The Brokenhearted (9 page)

The woman places her hand on my head, gently patting my matted hair. Her eyebrows furrow with concern beneath her mass of silver curls, the color an odd contrast to her youthful, unlined face.

“Don’t touch me,” I hiss. “Get your hands off me right now!”

“She’s ferocious.” She grins at the jogger, seemingly impressed. Her bloodshot blue eyes shine with evident pride as she writes something down on a clipboard. “A very good sign.”

“Where am I?” I demand. “And why am I tied up?”

“I’ll get those. Sorry about that. You kept trying to pull out the IV.” The jogger starts to unbuckle the restraints binding my wrists to the table. “We didn’t know if you were going to make it.” His ears turn red as he releases the last of the straps pinning me down.

“What happened last night?” I whisper, struggling to sit up. The effort makes the room spin. I instinctively reach my hands to my throat. The necklace is still there, the flat gold heart cool in my hand.

“Three nights ago, actually,” the woman chirps as she presses a stethoscope to my chest.

“Three nights?” The blood drains from my face, and I will myself not to pass out. The boy rests a hand on my back to steady me, and I don’t have the strength to shake him off.

“Easy now, take it slow. You don’t want to lose consciousness again,” the doctor murmurs. Through my dizziness I notice a large tattoo on the inside of her forearm. It’s a double helix, two curved strands of DNA. Surrounding it is a complex series of interlocking hexagons and pentagons dotted with letters and numbers. I think back to last year’s bio lab, where we were always drawing symbols like this. Nucleotides. The basic elements of genetic reproduction. A second tattoo near her wrist is of a small heart, encircling a name in delicate script.
Noa
.

“You remember falling into the river, right?” the jogger says, a guilty, pained expression on his face.

I nod, wishing I could forget the icy water flooding my lungs, the instant freezing of my limbs, the polluted kerosene stench of the Midland, the certainty that my life was over.

“Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have asked for a reward.” He pauses for a moment, and I notice his eyes are a clear brown but red rimmed and tired-looking. “I don’t know what I was thinking.

“Anyway,” he goes on, “you were carried down the river, but I jumped in after you. When I finally reached you, I took you straight to Jax’s lab. I’m Ford, by the way, and this is Jax. She saved your life. Jax, this is . . .”

“Anthem.”

Ford’s cheeks redden a little, and he nods. “We, uh, actually already know your name.”

I look from one to the other, my chest suddenly skipping like a broken hard drive. “You do?”

“You’ve been in the papers,” Ford says carefully, avoiding my eyes. “The whole city is looking for you.”

“Oh my god.” I picture my mother and father being interviewed on
Channel Four Roundup,
and goose bumps rise on my forearms at the realization that they probably think I’m dead. Then a thought occurs to me—maybe they’ve found out about Gavin, maybe somehow the kidnappers have changed their plan. “Did the news mention a kidnapping?”

Ford eyes me curiously, but shakes his head. “Just you.”

“I . . . the reason I was on that bridge so late is because my boyfriend was kidnapped and I was going for help. Have you heard the name Gavin Sharp in the news at all?”

“Sorry.” Ford shakes his head. “About everything. Really.”

“It’s an honor to meet you, Anthem,” Jax jumps in, her fingers closing around mine, pumping them up and down a little too enthusiastically. “Ford used to be a boxer before he got on the wrong side of a few fights. It may have made him into the reckless idiot he is today. He didn’t tell me he was responsible for your death until later. I was furious when—”

“My
death
?” I look down at my paper gown and notice something black and wormlike swimming beneath it, near the center of my chest. I start to lift the hospital gown, but Ford lifts my chin up, his eyes carrying a warning.

“Better not look just yet.”

“Why not?” I manage, my voice scraping my throat. Again I notice the tight, tingly hum in my chest, the whirring sensation.

Jax interrupts. “The river was ice-cold. Your heart stopped. Ford tried mouth-to-mouth, but it was too late. You were . . . clinically dead. Until we brought you back, of course.”

“Brought me back how?” I whisper, putting a hand onto the metal table to steady myself. The lab animals. The scalpels. The—oh,
God
. The
walls
. The blood spattered across them. I begin to shake so violently that my body rustles the paper on the gurney.

