"Nice day we're having." said Robyn.
"How did you know I was up here?" asked Jeisa, picking up her phone and lowering the volume. She was patched into the hospital radio channel. They were on the roof of the hospital.
"Cass' nurse, Marion, told me you've been coming up here every day since she woke up," Robyn said, sitting next to Jeisa who was sitting up against the hospital's radio antenna, her technopath tendrils deeply intertwined with the radio wires. Robyn continued. "You want to be close to her, even though you won't talk to her."
They stayed silent for a while, listening to the song playing on Jeisa's phone.
"It's weird that all the radio stations are playing the same songs, huh? They're still trying to figure out who's hijacked the city's radio frequencies," Robyn said. "They can't trace whoever's doing it and the army is freaking out, assuming it's some kind of terrorist attack. My mum's thinking of calling in some outside help. A white hat hacker or someone similar to try and figure out how they're doing this. Whoever it is must be depressed as fuck though, with that emo playlist. It's bringing everyone down."
About an hour ago, Jeisa had hijacked all the Wraith Hamlet radio frequencies using the hospital's radio transmitter and was playing her very own heartbreak playlist. She had just played Selena's 'The heart wants what it wants' on repeat three times. Now she was sipping up electric energy from her connection for a buzz as she played 'Stay High' by Tove Lo. Jeisa looked up at the sky, smiled to herself and switched songs, playing 'Iris' by the Goo Goo Dolls to properly qualify that "emo playlist" comment.
"Jesus! This is torture. I'm going to find a hot nurse to flirt with." Robyn said, standing up to leave. "I just came over to say that Cass is asking to see you. Begged me to convince you to come over."
"Yeah?" asked Jeisa. She still wasn't sure if she ever wanted to see Cass again.
"Yeah." said Robyn.
"Begged?" Jeisa questioned with a raised brow.
"Yup. She's the tiniest of steps away from grovelling." Robyn confirmed with a sad smile before turning around and walking back into the hospital.
Jeisa sat there for a little while, playing Keri Hilson's 'Energy', wondering how she could face reality again and deal with this thing between her and Cass. Because she would eventually have to face it. As much as she wished she could, she couldn't walk away. She finally released the frequencies, playing one last song to hype herself up for what was coming.
'Battle Scars' by Guy Sebastian.
Jeisa was riding the elevator down to Cass' level, singing along with that last song still playing through the frequencies, when the elevator stopped two levels above Cass'. A girl in a wheelchair wheeled herself into the elevator. She looked about ten. Her face was a bit pale. Her bright blue eyes slightly sunken. Her head was covered in tiny fuzz. Jeisa immediately knew that they'd stopped the chemo.
"You ride a motorbike!" the girl said to Jeisa, her eyes wide with surprise and excitement.
"Yeah." said Jeisa. She was carrying her bike helmet in her right hand and her leather jacket and riding pants also made it pretty obvious that she'd come over on her sports bike.
"I love motorbikes." said the girl. "For my wish, I asked to ride one. But my doctors said that I couldn't."
"I'm sorry." said Jeisa.
"It's okay." said the girl shrugging. Then she smiled. "My mum let me watch 'Teen Beach Movie' again before bed last night. I like when the bikers sing. She played their song on repeat for me."
"Sounds like a cool song." said Jeisa.
"Oh, yeah. It's a fun song," the girl confirmed. "Nowhere near as awful as what they've been playing on the radio all day today!"
Jeisa swallowed the guilt that flared up. "I haven't watched that movie yet. Maybe I will, tonight."
"I don't really like the movie itself that much. It's a little too Disney for me," the girl said with another shrug. "But I love that biker song scene."
Before Jeisa could reply, the girl suddenly doubled over in pain for a few seconds before sitting upright again. The elevator stopped. The girl's floor was the floor above Cass'. Jeisa wheeled her out then knelt to get down to her height. She reached for the girl's cheek. Jeisa closed her eyes and found the malignant cells almost immediately. Damn it. They were everywhere. She tried to follow the cells' commands, but there were too many. It was too much. The girl wouldn't last long. Jeisa sighed. She let her technopath tendrils find the pain receptors. She could at least ease the girl's journey.
