The Ward

46


9:51 P.M., SUNDAY


My feet fly down one flight and then another, rounding each corner with a jump. He’s behind me, barreling down the stairwell. I don’t stop on the fifth floor, or the fourth, or the third. But when I hit the second floor, Aven’s floor, that’s when I pause—I have to see her.

Checking my cuffcomm, I’ve still got nine minutes till rations go out. Probably a few more before someone stops by to change her IV. Which means she won’t be awake. . . .

That pause is all the time it takes for Derek to catch up. He slams against my back. The momentum hurtles me into the metal door, and an ache, sharp and hot, spreads down my arm. “Damn you—” I bite my lip to keep from whimpering.

Derek pulls away. Props himself against the wall as I slide to the floor, slack-muscled.

“It’s you,” he whispers. “I thought it was you. But you look so . . . different.” He eyes my not-hair, kneeling in front of me. Makes like he’s about to touch my shoulder. “Kitaneh . . . the crash?”

“Don’t,” I snap, recoiling, like he’s made of pure fire. “I know what you did to my Rimbo. And I know about Kitaneh. And I know about you. You don’t get to touch me.”

The way his face contorts, you’d think I was the one made of fire. That he’d just been burned. Derek closes his eyes, turns away. “What happened to your Rimbo—it was an accident. . . .”

“What? That I survived?”

He shakes his head and collapses down onto the stairs, keeping his back to me. I don’t like it. I may not want him touching me, but I do deserve to see his face right now.

“You were supposed to see the malfunction before the race. You weren’t supposed to race at all,” he murmurs.

“Look at me.” Angry echoes of my words travel up and down the stairwell. “Tell me to my face why I almost died because of you.”

Derek shifts uncomfortably. With his back up against the wall, he says, “My brother and his wife live on the Isle. They learned what that doctor Callum was up to. They informed us. I never wanted you hurt. . . . And I certainly never wanted you dead.”

I exhale, realizing I’ve been holding my breath this whole time. What he’s said . . . maybe I should feel comforted by it. He didn’t want me dead, after all.

It’s just the other hundreds of sick people he’d see murdered.

Not quite enough, I’m afraid.

“Your brother and his wife,” I start. I’m remembering the photo album—there were six of them. “Are they . . . are they like you?”

“You mean are they still alive after too many years? Yes. They are.”

Now he looks at me, and I wonder how his eyes can seem so damned soft while he’s telling me these things. I’m suddenly very aware of my weakness.

“And what about your wife?”

I can hear him swallow. The muscles in his throat tense up, and he looks away. “What about her?” he asks. Each word drags, ending and beginning like some far-off thunder.

Forget this. I shouldn’t be here, drilling Derek about his epically eternal love life.

Not with Aven so close, about to wake up.

I don’t wait for him to answer—don’t even want to hear it. I lift myself up from the linoleum and reach for the door to the second floor.

Before I have a chance to turn the knob, he spits out, “How are you going to get those patients follow-up doses? Most of them will need more. Did you think of that?”

“Callum . . . He developed a serum so that it requires only one dose,” I tell Derek, pushing myself through the door just in time to hear him say, “That’s not possible,” in a whisper.

I can sense his awe as he steps closer. “We’ve tried. There’s no substance in existence that allows it. . . .”

I exist.

I make for Aven’s room.

“Ren, wait!” he calls after, but I don’t hear any more—

I’m already gone, rushing down the corridor.

He follows. And when I pause a few feet from her door, he’s only steps behind me. I feel him reach for me, and I also feel him stop. His palm hovers over my shoulder before he pulls it away. “Go inside,” he says softly.

I turn around—

He says it like he’s been to see her.

I turn the handle and walk in, every atom in the room feeling different to me than the last time I was here. Good different. Even the smell.

Flowers. Real, live flowers. Must’ve been expensive, too. Yellower than Aven’s hair, shaped like cups on six-petaled saucers. Soil grown probably from a rooftop hothouse in one of the northern quads, where fewer people live. They sit on her night table in a pretty, red-painted pot, roots and all, smelling too delicious; I want to eat them like food. Who . . . ?

