Melancholy: Episode 2 by Charlotte McConaghy
Luke’s close behind me, but because he’s holding Dr Shaw he can’t draw his own weapon. Which means it’s all me this time: the girl who can’t hit a grown man three paces in front of her.
A billow of what seems to be mist caused by the low temperature wafts aside and I am able to see the glass container. Inside it, lying asleep on the floor – without even a bed to lie on – is Ben Collingsworth.
Lowering my gun, I run to the glass. He looks older than I remember, his skin much paler, hair wispier. “Open it,” I implore Luke quickly. I don’t know why I feel so profoundly protective of this old man. Maybe it’s simply because although I don’t remember him experimenting on me, I do remember him saving my life last year.
Luke gets the door open and I rush in to squat beside Ben, rolling him over. There is blood in his mouth, and I lift his top lip to see that it’s coming from his gums. His skin is freezing to the touch, and there is blood under his fingernails too. I can’t help but look worriedly up at Luke. He wears a pensive expression that doesn’t make me feel any better. Gathering the old man into his arms, he carries Ben up the stairs and out of the cold room.
“I want to take Dr Shaw with us,” I tell him.
He considers quickly, eyes darting back to where he left the woman at the bottom of the stairs.
“We can find gurneys to carry them,” I press. “Think how badly it’ll mess up their schedule to lose their head scientist. And imagine what she’ll be able to tell us.”
With a quick breath, Luke nods. “Righto, wait here and keep your gun aimed down the hall.”
He puts Ben on the ground and runs back down the steps to get Dr Shaw. That’s one of the things I like about Luke, I realize. He’s the one in charge, he knows a thousand percent more than I do about this stuff, but he’s always open to suggestions and happy to listen to other people’s ideas. It’s a nice quality.
“He’s a lot lighter than she is,” Luke says when he returns with the scientist. “You’ll have to get him in a fireman’s hold.”
“I carried you on my back for about two miles,” I grunt wryly. “I think I can carry one old guy who looks like he’s mostly made of paper.”
“When did you carry me on your back?” Luke demands.
I pause to look at him. “To get you out of the asylum.”
“You carried me all the way from the asylum to the resistance tree?”
“How else did you think we got away?” I ask, leaning to try to roll Ben over my shoulder. I don’t really want to talk about it, to be honest. Leaving my pack and a bunch of the crap I’ve been hauling around, I instead try to get Ben over my shoulders. I have to stop, though, as my wrist feels like it might snap off.
“Uh, give me a hand here?”
Luke belatedly rushes to help me, lifting Ben over my shoulders and supporting our weight as I straighten my legs under the load. Despite my bravado, Ben is really heavy and incredibly awkward to carry. He keeps slipping and every time I catch him my wrist jerks and feels like it’s breaking anew.
One of the rooms we saw held a few unused gurneys, so we backtrack and gratefully put the sleeping beauties down. Then we roll them back out to the elevator, which still has three dead bodies in it.
Dragging these out, I feel a pit in my stomach, along with a whole ocean’s worth of guilt for having been excited about a mission during which we murdered five people. Doesn’t matter that they’re scientists in a clinic that essentially rapes innocent people of their personalities. It only matters that Luke shot them without batting an eyelid, and now they’ll never again go home to their families.
I hate it all. I hate these people and their science, I hate Ben, I hate Dr Shaw, I hate Luke and I hate myself. And I am having some serious mood swings. Anthony would tell me it’s due to stress. And normally I’d tell him how mood swings are my right, but in this moment I think I’d rather not feel anything at all.
We squeeze the gurneys into the elevator and ride it up to the ground floor, only to have the doors open on six mask-wearing police officers with their guns pointed straight at us.
“Freeze!” one shouts.
Oh dear.
“Get low,” Luke orders me.
