Ward Z Read online

  ***

  "Yeah," I say, finally getting my thoughts together, "I was having a nightmare, sweetheart. Just a very vivid nightmare. Nothing to worry about."

  "You were talking in your sleep," she replies cautiously. She might only be nine years old, but Emma seems more mature than ever, as if she can no longer be entirely fooled by my easy platitudes and hopeful promises.

  "What was I saying?" I ask with a forced smile.

  She pauses. "I don't know."

  "I was mumbling, huh?"

  She nods, but I'm not sure she's telling the truth.

  We sit in silence for a moment. I still feel... wrong somehow, as if that nightmare wasn't entirely a nightmare. For one thing, the sensation in my belly has been coming and going for a while now; for another, I feel as if my actions in the nightmare were completely insane. Why would I open that door and help some kind of monster to get inside and kill a woman? And why would I then start eating her arm? It was almost as if, in the dream, I was a completely different person, with different aims and different feelings; I wanted to help that creature and I enjoyed consuming that arm. God knows what's wrong with me, but I've never dreamed of being a different person before.

  "Can I go home now?" Emma asks plaintively.

  "Home?" I pause. "Um, no, I don't think so. Did anyone come into the room while I was sleeping?"

  She shakes her head.

  "Someone'll come and tell us when you can leave," I reply. "How long was I asleep, anyway?"

  "Not long," she replies. "When that nurse left, you were talking for a while and then you just fell asleep really fast."

  I smile weakly, even though I don't remember any of that. I remember Nurse Aubry being here, and I remember her telling me to get some rest, but after that... I've never experienced any kind of amnesia or memory trouble before, not even when I was on the strongest dose of chemotherapy, so this is a new symptom, and I don't like the idea that maybe I'm not in complete control while Emma's here.

  "It's okay," I say, reaching out and putting a hand on the side of her face.

  "You're all sweaty," she replies, moving away from me.

  "Sorry," I reply. "I guess that was a pretty bad nightmare after all, huh?"

  She stares at me, and it's clear that she's skeptical. The weird thing is, in all my time here at the hospital, Emma has been the hardest person to fool. When I'm in pain, I can usually hide it from the doctors and nurses, and from Kieran or any other visitors, but Emma always gets a little frown on her face, as if she sees through my lies. I guess I should have been honest with her from the start, instead of trying - and failing - to lie to her, but I did what I thought was best at the time.

  "Hey," I say, sitting up and realizing that the back of my gown is soaked in sweat. "I've got an idea. Why don't I get changed and have a wash, and then we'll go for a little walk, huh? Just around the ward or something? Does that sound like fun?"

  She stares at me.

  "I think it sounds like fun," I say, slowly and awkwardly getting out of bed despite the fact that my arms and legs are aching. "Just wait here," I add, before starting to make my way toward the bathroom door. I still feel a little hot and sweaty, but I'm determined to get up and start moving about. "We'll go for a walk," I continue. "You and me. It'll be fun, sweetheart, it'll -" I pause as the pain in my side returns, but it quickly subsides. Turning to Emma, I can see the look of fear in her eyes. "It'll be fun," I say again. "I promise."

  "I want to go home," she says, her voice reduced to a quiet whine.

  "Sweetheart -"

  "Why can't I go home?" she asks, with tears in her eyes as her frustration mounts. "I just want to go home! Why can't you make Daddy come and pick me up?"

  "I just can't," I reply with a sigh, feeling an unnatural, unfamiliar sense of anger starting to rise through my body. "Emma, sweetheart, there's -"

  "I want to go home!" she shouts.

  "You can't fucking go home!" I shout back at her. Ignoring the look of terrified shock in her eyes, I take a step closer, unable to control the fury I'm feeling right now. It takes all my self-control not to slap the little bitch across the side of her face. "You think I don't want you to go home?" I continue. "You think I wouldn't happily send you back to your fucking cheating asshole of a father, just so I can get you out of my fucking hair while I'm dying of fucking cancer?"

  She stares at me, trembling, with tears in her eyes.

