Excerpt: Wyrd Dreams

Wyrd Dreams

“Excuse me – Miss!”

She slammed shoulder to shoulder with a student, and papers exploded.

With only a glance over her shoulder – not at the student, but at the security guard who followed – she continued down the hall turned slightly sideways, judging his speed.

The security guard picked up the pace and raised his voice. “Miss. You can’t go down there without a security pass.”

She spotted the young Asian woman out of the corner of her eye a split second before the inevitable. Both women grimaced, braced for impact, and they collided, with a stack of text books crushed between them. The Asian stood back, dropping all her books, apologizing profusely and adjusting her glasses.

“I’m looking for Dr. Daniel Grey,” she said, catching the student by the shoulders. “Do you know where he is?”

Again, the Asian apologized, saying, “No! But I think that guard is – ”

A hot hand wrapped around Eva’s arm. “Miss!” he said, giving her a shake. “Are you deaf? I’ve been chasing you all the way from C-Wing! You need a pass.”

“I’m on urgent business with Dr. Daniel Grey.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No!” Eva answered. “I mean, yes! I mean – ” She sighed impatiently. “Listen, I’ve been trying to call him since I arrived at the Gatwick airport! He’s not answering his phone.”

“Why don’t you come back with me to my office?” the guard suggested. “We’ll give him a call, and then I’ll give you directions.” He pointed to the path of destruction she’d made of the 11:00 o’clock rush.

Eva reluctantly followed her elbow, feeling both furious and sheepish as she dragged her heels. “I used to be a professor here – Let me go. I can walk on my own two feet.”

“You worked here?”

“Yes, Harry. You used to check on me every night at exactly 9:45, telling me that you were locking up the wing for the night.”

They stood for a moment in the middle of the hall, with the knotted traffic merging and diverging around them. “Dr. Foster?” he asked.

“Eva Foster,” she said with a nod. “Genetics and microbiology.”

“I didn’t recognize you!” Then he frowned. “You haven’t aged a day.”

“I’ve aged a lifetime in the last three years, Harry. Listen, do I still need a pass? This really is urgent.”

“Uh…” He looked at his watch. “I’ll take you, if you’re that much in a hurry.”

“He’s not in his usual lab anymore,” she said. “That’s where I went at first.”

“No, he’s not there,” Harry said. He touched her elbow and took her to the nearest staircase. “You heard about his wife?”

“His wife was one of the reasons I came in such a hurry,” she said. Her voice echoed down the stairwell. Two lanky young men bounded up the stairs toward and past them, brushing shoulders. “She’s still alive, I hope. She’s still in hospital?”

“Well…no, not exactly,” Harry said. “He didn’t tell you?”

“He was lean on details when he called me. I’ve never heard a man chatter so fast for so long without actually saying anything.” They stopped on the landing, she staring up at him, him looking grave.

“He’ll tell you when we get there, I guess,” Harry said. You’re sure he’s expecting you?”

“I told him I would board the first flight,” she said to the back of his head. Heels, she thought, why did I have to wear heels? “But at the time I didn’t know when the flight would leave, how many connections, what weather delays – I hate November in this part of the country. Swimsuits one day, snowsuits the next. How far is it?”

“We’re in the wrong part of the campus. He’s out in the Dolarmar Building. We’ll take my car.” He punched through the stairwell door into a bucktoothed sleepy head, who dropped his book bag. “Can you tell me what this is all about?”

“No,” she answered. She shouldered her slipping purse and did a hop-skip to catch up to Harry, who put his paramilitary legs into a higher gear.

“Nothing?” he asked over his shoulder. He had to shout over the buzz of the main foyer of the university, where competing currents of foot traffic sluiced among students and faculty lost in thought and conversation. “Not even a hint?”

“No.”

“Breakthrough in the cancer research?”

“No. God, I hope not.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Never mind. Just get me there.”

“I’m parked on the traffic circle.”

“I appreciate this, Harry. If I’d known I was going to do track and field, I wouldn’t have left without my running shoes.” She stumbled as one of her heels wobbled out from under her, and Harry caught her before she slid across the wet marble.

---------------

The drive was longer than she’d remembered. There’d been a time when she, Beth and Daniel walked through these fields, watching deer as they grazed – before urban sprawl had decimated the vast park that had given them shelter. Beth and Daniel used to walk for hours, arm in arm: twenty years of honeymoon. Eva Foster went with them, sometimes, smelling the air, ignoring the gentle conversation that lingered on the breeze, feeling forever like the odd one out. Sometimes, either Beth or Daniel would turn and give her some time-worn advice, as mentors to protégée, never knowing –

“They still haven’t fixed this.” Harry turned the wheel and bumped onto what had been paved, once upon a time. “Even since you left.”

She bumped and jostled, hostage to the potholes. She’d chewed off all her nails on the plane, but that didn’t stop her from tapping her teeth with her nibbled fingertips.

