Human Sister

seemed like a thick rod tear out of my left arm.
    It’s just the needle, I thought. Concentrate on—
    “She’s ready,” the doctor’s voice thundered, sounding like Zeus calling down from Mount Olympus.
    I was yanked out of my countdown like a naked little worm pulled from its hole. I tried to find the leaf again, to start over, but the sky was no longer blue—it was red. And my breath seemed no longer to be mine; it screamed through my nose like wind through barren trees. The whole Earth seemed to shudder with each beat of my heart, and though I hadn’t seen it depart, I sensed that the leaf was gone, torn to shreds along its veins and blown away in the wind.
    “Okay, let’s begin again,” came booming from Casey like plangent thunder. “Now, I’ll tear the words from your brain, one by one.”
    No you won’t, I assured myself. The sensations are just illusions. I won’t be hurt. I won’t talk.
    Unable to hypnotize myself, I quickly decided to try the alternative Grandpa had taught me. “Go to the painful sensations,” he’d said. “Absorb them. Be absorbed by them. Become them. Then you can control them as yourself.”
    Casey’s command, “Global level 5,” reverberated in my skull.
    Then I felt pain everywhere: an agonizing blast in my ears, knives piercing every organ, an unrelenting fire inside my head, a ferocious wind searing my face. I tried to grab at something, anything, inside myself to shelter me from the pain’s loudness, its strength and bite and fury.
    Just when I felt every aspect of my being slipping away, the blast, the knives, the fire and wind vanished, leaving me nauseated and more exhausted than I could have ever imagined.
    “Sara, can you hear me?” Casey said, his words concussive hoofbeats of sound.
    Unfortunately, I thought—though I might have said it. My uncertainty as to whether or not I’d spoken startled me into clearer consciousness. I was determined not to speak a single word to that man.
    “Those mechanical things your parents call ‘Sentirens’ certainly can’t be worth that, now can they? Look, here’s the deal: You tell me you saw them on your trip, just say yes, and I’ll unhook you from this machine and leave. Then you and Smith can hold hands, and you can talk with him instead of me. Now, say yes.”
    I let his roar wash through me.
    “Global 10,” Casey bellowed.
    “Ten?” the doctor asked.
    “Yes, ten. Sara, say yes. Just say yes, and you’ll be freed from this.”
    The reignited pain was much stronger than before. Its screaming, blazing fury engulfed me. And more frightening than earlier came the feeling that my grip on everything, even on my resolve to protect Michael, was slipping away. Something in me I could no longer control seemed to agree with Casey that too much was being asked of me by Grandpa, and it, this wild self-preserving thing, nearly screamed Yes! But at that very moment, I was lifted, floating, then spiraling dizzyingly in flames, getting lighter, smaller, sputtering, disappearing like a drop of water on a hot skillet. Then, for a brief moment, I felt a glowing, almost joyous sense of relief at the rushing in of a hollow darkness.

    “Seventy-five over 40. She’s coming around. Thank God,” the doctor thundered.
    My mind felt unmoored: Where am I? What happened?
    “Eighty over 42. I swear I’m finished. I quit. You can take my license if you want. I’ll go bankrupt. I’ll go to jail. Anything—but I’ll never work with you people again. Never.”
    “We’ll see how brave you are when you need your next fix,” Casey roared.
    “I’m going straight from here to a clinic, just as my wife’s been—”
    The doctor was interrupted by a tremendous banging and clanking of something on wheels coming through the door.
    “That’s okay,” the doctor shouted. “I don’t think we’ll need it. Her heartbeat and breathing have resumed. Her blood pressure is rising steadily. Eighty-five over 45. Thank God.”
    I wanted to open my eyes but found that even the tiniest slit let in blinding light. I decided to rest quietly and listen. Over the next few minutes, the doctor spoke with several people who noisily ran in and out of the room. From those conversations, I learned that he’d decided not to give me anything to counter the LN27Q3 because of possible cross-reactions. The drug would wear off on its own in about an hour.
    The doctor took my hand in a grip from which I winced. “Sara? Are you conscious? Can you