When She Woke (5 page)

Hannah had been eleven when Texas passed its own version of the SOL laws. Not many doctors had openly protested, but the ones who had were vociferous. She could still remember their impassioned testimony before the legislature and their angry response when the laws, which were almost identical to Utah’s, inevitably won passage. Most of the objectors had left Texas in protest, and their like-minded colleagues in the other forty states that eventually passed similar statutes had followed suit. “Good riddance to them. California and New York can have them,” her mother had said, and Hannah had felt much the same. How could anyone sworn to preserve life condone the taking of it or seek to protect those who’d taken it, especially when the future of the human race was at stake? That was the third year of the scourge, and though no one close to Hannah had caught it, they were all infected by the fear and desperation that gripped the world as increasing numbers of women became sterile and birthrates plummeted. The prejudicial nature of the disease—men were carriers, but they had few if any symptoms or complications—hindered efforts to detect and contain it. In the fourth year of the pandemic, Hannah, along with every other American between the ages of twelve and sixty-five, went in for the first of many mandatory biannual screenings, and by the time the cure was found in the seventh year, there’d been talk of quarantining and compulsory harvesting of the eggs of healthy young women, measures that Congress almost certainly would have passed had the superbiotics come any later. As distressing as the prospect had been, Hannah was well aware that if she lived in a country like China or India, she would have already been forcibly inseminated. Humanity’s survival demanded sacrifices of everyone, moral as well as physical. Not even her parents had objected when the president suspended melachroming for misdemeanor offenses and pardoned all Yellows under the age of forty, ordering that their chroming be reversed and their birth control implants removed. And when he’d authorized the death penalty for kidnapping a child, Hannah’s parents had supported the decision, though it went against their faith. Child-snatching had become so endemic that wealthy and even middle-class families with young children traveled with bodyguards. Hannah and Becca were too old to be targets, but their mother still glared at any woman whose eyes rested on them too hungrily or for too long. “Remember this, girls,” she’d say when they encountered one of the childless women who loitered like forlorn ghosts around playgrounds and parks, in toy stores and museums. “This is what comes of sex outside of marriage.”

And this
, Hannah thought now, studying her red reflection in the mirror. She’d been so certain of everything in those days: that she’d never have premarital sex, never be one of those sad women, never, ever have an abortion. She, Hannah, was incapable of such terrible wrongdoing.

It still surprised her that Raphael hadn’t seen it as such. In his mind, it was the SOL laws that were wrong, and those who espoused them who were guilty of a crime. His deepest contempt was reserved for other doctors: not just those who’d supported and enforced the laws, but also those who’d remained mute out of fear. When Hannah asked him why he’d stayed in Texas instead of going to one of the pro-Roe states, he shook his head and took a swig from the flask. “I suppose I should have, but I was young and hotheaded, saw myself as a revolutionary. I let them talk me into staying here.”

“Who?”

Raphael froze momentarily and then turned away from her, visibly agitated. “Her, I mean, my wife—that’s what I meant to say. She’s from here. She wanted to be near her sister, they’re very close.” He fumbled to close his bag, and Hannah didn’t need to see the bare fourth finger of his left hand to know he was lying.

She felt a dull cramping sensation in her abdomen and clutched it involuntarily.

“You can expect quite a bit of cramping and bleeding for the next several days,” Raphael said. “Take Tylenol for the pain, not ibuprofen or aspirin. And stay off your feet as much as you can.”

He went to the door and paused with his hand on the knob. “The money. Did you bring it?”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry.” Hannah looked in her purse, took out the cash card she’d bought that morning and handed it to him. He thrust it into his pocket without even checking the amount.

“Lights off,” he said. The room went black. Hannah heard him open the door and exhale loudly, with what sounded like relief. “Wait ten minutes, then you can leave.”

“Raphael?”

“What?” he said, impatient now.

“Is that how you think of yourself? As a healer?”

He didn’t answer right away, and Hannah wondered if she’d offended him. “Yes, most of the time,” he said finally. She heard his footsteps crossing the apartment, the bolt being turned, the front door closing behind him.

“Thank you,” she said, into the empty dark.

