The Ward (16 page)

“Is she going to be okay?” I ask, watching her stillness. Then I realize, I’m not even supposed to be here with her. Aven and I ain’t family, not by blood anyway. How am I allowed here?

I look up, and it’s Justin’s face I see. “What—?”

“Am I doing here?” he finishes, eyes glued to another, more complicated-looking VEL scanner. Then he leans over Aven, tilts her head with one hand to examine something.

The tumor. It’s back, visible again. Not as large as before, but I can see it. We both can. I stifle a gasp, shaking my head.
Not possible
.

“She’s stable, for now. I’ve given her an anti-inflammatory and a heavy dose of Dilameth for the pain. No longer contagious, I presume?” He doesn’t say it the way the Bouncer did. The way his brow furrows, his jaw tenses—it’s like he cares. Dangling from his neck, a blue dog tag with the hammered image of a snake coiled around a rod.

A doctor.

“Who are you?” I ask, gripping Aven’s hand. She doesn’t grip back. Her hand is limp, which just makes me hold on tighter.

“My name is Callum Pace,” he answers. “And I’m sorry to have mislead you.”

“You don’t work for the Blues.”

He sighs. Looks around the elevator. I guess he decides it’s safe enough, ’cause he says, “Not anymore, no. We had a sort of . . . falling-out. I now go by the name Justin Cory, Dr. Justin Cory,” he says pointedly, and I get the hint. Call him Dr. Cory. “After you left the bathroom, I saw this young girl collapse. I knew the Bouncers wouldn’t provide her with the medical attention she needed, being that she’s probably not contagious. So I stepped in.” A pause. “I hope that’s all right with you?”

Of course it’s okay. . . . A doctor helping my sister, not asking for pay.

“When did you first notice her symptoms?” He wraps his fingers around her wrist to take her pulse.

“Three years ago . . .” I mumble, avoiding his eyes.

“And she’s still able to come to parties at the Tank?” Then, when he looks at me, something like understanding dawns on his face.

I don’t answer. All I can do is look at Aven’s face, watch and imagine movement there.

Then I’m no longer imagining it. Her eyelids flutter, just barely. I’m sure of it—

“Feathers?” I say, bending closer.

A tiny smile grazes her lips. “I ruined your night.” Her words are so quiet I have to lower myself inches from her mouth to hear.

“Shhh,” I whisper, and I kiss her knuckles.

“Are you mad?”

“No, no, no. Of course not,” I tell her. Even though I am.
At myself
.

“Ren?” Aven tugs at the hem of my shirt, her breathing thin. I shush her, but it doesn’t matter. “You think T-Bone could like me again?” she asks seriously, like her very life depends on the answer. “Even though I’m going to . . .”

“Hey, you’re not going anywhere. And yeah, I think you and Ter would make an adorable couple.”

One final
ding
, and we’re at sea level, the ground floor. Callum wheels Aven out of the elevator, into a shock of cool night air. I follow. Terrence and Derek wait for us there, pacing and arguing with each other.

“Finally!” Derek calls out, covering the distance between us in only a few strides. “It’s been forever.”

“Service elevators,” Callum replies curtly, even though Derek wasn’t talking to him. Looking at me, he says, “We’re going to Ward Hope. Hop in.” He gestures to the hulking red marine transport that waits at the edge of the dock.

We jog together—two of my steps matching one of his.

Callum lifts the hatch, but Derek calls out, “Wait!” just as I’m about to jump in. He runs to catch up, and when he’s close enough, he leans toward me. “Ren, I want to come with you.” His eyes flick to Callum. “Aren’t you suspicious? Why is a West Isle doctor hanging around these parts?”

Why, indeed. I thought I knew who he was. Now he could be anybody.

I look down the hatch into the red emergency-transport sub. There’s barely enough room for Aven, much less Callum, me, and Derek. “I don’t know why he’s here,” I answer, speaking the truth. “But . . . trust this guy or not, I’m going with. So is Aven.”

Derek shifts his body slightly, covers the hatch of the submarine with his arm to stop me.

“Derek,” I plead, and my voice breaks. “I don’t think you understand. I won’t leave her again. For three years I’ve been leaving her, and this last time, she almost . . .” I don’t finish the sentence. Never before did that reality seem so close. “I never shoulda left her, not ever.” The words tumble out too fast, and then silence is the only thing to listen to. I’m about to cry—the muscles in my throat burn, I’m holding it back so hard.

