The Ward

35


The spigot’s steady dripping becomes the second hand on a clock I don’t see, the only reminder I have that time moves forward.

When I can’t do it anymore, when holding his head becomes a betrayal so sharp I can’t stand it, I lift it off my lap and lower him down. He can’t be moved now, but when he can, he’ll need a place nearby to lie. I drag the mattress from the cot to the bathroom door. Then I take his hand in mine and lie on the mattress myself.

I’m alone. I chose it, too. Chose to lose the one person I called family—who was better than family, really. My own blood dropped me on a doorstep. Aven was—She’s not dead yet.

Drip, drip, drip.

“Ren . . .” Callum sounds stronger as his voice echoes against the bathroom tiles, but hearing my name in his mouth—it’s like hearing my shame speak directly to me. It makes me want to resent him for being alive. Using the life I gave him.

I swallow the feeling and crawl off the mattress. The choice has been made, and I made it. He will save people. We will save lives, together. “I’m here,” I say, lifting his wrist and wrapping my fingers over his veins to check his pulse again.

I can feel it, the beating of his heart. It’s stronger now. “You’re going to be okay, Callum,” I whisper, and wait for more words, signs of life, but he’s silent again.

He’s going to be okay, I tell myself. It won’t have been for nothing. Keeping his hand in mine, I return to the mattress.

More drips. Time passes.


“I’m not dead. . . .” Callum whispers, and my eyes snap open.

I must have fallen asleep. Sliding toward him again, “Callum?” I say, and I squeeze his hand in mine. It’s warmer. Hot, even. When I look down, his eyes are open. Big and blue and clear and awake. “How do you feel?”

His eyes dart around the bathroom, land on every corner. “I’m not dead,” he says again, which I guess is answer enough. And then, looking up at the ceiling, “How am I alive?”

He must not remember.

On the counter, the candle—wick almost at its end—flickers, hissing into wax. The sound catches his attention, and he watches the shadows in the room like they’re ghosts. Follows their haunting all the way to his side. To the vial, now empty.

Callum looks at it. Moves to sit up, but clutches himself, face in a grimace. “Why?” he asks, twisting to look at me head-on.

I wait to answer, not knowing where to start . . . but then I hear him inhale.

Like he’s breathed in the answer.

Through teeth gritted in hurt, “The cure,” he says, forcing his back against the wall. “It’s not—”

“I know. It’s an extermination plan. A poison pill,” I fill in for him. Don’t want the words, or their meaning, on my tongue too long. “And with the extremists and the protestors on his back—”

“He’ll go through with it,” Callum finishes for me.

Pushing his back farther up the wall, face flushed, “We can’t let it happen,” he says.

“No. We can’t.”

Callum nods. Closes his eyes. “Which is why you saved me.”

“Yes.”

He’s silent, then opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling. “Do you have a plan?” he asks, monotone. I can hear it in his voice; he don’t know what to do with it. The knowledge that I saved him not for him, but for what he can do.

I didn’t think about how that might make him feel.

“Get the cure out first?” I offer weakly. Now that the serum actually worked, and Callum is here—alive—I shake my head, realizing how weak of a plan it is.

“We have no more water. And I have no notes,” he counters, groaning and throwing a fist into the tiled floor. “Not to mention that the cure is a poison. Who’s to say the water will counteract it?”

“It will. I asked Derek. He said so.” I take his hand. It’s clammy in mine as I unball his fist, one finger at a time. “And I know where to find more.”

That bath I took . . . Derek had enough water to draw me one, then another, with no worries about rationing. And where else could he constantly keep an eye on things?

Callum’s eyes flicker toward his hand. My hand. Our hands together. Shifting himself toward me, “Let me guess. Derek. Your bookie.”

“My bookie,” I answer, exhaling as Callum closes his eyes once more.

My bookie. Derek.

No, I correct myself.

Someone who would sit by and watch as hundreds are killed.

A murderer.


Callum walks upstairs after his shower, a towel wrapped carefully around his waist, loose, avoiding the wound.

“Let me check your side one more time,” I insist, and then realize that as he’s no longer on death’s doorstep, that request is a tad more awkward. Especially the half-naked bit.

He rolls his eyes—this is the fifth time I’ve asked him that. But he walks over anyway and turns to the side, showing me the flesh under his rib cage. “You need to leave,” he says.

