“I finished with a pretty good grade. Serious data dissection work is hard to come by but I’ve got a couple of interviews coming up, it’s looking promising. It’s pretty tight these days, I guess, but I’m hopeful.” Why do I feel guilty saying this? I’m not the screw-up here. I’m not the disease junky.
“Yeah? Well, that’s good.” She tries to sound like she means it. I feel as if we’re on different planets, separated by a million miles. All I can think is how I want to be somewhere else, and maybe that’s why I say what I do. “Jenny, you look really fucking sick.” It’s out of my mouth before I know it.
But she’s not even fazed. “Yeah?” She smiles. “Oh, yeah: I’m dying.”
This time, I don’t even try and make an excuse. I turn and walk away, and the closest I come to apologizing is that I try not to run.
That night I dream about Jenny, cold and blue and somehow happy, grinning up at me from some deep dark place with a rictus smile cut over her lips. The dream hangs beside me all the next day, like smoke in the air, and I feel like I’m caught in Jenny’s gravity, like I’m plummeting.
But it’s a week on from that chance meeting in the street, just when I’ve almost managed to forget, that my phone rings. I don’t recognize the name or face, except that she looks familiar somehow. For a moment I get that same gut feeling, that urge to run. I pick up anyway. “Hello. Can I help you?”
“My name is Linda Ulek. I’m sorry to intrude on your time, but it’s very important, and there really isn’t anybody else.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t—” Then I remember where I’ve heard the name Ulek before. “You’re Jenny’s mother.”
I met her once. Jenny’s parents came to the flat and looked uncomfortable and left as quickly as they could. Jenny told me once that they were both high up in some obscure branch of the government. That explains how she got hold of my private number.
“As I say, I’m sorry to intrude, but Jenny doesn’t have any friends that we know of and we remembered your name, and that the two of you lived together, and were close at one point. Of course we’d like to go ourselves, of course we would, but we’re in Rome this month and we have commitments. And the doctors are adamant that somebody who knows her should be with her—”
“I’m sorry; I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“Jenny’s in hospital,” she says. “She’s very sick and the doctors have asked us to visit her, as part of her treatment. As I say, we can’t do that. We thought that perhaps you could.”
I didn’t know there were any hospitals left. In a world with a cure for everything, I figured the common hospital was as extinct as the common cold. Whatever I’m expecting, the Rondelle Panacea Clinic isn’t it. It’s just another nondescript building, a few klicks out of the city, like the office I work in or the flats I live in. I press the buzzer beside the doors, and a few moments later a young woman in a white suit appears. When I tell her who I am she says, “You’re here for Jenny Ulek,” and ushers me inside.
The woman, who gives her name as Doctor Meier, leads me through blank-walled corridors, into a small office, and offers me a seat. It occurs to me that Jenny must hate this place, that in fact it’s everything she despises. White walls, white furniture, white people in white suits. If somebody had to design a personal hell for Jenny it would look a lot like this.
Doctor Meier sits opposite me and says, “It was good of you to come.”
I nod. There’s no point telling her how close I came to saying no.
“You’re aware of Jenny’s case history?”
“Some of it. We lived together for a while. I know she likes to get sick.”
“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, but in essence, yes, Jenny takes a certain gratification from physical illness. Recently Jenny has introduced a disease into her system that, left untreated, will be terminal within the next two months.” She pauses for just a moment, to let that sink in. “We could cure it, of course, completely eradicate it. Or we could use more outmoded techniques to keep it in check.”
“Why would you do that?”
Doctor Meier has clearly prepared her answer. She looks the type to have prepared an answer for anything I could hope to ask. “Because if we were to let Jenny out into the world tomorrow she would immediately find a way to infect herself again, with the same disease or perhaps with something worse. Put bluntly, the condition we need to treat in this case—if Jenny is to survive in any meaningful way—is not the physical one.”
I nod again. Sure, I get that. From these peoples’ point of view, Jenny is crazy. I guess if I’d thought about it I would have come to the same conclusion, but somehow it never occurred to me. “So, what’s the alternative?”
“There are two options. The first, perhaps the easiest in many ways, will involve gene therapy, some alteration of memories, intrusive brain surgery. Put bluntly, we would correct Jenny’s personality to a degree where she can function safely in society. It sounds, perhaps, more drastic than it is. But at the end of it Jenny will, obviously, not be quite the same person she is now.”
Damn right it sounds drastic. “There’s another option?”
“There is. It’s slower, and there are no guarantees, but we have excellent psychologists on staff, and similar cases have been treated with a high degree of success.”
I know that there’s going to be a “but,” it’s written all over her face.
“While there’s a good chance that Ms. Ulek can become well with sufficient help and support, it will take more than the kindness of strangers. What she will need is someone she knows, someone who knows her, who will devote time and—”
“No.”
“If you’ll just let me explain—”
“No, I can’t do that. I have a career, I have my life.” Suddenly, my heart has sunk right down into the pit of my stomach. “I haven’t seen Jenny in years, I don’t think I mean anything to her at all, and I can’t possibly do that.” Listening to my own voice, I know that what I’m saying is true, and yet at the same time I know it’s not the truth. But what would be? That I couldn’t say.
“We’d only ask that you spend some time considering it.”
“Sure, I will. I’ll consider it, and then the answer is still going to be no. It’s just not something I can do.”
Doctor Meier nods. She stands up and moves towards the door. I can tell she’s bluffing, that she hasn’t quite given up yet. “We’ll call you in a few days, when you’ve had time to consider.”
I guess I know myself better than Doctor Meier does, because when she calls three days later the answer hasn’t changed. I didn’t make Jenny sick. I didn’t make her want to be sick. I have another interview coming up, and I can’t be asked to abandon that for someone I barely know. But I don’t tell her that. I don’t have to explain myself.
Only, the nightmares keep coming. In some way, a way I don’t much like, it seems that Jenny is still a part of me. I find myself remembering, more and more, those months we lived together. Jenny has become a ghost, and I don’t know if I can escape her.
A week after my visit I phone the hospital. I don’t recognize the doctor who answers so I have to explain who I am, the whole situation, before I can finally get to saying it: “I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to help.”
This new doctor, male and middle-aged, looks away from me for a moment. When he looks back he says, very flatly, “Ms. Ulek’s procedure was completed yesterday morning. She’s due to be released at the end of the week, but perhaps you could visit her in the meantime. I’m sure she would appreciate the company.”
I don’t kid myself that I go for Jenny’s sake.
Doctor Meier meets me at the door, and she’s all smiles: “The procedure went well,” she says, “we’re very optimistic.”
She leads me through corridors again, presumably in a different direction this time, but it’s all so indistinguishable that I honestly can’t tell. Either way, we wind up at a particular door and she steps back and says, “I’ll let you go in on your own. I’ll wait here until you’re finished.”
“I won’t be long.”
“Take as long as you need.”
I won’t be long. I don’t
I push through the door and the room on the other side is a lot like the corridor, only wider. Jenny is propped up in bed, with some glossy magazine spread over her knees. When she hears the door, she glances up and looks confused for just an instant, then turns her puzzled look into a smile and says, “Hi there. You’ve come to see me.”
“Jenny. How are you?”
