Incognito

Chapter 6

I'm standing in front of the entrance to Valley View Regional Medical Center, the hospital where Kim was taken to after the bombing, just staring at it, deciding if I really want to do what I'm about to do. Water trickles down my cheek and forehead, and I wipe it away with the back of my hand. It's raining pretty hard now; lucky for me the weather didn't decide to freeze like everything else...

Kim is asleep back at the fancy hotel where she's chosen to camp out while in this alternate reality, safely asleep with no idea what I'm doing. It's better that she doesn't know. She wouldn't approve of it, not in a million years. I tried falling asleep myself, but there's a pit in my stomach tonight that's refusing to go away, refusing to let me fall asleep. I've had it since taking that flight with Kim almost a month ago, since she told me about her year in here, in this heaven-forsaken reality. I haven't been able to shake the feeling, which is why I'm here now, at this hospital, hoping that somehow it can be taken away.

I walk in through the automatic doors, finally cementing my conviction, and move past the mess of people gathered in the lobby. Some of the hospital's patrons are seated, clearly having waited for a considerable amount of time for their appointment, judging by their expressions. A few of them are arguing with the attendants at the front desk. One person is halfway through a sneeze; I wonder if germs are frozen too. I certainly hope so.

I move behind the receptionist's desk and slide her chair out of the way with her still seated in it. She skids over against the wall, her arms still raised as if she's typing. I take her spot and scroll across the display with one finger, moving applications out of the way in search of what I need. There are so many open, I wonder how this lady's computer hasn't crashed, or at the very least been bogged down to a speed so slow it's going backwards. Finally, I find one called Patient Portal and move through the various functions until I find the patient registry.

"Reisberg, Reisberg..." I mutter under my breath, moving through the list of patients. There's a Daniel Reisberg, a Julie Reisberg. Jeez, there's more than one of them? How common is that name? No Kim though. I double check and cross reference with records from the other hospitals in the region, but there's no Kim. If she's real, and not some trick on my messed-up mind, and she really was put in a medical coma like she described in her story, she would—in theory—still be on record in the hospital. My current theory is that there's a disconnect between mind and body in the Pause. It has to be. How else do you explain all the things we've been able to do, all the risks we've been able to take, all with impunity. A year to be in a coma though? Kim's clearly not awake and well, and if she's not registered in any of the hospitals around here...

I dive deeper and expand my search to the time she was first admitted, including discharged patients. I look through the list again, but still, nothing. Then, the pit in my stomach surfaces again, guiding me to what I already fear. I select the check-box marked Deceased and refresh the search. If I were being honest with myself, this is probably the whole reason why I came in the first place. I hold my breath, waiting for the results.

Kim Reisberg. Admitted: 4 August 2181. Deceased: 7 August 2181. TOD: 0838.

The rain continues to pelt the windows outside, creating trails of water that crisscross down to the ground in static patterns. My heart feels like it's stopped inside of my chest, and for the first time since meeting Kim, I wish it really were stopped.

Maybe it already is.

She's dead. But I can still see her. Does that mean I'm dead, too? I mean, I can't say this is how I imagined the afterlife, but what other explanation is there? How did I die? Was I killed by the Europeans? Or was there another rebel attack and I got caught in the middle? Panamerican citizens have been caught in the crossfire before.