Before She Sleeps

by Bina Shah

  “She saved me. She taught me everything. The procreation schedules. The fertility testing. You pump us full of hormones and expect us to produce children as if we’re cows. With each new baby, a new hope for Green City and South West Asia is born.”

  “It’s not like that. We preserve your dignity and your respect. Without this, you’d be bought and sold on the open market, like slaves.”

  “Don’t you see? We already are.” She frowned, as if he had given her a gift she didn’t like. “But as I said, there’s one crime you didn’t write about in your Handbook. You weren’t so clever after all.”

  He wished she would stop saying you, as if he was the one who had come up with everything. “What crime is that?”

  “Refusal.”

  “What?”

  She lifted her chin. “I refuse to be part of your system. Arrest me for that, if you have to.”

  Just then a lock of auburn hair escaped the veil and fell down to her shoulder. An urge seized him to wind it around his hand and pull her head back to expose the lines of her throat, then trace the vein in her neck with his fingers. He didn’t know what force compelled him forward, but he pressed his mouth against hers long and hard. She strained against him, but he could not stop himself. After a moment, it seemed that neither could she. He kissed her angrily, greedily, as she shivered in his arms.

  The kiss hurt as much as it helped, bruising their lips and knocking their teeth together. He thrust his hands under her veil without refinement or control, feeling the contours of her body from shoulders to hips as she pressed her legs all the way down the lengths of his own.

  Reuben drove up to Joseph’s apartment building and immediately spotted Sabine lying on the ground. A curse escaped his lips. She was on her stomach, her black cloak obscuring the upper part of her body, her arms and legs bent, a broken doll, not a girl. What on earth did Lin think he’d be able to do for her? Sleeping with Lin was one thing, but helping a woman of the Panah once above ground was collaboration, something for which he would not avoid censure. The Agency would never spare him for the crime of interfering with their self-designed order. Such a transgression, even for him, would be fatal. For an Agency official, or a Leader, collaboration was worse than reluctance, rebellion, and revolt put together. Collaboration equaled treason, and there was no coming back from that.

  But there was something about the girl’s body that made him feel uneasy, as if he’d unwittingly had a hand in bringing her to this point. If he left her there, she’d be discovered by someone else, and they’d follow the trail all the way back to Lin. He had to take her right now; he’d figure out the next step once she was somewhere safe.

  He angled the car so that she was shielded by it as he pulled the emergency brakes and threw open the door. A glance up and down the street revealed nobody else, though any moment the robot cleaners would come trundling down the street with their chemical blasts and hygiene fumigators. Joseph resided in a high-security, low-crime neighborhood; early-morning Agency patrols occurred less frequently than in the more populous areas of Green City. Although it was never publicly stated, to better maintain the illusion that all Green City residents were safer because they were always watched. Not a soul lurked in the doorway of Joseph’s building, but someone might still be spying on him behind one of the reflective blue windows of the high-rise tower.

  Reuben hurled himself out of his seat, ran a few paces, and crouched over Sabine. He pulled the veil off her, revealing her face. At first glance he could tell that she was lovely, but her pallor was alarming. He lifted her and carried her quickly to the car, trying to be gentle. If he had a daughter, he’d want the world to be gentle with her, too.

  In a moment she was inside on the back seat. The car engine hummed a strange lullaby for the girl. Reuben was alarmed by her lifeless face, her closed eyes, her head lolling back. He raised her arms and tried to tuck her head in between them, then he straightened her tunic, uncomfortable with her naked back showing. He had at least to give her some dignity.

  Reuben climbed into the driver’s seat. He set course for Shifana Hospital, then erased the route. He’d drive without navigation; he knew the way well enough, and it wasn’t far from here. And there was someone there who he thought might come in useful in helping him make sure Sabine was all right, before he took her back to the Panah, if he could. He glanced in the rearview mirror to check on the girl. Her chest seemed to rise and fall, although whether due to her breath or the vibrations of the car, he couldn’t be sure.

  He gunned the engine, driving the accelerator almost down to the floor. Only after he pulled away from the curb, leaving the streets of Joseph’s colony far behind, did he remember her black veil still lying like a shroud on the pavement where she fell.

