The Ward

by Frankel, Jordana

  Derek squeezes my shoulder. “Speak to her, Ren,” he insists. “Even if she’s not awake, she can still hear you.”

  Can she? I want to talk to her, but I can’t bring myself to make more words come out if I’m not gonna hear her voice afterward.

  Aven, I think in my head. I need you. You can’t leave me.

  Maybe . . . maybe she and I don’t need words. You live with someone for so long—love them so entirely—you come to learn how they think.

  Don’t go and stop using your heart, you hear? Remember me, and keep living. Just a little longer. I’ve got a doctor, right now, working on a medicine that’s gonna fix you for good.

  The penny around my neck dangles on its chain, brushing her bedcovers. I grab it, rub it so hard between my fingers I imagine I’ve turned it shiny again. My mind goes back to that first night, the night we decided we’d be friends. You said it wouldn’t hurt, I remind her. You promised.

  My eyes turn watery, the prickle starts slow and hot, but when Derek says, “Out loud, Ren?” I have to laugh-cry. I can’t believe he knew that’s what I was doing.

  With a sigh, I kiss her open palm, the one still pressed against my cheek. “Feathers?”

  I wait to go on, like I’m expecting her to answer. The silence hurts, even more than I thought it would. I try again. “Feathers . . .”

  But her quiet unnerves me even more the second time around. It fills up the room—no answer is a type of answer after all, and when I translate what that means, I start unraveling. I bite at my shoulder to keep from shaking her awake. The burn of tears is back, and I move to brush them away.

  I forget I’m holding Aven’s hand. I watch it drop. Fall into my lap.

  My throat tightens, tries to keep me from crying, but when I push my fists against my eyes, they come back slippery with salt water.

  The door opens again—the doctor. I turn around to find him waiting in the hallway, one hand on the knob.

  “If I could speak with you alone, Miss Dane,” he calls to me.

  Carefully, I lay Aven’s hand beside her on the bed, and walk to meet him. I want to howl. She should be having surgery today, and he’s got to be the one taking the orders.

  He had her surgery canceled.

  When I step out into the hallway, I rub my eyes dry. Nothing’s there, though. I killed all the tears with my fists.

  My vision’s clear and I can see his face just as easily as I could at thirteen. At Nale’s Home.

  It comes back to me, how I know him—the briefcase. The needle he filled up with my blood. He told me I was immune. Told me to keep it a secret. He wanted to keep me safe from the DI, and anyone else who would dissect a small girl in the hopes of finding a cure.

  Locking eyes with him, I say the next words carefully, one at a time. “You don’t deserve to be called a doctor.” As I hear them seethe out of me, I realize I might just have more disgust, more hatred for this man than I do for the chief.

  The chief is no more than a bully who made it too high up the ladder for his own good.

  But Dr. Hartigan? He was one of the good guys, and now he’s runnin’ scared.

  The man’s expression drops. He searches my face. I can feel him recognizing me. “Nale’s Home . . .” he says. “I was . . . your doctor, wasn’t I?”

  “Hers too,” I answer, throwing a look over my shoulder.

  Dr. Hartigan stares at the door to her room, and I can see him looking through it, all the way to the girl inside.

  “She needs the surgery,” I say to him. “You know she needs it. But you’re a coward. You’re their pet. A dog. And instead of ‘fetch,’ they said, ‘murder.’ And you’re okay with that.”

  The doctor swallows. For a moment, I see it: like he’s looking in a mirror for the first time. His mouth opens, he goes slack-jawed. Even his eyes turn glassy.

  The moment ends, and his face hardens, cheeks turning red as they puff out. “You leave me alone,” he snaps, growing blustery, tugging at his white lab coat. “How dare you—you, of all people—say that. I could’ve told your secret. I could still tell someone. But despite what you may think, I’m not a bad person. We do what we must, and if I were you, I would go back into that room and spend what time you and that girl have left together, together.”

  I bite my lip, nauseous all of a sudden, and I look over my shoulder to her room again. “How long . . .” I ask in a voice even I can barely hear.

