by Lydia Hope
“It will dry and we’ll never be able to clean this mess,” Ruby commented.
Gemma frowned, further dispirited by the sad spectacle.
“You know, he’s getting worse. He no longer behaves like a conscious being.”
Ruby scoffed, “He’s never been much of one.”
“To think of it, it’s been weeks since I heard him speak. He only grunts and screeches. Do we need to report him to the medical bay?”
“They aren’t going to treat him.”
“Why? Because he’s an alien?”
“Yep.”
“They’re nurses! They should treat every patient the same.”
“They won’t know how to help him, hon. They are human nurses.”
They moved past Little Green Man’s cell. Ruby wanted to sneak to the kitchens to see someone, and Gemma was okay with that. She had her little rendezvous with Simon to occupy her precious free minutes.
Arlo had already disappeared.
On her way to cell 35, Gemma passed the Obu alien, noting how restless he was.
“Hey, bear-man. Are you alright?” She stopped by.
In response, the Obu grunted, stomped his flat elephant feet, and stuck his arm out for Gemma to pet. She smiled as she rubbed the massive furry forearm.
“I know, the cells are so small. When is your time up? Soon? I hope so. Hang in there, big boy.”
The Obu whimpered with pleasure and his eyelids drooped. He banged his head against the bars and Gemma thought that if not for the bars, he would’ve butted it against her shoulder probably breaking a clavicle.
Chuckling, she gave him one last rub and left him, unhappy and kicking up a fuss at her departure.
Simon’s cell was quiet and appeared empty as usual. It disappointed Gemma. Her hopes were flying high after yesterday’s progress, but nothing seemed to have changed.
“Hi, Simon.”
She unlocked his door and entered. He was sitting on his cot staring into the ether, unmoving and unresponsive. His eyes were still the same opaque surfaces without depth, even though today they appeared more gray than white.
“How are you today?”
No response.
“My foot’s better. Surprise, that, because yesterday when I left prison I had to run on it like crazy. A gang of Perali attacked humans on the street and one of them nearly caught me. I don’t know how I escaped. It was pretty scary.”
He remained in withdrawal. It rankled Gemma.
Yesterday, he’d claimed to be able to hear, so he must’ve heard what she just said. Still, no effing reaction. Not even a twitch.
Gemma began to imagine he hid in his cocoon of apathy on purpose, as a way to ignore the world. It was petty of her to think so, but today she was in a fragile state of mind, and his impassive alien face made her want to cry.
With a sigh, she sat down next to him on the cot.
“Your hair needs tidying. Let me do it over.”
She undid his braid and combed his silky strands pulling the hair back from his face.
“I’m sorry for my bad mood.” She had no idea if he knew her bad mood from her good one, but she said it anyway. “Christmas makes me maudlin. I used to look forward to the celebration, but it was before my family died. Actually, before my brother Foy was killed. He died in battle. Many airmen did fighting during the Great Invasion, but our family just… crumbled after his passing. My parents took such tremendous pride in him. Especially mom. She never recovered.”
Gemma combed Simon’s hair over and over again. She was fascinated by its texture and simply loving the feel of it in her hands.
“Anyway, after I came to the City with Zeke, Christmas was too painful to celebrate. It reminded us of everyone we’d lost. But we hoped to someday make it what it used to be. We made plans, he and I. As soon as my broken foot healed, I found a job teaching dance at a school. We scrimped and saved, and finally, we were able to send Zeke to Meeus. Zeke is a doctor, you know. If he were here, he’d treat you, help you get better. He helps everybody.”
Gemma hadn't noticed when her hands stilled, lost in her recollections.
“And then the school canceled dance classes and I ended up here. But it was after Zeke’d already left. He is now happily married to someone else on Meeus.”
She fell silent, lost in self-reflection. Was she unhappy here? She used to be. Now, it was different. Saying that she’d achieved happiness would be a stretch, but she deemed herself content. Because of him.
