Borrowed Hands

She knew it the same way you know something in a dream — not because there was any reasoning behind it, but because you simply knew it. She had no body, no heartbeat, no breath. The last thing she remembered was being beside Lucas, in the car. They hit something; she heard the sound. And now she was there, in the middle of nothing.

There was no darkness, because darkness was something. It implied she could see but she could not see. She could not panic because panic required a chest to tighten. She could not scream because screaming required a throat, air, the concept of sound.

What remained were fragments. Lucas's voice asking a question she could no longer hear. The smell, taste and warmth of the tea her mother made. She tried to hold on to all of it. She had no hands.

There was no God there, no light at the end of anything, no feeling of peace or judgment or arrival. Only this: the fragments, and the terrible patience of nothing. She did not know how long it lasted. Long enough to stop asking.

And then — light.

✦ ✦ ✦

White. That was all. White, a sound she could not name, and then nothing again.

✦ ✦ ✦

The next time she left the darkness, the sound had a rhythm. She understood the rhythm. She understood that the sound meant something, that it was a signal of some kind, but the understanding came and went like a wave she could not catch.

Something touched her arm. She could not pull away. She was not sure she had an arm to move. A voice said something, but she did not understand it. She was gone again.

✦ ✦ ✦

She opened her eyes and saw a ceiling. White and smooth, no cracks, no water stains. It was not her ceiling, it was not Lucas's.

A shape with blue eyes moved at the edge of her vision. She tried to turn her head and it moved, a little. She tried to speak but nothing came out.

"It's all right," said the shape. "You don't need to speak. Just rest."

She slept.

✦ ✦ ✦

"Can you squeeze my hand?"

Something pressed against her right palm. She concentrated. It took a long time, longer than it should have, but eventually her fingers moved. She looked at her hand. It seemed different. It didn't have the ring of her marriage with Lucas, but it seemed there was something more.

"Good," said the voice. "Very good."

She tried to speak again. Her mouth was dry. A sound came out, not a word.

"Water," said the voice at once, and something cold touched her lips, a straw, and she drank. The water moved down her throat and she understood that she had a throat, a body. She was alive.

She was not sure that was good news. She tried to ask where she was, but what came out was more breath than words.

"You're in a hospital," said the voice, before she could try again. "You're safe. That's all you need to know right now."

She opened her mouth but only air came out. She wanted to keep asking, but sleep took her before she could.

✦ ✦ ✦

The blue-eyed shape was always there. By now she'd time to look at it more carefully. It was a robot. She knew what robots were; what she did not know was when robots had started to look like this.

She tried to speak. Her voice came out as a hoarse whisper, but it came out.

"Name," she managed to say.

"VERA-3," said the robot. "I have been assigned to your care."

"Mine?"

"Yes."

She looked at the ceiling. At her own hand on the sheet, which she kept feeling a little bit odd about. It looked like her hand. Five fingers. Short nails. A palm with lines crossing it. She stared at the lines for a long time. Something about them unsettled her.

"Lucas," she said.

"He's fine," said VERA immediately.

Something sounded odd, but she was too tired to ask. While her eyes were closing, she realised this time that she didn't want to sleep.

✦ ✦ ✦

"What month is it?" Sara asked the next time she woke up.

"May."

The accident had happened in March. Two months. Or…wait. Could it be more?

"What year?" she said.

VERA said nothing.

"VERA," Her voice was steadier than she expected. "What year is it?"

"2046," said VERA.

Twenty years had passed. Her mouth was dry again. But there was something more important that needed explaining. Sara looked at her hand.

The lines. That was what was wrong with the lines. She knew the lines of her own palms the way she knew her own face: not through study, but through thirty-six years of glancing at them. And above all, the scar on the index finger — small, pale, barely there — from a kitchen knife three years before the accident. She had cursed it at the time. Now she would have given anything to see it.

These were not those lines. They were similar. They were close. They were the lines of someone who might have been her daughter, if she'd had a daughter. They were too close.

"Whose hands are these?" she said.

"Sara…" VERA shifted.

"Whose hands are these?"

"Yours," VERA said. "Biologically yours."

"What does that mean?"

"It means we should talk about what happened," VERA paused. "About how you're here. Are you ready for that?"

Sara looked at the hands in her lap. The skin too smooth, the nails too even, the scar absent.

"Tell me," she said.

VERA was silent for a long moment.

"The accident was very serious, Sara. Your body suffered massive damage. The doctors did everything they could, but…"

"But what?"

"Your body could not continue to function."

"Then it's true. I'm dead."

"You're alive."

"You just told me I died."

"You didn't die. Your body stopped functioning."

Sara looked down. It looked like her, didn't it?

"How am I alive?"

"There is no easy way to say this briefly, but they froze you."

Sara took a moment before responding.

"They… froze me?"

"Yes. While they developed a solution."

Sara laughed. It didn't sound like her laugh.

"Like Disney."

"The freezing process was the most experimental part. The technology to thaw the brain and connect it to a new body wasn't ready in 2026. We had to develop it. We had to wait."

Sara stopped laughing. Something in VERA's tone stopped her.

"What do you mean, a new body? Couldn't they repair it?"

"No," she whispered.

"Sara…" VERA began.

"Whose body is this?"

"We created a clone using your stem cells. We grew it to maturity and then transferred your brain."

"My brain?"

"Yes."

"Into a body cloned from mine?"

"Yes."

Sara brought her hands to her face. She pulled them away immediately. Those were not her hands. They were someone else's hands. Something else's. She tried to stand but lost her balance and fell to the floor. VERA knelt beside her, careful not to touch her.

"Don't touch me!"

"Sara, you need help."

"This isn't me," she sobbed. "I'm dead."

"You are you, Sara. Your brain. Your memories. Your thoughts. Everything that makes you is here."

"No. I'm not me."

"It isn't the same body you had at thirty-six, but it's the best replica we could create with the technology we have. In fact, once you adjust, you'll see it has its advantages. You could even say you've gotten younger."

Sara looked at herself. Her hands were smoother. The extra weight was gone. Her chest was firmer.

"How old is it? This… body."

"Biologically, twenty."

Sara closed her eyes.

"Twenty years old. I'm twenty years old."

"Biologically."

"But I'm thirty-six."

"Legally, fifty-six."

"Fifty. Thirty. Twenty. I don't even know how old I am."

"You are Sara. That's what matters."

"I'm Frankenstein."

Twenty years old. She was twenty and thirty-six and fifty-six, and she had been frozen in a hospital for two decades while Lucas —

She didn't finish the thought.

She stared at her hands. These hands, these young, smooth, borrowed hands. She pressed her thumbnail into her palm. Hard. Harder. Until she felt the pain, clear and immediate and real.

She pressed harder, watching the white half-moon form in the skin, watching the skin go white and then red around it, and she waited to feel like herself.

She was still waiting when VERA gently took her wrist and held it.

"I should have stayed dead."