“Maybe you should lie back down for a minute?” Jax says, her lips pursed with concern. She presses two fingers against her wrist, on top of the heart tattoo. “You’re still extremely weak. I’ll need to keep you for observation for at least a couple more days—”

“I’m fine,” I lie, my throat constricting, my larynx strangled by a crushing fist of dread. “Just tell me what you did.”

Jax nods. “I dabble in a lot of different sciences. Chemistry, biology, genetics, a bit of physics—” She titters nervously. “I was actually the youngest professor ever hired in the bioengineering department of Bedlam University, before a couple of experiments got away from me and they raided my lab.” Her expression grows stormy.

“Total mad scientist, in other words,” Ford interrupts. “She’s wanted by the feds, which is why she never leaves this lab. I do her errands, buy her equipment, that kind of thing.”

Jax scowls and perches on a rolling metal stool, her face now level with mine. “Yes, Ford, I don’t know what I’d do without you. But enough about me, right?” More nervous laughter spills from her mouth, and she stops abruptly, growing serious again. “After three minutes without a heartbeat, a person is pronounced clinically dead. Your heart stopped for approximately forty minutes, but because of the lake, you were also experiencing hypothermia, which is very good for a dead person. The river may have saved your life every bit as much as the surgery.”

Surgery.
I feel bile rise in my throat and swallow it down. “I hooked you up to the ventilator for a while.” Jax waves her hand toward a huge, hulking machine with accordions encased in glass tubing above six rusty dials. “But your heart refused to restart on its own. So I intervened.”

“You intervened,” I repeat dumbly.

“See those sweet little guys?” Jax points to the corner of the room. I force myself to look at the table with the cages, where the rats are frantically racing on their creaky wheels. “Maybe we should go take a closer look at them, if you think you’re strong enough to get there.”

I nod, sliding carefully off the metal table and following Jax and Ford toward the cages, careful not to move too far from the IV pole still dripping pink fluid into my veins. We stand side by side and watch them run. They’re moving so fast in their exercise wheel that their feet are just a white blur.

“About a year ago, I used recombinant technology to culture stem cells from a hummingbird and grow a powerful chimeric heart. These little speed demons each have one.”

I stare at the furry blurs of motion, transfixed by their speed. Their little legs move as rapidly as hummingbird wings. “Chimeric? As in a chimera?” I think back to Greek mythology and flash on the sculpture in our foyer, his eagle head, his lion body. “Like a griffin?”

“Like a griffin, yes . . . in that their hearts are formed from a combination of more than one species.”

“And . . . how does that relate to me?”

Jax turns to me, her expression delighted. “Well, now you have one, too.”

I watch her mouth move as she goes on excitedly, spirals of her silver hair bouncing as she talks, her eyes dancing. But all I hear is the whirring, louder now that I know its terrifying source. So loud it’s thudding inside my head. I start to feel faint, the room stretching out like a funhouse mirror.

“Just like a hummingbird’s,” she’s saying, “your chimeric heart beats ten times per second. It’s working so hard and so fast that it appears to have already reversed all the effects of hypothermia. Lucky, because I didn’t want to have to amputate your legs . . .”

My eyes move back to the rat cage. The rats appear to speed up, their bodies almost flying in their wheel. I’m not sure if it’s because of their unnatural speed or my blurred vision. I put a hand to my chest, resting it lightly on top of the jagged line Ford warned me against examining. Knotted wires poke through the hospital gown. Stitches.

Picturing it, the edges of my vision turn black. My legs start to give out. I stagger back to the gurney and grab hold of it. Inside me, there’s that fluttery sensation again, only now I know its source. A freakish hummingbird heart, beating ten times faster than my old one. Racing at 600 beats per minute. Pushing the blood through my veins faster than any human heart could, or should. Pumping hard and fast until the day it burns itself out.

“My clothes,” I mumble, my eyes flicking across Ford’s face before I squeeze them shut against the dizzy whirling of the room. “I’m cold.”

He nods, springing toward the door. “I bought some stuff for you. I’ll grab it.”

“How long will I live?” I whisper frantically to Jax the moment Ford leaves the room.