  I stare back, and suddenly the anger subsides, replaced by a sense of growing guilt. Where the hell did that malice and fury come from? My hands are shaking and although I open my mouth to apologize, no words come out. I've managed to hide my anger pretty well since I was diagnosed, and this was something else entirely; it's as if there's some kind of hidden spite and hatred in my heart, and just for a second it was able to get loose. Just for a few seconds, I was someone else.

  "Sweetheart," I say, stepping closer and reaching out to take her hands in mine. "I am so sorry. I have no idea why I just said those things to you, but I didn't mean any of them."

  She stares at me, but it's clear that she's terrified.

  "You have to believe me," I say, putting my arms around her and pulling her close, even though she feels tense and scared. "I'm so sorry," I continue, realizing that one of her final, abiding memories of me will now be that brief little tantrum. "Emma, please, you have to forgive me. I'm so, so sorry. I don't know where those words came from."

  It's true. I don't. They just seemed to well up inside me and spew forth, and for a moment I even felt as if I might be about to strike her. The worst part is, I think there's a real danger it might happen again.

  Dr. Andrew Page

  "Don't bother weighing it," Lincoln says as he lifts Dominique Ribery's liver from her body and passes it to me. "Just get rid of it."

  "But -" I start to say.

  "Just get rid of it," he says again, more firmly this time. "Please don't make me say everything twice."

  I glance over at Dr. Gerrold, but it's clear that he's inclined to toe the line and keep quiet. Carrying the liver over to the counter on the far side of the room, I set it down gently, but I can't shake the feeling that Lincoln is simply using as for the moment as a pair of useful idiots.

  "It looks swollen," I say, lifting up one end of the liver and giving it a gentle squeeze. "Do we know if Ribery was a heavy drinker?"

  "Not a goddamn clue," Lincoln replies.

  Figuring it wouldn't hurt to get a better idea of what's happening here, I pick the liver up and place it on the set of scales in the corner. In the midst of so much chaos, it feels good to actually be doing something fairly normal. Something routine.

  "Two and a half kilograms," I say after a moment. "Something was definitely causing her liver to expand. It doesn't look discolored, but I'd like to cut it open and -"

  "What you do on your own time," Lincoln replies, interrupting me, "is entirely up to you. Right now, however, I'd appreciate a little help here. I'd very much value your professional opinion, Dr. Page. Yours too, Dr. Gerrold. For example, what do you make of this?"

  Joining Dr. Gerrold over by the table, I peer into Ribery's chest cavity as Lincoln uses a scalpel to clean away some matter around what appears to be a thick, whitish cord running alongside the corpse's spine. It's clearly not something that's present in most bodies, and I'm starting to realize that whatever's happening here, it's rooted in some kind of physical mutation.

  "Looks like her spinal cord has become exposed," Dr. Gerrold says.

  "No," Lincoln replies, moving the scalpel over to the spine. "Her spinal cord is where it should be. This -" He moves the scalpel back to the whitish cord. "This is..." He pauses. "This is something that I've never seen in a human body before. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that it's a secondary spinal cord encased in some kind of thick, gelatinous covering, possibly designed to keep it safe without resorting to the use of a skeletal structure."

  "It'd be more flexible," I point out.

 
; "Perhaps just as safe, too," he replies. "An improvement on the old model, you might say."

  "Hang on," Dr. Gerrold mutters. "What you're describing is completely impossible. This kind of evolutionary step would take many years and generations to develop."

  "And yet we appear to be looking at it," Lincoln continues, glancing over at me. "What about you, Dr. Page? Do you share your colleague's skepticism, or are you willing to accept a more unusual explanation for the evidence that's right in front of us?"

  "I share Dr. Gerrold's concerns," I reply, staring down at the cord, "but..." I pause for a moment. "Where are the ends? Is it connected to anything?"

  "You can't seriously be entertaining this nonsense," Dr. Gerrold replies.

  "Perhaps this reminds Dr. Page of some of his earlier work," Lincoln points out with a faint smile. "Have you ever seen anything like this before, Dr. Page?"

