Subject Seven by James A. Moore Page B

tests to make sure that he wasn’t a hardened drug freak. He’d heard his parents talking at home about how much the tests would cost, well, arguing really, about whether or not they could afford to get them done at all because apparently insurance didn’t cover paranoid exams of your son’s blood for illicit substances.
    His dad had been against it. His mom had insisted. In the long run, Mom won. Mom always won. It had always been that way.
    He kept pacing, worrying, doing his best to ignore the constriction in his chest and the fact that his lungs wanted to whistle. Asthma sucked. He wished he’d brought his Game Boy.
    The door opened and his parents walked out with a man he’d never seen before. He had to guess the stranger was their new friend, the doctor.
    â€œCody?” The man walked forward and offered his hand. He had a very strong grip and a smile that looked like it belonged on a politician. “I’m Dr. Peebles. I’ve been talking to your parents about your blood test results.”
    Cody looked at his mom first; her face was set and worried. Then his dad, who seemed a little more relaxed but only a little.
    The doctor was still smiling when he looked back.
    â€œYeah? What was the verdict?”
    â€œWell, there’s no evidence that you took any illegal drugs, and aside from a few tests that are very painful and cost prohibitive, I doubt we’d be able to check any more thoroughly than we already did.”
    He nodded. He didn’t like the man. He didn’t trust the man. Everything about the guy just rubbed him wrong.
    â€œI get the idea there’s a but in this.”
    The doctor blinked. “A but ?”
    â€œYeah, you know. You seem all good, BUT, we have to consider this or that other thing.”
    The man nodded and got a serious look on his face. Cody had to wonder if he practiced the expression in the mirror to make it look so sincere.
    â€œWell, Cody, the thing is, we have to consider blackouts very carefully.”
    â€œBlackouts?”
    A nod from Dr. Sincere. “Yes, blackouts, or fugues, or amnesia. The fact of the matter is, you lost four days of your life and we can’t figure out why.”
    Cody swallowed hard. This was about to get bad, he could feel it in his stomach, like the way he felt at the top of the first roller-coaster hill when he knew the car was about to take a giant plummet downward and there was that chance that he was about to crash into the ground.
    â€œThe thing is, Cody, we’ve checked your head for possible causes, we’ve done examinations of your electrolytes for possible imbalances . . . and you’re in remarkable physical shape.”
    He shook his head. The man had to be looking at someone else’s medical records. “No. I have asthma. My mom is always telling me I’ve got health problems.”
    Another smile, but it was fast and lacked conviction. The doctor looked to his mom for a second and she in turn looked down, like she was guilty of letting out a shameful family secret. What the hell?
    â€œWell, you’re in better shape than you think. At least physically.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” And there it was, that feeling like falling. The roller coaster was dropping fast and hard and it was a doozy, too.
    â€œThere are no signs of drugs, no physiological signs of trauma, and Cody, that only leaves one alternative that we can think of.”
    Cody stepped back and looked from adult to adult, his eyes widening in his head. His mother and father looked away. Mom had a fretting look on her pretty face and Dad, well, Dad was looking about as happy as he probably would if Cody suddenly decided he needed to get a sex change. “You’re kidding me. You think I’m mental.”
    â€œWe just need to take a few more tests to make sure that the fugue state was just a fluke, a one-time thing.”
    â€œOh, hell no.” Cody shook his head. “I am not