  “Two days,” Dr. Hartigan says, and I can hear in his tone how angry he still is. “Maybe less. The rate of deterioration is . . . unusual, to say the least.”

  I choke. “Days?”

  After that, it’s all a blur.

  I remember turning, finding Derek there, not wondering how he made it to the hallway. I remember fighting him, as though he were the Blight and destroying him might make everything else make sense. But that’s the last image in my head—the rest is a series of sounds and sensations, none of which include sight.

  I know that I am in an elevator by the ringing it makes. I know that I am in Derek’s arms by the feel of the muscle just above his shoulder. I know that I am crying because my face is wet, and from the burning in my throat.

  25

  7:30 A.M., SUNDAY

  My eyes process nothing. I step down stairs without seeing stairs. I’m brought into a room I don’t remember entering. Only when I realize I’m not standing does it occur to me that I’m sitting. A dam, high and thick, divides me from the world.

  “Ren . . .” Derek’s voice is miles away, but it pulls me from myself.

  When my eyes shift into focus, things seem off. Like someone’s pressed the mute button on life and colored it in shades of gray. Looking around the small, stark space, I can piece together where he’s brought me by the objects, if not the colors. A corner mat. Cross-legged statues. Lit, floating candles under a small painting of a blue god. A cross. Stained glass windows. And rows of benches.

  The hospital sanctuary.

  How long my mind’s been gone, I can’t tell.

  He’s seated on the bench beside me, though I don’t have to look at him to know.

  Gently, he tips my chin and I have no choice. His eyes lock on mine. I notice how his finger is so close to my lip. “She’s lucky to have you, Ren,” he breathes, tone soft. “Whatever you’re feeling right now—guilt, or maybe you’re thinking you can do more for her . . . I hope you know how much you’ve already done.”

  “You’re wrong.” I force myself to look past him, over his shoulder. Sliding away, I sink lower into the pew. “There is more I can do.”

  He’ll think I’m talking about the surgery, but I’m not.

  Callum. I need to get to him. I need him to know that she doesn’t have much time.

  In some faraway corner of my mind, I remember that Dunn is having me followed. That I should be looking for another spring . . . but that doesn’t feel like what I should be doing. Not at all. I should be trying to get Aven a cure.

  I push myself to stand but my head goes black and dizzy—I stumble back onto the bench. Nothing works, none of my limbs will do as they’re told.

  “Drink—” Derek passes me the metal canteen from his belt. When I can’t find the energy to take it, he tilts the cool rim against my lips for me.

  My tongue is sandpaper in my mouth, after all that crying. I didn’t even realize it. My thirst don’t know the word “polite.” I chug and I chug until my breathing slows. The drinking forces me to relax. After I’ve downed half, I pull myself away.

  That right there just cost him three square meals of the nonpackaged variety.

  “Finish it.”

  I look at him, guilty, but I don’t argue. With a few more sips, my head begins to clear, like stripping dirt from a pane of glass. I wait for the world to hit me with its colors and sounds, but nothing happens. Everything is still at a distance. The glass might be cleaner, but my mind is off in a different room, numb.

  Derek takes the canteen, straps it back on his belt. />
  “How do you do it?” he asks, and rubs at the scruff along his jaw.

  “Do what?”

  “I called you reckless . . . ,” he says, and he watches my hand. Reaches for it. Turns it over, palm up. “All this time you hardly spoke about her. But that’s where your winnings would go each month, wouldn’t they? You’ve been taking care of her. Yourself.”

  I nod, barely.

  “So how do you do it?” he asks, my hand still in his. “Love someone who’s dying—so much so that, for them you’ve been willing to risk your own life, over and over again?” Derek shakes his head, and he has the same look I saw on Callum earlier after he noticed the scar.

  “What’s dying got to do with love?” I start to pull away, readying myself to stand again.

  “You’re hurting.” He tugs me back. Circles my wrist with his fingers, and I let him.

  My legs are not quite ready to carry the burden that is me. I’m still too numb, too exhausted.

  “Some hurt’s worth it,” I say, knowing I wouldn’t give up the past three years with Aven for anything.

