The Phantom Limb by William Sleator, Ann Monticone

it all over again. He had no idea how much time was going by and how soon it would be over.
    He’d been inside the thing for only a few seconds and already sweat was sliding down his forehead into his eyes, making them sting. But he couldn’t move his arm to wipe it away. He tried not to hyperventilate, so his chest wouldn’t move. He felt that at any second he was going to have a seizure, like Vera, or scream, or throw up.
    Why hadn’t they offered to give him something to knock him out? It felt exactly the same as when they hadn’t given him a sedative for the endoscopy.
    Then there were noises all around him, weird, unearthly noises unlike anything he had ever heard before. Deep rumbling, like thunder, turning into a high-pitched screeching that penetrated painfully through the plugs in his ears. He held his body as tightly as possible, feeling the sweat oozing down his sides now. Soon his hospital gown was soaking wetand his eyes were stinging more than ever. It felt as if he’d been in here for hours.
    â€œOnly fifteen minutes left,” a voice said through a loudspeaker inside the machine.
    Fifteen more minutes? How could he stand this? He squeezed his eyes shut, so he wouldn’t see how close the top of the cylinder was. He desperately needed to stifle the painful stinging. He did everything he could to imagine he was somewhere else. But all that came into his mind was the Menger sponge, the strange fractal object in which every chamber was smaller than the one before. And that only made it worse.
    He tried to think of riding his bike, of trees and the sky. But the Menger sponge kept swimming back into his mind. His muscles were aching now from holding them so rigidly. It felt like hours were going by in this hell. How could he take this? How
could
he? How—
    The noises stopped. And finally,
finally,
the gurney began sliding out of the cylinder.
    Isaac was a wreck. He was so limp, the nurse had to help him climb down off the gurney. The man in the white lab coat told the orderly to get a wheelchair and then took Isaac into the locker room, where, with shaky hands, Isaac slowly got into his clothes.
    As the orderly wheeled him to the elevator, Isaac gradually began to recover. He knew that the more he hung around the hospital, trying to figure out what was really going on, the more they would find ways to torture him.
    He and Vera had to escape tomorrow.

 
    SAAC GOT TO THE HOSPITAL EARLIER THAN ever the next day, at six. He felt shaky about going there at all, afraid of what they might do to him this time, but he knew he had to force himself to go. He was getting more and more worried about Vera.
    He brought the spiral aftereffect with him, carefully wrapped and taped in its box, the box itself wrapped in a towel. He fitted it snugly into his bicycle basket. His schoolbooks and unfinished homework weighed down his backpack as he rode.
    Nurse Vicky was at the station. “Is the doctor here yet?” Isaac asked her.
    Vicky checked a chart on the wall behind her. “The doctor doesn’t get here this early.”
    â€œIs Candi here?” Isaac asked.
    â€œCandi changed shifts today. She’s in the ER and won’t be up on this floor at all,” she said, smiling pleasantly.
    Did Vicky know what was happening to Vera? Could Isaac trust her? He wasn’t sure, so he continued on to room 638 without saying anything more.
    Isaac found Vera awake, staring at the ceiling. She was looking worried and vulnerable. She seemed more alert than she had been in the last few days. Was it because Dr. Ciano wasn’t there to dope her into submission? When she saw Isaac in the doorway, her pale, shrunken face broke into a big smile. “Ize! Where’ve you been?”
    â€œI’ve been here. But you’ve just been asleep—drugged out,” he said as he washed his hands.
    â€œI want to go home, Ize.”
    â€œI’m working on it, Mom. We’ll get