“If you’re very careful to resist torpor, you’ll live to a hundred, maybe longer.”

“If I resist what?”

“Think of your heart as like an engine. If a car sits in the garage for too many days, the engine will cease. Your heart is the same way. Your blood flow will slow if you’re too still for too long, or if you deprive it of fuel. This slowing of the system is called torpor, and it can kill you if you aren’t careful.”

“What about when I sleep?”

Jax shrugs. “We’ll observe you over the next few days and see how the heart responds to eight hours of REM state. After that, we’ll know more.”

But I don’t have a few days
, I want to scream. All I can think about is Gavin being dragged out the door by the kidnappers. If I’ve been here three days, I have less than forty-eight hours to get them their money.

Jax taps the IV pole. “This is glucose. It’s been keeping your blood sugar steady. Once we disconnect you from the IV, you might find you’ll need to eat more often than you’re used to.”

“I need to go home,” I say, my voice thick. “My parents . . .” I silently add,
Gavin.
Everything depends on getting that money to the kidnappers by tomorrow night. My stomach sinks as I stare at the rats trapped in their cage. Ford comes back, holding a carefully folded sweatshirt and workout pants with a pair of tube socks sitting on top. Under his arm are two shoeboxes. The tags are still on everything.

“I had to guess your size,” he says apologetically. “I hope some of this fits.”

I look at him, then at Jax. “Could I have some privacy?”

“Of course,” they say in unison.

Jax pauses in the doorway and turns around, her eyes tearing up. “Your recovery is truly astonishing, Anthem. If only this were legal, we would make history.” Her eye twitches as she leans into the room and continues. “Every scientist in the country would give their right arm to study you in their lab. For now, it’s best that we keep this between us.”

A shudder ripples through me at the thought of being studied, hooked up to wires for the rest of my life. I nod and force a weak smile as she backs out of the lab.

Alone again, I grit my teeth and rip the IV out of my hand. It stings and burns at the same time, but I manage to swallow my scream. There’s a little blood, so I grab a roll of gauze from the metal table and wrap it around my hand, ripping it with my teeth and tying it in a sloppy knot. I slip into the workout pants, rolling the waistband so the bottoms don’t drag on the floor, and carefully untie the strings on my hospital gown. Nobody thought to find a bra, thank goodness. This is one of those times when it comes in handy not to really need one. I stop myself from looking closely at the black line of stitches and pull on the huge maroon sweatshirt, careful to avoid brushing it too roughly against my bare chest.

After I lace up the sneakers, I slowly turn the door handle, peering out into what must be the main room of Jax’s lab. She’s bent over a Bunsen burner in the far corner, heating water in a large beaker, humming an aimless tune.

I dry-heave a couple of times when I see the rest of the lab. Along each wall are dozens and dozens of animal cages, full of rats, rabbits, mice, and even a monkey, black and scrawny with a large tuft of white chest hair. My heart whirring, I begin to move quietly in the direction of the door. As it creaks open, I see Jax’s frizzy head whirl around from the corner of my eye. But by the time she makes it to the door, I’m already halfway down an alley. She won’t chase me too far, I realize as I gather speed. A fugitive can’t risk being seen.

And then I’m running, running, running, a lab rat loosed from its cage.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

CHAPTER 12

At first, I run slowly, nervous I’ll hurt myself so soon after major surgery. I stop for a moment behind a smoldering tire fire to gauge how I’m holding up physically. I should feel like collapsing, but I don’t. I feel energized. My muscles are warm and loose. I put a hand over my whirring chest. What was it Jax said about my heartbeat? Ten times per second? It’s so fast I can’t differentiate between the beats at all. It feels more like a vibration.

I take off again, and with each block I’m pushing harder, daring myself to go faster. The longer I run, the more the tightness in my chest fades. Soon it’s nothing but an internal itch. My feet pound the trash-strewn streets of the South Side, my pace quickening until it feels as if my sneakers are barely touching the ground. The rhythm of my toes on the sidewalk, the blast of cool air in my lungs, the simple fact of being alive after everything that’s happened makes me feel that even with this . . .
thing
inside me, I’m still healthy and strong.