Triggers

“No, no. Just visiting my brother, but—but something’s wrong.”

“What’s your name?” the doctor asked.

And she went to answer, but—

But that wasn’t her name! And that wasn’t where she lived! And that wasn’t her hometown! Nikki felt herself teetering. She was still holding her hands up in front of her, and she fell against the doctor, her palms pressing into his chest.

More strange thoughts poured into her head. A knife slicing through fat and muscle. Being tackled in a football game—something that had never happened to her. A funeral—oh God, a funeral for her mother, who was still alive and well.

Her eyes had closed when she’d fallen forward, but she opened them now, looked down, and saw the doctor’s little engraved plastic name badge, “J. Sturgess, M.D.,” and she knew, even though she’d never seen him before, that the J was for Jurgen, and she suddenly also knew that M.D. didn’t stand for “Medical Doctor,” as she’d always thought, but rather for the Latin equivalent, Medicinae Doctor.

Just then, two nurses walked by, and she heard one of them spouting medical gobbledygook. Or it should have been gobbledygook; she shouldn’t even have been able to say, a moment later, what words the nurse had used but…

But she’d heard it clearly: “Amitriptyline.” And she knew how to spell it, and that it was a tricyclic antidepressant, and…My God!…she knew that “tricyclic” referred to the three rings of atoms in its chemical structure, and—

Her flattened hands balled into fists and pounded into the doctor’s chest. “Make it stop!” she said. “Make it stop!”

The doctor—Jurgen, he played golf badly, had two daughters, was divorced, loved sushi—called out to the passing nurses. “Heather, Tamara—help, please.”

One of the nurses—it was Tamara, she knew it was Tamara—turned and took hold of Nikki’s shoulders, and the other one, Heather, picked up a wall-mounted phone and dialed four digits; if she was calling security…

How the hell did she know all this?

If she was calling security, she’d just tapped out 4-3-2-1.

Nikki half turned and pushed Tamara away, not because she didn’t want help but because it welled up in her that it was wrong, wrong, wrong to touch a nurse during duty hours.

She felt dizzy again, though, and reached out for support, finding herself grabbing Dr. Sturgess’s stethoscope, which was hanging loosely around his neck; it came free and she was suddenly falling backward. Heather surged in to catch her. “Is she stoned?” the nurse asked.

“I don’t know,” said Sturgess, but Nikki was incensed by the suggestion.

“I’m not stoned, damn it! What’s happening? What’s going on here? What did you do?”

Tamara moved closer. “Security is on its way, Dr. Sturgess. They’re sending someone down from five; everyone normally on this floor is downstairs, helping guard the president.”

The president.

And suddenly she saw him, Jerrison, his chest split wide, and her hands plunging into his torso, seizing his heart, squeezing it…

And that name again: Eric Redekop.

“Make it stop!” Nikki said. She moved her hands to the top of her head and pushed down, as if she could somehow squeeze the alien thoughts out. “Make it stop!”

“Tamara,” said Sturgess, “get some secobarbital.”

And that, Nikki found she knew, was a sedative.

“It’ll be okay,” Sturgess said to Nikki, his tone soothing. “It’ll be fine.”

She looked up and saw a middle-aged white man: lean, bald, bearded, wearing green surgical garb, and—

“Eric!” she called. “Eric!”

He continued to close the distance but had a puzzled expression on his face.

Sturgess turned and looked at Eric, too. “Eric! My God, how’s—” He glanced at Nikki. “How’s your, um, your special patient?”

Eric sounded weary. “We almost lost him, but he’s stable now. Jono is closing.”

“And you?” asked Sturgess, touching Eric’s arm briefly. “How are you?”

“Dead,” said Eric. “Exhausted.” He shook his head. “What’s the world coming to?”

Nikki was reeling. She’d never seen Eric before, but she knew exactly what he looked like, and—God!—even what he looked like naked. She knew him, this Eric, this man who—

—who was born fifty years ago, on April 11, in Fort Wayne, Indiana; who has an older brother named Carl; who plays a killer game of chess; who is allergic to penicillin; and who—yes!—had just performed surgery, saving the president’s life.

“Eric,” she said, “what’s happening to me?”

“Miss,” he replied, “do I know you?”

The words struck Nikki like a knife—like a scalpel. Surely he must know her, if she knew him. But he didn’t. There was no hint of recognition on his face.

“I’m Nikki,” she said, as if that should mean something to him.

“Hello,” Eric said, sounding bewildered.

“I know you,” Nikki said, imploringly. “I know you, Eric.”

“I’m sorry, um, Nikki. I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“Damn it,” said Nikki. “This is crazy!”

“What’s wrong with her?” Eric asked Sturgess.

Tamara was gesturing to someone; Nikki turned to see who. It was a uniformed security guard.