  Ignoring the question for now, I take a scalpel and use it to remove some flesh from around the extraneous cord. Following its length up through Ribery's body, I eventually reach her heart, where the cord seems to have become fused with the superior vena cava at the top of the organ. In all my years of medical practice, I've never come across anything specifically like this, and it's hard to escape the obvious conclusion that we're looking at something completely new. At the same time, the cord hints at something I remember from many years ago, something I never thought I'd see again.

  "Cabin fever," Dr. Gerrold says suddenly. "That's what this is. You're both experiencing cabin fever. You're jumping to the wildest of conclusions, based on nothing more than a few unusual elements of one woman's body!"

  "And that's how you're going to ignore the truth, is it?" Lincoln asks.

  "This doesn't make any sense," I say after a moment. "How could she have been walking around while this thing was inside her body? It's going into her heart, for God's sake. She should have dropped dead the moment it manifested itself."

  "And the other end," Lincoln replies, tracing the cord down toward the right-hand-side of Ribery's body, "leads to this." He uses the tip of the scalpel to push away one of the kidneys, revealing a shiny, fist-sized ovoid object. "In case either of you are in any doubt," he continues, "this is a malignant tumor that has been growing adjacent to, but not connected to, the subject's right kidney. The mass is approximately four inches long and three inches across. As you can see, it has three separate growths coming from the sides. One is this cord, and the other two are these smaller, thinner vessels that seem to be linked to Ribery's original spinal column."

  "Original spinal column?" Dr. Gerrold says, his voice filled with disdain. "Are you even listening to yourselves? You're talking complete nonsense. You sound like you belong in some poorly-researched fifties movie."

  "I'm describing what's right in front of me," Lincoln replies calmly. "You can fetch every text-book in the world, Dr. Gerrold, and it won't change what we're looking at. You might want to comfort yourself by pretending that conventional medicine can explain Dominique Ribery's body, but I can tell you for a fact that this is something completely new."

  "Those look like blood vessels," I say, using the tip of my scalpel to pull the two vessels apart from one another. "One taking blood from the tumor, and one bringing it back. What I don't get, though, is why it'd be attached to the spinal column. There's no obvious function that could be served."

  "Maybe it's a more efficient way of organizing the coronary and nervous systems," Lincoln replies. "It's clear that the tumor, once it was established, began to extend these new structures throughout her body. We're used to seeing cancers spread, but this is something else. This is more focused and controlled."

  "More deliberate," I add.

  "Do you see this?" he asks, indicating what appears to be a small sac on the side of the tumor. "It's a type of poison. It's my belief that the tumor releases this poison slowly into the bloodstream over a period of time, rendering the host less able to fight. Eventually, the remainder of the poison is released. Look." He presses the side of the scalpel tip against the sac, showing that it's empty. "My best guess is that the tumor released the last of the poison shortly before Dominique Ribery died."

  "You make it sound like an intentional act," I point out.

  "Perhaps," he replies. "Have either of you gentlemen ever seen Charles Babbage's difference engine?"

  "Babbage?" Dr. Gerrold says with a frown. "The man was a nineteenth century scientist."

  "And he created a machine that's widely considered to be the first computer," Lincoln continues. "I've seen it, or at least a mock-up. The thing was huge. It damn near filled a room. Nowadays, you could fit the same computing power into an atom, but the point is, the larger machine had to exist before the smaller one, because that's just how progress works. Each new stage seems like the ultimate evolution, at least until the next stage arrives."

  "Why are you talking about computers?" Dr. Gerrold asks.

  "This tumor," Lincoln replies, "is a remarkable thing. If I'm right, this small, discreet little organ is able to replicate the functions of pretty much all the other major organs in a normal human body. The brain, the lungs, the liver, the kidneys..."

  "Nonsense," Dr. Gerrold says, turning to me. "Come on, man, you can see this is nonsense, can't you?"

