Machine Man (serial)

Then Lola stopped doing anything. She lay listless. She didn’t respond to my questions. She stared at nothing. And I started thinking, well, I don’t really know her that well. We had shared a few intense experiences, but you add up the time we’d spent in each other’s company, and it was like four hours. It was an amazing four hours. I’m not saying otherwise. I’m saying that when a person you’ve just met completely changes personality, you wonder which one they really are.

“Get her to talk about the heart,” said Cassandra Cautery. This was later, in the hallway outside Lola Banks’s room. I had given up trying to get a reaction out of Lola and wheeled myself away for some thinking time.

“I can’t get her to talk about anything. She’s practically comatose.”

“You’re not trying. You’re just saying her name over and over.”

I blinked. Now I understood why one wall in Lola’s recovery room was a big mirror. “You’re spying on us?”

“Charlie,” said Cassandra Cautery. “I do not want to put any pressure on you, but what we’ve done here, this in-house surgery, that’s not exactly legal. Do you know how that feels, to a lawyer?” She put one hand on her breast. I mean her chest.

“No.”

“It’s horrible. It’s like spending your whole life training to swim the hundred meters, then putting on a pair of flippers and hoping nobody notices.”

“What?” I said.

“We don’t break the law. The entire point of being a lawyer is to get what you want without breaking the law. Now this…” She gestured at Lola’s door. “It jeopardizes everything.”

Her lips pressed together. Then she snuffled. It was a noise I had heard before. I had been lying on the floor of my lab, after crushing my right leg. Cassandra Cautery and D. Peters had been standing over me. D. Peters had said: Don’t do that thing.

“Just… one moment.” Tears began to spill from her eyes. Her cheeks grew flushed and puffy. “When I get angry… it’s a chemical imbalance.” Her chest hitched, like a car someone was trying to jump-start. I was transfixed with horror. “It… passes… in a… minute.” She began to hiccup.

“I’ll ask about the heart,” I said.

50.