As I Wake (2 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Scott
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Psychology, #Love & Romance, #Cognitive Psychology, #Law & Crime
“You have to take her to the hospital,” she says, and then does reach me, moves and grabs my arm, fingers sliding around my wrist, clinging tight. “Ava, honey, we have to go to the hospital now, okay? You’ll be fine, though. You’re going to be fine.”
Ava?
“Is that your name?” the man with the light says, arms folding me onto a stretcher, twirling this place around me, Homeway Lane turning out of sight, and the woman looks at me like she knows me. Looks so happy.
This is a dream; this has to be a dream.
“Ava, can you hear me?” the man says, and I don’t want to be pushed down onto a stretcher. I don’t want this, I want to go, I want to wake up but I’m not, I’m not, and I can’t breathe, there isn’t enough air in me, in this place and the OhGod woman is still here, still looking at me, and she looks so real, all this looks so real, and I just want to go to sleep, I just want to wake up and breathe, stop this heavy fuzzy darkness in my head.
Shock, I hear someone say as the darkness starts to swallow me, creeping up all around. Oh shit, she’s going into shock.
I close my eyes.
3.
I LOOK AROUND THE ATTIC.
I don’t need to, of course. I know it, I’ve seen the plans for the whole building, memorized them. I learned how to do that early on when I was in school, hoping that I’d be here, that I’d be part of SAT, the State Antiterrorism Taskforce. It’s cold, but after I’ve been here for a while my body heat will warm the air, stop my breath from coming out in frosty puffs.
I don’t need to, of course. I know it, I’ve seen the plans for the whole building, memorized them. I learned how to do that early on when I was in school, hoping that I’d be here, that I’d be part of SAT, the State Antiterrorism Taskforce. It’s cold, but after I’ve been here for a while my body heat will warm the air, stop my breath from coming out in frosty puffs.
I stroke the side of the chair I’m sitting on, my fingers skating over the cracked orange plastic, and turn on the headset.
I am here, finally, and I must do a good job. I know what will happen if I am lazy or sloppy or stupid. The People’s Democratic Movement, the ones who make the rules that keep us safe, who run everything, who want to know everything—they will know if I fail. They know everything.
And if I do, the crèche will swallow me again, that I will disappear inside its endless gray walls full of children who are unwanted, or, like I was, orphaned and watched, doomed to nothingness unless they can prove themselves. The PDM is letting me try, letting me be part of something that is as necessary as breathing, for if the SAT isn’t working, if people aren’t looking out for each other, listening or watching or doing whatever it takes to keep everyone safe, then we aren’t part of a strong government. We’d be at the mercy of anyone who wanted anything.
If we have all the information, no one can ever hurt us.
There are no instructions for me to read, but I don’t need them. I was trained for this. I’ve proved myself. I can do this in my sleep. Power on listening device, switch on right side; hit pause to show start of duty, and then begin recording. Extra batteries are stored inside the bottom of the unit, and all battery changes must be done after noting them in my report.
I unfold the keyboard. It is sticky. The other person who listens here, the silent man who left when I came in, must have eaten. My stomach rumbles. He must be higher in the SAT than I am.
Of course he is. He didn’t come from the crèche, isn’t a child of those who did things that SAT works to stop.
I open the report. The date and time fill themselves in automatically, and the field for subject is labeled “56-412. MORGAN.” It doesn’t say why 56-412 is being watched.
There is no need to. Everyone who might matter, who might possibly think things that could hurt the government, is watched at one time or another. That is what the SAT does, and this is just 56-412’s time. It might just be a few days. It might be a few months.
Or 56-412 might say something that could harm the PDM, in which case he’ll disappear and I—
I will have another job. I’ve proven myself. I have.
I listen, hands hovering over the keys.
After a moment, I type
56-412, Sleeping.
It is the same as the last entry, and the one before it.
56-412, Sleeping.
It is the same as the last entry, and the one before it.
56-412 rolls over. I hear the bed rustling, and curl my feet into my socks, wishing I had better shoes.
56-412 breathes slowly, deeply. I try breathing like that too. The best way to understand those who might want to harm the state is to know them, to do what I am doing now, to listen and serve the greater good, but after a few minutes I feel myself sliding toward sleep. I stayed up too late last night waiting for now, waiting for my life to truly begin.
I close my eyes.
4.
WAKE UP.
I see white-green lights flickering overhead. I’m flat on my back, a bed under me and a television high up on the wall, its screen dark. White walls, and signs at eye level: NO PHONES, NO ELECTRONIC DEVICES, NO SMOKING, PLEASE STOP AT THE DESK BEFORE LEAVING THE HOSPITAL.
Hospital. I’m in the hospital. I must have been in an accident. I try to remember it, but my head hurts, blinding hot pain, and I squeeze my eyes shut, see an attic, an orange chair, and the number 56-412.
The pain gets worse, and I push the images away, see a house and a road and a streetlight shining down on me.
Which one is real? I have to think.
Go on, do it. I’ll tell myself to.
______, think.
What? No. no no no no.
_______, think.
I feel myself start to shake.
I don’t know who I am. My head aches and is empty, full of words but nothing more. I sit up, frantic, scrabbling at the bed, at my body (Is it real? Is any of this real?), and startle a slumped lump in a chair in the corner.
One look shows me it’s the woman from before, from the street. The house.
The one who says she’s my mother.
“Ava, honey,” she says, and is there, right there, grabbing me again, covering one of my hands with her own. Her skin is warm, normal.
Real.
Skin renews itself daily, new cells born, old cells die. The human body is a complex machine, and there is one spot on the foot that, if pressed, will make your body cramp in pain. People will answer questions if you place your fingers there and push.
