CHAPTER 5
The technician set the intravenous catheter into a vein in Maria’s right wrist. She flushed it with cold heparinized saline, then attached the fluid-filled bag. There was an electronic device attached to the tube that connected the bag to the catheter. The device was connected by an electrical cable to a joystick with two buttons. One of the buttons, a red one, had a safety over it. It was sitting under Maria’s thumb. The yellow button on the top of the stick sat under Maria’s trigger finger.
The androgynous technician pulled a chair on casters squarely in front of Maria’s seat and mounted it like a horse. They said, “Maria, I’m Shay. I’d like to describe each step of what we will be doing this morning and how you might expect to feel. At the end, you’ll have an opportunity to ask me any questions. If you don’t feel like I have answered questions adequately, I’d be happy to bring a doctor in to address any concerns.”
Maria offered a curt nod; wanting to simply get on with things.
Shay pointed to Maria’s right at the full wall mirror and said, “As a first step, we will swivel your chair to face the mirror. We find that this helps the reanimated mind find themselves and facilitates communication for both parties.”
They continued, “Then we will push an IV bolus of synaptogin fusion decoupler into your bloodstream. Do you understand the technology that has been suppressing Carmen Mayor? Or would you like me to explain?”
“I understand it,” Maria said.
Shay nodded, “I thought so. So the decoupler will liberate Carmen’s neural networks. She’ll come to consciousness a little like a person waking from a long and deep sleep. She might be disoriented at first. You’ll want to be looking at that mirror so the first thing she sees is herself and, well, you. She won’t be worried about where she is if she can be grounded in who she is and who she is with.”
Maria nodded, “Understood.”
“Now, if at any point, you feel threatened, you can press the yellow button. It will introduce fusers that avoid the uncouplers and should bring Carmen back into stasis. If the stasis doesn’t hold and you feel further threatened, you should release the safety and press the red button under your thumb. It’s irreversible. It permanently ablates prefrontal cortex pyramidals in layer III, hippocampal pyramidals, dentate granules, fast-spiking baskets, and dorsal raphe serotonergic neurons, among some others. That will permanently suppress Carmen.”
Maria held her breath for a two count then declared, “It would kill Carmen.”
“Yes.” Shay turned Maria’s chair to face the mirror. “I’ll leave the room to give you privacy unless you press this button on the side of your chair. You’ll be able to speak with me and I can come back into the room if you press it.”
“You’ll be with Mona and Nica?” Maria asked.
“Yes.”
“Will they be able to hear me, too, if I call to you?”
“If you want. I can use a headset if you prefer our comms to be private,” Shay offered.
“No. No — it’s ok if they hear,” Maria said. Then, as Shay turned away to walk out of the room, Maria grabbed their arm. “Actually, can we record it, Shay? The conversation?”
“Of course,” Shay tapped their watch and spoke out to the room, “Begin recording of re-animation procedure, Basquez vis Mayor.”
The room announced: Recording.
“How long after the decoupler injection will I need to wait before Carmen is back?”
Shay wobbled their head, “It varies. Between two and ten minutes.”
Maria rubbed her eyes hard, felt her heartbeat thumping hard, and then said, “Okay.”
“Okay, meaning you are ready for your decoupler bolus?”
Maria wanted to say no. Maria wanted to leave. Maria wanted to hide.
Maria said, “I’m ready.”
Then she watched the needle pop into the port, saw Shay’s thumb push the plunger, and braced herself for a long-awaited visit.
Maria wasn’t sure if the movement belonged to Carmen. They probably both felt the same itch. But Maria was not usually this impulsive, not when she was watching her own body this closely. Still, she was glad their right hand was scratching their scalp.
“Carmen? You there? I’m gonna let you talk if you want.”
“Mamaciiiiita? Mariiiia?” came the slurred words, but in the mirror, Maria only saw her own expressions.
“Yes, Carmen, it’s me. You’re, you’re waking up,” Maria said carefully, nervously — her finger on the yellow trigger.
Then, she saw it. A squint. A look of confusion that was not her own. Carmen.
The next words came more quickly and frantically, “Donde estás? Donde estamos? Maria?”
Maria felt her heart galloping with emotions that were not hers, but the adrenalin release from Carmen’s emotions certainly jolted her into her own fight or flight response. She dropped her hand away from the joystick completely to guard against an inadvertent resuppression — or death — of her sister.
For a few moments, Maria couldn’t speak at all. Neither could Carmen. They were out of practice. They were stepping on each other’s motor control. Maria squeezed their right fist twice. Her old signal for: let me speak. Carmen squeezed their left fist once, confirmation that she understood.
Maria said, “Thank you, Carmen. Are you ok?”
Maria noticed Carmen studying them in the mirror, “Estamos viejas…shit…we got old, Maria…”
Maria felt her hackles come up. She’d worked hard to maintain their body, partly because she knew she needed to share it with Carmen. She wanted to tell her sister to go fuck herself. Instead she said, “Not that old, Carmy. You should see our old classmates. We look really good - at least for our age.”
