The Hourglass (13 page)

The doctor had
started to cut away Finn’s shirt. Sarah looked back at Finn and gasped. The
whole right side of his chest was covered in a nasty looking purple and black
bruise that was yellowing at the edges. The doctor turned around and looked at
Gragur. “What’s your name?”

“Gragur,”
answered Gragur.

“Gragur, clean
up his face while I deal with this,” he said, indicating Finn’s chest.

Gragur got up
and rounded the bed so that he was now standing on the opposite side to the
doctor, near Finn’s head. He stared at Finn’s bloody face for a second before
looking around the room vaguely for something he could use to wipe the blood
away. After nearly a minute the doctor realised that Gragur hadn’t moved. He
rolled his eyes.

“Sit down
Gragur,” he said, exasperated. Gragur returned to his usual seat on the bed
with a look of relief on his face. For the first time the doctor seemed to
realise that Sarah was there. “You,” he said, pointing at her. “There is a
cloth and a dish under the sink. Let’s see if you can do any better.”

Sarah followed
his directions and started rooting around under the sink. She found a stack of
kidney dishes, disposable cloths and a variety of bandages. She grabbed a
kidney dish and filled about a third of it with water from the sink, added a
few disposable cloths and walked back over to the bed, careful not spill any of
the water. The doctor had finished poking and prodding Finn’s chest and was now
listening to his lungs with a stethoscope. Sarah set down her equipment and wet
one end of a piece of cloth. Finn’s face was an absolute mess. His nose looked
misshapen and the blood had smeared everywhere. He was grimacing. The doctor
had told him to take deep breaths and apparently this was hurting just as much
as the prodding. Sarah decided on cleaning him up from the edges in, leaving
his bent nose until last. Finn was watching her as she worked, which unnerved
her somewhat.
“Quit looking at me,” she murmured under her breath.

Finn was saved
from responding as a particularly vicious prod from the doctor elicited a long
groan. She had washed the cloth five times, the water in the kidney dish a
bright red, before she got to his nose. By this time the doctor had finished with
the rest of him and was ready to assess his nose, now that he was looking a bit
tidier. He took the cloth off Sarah and cleaned the remaining blood away
roughly but effectively. Finn groaned. “Yup,” said the doctor, “definitely
broken.” He put a finger and a thumb on either side of Finn’s nose and then,
without any warning, tweaked it. Sarah winced at the grating noise it made and
Finn yelped. His nose starting bleeding again, but at least it looked
straighter. Finn was trying to blink the tears out of his eyes without looking
like he was crying. The doctor wiped away the new flow of blood and pulled out
a small packet from the breast pocket of his scrubs. In it were lines of small
pieces of fabric and plastic. He peeled off two of them from their plastic backing
and placed them across the bridge of Finn’s nose.

“That’ll help
keep the nasal passages open so you can breathe,” he said. He got up and
disappeared into his office, returning almost immediately with two white
tablets in a cup. “Take these, they’ll help with the pain.”

Finn took them.

“He’s fractured
a few ribs and his nose, but otherwise he’s fit for the factory floor.” The
doctor retrieved a small notebook from the same breast pocket as he kept the
nose strips in, scribbled a note and tore out the page, handing it to Finn. “Show
this to a guard so they’ll bring you here.” He turned back to Gragur. “He can
come back twice a day and get more analgesia for his ribs.” The doctor walked
towards another cabinet, opened it, and pulled out a fresh shirt, which he
threw gently at Finn. Finn removed the remaining rags of his old shirt and
slowly, with much grimacing and pauses, he managed to put the fresh one on.

“You’re sure I
don’t need to stay here?” asked Finn. “The pain is pretty bad.”

“Nope,” said the
doctor with a confidence that broke no argument. “You’re perfectly able to sit
on a stool and look at metal stuff all day.”

“What if one of
my ribs punctures my lung? I could die, right?”

“Then you better
let someone know quickly so they can bring you back.” The doctor was starting
to get exasperated. Gragur took this as a cue to get going.

“C’mon,” he
said, “up you get.” He leant down and wrapped a strong, beefy arm around Finn’s
shoulders, helping him stand up. Finn did so, gritting his teeth. It would have
looked suspicious to argue too much, and he didn’t want to lose the privilege
of coming back twice a day for his painkillers. It would give him more time to
scope out the place.

“Hey,” called
back Finn. “What’s going to happen to him?” he nodded at Justin.

The doctor
raised an eyebrow. “How about you focus on getting yourself better.”

Sarah hurried
around to Finn’s other side and together the three of them left the room. As
soon as the guard and Sarah had deposited him back at his usual seat in front
of the conveyer belt, he returned to his usual level of function.

