The Nirvana Plague by Gary Glass

speak.
    Roger said nothing either.
    Finally, he used his free hand to pull Roger’s hand loose from his own. “All right then,” he said. “I’ll let you sleep now. Karen, I’ll wait for you in the visitors’ lounge. It’s just around the corner there.”
    After he’d gone, Karen asked Roger what had happened to him.
    Roger’s gaze drifted up to the ceiling again. “Remember,” he said.
    “Remember what?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Remember what?”
    “Don’t you remember what happened to you?”
    “Memories. Thoughts.” He spoke slowly, as if he wasn’t sure whether he was using the right words. “There is that, yes.”
    “Just tell me.”
    “There is asking. And answering. Asking causes answering. But. But. But who?”
    “Roger, just talk to me.” She took his face in her hands. “To me. ”
    In the gloom of the room, his small eyes sparkled under her face. “There’s, there’s no, there’s no — ”
    He stopped trying to talk and just looked at her — into her. She hadn’t seen such a look from him in many years. But it wasn’t just intimacy. He saw her. Suddenly she felt fear — or something like fear. She began to cry again, silently, tears spilling from her eyes and falling on him. She saw his eyes soften.
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “No need.”
    “I’m not worried, honey,” she whispered. “I just don’t understand. I don’t understand.”
    “Understand.” Vaguely.
    “Please get some sleep now, OK? I’ll be here in the morning. I’ll take you home.”
    He said nothing, his eyes softening more, already going to sleep, as if on command.
    “Roger? Promise me that you won’t try to leave your room tonight.”
    But he was already asleep.
    Karen picked up the sheets and blankets he had knocked on the floor and spread them over him.
    She sat beside him for a long time while he slept.

    She found Marley sitting in the visitors’ lounge near the nurses’ station, reading something on his tablet. She slumped into the seat next to him. Typical hospital furniture — she might slide off it any second.
    Marley looked up.
    “How does he seem?”
    “I’m staying here tonight,” she said. “I don’t trust him not to try and leave.”
    “I’ll stay too.”
    “Nonsense.”
    “He’s different, isn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    She shifted in the chair. Comfort was impossible. “Now go home,” she said.
    “I want to talk to him as soon as possible tomorrow.”
    “What’s the urgency?”
    “The urgency is that it may continue to spread.”
    “Worried about a patient rebellion?”
    “Among other things.”
    “Well, you can go home tonight. Come back tomorrow. Don’t you want to get some sleep?”
    “I can talk my way into the doctors’ lounge.” He nodded toward a pillow and folded blanket stacked on the sofa beside her. “Also I asked the charge nurse to bring you a blanket and pillow. You can stretch out here on the couch.”
    “You’ve really become almost human, doc.”
    “Almost.”
    “What are you doing there?”
    He tapped his tablet. “I’ve been doing some research. The thing is, I’m having trouble labeling the symptoms. When I interviewed the other two patients today, I strongly felt the similarity of their behaviors with what I saw in your husband this morning, yet I can’t quite put my finger on what these behaviors are. Behaviors doesn’t even seem like the right word.”
    “I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve never seen Roger talk so slowly, and, and something else. So indefinitely . He always thought fast and talked fast — and with complete assurance. Even before he got sick. A lot of people, when they first met him, thought he was arrogant, but I liked it. But now he doesn’t seem to know what he wants to say. It’s like talking to a child in some ways. Did you ever have a four-year-old try to tell you something they didn’t have the words for? Lots of false starts, and repetitions, and disjointed syntax.”
    “Right. All three of these