abby thought, and she was so defeated by that news that she let the speed fall off. The kid leaned forward and tapped her head with the gun.

“Pick it back up. Speed limit or five miles over, no more.”

Abby accelerated to five miles over the limit. She tried to look indifferent to the discussion of Tara, but all she could think about was whether the kid had heard her talking to Shannon, whether he knew what Abby had disclosed to her.

“In fact,” the kid said once he was satisfied with Abby’s driving, “the news about Tara is particularly encouraging after seeing this. She can move her eyes, Abby. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Abby was silent.

“Okay, maybe you’re not a member of Team Tara. Rather coldhearted, but to each her own. As a proud member of Team Tara, though, I’m especially encouraged after seeing the phone, because a lot of facial-recognition systems depend on active eyes. While once she might have been useless, now...”

He let the thought hang unfinished, then said, “Do you get it yet, Abby?”

Abby didn’t want to engage with him again. Each time she did, she felt like the kid was seeing more of her brain, learning her heart. It was through his strange dialogue that he opened you up somehow, laid you bare on the table and decided whether there was anything in you worth keeping alive. If he decided the answer was no, that was the end.

“I think you do, but you’re in a sullen mood. Understandable. It’s been a tough couple of days for you. I’ll explain what you already know, then, since you’re not willing to play along. If I’m right, Abby, then what we have is a lock...” He lifted Oltamu’s phone. “And Tara Beckley, bless her miraculous survivor’s will, is the key.”

He put the phone back into his pocket, braced his gun hand on his knee, and said, “That makes our next move pretty easy, doesn’t it? We’ll need to bring the lock to the key. Usually it would work the other way around, but we’re in very atypical circumstances. Tell you what, Abby — we’re going to detour. Forget the house and turn around. Right up here will work.”

He nudged Abby with the gun. They were approaching the Tenants Harbor village center, which amounted to a general store and the post office on the left, a volunteer fire department up ahead, and the school and the library somewhere off to the right. The street was empty save for one man in a rusted pickup filling plastic gas cans at the general store’s pump. He didn’t even look up when Abby pulled in behind him and then backed out. She didn’t leave the parking lot, though. The clouds had obscured the sun and now the first drops of rain fell, fat and loud as they splattered on the hood.

“Where am I going?” she said.

“Southbound,” the kid answered. “Boston or bust.”

Abby kept her foot on the brake, and this time the gun muzzle found her ribs, a jab with more force.

“Don’t sit here waiting to be noticed. Get on the move.”

Abby eased her foot off the brake. She wasn’t sitting there hoping to be noticed or expecting to find help in this isolated fishing village.

She was thinking about I-95 southbound in the rain. They’d hit the Boston area around rush hour, although every hour seemed like rush hour in Boston. Cars and trucks squeezing you from all sides, tens of thousands of drivers oblivious to the killing power controlled by their hands and feet.

And a sociopath with a gun in her backseat.

This was the first time she’d shared a car with anyone since Luke. Always, she’d made sure to drive alone in the days after that, making any excuse. No excuse offered itself now.

“Let’s go,” the kid said, and Abby moved her foot to the gas.

The Tahoe rolled out of the general store’s parking lot and passed the post office; the North Atlantic was visible briefly to the right, then gone. Abby drove on through the gathering gray as the coastal fog swept in. She told herself this would be fine, this was the simple part, whatever came next was the trouble.

Faster, Abby, Luke had whispered just before the end. Faster.

Or had it been Slow down ? It was so damned hard to remember.

The hospital room is abuzz with joy, yet Shannon seems distant.

Tara doesn’t understand this at all. Shannon, her champion, the one who would never quit on her, is somehow the most distracted person there. She’s left the room four times now, and each time she returns, the phone in her hand, she seems farther away. She’s stopped looking Tara in the eye and she seems, inexplicably, more concerned now than she was before Dr. Pine and Dr. Carlisle arrived with their good news.

What does she know that I don’t?

Recovery prognosis. That has to be it. Either the doctors have been more honest with Shannon than they’ve been with Mom and Rick or Shannon is doing her own research. Maybe Shannon understands already what Tara fears — it would have been better if she’d failed the tests, because there’s no return to real life ahead of her. Nothing but this awful limbo, only now they all know she’s awake and alert, and that means they feel an even greater burden of responsibility. Endless days of one-way chatter, countless hospital bills, all to sustain an empty existence. This would defeat even Shannon’s willpower.

But the doctors are excited, and the disconnect there is confusing. It’s also something Tara can’t focus on any longer, because Dr. Pine is demanding all of her attention. In his hands he has a plastic board filled with rows of letters, each row a different color. The first row is red, the second yellow, the third blue, then green, then white. At the end of the red row is the phrase end of word . At the end of the yellow row is end of sentence .

This is Tara’s chance to speak.

“It’s going to feel laborious,” Dr. Pine warns, “and you might get tired. It’s more work than people would guess.”

He’s right about that. Even the yes/no answers were draining. But Tara is a marathon runner. She knows how you keep the finish line from invading your thoughts too early.