“Don’t fire,” I hiss, because I can suddenly see how this is going to play out. He’s going to fire, and there’s going to be a gunfight, and I’m going to have to watch him get mowed down by a hail of bullets and I can’t do that –
Someone fires and my heart skips a beat, but I realize belatedly that it wasn’t the officers or Luke – it came from behind the cops, wounding and dropping three of them.
Luke picks off one, two of the other men in quick succession.
The last cop is firing wildly, and then a few more of the wounded ones start to fire from the ground. Bullets go past my head, smash through walls and ding against the inside of the elevator. The doors start to close in front of us but Luke shoves them open and shoots the last cop.
I rise shakily and push Ben’s gurney out into the hall behind Luke and Dr Shaw. Around the corner comes Will, panting in panic.
“Shadow’s hit!” he shouts.
No. We sprint to Shadow’s side and I see blood all over his abdomen and pooling onto the floor. He has his hand pressed into his stomach just beneath where his vest ends, and his face and lips look gray. It is a horrifying sight.
“Still here,” he grunts.
“You’re okay, mate,” Luke says. “Will, get Ben’s gurney.” He picks up Shadow and runs with him toward the parking garage door. Will and I push the beds in a sprint down the hall, careening around corners and almost overturning them at one point.
Pressing through the heavy swing doors, we arrive in the garage to see a white patient transport van. In the driver’s seat is Pace. Hal is already helping Luke get Shadow into the back, so we bring Ben and Dr Shaw to be loaded in next.
Once the three of them are laid out in the back, Luke, Will and I squeeze in, Hal jumps in the passenger seat and Pace roars us out of the garage and into the night.
“Where are we going?” she shouts.
We’re all looking at Shadow, who is bleeding everywhere.
“We can’t take him back to the train like this,” I murmur. “He’ll never make it.”
“Can’t take him to a hospital,” Will points out.
“Head back toward the apartments,” Luke calls.
“We can’t go back to that shithole,” I argue. “John’s boys’ll be out for blood.”
“We’re not,” he replies, meeting my eyes. “We’re going to my parents’ house.”
Chapter 11
February 8th, 2066
Luke
When my mother opens the front door she finds a gaggle of rough, bleeding soldiers carrying an unconscious woman, an unconscious elderly man, and a dying giant. She takes one look at us, sees me at the forefront, and bursts into laughter. I am reminded of how, after she was given the cure, she always laughed when something went wrong.
She is bent over double when Dad comes to the door behind her, spots the chaos on his front lawn and frowns.
“You’ll be wanting to get that van into the garage, boy?”
“Thanks, Dad.” To Mom I say, “We’ve got a gunshot wound to the stomach here.”
Thankfully she sobers quickly and shepherds everyone inside. It takes us a few trips to get all the unconscious people in, but we manage to settle them on beds and put Shadow on the kitchen table for Mom to work on. Pace pulls the van into the garage.
Josephine looks spooked. She has imagined this house a million times, I know, and I never made it easy for her by giving her any details. I was so tight-lipped about my family that she probably started to think I’d made them up, but here she is in their living room.
It smells the same, and even though I am always transported into memory when I walk in the door of this house, now it is more than that – now I have this tingling sensation on my skin, and there are pictures in my mind so vibrant I feel like I’m having a seiz
“You okay?” Josi asks me.
I blink, returning from a memory of Dave picking Mom’s pot-planted flowers to give to her and being mystified when she screeched in horror at the sight. I nod quickly, trying to rid myself of the uncanny sensations. I shouldn’t have brought danger here; I can taste the regret already. But what choice did I have? To let Shadow bleed to death on the train home?
Wanting them out of the way, I sit Hal, Pace and Will on the couch and tell them they have to either sleep or eat. “Mom’s a trauma nurse,” I assure them. “She’ll sort him out.”
I go back into the kitchen where Dad’s helping Mom cut Shadow’s shirt away. Shadow is still conscious, and I cross to his side to lay a hand on his shoulder.
“Rookie error,” I tell him.