“So that didn’t
quite work out,” he said, “but at least I’ve got an excuse to go back there
twice a day, maybe I’ll be able to pull something off.”

“Yeah, maybe,”
replied Sarah with a forced smile, trying to be optimistic.

“Justin,
though…”

“Yeah,” replied
Sarah sadly. “He doesn’t look too good.”

They passed the
rest of the day in a despondent mood. Finn returned briefly that afternoon to
the infirmary to collect his pain killers, but as soon as he returned Sarah
knew that nothing had come of it. It wasn’t until later that night, just as
Sarah was about to fall asleep that an idea hit her, forcing her awake like a
bolt of lightning. For the first time since she had arrived on the ship she was
looking forward to her cell opening in the morning. When the gates slid back
she headed straight to the Queen’s cell. The Queen had just jumped down from
her bunk when Sarah appeared. A startled look spread across her face but she
covered it quickly. Sarah figured that she was probably wondering where her bodyguards
were. Without turning around, Sarah felt the presence of one or two of them now
appear behind her back. She stiffened automatically, ready for a confrontation,
but the Queen waved them away. Sarah doubted that anyone had ever been this
eager to see the Queen before.

“I want you to
get me a job assisting the doctor in the infirmary.”

The Queen
blinked. “What?”

Sarah was now
starting to wonder about her approach. The Queen probably wasn’t used to
demands, especially not from the little people. “If you want to get out of here
in seven days,” Sarah said, lowering her voice, “then I need to spend more time
in the infirmary. We can’t get in through Finn, which just leaves me.”

“And how do you
expect me to do that?”

“You’re the Queen.
You have connections. Whisper in ears or whatever it is you do. It won’t look
that strange. I assisted him the other day so people will just assume that he
was impressed with me and wanted to keep me on.”

Without changing
her expression the Queen disappeared into the ensuite. She came out a minute
later, wiping her hands on a soft, fluffy bath towel, the kind that definitely
was not in Sarah’s bathroom.

“I’ll see what I
can do, but don’t count on it. Don’t make this you’re A plan.”

Sarah nodded in
reply and left the cell. She hoped that the Queen could make it work, because
not only was this her A plan, it was also her, B, C and D plan.

The A Plan

She heard
nothing for the rest of the day, nor the day after. Finn came and went to the
infirmary twice a day to pick up his pain medications but nothing ever came of
it. The doctor was always in the front room attending his patients, and he
always had Finn’s drugs on hand in one of his numerous pockets. The drugs would
get popped into Finn’s open palm and he would get sent back to the factory
floor.

On the morning
of the third day, with only four days left until their deadline, Sarah was
escorted from her normal seat at the conveyer belt by Gragur.

“Looks like you
impressed the doc,” said Gragur as he led her towards the infirmary. “Word is
that he asked for you specifically.”

Sarah smiled
back briefly. She didn’t mind Gragur. Unlike some of the other guards he didn’t
go out of his way to beat up any of the prisoners, but he also didn’t try to
help them either. He just did his job. She wondered how the Queen had done it
and if it had cost her anything to do so. She hoped it had. Gragur guided her
through the front door of the infirmary. The doctor was bending over Justin,
who looked like he hadn’t moved since she had last seen him. The doctor
straightened up and turned to face her. She could tell from the glance he gave
her that he didn’t remember her.

“My new
assistant, right?” he asked, turning back to his patient and tightening the
blood pressure cuff.

“Yup,” replied
Gragur.

“Great. You can
go.”

Gragur pulled a
face but didn’t object. Without so much as a goodbye he left Sarah standing
near the first pair of beds. The doctor finished checking Justin’s blood
pressure.

“What’s your
name again?”

“Sarah.”

“Well Sarah, you
can go grab a bucket and mop from the storage room back down the corridor. I
expect to be able to eat off these floors.”

Sarah sighed and
headed out into the corridor to collect what he said. She could hear the other
two infirmary inmates, the ones with their limbs in plaster, chuckling as she
left. For a moment she almost missed being on the factory floor. She shook her
head. That was craziness. The factory floor involved unending tedium and the threat
of a possible beating if you somehow managed to annoy a guard. There was no
Finn here, however, she caught herself thinking. Then she shook herself out of
it. She had four days to find and steal a document or her life and the lives of
her friends would be in danger. A little bit of cleaning was acceptable. She
returned to the infirmary, mop and bucket in hand and got to work. The doctor
had by now retreated back into his office. The infirmary was actually pretty
clean to begin with. She couldn’t picture the doctor mopping the floor each day
though, so she wondered whose chores she was taking over.   

