The Ward

24


6:30 A.M., SUNDAY


In the waiting room, the air is tight with electricity. Tense. Every couple of seconds I check the door by the receptionist’s desk, waiting for the nurse to call us. And every other couple of seconds, I check the entryway, waiting for a DI agent to charge through.

Then, my foot freezes. Quits its tapping.

A woman in white steps into the waiting room, a datapad clutched at her hip. It’s as though my lungs have shrunk a size and my arm hairs lift up, like the moment before lightning. You don’t know when it will strike—you only know it will.

“Visitors of Aventine Colatura?”

I begin to lose it, my insides go haywire, and Derek squeezes my hand.

We stand up together, and we follow the nurse. She leads us through the corridors, up two flights of stairs, all the way to the HBNC wing. Its double doors swing open, and then we’re in the ward where noncontagious patients are kept.

Derek won’t look through the windows, into the other patients’ rooms, but I do. I look in each one—I can’t help it.

A child using only one arm to play with his plastic blocks—the other he can’t lift. It’s covered in fist-sized lumps, all a blue-black-red. An elderly man, but no older than Benny, with a tumor on his forehead, balled up low and thick over one eye.

Patients whose families can afford to send them here.

The nurse opens the door to Aven’s room.

Immediately I can tell—something is off. She’s just lying there, body too still in the small cot. I examine her face, pale and waxy, even with daylight streaming through the window. “What’s wrong with her?” I ask the nurse, watching from behind us. “She’s worse. . . .” Sucking in air through my teeth, I force my hands out of their fists, like unclamping a vise. I’d been holding them so tight, I can actually feel the muscles twitching, clicking as they release.

“You should be prepping her for surgery,” I say.

Looking down at her datapad, the nurse shakes her head. “According to her records, she’s in no shape for surgery. There’s still too much pressure on her brain and so her oxygen supply is limited,” she says.

“We both know that’s not why,” I spit, starting to shake from limb to limb as I glance over at Derek. If he’s curious about what the hell is going on, he doesn’t show it.

The nurse opens her arms like she has no control over anything that happens in this room. Which, to be fair, she may not. “I know nothing of the sort, young lady,” she says, voice stern and monotone. “But Dr. Hartigan will be here in just a moment, and he can tell you more about her condition. I’ll leave you three alone until he gets here.” She nods over her glasses and slips out the door.

Dr. Hartigan . . . That name, I know that name, I think, crossing the room to Aven’s bedside. But anger’s made my thinking blurry and I collapse into a chair, wanting only to kick something. There’s nothing around, though, that wouldn’t get me kicked out in turn.

“Aven . . . it’s me, Renny.” I take her limp hand in my own and bring it to my cheek.

I wait, but I get no sign that she’s even heard me.

However the sky feels after the lightning hits, that’s how I feel. Charged up, struck down. I keep my voice sealed tight—lightning might have died, but I’m afraid that once I open my mouth and find myself talking to an empty body, I’ll start raining.

Derek squeezes my shoulder. “Speak to her, Ren,” he insists. “Even if she’s not awake, she can still hear you.”

Can she? I want to talk to her, but I can’t bring myself to make more words come out if I’m not gonna hear her voice afterward.

Aven, I think in my head. I need you. You can’t leave me.

Maybe . . . maybe she and I don’t need words. You live with someone for so long—love them so entirely—you come to learn how they think.

Don’t go and stop using your heart, you hear? Remember me, and keep living. Just a little longer. I’ve got a doctor, right now, working on a medicine that’s gonna fix you for good.

The penny around my neck dangles on its chain, brushing her bedcovers. I grab it, rub it so hard between my fingers I imagine I’ve turned it shiny again. My mind goes back to that first night, the night we decided we’d be friends. You said it wouldn’t hurt, I remind her. You promised.

My eyes turn watery, the prickle starts slow and hot, but when Derek says, “Out loud, Ren?” I have to laugh-cry. I can’t believe he knew that’s what I was doing.

With a sigh, I kiss her open palm, the one still pressed against my cheek. “Feathers?”

I wait to go on, like I’m expecting her to answer. The silence hurts, even more than I thought it would. I try again. “Feathers . . .”

But her quiet unnerves me even more the second time around. It fills up the room—no answer is a type of answer after all, and when I translate what that means, I start unraveling. I bite at my shoulder to keep from shaking her awake. The burn of tears is back, and I move to brush them away.

I forget I’m holding Aven’s hand. I watch it drop. Fall into my lap.

My throat tightens, tries to keep me from crying, but when I push my fists against my eyes, they come back slippery with salt water.

The door opens again—the doctor. I turn around to find him waiting in the hallway, one hand on the knob.

“If I could speak with you alone, Miss Dane,” he calls to me.

Carefully, I lay Aven’s hand beside her on the bed, and walk to meet him. I want to howl. She should be having surgery today, and he’s got to be the one taking the orders.

He had her surgery canceled.

When I step out into the hallway, I rub my eyes dry. Nothing’s there, though. I killed all the tears with my fists.

My vision’s clear and I can see his face just as easily as I could at thirteen. At Nale’s Home.

It comes back to me, how I know him—the briefcase. The needle he filled up with my blood. He told me I was immune. Told me to keep it a secret. He wanted to keep me safe from the DI, and anyone else who would dissect a small girl in the hopes of finding a cure.

Locking eyes with him, I say the next words carefully, one at a time. “You don’t deserve to be called a doctor.” As I hear them seethe out of me, I realize I might just have more disgust, more hatred for this man than I do for the chief.

The chief is no more than a bully who made it too high up the ladder for his own good.

But Dr. Hartigan? He was one of the good guys, and now he’s runnin’ scared.

The man’s expression drops. He searches my face. I can feel him recognizing me. “Nale’s Home . . .” he says. “I was . . . your doctor, wasn’t I?”

“Hers too,” I answer, throwing a look over my shoulder.

Dr. Hartigan stares at the door to her room, and I can see him looking through it, all the way to the girl inside.

“She needs the surgery,” I say to him. “You know she needs it. But you’re a coward. You’re their pet. A dog. And instead of ‘fetch,’ they said, ‘murder.’ And you’re okay with that.”

The doctor swallows. For a moment, I see it: like he’s looking in a mirror for the first time. His mouth opens, he goes slack-jawed. Even his eyes turn glassy.

The moment ends, and his face hardens, cheeks turning red as they puff out. “You leave me alone,” he snaps, growing blustery, tugging at his white lab coat. “How dare you—you, of all people—say that. I could’ve told your secret. I could still tell someone. But despite what you may think, I’m not a bad person. We do what we must, and if I were you, I would go back into that room and spend what time you and that girl have left together, together.”

I bite my lip, nauseous all of a sudden, and I look over my shoulder to her room again. “How long . . .” I ask in a voice even I can barely hear.

“Two days,” Dr. Hartigan says, and I can hear in his tone how angry he still is. “Maybe less. The rate of deterioration is . . . unusual, to say the least.”

I choke. “Days?”

After that, it’s all a blur.

I remember turning, finding Derek there, not wondering how he made it to the hallway. I remember fighting him, as though he were the Blight and destroying him might make everything else make sense. But that’s the last image in my head—the rest is a series of sounds and sensations, none of which include sight.

I know that I am in an elevator by the ringing it makes. I know that I am in Derek’s arms by the feel of the muscle just above his shoulder. I know that I am crying because my face is wet, and from the burning in my throat.