The Reincarnation

Laura looked through the window in the door to David’s room. She saw that he was either asleep or resting quietly with his eyes closed. My God, she thought, he’s alive. This changed everything. Her quiet little job was going to get a lot noisier. Still, it was for the best. Maybe Dr. Persey was right – maybe it was a miracle.

But of course that was just what the Church would want the world to believe – that MCA was performing miracles. It was just science, though, nothing miraculous about it. Still, it was amazing. They had taken a stiff, frozen corpse and reanimated it. Now that the procedure had been perfected, it would become one more service they could provide to their ever-burgeoning flock. One more way to fill the Church’s coffers. One more way for them to control people.

Wondering what David thought about the whole thing, Laura continued looking through the window, resisting the urge to walk in and ask him. She figured he must be disoriented – twenty-five years, a little longer than she had been alive. Years during which the Church grew enormously. David had been suspended back when the Lab was still borrowing space from another part of the Church. Back then the Church had only been into medicine. Now they were into everything – theme parks, organ donation, insurance, blood banks, financing, children’s television, biotechnology, energy, pathology...and media – she made a note to tell David about the films Media made.

Laura looked away from the door and down the hall to the nurse’s station. Those films are really a joke though, she thought, they’re so slanted in favor of the Church. She looked back in at David. He looked deep in thought.

But the Church is used to controlling what people see, Laura deduced; they do it twenty-four hours a day on their television channels, every day in their newspapers, every month in their magazines. David was their patient, after all, they could show him whatever version of history they pleased.

Laura shifted her feet, suddenly feeling uncomfortable, as if her thoughts were somehow being monitored and she was committing blasphemy simply by thinking them.

There was something unwholesome about the Church, she thought, her eyes darting from the nurse’s station back to David. She could just never put her finger on it. And why weren’t there any women doctors in the whole organization? It was as if they were running the place back in the 1950′s. Well, she thought, looking down at the floor, mine is not to question why, mine is but to do or die. She should just be happy she had a job at all.

Which reminded her that Peggy would be in soon. Peggy had worked there a little longer than Laura, and was older, more experienced. Laura wondered what Peggy made of all of this. Maybe now they’ll be able to afford more staff, she thought. No more crazy twelve hour shifts. Crazy maybe, but Peggy probably slept through half of hers. That was the advantage of the night shift in a place like this.

Laura caught herself shamelessly staring at David through the window. He is cute, though, she thought, wondering what he looked like when he wasn’t all skin-and-bones. Maybe in his file there was a picture of him when he was in better shape. She would have to check tomorrow.

Laura walked back to the nurse’s station just as Peggy arrived.

“You’re early,” Laura said.

“How’s he doing?” Peggy asked, shrugging her purse off her shoulder and placing it on the countertop of the station.

“Good,” Laura answered. “He’s resting now. I brought some CD’s in for him to listen to.”

“Still got a crush on him, huh?”

“I never said that, I just said it would be nice to meet a guy who’s clean, you know? Somebody who didn’t get exposed to all the crazy stuff that’s put my love life on hold for so long.”

“Well, I sympathize with you there. Remember Charlie?” Peggy leaned her back against the station’s counter and crossed her arms.

“Sure, we talked about him a few times.”

“Well, thankfully I didn’t get too attached to him. He’s down with something. They don’t know what it is yet, but they’ve got him quarantined.”

“Oh, Peggy, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, like I said, we weren’t too attached. It’s always better to stay stand-offish for a while, I guess. Still, it’d be nice to go defrost one of the better-looking guys in the freezer – one of the clean ones, that is – and just run away with him, ya know? Just grab Rip Van Winkle and head north – get the hell out of this climate. It’d be nice to get away from the bugs at least,” she shivered.

“I know what you mean. Maybe we just weren’t made for these times.”

“Say that too loud around here and Dr. P might just take you up on it – freeze you into the next century,” Peggy laughed.

“Ha. I wouldn’t let him touch me with that stuff. No thank you. I’ll cope with the here and now somehow.”

“Do you want to get a cup of coffee?”

“No. I’ve got to give David a shave.”

“Sure you don’t want me to do it?” Peggy glanced at her time implant. “Your shift’s almost over.”

“That’s okay. I’m still on for another ten minutes.”

“You do have a crush on him.”

“No,” Laura said, feeling color rise to her cheeks. “Just doing my job.”