“I am sorry I missed our outing,” she confided in a low voice. “You’ll have to eat gruel today, Simon.”
She finished braiding his hair and briskly flipped his braid to lay over his shoulder. He continued sitting in the same position, unmoved, and, she thought, affronted.
She resolutely reached for the bowl of cold gruel on the floor.
“I think that you should try it, Simon,” she said firmly as if talking to a recalcitrant toddler. “You need energy.”
Without hesitation, she lifted a spoonful of goopy gruel to his mouth and pushed it between his lips. He didn’t cooperate. His lips firmed up and refused to accept her gift of food.
Gemma didn’t give up easily and made attempt after attempt to coax him into eating, with no results. As if tired of the game, he turned his head away from her.
He turned away.
She put the spoon down.
“Because you’re able to turn away, I assume you’re aware,” she said with frustration. No, scratch frustration. His passive-aggressive tantrum made her so upset she wanted to shake him. “I don’t know why I’m bothering with you. I can’t say why I care about silly aliens who don’t want to eat their food.”
Emotions choked her. It was difficult to talk.
“You may not think so, Simon, but you are lucky. Yes, you’re lucky because you’re alive. You are caged but safe. It isn’t great food, but you’re fed on a schedule. You have me, somebody who gives a flip whether you are still breathing the next morning. Not everyone has got even that little. But you don’t seem to appreciate what you do have. You set out on your little hunger strikes because the gruel doesn’t agree with you. My uncle was mauled by Perali thugs last night, and in a blink of an eye, he lost everything. He can’t work. He might yet die from his injuries! And there are three kids to raise and protect…”
Her nose was running, she realized with surprise and wiped it with a sleeve. And it wasn’t just the nose. Her eyes were running too, tears blurring Simon’s white face and making it difficult to see his expression in finer detail. Was he looking at her? Who the hell could tell with those freaky eyes of his.
“Well, I give up. If you don’t want to eat prison food, don’t eat. Don’t get stronger. Don’t choose life. And we’ll both deal with the consequences of your choices.”
She fell silent working to stop the tears. Absently, she stuck her finger into her boot and rubbed her aching foot to relieve some of the pain. Unhappy thoughts jounced around her head. What was going to happen to Uncle Drexel? His arm looked like processed meat. She prayed to God it healed for his sake, as well as for the sake of the kids.
“Rix don’t eat grains.”
Gemma’s eyes snapped to Simon’s face. She’d never tire of hearing his voice, rusty, deep, and liquid, with a peculiar sibilance of his accent.
He was looking at her. She knew because she could see her face reflected in his dirty whitish eyes. They appeared shinier today, not quite as deadened, although the new gray cast failed to improve his sepulchral visage.
Then he shifted his attention to the bowl of gruel and regarded it like it was a nest of maggots. His head made a small disdainful motion indicating the bowl of gruel.
“Do it again.”
Gemma understood it was an order. Despite his high-handed manner, her spirits rose. She cared about Simon. It wasn’t something she could turn off. If he died, she would… She didn’t want to think about it.
She obediently scooped another spoonful of the goop and
raised it to his lips. He accepted it, but swallowing the food took an effort. His breath hitched and he nearly choked, his slitted nostrils fluttering wildly. He even closed his eyes, the action revealing blue-tinged third eyelids popping across the corneas from the inner corners. His face showed the strain of the effort.
Gemma watched him closely. “That bad?”
He didn’t reply but motioned again at the food. They repeated the tortuous procedure one more time, and then he was done. Gemma set the bowl down. Simon rearranged his body by lowering his legs down to the floor and flattening his palms on the edge of the cot, bracing himself. His bony shoulders hunched.
Gemma frowned. “Are you uncomfortable?”
“I’ve been uncomfortable for a long time,” he slurred, the fluid accent running the words together. “But this vile slush that you call food is a new kind of torture.”
And then he puked.
Gemma slumped in her seat.