Derek brings his hand to his forehead, runs it through his hair, worry all over his face. Then, almost as though he needs it as much as I do, he folds his arms around me, resting my head against his chest.

I’m too shaken by everything that’s happened tonight to think about it, but dim recognition dawns that this feels natural, comfortable in a way it wouldn’t have yesterday. I curl up against him, allowing myself just a few moments, and breathe him in.

I also allow myself to believe that maybe he was telling the truth. About Kitaneh.

I pull away before the thought lasts too long. No time to waste on me. “See you at the hospital?”

The smallest movement—his fists balling up at his sides—makes it clear he doesn’t like my leaving. But it also shows he’s fighting to keep quiet, which means he understands.

I hop down into the transport sub behind Callum, and when I lower myself into the cabin, the doctor’s hands steady me by the waist.

“Your file didn’t say you had a sister,” Callum notes as the sub sails through the underwater city.

Always knew I had a file. But I don’t like that this guy thinks he knows me ’cause some lights on a screen gave him my stats. “We’re not blood. And anyway, it ain’t your business,” I say quietly, watching Aven. “Bet the file didn’t say a lot of things.”

My tone smarts in my ears—I’m being too harsh on him. It’s just, small talk hurts more than silence. “I’m sorry,” I say into my hands. “I’m sorry. Thank you. You know I mean thank you. I’m just . . .” I cut myself off, choking the rest of the sentence by biting into my fist.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

So I don’t, and the only noise comes from the soft whooshing of the steam engine and Aven’s air flowing in and out. As I press my forehead to hers, she reaches for my shoulder, clutches it tight.

Too tight.

“Where are you?” she rasps, too sudden. “Ren? Where’d you go?”

I get closer, leaning in so my face is clear in front of hers. “Right here, I’m right here—”

“What’s going on? Why can’t she see me?” I ask Callum, all the fear racing back.

“Her brain is swelling,” he answers. “I gave her all the anti-inflammatory medication that the Tank had on hand, but she needs more, soon.”

“Well, why don’t you tell it to that guy?” I cry, waving my arm toward the driver.

Callum pushes a red button on the side of the sub, which obviously means “speed the hell up,” because the driver suddenly grows a pair and we’re really moving.

Aven smiles. It drops away too quickly. Her eyes roll back into her head again, and then fix on me. “Can we fly home now? I have wings, too. Just like you. See?” She lifts her arms; this isn’t one of her games.

“Why is she saying that?” I’m trying to stay calm, but my heart becomes a wild animal. Starts slamming against my rib cage like it wants out of my body, fast. My vision even goes black around the edges, and soon I’m looking at everything through a funnel of darkness
. Breathe. You’re no good to anyone if you pass out too
.

If only Derek or Ter could have come with us—this would be so much easier.

Callum moves me aside and places a mask with a breathing tube over her face. “She’s hallucinating. The swelling is depriving her brain of oxygen. If we don’t get her there fast . . .”

The sentence dangles there, but I know how it ends. Comatose.

16

11:45 P.M., SATURDAY

S
tanding up.

Sitting down.

The waiting room is the color of old pigeon crud, white and yellowed and crusty, and I’m wondering if I can peel the paint off the walls.

Biting my nails down to their beds.

They took Aven away, wheeled her off into the great crap-colored yonder, and left me sitting here.

Up.

Down—

No, wait
. Pacing. Pacing is the way to go, most definitely. I keep moving to hold the guilt at bay. Every time I stop, I feel it closing in, and my eyes start to fill up with salt water. I go back to the moment at the ’Racks when I give her the water. I rewind. Make the right choice, the smart one. The one that doesn’t send Aven to the hospital. My mind tilts and gravity no longer works like normal—I feel like I’m in a constant state of sideways free fall.

So I keep myself moving, read the signs around me. Anything to distract. Tacked loosely to the whitewashed walls hang poster after poster, each one aiming to convince you to get tested.

Are you experiencing shortness of breath?

Have you blacked out with no apparent cause?

Do you sometimes see blood when you cough?

