MAX ORDOS DOES NOT EXIST

MAX ORDOS DOES NOT EXIST: CHAPTER NINE

"Sorry," the woman says. "I was hoping to have this done before you woke up, but this took way longer than I thought it would." She grimaces. "Christ, it's not even fluid. It's all blood. And these fatty deposits here," she says, pointing to white globs in the bedpan, "mean you definitely tore something. What happened?"

"I got pushed down a well," Pearl says. His voice is slow. "Where am I?"

His response rattles the woman, who gets up and changes gloves. "My lab space." When she steps fully into the light, he recognizes her as the woman from the farmer's market and the diner, the one who works for the college. Jane Cornette.

Pearl runs a hand through his hair. "I'm still on campus?"

Jane nods. "You passed out in the radio station. Those kids thought you were dead." She reties her graying brown hair back into a ponytail. "I think we're almost done with your leg." She sits down and resumes squeezing.

"Why can't I feel it?" Pearl asks.

"I shot your leg full of painkillers."

"Oh. Right. Stupid question." Pearl tilts his head back and looks at the ceiling. "Thanks." He feels like his brain is a half-step behind the rest of him. She must have given him a lot of painkillers.

"You'll need to get this operated on," she says. "They'll scope it first, but the ligament is probably torn so you'll be on crutches for a month and rehabbing it for six. I'm guessing cartilage and meniscus injuries, too."

Pearl nods. "Why didn't you take me to a hospital?" he asks. "Or call an ambulance. Why am I still on campus?"

Jane cleans and wraps his knee tight. She looks worried, but she has the kind of face that always does. "How did you get in there?"

"What?"

"You know what I'm talking about." She pours the bedpan out into a sterile container and washes her hands, then swaps out gloves again. "How did you get back there?"

"Some idiot drilled a hole in the ceiling trying to dig a well," Pearl says, the words barely fitting through his mouth. "Then he went crazy and died and I got pushed down the well." Hardly a complete summary, but not bad under the circumstances. "There were all these brains in jars. One of them kept saying all this crazy shit to me, or making me think it." He doesn't notice the other syringe near the table, or the ordinary-looking brown bottle next to it, or the way Jane keeps glancing at them.

"There's one left," she says. "It wants a body."

Pearl lifts up and leans back on his elbows. "Yeah," he says. "It kept saying that."

A phone on the wall rings and Jane nearly jumps out of her lab coat. She lets it ring four times before she picks it up. She says hello and yes and yes, then pauses, then looks over at Pearl and bites a fingernail and says yes, then okay and hangs up.

"That was the sheriff," she says. "I know you can't walk on that leg, but you're gonna have to." She grabs a brace from one of the cabinets above the sink and approaches him with it.

Pearl kicks at her with his good leg. "No," he says. "No fucking way. He and I aren't friendly."

Jane swats him away and pulls the brace over his wrapped knee. "He told me to kill you. So we shouldn't be here when he shows up."

Pearl isn't surprised, per se, but he's as alarmed as his cloudy brain will allow. Understandably not wanting to die, he follows Jane out through her office and down a featureless gray hallway, limping and bracing himself on the wall. The doctor's car is parked in a small, staff-only parking lot near a side entrance to the lab facility, and Pearl sprawls across the backseat, keeping his leg elevated as best he can. His vision shifts in and out of focus, complicating his ability to concentrate on anything. His leg is mostly numb, save a few brief flashes of pain around his knee.

While Jane drives and fiddles with the radio, Pearl takes inventory of the backseat. It's pretty clean, save for a few medical textbooks on the floor, some candy bar wrappers, and a tall can of Chemical Billy mace tucked into the passenger seat's back pouch.

"Why do you keep this back here?" he asks, flicking the can with his middle finger. "Should be up in the front seat."

"The sheriff told me who you are," Jane says, ignoring his suggestion. "Why did you lie to me before?"

Pearl shrugs and shuts his eyes; looking out the window is making him dizzy. "It's the only part of my job that's any fun." He's still slurring his speech. "Where are we going?"

"Out of town," Jane says. "Not sure where exactly, but you're a liability now." She sighs. "This was bound to happen eventually."

"What was?"

"Someone finding those goddamn brains," Jane says. "They're some experimental Army thing. When it ran out of funding, they built the Regenerative Medicine Institute to justify all that research."

"Were you part of it?"

Jane shakes her head. "I was a grad student when it got shut down."

"How about the sheriff?"

"He's ex-military. Got planted here to keep an eye on the brains and make sure they get taken care of without anyone in town knowing about it."

Knowing that, Sheriff West's particular brand of aggressive condescension makes a lot more sense to Pearl. "So where do you fit into all this?"

"My advisor was ex-military too," Jane says. "He was destroying those things a few at a time once they shut themselves off. When he retired, I got forced into it." She slows down to allow a few cars to merge into traffic, then speeds up again. "I didn't think it would be so bad at first, but the conscious ones..." She falls quiet as light rain patters on the windshield. "They were supposed to get bodies, but the program didn't get that far. They feel lied to, and I don't blame them."

"Yeah, the one I talked to said that," Pearl says. "Kind of. It was hard to understand. I don't know if 'talked to' is the right word." Outside, ashy clouds cast a gloom over a countryside empty of everything but farms, gas stations, and churches. Jane stops at a gas station to fill up, and when they get back on the road, Pearl asks if he can smoke in the car. She rolls her eyes and lowers the window behind his head.

As he lights up, a cop car peels out from behind a blank billboard and tails them. Its red and blue lights look pretty in the rain. Pearl closes his eyes.