Jeisa opened her eyes when she felt a tiny hand brush away a tear from her cheek.
"You can't take it away, can you?" the girl asked, her blue eyes piercing right through Jeisa.
"No." said Jeisa. "I'm sorry."
"Thank you for trying." said the girl. She smiled. "Who are you here to see?"
"My girlfriend." said Jeisa, smiling back.
"Oh. I have two mums." the girl said proudly. Then she frowned, the sadness clear on her featured. "Is your girlfriend on this floor? Does she have cancer too, like me?"
"No. She got shot." said Jeisa. "But she'll be okay."
"Good." said the girl, nodding then smiling again. "Tell her I said hi. I'm Corrine, by the way."
"I'm Jeisa."
*
"I cannot believe you let that witch shoot me, Jeisa." were Cass' first words to Jeisa when she entered the room.
"Hello to you too, Cass." said Jeisa, standing at the foot of Cass' bed, arms folded over her chest.
She glared at Cass. Jeisa couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so betrayed. So angry. So heart broken. It was a pure, righteous anger. A feeling she wanted to hold on to because she was sure it was hers. No one had put it there. Programmed it in her. She sighed and let her hands fall to her side. Let the feeling of pain and heartbreak wash away. This was Cass. Her Cass. Despite everything, looking at her again, Jeisa knew that that still meant something.
"I was angry at you. Still am, to be honest." said Jeisa. "But you're right. I shouldn't have let her hurt you. I'm sorry."
"What the hell could you possibly be that angry at me for?" Cass asked, a little indignant.
"You programmed me Cass!" Jeisa shot back.
Cass froze. The blood drained from her face. Jeisa couldn't overstate just how satisfying it was to see that reaction. She'd been holding everything back for far too long. Seeing Cass falter and realise her blunder was incredibly cathartic.
"How did you do it? How did you program me? You made me protect you Cass! You made me love you! Everything about my feelings for you were a lie. Lies that you planted inside me. I'm just a stupid machine, right? Just something that you and everyone else can use and abuse any time you feel like it!"
"Jeisa..." started Cass.
Jeisa cut her off.
"How did you do it Cass?" Jeisa demanded, knowing that she was being unreasonable and that she should let Cass speak, but not caring. "And why would you even do it? How would you even..."
Cass suddenly slapped her palm on the monitor by the bed, then the room's television burst to life, yodelling Lewis Capaldi's 'Leaving my love Behind'. Jeisa felt like she'd finally slammed into that brick wall she'd been speeding towards. Her mind raced, putting together all those small pieces she'd missed out on. In the maelstrom of thoughts, one settled down as the final puzzle piece: there was no other way Cass could have sparked her awake after she died on that forest floor.
As they stared each other down, the only sound was Lewis' Capaldi's crooning voice.
"...I was just wondering, could you tell me is it all a waste of time? Are you leaving my love behind? Baby, say the word and let me know..."
Without saying a word, Jeisa walked to the nearest wall socket and let her nanofiber tendrils sink into it and finding Cass'. The act was a lot more intimate that Jeisa had been ready for, and she struggled to keep her composure. She pulled her focus to the television, cutting off Cass' song choice and playing 'Broken Strings' by James Morrison.
"...you can't play on broken strings. You can't feel anything that your heart don't want to feel. I can't tell you something that ain't real..." was as far as the song went before Cass switched it up again.
Gracie Abrams. 'I miss you, I'm sorry'.
Jeisa had to admit, that was a good follow up.
"...You said 'forever', in the end I fought it. Please be honest, are we better for it?..." Gracie sang.
Jeisa couldn't let the words pull her in, no matter how much she wanted it to. She played her Ace in the hole. Her winning hand. One Republic. 'Apologize'.
"...You tell me that you need me, then you go and cut me down. But wait. You tell me that you're sorry, didn't think I'd turn around and say, 'It's too late to apologize'..." the words hit with the force of a tsunami.
There was no way Cass could beat that!
And then she did.
"...I'm alone in my head, looking for love in a stranger's bed, but I don't think I'll find it because only you can fill this empty space."