I know that, but I do not know this woman.
I do not know me.
“Ava?” the woman says again, and I look at her for a moment. Her eyes are scared but happy too, and she keeps patting my hand. I crawl my fingers away.
Her face falls, going sad.
“Honey, it’s me, it’s okay,” she says, as if that means everything.
It means nothing and I swing my legs away from her, my feet on the floor. I still don’t have shoes, and the floor is cold.
The door opens and a man—a doctor, I know from the way he walks, the way he’s dressed—comes in and looks at me.
“So you woke up,” he says, and I stare at him because this has to be a dream. Doctors never come to a hospital room unless something very bad has happened because there simply aren’t enough of them. The study required—and the screening for it—is intense, and few meet the qualifications of intellect and respect for all that’s done to keep us all safe.
“I—I think I’m still asleep,” I say, and he frowns, looking at the not-mother.
“No, you’re awake,” he says, moving toward me as a nurse comes in behind him, head bowed over a tray she’s holding. “You hyperventilated on the way here and passed out, and then you did seem to fall asleep for a while. How are you feeling now?”
“You don’t—I know something’s wrong,” I say. “You wouldn’t—you wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t. And the attic and the orange chair and the number—” I break off, my head hurting again, sudden cramping pain, and know—yes, know—that I shouldn’t say any more. That I must be careful.
The doctor frowns, and then looks at the chair the not-mother was sitting in.
Orange plastic.
Then he touches my wrist once, gently and impersonally as the nurse moves around behind me. I look down, see what he sees, thin strip of plastic around my wrist.
Ava Hanson, it says. Allergies, none. 56-412.
“I don’t—I thought—” I say, and the woman who called me Ava, the mother not-mother, says, “Oh, honey,” and starts to cry, big wet tears and hiccuping sobs.
“Mrs. Hanson,” the doctor says, and the woman shakes her head, says, “I’m sorry,” and moves away.
Her eyes are full of pain.
5.
THE DOCTOR ASKS ME
where I live. “Your address,” he says, when I don’t answer.
where I live. “Your address,” he says, when I don’t answer.
“I don’t know.”
“What were you doing tonight before your mother found you?”
I force my body to go rigid, to not shake. I force myself to look into the endless dark of my brain and search. “I don’t know.”
He looks at Mrs. Hanson and I keep trying, looking for something, but there is only blankness because behind the bed and the light, behind Homeway Lane, there is nothing, and all I think when I think “Me” is—
Nothing. I am a blank, a blur.
“Okay. Tell me exactly what you do remember,” the doctor says.
“Double-checking temperature,” the nurse says, moving around the doctor to scan my forehead with a small plastic machine.
“I woke up in a room and I didn’t—I didn’t know where I was. So I left and I went downstairs, I went outside—”
“See, she knows the house,” Mrs. Hanson says. “She knows how to go downstairs, and she knew how to open the front door. She’s fine. I’m sure she’s fine. She has to be—”
“Mrs. Hanson,” the doctor says, so kindly, so evenly, and so full of pity that my skin prickles, and then he turns back to me and says, “Where are we?”
“The hospital.”
“And where is the hospital?”
I stare at him because I don’t know.
I know what a hospital is, I know what this room means, but it could be anywhere, I could be anywhere, and I don’t know how I woke up in that house or who Ava Hanson is and who her mother is and why I’m here, why I’m supposed to be here.
The doctor frowns a little and then looks at Mrs. Hanson, the mother who has claimed me. “We’ll need to run some tests.”
“Temperature’s normal,” the nurse says, and when I look at her she is blurred around the edges somehow, as if she’s here but not here, but then she becomes clear and I see an old woman, grandmother-age with silver hair and hands so thin they are nothing but knotty ropes of veins, watching me, dressed all in white like an angel.
She is smiling at me, but her smile is like broken glass, shiny and sharp.
She knows things about me. I can see it, and for the first time since this dream that won’t end began, I know something too. I know she has answers.
“Where am I?” I say. “Who am I?”
She points at the plastic on my wrist and says, “Hospital, of course. But soon you’ll be back home. Be back to your old self. You’ll see.”
“But I—” I say and then stop because she puts her fingers on my wrist and her skin is cold like winter, like her eyes, and I’m not sure what I’m seeing now. I thought she knew things but my head is spinning, painful but not, like it is being looked at from the inside, and—
“Ava,” the doctor says, and I blink, see him frowning at me. The nurse has two fingers on the inside of my wrist still, frowning as her eyes squint in concentration. She looks different though, younger.
“What happened to the other nurse?” I say, and she looks at the doctor.
“There was no other nurse,” he says, and then looks at Ava’s mother. “She drifted away just now, somehow. Her eyes were open, even. We have to run more tests.”
“But she—she’s here, she’s going to be all right,” Ava’s mother says, her voice rising. “You don’t understand, but if I could just take her home—”
There is more talking, lots of it, but this isn’t real, it can’t be, I can’t be a blank, unknown and full of darkness. And then I am being gently pushed onto the bed again, the ceiling gleaming down at me, and I don’t know this place but the older nurse knew something, knows me. I remember that. I know it.
She said I was going home soon and so I will because I will wake up. I will. I have to.
I close my eyes.
Nothing happens.
I just see dark edged with light, sneaking in and flickering green-white while Ava’s mother cries and the doctor talks more about tests and the nurse, the young one, the one who wasn’t here before, says, “I’ll go see if the neurologist is here yet.”
I close my eyes tighter but nothing happens. I don’t wake up.
When I finally open them Ava’s mother is looking down at me.
“Everything will be fine,” she says. “Really, honey, it will,” and the doctor says, “Yes, it will,” and I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am.
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