Lyle Nee Jules: Chapter One

Jules woke up laughing. Actually, to be more accurate and descriptive, she woke up with a heaving snort due to her laughter catching on the outgoing drool that had collected in her mouth while sleeping. She immediately glanced at Nancy, who hated any kind of noise in the morning, much less guttural ones, but Nancy barely stirred. The laughter didn’t stop when she tip toed to the bathroom. In fact, it got worse when she noticed the grey wirey hairs growing out of her nose and ears. When Nancy called her name from the other room Jules took great pains to hide her smile and prepare for a lecture. Instead, Nancy was also laughing, pointing out that at some point she herself had wet the bed during the course of the night. The two of them laughed so hard they could barely breathe and the orderly had to come in to remind them that it was time to start the day’s briefings.

Jules had her physical assessment first thing today, so she had to take the long walk through the rounded glass walkway from the West Hall to the East. The walk to the physical therapy center always used to be an emotional gamble. Some days she could see the protestors lining the streets, weeping or yelling while hoisting up signs she could barely make out. Other days, the better days, it would be raining and gloomy and the protestors would be gone. But now, the walk didn’t fuel any kind of reaction, other than general boredom.

The boredom would be present throughout the morning, as Rick the Nurse (“Just call me RN!”) strapped her into monitors and stuck those suction cups on her temples. Lily, the lanky, stork-like grad student asked her the same questions she always asked and Jules answered them directly toward the one way mirror at the head of the room. She always thought it was weird not to acknowledge them and hoped that her attempts at personalization would make them reveal something, even if it was just the number of people on the other side.

“Any new developments I should be aware about?” Lily asked

“Just the hair growth.” Jules replied as she climbed laboriously on the treadmill. “And I feel stiff today.”

Lily nodded and jotted some notes down which her infamous look of tortured pity. “I’m sorry.”

“Lily, I told you to stop saying that. It’s fine.”

She nodded, now even sadder. RN increased the speed of the treadmill.

“How’s group?”

“The briefing meetings? They’re fine.”

“This note here says that you’re pretty quiet in them.”

“Of course I am. Everyone who’s still here is. Except for Olivier. He’s a talker.”

“Yes,” Lily sighed with a smile, “he does like to talk.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Does Emma do this?”

Lily stopped for a moment, looking toward the mirror, unsure about how much she could divulge. Jules thought if anyone was really to be pitied it would be Emma, who really was being treated as a constant in this whole experiment, unaware of what she was really being put through. Although maybe being unconscious afforded her the pain of menial tests.

“Emma’s health is monitored. We make sure to give attention to her muscles too.”

“Do you like, move her legs around and stuff? Like a puppet?”

Lily didn’t like the idea of comparing any part of the system to a toy and became flushed. RN increased the speed again and Jules’ knees started to ache. Her crotch started to feel odd, a protruding malleable pressure started to give her a stomach ache. She was scheduled to see the urologist this week but she already had a good idea of what the conversation would be. She knew it would only get worse before it gets better and she wouldn’t even be around for the better part.

After physical therapy, Jules trodded toward briefing, her sole motivation was the hope that today they’d have those giant protein banana muffins. Most of the food assigned was focused more on nutrient rather than taste or comfort, an aspect of the experiment that she genuinely hated. In the beginning, she even volunteered to work with the doctors to examine the menu. She had put in enough time in kitchens and a few semesters at culinary school to know what flavors go well with what. It’s only right that they should be allowed to eat well, they only have so long. Then she reminded herself that really, the whole point of CM was that her feelings, from favorite songs to physical comfort, were as irrelevant as the thread sheet count of the sheets in a coffin. 

That realization failed to come to fourteen of twenty participants of the first trials of what scientists are calling Cognizant Metastasis. All they wanted to do the first few weeks was talk about their feelings, their whys and hows and whos. They focused on their own relationships with their Primaries. Most of them, the more they talked about their feelings, the less dedicated they became. Six dropped out in the first week. Five more then started rejecting the process, mentally and physically. One was an undercover journalist trying to get a promotion (that one wasn’t thought through). One died, a result of bad timing. Then there was George, who was Jules’ favorite of the group. He was convinced by his own Primary that it wasn’t worth it. His Primary. His wife. Her name was Patty and even bald she was beautiful.

So it was the final six. Jules and Nancy in one room, Marcos and Ross in the next. Emma was wheeled in from the far wing of the hospital and Olivier was shipped in from Walla Walla State whenever the doctors demanded the group together. 

“Howdy, Mona.” Speak of the devil and he should appear. He said he called her Mona because she was always silent, but she’s pretty sure he just wanted to seem clever by acknowledging that he knew the name of a painting. “Ready for therapy?” He shuffled away, his shackles clinking on the floor as he went. He almost collided with Nancy who had taken to skipping everywhere she went.

The small pleasures of banana muffins was short lived. After everyone settled down into their chairs and Emma had been wheeled in by her bored looking, ever changing nurse, Dr. Thames, the falsely genuious psychologist of the operation settled cross legged into her leather lounger, notebook on her lap.