  I stare at the tumor. Although I recognize the implausibility of Lincoln's ideas, I can't quite dismiss them. Not yet. This whole situation is starting to remind me of the things I discovered many years ago, back when I was just starting out. In my naivety, I presented my ideas far too soon, and I was shot down accordingly; for many years now, I've assumed that I was wrong, but now it's becoming increasingly clear that there might be a connection between my early work and the body of Dominique Ribery.

  "This is why she came to me," I whisper. "She thought I'd understand."

  "Imagine that the human body as we know it is analogous to Charles Babbage's original computer," Lincoln continues. "It works, but it's big and bulky, and it's pretty unsophisticated. And this tumor is more like a modern device, something compact and fast. What if this tumor can do everything that a normal human body can do?"

  "I can't believe you're even saying these things," Dr. Gerrold says with a sigh. "I'd hoped that you might be an intelligent man, Mr. Lincoln -"

  "Doctor Lincoln, actually."

  "You're just a fantasist," he continues. "Whatever deformations this woman suffered, they're by no means sufficient to allow you to make such fantastical leaps. We need to apply a little more academic rigor and try to come to a more realistic conclusion, rather than embracing a bunch of insane theories."

  "What about you, Dr. Page?" Lincoln says, turning to me. "You seem awfully quiet. Is it possible that all of this is triggering some kind of memory for you?" He pauses, and there's a faint smile on his face. "Dominique Ribery came to this hospital because she knew about your work, and because she knew about your embarrassment a number of years ago. She knew that you might be the one man who'd be willing to accept the possibility, however remote, that something very unusual was happening inside her body."

  "You seem willing to believe it too," I point out.

  "That's because I've read your original report," he replies.

  "I had it withdrawn."

  "I found it," he says with a smile. "I have contacts."

  I take a deep breath. It's been many years since I last allowed myself to even consider the possibility that a tumor could behave this way. I was young when I saw the first hints of evidence, but I rushed to present my ideas and I was quickly swatted down. My reputation was pretty much ruined, and I swore thereafter to ignore such crazy thoughts. Now, though, I'm starting to wonder if maybe I was right all along. This type of cancer is real.

  "What exactly are you proposing?" Dr. Gerrold asks after a moment, clearly still not convinced.

  "Perhaps Dr. Page would like to explain it to you?" Lincoln replies.

  I pause for a moment. "What if all the functions of the human body could be take
n in-house," I say eventually, staring at the tumor. "What if it was no longer necessary to pump blood around the body? What if the whole system could be rewired and reconfigured so that it was much more efficient and much more centralized? Much smaller. Wouldn't that present an evolutionary advantage?"

  "It might," Dr. Gerrold replies, "but -"

  "Suddenly," I continue, "half the vulnerabilities of the human body would be removed. More than half."

  Sighing, Dr. Gerrold stares at me for a moment. "Are you seriously buying into these lunatic theories?"

  "What if this is the purpose of a certain type of cancer?" I ask, turning to Lincoln. "I know this is going to sound crazy, but just let me finish. What if cancer is evolving and becoming... better... at whatever it's trying to do? Cancer eventually kills the human body, and when that happens, the cancer dies too. But what if this time, a type of cancer is evolving in such a way as to merely reprogram the body and take it over, in the same way that a parasite takes control of a host?"

  "A completely new life-form," Lincoln says, fixing me with a determined stare. "Something that grows within the human body. Something we've dismissed up until now as a disease, when in fact it might be something else entirely."

  "This is nonsense," Dr. Gerrold says. "You've got one body with one set of unusual -"

  "No," Lincoln says, turning to him. "With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. We don't have one body. Dominique Ribery is not the first person who has been brought to our attention in this manner, although she's certainly the one whose condition had progressed the farthest. There have been others, and the number of instances is slowly increasing."

  "So what are you saying?" Dr. Gerrold asks, a hint of doubt starting to creep in his voice for the first time. "What exactly do you think is happening here?"

  "He thinks we're being invaded," I reply, with my gaze still fixed firmly on the tumor. "He thinks we're being invaded from the inside."