Sine Therapy, Final draft
by Airan Wright
1. Same Wavelength
The silence before surgery is deafening. At least that’s how Merida thought of it, sitting in the operating booth at Northern General surrounded by a bevy of acoustic baffles, the eggshell-patterned foam soaking up all her ambient noise. In front of her the room’s diagnostic tablet displayed details of her 9:30: a 41-year-old male with stage II prostate cancer, 104.78 kg, 137/92 mmHg, 52 bpm. 97% Sp02.
A low risk operation then she thought to herself as she thumbed through the rest of the patient report. She was happy for an easy morning. Last night’s afterparty had run long into the night and, being the featured artist on the gala performance, she hadn’t the heart to leave early.
She took a long sip off her travel mug, thankful the hospital had seen value in building a decent café in the lobby. A clear money maker, that place, with lines ten to fifteen long most mornings. Even with the hospital’s employee discount she figured she probably dumped at least $20 a week there. It was worth it though. Merida closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of the nonfat latte settle into her core.
When the feeling subsided, she slowly opened her eyes, looking out through thick laminated glass to the operating room beyond where her patient lay comatose from general anesthetic. Gregory, her hRNA delivery tech and general anesthesiologist, was close by clad head to toe in surgical blue with an AR headset casting a shadow across his forehead. Not one to mince words, he sat in an ergonomic chair he’d made the hospital special order, reading something from a tablet similar to hers. He paged through content, casually swiping right to left, seemingly unaware of anything else nearby. She knew Liese would be in there as well, but from her seat in the booth the young audio tech was hidden from sight.
All right then, she decided — time to get to work.
Stifling a yawn, she placed her mug down on a small ledge to her right and reached for the intercom button. It sat close by, mounted into the front edge of the shallow desk housing her workstation and audio interface. It lit up a dull white as she pressed it, the room’s playback monitor immediately filling her tiny space with a hissing undertone of white noise combined with the jostling of equipment from somewhere out in the room. She cleared her throat.
“How we looking?” she asked, hearing the booth’s microphone array pick up her voice, broadcasting it out to the operating room. Gregory looked up. She watched his eyes unfocus, taking a second to scan vitals from his headset, before returning her gaze through the glass.
“All good here, boss,” he replied, laying the tablet aside and standing up to physically check on the patient.
“Just locking the splitter down,” came the disembodied response from Liese. She appeared a second later, walking decisively across Merida’s field of view holding a bundle of cabling and heading to the diffractive beamsplitter. She plugged one end of the cabling into the DBS’s side panel, its monitor lighting up with data from the connection. Liese took a second to watch the information flash across the screen before holding a confident thumbs up and responding with “…and…we are green to go.”
“Copy that.” Merida glanced to her left at the tertiary display running a real-time feed of their directional wave generator. After quick verification that the signal was within tolerance, she agreed. They were indeed good to go — green across the board. With the PET scanner built into the operating table, its data feed casting a running report to her second monitor, and her Digital Audio Workstation application running on her primary, she was ready.
“One minute to broadcast on my mark” she called to the room.
“And…mark.”
She released the talkback while simultaneously punching the broadcast button on the DAW control. A clock on the far side of the operating room lit up red with a sixty second countdown. She picked up her Electronic String Instrument, plucking the strings to ground herself in the moment before placing the ESI on her shoulder, ready for her morning concert to begin.
2. Pop-Tarts and Styrofoam
The cookies-n-cream pop tart fell from A6, hitting the bottom of the vending machine harder than Merida wished. She cursed under her breath. Pristine pop tarts are a thing of beauty, but once broken they lack a certain je ne sais quoi. She retrieved the silver package from the receptacle, feeling the integrity of her snack wobble with the telltale sign of fracture. She sighed in frustration.
“Breakfast of champions?” Gregory shuffled past her to the neighboring machine, its bright orange and yellow display glaringly aggressive to her tired eyes. He inserted a card into the reader and hit a couple buttons in quick succession, watching a Styrofoam cup drop into position in response. The vending machine made a small sound like a mechanical cough before releasing dark liquid into the cup. It smelled burnt. Merida cringed.
“Fuck off,” she replied. “Rainforest killer.” She knew the comment wouldn’t have an effect but she said it out of habit anyway. Gregory, ever the fatalist, laughed it off.
“Nice show in there,” he returned, picking up his coffee and taking a sip. He grimaced at the taste, feigning enjoyment and failing. The white cup looked minuscule in his large, tattooed grip. She’d often admired his ink; the colorful head of a viper spread across the back of his hand, its body disappearing underneath his shirt sleeve. “A little shaky on G6 though. Rough night?”