“I guess I’ll go get the mop,” she said when he stopped heaving.
Strangely uplifted, Gemma suffered through the interrogations of Marigold on why she needed cleaning supplies during an unscheduled time, and what happened to the inmate on the third floor to make him throw up.
The cell block was quiet when Gemma came back except for the clicking and farting sounds coming from Little Green Man’s direction that had long become a white noise of their floor. Moving along the corridor, she received intense looks from some of the inmates. Number 34 followed her progress to Simon’s cell with reserved interest.
“Signs of life aren’t always pleasant, eh?” he commented as she was unlocking Simon’s door. “I told you, he was better off undisturbed. Or dead.”
“Your compassion needs work, Arc.”
He gave her a cheeky smile. “Not interested in compassion. But I’m happy you called me by my name, beautiful Gemma. We’re making progress.”
Gemma chuckled as she went in to clean up Simon’s mess.
He was sitting in the same position and his eyes glittered when she came in. The new wet sheen in them was disconcerting. It changed his whole face from peculiar and vulnerable to eerie and unnerving.
“Beautiful Gemma?” he asked quietly, and the words rolled off his tongue like water. He also managed to make her self-conscious.
“He was joking.”
“Joking?” Simon asked blankly. “Are you not beautiful?”
“Well, what I look like isn’t the point.” She dipped the mop into the bucket and wrung the excess water from it. “It’s flattery. A compliment.”
“Is it sincere?” Simon clearly didn’t understand flirtation when he saw it.
“It doesn't have to be. It sounds nice, though.”
“He isn’t nice. He would harm you if he had a chance. He would kill me if he could.”
Gemma plopped the wet mop on top of his puke and started swishing. “I see you have trust issues.”
“I don’t have issues. I don’t have trust, either.”
“Figures.” She scoffed and looked closer at something strange that caught her attention in the mess on the floor. Bright blue streaks laced the gruel vomit. “Even your barf is weird, Simon. There’s blue stuff in it.”
To her surprise, Simon’s upper lip curled revealing his top gum, toothless and dark-blue, dotted with brown spots. A pretty distasteful sight until you realized it passed for a smile. Then it became quite horrifying.
She hastened to cover up her recoil. “So, I take it blue’s normal?” she said with forced cheer.
“Yeah. I’m not dying anymore.”
Earth tilted on its axis. Gemma dipped her head low as elation so powerful her eyes watered from it had overtaken her. She clumsily rinsed the mop and wrung the water out, elbowing the bucket in the handle, sending it rolling toward Simon, water sloshing over the rim. He saved himself from being drenched by grabbing the handle and stopping the bucket’s wild run. He had a strong hand. Gemma stared fixedly at the thick bones of his wrist and the six long fingers wrapped around the handle.
A shiver passed between her shoulder blades. Simon let the bucket go and the moment passed. Gemma turned her back on him while fiddling with her mop, sorting through her emotions.
“What do you want from me?” he asked quietly.
She stilled. “From you? Nothing.”
“Then why do you care if I live?”
Gemma slowly turned and gazed into his reflective eyes.
“I don’t know,” she told him the truth, implicitly admitting that she did care.
Nursing this odd creature who was as prickly as a cactus had become her mission in life. But she wasn’t prepared to let him know how special she found him to be, how important.
“It matters,” she said simply. “You matter. I couldn’t see you suffer alone.”
“I wasn’t suffering.”
Okay, that statement was arguable. “I thought you might be. I wanted to make a difference for you.”
“You don’t know me.”
She straightened her spine. “I take it you don’t approve of people who care.”
“There’s always a reason. What is yours? Why do you put yourself at risk?”
“I’m not risking anything.” Except for her stupid heart.
They faced off. A frisson of sensation made her skin tight. Was it fear? Or something else?
His huge eyes didn’t seem so vacant when he trained them on her.
“You come into my cell,” he pointed out.