  Curling his hand behind my neck, he brings my forehead to rest on his shoulder’s soft spot, while I wipe away fresh tears. They’ve started marching, slow, steady down each cheek. Derek reaches to catch one with a calloused finger. “She’s lucky to have you,” he tells me again.

  I brush my head against the soft cotton of his tee, noticing he hasn’t moved his finger from my cheek. “Maybe,” I answer. “But she’s my favorite part of life.”

  That’s when I feel him press his lips to my forehead.

  He lets them rest for longer than I understand and I freeze, confused. Everything is still happening through that glass pane; it feels so far away. Is this a kiss? I think. It could be—his lips are touching my skin—so I wait for some flutter, some something.

  But even my nerve endings have had the mute button pushed on them.

  “She’s worth the hurt,” he murmurs, repeating my words back to me.

  I pull away, try to look him in the eye. “You’re talking like you’ve never loved someone.” Derek refuses to meet my gaze.

  Instead, he palms the nape of my neck and twines my rough curls between his fingers, all the while looking down into his lap. One breathy, quick laugh, and he shakes his head. “I’m just jaded, I guess. I don’t want to be—but it happens. You get older. The heart gets tired of good-byes.”

  He sounds like me, back in the orphanage. Before Aven. I didn’t want to be friends with anyone. I knew I’d get left behind.

  Then, I feel a second kiss. Again, my forehead. Lighter this time.

  What is he doing? It’s over now—there’s Kitaneh to think about. He’ll pull away.

  But he doesn’t. He traces his lips down between my eyebrows, and I can feel his breath on my eyelashes. When he kisses me there—number three—I feel it. Low in my spine. A fizzy, bubbling itch.

  The fourth is different; it doesn’t meander, it has a destination. It lands on the bridge of my nose. I start to sink away, I’m not sure I can help myself.

  Five and six. My cheeks. One for each saltwater trail still left behind. Slowly, he turns Technicolor—I feel his bright lashes twice, and twice, I feel the fizzing current rippling up to my back.

  My body can only react.

  One by one my nerves . . . they’re waking up. They’re waking up to a world on fire, and they like it. I imagine the destination of seven. It makes my face flush hot.

  What am I doing? I want to leave, I have to leave, have to get to Callum’s. But I need to take this with me.

  I don’t wait. I come up on my knees and with both hands, cup the angles of his jaw. I let my fingers rest at his earlobes, graze his faded tattoo, and close my eyes. Before I can think, I draw his mouth to mine. Like we’ve done this a million times, he opens up to me and we’re breathing each other’s breath.

  Lips shouldn’t feel like this, like swimming through another’s body. It’s addictive, I could forget things this way. I press closer, wind my arms around his neck. He, in turn, grips me by the hips, hooks his fingers through my belt loops and tugs me into him.

  Derek wants me. . . . It’s a thrill, knowing that. Makes me bolder. We close all the open spaces between us, and I know my body has never needed before. I drink him like freshwater.

  Everywhere his hands move, my skin—even under my clothes—hums.

  And then, just as quickly . . .

  I do it—I riptide myself away from his body. “I’m sorry,” I mumble, and stagger to my feet. “I’ve got to go. I’m sorry. . . .” I don’t turn to look at his face as I run from the sanctuary. I don’t want to see.

  Aven. Aven. Aven. Her name is never far from sight. It circles my brain in an orbit, leads me no different from gravity.

  26

  8:00 A.M., SUNDAY

  I run for the main stairs, still warm in all the places Derek’s skin touched mine. Like there’s a burner left on, way under my skin, that I can’t turn off. I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to want to think about him. But my mind replays that moment, can’t let it go, and then it’s too late—

  A cold hand grips me from behind. Covers my mouth; I can’t yell. . . . The DI.

  Pure adrenaline pumps my legs alive. I try and shimmy myself out from his grasp, but it’s no use. Whoever’s behind me has got too strong of a grip. I try biting at the hand—no one likes that—but he’s immune to the charms of a slimy tongue.

