John Scalzi - Agent to the Stars

The door opened and a tall man in a lab coat came through.

"Tom, this is Doctor Paul Adams," Mizuhara said. "He's the one that worked on Michelle."

We shook hands. "How is she?" I asked.

"She's not good," Adams said. "We don't know how long she was without oxygen, but we think she went right up to the limit — five or six minutes. Her heart activity is fine, but we haven't been able to get her to breathe on her own. Her brain activity is very low; I think it's very likely she's probably suffered some permanent brain damage. She's in a comatose state now. I think we can expect her to come out of it at some point, and then we can judge the extent of her brain injuries."

"'At some point,'" I said. "What does that mean?"

"Hard to say," Adams said. "She could come out of it later today, or it could be weeks. It just depends. The concussion she got," he pointed to the bandage, "doesn't help any, although it's actually the least of her problems; it was fairly superficial. In and of itself, it would have knocked her out, but she would have come out of it with nothing more than a bump and maybe some stitches. It was the lack of oxygen to the brain that's the real problem. If you don't mind me asking, what the hell was she doing with latex all over her face?"

"They were making a mask of her face for a movie," I said.

"So that's how they do it," Adams said. "Well, I'm no expert on these things, but I think they might want to find another way to do it from here on out. That mask of hers just about killed her."

"Dr. Adams," I said. "This may be offensive, but I hope you won't be going to the press with any of this."

"You're right, it is offensive," Adams said. "But I understand your concern. The staff that worked with me all understand that it's more important for Miss Beck to recover than it is to be shown in the National Enquirer with a tube down her throat."

"Thanks," I said.

"Of course," Adams said, and looked back at Michelle. "Don't expect too much from her over the next couple of days," he said. "But if you can, talk to her. Let her hear familiar voices. That helps as often as not. If she has any family, you should contact them and see if they can come as well."

"I'm afraid she has no family," I said. "Although she has a dog. Would it be okay to bring him in to see her?"

"I'd really rather not," Adams said. "It's a question of hygiene. Also of state law. Unless it's a guide dog, of course." We shook hands again and he departed.

"I have to join Dr. Adams," Mizuhara said. "Carl should be arriving any minute now and we want to be there to meet him." We shook hands as well, and he left.

I stayed in the room, staring at Michelle. Miranda was in the hall, feeling guilty about Michelle's situation, but if anyone had to shoulder the blame, I felt it should be me. If I had gone with her rather than Miranda, this might not have happened. Michelle and I would be on our way to Mondo Chicken, her to sulk in her oriental chicken salad, and me doing my best to cheer her up. It occurred to me that if no one was closer to Michelle than me, than the reverse was also probably true as well. I couldn't think of anyone I was closer to than her. Except possibly Miranda, who I had managed to drag into this mess as well.

I sighed to myself, and rested my head back against the wall. I had really managed to screw this one up.

After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. Miranda poked her head through. "Carl is here," she said.

I went out to see Carl, Mizuhara and Adams chatting about something or other. Carl turned to me when he saw me. "Tom," he said, shaking my shoulder. "I'm terribly sorry. But you did right to call me. Mike and I go back a ways."

"So I heard," I said. "Los Angeles really is a small town."

"Yes it is," Carl said. "Tom, Mike and I were trying to decide what we should do next. My first inclination is to move Michelle closer, perhaps to Cedars, but Mike and Dr. Adams think she'd best off here."

"If it's a question of the quality of care..." Dr. Adams began.

"No, not at all," Carl said. "But in the next 24 hours you're going to be dealing with things you've never had to deal with before. Photographers posing as maintenance workers and nurses. Fan vigils. Reporters trying to interview everyone down to the cafeteria staff. It's a mess."

"We've managed to keep the lid on it so far," Mizuhara said. "And I think Dr. Adams will agree with me when I say that the best thing for the patient is continuity of care. Additionally, I'm not comfortable with moving her now. She's stable at the moment but she's certainly not out of the woods."

"We'd probably cause more of a commotion moving her than just keeping her here, anyway," Adams said.

"Tom?" Carl said. "What do you want to do?"

"I don't think I'm really qualified to answer that," I said.

All three of them stared at me for a minute. I suddenly became very uncomfortable.

"What?" I asked.

"You don't know, do you?" Carl said.

"Know what?" I said, looking at Carl, then Adams, and then Mizuhara.

"Tom, we had her insurance send over her information," Mizuhara said. "Discreetly, of course; I handled the request myself. Most people have someone listed who has the right to make medical decisions for them if they are unable to make the decisions themselves. Usually it's a relative or spouse or a longtime companion."

"Sure," I said. I'd filled out insurance forms in my own time; if anything ever happened to me, my mother would have to decide whether to unplug me or not.

"Well, Miss Beck doesn't have any of those," Mizuhara said.

"All right," I said. "So?"

"Tom," Carl said. "The person who Michelle authorized to make medical decisions for her is you."

I found a chair and sat down.

"You really didn't know?" Adams asked.

I shook my head. "No. No, I didn't."

"I'm sorry," Adams said. "It's a hard job to have."

"Tom," Carl said, again. "What do you want to do?"

I covered my face with my hands and just sat there for a few minutes, awash in guilt and grief. I felt my actions had put Michelle here to begin with; now I was being asked to make decisions that could affect the rest of her life. I was going to need a really good cry when this was all over.

But not right now. I put my hands down in my lap.

"We'll keep her here," I said.

Now if I could just figure the rest of it out.

The leak, of course, was as impossible to track as it was inevitable to occur. Sometime after the 2 am shift change, one of the janitors or nurses or doctors hit the phones, waking up friends and relatives because, after all, how often does the hottest female star in the United States come into your hospital in a coma? At 3:35 in the morning, one of these friends or relatives called KOST-FM and requested to hear "Your Eyes Tell Me," the hit theme song from Summertime Blues, because she heard Michelle Beck had died. After the song played, another listener called in to say no, she wasn't dead, but she was in a coma, and she had heard that Michelle's corneas were slated to be given to Marlee Matlin, who was, after all, deaf.

KOST happened to be the favorite morning radio station of Curt McLachlan, KABC's morning news director, who was, at 3:35, getting into his car to head to work. The first thing he did was switch off "Your Eyes Tell Me," because it was, by any objective standard, the single worst pop song of the decade. The second thing he did was get on the car phone with his counterpart at Good Morning America, which, at 6:37 Eastern Time, was just a few minutes away from air. GMA's news director screamed at the video morgue to pull up clips of Michelle, and at some poor, groggy intern, 19 years old and two days into her stint of slave labor, to ready a blurb for the hosts to announce on the air. Once McLachlan got off the phone with Good Morning America, he called his own assignment editor out of a sound sleep and told him to get working on a package. He flipped on the radio just in time to hear about the corneas going to Marlee Matlin. This prompted another round of phone calls.