“Cuantos…” Carmen trailed off, her use of their tongue and mouth feeling clumsy to Maria. She wondered if it was Carmen’s rust, or Maria being out of practice at ceding the muscles to her sister’s will.
As if in a response to Maria’s musings, Carmen spoke more clearly, “How old are we, Maria?”
“We’re forty three, Carmy.”
“Shit…so it’s been, what? Fifteen years?”
“Fourteen.”
“Hell of a night of sleep…why do I still feel so…cansada?” Carmen asked as she lifted her left hand to trace the lines that had formed on their face through a decade and a half of Maria’s motherhood, wifehood, and hard work as a neuroimmunologist. “So you didn’t wait until the very last minute? To wake me?”
Maria smiled for both of them, “I thought about it. I like the quieter house, but I realized I missed you more.”
Carmen rolled their eyes, “I bet you did.”
Carmen grabbed a few strands of their hair and pulled them in front of their eyes, “You let it get split ends! Don’t you condition?!”
“There she is,” Maria almost laughed, “You know I can press this button and put you back to sleep, right?”
Carmen looked down and away from the mirror, “Who says I don’t want you to, Maria?”
Maria heard Carmen’s old melancholy there – he tone that had often chased Carmen’s over-the-top joie de vivre.
Maria was about to probe it’s depths when Carmen’s control of their voice cut in, “Hey! How are the girls?! Are either of them any fun like me? Or both sticks-in-mud like you?”
Maria smiled, “They’re amazing and difficult and brilliant and stupid…so they are both like both of us. I’ll let you do the math on which adjectives apply to you and which apply to me.” She winked.
“Bitch, your punch lines are still lame, sis. Here I was thinking you might have learned how to be funny. Fifteen years and all that.” She paused, “Nope.”
“Well, I have six more months to get there,” Maria said. “But in all seriousness, Mona and Nica are great. Nica studies a bit more. Mona’s a bit boy crazy, but not as bad as you ever were.”
Carmen laughed, “That’s good.”
“And Pedro, he’s this amazing athlete! He got that from his dad…”
Maria felt her face pull away from the mirror. She felt her eyes averting her own eyes..
Carmen interrupted her, “Is — is Pedro a…is he a happy kid?”
“That kid? If he’s got a basketball in his hands…which he always does…then, yes, he’s the happiest kid you’ll ever meet.”
Carmen flashed a fleeting grin on their face, “I’d like that.”
“You’d like what?”
“To meet him, Maria.”
“Oh, of course! I forgot you never met him…”
“Hermana, I wasn’t in a good headspace. I —” Carmen cut herself off.
“What, sis?”
“That’s why I asked to leave. Well, part of it. My headspace, I mean.”
“Carmy, no offense, but you’ve never been in a good headspace…ever…I didn’t think anything had changed. I just thought you got tired of it,” Maria said.
“No, this was different. I was scared I was gonna relapse, Maria…during our…during the…your pregnancy with Pedro. I couldn’t handle it.”
Maria forced their eyes right into the mirror. She stared hard into her own and Carmen’s eyes. “You couldn’t handle my pregnancy with Pedro? Why? You were fine with Mona and Nica.”
Carmen looked right back into Maria’s eyes this time. She said, “That’s because, with the girls, I didn’t think the baby was mine…”
“Of course the baby wasn’t y—” Maria started and stopped, “Wait, what are you saying?”
Carmen looked away again, “Hermana, how much did Javier tell you about the night when I got high, knocked you out with CD11 gel?”
Anger rose hot in her gut, like lava under pressure, and she heard herself say, “You mean the night you tricked him into fucking you?”
They sat silent for a few moments before Carmen said, “Yes, that night.”
Maria said nothing. When she focused on herself in the mirror, she saw her anger and hatred had found her face. She knew Carmen saw the same.
Then Maria noticed that her hand had moved back to the joystick. And she realized that it had been her who put it there, not Carmen.
But Carmen was tightening the grip. “Do it.” she said. “Do it, Sis. Get it done. Then I don’t have to live with this. I thought the long sleep would help. But…”
Maria spoke through her own gritted teeth. Unsure how much control she had over what parts of her body. “You do it, puta hermana. You can control this hand, too. Yellow or red. Sleep or death. You pick. I thought maybe you’d come back different. Maybe you’d want to move on. Do less damage, but, no, you’re the same destructive… Yellow or red? You can pick.”
Her index finger sat on the yellow button and her thumb hovered over the safety locked red.
She felt her sister’s tears well in her eyes, “I — I can’t. I’m a cow—”
Maria sneered, “You’re a coward? Yeah you are. You say shit and then try to run away from your words. Tell me. Just say it. What are you saying about that night with Javi? What are you telling me about Javier. What are you telling me about Pedro?!”
But Carmen didn’t answer. Maria felt her trigger finger twitch. She felt cool liquid flowing into her vein. She felt her muscle slacken. She felt her body under her own complete control. But she felt something else, too. Something bigger than her body. She felt something about her life. Was it her life spiraling out of control?