If so, you may have contracted Hyper Basilic

Neoplasma Contagion, or “HBNC,”

and you could be contagious.

Get tested.

We can help.

They leave out the bit where you could get arrested for transmitting it, of course. Which is impossible to prove, by the by, but the Blues don’t care none. So long as someone’s getting blamed, and it’s not them, they’re happy. If that’s not incentive to find out you’ve got a deadly disease, I don’t know what is.

Minutes pass, hours pass, decades and centuries
—Where are the guys?—
then it becomes universes and galaxies that pass, and with all this pacing, it’s as though I’m running through the space-time continuum, but when I look up, nothing has changed. I’m alone. Alone.

Soon enough, that’s how I’ll be all the time.

I try and steel my mind to the thought, except my mind and body are on two different planets so even if I harden one, the other is off doing its own thing. I’m so in my head, I don’t even notice when Derek and Terrence finally come bounding into the hospital.

“Where is she?” they ask in unison, and when I look up, Derek walks close—too close—and pulls my hands into his.

“What are you doing to yourself?” he asks.

Here I’d thought I was keeping it together pretty well. “What do you mean?”

He brings my hands in front of my face—shows me my bloodied nail tips, raw and red smeared.

“Oh . . .” I say, not really caring. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“You need a Band-Aid,” Terrence comments, running to a nurse behind the counter.

“Go wash the blood off,” Derek tells me, putting his hand on my back and pushing me in the direction of the bathroom.

I can’t see why any of this matters.

I go to the bathroom anyway. It’s easier than thinking for myself.

There’s a rusty faucet in here, and even the hospital doesn’t spill its filtered rainwater for visitors—just chlorinated brackish water. Only patients get fresh. The murk runs over my hands, mixing together with my blood, then whirlpooling down the drain. I wait to feel something, some pain to bring me back to myself. But I guess biting my fingernails wasn’t enough, ’cause I feel nothing. That, or everything has shut down.

I walk back to the waiting room and sit beside Derek and Terrence, all three of us quiet. After a few moments of the mind-numbing silence, Derek tugs my hands away again.

I’m back to gnawing at my cuticles like they’re dinner.

“I can’t help it,” I growl, exasperated. This is not the Important Thing that’s going on right now.

Derek won’t let go of my hands, though, when I try and move on to chewing at the nail beds since the nails are mostly gone. I meet his eyes and glower, yanking my hands, but with his solid-as-cement grip, it’s useless.

“She needs you right now.” Our eyes are still magnets—mine angry and filled with venom, his weary but calm. Polar opposites that can’t let go of the other.

And it occurs to me: those are the only words anyone could have spoken to me that might’ve had any chance at keeping me sane. Somehow, he knew. He didn’t tell me to calm down, or to relax. That would’ve just pissed me off. It’s a comfort, when someone knows you like that. Would I know what to say to him, if the tables were turned?

I quit the tug-of-war and force my hands to slacken, which is when I realize that Derek’s holding them for good, and he ain’t letting go. I try not to focus too hard on what that means, or doesn’t mean.

A radio blares from the receptionist’s desk, even though they’ve got hologram TVs overhead. Cheaper that way, keeping the radio on for nighttime use. We’ve all fallen into a tense silence, so with nothing else to listen to, we’re forced to hear news of yet another West Isle Blight outbreak.

Derek rolls his eyes in Terrence’s direction, then opens his mouth to speak. The next piece of news stops him before he starts.

“. . . the West Isle citizens are even planning a rally. At dawn tomorrow morning, in front of town hall, individuals are encouraged to attend and voice their discontent with Governor Voss’s inability to address the two major issues facing the United Metro Islets: a viable freshwater source, and the spread of the HBNC virus.”

“They’re rallying,” Derek says. “Things must be getting serious.”

“A rally won’t help nothing,” I say. “You can’t make water appear where there’s none, and you can’t disappear a sickness.”

Those last words make me queasy. For one perfect moment, I thought it was possible—a sickness just disappearing. Nothing’s that easy. I knew nothing was that easy. Water can’t heal, especially not the water I found. It’s dangerous, and I handed it to my sister on a silver platter.

I shut my eyes to keep the tears away.

“Miss Dane?” the receptionist calls out. “Please step to the front desk.”