“Cocky little prick,” he manages, and I grin. “Where’s the girl?”
“I’m here,” Josi says, moving to his other side.
He looks like he’s about to say something to her, but instead just quietens down, her presence seeming to calm him.
Dad brings over a bottle of vodka and makes Shadow drink as much as he can, then he sluices the rest over the wound, causing the man to groan in pain.
“If you’re staying, sweetheart,” Mom says to Josi, “you’d better be ready to help.”
“Yes, ma’am. What can I do?”
“Mop and bucket in the laundry. Make sure I don’t slip on the blood. Get towels too – pack them and change them as needed.”
Josie rushes off to get supplies, despite her broken wrist and the shock-after-shock-after-shock she has endured tonight. She’s done really well, actually. Better than I imagined a complete novice could. Her presence alone focused me while on the job – surprising, given I’d thought she would be distracting.
I watch as Mom gets a pair of tweezers and starts digging around inside Shadow’s stomach for the bullet. He screams then, a terrible sound that reverberates around the room and through the house.
Mom gets the bullet out, followed by the two fragments that have broken off in his stomach. Then she gets to work sewing the organ and tissue back together.
“I need blood,” she says briskly at one point.
“I’ll give it,” Josi offers immediately.
“Not you,” I say. “I can’t either.” Mom looks at me as though she’s never been more disappointed. “Our blood’s diseased,” I explain. Or something to that effect.
“Take mine,” Dad says, rolling up his sleeve.
“What type is he?” Mom asks.
“B negative,” Shadow mutters.
“It’s too rare,” Mom sighs.
“You three – you got B negative blood?” Dad asks the three musketeers. They all reply no.
“I do,” Josi says.
“Josi, we don’t know what’s in your blood.”
“It’s nothing that’s transmittable, Luke,” she argues. “The Zetemaphine has been blocked. Dodge well and truly discovered that when you were dying.”
“You were dying?” Mom screeches at me.
“No, Mom.” Of Josi I ask, “What if the blocker’s done something weird?”
“Whatever it is at this point is better than Shadow bleeding out.”
Dad starts setting Josi up to donate blood, but he’s shaking so I guide him to a chair and take the blood myself. Mom makes sure I’m doing it right as I insert the needle and siphon the blood through the tube and into the bag. We used to joke that Mom needed to bring all this stuff home from work because Dave and I were always so badly injured. But I’m sure as shit glad about it now.
“How’s your wrist?” I ask Josi softly as we watch her blood flow into the bag.
“Fine.”
“I’ll get you some painkillers once we’ve done this. Mom, how much?”
“Eight hundred mills,” she says without looking over.
“That seems like a lot …” I hedge.
“It is, but we’ll watch her.”
“I don’t think – ”
“Do it,” Josi snaps. “It’s just blood, Luke.”
So I measure the blood and pass it off to Mom, who hooks it up to Shadow’s IV. I get Josi a loaf of bread and make her eat a few slices, as well as a sugary cup of tea. She looks pale, so I get her some painkillers too.
“I’ve repaired as much as I can, so now we wait,” Mom says eventually. “If he gets an infection overnight there won’t be much I can do for him unless you can find me some antibiotics.”
I nod, mopping up the blood all over the floor and placing new towels around Shadow’s abdomen.
Dad’s setting up bedding for the three in the living room, placing down blow-up mattresses and sleeping bags. Ben is asleep in Dave’s bed, and we’ve tied up Dr Shaw on the floor so she won’t escape during the night, which I admit is kinda mean. But Pace assures us that the amount of gas they put through the vents is enough to keep both Ben and Dr Shaw out for at least twelve hours. We’ll leave Shadow on the table as he needs to be hooked up to the blood bag and the fluids, and he needs to keep his wound flat. The five of us will take turns monitoring him and if there’s any change during the night, we’ll wake Mom.
Which leaves Josi and me in my old room.
