It's A Wonderful Life III: Sandy Lopez
DVD Region 2: serial number: (10 X Nth power) 1-84357-035-3
Sandy Lopez woozed in and out of consciousness. Sometimes she looked down on her body in its firefighter uniform from high above; sometimes she was back in her body, lying heavily on what looked like fluffy white clouds. Sometimes she was in pain, worse even than when she had Henry; other times, some good drugs must have kicked in.
In her dream, or the drug trance, she was on her own in an empty cloudscape. It could have been the Antarctic, silent and uninhabited. Sandy felt herself growing colder, though she couldn't have put the feeling into words. Something was pulling her back down through the clouds, and that scared her, because everybody knew that if you had a dream in which you died, you died for real, in real life. She struggled to wake up from the silent whiteness.
She had to wake up.
She fought and fought whatever it was that was pulling her back down through the white stuff.
She didn't belong down there.
She didn't want to die.
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When she woke up, she was weak and dizzy, and standing at the edge of a parking lot outside a very tall office building. A building very obviously not on fire. Sandy worked out that the shout must have been for a drill, or somebody stuck in an elevator.
How she'd got from being in a forty foot fall to being back on duty fully recovered, she didn't ask. She reckoned amnesia, or concussion, could explain a lot, and she was just happy to be back doing her job, alive.
The fog must have rolled in early off the Lake that day, because she couldn't see very far across the lot. Sure couldn't see the 38th's rigs.
Outside the building, a knot of officer workers smoked surreptitiously. The stuck-up bastards ignored her, like they always did people in uniform. Even if she was a Lieutenant.
Cold wind blasted through her hair. Didn't make sense. She her fireproof overalls on, but where was her helmet?
She couldn't see her men for the fog: maybe she'd left them inside.
Sandy Lopez swaggered through unpearly doors into a large atrium. Far, far above was a glass roof, down through which shone a weak spring sun. Around the sides were glass walls, barely visible behind the originals of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. From Sandy's viewpoint, there was no way to tell how large the rest of the place was.
A marble floor stretched far ahead to a fountain that jetted a hundred feet in the air and made the atmosphere pleasantly cool. It was fed by, or fed into, a narrow but deep channel that crossed the atrium.
There wasn't another firefighter in sight.
An old fat bored guy in tacky corporate workwear and a nametag saying Stan beckoned her over to Reception. His companion Hilda simpered up at her, and continued to stir her cup of tea, sticking her pinkie out in exaggerated refinement.
"Where's my men?" she demanded. "38th."
Old fat bored Stan riffled through the appointment book, and punched a number into a hands-free telephone. "Oh yeah," he said, glancing at Sandy. "Best of British, Caroline."
"HEY!" she yelled. "I said –"
Sandy didn't see Hilda get up, or move towards her, but there she was, in her face and hissing, "Don't you ever dare talk to my Stan that way again."
"You'd best go straight on up," said Stan to Sandy, shuffling his Racing Post longingly. He nodded at Hilda. "No telling what she's capable of when she's in one of her moods. And you don't want to keep Caroline waiting."
"Not even Geoffrey does that," said Hilda, staring at Sandy with a mean glint in her eye.
"This Caroline," said Sandy. "She's the boss here?"
"Yes," said Stan.
"No," said Hilda.
Whatever. She didn't have time to argue with two dumbasses. "So where is this Caroline?"
A thin woman name tagged Sharon materialised, and waved Sandy towards the channel of flowing water, but at the last moment put her hand out and wouldn't let her step over it. More Feng Shui crap, Sandy supposed.
"Feet," said Stan, from behind his paper.
Sandy looked down. Dry ice foamed around her boots. Where'd it come from? That stuff could burn you. She stamped, hard, on the marble floor until she got rid of the white clouds. She was alarmed. What if this was a chemical spill? Or worse? Where were the full protection suits?
This time Sharon led her across the channel, straight towards a bank of glass elevators that rose up as far as Sandy could see. An immaculate, blonde, thirty-something woman in a shocking pink jacket waited for her. Caroline, she guessed, and then bitch. ehind, a nervous young man with an armful of filesnd cheered up.
elephone. a drill, or somebody stuck in the elevaThree paces behind, a nervous young man with an armful of files: PA, thought Sandy. It reminded her of Kerry and her guy PA, and she didn't like it one little bit.