The ultimate trump card.
James Arthur. 'Empty Space'.
Damn.
Cass was good.
Jeisa pulled her hand from the socket and let the song play to its end, the words reverberating around and through her. The song ended and Cass pulled her hand from the monitor, resting it on her lap. They stayed in silence for a moment.
"I liked Felton in the video." Jeisa finally said.
"Yeah. He's great in pretty much every role he plays." Cass said with a smile.
"Maybe we should talk? Like, have a normal conversation?" Jeisa said, giving a smile of her own.
Cass chuckled. "Aww. That won't be nearly as fun. Not even close to being as fun as hijacking all of Wraith Hamlet's radio frequencies to stream an 'I hate you, but still miss you' playlist."
Jeisa chuckled and felt her face flush.
"I thought it was sweet." Cass said. Then she pointed at the television. "What would have been your next pick?"
Jeisa thought about it for a while. "In the end."
"Linkin Park. Solid choice." Cass nodded. "That would have been hard to beat."
"Hard? More like impossible." Jeisa asserted.
"Nah. I'd have just gone completely left field." Cass said with a shrug. "Something absolutely inappropriate and totally irreverent. Something like... 'Shoop', Salt n Pepa."
Jeisa couldn't have held back her laughter even if she tried! She could just imagine the upbeat, brassy, vociferous 'Here I go, here I go, here I go again. Girls what's my weakness? Men! ...' barrelling through and completely shattering the tension.
Classic Cass.
Jeisa had really missed this. Their banter. Her.
"The program that made us was called the 'Triple Helix'," Cass said, suddenly solemn. However, the air between them wasn't as rigid as before. Cass continued. "You were the first subject. Or at least, you were supposed to be. It was reported and confirmed that you'd failed. That you hadn't even been activated or 'born'. Now it's clear that someone lied and sabotaged every experiment that came after. It took two years, twenty-two other tries and one of the main scientists being fired before the experiments 'finally' worked, and I was 'born'. I'm nowhere near as powerful a technopath as you are, but I can hold my own."
"The scientist that was fired?" Jeisa asked, even though she knew the answer.
"His name was Reginald Myste," Cass said. "He disappeared. No one knows where he is."
"Right." Jeisa replied, her voice breaking a little. She cleared her throat. "When you saw me in the truck... the first time we met. You knew, didn't you?"
"Yes." said Cass. "I don't know how, but I did."
"Why did you program me?" asked Jeisa, not sure that she was ready for this answer. Her knees were going to collapse under her. She walked to the chair beside the bed and dropped into it. "You made me protect you. You made me love you. Why?"
"I admit that I planted the suggestion to protect me. There's more to the 'Triple Helix' program than you can ever imagine, and I was dragged into that mess without my consent. But I didn't care for it because I knew it would be dangerous and I was looking for a way out. I wasn't going to risk my life for..." Cass stopped and took a deep breath as if to steady herself. "Anyway, I was about to sell one of my more valuable assets, get some serious cash, dip, and just disappear. But then you showed up that night... and everything changed."
"When..." Jeisa didn't want to ask, but it was eating at her. "When did you..."
"That first Forest Services meeting." Cass replied.
Jeisa could barely think past the hurt from those words.
"All that stuff you did. Were you testing me? Seeing how far I would go to keep you safe? Fucking with my emotions?" Jeisa whispered, finding it difficult to speak through the sudden rock in her throat. She tried to clear her throat, but that rock just kept growing. "You said you didn't have relationships with girls. Then you go and... If I was nothing but a machine, just your little bodyguard, why did you have to put me through that? Make me feel all that for you... just to rip it all away? Why?"
"I may have programmed you to protect me, Jeis, but I never ever made you love me!" said Cass. "And I wasn't fucking with your emotions."
Jeisa scoffed. "What about the whole 'I don't do...'"
Cass cut her off.
"Listen Jeisa. You're fun, you're considerate and you're a good person. I laugh when I'm with you. I don't have to hide who I am when I'm with you, and I enjoy the version of myself that I've grown into because of you. You go out of your way make me feel good. Feel wanted. Needed." said Cass. She reached over to touch Jeisa's cheek. "You made it not matter that you were a girl. All that mattered in the end was that you were someone who cared for me and that I loved sharing my world with."