“That’s hardly unusual. To work here, I have to go into the cells. I deal with inmates every day, even with the dangerous ones like Perali who always look to snag you in some way. And you aren’t high risk at the moment, if you know what I mean.”
“You think Perali are dangerous because one scared you last night.”
“Scared? Yes, I was scared.” His blatant dismissal of her last night’s ordeal put her on the defensive. “What do you think he would’ve done if he caught me?”
He made a little motion with his head. “He wanted to kill you, for sure. Maybe rape you, I don’t know. But a single Perali is easy to handle.”
Gemma peered at Simon. Did he even realize who he was talking to?
“And how do I ‘handle’ a grown Perali? With what? My mad jiu-jitsu skillz? Oh, wait. Don’t have any. Have a crooked foot though. Maybe I could stick it in his butt and make it hurt that way.”
“You have a weapon,” he countered.
“I check it out at the door.”
That gave him pause. “Who takes you home at night?”
Was he serious? “My friend the North Wind.”
“You are funny.”
“Yeah, I’m a clown.”
He didn’t reply. Then his shoulders slumped as if the discussion exhausted him.
“You have no defenses,” he said.
“Against what?” Gemma challenged sensing that her lack of toughness disappointed him.
“Anything. Anyone.”
Funny that he, of all the creatures, thought of her as weak. His assessment hurt. But she couldn't deny how accurately he’d profiled her, Gemma, as being out of her depth.
It also frustrated her. “Why is everybody always telling me to toughen up and be prepared? I am as prepared as I will ever be. That’s me, on my own, living the life I didn’t choose. It sucks! But I plan on making it until I die. What more do you expect me to do?”
Simon stared at her with fogged up eyes. He didn’t say anything more and Gemma saw that he started drifting.
She finished cleaning his cell and looked at him once more before leaving. His eyes were vacant and he appeared frail and helpless sitting there on his thin mattress.
But the flashback to the grip of his weird fingers around the bucket handle gave her shivers. In this one simple gesture, she sensed power, an innate kind of strength he was used to taking for granted.
Yes, he was weakened but Gemma was no longer sure that he was weak.
Chapter 13
T
he next several days brought no change to Uncle Drexel’s condition. He remained at home, helpless and in pain. Gemma and Aunt Herise took turns changing his wound dressings and cleaning his arm with warm water and herbal disinfectant procured through Herise’s friends. Their ministrations brought no improvement, and Drexel’s arm continued inflamed. He weakened and fever set in.
“He has to see a doctor, Aunt Herise,” Gemma spoke her mind, and for once, Aunt Herise agreed.
“We have a little money. I’ll see what I can do.”
She had taken time off work and when she came home, her face shone with hope.
“I booked Drexel an appointment at the hospital. A doctor who specializes in alien-inflicted wounds agreed to treat him. Gemma, we’re so lucky! His first visit is tomorrow night and you have to take him. I can’t miss any more work.”
“Yes, Aunt Herise. Don’t worry about a thing.”
When Gemma arrived at the prison, it was still early. She felt little pain in her ankle and was able to walk with almost her normal speed. A relief, for it was hard on the family with two cripples in the house.
She took Simon outside in his wheelchair as she did every day. They parked by the crumbling brick wall of the old church where he liked to sit and gaze across the shimmering water of the bay. Out of hooded eyes, he looked past the junkyard and the back end of the docks that were visible to them.
He hardly said two words to her preferring silences.
She fed him his yogurt - her yogurt, really, that had long become his - and he accepted graciously like a vassal accepts the tax owed to him by a serf under the Oath of Fealty. Gemma knew he was able to move his hands well enough yet he never volunteered to take charge, so she spoon-fed him. Strange, that, but who could understand what was going through the brain of an alien?
“I am amazed that you can survive on eight ounces of goat yogurt.”
Her comment roused him from his after-the-meal slumber. “Yogurt? Is that what you call this milk brew?”
“Brew?” She raised her eyebrows. “Excuse you. I thought you rather preferred it to the gruel.”