T
HE CELL WENT
suddenly dark, disorienting her. Had the tones sounded? She hadn’t heard them. She groped her way to the platform and lay down on her back, lost in memory. Raphael had been so gentle with her, so compassionate. So different from the police doctor who’d examined her the night of her arrest. A woman only a little older than Hannah, with cold hands and colder eyes, who’d probed her body with brutal efficiency while she lay splayed open with her ankles cuffed to the stirrups. When she winced, the woman said, “Move again, and I’ll call the guard to hold you down.” Hannah went rigid. The guard was young and male, and he’d muttered something to her as the policeman led her past him into the examination room. She’d heard the word
cunt;
the rest was mercifully unintelligible. She clenched her teeth and lay unmoving for the rest of the exam, though the pain was fierce.

Pain
. Something sharp jabbed her in the arm, and she cried out and opened her eyes. Two glowing white shapes hovered above her.
Angels
, she thought dreamily.
Raphael and one other, maybe Michael
. They spun around her, slowly at first and then faster, blurring together. Their immense white wings buffeted her up into heaven.

W
HEN THE LIGHTS CAME ON
, Hannah’s lids opened with reluctance. She felt thick-headed, like her skull was stuffed with wadding. She pushed herself to a sitting position and noticed a slight soreness in her left wrist. There was a puncture mark on the underside, surrounded by a small purple circle. She studied herself in the mirror, seeing other subtle changes. Her face was a little fuller, the cheekbones less pronounced. She’d put on weight, maybe a couple of pounds, and although she was still groggy, her lethargy was gone. She dug through her memories, unearthed the two white figures she’d seen. They must have sedated her and fed her intravenously.

Something about the cell felt different too, but she couldn’t put her finger on what. Everything looked exactly the same. And then she heard it: a high-pitched, droning buzz coming from behind her. She turned and spied a fly crawling up one of the mirrored walls. For the first time in twenty-some-odd days, she wasn’t alone. She waved her arm and the fly buzzed off, zipping around the room. When it settled she waved her arm at it again, for the sheer pleasure of seeing it move.

Hannah paced the cell, feeling restless. How long had she been unconscious? And how much longer before they released her? She hadn’t allowed herself to think beyond these thirty days. The future was a yawning blank, unimaginable. All she knew was that the mirrored wall would soon slide open, and she’d walk out of this cell and follow the waiting guard to a processing area where she’d be given her clothes and allowed to change. They’d take her picture and issue her a new National Identification Card sporting her new red likeness, transfer the princely sum of three hundred dollars to her bank account and go over the terms of her sentence, most of which she already knew: no leaving the state of Texas; no going anywhere without her NIC on her person; no purchasing of firearms; renewal shots every four months at a federal Chrome center. Then they’d escort her to the gate she came in by and open it to the outside world.

The prospect of crossing that threshold filled her with both longing and trepidation. She’d be free—but to go where and do what? She couldn’t go home, that much was certain; her mother would never allow it. Would her father be there to pick her up? Where would she live? How would she survive the next week? The next sixteen years?

A plan
, she thought, forcing down her growing panic,
I need a plan
. The most urgent question was where she’d live. It was notoriously difficult for Chromes to find housing outside the ghettos where they clustered. Dallas had three Chromevilles that Hannah knew of, one in West Dallas, one in South Dallas and a third, known as Chromewood, in what used to be the Lakewood area. The first two had already been ghettos when they were chromatized, but Lakewood had once been a respectable middle-class neighborhood. Like its counterparts in Houston, Chicago, New York and other cities, its transformation had begun with just a handful of Chromes who’d happened to own houses or apartments in the same immediate area. When their law-abiding neighbors tried to force them out, they banded together and resisted, holding out long enough that the neighbors decided to leave instead, first in ones and twos and then in droves as property values went into a free fall. Hannah’s aunt Jo and uncle Doug had been among those who’d held out too long, and they’d ended up selling to a Chrome for a third of what the house had been worth. Uncle Doug had died of a heart attack soon afterward. Aunt Jo always said the Chromes had killed him.

