PARTRIDGE
COAL
Arvin Weed is leading Partridge and Beckley through a wing of the medical center. Arvin is explaining that Mrs. Hollenback is sharing a room that should only be a single. “Nothing we could do at the time. Of course, the other two patients have been temporarily moved—to give you privacy. It’s been a mad house,” Weed tells him. “At one point, we had beds lining the halls.”
This makes Partridge’s chest tighten. He’d like to have his dead father keep shouldering the blame, but how long can he keep that up? Rationalizing—that’s what Weed called it, and he was right.
There are only a few medical personnel, talking over a stack of charts. All of the doors they pass by are shut. He feels guilty for thinking that Foresteed was exaggerating the epidemic of suicides. Maybe Partridge just wanted a reason not to believe it and accept the guilt.
“Does Mrs. Hollenback know I’m coming?” Partridge asks.
“I asked to have her prepped for the visit. I asked a lot of the people on staff if she’s ready for this,” Arvin says. “They thought it might actually be really good for her. She loved you like her own, you know.”
Partridge knows that she accepted him into her home and was kind about it, but he’d always felt like a burden on some level. “She was good to me,” he says.
Now they walk up to Mrs. Hollenback’s door. Her name is on her chart, sitting in a holder attached to the wall: HOLLENBACK, HELENIA. FEMALE. AGE 35.
Only thirty-five? She’d always seemed old.
Weed hovers a few feet from the door. It’s strange to Partridge suddenly how grown-up Arvin is—a doctor, a scientist, a genius. Weed hates him and has for a while—that’s what Partridge figured out from their heated conversation. Still, he can’t help but be impressed by Weed; he seems like an adult already and Partridge feels like he’s only faking.
“Your parents must be proud of you,” Partridge says, maybe stalling—he’s scared of the condition he might find Mrs. Hollenback in. “How are they?” Partridge might not be sure exactly where Arvin stands, but his parents were both on his mother’s list—the Cygnus, the good guys.
“They caught colds, actually.”
“Colds? Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Nothing serious,” Arvin says, and then he claps Partridge on the shoulder. “Good luck in there.”
“I’ll stand guard,” Beckley says.
Partridge nods, takes a breath, and knocks.
“You’ll have to just open the door,” Weed says. “Her voice isn’t strong enough to tell you to come in. I’ll be down at the nurse’s station.”
“Wait,” Partridge says. “Are you going to tell me how she tried to do it?”
Weed shakes his head. “She’ll tell you if she wants to.”
Partridge puts his hand on the knob, turns it slowly, and walks into the room. It’s clean and white, brightly lit. He walks past two empty beds. The beds of the patients taken away for Partridge’s visit are fitted with straps loosely dangling by the bed rails, which chills him.
He hears Mrs. Hollenback’s voice, a hoarse whisper. “Is it you?”
He walks to the curtain pulled around her bed, reaches up—and thinks of his own mother, the hazy memory of the small room where he and Pressia found her again, the glass-covered capsule, her serene face, her eyes opening… He pulls back the curtain and says, “Yes. It’s me.”
She’s thin and pale. Her eyes are hollowed. She wears a hospital gown that’s too big for her and gapes around her neck so much that she holds it down with one hand, as if pledging allegiance. But the most disturbing part of her appearance is her mouth. It’s blackened—her lips look ashen, and when she smiles, even her teeth are dark as if she’s chewed a piece of coal, like her mouth is a dark pit.
She reaches out her hand.
Partridge walks quickly to her and takes it in his. Her hand feels bony and cold, like a child’s hand in winter.
She says, “Oh, Partridge.” Her voice is raw.
He’s not sure if it’s said in tenderness or if it’s edged with scolding. She’s been a kind of mother to him. Over the last few years, she was the one who set his presents out under the Christmas tree, who gave him a warm bed and fed him from their Sunday food rations. Julby and Jarv treated him like an older brother. “How are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m alive, right?” Her face tightens into a painful smile. “When you get better, we’ll have dinner together. Your family and me and Iralene,” he says, wanting to do anything to make things right. “I owe you so many dinners!”