“Not until I’m sure you’ll still be alive when I’m done,” I answer, leaning down to get a better look at the wound. I try my best to look at him without looking at him. I feel my face start to burn, but as soon as I get a better look at the almost-mortal wound at his side, the embarrassment kind of dies. A gory flesh wound tends to do that sort of thing.

By now, the bleeding has stopped entirely. The two folds of sliced skin are taut together, and dark maroon crusts along the line. I whistle my amazement, timid as I press my fingers around the worst of it. “Well,” I say, standing up. “The serum definitely works on wounds. Enough of those phytowhosits, it would seem. Faster than the original stuff without a doubt.”

Callum smiles and looks down at his torso like he’s pleased with his work. “And with pure, unmuddied water . . . I’ll be able to do even more, I think.” He walks over to his suitcase to pull out clean clothes.

“Will you still need my blood, do you think?” I ask, turning away from him so he can change. I walk over to the mess by his table, and with my fingers wrapped in a washcloth, I try to collect half-broken test tubes and droppers and whatever else looks even remotely usable. I’m only slightly worried about him needing my blood to make the cure. With a few hundred sick to heal, I don’t know if I have it in me—literally have enough blood in me—to be up to the task.

Callum looks at me and inhales. “As all of my notes have been destroyed, it’s hard to say. But, Ren . . . after you left, I ran more tests. The way your blood interacted with the virus—I’ve never seen anything like it. Not only did it break down the viral cells but somehow—and I’m still foggy on this point—it stimulated Milo’s own immune response. And, if my observations are correct, your blood actually improved how the recipient was able to synthesize the springwater’s chemical compounds.”

A pause. He raises one brow like he don’t understand it himself. “Your blood is . . . different.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs, then says, “But your blood has served you well these sixteen years, so clearly it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

I nod—If he says so—and pack away the last of what was salvageable into his suitcase. He’s ready to take off. The lab is still a disaster—glass shards on the floor, tubing cut into pieces. . . .

It’s as good as it’s going to get.

“Comm me when you have a new location,” I say. He throws me a look that reads Of course, now get out of here? I take the keys to his Omni. “Can I ask you to do one more thing for me?”

He meets me by the door, and I turn to find him holding something in his hand. “Anything,” he says, and I can see he means anything, though what I’m about to ask doesn’t require that much.

“You’re a doctor. The hospital knows you. If you asked for Aven’s status, they’d tell you the whole truth, no sugarcoating. I want you to contact them for me and find out how she’s doing.”

Callum nods. “Absolutely, I’m happy to. I’ll get an update from them soon as you leave, and I’ll comm you straightaway. Anything else?”

“Nope,” I say, one hand on the doorknob. I’m about to step out, when I feel his arm on my shoulder.

“Wait, Ren.” He pulls me back gently, and when I turn around, there’s an openness to his face that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. Not that he’s always closed off. . . . He’s just the serious, bookish type. Head always off someplace, figuring out confusing things.

“What you did before . . .” Callum starts, shuffling his feet and shaking his fist. It’s still holding something that I can’t see. “We don’t know each other, and you didn’t have to do it. It wasn’t for me. I know that.”

He waves his hand to dismiss me before I even have a chance to speak, then continues.

“You saved me because I can save others. We can save others,” he corrects himself. “I just want you to know—I’m going to make it worth it. For you. Aven’s not lost. You didn’t choose me over her. . . . You chose both. I promise.”

I smile, but his words . . . they make me want to cry. The happy kind, but also the not-so-happy kind. I don’t like him thinking that he’s just a means to an end. I do care about him, of course. Though I don’t know him well, he’s a good person. That much I can see.

I make my hand into a fist just so I can bite it to stop the tears.

Callum turns up his palm. In it, he’s holding a shiny copper penny.

“I saw at the race you already have one.” He glances at my necklace. “Nonetheless. Thank you,” he says, gesturing for me to turn around so he can add it to the chain I’m already wearing. “It’s store-bought, unfortunately,” he goes on. “Not like the other you’re wearing. I don’t expect it’s any less lucky, though.”

I open my mouth—

“Not that you need luck, of course,” he adds casually. “I’m quite certain you get along perfectly well without it.”

Good skill—I can almost hear Aven saying it to me right now. Like she’s speaking to me through him. Or maybe . . . maybe it’s that they just think the same. For the first time in days, I smile, with Aven’s voice right there.

“Thank you,” I say, rubbing the penny between my fingers. “Thank you.”

Good skill.