“Today is the first day of what we’re calling the intensive briefings. We’ll be meeting every day and I’m going to strongly encourage you all to start talking more openly and honestly about your reactions and feelings.” Strongly encourage, Jules knew, meant that there was going to be intense badgering.

“I feel horny!” Oliver spoke, grabbing his crotch, “Sucks ‘cause my dick is shrinking. Hey,  Mona, are you getting your dick yet? I could still give you some of mine.”

“Mr. Bean, we have discussed this. If you cannot contribute to briefings, you will be placed in solitary the remainder of your time here. You will save all your burgeoning sexual identity issues with your specialist.” That shut him up. Who wants to be in solitary the rest of their life? Dr. Thames collected herself, clicking her pen in anticipation “Who would like to open the briefing with any thoughts?”

“I’ve been starting to have dreams. Very real. I never used to have dreams.” Marcos adjusted his glasses, the way he does when he’s trying to articulate. He never fully grasped English but desperately wanted to. “They are like memories I had as a child, but I didn’t have. I am not in Spain, I am in Iowa. No, Indiana, no... I don’t know.” Dr. Thames nodded, fervently jotting down notes.

“Is anyone else experiencing dreams like this?”

Everyone raised their hands, except Emma of course. 

“This is good. This means that your transformation is going well. The mind is very complicated and we want to make sure that we can understand the differences between incoming data and your actual imagination.”

“I feel love,” Ross added “my mother is my mother in my dreams, but she loves me. She never hits me.”

“But your mother is your mother?”

“Yes. Except she is blonde. But she has the same face.” Dr. Thames looks over to her assistant who burns away typing at his computer, looking up information. He nods back.

“Good. Next dream you have I want you to focus on your mother’s appearance. Tell me if it changes... Ms. Abberoy?”

Jules made eye contact with Dr. Thames, trying to threaten to her out of prying. 

“Yeah?”

“Do you have anything you want share? Any dreams?”

“I have dreams.”

“Yes? Please elaborate.” Jules took a moment to think over the previous night. She involuntarily smiled again. This seemed to please Dr. Thames immensely.

“Well, he’s young. He just got this leather jacket that he-”

“You, you got a leather jacket.”

“Er, right. I got this leather jacket. I had saved up for. It really smells. And it’s kind of greasy cause he, I, keep on polishing it. I’m getting ready to go out joy riding, I think. It’s this red car with white detail. It’s...uh....Dick’s! Dick’s car. No one has seen the jacket yet.”

As she started describing the dream, she started to fall into it. She stands in front of her bedroom mirror, small, made of old oak. In the mirror she sees herself. Seventeen, thick black hair styled in a pompadour. She painstakingly combs it again, locking it in place, fearing that if it gets too hot her curls will ruin the image. Her eyes are a deep brown but with her jaw clenched and shoulder’s back she could almost look like Tony Curtis.

Then she remembers getting in Dick’s car, given the front seat to show off her jacket. Driving, a warm spring night in Chicago, cruising down Lake Shore Drive. It smells of spring and the air is perfectly breezing across her cheeks, the feeling of diving into a refreshing pool. They’re trying to catch up to Janette’s Buick, only a few hundred feet ahead. Dick makes a joke about Mr. Opal, their civic teacher. It’s so funny. So, so funny. They reach Janette and she looks over from the driver’s seat. She’s beautiful and unafraid of her own orange curls, the color of poppies, which are wildly escaping from the scarf tied around her head. She smiles at Jules, so perfectly, and the moment becomes everything that ever was. And then it fades out.

“That’s a great start Jules.” Dr. Thames. “Did everyone notice how Jules described the memory with a lot of senses? She talked about smells and how the air felt? Next time you find yourself in a memory, really take a moment to focus on the details. Remember as a secondary, you must make sure you’re accepting, not rejecting.”

The rest of the group is a tedious process. Nancy seems to have problems focusing, all the more difficult that her memories actually cross over from each other. Dr. Thames makes a note for special time to be spent in a one on one atmosphere.

Then it’s two o’clock and time for drip. Jules takes her squeaky IV cart to the adirondack chair in the glass hallway. She lies down and closes her eyes. The drips have become increasingly exhausting. The doctors recommend to be as relaxed as possible. 

She smiles again, swimming in memory. This time she is not in someone else’s but her own. Standing on the ledge of the bridge, looking down at the water, concentrating to make it bluer than the grey green it was. The moment of the fall, a slow motion series of realizations: pride and relief and then right before the water, fear and familiar sadness. The sound: whoosh.

She wakes up in the hospital. Her leg is broken. Her skin still feels cold. Different IVs are now hooked up to her and monitors show that her heart is healthy. At first, she thinks that the man standing at the foot of her bed is her doctor. He’s distinguished looking, caring. But then she notices his cane and his frailty, his once broad shoulders going bony and his pale skin around his face hiding his jaw. Still, he almost looks like Tony Curtis. His brown eyes stare at her as if she’s that leather jacket, waiting to be shown. Her Primary.

“Julia Abberoy, my name is Lyle Masters and I’m dying. I’d like to ask you for a favor.”

To Be Continued