《Mirrored Cuts》Chapter 26

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John and I started spending time together at strange hours, usually framed around the time that normal people slept. Everyone usually assumed that 10 pm to 2 am and 7 am-8 am were off limits because some people were normal, even on a college campus. So those were the times that we were both free. We would wrap our arms around each other and talk about everything and anything that came to mind; the calls we had seen, the latest drama, the possibility of other life in space and the ethics of an artificial super-intelligence.

“So we shouldn’t build it…because it will most likely kill us all,” I said, confused as to why people were building these things.

“But we could solve problems exponentially faster.” He traced my hair behind my ear, applying pressure in all the right places.

“We wouldn’t need those problems solved if we were dead. Which we would be.”

“Maybe not.” He kissed me, silencing my dark fear of a robot so efficient that it would wipe out its creators to do its job better. I melted, feeling the usual warmth start in the pit of my stomach.

I ignored my mother and father’s calls, which were becoming more and more frequent. Eventually though, they called my RA. And my RA has physical access to my location. She bustled in like a disease. She was wearing the sweatpants she had lent me the week before with a more fashionable tank top, that lent a sexy but casual look to her that I knew I had not obtained running to my test.

“Your parents are freaking out,” she said. Astute, I thought. I hadn’t figured that out from the twelve consecutive phone calls I had just received.

“I’ll call them back. I was just in the middle of something.”

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“Then you must have been doing it for a long time. They said they’ve been calling all week. You need to call them now.”

“I appreciate you coming here to tell me this, but it’s honestly none of your business.”

She pouted. “I’m your RA. Your well being is my job.”

“I’ll call them back later. I haven’t taken a shift in a week and a half and now I’m going to be late.” I picked up my jacket and my watch and walked out of my room, checking to see if I had my key before shutting the door.

When I reached the office, I called and asked to be let in. It was a tradition or a rule, no one knew at this point, that until you were made a responder, you didn’t get a key to the office. You called and someone got up to get you. I think it was for practical reasons, because of high turnover. Why would you give someone a key if you were just going to ask for it back in a few weeks? It was like in relationships. You had to have been dating for a long time before you were given a key to the other person’s place.

John let me in. As I entered the building, I thought he was going to say something, but decided against it. In the office, I settled myself in to read the assigned reading. One of my professors had forgotten what it was like to be a student and assigned a hundred and fifty pages of reading, to be completed in two days. Most of the professors here assumed that theirs was the only class the students were taking. John was playing a video game on the other couch in the most subdued way possible. I had never seen someone play video games in such a sad, intending-to-send-a-message manner. I refused to apologize for not communicating with him for the last week. I had to fix this problem or everything was going to fall apart.

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I cracked though. Sad video game playing was new to me and I felt bad that I had upset him.

“Quiet night, huh?” I said, hoping to start a conversation with John.

“MOTHER FUCKER,” the graduate student in the other room screamed. He walked into the room. “Did you really just say that? Has no one taught you anything?”

DOOOH-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOH. The foghorn noise sounded through the radio.

Obviously, no one had taught me anything. I later learned that you were never supposed to say quiet or slow or bored on a shift. You were just asking for it. That was one of the worst nights of my life, and sometimes I wonder if I really did cause it. Superstition is a slippery one because I’m someone who would rather be safe than sorry. And superstition loves people like me.

From the radio, we learned that there was a patient in a sorority dorm who had stopped breathing. We didn’t know why at the time and we didn’t know when. I thanked any deity that was listening to have two people who actually knew what they were doing with me.

“Do you remember how to bag?” the graduate student asked me as we leapt into the car. I remembered how to breathe air into someone’s lungs with a bag-valve mask but I had never done it on a real person.

He flipped on the lights and drove us out of the parking lot at top speeds. I was thankful that it was dark outside so I couldn’t see the trees whipping past. Meanwhile, he was delegating jobs. There wouldn’t be time on scene. John was to get an initial scene assessment, check her pulse and see if she really wasn’t breathing. If she wasn’t, I was to start bagging her every six seconds. The graduate student would talk to the bystanders and figure out what had happened. The two-minute drive felt like two seconds and two hours, such was my anxiety. I kept clenching and unclenching the handle on my jump kit to release some tension. John and the graduate student were on high alert but they didn’t seem to be freaking out. I took a few deep breaths and concentrated on the fact that staying calm was my job at this point.

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