The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

some people died. Same as they would have if she’d been an ordinary doctor. Ordinary doctors lose patients all the time and don’t get arrested for it. The important thing is to make Janet seem less special. The knife trick didn’t help.

“What has made the difference?” the prosecutor asks.

“Early on, I worried about getting caught,” Janet says. “A doctor with a perfect record attracts attention. My colleagues already talked about me like I was supernatural. If everyone who came to me lived, every single patient, they’d know something was different about me.”

“Something is different about you.”

“Yes,” says Janet. “As I said, I’m a Resonant. I can say that now. I couldn’t then.”

“You were hiding your ability,” says the prosecutor.

“Not hiding,” Janet says. “If I was hiding it, I wouldn’t have healed anyone. Or I would have, but only with my training as a doctor. That’s a kind of ability as well, I think.”

“Not the same kind of ability,” says the prosecutor.

Tell him it is, Avi thinks. Tell him it’s exactly the same as being a good doctor. Some people can figure a tip in their head, some people can fucking juggle. You can knit bones back together with your brain. It’s all the same thing. Tell him.

“No,” Janet says. “I suppose it isn’t.”

“So there were patients you healed with your ability and patients you didn’t.”

“Yes.”

“How did you decide?”

“Who I healed and who I didn’t?”

“Yes.”

“I rolled dice.”

“Dice,” he says. He revels in the word, feels it roll around in his mouth. It tastes like chance, like gambling. He knows it’ll sound that way to the jury. He’s not the schlub Avi assumed he was. Kay keeps her face still, but she must see the way the jury looks at Janet. A minute ago she was a miracle worker, Montgomery’s Angel. Now she’s a capricious god, rolling dice to decide the fate of mortals like them.

“A sixty-six percent success rate beyond whatever I could do normally as a surgeon seemed safe,” Janet says. “Low enough not to attract attention. I carried a die in my pocket. Before I went into surgery, I’d excuse myself and roll. As long as it didn’t come up three or four, I’d use my ability to heal the patient. Even if it meant bringing them back from the brink of death.”

“And if the dice came up three or four?”

“I’d do everything within my power as a doctor,” Janet says.

“Except you wouldn’t,” the prosecutor says. “Because your power as a doctor was different from other doctors. You had this extra ability. Choosing not to use it, wouldn’t that be like operating with your eyes closed or with your nondominant hand? Just to see if you could?”

“I didn’t do it for a challenge,” Janet says, angry, offended for the first time. A little late now, Avi thinks.

“No, you did it to keep your secret,” says the prosecutor. “Doctor, do you remember Donald Morena?”

Janet looks down at her hands. “Yes.”

“What do you remember about him?”

“On the evening of May 13, Donald Morena came into the St. Peter’s emergency room with a gunshot wound to the head.” She points to a spot above her left eye. “The bullet had not exited the skull and had become lodged within the occipital lobe.” She pats the back of her head. “I operated to remove the bullet, but Mr. Morena died during the surgery.”

“Did you roll the dice for Donald Morena?” the prosecutor asks.

“I did.”

“What number did Donald Morena get?”

“A four.”

“And that’s why Donald Morena died.”

“He died because someone shot him in the head,” Janet says.

“But you could have saved him,” says the prosecutor.

“Yes.”

“Why did you stop rolling the dice?” the prosecutor asks.

“They shot that boy in the street,” Janet says. “At the school in New York. That boy was brave enough to be who he was in public, and that other boy shot him. And I was letting people die to keep my secret.”

“People like Donald Morena,” says the prosecutor.

“Do you want their names?” Janet asks. “I can name every one. I can tell you if they came up a three or a four. Should I tell you what I called my system?” The prosecutor looks at her blankly. Janet turns to the jury. One of them, juror number four, nods. “I called it the coefficient of failure. Except that’s not how I thought of it. I thought of it as the coefficient of death. I swore I would remember the names of every person who died on that table so that I could keep going. Let one die to save two more. But the ones who live never pile up. I don’t remember their names or their numbers. They send Christmas cards, and I throw them away without opening them. They invite me to dinners and weddings and baptisms. They friend me on Facebook. And I remember the ones who died.”

Avi watches the jury. He watches Kay school her face, trying not to show how the scaffolding that holds her case up is coming apart. He looks at Janet, who insisted on a trial. She needed to crucify herself to feel whole. She needed to let herself be punished for all her dead. After the prosecution is done, Kay will parade Janet’s miracles through the court. She will bury the jury in a pile of living bodies, people who would be dead if not for Janet Goulding and Janine Coupland.

It may keep Janet out of jail. It won’t heal her.

Fahima has work to finish. It’s difficult to take a functioning device and make it smaller. The right idea came to her last night. Alyssa picked up an extra shift, and so Fahima got to spend the whole night in the lab. Sometimes absence is the best gift a loved one can give.

The problem is focus over distance. The inhibitor’s countersignal dissipates quickly as it moves away from the source. It’s easier to imagine an inhibitor knife than an inhibitor gun. What would