“Renny?”

I snap my head toward the bed, and watch, no words, as Aven looks at me from her pillow, pale as the linens she’s been sleeping on. She squints her eyes to see better. Using her elbows, she props herself up. Squints some more.

“That you?”

She’s awake.

She’s awake, she’s awake—I blink a hundred times, and each time it’s true—she’s awake. She shouldn’t be, not yet, not for another three minutes, but she is. I had no time to expect this moment. It’s as though the world, broken into bits around me, has suddenly pieced itself together again.

“It’s me, Feathers. It’s me,” I say, hushed, and run to her bedside. Lean over her. Run my hand across her forehead, pale and bluish under the harsh light. Then her white-blond hair. She looks up at me with eyes that have never seemed so hazel. They’re the color of the canals on a good day, sunlit and golden-green.

“Where’d your hair go?” she asks, rubbing her eyes at me like I’m an alien. Then, her face softens, and she lies back in bed. “You’re still so pretty.”

I laugh, and choke down a sob, new water at my eyes. Good water.

Only a few times before has my heart not felt like it fit in my body. Like it belonged in a bigger body, a giant’s, maybe. One with a rib cage that had more compartment space to it. It’s a strange feeling of feeling too much. Wanting to cram it all in and then make room for some more.

“You’re just saying that,” I mumble, and I kiss her knuckles over and over again. “You, on the other hand. Even in a hospital bed, look at you. Blooming prettier than those flowers.” I nod in their direction, all trumpety and yellow.

“Aren’t they wonderful? Derek brought them,” she says, grinning, pointing back at him.

Derek was here . . . when she woke up? And here I’d forgotten he was even in the room.

“He was here when I woke up! They were the first things I opened my eyes to.”

I can land on a possible explanation, but it makes no sense. If he wouldn’t give the water to anyone else . . .

“Did he give you a medicine, Aven?” I ask, and look back at him standing by the door. He’s running a hand through his curls, now he’s avoiding my eyes.

Aven nods. Bites her lip. “I think he likes you,” she whispers, and winks.

I don’t know what to say to that. With all my cells, I want to hate him. I do hate him. My heart wants something entirely different. But this still isn’t enough.

Just as I think the question, Why—? Aven opens her mouth with an answer.

“He thought you were dead, Renny. He said he was going to miss you, and that since you told him I was your favorite part of life—which I thought was very silly—he wanted to get to know me. Like he was getting to know you, through me.”

I don’t know what to think anymore, but I’m happy. Happier than I’ve ever been, maybe in my whole life.

Our microscopic futures . . . they’re ours again.

“I can’t stay,” I tell Aven, looking down. “But I’m coming back tonight. After I’m done, I’m coming for you. I’ll sneak in. I’d take you with me now, but you’re still too weak.” I pause, and take her hand in mine. “I’m about to do something big . . . something almost impossible.”

I want her to know the rest—the governor’s plan, and what we’re doing to stop it—but I gotta leave before the attendants realize I broke in. The hospital will go on lockdown and I’ll never get out.

Aven nods like she understands. “If you say it’s impossible, it must be hard.” Reaching for the necklace dangling against the bed, she notices the second penny. “Where’d you get this one?” she asks. Then she looks up at me, grinning all the way to her eyes again. “Is it from another boy?”

I open her palm and laugh into it, kissing her lifeline.

“It is.”

Aven eyes Derek still standing by the door. “I bet he’s not cuter than that one.”

Oh my goodness. My sister . . . who is she?

I can’t wait to find out.

“You still wear this,” she mumbles to herself, touching the penny she gave me. When she looks up, she sighs. “And I’m still holding you to your promise. If I’m going to be healthy soon, you’d better stick around long enough to see it.”

Without hesitation, “I promise. No dying allowed,” and I stand up. Head for the door.

All the way there, I battle a fear so old, it’s beginning to feel like a friend. That someday, the only promise I ever make might become one I can’t keep.