Jeisa stood up, walked to the window, and let out a humourless laugh as she stared at the parking lot. "You're saying that you fell for me?"
"It would have been hard not to, Jeis." Cass replied. Jeisa turned to look at her. Cass smiled then said, "No, not hard. More like impossible."
She winced as she pushed the covers off her, swung her legs to the side of the bed, and slowly touched her feet to the ground. All the while, she kept her eyes on Jeisa's, even as she pulled the IV pole along with her to where Jeisa stood.
Jeisa couldn't remember the last time her heart beat so fast.
"I never made you love me, Jeisa." Cass was only an arm's length away. She shortened the distance between them even more. "And when your programming malfunctioned, I didn't restore it. Not even to make you protect me again."
Jeisa moved even closer.
"The lightning strike." Jeisa whispered. She slipped a hand around Cass, to the small of her bare back, and let her tendrils gently work their way into Cass to ease some of the pain. "It killed me. It killed the program."
"Yeah," Cass replied, closing her eyes, and breathing slightly easier, leaning against Jeisa's touch. "I've never been more scared than when I saw you lying there... no pulse, no breathing... dead. It almost broke me. I brought you back. But that was all I did. No more."
A wreath of sadness wrapped itself around Jeisa, killing every other feeling.
"I'm just a machine Cass." whispered Jeisa. Sad. Lost. "A programmable entity with no choice or control. Who's to say that I can feel anything without being programmed to?"
"If that's your argument, Jeis, then everyone around us is a machine. They're all programmed." Cass replied, taking Jeisa's face in her hands. "They call it all sorts of things. Instinct. Intuition. Habit. It's all the same. The trap is thinking that having a clear-cut, black and white choice is the only right way to live. That there isn't more out there. An unseen code written in our very cells to guide us and help us unlock the best experiences life can give. Like a gift that just needs us to accept it."
Jeisa sighed. "If that's true, then there's no such thing as choice. What's the point of anything we do?"
"This."
Cass leaned in and kissed Jeisa, stopping time in its tracks and plunging them into nirvana. She pulled away and looked at Jeisa, her eyes heavy with emotion.
"The point, Jeisa, is finding yourself in moments like these and living in them for as long as you can without dwelling on what came before or worrying about what comes next."
***
"Hey!" Cass exclaimed as she got out of her bed. Jeisa had quickly slapped her butt through the open back of her hospital gown.
"Sorry, but that hospital gown is totally asking for it." said Jeisa laughing.
"Don't remind how much I hate these fucking things. Three weeks in them is enough to last me a lifetime." said Cass. "So glad I'm going home."
"I'm glad I get to wake up beside you every day." said Jeisa, smiling as she remembered moving all of Cass' stuff to the guest house.
"So, will you finally tell me why you're not taking me straight home to a hot bowl of Vietnamese pho while you lay on the couch naked with me and watch all the trash reality shows the nurses introduced me to?" said Cass.
She made a show of stripping off her hospital gown before slipping on a blue button-down shirt over a black lace bra that Jeisa had brought her. Jeisa liked how she looked in lace. Cass smiled and Jeisa didn't doubt it anymore. Cass absolutely knew what she was doing to Jeisa.
"No." said Jeisa, resisting the urge to get up and go help Cass out of her clothes again. "You'll just laugh at me."
"Aww, c'mon Jeis. I promise I won't." whined Cass, slipping on a pair of blue jeans.
Damn, Jeisa thought. It should be a crime to cover up that gorgeous, tight butt. She walked over to Cass and, with all the control she could master, limited herself to giving Cass just one kiss. She pulled away, slightly breathless.
"Cafeteria, ten minutes." said Jeisa, leaving Cass and heading for the cafeteria.
While Cass had been recovering, Jeisa had found a new volunteering gig, and she couldn't wait to share what she'd been doing with Cass. This was one of her best gigs yet!