"He's got a heart condition, he has," muttered Hilda, as she sat back down. She made an intricate hand gesture that warmed up her now lukewarm tea. Microwaves were ruled out by the pacemaker she'd got used to Stan having in life.
"Hilda love," said Stan, "let it lie. Nothing bad's going to happen to me."
Hilda looked at Sandy walking towards Caroline by the lifts, and cheered up.
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From the distance, Caroline watched as Sandy stomped over. Now she finally saw Sandy close up, and no, she still couldn't understand what Kerry had been thinking of. However, she still had a job to do, and she was here to do it dispassionately and impartially.
Behind her, Damien fidgeted with the heavy files.
"Stop that NOW unless you want to spin in a whirlwind for all eternity!"
Damien froze. He desperately tried to balance on one leg as he held the files to his body with the other knee.
Sandy stopped about three feet away, and announced, "You called us."
"We call everyone," said Caroline.
"So," said Sandy, "where's the fire?" English bitch, she added mentally.
Caroline sighed, inwardly. You always got some who wouldn't accept it. Particularly if they'd died in their sleep, or under anaesthetic. Or maybe they truly didn't know. Caroline was never sure. She wasn't very good at the human condition.
She led Sandy over to a balustrade that surrounded an opening in the floor of the atrium, and pointed.
Far, far below, burning fiery furnaces of magma seethed. Dull crimson crusts thinned and broke. Along the fissure lines, sheets of yellow flame shrieked up into the air, and subsided again. Underneath the crimson shell, pits of scarlet molten rock swirled and heaved. Strange contorted human shapes, insubstantial as ghosts , briefly churned to the surface, only to be swallowed up again instantly. As Sandy watched, an incandescent geyser erupted, sending lumps of red lava shooting into the air to fall like sparks that burned out in mid-air.
Sandy stepped back. She opened her mouth, but words wouldn't come out. Her shoulders slumped.
"This way," said Caroline, now smiling. She walked to one of a bank of glass lifts, and Sandy shuffled after her. The two women got in, and Caroline turned round to press the button for their floor.
"Damien," said Caroline. "What the hell are you doing?"
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The glass doors of the lift swished shut. The view out of the glass box took in the whole atrium. There were innumerable buttons for the mansion's many floors, seen and unseen. Mozart played, and the lift began its ascent.
Sandy Lopez stared out of the lift, mostly downwards, as they sped upwards towards the Viewing Room.
The lift stopped, its doors opened, and Caroline glided out. Damien coughed, discreetly. Sandy jumped, and stumbled out. Damien had to leap out of the lift when before its doors swished shut on him.
"Sorrysorrysorry," he said, as he trod on the heels of the recently deceased. Sandy didn't even yell at him. Caroline had gone ahead, and he was left with the job of shepherding Sandy to her Viewing.
"Please come this way," said Damien.
Sandy looked at him with the faintest glimmer of her old spirit. "Why?" she said, eventually.
"I'm glad you asked me that," lied Damien. "Ms - " he noticed the slightest beginnings of a scowl, "- er, sorry, Lieutenant Lopez, you know that old film It's A Wonderful Life?"
Did Sandy ever know it. Kerry insisted on watching it over the Christmas holidays, every damn time, even though she could recite the dialogue by heart. Some kind of crap tradition that was.
"Yeah," she said.
"Good, good," said Damien, as he led her to room 101, "Well …"
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The Viewing Room set aside for Sandy Lopez had a screen the size of the wall, and a DVD player the size of a slim silver paperback. By the opposite wall, a sleek popcorn maker hummed on middle C.
Two all-enveloping leather recliners waited for Damien and Sandy. Caroline occupied the third, tapping her finger on the remote. She disapproved of tardiness.
Finally she heard two sets of loud footsteps and one louder voice coming down the corridor.
"…. Only without me in it," said Sandy. She sounded angry, Caroline noted. "That decides whether I got heaven or hell."
"Exactly," said Damien.
The footsteps did a complicated little tango at the door. Sandy crashed the door open, and stood with her hand on the door knob. Behind her, Damien bounced up and down apologetically.
