The Ward

16


11:45 P.M., SATURDAY


Standing 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.”

I snap my head up, slip my hands from Derek’s. Their sudden coldness makes me tuck them under my armpits. I stand, nervous. Never liked being called by my last name. It’s always bad news.

At the window, a woman seated in a low chair points to a laser projection, red against the white counter. At first I don’t know what she’s asking of me. That is, until I see the dollar sign.

Aven’s first hospital bill. The first of many.

I pull the cash Callum gave me earlier out from my bra and slide it across to the woman. There goes the money that was supposed to get Aven and me through till the end of the month, when I get my stipend.

If I get my stipend.

Who knows—the chief might suspend my contract if the sample I gave him turns out to be a viable source of freshwater.

The doors swing open and Callum—Dr. Cory—strides though, a white mask dangling from his neck. I look for signs of what he’s about to tell me, and straightaway I notice his hands. They’re tucked into the pockets of his lab coat in a comfortable, relaxed Good News sort of way.

“How is she?” I blurt, leaving the counter to join him.

Don’t say “coma.” Don’t say “coma.”

Please don’t—

“She’s awake, but the growth . . . it needs to be removed. Quickly.”

“That can even be done?” I ask. I’ll find a way to cover it. However I have to, I’ll find a way.

“It’s risky, but it’s her only option.”

“And it’ll fix her?”

Callum pauses. “It’s a patch. And that’s provided she doesn’t bleed out on the table. If successful, however, she could live another year, depending on how fast the tumor grows back. HBNC-related growths have a hundred-percent return rate, but they sometimes return more aggressively than they did at primary onset. She could live a year. She could also live a month, or less.”

Boy doesn’t mince words.

Last question. The one I need to ask, though the answer changes nothing.

“How much will it cost us?” I hold my breath and wait for an answer.

When Callum finds my eyes again, something like guilt catches in his expression. “I don’t know, but I’d like to try talking to some people. I might be able to do something for you. No promises, of course.”

Is he saying he can get her the surgery for free? Is that what he’s saying?

I don’t feel comfortable outright asking—always said I’m no one’s charity case. But for Aven, I’d eat my pride, I’d take whatever they’re willing to offer. Got to wonder why he’d stick his neck out, though, for a roofrat like me.

“Aven’s surgery has been scheduled for tomorrow morning, nine A.M.,” he continues. “You can see her in a few moments, if you like. The nurse will be with you shortly to assist from here on in. Oh, yes . . .”

Callum takes me by the elbow, leads me out of earshot of the others. “Two things. First, a reminder. Do not offer my real name to anyone,” he says, then eyes the name tag pinned to his coat. “I’ve been working under the Blues’ radar for about six months now, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

The whys come back—there’s so much I want to know—but now’s not the time. So I just say, “Sure. Dr. Cory,” and I keep the questions to myself. I’m going to get some answers from him. Just don’t know how. Yet.

“Also,” the doctor says, checking his cuffcomm for the time. From his lab coat pocket he pulls out a shiny, fancy pen. I can’t help but wince, watching as he tears off the corner of yet another envelope and writes something on it.

When he’s done, he holds up the piece of paper and pushes it into my fist. “They can tap the cuffcomm they gave you too easily.”

In a low voice: “Aven was very sick before tonight, wasn’t she?” And then, his face a mixture of distress and hope, he whispers, “You found it,” and watches me for my answer.

I drop my chin the slightest bit, meeting his eyes. For a moment our gazes are locked. I nod.

“Find me. I can help her,” he insists, his tone soft. Desperate, almost. “And bring a sample. It’s the only way.”

But I don’t have a sample—I gave it to Chief. . . .

“I think we got to your sister just in time.” One last pleading look and Callum tips his chin, much the same as I’ve seen the Derbies do, but with respect. First to Ter, then Derek, and me last. Once more he looks at me, before heading down the corridor.

Still turned from the others, I look at the piece of paper, then stuff it into my bra for safekeeping. It’s his address.

We got to your sister just in time.

A gentle reminder that without his help, she might be dead.

But then, a voice, small and angry and irrational, gnaws at my mind: without his “help” I never would have found the water, or given it to Aven in the first place.

The fault is just as much his as it is mine.

I walk back to Derek and Ter, chewing on my lip, suddenly full of anger. Not at myself anymore, though. Now, now it’s toward Callum. If he’d never found me . . . or lied about being with the Blues . . .

“It’s just so weird,” Terrence comments. “She seemed fine. Did you change her meds or anything?”

Sitting down, I cradle my head in my hands. His question rings in my mind.

The guilt comes back, tidal. For a few measly seconds I’d been able to forget it, put it on someone else, but I’m glad it’s back. Because that sort of thing is too big, too important to forget. Or deny. Even for a second. I should feel it—the sick, gut-twisting knife of my stupidity. I should feel it over and over and over again.

And I should make it right. I gave her the water, I’m responsible for making sure she gets better. Which means she needs to have the surgery. I can pay for the surgery with the extra Callum promised.

Not hiding his suspicion, “What did that guy hand you?” Derek asks.

“Dr. Cory handed me the names of some herbs I can pick up on Mad Ave to help her with the pain.” It could be true. Herbs ain’t offered in hospitals, but that don’t mean they won’t help her. Pricey, though, like anything grown in soil.

Derek looks down at his cuffcomm like he’s reading a message. Then he stands up, face drawn and grave. “Brack—I’m so sorry, Ren. I just got a call from a friend. I have to be somewhere.”

“You’re serious?” I ask, stunned. A friend? I swallow, knowing full well what that means.

Her. He can’t leave. He can’t. . . . If there’s one thing he could do to make every feeling I’ve ever had for him die a quick, early death, it would be this.

“Yeah, man,” Ter says. “Stay . . . we should be seeing Aven any minute.”

Almost on cue, the double doors open. A woman in white calls my name while reading from a clipboard.

“Look, we’re headed in now. Let’s go.” Ter rises to his feet.

I search Derek’s face, as though I might find out what could be so important that it would take him away. At this hour. From here.

And from me, a hurt, wishful part of myself adds.

But his face is no better than stone: hard, without expression.

“I’m sorry. . . . It’s an emergency,” Derek pleads, looking at me. “Please, tell Aven I hope she feels better. Ren, I’m sorry, I am. . . . I’ll come back with you tomorrow. Promise.” He backs away from us, then turns and quickens his pace out the hospital doors.

I stand, and Ter and I watch as Derek practically races away. We exchange looks—shocked, confused looks—and without a word follow the nurse.