“Are you okay? You’re looking a little feverish.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I have time.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

The tree-lined driveway twisted to the right, then left again, obscuring all sign of the expansive campus behind them. The path opened like an estuary into a gravel parking lot, where three cars and an SUV were stationed. Eva had the door open even before Harry, protesting, could bring the car to a full stop. The sun had gone down behind the main building of the university, and dusky slants of illuminated dust glowed green between the trees, falling on the fieldstone walls and the black windows of the Dolarmar Building. On the south side of the building, fluorescent light spewed out onto the snow fence. Eva ran up the creaking wooden steps of the residence-turned-laboratory and slammed into the locked door. Harry jogged up beside her, chuckling as she tried the door knob again.

“We might not have paved, but we have added a few more security,” Harry said, pressing his ID against the black pad beside the door frame. “Dr. Grey insisted on it. We decided to overhaul all the security systems in the university while we were at it.” The door knob clicked unlocked. “That,” Harry said, “is why I’d insisted on giving you a pass.”

Eva twisted the knob and shouldered open the door. The hall was dark, but once she walked in, motion detectors triggered the lights. To her left, the walls were lined alternately with unmarked doors and cheap artwork. To her right was much the same. “Which way?”

“To the right, and turn left,” Harry said, and he continued to follow her.

The place was as silent as a tomb. She walked past one fishbowl window; inside, lab assistants were working on computers, printers and various specialized equipment – machines Eva had helped buy, so many years ago.

“In here.” Harry pointed at the fourth door on the right, the last one before the men’s washroom and the end of the hall. He balled up his fingers and knuckled the door. “Dr. Grey?” he called. “There’s someone to see you.” There was no answer.

“He’s there,” she said.

“You sure?”

The room had no windows. On either side of the door were scenes of a Romantic countryside, with innocent young lovers on benches.

“Positive,” she said. “I can hear Abba.”

“Uh – ”

“Gimme Gimme Gimme a Man After Midnight,” she said. “Let me try.”

“You can hear that?” Harry asked.

She knocked as loudly as she could, for as long as she could stand it. “Dr. Daniel Grey, open this god damned door and let me in.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, that oughta do it.” A grad student peered out from the neighbouring lab. Harry made a hand sign to make a phone call, and the student nodded once before disappearing back into his room.

Eva hated standing around without anything to do, so she started a fresh barrage of knocks against the door. “Dr. Grey, if you don’t open this damned door – ”

The doctor opened the door at last. He and Eva made for a matched pair, she was sure of it. She was flush from the mad dash from one continent to the other, and he looked like he’d been rudely interrupted from a frantic love affair with a Tesla ball. “You’re here!”

“Yes, damn it! Now let me in!”

Dr. Grey filled the doorway, and he stared at Harry as if he was a threat and a stranger. He set his lips and his jaw, but then the expression softened, and he grinned. “Thanks, Henry!”

“Harry,” the campus cop said.

“Harry, thanks. She’s probably been running all over the university looking for me – I’m sorry, Foster, I should have told you we’ve moved.”

Harry was about to slide in behind Eva through the open door, but Dr. Grey pressed a broad hand against Harry’s chest, pushing him back. Colour rose on the guard’s cheeks, and Dr. Grey’s chocolate eyes narrowed. “Everything all right, Dr. Grey?” Harry asked.

“Everything’s fine!” Dr. Grey said. If he’d been on the phone, Dr. Grey might have been able to lie with his voice, but the set of his broad shoulders and his chin warned of a snap temper and dire straits. “Everything’s fine. I’ll call you back if she needs a ride to her car. You mind?”

“Not at all,” Harry answered, and he stepped clear of Dr. Grey’s reach.

Eva closed the door between them, steaming. “You’re going to tell me what this is all about?” She ran her fingers through her hair, getting them caught in a mess of tangles that hadn’t been combed out since she burst from the shower almost twenty hours earlier.

Dr. Grey had always been a large man. He had quarterback shoulders, heavy weight arms, jowls full of quick humour and mercurial fury, and he had a potbelly full of candy, pizza and beer. “It’s amazing,” he whispered. He led her down the little ramp, nearly tipping over a row of jars full of jelly beans set atop the half-wall. “I mean, I know what I saw – I know what you’d shown me – but you didn’t tell me everything!” He took her hand in his. Both of them were feverish. “The results…” He was breathless. She stared at the side of his head, remarking that he had black roots among the grey hairs, and her heart fell.

No, no, no, she thought.

“Come see,” he said. “I’ve redone this whole lab into a room for Beth.”

No, no, no!

She came around the corner, at the bottom of ramp. The room was wide open and yet still felt warm, inviting and well-decorated with all the comforts of home – it had become a bedroom in a cottage, not a sick room. Dr. Beth Grey was reclining on a hospital bed, ashen, oxygen tube in her nostrils, patchy hair turned whitish grey, with blue veins visible through the waxen skin. But when she spotted her visitor, she beamed, and in a ragged but joyful voice, she said, “Eva! You came to see me!”

Eva reached for a wall, or a chair, or anything, but when her knees softened, there was nothing to catch her but the two enormous, granite-like arms of Dr. Grey.