"You've brought me all the way up her to watch my life flash before my eyes. My life. Without me in it."
"Please," said Caroline, making an effort to be hospitable. "Do - "
"Don't make no sense," snapped Sandy, marching into the room. Damien followed, and shut the door behind him.
"Makes perfect sense," said Caroline smoothly. She stood up. "You see your life as it would have been without you in it: that reveals whether your life touched people for better or worse. Every decision you have ever made determines whether your next destination is heaven, or hell. Then - "
"Take me home to my kid," said Sandy. "He's only twelve weeks old."
"Yes," said Caroline, "and your point is?"
"My point is," said Sandy, stabbing the air with her index finger about three inches from Caroline's shocking pink lapel, "My point is you are going to send me home to my kid, now, - "
"No."
"And then - NO?!?!?"
"You're dead," said Caroline. "Does this place look like Zombies R'Us?"
Sandy turned away to smack the wall in frustration, and yelled, "I can't be dead."
"Why not?" said Caroline. Her tone was sweetly reasonable. Sandy gaped at her. "Give me one good reason why you can't be dead." She knew there wasn't one: she'd had Damien and the rest of her office up all night checking get-out clauses.
"I'm walking … and talking…"
"Welcome to the afterlife," said Caroline.
"And .. there's … there's my kid," said Sandy, "and .. and my old lady …"
"Doesn't work like that," said Caroline, shaking her head. "Everybody dies, Sandy, everybody. Even dykes with kids and partners. How many times did you see that when you were alive?"
"I'm not dead," said Sandy.
"Oh for fuck's sake," said Caroline. "You. Are. Dead. You fell five floors in a burning building, result, crushed chest, broken ribs, humerus and pelvis, liver ripped in two, your insides are raw burger, your heart stopped on the operating table, THE END. Right now? You are meat in a Ziploc."
Caroline threw a carton of popcorn over to Sandy.
"Sit down, shut up and get over yourself."
She pressed PLAY.
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Caroline had the remote to run the viewing, and Damien was popcorn guy. All Sandy had to do was watch.
The first chapter showed a perfectly ordinary working-class Latina childhood in Chicago. A stocky child of about four ran about an apartment, kicking a ball.
Sandy sat up. "Looks like Eduardo," she said.
"It is Eduardo," said Caroline. Damien remembered: Sandy's brother.
Sandy considered a moment. "Nah," she said, dismissing Caroline. "Never used to smile like that."
In the apartment on the screen, a boss-eyed day-glo Baby Jesus was knocked off its shelf by Eduardo's ball, and smashed on the floor. The child's mother chased him out onto the landing, half-heartedly yelling at him in Spanish.
"That's supposed to be Mama?" said Sandy. She considered for a moment. There was a certain facial resemblance, no more. She snorted. "Never have recognised her."
She rooted around for more popcorn. It didn't taste bad, all things considered, and it sure took the edge off the boredom. "Hey," she called to Damien, holding out the empty carton. "Keep it coming, will ya?"
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Then on to the next chapters of Sandy Lopez's short life: The Fire-Fighting Years. Smoke. Blue lights, Screaming (human). Jets of water. Jokes in bad taste. Screaming (twisted metal). Roaring flames. Rigs tearing through Chicago. Masks. Explosions. Darkness.
Caroline found it hard to watch. Pity the Singapore Sling flavour popcorn had been a failure, she thought.
Sandy didn't much care for watching other people do her job, so at the end of the second chapter, she leaned across and took the remote from Caroline.
PAUSE.
"How much more of this is there?" she demanded.
"Another four years," said Caroline, "more or less." She was careful where she put the stress in that.
Sandy groaned. It was boring, like she was watching this version of her life unfold in real time.
"More or less," said Caroline. Sandy snorted. It was like the bitch read her mind. Maybe she just liked repeating herself.
Caroline took back the remote. She hesitated before she pressed PLAY, and then asked Sandy, "Have you noticed any differences?"
Sandy thought. "There ain't much differences." And there weren't many, as far as the body count went. She went on, "Less you count that dick Mason making Lieutenant. Man." She shook her head.
"The one on the ladder?" asked Caroline. She had no idea which of the fragile humans had been Mason.
"On the ground," said Sandy. "Mason up a ladder. As if."
