Artificial Heart
32

A figure was standing over her. A very familiar and missed one. Blurry. Dark. His eyes were shining. Just like the metal of his face was shining. There was a faint beeping sound and it seemed to beep in time with the flashing of his red eye. She was lying on his hard bench. He was gathering his “data” again.

‘Alf?’ Her voice echoed strangely. ‘But I thought you were done.’

He shined a light in her eyes. He said something but his voice was muffled. He disappeared into the shadows, then reappeared. Prisha blinked and found herself lying in the narrow bed in the main part of the ship. Alf was lying next to her, shoulder pressed against hers. How was that possible? The cot shouldn’t be so big. It was stretched. The whole ship looked stretched. Like she was looking down a long corridor.

‘Alf,’ she whispered, reaching out to touch him.

He turned his head and smiled. His lips moved. He said something. But again it was like she was hearing from a distance.

’Prisha,’ she recognised. But his voice sounded different, sharper, higher. ‘Prisha, can you hear me?’

Prisha blinked. She rolled her eyes, closed them, then opened them again.

The ship was gone. Along with Alf. Instead, she was lying in an unfamiliar brightly lit room. Several figures were standing over her. The beeping sound came from a heart monitor. The man leaning over her shone that damn light in her eyes again. Prisha winced.

‘Where am I?’ she croaked.

‘You collapsed. We’re taking care of you.’

He was wearing a white cloak. He had short curly black hair. Dark eyes. Prisha looked at the others. There were five. One woman. Ralph.

She shut her eyes. ‘Too bright.’

‘Turn down the lights please.’

Prisha opened her eyes again.

‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

‘Better … now.’ She tried to sit up.

‘Easy, easy,’ the man said, gripping her shoulder.

She grabbed the side of her head at a hard throb. ‘How did I get here?’

‘Your agent brought you in.’

‘My agent?’

Ralph lifted his hand.

‘Tell me what happened,’ the doctor asked. He took her chin and pressed his fingers to her throat like the army doctor did. ‘Have you been sick? Coughs? Sneezes? Fevers?’

‘No. I don’t know what happened. I just felt dizzy, sweaty, and I blacked out.’

‘We’ve taken some blood. We might get some answers.’

‘They already took some. Back home. In Australia.’

The doctor turned to the man next to him and said, ‘Go get those records.’ He looked towards the others in the room. ‘You can go now. She’s fine.’

They filed out one by one. The woman whispered something in the doctor’s ear. He nodded. Then it was just the two of them and a man standing in the back corner. He was wearing black and leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

‘Another bodyguard,’ Prisha said. ‘What exactly are you afraid of?’

‘Should I be afraid?’ the doctor asked.

Prisha scoffed.

‘My name is Craig, by the way. And this is not really a hospital, only the medical portion of our secure compound here in D.C.’

‘Compound?’

He smiled. ‘For people like you.’

He was a little too charming and it made Prisha suspicious. Her monitor kept beeping. ‘Can I take these off?’ She tugged at her leads.

The doctor helped her remove them.

‘Your ECG is a little different. Do you have heart problems?’

‘Not anymore,’ she said without thinking.

‘Anymore?’

Prisha bit down on her tongue, then realised it was completely pointless hiding the truth anymore. ‘I had a deteriorating heart murmur. Alf fixed it.’

‘Alf?’

‘Alf the alien.’

They stared at each other. The doctor grinned. ‘Okay, don’t tell me then.’

‘You’re not going to open me up, are you?’

‘Why would we open you up?’

‘To take a look. To take a look at what he did to me.’

He frowned, puzzled. ‘Let’s examine you.’

Unlike the last doctor, he asked a lot of questions. General, normal questions. Nothing about Alf. Did he even know? His assessment was much more in depth. He checked her everywhere: her scalp, her moles, her teeth. He skipped over her breasts.

‘What’s this scar?’ he asked as he lifted her arm.

‘That’s from Alf, when he fixed my heart.’

He looked at her again. He put down her arm. ‘Okay. Lie down.’

He began to prod her abdomen.

‘It feels quite hard. Have you been eating? Have you been moving your bowels normally?’

‘Yes.’ Prisha frowned. ‘I’m bloated though or I’m getting fat. It must be that food Alf gave me to eat.’

Ignoring her comment about Alf, the doctor pulled out his stethoscope and listened to her stomach.

‘Everything seems fine.’ He pulled back. ‘We should scan your head.’

‘I’m not crazy, doctor. Besides, it’s already been done. I had a full workup at the hospital a few weeks ago for the same thing.’

They both turned at the sound of the door opening. The woman who had been in the room earlier approached Craig. She murmured into his ear. The doctor’s eyebrows shot up.

The woman left. Craig tapped his chin as he studied Prisha.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

The doctor shook his head. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact. How old are you, Prisha?’