“I remember
you.” Sarah turned around. It was the boy with both his arms in plaster. “You
came in the other day, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” said the
boy in the other bed, “you came in with that tosser who only cracked a few
ribs.”

“He’s not a
tosser.”

“Ooo, seems
liked we touched a sore spot there, hey Talbot.” The boy with the broken arms
grinned at the boy with the broken leg, evidently called Talbot.

Talbot grinned
back. “So who beat him up?” he asked.

“Didn’t you
hear,” replied the first boy sarcastically, “he fell over a stool.”

“Shut up Dalton,
I was talking to her,” he flashed a sweet smile at Sarah. Sarah rolled her
eyes.

“Tell me what
happened to you two first,” she said.

“Ah, a bargain!”
said Talbot enthusiastically.

“Well?” prompted
Sarah.

Talbot shrugged.
“We were working on one of the machines. The one pressing out those thick pins?
Anyway it got jammed and stopped working. The bloody guard came over and told
us to fix it.”
“And we were like, ‘how do you expect me to do that? We didn’t make the bloody
things!’” added in Dalton, unable to keep out of the story.

“And he told us
to just stick our hands in and find out where it was jammed.”

“Bloody
dickhead.”

“And we told him
that he had to turn the machine off first, ‘cause there was no fragging way I
was sticking my hand in there while it was still on. So he signals to some
other guard on the far end of the factory, who goes and presses a button on the
wall.”

“Yeah, the wrong
fragging button!” raged Dalton. Talbot shot him a look as if he was ruining the
story.

“Only we didn’t
know that,” continued Talbot. “So Dalton goes and sticks his arms into the
machine.”

“Thinking it was
off,” added Dalton, just to make it perfectly clear that he wasn’t being
stupid.

“Meanwhile, the
guard has this great idea that maybe something is lodged
underneath
the
machine, so I go down to swipe my leg underneath it. At the same time Dalton finds
the pin that’s buggered the whole thing up and wrenches it free. The machine
starts working again, Dalton’s arms are trapped in there, my leg is underneath.
A large piston thing that goes up and down when the machine is on crushes my
leg. Meanwhile Dalton’s screaming to high heaven ‘cause the machine is chewing
up his arms. I drag my leg out the next time the piston rises, grab Dalton by
the waist and pull him back onto the floor, where the bloody dolt lands on me.”

Dalton shrugged.
“You were softer than the floor.”

“And the stupid
frag-head idiot of a guard is just standing there with his mouth open. Didn’t
even try and turn the machine off.”

Both Talbot and
Dalton were shaking their heads in disbelief at the guard’s idiocy.

“And then,”
added Dalton, “the guard vomits all over the place because he’s grossed out.
We’re lying there, a mangled pile of blood and bones, and he’s having a
moment.”

“Absolute frag-head.”

There was a
pause while they both reflected on the event and Sarah stared at them, horrified.

“So,” said
Talbot, “what happened to that other guy?”

“Ah, he got
beaten up by the King.” It actually sounded tame compared to the boys’ story.

“How come?”
asked Dalton.

Sarah shrugged.
“Because he has white hair, we think.”

The boys nodded
their heads philosophically. “The King is a prick,” said Talbot, surprising
Sarah. “He doesn’t cope well with different.”

Dalton snorted.
“Like you would dare say that out there.”

“’Course I
wouldn’t,” replied Talbot sensibly, “I’m not suicidal.”

“So how come he
has white hair?” asked Dalton.

Sarah shrugged
again. “How come you have brown hair?”

“Because I’m
damn sexy.”

Sarah snorted in
a mixture of amusement and disdain and Talbot laughed. Sarah, who had been
mopping steadily throughout the conversation as she knew the doctor could see
her through the windows, had by now made her way over to Justin’s bed.

“Hey Justin,”
said Sarah gently, not really expecting a reply but hoping for one anyway,
“remember me? Sarah? I came across on the boat with you.”

“He’s not going to
respond,” said Talbot, sounding uncharacteristically sombre. Sarah knew he was
right, but she didn’t like it.

“Why not?” asked
Sarah. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

“We don’t know,”
said Talbot at the same time that Dalton said, “cabin fever.”

“Cabin fever?”

“Happens all the
time,” said Dalton, ignoring Talbot’s expression. “Basically if you spend too
long cooped up inside, without feeling the wind or the sun or anything, you go
mad. People start acting all kinds of crazy.”

Sarah looked at
Talbot. “Yeah, that’s true,” he conceded, “but he’s not crazy like the others.
The others would babble to themselves and see things, but he just sort of… shut
down.”

Sarah shivered. What
if that had happened to her? How could you prepare for that?