"He didn't deserve it?" asked Caroline.
Sandy stared at her. "No way! Yeah, he's one of us old-timers, good man to have at your back, but he plays by the rules. And you can't always do that, you know? You can't. 'Cause the rules will screw you over every time if you let them. Mason, Lieutenant, shit. Think I'd have made Lieutenant if I'd played by the rules?"
"You tell me," said Caroline.
"I'm a woman, I'm Latina and I'm a lesbian. You have any idea how I have to stand up and fight, every day?"
Caroline pressed PLAY before Sandy could tell her.
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Half way through the next but one chapter, there was an abrupt cut to an outdoors scene, a winter storm at night, with electric cables exploding and lots of indistinct yelling. At first sight it looked like the screen was full of smoke, but it turned out that was how hard it was raining.
Caroline suddenly looked considerably happier. Sandy was going to be needing another refill soon.
The camera zoomed past an ambulance almost on its side, and on to Mason, who was yelling at two half-drowned people in lab coats. It wasn't clear whether Mason rescued them from the ambulance. One black guy, well-built, young, and one small white woman.
She started yelling back at Mason, and pointing past him at the ambulance.
"Holy shit," yelled Sandy.
"Yeah," said Caroline.
Mason was holding up his hands and trying to push the two non-firefighters back. He wasn't having much success.
"Not till we've secured the scene," he yelled.
Behind him, a live electricity cable snapped, crashed to the ground, and sparked up the puddles of water in a hellish way. The pylon it had fallen from groaned and sagged at the change in load.
"She could die," screamed the small woman. "They could both die."
"So could you," Mason yelled. Behind the civilians, three more firefighters were approaching.
"Let us through," she screamed.
"That thing conducts," yelled Mason, pointing at the woman's right side. Damien noticed she was leaning on a metal crutch. She glared at Mason, and stepped even closer as if about to ram it up his ass. Mason didn't flinch.
"I've got a job to do," she roared.
The pylon twisted and sagged nearer the ambulance.
"Dr Weaver- " said the young guy.
"So have I, and frying half of County ain't part of it," bellowed Mason. He grabbed the young black guy who was trying to out-flank him. "Oh no you don't." Two of the firefighters manhandled the guy back. Mason pointed at the small woman again. "You stay here." He pointed at the third firefighter. "Sit on her if you have to." He began to jog off.
"HEY!" roared the small woman. "COME BACK HERE YOU ASSHOLE -"
The rain and the wind swept the rest of her words away. She struggled against the third firefighter, briefly. Mason jogged back. "Power's off," he yelled against the rain and wind. "This way. She's all yours."
The two doctors ran over to the ambulance. Inside was a young, pregnant woman, and it was clear that it was too late for anything except an emergency C-section.
"See," said Sandy, "that's exactly how it really happened." She munched popcorn. "Less you count Mason securing the scene. Wonder how many extra rigs he had to have to manage that."
Caroline had counted the rigs, and the firefighters, in the scene, and said nothing.
Sandy munched some more.
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The next chapters were intercut with scenes at the firehouse, and at the Lopez family household. Apart from the recreation of the crash where Kerry had first met her, Sandy wasn't impressed with the film version of her life.
Everybody had been blanded out so they might as well have been on Prozac: her father, her brother, especially her mother. There was no fire in any of them, no spark, no life.
The guys in the Firehouse … they could have been other people. She knew her men's personalities and these versions were just – airbrushed.
It was dull. She'd remembered more passion, more fights. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't right for people to go through life without friction.
And no sorrow and no pain to make you appreciate the good times better. Sandy hated the ordinary contentment that she saw on the screen.
Because you need some grit in the oyster, right?
Otherwise, you got no pearls.
Sandy felt a pang to see people worse off without her, and never knowing it.
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It bugged Sandy that there'd only been one short scene with Kerry. Then it was Summer, 2002. The summer Kerry had taken her to Barbados.
She had clear memories of that holiday, clear memories of what you could do on a private beach, of beginnings, of promises, of hopes. Of every favour she'd ever done for Kerry. Of Kerry finally committing herself to belong to her.
And now none of it had happened. Sandy felt cheated.
In this version, Kerry wasn't on holiday: was, in fact, working in the ER, on a double shift, at no notice. That always annoyed Sandy. Always.