She’d not intended the finger bobble at 1567.98 Hz, but nobody ever does. Mistakes happen. This was exactly why she’d built her hunter RNA packages to accept a wider than average sine range she reminded herself, but it didn’t lessen her embarrassment. Ultimately the cancer she’d broken up wouldn’t know the difference, having no concept of musicality or empathy. But she did. It made her mad to have stumbled on such a trivial thing. Frowning, she ripped open the corner of her purchase and gently retrieved a broken corner of pastry, making sure to keep its crumbs from escaping out onto the white tile of the hall.
“Not rough, just late.”
“Oh, right. Your thing…” Gregory replied, gesturing in her direction with the hand that held his burned caffeine. “How’d it go?”
“Fine, I guess? Good crowd. They seemed to like it. At least they didn’t riot.” She shrugged while freeing another bit of pastry. The sugar tasted amazing. “Fenn was there,” she mentioned, trying to make it sound inconsequential.
Gregory’s raised eyebrow and tilted head swung up at the name. “What the hell?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust before taking another sip. “I thought he was deaf.” Behind him a tech from radiation sidled up to the machines, merging with their personal space and causing them to start the long walk back from the lobby to the surgery wing.
“Yeah…” She let his comment hang in the air as they walked, unanswered. He’d been in the audience, three rows back and slightly left of center. Directly in her line of sight. “He was with some woman. I didn’t recognize her.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No,” was her curt reply…but it was a lie.
3. A Good, Stiff Drink
The timer-driven string of soft white Christmas lights was on when she opened the door to her 2nd floor apartment, casting her living room in subtle shades of ambiance. Below, the distinct sound of a legal drama filtered up from her neighbors’ flat; medium-paced opening credits recorded on some sort of synth mixed with the low, serious voiceover of an actor who’d never made it to the silver screen but was a star in syndication. She kicked off her shoes by the door, deposited her instrument and bag off to one side, and removed her coat, tossing the black wrap over the back of a well-used sofa.
Grabbing her phone, she thumbed to her current playlist and pushed it up to the speakers she’d carefully placed about the entirety of the apartment, happy for the mix of electronica and classical that it returned. It didn’t quite drown out the courtroom narrative below, but it helped.
Fenn’s envelope glared at her from a low coffee table where it lay unopened on top of several medical bills, her W-2 from the hospital, and her copy of “Degas à l’Opéra”, the hardback more a design element than real reading at this point. She ignored it all, walking toward the back of the room and out through the short hall leading to her small kitchen. As she did, she passed a small nook with a built-in bar, grabbing the bottle of rye she’d been nursing the past few months and a glass tumbler. Most nights the “don’t drink by yourself” directive was easy to maintain, but the last 24 hours had been more than she cared for.
Merida shuffled into the kitchen, her socks on hardwood feeling more like mediocre ice skates than footwear, and placed the bottle on the counter nearest the refrigerator. Opening the freezer she retrieved a handful of ice with her hand, dropping it in the tumbler with a familiar clink. Finally, with a healthy pour of whiskey and a couple of fancy Luxardo cherries in her glass, she returned to the living room to fall deep into her couch. Fenn’s envelope watched her accusatorily from its perch on the table.
She’d been well into the Allegro last night before she’d seen him in the audience. She hadn’t been sure about it at first, forcing herself to put him out of mind before hitting the finale with all its finger acrobatics and pageantry. Mere minutes later though, with the crowd on its feet clapping, she found him again. She’d hidden her surprise by taking an extra bow, but she’d felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. Fenn looked the same as he did all those years ago, back when they had nothing to lose.
Except they’d lost a lot. Her whole lab team had. Two decades of distance had dulled her to the pain, but it still lingered in her core. Coule’s death… Fenn and Sammas with permanent hearing loss… The accident had fractured them, leaving nothing behind of their work but for inked names on a forgotten patent.
Fenn and Samm had been late to her team having first been lab necessities and later friends, but Coule had been her partner from the beginning. Childhood neighbors. College roommates. Their first patent from their undergrad, when it was just the two of them, was both a shining reminder of their time together and a burning brand of the aftermath. The survivor’s guilt she felt, her hands on the proverbial wheel running the show from the safety of the sound booth, never really left her. It sat in her gut, waiting for quiet moments to punch and kick. Sitting in the well of her depression she could still see his lifeless form on the test floor surrounded by smoking gear, having collapsed immediately following the massive sound spike.
Merida wiped a tear away, jumping at the sound of gunshots on the crime drama one floor down. She pulled her attention back to the present, looking down at her now empty glass but for the ice and the cherries. She hadn’t remembered drinking it. More like a two or three drink night, she thought, standing up and returning to the kitchen.
Fenn’s envelope could wait. Fenn could wait. She hoped he could wait forever.
***
This is a full short story developed as a part of the 500Words Short Story Project. It may continue to evolve beyond its current state.
