Across the Universe - Beth Revis [34]
The wi-com is doing its best to distract me—the sounds and tones are cycling through at a dizzying pace. Part of me wants to bash my head against the door, just to make the noise stop. It’s driving me insane, the sort of insane that Doc’s mental meds can’t fix. My left hand grips my ear so hard that blood trickles between my fingers—I’m afraid I’ll rip it off. Instead, I punch the wall with my right hand.
The flowers I’d so carefully chosen from the garden—the big, bright blooms I’d selected specifically because they reminded me of Amy’s hair—crinkle against the force of my fist meeting the wall. Petals fall in a shower of reds and golds. I unclench my fist. The stems are a stringy, gooey mass. The leaves have been crushed beyond recognition. The flowers themselves are pitiful remnants of the natural beauty they held on the pond’s edge.
An undercurrent of clicking sounds adds itself to my tonal torture. I let the flowers drop at Amy’s door, slap both hands around my ears, trapping the noises inside my skull as I run from the Hospital to the grav tube to the Keeper Level and silent tranquility.
17
AMY
THE MAN IN FRONT OF ME HAS LONG FINGERS. HE WEAVES them in and out of one another, then rests his head upon them while he stares at me as if I am a puzzle he cannot solve. He seemed polite, almost sympathetic, when he’d fetched me from my room, but now I wish he’d left his office door open.
“I’m sorry you’re in this situation.” Although he sounds sincere, he just looks curious.
Even though that boy had explained everything to me, I still feel the need to have this “doctor” confirm it.
“We’re really fifty years from landing?” My voice is cold and hard, like the ice I am beginning to wish I was still encased in.
“About 49 years and 250 days, yes.”
It’s 266 days, I think, remembering what the boy said. “I can’t be refrozen?”
“No,” the doctor says simply. When all I do is sit there, staring at him, he adds, “We do actually have a few more cryo chambers—”
“Put me in one of them!” I say, leaning forward. I will face a century of nightmares if I can wake up with my parents.
“If you had been reanimated correctly, that might have been an option, and even then, it would have been dangerous. Cells are not meant to be frozen and refrozen. The body deteriorates with multiple reanimations.” The doctor shakes his head. “Refreezing might kill you.” He struggles to find a way to describe it to me. “You will become like freezer-burned meat. Dried out. Dead,” he adds when that gross image does not deter my eagerness.
For a moment, I’m crestfallen. Then I remember. “What about my parents?”
“What about them?”
“Are they going to be unfrozen early, too?”
“Ah.” He unwraps his fingers and straightens the objects on his desk, making the notepad parallel to the desk edge, the pens in the cup all lean to one side. He’s wasting time, avoiding eye contact. “You weren’t meant to be unfrozen. What you must understand is that your parents, Numbers 41 and 40, are essential. They both have highly specialized skills that will be needed when we land. We will require their knowledge and aid at Centauri-Earth’s developmental stages.”
“So, basically, no.” I want to hear him say it.
“No.”
I shut my eyes and breathe. I am so angry—so frustrated—just so pissed off that this has happened and that I can’t do anything at all about it. I can feel the hot, itchy tears in my eyes, but I do not want to cry, not now in front of the doctor, not ever again.
The doctor pushes the bottom right corner of his big notepad so that it is perfectly square to the edge of the desk. His long, twitchy fingers pause. There is nothing out of place on his desk. There is nothing out of place in his whole office. Except me.
“It’s not so bad here,” the doctor says. I look up. There’s a blurry film fogging my vision, and I know if I’m not careful, I’ll cry. I let him continue. “In a very real way, it’s better that you are here now, instead of there later. Who knows