  What will Chief do to me?

  So he can cuff my hands with his own, he says, “Let’s not make a scene, Dane,” as he frees my mouth.

  Now that his hands are off my face, I’m better able to have a look at him, but there are no surprises: cropped hair, blue fatigues, silver five-pointed star pinned to his breast pocket. I’m just glad it ain’t the chief.

  Something tells me he wouldn’t be going so easy on me.

  The agent hauls me through unfamiliar corridors, all the way up the stairwell. When there are no more stairs to climb—we have to be at the rooftop—he opens one last door. Pushes me into open air.

  I’m instantly blinded by the sun bouncing white-hot over the roof’s metal drainage system. Behind me, the agent doesn’t care that I’m tripping on every damn steel pipe up here. My feet stumble, he jolts me back, only to throw me forward. By the time my eyes adjust to the light, we’re dead center of the roof, and he’s opening a door.

  A door to a house made of glass.

  “It is . . . quite incredible, is it not?” I hear a man say, but see nobody.

  I blink, and I blink, and I blink again, and even if I couldn’t see, I would know—my cells are buzzing, they can feel it: there’s magic in this place. Not fairy-tale magic . . . more like the magic of being alive with something built by the world, not by its people.

  My eyes don’t know what to do with all the green. They’ve never seen so much of the color in all my sixteen years.

  Leaves. Branches and branches of them. Branches attached to trunks, planted in soil, all growing roots. Right here. Right under my feet.

  Trees.

  I bring my hand to my mouth, gasp out loud, and then realize I’m able to. The agent—gone, already.

  “I hope you know how privileged you should feel to be here—the arboretum is for staff use only, naturally.”

  Vaguely, like I’ve missed the cue but my body hasn’t, I notice my heart pushing out blood faster than it should. And the hairs on the back of my neck stand higher, even though I hear no threat in the voice.

  I turn around to watch him approach—an older man. His feet lazy, unhurried, as he walks the stone path that must wind through the structure. I’m sure I’ve never met him before, but he has a familiar face. When he’s feet away, he motions to the tree at the center of the building with a bench that circles its base.

  “Do have a seat,” he says, and I listen. Find myself holding the wooden planks beneath my palms. They have a different feel to them than the boardwalk plank
s, I don’t know how.

  It occurs to me to be scared. But this place . . . how can I be scared in this place?

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asks, lowering himself onto the bench next to me.

  When I look at him more closely, something about his features brings to mind that night at Derek’s—the autoupdate. I see a hardness, a gaunt line to his cheekbones. This man can’t be him, though. . . .

  He can’t be the governor. “Are you . . . ?”

  Crossing his legs and extending an arm, “These last nine years, yes. Governor Voss. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Dane.” He takes my hand in his and gives it a firm shake. At his neck, I see the K-dot, white and just applied.

  Soon he releases my hand; I’m holding on to the planks again, my life raft.

  “All of these trees are different, you know?” the governor says quietly, pointing around the arboretum. “With different names. Properties, too. Medicinal, some of them.”

  The way he says that, so pointed . . . It’s like he knows.

  “This one,” he says as he tugs down a branch from overhead, “is called a hemlock. Natives who once occupied this territory ate the bark.” Ripping off a few of its leaves—needly, dark things—he then opens my hand and drops them there.

  I close my fist around all the greenness. Aven would love to see them. But she’s downstairs, barely living. The needles prick at my palm, so I let them go.

  I turn to face the governor. He must know that Chief Dunn canceled the surgery. He must.

  “What brings you to Ward Hope Hospital?” he asks me, brushing off his hands. “I already know the girl, Aventine Colatura, is a patient, but that’s not what I am asking.”

  Through the dotted green I can see the glass roof, and past that, sky. A twinge at my stomach tells me to be careful what I say. This place is beautiful, but he’s brought me here for a reason. On the day of a riot erupting on the West Isle, the governor crossed the Strait to speak to me.

  “What do you mean, sir?” I ask, keeping my voice soft.

  Governor Voss waves his hand. “I mean, who is this girl to you?”