I show her in and tell her to take the bed, setting myself up on the floor. She’s weary beyond any point of embarrassment because she turns her back to me and gets undressed down to her underpants. I’m about to turn away when I see her back.
Circling her bony spine and spreading out to her shoulder blades in an expression of emerging joy are dozens of small black birds in flight.
They’re beautiful, beyond beautiful; they’re poignant in a way I haven’t recognized many times in my life. Like a whisper of truth, of freedom and memory. All I want is to touch them. Because I realize now as I look at these birds that Josi has grown so much since those years she and I spent together. There’s something sad in the shift and tilt of her bones, but there’s also something far more aware of the beauty in the world.
I wish she wouldn’t swallow that awareness away so much, living instead in the misery and pain of existence.
“When did you get them done?” I ask her softly.
She looks over her shoulder at me. Seeing her like that is almost painful in its loveliness. “Couple of months ago. For Anthony.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“They’re sad.”
I nod, moving closer in the dim rosy light from the bedside lamp. The space between us feels full of memories and longings.
“Your parents are wonderful,” Josi says, and I can hear in her voice a need for family, a simple appreciation of love.
“They’re so lost.”
She’s holding her arms in front of her breasts; I get her an old singlet out of my drawer. She has trouble putting it on with her broken wrist, so I take it and slide it over her head and shoulders, threading through her arms and pulling it down over her tummy. My fingers skim her warm, smooth skin and I feel delirious with the luxury of touching her. I pass her some shorts too.
“Do you have any pictures of Dave?”
I nod, going to my old dresser and feeling a pang to simply be here in the place I grew up. Here are all my old things, my stupid knick-knacks kept by my parents for so many years. My awards and trophies, my old books and toys and teddies and clothes. It’s weird, actually, like stepping back in time to a very confronting period of my life that always seemed to be about finding a space for myself between poverty and skill, family and work. I don’t have any real connection to these things, but the fact that Mom and Dad have kept them makes me feel more nostalgic than the items themselves.
I get an old photo album out of a drawer, and as I pass it to Josi and watch her flick through the pictures I feel a desperate ache for the fragile thing we once shared. In fact, everything I once enjoyed or experienced now seems fragile to me. “I look at all of this,” I tell her softly, the truth spilling out unbidden, “and it’s torturou
Josephine looks up from the photos and meets my eyes. The singlet and shorts she wears, once mine as a boy, show off her long, bony limbs, the limbs that are filling out more with each day. It is such a relief to me to see her gaining weight, to see her becoming a person again.
Her brown and blue eyes watch me and I feel so helpless, so vulnerable, standing here like the biggest idiot in the world. But it’s in these moments, I think, when you have to be bravest of all.
So I say, “But you, my darling, were the most precious thing of all, the love between us the most fragile. I tried to cherish it, but I was clumsy. And for that I’ll be sorry until the day I die.”
Her eyelids fall shut, and I see tears slip beneath her lashes.
A soft, tender moment lies between us; my eyes follow the lines of her face as though trying to memorize them.
“I want to ask my first question,” she tells me quietly. “You promised to answer me with complete honesty, no matter what.”
“I did.”
Josi opens her eyes. “If I ask you to hold me for tonight, will you be able to let me go in the morning?”
I feel a swelling inside my heart. “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “But I can try.”
She swallows. “Try, then.”
I cross to her and lift the singlet back over her head. We move to the bed and lie down, and then I duck my head to kiss the birds, smoothing my hands and my lips over each one of them. I am as careful as I would be if the creatures were alive or could shatter with one touch.
When I have kissed them all, every one of her ravens, I hold her against me and look into her face. Our legs entwine, hands clasp, gazes lock.
“I love you,” I tell her.
She shakes her head a little. “Just for tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only person on this planet who can destroy me.”
“I would never.”
“You already did.”
My forehead rests against hers. “I didn’t. You’re stronger than you ever were. You just can’t see it yet.”