Free Crosstalk by Connie Willis

give your body a chance to recover first, and the best way to do that is to rest. Here’s your call button.” She showed Briddey where it was clipped to her pillow. “If you need anything, call.”
    I
did
,
Briddey thought,
and Trent answered me. I felt it. I need to speak to him and find out if he felt it, too. I need to find out his room number.
But the nurse had already gone. Briddey fumbled for the call button. Before she could push it, though, the nurse returned with a huge bouquet of roses.
    She showed Briddey the card from Trent. It read, “In just one more day we’ll be inseparable!”
    It may not take that long,
Briddey thought, and asked the nurse, who was setting the roses in the window, “Which room is Mr. Worth in?”
    “I’ll check,” she said, and came back a moment later to say, “He’s still in recovery.”
    Of course. Briddey’d forgotten that he’d had his EED done after hers. “I need to talk to him,” she said.
    “He’s not out of the anesthesia yet. You can talk to him later. Right now you need to rest,” the nurse said firmly, and shut the overhead light off.
    He must have come out of the anesthesia for a few minutes and then drifted off again,
Briddey told herself,
and that’s why he didn’t answer the second time.
    She was feeling a little drowsy herself, as if she might doze off at any moment.
The nurse was right,
she thought.
I do still have a lot of anesthetic in…
and was asleep before she could complete the thought.
    When she woke up again, it was to darkness.
What time is it?
she wondered, groping for her phone, and then remembered that she didn’t have it—she was in the hospital. The darkness—and her mind feeling much clearer—told her she’d been asleep for hours, and that was confirmed by the late-night hush in the corridor outside. There were no footsteps, no nurses’ voices, no intercom announcements. The entire floor was asleep.
    But something had woken her. As before, she had the distinct feeling that she’d heard a voice. Trent would definitely be out of the anesthesia by now. Had he reached out to her?
Trent?
she called.
    No response, and after a minute she heard a buzzer from somewhere down the hall and footsteps going toward it. Had she heard an actual sound—a door shutting or a patient calling for the nurse—and was that what had awakened her? And was it a sound like that, plus her imagination and the after-effects of the anesthestic, that had caused the first one, too?
    But it had felt so real—and so different from what she’d imagined Trent would be feeling. She’d expected delight that they’d connected but not relief. Trent had been completely confident about the EED. And there’d been other feelings in that explosion of emotion—surprise and uncertainty and amusement. And some other feeling, which had been suppressed so quickly she hadn’t had time to identify it. But she was sure about the uncertainty and the surprise.
Were you secretly afraid it wouldn’t work, like I was?
she called.
    No answer.
    She waited a long minute, listening in the darkness, and then called,
Are you there? Can you hear me?
    Yes.
    I
knew
I heard him,
she thought. And realized who the voice sounded like.
But it can’t be him! And this can’t be happening. The EED doesn’t make you telepathic—
    Apparently it does,
he said, and this time there was no question at all who the voice belonged to. She clapped her hand to her mouth, horrified.
    I told you it could have unintended consequences,
C.B. said.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
    “Why, so can I, and so can any man;/But will they come when you do call for them?”
    —W ILLIAM S HAKESPEARE ,
Henry IV, Part I
    Please tell me I’m dreaming, Briddey thought, but she knew she wasn’t. She could feel the sharp pull of the IV needle in the hand that she’d clapped over her mouth, could hear the beep of the IV monitor next to her bed.
    And C.B.’s voice answering her, saying,
I’m afraid not,