  Part 3

  Revolt

  From The Official Green City Handbook for Female Citizens

  The use of contraceptives is strictly prohibited in Green City. Anyone caught trying to buy or sell, deal in, or trade any substances used to prevent or end pregnancy will be dealt with severely by the Perpetuation Bureau. All citizens are charged with the duty of aiding any and all pregnancies to go to full term; every new baby is a new hope for Green City. By the same token, abortions are forbidden in all South West Asian territories. Under no circumstances will any pregnancy be terminated at any stage. Anyone caught trying to procure an abortion, for herself or others, will feel the full wrath of Green City’s authority. Order brought us out of the near-collapse of our nation, but chaos is a danger to the future of Green City. The authorities consider anything that harms an unborn child no less than treason against the state. Beware of those who urge you to revolt against Green City; they cannot be trusted, and you, no matter how young, will receive the same punishment as your cohorts.

  Sabine

  Standing is uncomfortable; walking requires more effort. I plan each step carefully to minimize the jolt it sends up my spine. Julien tells me I’m lucky: I haven’t lost as much blood as he’d feared, which will make my recovery faster.

  “We’ve pumped you full of bio-healers and chemical endorphins. It’s a cocktail of drugs and natural hormones that stimulates the body into repairing itself,” explains Julien, like a professor. I nod gravely at him as if I’ve understood him, when in reality I’m still dazed by everything that’s happened to me so far.

  At first, even getting up out of bed is agony, but I push myself and make it to my feet. Then I attempt a few steps from the bed, only to collapse back into it. After a few tries, I reach the bathroom and back. Again, again, again, five times an hour, as much as I can bear the weight on my legs. Julien says the drugs work better if I keep my circulation going: my heart will pump all the drugs to all the right receptors in my brain. Right now my heart is trying to dig its way out of my ribcage.

  Finally, I make it all the way to the window, a distance of about six feet, and stand there, trembling with weakness. For the first time I realize the room is at a great height; at least thirty stories above ground. I’ve never been so high before—Green City’s skyscrapers are built for the rich and powerful, and we crawl close to the earth. I didn’t know people could live this high and perform all their functions without the ground underneath to steady them.

  Dizziness strikes when I peer down at the rows of houses. Maybe we’re closer to forty stories. The windows are polarized; they keep changing color with the ambient light and the sun’s journey across the sky. Right now they’re turning everything outside to notes of blue and green and soft gray, taking the glare away so I can look at everything without squinting. The solar panels are catching the brilliant early morning light even though the sky hasn’t yet taken on the punishing white heat of the daytime. The buildings form grids intersected by neat roads ribboning away towards the sea, the cars traveling on them small bullets moving in all directions. I’m calmed by looking out at the sea, a flat sheet of deep blue in the distance, and
I feel as though I’m in an airplane, moving quickly over the rippling greenish-blue waves massaging the shore.

  I sleep for most of the first day. The next day, just as the room lights are beginning to turn midday bright, Julien comes to my room. My thoughts are surprisingly focused; the dull fuzz of the anesthetic has worn away and the nausea’s died with it. I can recognize my surroundings immediately, as well as the thin tall man who stands there before me, holding a tray of food that he’s sneaked out from the hospital kitchens.

  “It’s my lunch. I hope you like fish.”

  The aroma of grilled fish provokes in me a strong, gnawing hunger, as well as a distant memory of being at the seaside with my parents when I was five or six, eating spiced fish out of wrapped banana leaves. My hand goes instinctively to my belly, pressing down: someone has replaced the gauze with a small, lightweight bandage while I’ve been sleeping. I feel raw, scraped out, but the incision is already halfway healed; all that really remains is tiredness and a heaviness over my stomach, and this new sensitivity, as if I’ve been stripped of my outermost layer of skin.

  “It’s all right for you to eat now, Julia,” Julien says, as I hesitate. “It won’t hurt you.”

  I don’t like it, his ability to discern my innermost thoughts as easily as he takes my temperature. “What about you? I don’t want to deprive you of your meal.”