On screen, the viewers could see that it also annoyed Kerry. She was tired, and her weak leg was hurting, badly. Not only had her plans for the evening been summarily cancelled, she hadn't been able to phone her new date ahead of time, and that had led to Frank taking a potentially awkward personal call for her at the desk.
Kerry couldn't stop herself fretting. God knows there'd been enough gossip and jokes when she'd treated Miss Whiplash. She'd never hear the last of it if her staff ever found out for sure she was gay.
She knew she wasn't being paranoid. She'd let Susan drag her along to Mark's wake, and had a painful memory of the way the conversation had suddenly stopped as she came back from the restroom. She knew they'd been gossiping about her, and about what. Jing-Mei and Haleh and Carter and Gallant. Not Susan, she had to be fair. Or Abby. Or Luka. Or Randi.
Yeah, but they hadn't shut the others up either.
They were probably taking extra money for the pool on her private life. Maybe even on what sex toys she'd borrowed from the dominatrix.
It had been Mark's wake, so she refused to think of all the hateful innuendos he'd made over the last year, all the times he'd mentioned gay issues, gay health issues, acted like she was the personal lesbian health advocate at County. You had to cut him some slack because of the brain tumour, and Mark sure knew that.
But the rest of the staff had no excuse, and apart from Luka, she was sure they looked at her differently. Carter had become borderline insubordinate, Jing-Mei was behaving like Madame Mao's Mini-Me, Malik just couldn't look her in the eye, though he looked everywhere else, and Frank had half-invited her to attend church with his family with the unstated motive of saving her from the special gay hell.
"Wait," said Sandy, "she's still in the closet?" Caroline didn't reply. Sandy thought about it. If she hadn't been around, there would have been nobody else to do Kerry that particular favour. Leave Kerry to her own selfish devices, and of course she would still be in the closet. Sandy shook her head. So what if Kerry was hurting? It served her right.
Sandy shrugged and helped herself to more popcorn.
Not that Kerry had a right to be seeing other women, anyway.
She despised this version of Kerry.
When she next focussed on the screen, the ER was relatively quiet except for two noisy lawyers bitching about burning their feet on hot coals during a team-building exercise. Sandy grinned. She didn't like doctors, but she downright hated lawyers. Never went near them if she could help it.
Sandy rolled her eyes in disgust as the cute nurse she remembered from the wake screwed up using a fire-extinguisher on the smouldering lawyers. Still, she soaked one of the doctors, so it wasn't all a waste. She remembered him, vaguely: the smug one. Not a waste at all.
Somewhere in the background Sandy was sure she could hear Stan the Can trying it on to get a bed for the weekend.
The camera swung round, and a frantic man was begging Kerry to come and look at his children, who were both sick. They'd been waiting fifteen minutes.
Kerry hesitated. As waiting times went at County, fifteen minutes barely registered, even for two sick kids. Chairs was full, though none of the cases were urgent and all could wait until the ER dealt with them in their turn, which was going to be slower than usual thanks to three good nurses attending that ACSL class.
And yet … the guy was not going to shut up, and the last thing any of them needed was the rest of the patients joining in a whine-fest. Plus, he would only get in her staff's way if he wasn't reassured immediately; and the kids had to be sick if they were huddled in blankets in May. It was always possible it was something infectious, and since Jing-Mei had missed a text-book case of measles only last year, she didn't want to take any chances.
All in all, it made sense not to let this small situation get out of control and screw up the big picture. Kerry sighed, inwardly, and on the outside nodded briskly at the father.
"I'll take a look, OK?" she said. "We'll take it from there."
"Thank you, thank you, they've both been so sick …," he babbled. The Turners. Adam and Bree. Kerry tuned the inessential details so she could concentrate on walking over to his family without lurching or falling over from pain.
She made sure she smiled reassuringly at the mother before she braced herself to lean over and pull back the blanket a little so she could get a proper look at the first kid.
Kerry caught her breath as she looked at the kid's face. That can't be what I think it is, she told herself. Can't be. In Chicago? How?
"We thought it was chicken pox," said their father, "but I've never seen it as bad as this."
Kerry said nothing. She was looking at the second child. Not as bad, thankfully, but still infected. As the parents could be.