Hannah quailed at the thought of living in such a place, surrounded by drug dealers, thieves and rapists. But where else could she go? Becca’s house was out too. Her husband, Cole, had forbidden her to see or speak to Hannah ever again (though Becca had violated this prohibition several times already, when she’d visited Hannah in jail).

As always, the thought of her brother-in-law made Hannah’s mood darken. Cole Crenshaw was a swaggering bull of a man with an aw-shucks grin that turned flat and mean when he didn’t get his way. He was a mortgage broker, originally from El Paso, partial to Western wear. Becca had met him at church two years ago, a few months before their father was injured. Their parents had approved of him—Becca wouldn’t have continued seeing him if they hadn’t —but Hannah had had misgivings from early on.

They surfaced the first time he came to supper. Hannah had met Cole on several occasions but had never spoken with him at length and was eager to get to know him better. Though he and Becca had only been dating about six weeks, she was already more infatuated than Hannah had ever seen her.

He was charming enough at first and full of compliments: for Becca’s dress, Hannah’s needlework, their mother’s spinach dip, their father’s good fortune in having three such lovely ladies to look after him. They were having hors d’oeuvres in the den. The vid was on in the background, and when breaking news footage of a shooting at a local community college came on, they turned up the volume to watch. The gunman, who’d been a student there, had shot his professor and eight of his classmates one at a time, posing questions to them about the Book of Mormon and executing the ones who answered incorrectly with a single shot to the head. When he’d finished quizzing every member of the class, he’d walked out of the building with his hands up and surrendered to the police. The expression on his face as they shoved him into the back of a squad car was eerily peaceful.

“Those poor people,” Hannah’s mother said. “What a way to die.”

Cole shook his head in disgust. “Nine innocent people murdered, and that animal gets to live.”

“Well,” Hannah’s father said, “he won’t have much of a life in a federal prison.”

“However much he has is too much, as far as I’m concerned,” said Cole. “I’ll never understand why we got rid of the death penalty.”

Becca’s eyes widened, reflecting Hannah’s own dismay, and their parents exchanged a troubled glance. The Paynes were against capital punishment, as was Reverend Dale, but the issue was a divisive one within both the church and the Trinity Party. Soon after he’d been made senior pastor at Ignited Word, Reverend Dale had come out in support of the Trinitarian congressional caucus that cast the deciding votes to abolish the death penalty over the vehement objections of their fellow evangelicals. Hundreds of people had quit the church over it, and Hannah’s best friend’s parents had forbidden their daughter to associate with her anymore. The controversy had died down eventually, but Hannah’s friend had never spoken to her again, and eight years later, the subject was still a sensitive one for many people.

The silence in the den grew awkward. Cole’s eyes skimmed over their faces before settling on Becca’s. “So, you agree with Reverend Dale,” he said.

“ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ ” said Hannah’s father. “We believe that only God can give life, and only He has the right to take it.”

“Innocent life, yes, but murder’s different,” Cole said. “It says so right in the Bible. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.’” He hadn’t taken his eyes off Becca. Hannah could feel the force of his will pressing against her sister.

Becca hesitated, looking uncertainly from Cole to their father. “Genesis
does
say that,” she said. “And so does Leviticus.”

“Leviticus also says people should be stoned to death for cursing,” Hannah said. “Do you believe that too?”

“Hannah!” her mother rebuked. “Do I have to remind you that Cole is a guest in our house?”

“I was speaking to Becca.”

“That’s no way to talk to your sister either,” Hannah’s father said, in his most disappointed tone. Cole’s eyes and mouth were hard, but Becca’s expression was more stricken than angry.

Hannah sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Becca, Cole.”

Becca nodded acceptance and turned to Cole. The naked hopefulness with which she looked at him told Hannah this was no mere infatuation. Her sister couldn’t bear conflict among those she loved.

“No, it’s my fault,” Cole said, addressing Hannah’s parents. His face turned rueful, but his eyes, she noted, were a few beats behind. “I never should have brought the subject up in the first place. My mama always said, ‘When in doubt, stick to the weather,’ and Lord knows my daddy tried his best to beat it into me, but my tongue still gets the better of my manners sometimes. I apologize.”