The tables and chairs of the cafeteria had been moved to the sides of the room. There was a little crowd gathered in the room. A band was set up to one side of the cafeteria and a crowd of twenty somethings dressed in various forms of leather were huddled in a group, talking and laughing. Jeisa joined the leather clad group until Cass finally made it downstairs. Cass smiled curiously at Jeisa from across the room as she entered the cafeteria. Jeisa smiled and waved at her, then she looked down to make sure everything she was wearing was just right.
Jeisa was in a simple white T-shirt that reached just above the black understated belt that held up black skinny jeans and some black and white low top chucks. She walked over to Cass, who'd brought her the leather jacket she'd left in Cass' hospital room. Just then, Corrine, the girl Jeisa had met in the elevator a few weeks ago, wheeled herself into the cafeteria just like she always did every day at the same time for lunch. She froze at the cafeteria entrance and looked around, eyes wide in surprise.
"Get ready." Jeisa said to Cass as she took the jacket from her.
"What for?" asked Cass.
"You'll see." said Jeisa, grinning like an idiot.
The room suddenly exploded into music and Jeisa watched with the utmost satisfaction as Corrine's jaw fell in disbelief when one of the leather clad boys started singing about how you better run because they were here and they were "cruisin' for a bruising'."
Jeisa had found the local dance troupe and had convinced them to volunteer for the 'Make a Wish' chapter of the Wraith Hamlet General Hospital, to live perform a song from the Disney movie that Corinne had talked about that day in the elevator. Jeisa had spent the last two weeks learning the moves of the blond, lead actor in the movie. Cass gasped when Jeisa finally jumped into the flash mob and slid on a pair of Aviators, declaring that she was "cruisin' for some lovin'", before leaning down to let a beaming Corrine kiss her cheek.
It was a lot of fun! Jeisa even got to do a rock and roll saxophone solo alongside Corrine's twenty-year-old brother, whom she'd convinced to do this with her. Nicholas played the song's guitar solo. He was a genius with the strings, and embodied the whole 'rock and roll star' thing incredibly well, even getting down on his knees as he strummed the heck out of his electric guitar. They finished the performance to wild applause. Jeisa had finished with a knee slide right up to Corrine's chair. Corrine's eyes were shining with tears. She stretched forward and hugged Jeisa.
Cass walked over to them.
"Did you just pirouette to a Disney song in a hospital cafeteria flash mob?" asked Cass shaking her head, laughing. "And should I be jealous?"
"Maybe, to the first question." Jeisa laughed and nodded. "And definitely yes to the second!"
"That was so awesome!" screamed Corrine. She hugged Jeisa again. "Thank you! Thank You!"
A tall, handsome man walked over to them.
"That was a killer sax solo, Jeisa!" said Nicholas, kneeling to hug his little sister, Corinne. "I thought you were just kidding about you being able to pull it off at practice. You never played for us."
Jeisa stood up and Nicholas swept her into a big hug. He was six foot two, with a five o'clock shadow that made him look very ruggedly sexy. He had dirty blond hair, and, with that shadow, he was absolutely channelling a 1980's George Michael. Especially in that leather jacket and those blue jeans that beautifully hugged his behind. He looked yummy. Even Jeisa could admit that.
"Didn't want to ruin the surprise." said Jeisa, laughing. When she was back on her feet, Jeisa introduced everyone. "Nick, Corrine, this is my girlfriend, Cass. And Cass, this is Nick, guitar genius and Corrine, his sister and my friend."
"Nice to meet you guys," said Cass, hugging Corrine and then hugging Nick. "Nick, I have to say that you're a wizard on that guitar."
"Oh no..." said Jeisa in mock exasperation.
Corrine mirrored Jeisa's feigned exasperation. "You're going to make him sing now!"
They laughed as Nick did a signature George Michael twirl and then started strumming to 'Faith'. The live band joined Nick and everyone around the cafeteria milled into the centre to dance. Jeisa laughed and she and Cass carefully took Corrine out of her chair and led her to the dance floor.
Jeisa was a machine. She was programmable. She was a weapon. But she was also human. And she could feel. That was all that mattered.
And while there was still so much to still deal with, Cass was right when she said that the best choice one could make was recognise the most precious moments and live in them for as long as was possible.