She stood up, disregarding the pain. She saw Carter, for some reason now wearing scrubs, and snapped her fingers at him. "Carter. Exam Four, with me, now." She turned to their father. "Can you carry your daughter? Good. Carter, get the little boy. Let's go. You come too," she said to their mother.
Inside Exam Four, Kerry pulled the blinds and shut, then surreptitiously locked, the door. The parents were babbling about chicken pox, and fever, and being in the ER last week – and wouldn't you know it, thought Kerry angrily, they had seen that idiot Jing-Mei – and Carter was settling the two children on the one bed. Not ideal, she acknowledged, but it was the best she could do.
Then he jumped back. "Dr Weaver," he said, pointing at the children's faces. "Kerry …."
"Carter," she snapped at him, willing him not to panic the parents, or the kids. Too late.
"Oh my God - "
"What's wrong - "
"Mommy - "
"WAAAAAH!"
Carter was staring at her like the drama queen she knew he was capable of being. Then he turned towards the Turners and announced, "It looks like smallpox."
"CARTER," she said, over the Turners' panic. "It is NOT." She added quietly, "Not smallpox."
The Turners rounded on her. "How can you tell?"
"You don't know that -" protested Carter.
Kerry held up her left hand to silence them. "There hasn't been a single naturally occurring case since 1977, and the World Health Organisation declared smallpox extinct in 1980. This - "
"What about terrorists?" asked Mr Turner. "There was a memo - "
"C'mon, Kerry, you know they've been using anthrax - "
"Smallpox has no natural reservoir of infection available to be exploited, and there have been no reported security breaches at any research lab. As was discussed at the last Bio-Terrorism Committee." said Kerry pointedly. Of course Carter hadn't bothered to go. "Wait - a memo?"
"My husband works for the State Department," said Mrs Turner, bitterly.
"Where?" asked Kerry.
He hesitated. "Africa," he said evasively.
Kerry sighed with relief. Things were beginning to fall into place. She started to examine Bree, the daughter, wishing she'd grabbed a nurse to help out. When did she last use one of those machines to take a pulse ox? She kept on talking while she examined the little girl: fever, swollen lymph nodes, difficulty breathing, generalised pustular-vesicular rash. "The children were with you?"
"We went on safari," said Mr Turner, stroking his daughter's hair. "At the end of my posting. We only got back ten days ago."
Last exposure meeting epidemiological criteria less than twenty-one days ago, Kerry noted.
"Some holiday that turned out to be," said Mrs Turner, with her arm round her son. Adam. Kerry examined him, less to check what he had than how bad he had it. Not good: but not as bad as his sister. The parents might be infected: if so they were asymptomatic. They would have to wait until their kids were treated.
"This is monkeypox," said Kerry. "Not as infectious, or as fatal, as smallpox. You can get it from exposure to an infected animal." Or a human, she thought to herself , but those were the odds if you were a doctor.
"How do you know that?" sneered Carter, from the other side of the room.
"I saw it when I was out there," said Kerry. Once, but that was enough. She stood up; it hurt; she ignored it. "Your daughter is very sick. The virus affects the lungs: it can be difficult to breathe unaided." She was aware that Bree's pulse ox was falling. At least the white kid in affluent Chicago would stand a chance.
Kerry pushed Carter out of the way to pick up the phone from the wall and to start making arrangements to treat the Turners, starting with the PICU.
"Don't get it, said Sandy, rooting around in the corner of the popcorn carton. Damien sighed, and made more.
"Why not?" asked Caroline.
Sandy set down the empty carton. "That summer, we was in Barbados, right? What you're saying, Kerry would have been a workaholic closet without me? 'Cause I knew that."
"You think this is all about you?" asked Caroline.
"Yeah," said Sandy, taking the next full carton from Damien.
Caroline hit PLAY.
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The very last chapter began with a long shot zooming through a very white suburb somewhere in Wisconsin, It closed down on a small house, expensively furnished in exactly the sort of arty taste that Sandy had so disliked in Kerry's old place.
They were indoors, in a nursery. It was the middle of the night. Some guy in his late thirties, maybe early forties, wearing a wedding ring, paced up and down. He was trying to lull a baby to sleep, holding the small body tenderly against his shoulder. In the next room, his wife slept, her head down under the covers..