She shakes her head. “Oh, Partridge.”
“You’re like family to me,” he says.
She turns her head to the pillow. “What do we know about family here?” she whispers.
“You taught me about family,” he says. “And Jarv is home, right? Don’t you want to go home to Julby and Jarv?”
“Jarv.” She clenches her fist on the hospital gown, twisting it tightly, and closes her eyes. “Don’t you know why he’s not right? Don’t you know?”
“No,” Partridge says softly.
“He comes from me,” she says, opening her eyes and turning back to him. “I’m sick inside. Diseased. If you cut me open, Partridge, there would be nothing but rot. Do you understand? I’ve been dying ever since I got into the Dome. Rotting from within.”
“That’s not true. You’re such a good mother and teacher. Everyone loves you.”
She shakes her head. “They don’t know me.”
“I know you,” Partridge says. “I know you, and I love you.”
“Do you know what I did to get in this hospital bed?”
He’s not sure he wants to know. “It’s personal. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I took all the pills. The ones for Jarv, the ones for my headaches, the ones for Ilvander’s back, even the ones to calm Julby when she gets into one of her fits. I took them all. I wanted to die. I needed to die. But they didn’t let me. They pumped my stomach and gave me charcoal tablets and tried to cleanse me. There is no way to cleanse me—not really. Not ever.”
“Mrs. Hollenback,” Partridge says. “Don’t…”
She reaches up and grips his shirtsleeve. “You spoke the truth,” she says. “It woke me up.”
He doesn’t want to start crying, but he can feel his chest tightening with guilt. “I didn’t mean what I said. Not the way you heard it. I didn’t mean it, Mrs. Hollenback. If I’d known anyone would do this, I wouldn’t have—”
“Do you know who I left to die out there beyond the Dome? My father was friends with someone who had spots reserved for himself, his wife, his two daughters. One of his daughters was a revolutionary, though. She told him she refused to go. I overheard my father and her father talking. He said, ‘If it goes bad suddenly, we’ll take one of your girls with us. She’ll take my daughter’s place. I wish I could offer more.’ I had two sisters. Which one would my parents choose? I had an advantage. I was the only one who knew we were competing. I didn’t want to let on that I knew, and so instead, Ilvander, who already had a spot, made a plan with me. I told my parents I was pregnant. I knew that this would never be exposed as a ploy to be chosen. There was so much shame in it, and yet I also knew that my parents would choose to send me if I was pregnant, a child inside of me. And then things happened more quickly than anyone thought they would. I was taken in. My sisters weren’t. They stayed behind with my parents and likely died. You said it—we are all complicit. I’m a murderer too, Partridge, like your father. I let them die. I should have died with them.”
The story stuns Partridge. He’s only able to mutter, “Don’t say that. Suicide is never the answer.”
“This wasn’t suicide. It was a death that I was owed a long time ago.”
He’s panicking. How can he make this right? “My wedding is something to look forward to. I want you to be there—your whole family—in the front row.”
“You spoke the truth.”
“What if I was lying?”
“You weren’t.”
“What if I told you…” And for a few seconds, he stops breathing. Can he tell her the truth? Can he accept some of her guilt to spare her? “I’m a murderer too.”
“You were too young. You didn’t understand what was happening—not like we did. No.”
“You don’t understand,” he says. “I killed him. I’m a murderer.”
Mrs. Hollenback searches his face. “You killed him?” she says, but he’s sure she knows who he’s talking about.
“I had to stop my father.” Now that he’s said these words aloud, he wants to tell her everything. “I had no choice. He was planning to—”
With one hand, she presses her fingers to his mouth and with the other brings her fingertips to her own blackened lips. Her eyes quiver with tears. She shakes her head and then lets her hands fall to her bed. She stares up at the ceiling.
“Forgive us,” she whispers. “Forgive us all.”