The Best of Nancy Kress by Nancy Kress Page A

‘high,’ Ludmilla. It will pass soon. Meanwhile, you are safe here.”
    “Like hell I am!”
    “You are. And I apologize for calling you ‘Ludmilla.’ I have not received permission.”
    “Oh, go the fuck ahead. Only it’s ‘Ludie.’” I felt my skull again. I wanted to rip off the bandage. I wanted to run out of the hospital. I wanted to stay in this bed forever, talking, not having to deal with my family. I didn’t know what I wanted.
    Maybe Dr. Chung did, because he went on talking, a steadying stream of nothing: graduate school in California and riding busses in China and his wife’s and daughters’ names. They were named after flowers, at least in English: Lotus and Jasmine and Plum Blossom. I liked that. I listened, and grew sleepy, and drifted into dreams of girls with faces like flowers.
     

     
    I was two days in Johnson Memorial and two more in a bed at the clinic, and every single one of them I worried about Shawn. Nobody came to see me. I thought Patty might, or maybe even Dinah if Bobby’d a let her, but they didn’t. Well, Patty was only twelve, still pretty young to come alone. So I watched TV and I talked with Dr. Chung, who didn’t seem to have a whole lot to do.
    “Don’t you got to see patients?”
    “I’m not an M.D., Ludie. Dr. Liu mostly sees the patients.”
    “How come Blaine got so many Chinese doctors? Aren’t Americans working on optogenetics?”
    “Of course they are. Liu Bo and I became friends at the university and so applied for this grant together.”
    “And you brought Jenny.”
    “She is Bo’s fiancé.”
    “Oh. She warn’t—there he is, the bastard!”
    President Rollins was on TV, giving a campaign speech. Red and blue balloons sailed up behind him. My hands curled into fists. Dr. Chung watched me, and I realized—stupid me!—that of course he was working. He was observing me, the lab rat.
    He said, “Why do you hate the president so?”
    “He stopped the government checks and the food stamps. It’s ’cause of him and his Libbies that most of Blaine is back to eating squirrels.”
    Dr. Chung looked at the TV like it was the most fascinating thing in the world, but I knew his attention was really on me. “But under the Libertarians, aren’t your taxes lower?”
    I snorted. “Five percent of nothing isn’t less to pay than fifteen percent of nothing.”
    “I thought the number of jobs in the coal mines had increased.”
    “If you can get one. My kin can’t.”
    “Why not?”
    I didn’t tell him why not. Bobby and Uncle Ted and maybe even now Shawn—they can’t none of them pass a drug screen. So I snapped, “You defending Ratface Rollins?”
    “Certainly not. He has drastically and tragically cut funding for basic research.”
    “But here you all are.” I waved my arm to take in the room and the machines hooked up to me and the desk in the lobby where Mrs. Cully was doing something on a computer. I was still floating.
    “Barely,” Dr. Chung said. “This study is funded as part of a grant now four years old and up for renewal. If—” He stopped and looked—for just a minute, and the first time ever—a little confused. He didn’t know why he was telling me so much. I didn’t know, either. My excuse was the pain drugs.
    I said, “If Ratface wins, you lose the money for this clinic?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why? I mean, why this one specially?”
    He chewed on his bottom lip, something else I didn’t see him do afore. I thought he warn’t going to say any more, but then he did. “The study so far has produced no publishable results. The population affected is small. We obtained the current grant just before President Rollins came into office and all but abolished both the FDA and research money. If the Libertarians are re-elected, it’s unlikely our grant will be renewed.”
    “Isn’t there someplace else to get the money?”
    “Not that we have found so far.”
    Mrs. Cully called to him then and he left. I sat thinking about what he