Sandy had no idea why she was seeing this, especially since all it did was burn her with how much she wanted to see her son again.
"Where's Henry?" demanded Sandy. "I wanna see him."
"There," said Caroline. Sandy gaped. Caroline pointed at the screen. "That's Henry." She zoomed in on his face.
Sandy stared at the baby's features. They were almost Henry's – but they weren't. She was sure of that. No way. That kid didn't look like Henry one little bit. At the same time, he didn't look like any other baby in the world.
Sandy started to feel cold inside.
And where was Kerry in all this? That couldn't be her asleep in the next room? Married, to a man? It had to be somebody else, it had to be. Sandy gripped the arm of her recliner. She was starting to have a bad feeling about this.
"That," said Sandy, "that is not my son." She turned to Caroline. "What have you done with my son?"
"That is Henry," said Caroline. "Only Henry's not your son, not here."
"No," said Sandy. "can't be. Can't be. My son, he's Kerry's son too."
"Biologically?" asked Caroline. Sandy glared at her. "Remember how it works. This is Henry if you hadn't lived. Henry's father was a donor, yes? So. You weren't around. He donated to somebody else. "
Sandy's knuckles whitened on the arm of her recliner. "Who to? You gotta tell me - "
"No," said Caroline. "I don't. Remember, in this version, the whole point is, you never existed. How can Henry be part of the life of somebody who never existed? It's just not possible." She waved the remote at the screen. "He belongs with them, in their lives."
No Henry? Kerry back fucking guys? Or maybe not? Birthing Sandy's kid – or not?
Sandy's head was spinning.
Or maybe she was looking at a different Henry, out of Kerry's life as well as her own? Her own kid in some WASP's home?
Who the hell was that guy with the craggy cheekbones anyway?
Sandy turned her head away from Caroline. The bitch thought she could get away with that?
No Henry?
Kerry going on living like she'd never existed?
The bitch thought she could get away with this? With messing with her head like that?
"No," said Sandy, loudly, "NO. You're gonna tell me where Henry is and I am gonna go back and get him-"
"No," said Caroline. Sandy understood the tone: the English bitch meant "no" to all of that.
Sandy decided she'd had enough, and stood up.
"Where do you think you're going?" asked Caroline. She sounded mildly amused.
"Home," said Sandy. "Back."
"Not going to happen," said Caroline. "Given you're dead."
"According to you," said Sandy. "Ain't seen no proof."
"Think you want to?" asked Caroline, conversationally.
Sandy glared at her. "I think," she said scornfully, "I think I'm going back down to earth, back into my body and back to my real life."
Caroline smiled. "You think you get to decide?"
Sandy put her hands on her hips. "Yeah."
"You were told, I believe" said Caroline, "that every decision you ever made in your lifetime has already decided where you go next. That we show you your life as it would have been without you in it to reveal whether your life touched people for better or worse, and that way we know whether you are damned or saved, going to heaven or hell." She waited for this to sink in.
Instead, Sandy turned on her heel , strode out of Room 101, and slammed the door behind her. It wasn't that long a walk to the lifts. She stood punching the button to go down.
She was going to call that bitch's bluff if it was the last thing she did.
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Caroline sighed. She picked up the remote, and pressed EJECT, then BOX. The DVD floated across the room to settle back in its box, which closely snugly.
"You're not going after her?" asked Damien.
"Free will," said Caroline. "All humans have free will. It belongs to them, not to us. Remember that."
She only hoped she could convince Kerry Weaver.
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Sandy waited impatiently for Caroline, or the lift. The lift arrived first. Its glass doors swished open. Sandy took a last look behind her and got in. There were only two buttons: UP and DOWN.
Her finger hit DOWN.
The glass doors swished shut, Celine Dion sang, and the lift began its unstoppable descent.
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Down in the atrium, it was tea time. Hilda was in the middle of making Stan his cuppa when she noticed the glass lift plummeting past floor level. She saw who was in it, and smiled at her favourite Happy Panda milk jug.
She added sugar, stirred and passed Stan his tea without saying a word.
"Hilda love," said Stan, passing his cup straight back to her. "This milk's gone sour."
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