“How come everybody
on this ship isn’t crazy then?”

“Every couple of
weeks they take us up to the deck and let us enjoy the sun and wind for a bit.
It’s a bit random when they do it though and for some people that’s just not
enough.”

Sarah remembered
the tingling sensation she got every time she walked under the stairwell that
led outside. She wished she could be up there again. “Have they taken him
outside? After they bought him here, I mean?” she asked.

“Every now and
then they take him up for a bit. I think he’s a bit better when they bring him
back, but it’s hard to say.”

She had finished
mopping by this point. After returning the mop and bucket to their place in the
cupboard she found the doctor waiting for her back in the main section of the
infirmary.

“The sheets are
changed every two days, today is one of them. We’ll start with Justin,” he
walked over to Justin and gently guided him off the bed and onto the bed next
to his. Justin didn’t resist in the slightest. As soon as he climbed onto the
spare bed he returned to the same rocking position. Sarah stared at him. It
broke her heart. They made the bed quickly and efficiently. The doctor returned
Justin gently to his usual bed and then they went over to the other two boys,
assisting them as they moved into wheelchairs so that they could make their
beds. They finished quickly and the doctor returned to his office, leaving her
the task of wiping down the room with alcohol to kill the germs.

“What do you
know about him?” she asked Talbot once she was sure the office door was firmly
closed behind the doctor. She gestured through the window at the seated doctor
who was busy at his desk. She had noticed that Talbot and Dalton never spoke
when the doctor was in the room unless he asked them a direct question. To her
surprise Talbot’s face became guarded and closed off.

“Leave it alone,
Sarah,” he said.

Sarah looked at
Dalton, her eyebrows raised. She had expected him to mock Talbot’s attitude and
give her some information, but he too looked guarded and closed off.

“He’s right.
It’s none of your business. Nothing good will come of it.”

“I don’t
understand. He doesn’t seem that bad. You guys seem ok for being here.”

“Yeah, well,
we’re not what he’s after,” said Talbot.

“What’s that?”

“We told you to
drop it.” His tone was dark, violent. It was so different to his previous
light-hearted, friendly tone that for the first time Sarah wondered what they
had done to be put on this ship. She returned to her job of wiping down the
shelves with alcohol. She hadn’t been entirely convinced about the horrors of
the infirmary until now. If anybody knew what was really happening, it would be
the people who had been there, and Talbot and Dalton seemed terrified.

Finn walked
through the doors ten minutes later and the doctor came out to give him his
painkillers. They didn’t bother trying to pretend like they didn’t know each other.
Everyone in the room had seen Sarah bring him in the other day. It would have
looked more strange if they ignored each other completely. They exchanged
greetings and then Sarah excused herself to collect more rubbing alcohol from
the Doctor’s room while he was pre-occupied with Finn, who had started to quiz
the doctor on the drug’s side effects. The doctor nodded distractedly and she
passed quickly into the room. He kept the rubbing alcohol in his room
deliberately. He had mentioned earlier when he had tasked her with wiping down
the room that there had been incidents in the past where some of the patients
had tried to drink the whole bottle, so now he kept it in his office. This was
the first time she had been inside. Sarah quickly grabbed the bottle and then,
with a glance over her shoulder to make sure that the doctor was still
chatting, she went straight for the bottom drawer of the cabinet and eased it
open. The safe was firmly shut and locked, like she had expected it to be, but
she still felt slightly disappointed. If the doctor had only been lazy then
half her problems would be over. She closed the fake cabinet drawer that hid
the safe and went back out into the room just as the doctor had turned away
from Finn and was heading back, apparently having tired of answering Finn’s
questions. She exchanged a glance with Finn before he left to join the guard
who had been waiting for him outside. At least she knew the safe was definitely
there now. She hadn’t enjoyed depending solely on Winter’s word that the safe
would be where she said it was. It gave more credence to the rest of her story
as well. The remainder of the day was uneventful and she had no further
opportunities to check out the office. Talbot and Dalton didn’t talk to her
much, apparently having decided that she was trouble. The doctor hardly left
his room. A kitchen supervisor bought him his lunch and he ate at his desk.
Occasionally he would leave the office through a side door, which Sarah assumed
led to his living quarters, but he always returned within a matter of minutes.
Finn appeared again in the late afternoon, but this time the doctor got rid of
him before he could ask any questions. She had spent most of the afternoon
reading a book she had found in one of the cupboards to Justin. He never
responded but she liked to think that he was listening anyway. At about five in
the evening a guard came and collected her, returning her to the cafeteria for
dinner. She had eaten lunch with the patients. There hadn’t been much in the
way of conversation.