‘Forty-eight.’

He nodded, then reached for his stethoscope. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her as he listened to her belly again. He was there a long time, focused, eyebrows knitted together beneath his curly fringe.

He pulled away the stethoscope. ‘How are your periods?’

‘Irregular. But that’s menopause.’

‘And you’ve been feeling sick and dizzy for how long?’

‘What did that woman tell you?’

The doctor paused, as though considering whether he should answer or not. ‘It’s your blood results.’

‘Oh … something wrong?’ Her stomach swam. They’d finally found the answer!

‘No. Like I said, quite the opposite. You’re healthy.’

’Oh … well, that’s good.’

He was giving her a funny look. ‘Have you had intercourse recently?’

Prisha’s mouth fell open. She clicked it shut. ‘That’s none of your …’ Prisha froze. Her swollen tummy, her nausea and dizziness, his talk about menopause …

She felt the blood drain from her face. She couldn’t speak. It was hard to swallow. She stared at the wall in a daze.

‘Prisha …’

Prisha nodded. Then she burst into tears.

She was the world’s biggest fool to think it wouldn’t happen. Menopause. Interspecific relations. It wasn’t impossible. No brains. All hormones. The idiot commenters on Facebook were right. She was a slut. An intergalactic slut!

Prisha dropped her head into her shaking hands.

The doctor was saying things but his voice came from afar. Everything was from afar. Nothing seemed important anymore. The room suddenly went very dark and he disappeared into the shadows.

Then there was quiet for a while.

Prisha was staring dazedly up at the ceiling, hands resting upon her tummy. Shakily, she got to her feet. She was alone. There was no more dizziness. The nausea was gone. There was a mirror. She stood in front of it and turned. Tears crowded her eyes. The bulge was obvious. She lifted her shirt. There was definitely some shape there. But so soon? It had only been a few weeks, maybe not even that.

She shivered. The back of her neck itched. There were no windows in the so-called hospital room. Only shelves of supplies and an attached bathroom. She looked over towards her left, towards the wall, through to the outside where somewhere Alf was waiting.

Prisha blinked.

The back of her neck was burning.

She rushed over to the door. She turned the handle, and found to her surprise that it was open. There was a corridor beyond. Empty. Soulless. It was very quiet and her breathing echoed loudly in her ears. She crept down the left, doing her best to keep her footsteps light against the hard polished floor. There was a door with an electrical symbol, which she passed over.

She found another door, pressed her ear against it. Her heart was thudding as she carefully opened it. It was only a closet. She turned at the sound of footsteps. Quickly, she slid into the closet and closed the door, backing up against the wall. The footsteps approached, then receded.

She opened the door again, saw that the coast was clear and continued on. There came voices, laughter. She went through a partially open door and climbed some rather steep stairs to another door. Surely, this door would be locked.

But it wasn’t.

Her feet found carpet. She blinked at the brightly lit hallway and white walls. A man and a woman were talking with each other further down the hall. They were dressed in suits and had badges hanging off their pockets.

Prisha went the other way, the tops of her shoulders prickling at the thought of being spotted. A man in a suit appeared up ahead. He walked towards her. He smiled at her politely as his eyes darted curiously over her doubtless dishevelled appearance. Prisha smiled politely back. He kept on walking. Quickly, she tucked in her shirt and hoicked up her pants. She twisted her hair down over right shoulder.

It was busy here. She could hear more people around the bend and through the doors on her right. One of the rooms was empty. There were chairs and tables facing a large black screen. Glasses of water. Notepad and pencils. Set up for a meeting.

Rubbing the back of her neck, Prisha approached the window. It was bright. Down below was a busy street, a huge expanse of nicely mown green lawn beyond. There was a large water fountain. Prisha gazed at a distant spot at the left corner of the field. She pressed her hands up to the window, fingertips pressed hard into the glass.

She shrugged against her burning neck. Was she just imagining things? She stepped back and turned. She gasped. There were three men in the room with her. Ralph was standing in front.

‘I don’t want to stay,’ she said.

Without a word Ralph came over and took her wrist. Prisha yanked against him. To both their surprise, she made him stagger. He grabbed her other arm. The two other men closed in.

‘Let go!’ Then she started screaming. ‘Help! Help! I need some HELP!’

They all grappled. Ralph wrapped an arm around her waist and slapped a hand to her mouth.

‘Enough,’ he hissed. ‘Or I’ll be forced to silence you.’

Prisha thrashed in his grip. He let go with an ‘oomph’ when she elbowed him hard in the side. The other two descended. She was suddenly arched backwards, head thrust back, a thick hairy forearm wrapped around her neck.

‘Wait!’ Ralph cried.

There was a sharp pain in the side of her throat, then everything went dark.

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