  “There’s enough for both of us. They always try to fatten me up. They think I’m starving to death.”

  “We’ll share, then. I’m not that hungry.” I am, actually, but in my state of confusion and discomfort, I find myself craving companionship and kindness.

  I pull myself out of the bed, rearrange my hospital gown with as much dignity as I can, and shuffle like an old woman to the sofa under the window, where we sit side by side, not quite touching, but he’s close enough that the warmth of his skin radiates against my bare arm.

  We eat in silence. The food is unmemorable, the fish slightly cold and rubbery, the vegetables an indescribable color halfway between orange and brown, the rice overcooked. It’s my first solid meal in seventy-two hours. Nevertheless, it is delicious.

  Before this day, I’ve never set foot in a hospital. Whatever small illnesses we suffer in the Panah, we treat ourselves. We’re young and strong; none of us has to deal with grave problems. When it comes time for me to die, Lin’s brisk efficiency will see me placed in the small crematorium at the end of the garden and incinerated within an hour of my death. Where I go after that doesn’t matter much to me.

  I watch Julien’s fingers as he holds his fork, scooping up his half of the fish and the congealed vegetables expertly. I can tell that he’s used to wolfing down these institutional meals. It strikes me that his hands have been inside my body, a fact about which he seems completely unembarrassed. I remind myself that I am just another body in the lineup of bodies that he deals with every day. But does he sit side by side with those other bodies, eating calmly and turning his head to look out the window, his face softening as he looks out on the city and the sea?

  I’ve never really spent any time with a man of my age before. I could have had a brother like him. Or a Husband. Or even a lover, although I bat away the thought as quickly as it comes to me. When Julien meets my eyes, he blushes, and I realized that for all his talents as a doctor, he has no idea what to do with me, now that he’s saved my life. I want to reach out and touch his face, to warm my fingertips against his flaming skin.

  Julien looks around at the room, observing its corners and features, his eyes bright with interest. “It’s a VIP room,” he says eventually. “This part of the hospital isn’t operational yet. That’s why there’s so much furniture in here. If you were a regular patient you’d be on a ward, with others. If you were a man, that is,” he adds carefully.

  I exhale slowly. We are beginning, at last. “How did I get here?”

  “I was waiting for you tell me that, Julia.”

  I look down at the single red dot where he put a needle into the vein on the back of my left hand only a few hours ago. “I don’t know anything. I can’t remember.” It’s true. I can’t remember what happened after I went to Joseph’s apartment.

  He tilts his head away from me, examining me with a sidelong gaze, perhaps as sharp as one of his surgeon’s tools. “Well then, let me explain. Someone drove up in a car and dumped you outside the hospital like a corpse. You would have died if we’d gotten to you just ten minutes later. My question is: Who would do such a thing to you? Where were your Husbands?” His voice cracks on the word Husbands.

  Again, that dreaded assumption that I’m a normal Wife of Green City. I want to escape as fast as possible. How can I run, though, from this wretched room, this wretched hospital, when my body now feels as though it’s made of different parts and pieces sewn together by him, guarded by the machines, and owned by this hospital itself?

  “I couldn’t have been pregnant …” My voice sounds small to my own ears.

  Julien says, “I didn’t keep any of the ultrasound images; I had to delete them. The recordings of the procedure I performed on you, too. Or else I would show you that you were definitely pregnant.”

  “Why?” I say. I need proof if I’m to believe his crazy story. “Why did you have to delete them?”

  “I had to make sure there was no evidence. Otherwise I’d have had to report the whole thing. How you got here. What kind of shape you were in. What we did for you.” He runs his hand through his hair, not for the first time. I’m beginning to recognize it as a sign of his nervousness.

  “And then they’d come find me,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Not just you. They’d take me away, and all the nurses that helped me. There were three of them. I can’t believe they all agreed to keep quiet about this, but they have. For now.”

  “So if it’s so dangerous, why did you help me? You wouldn’t have had to take any risks. You wouldn’t have to answer any questions afterward, or get rid of the evidence. You’d be safe. Why do you care so much what happens to me?”

  He answers with spirit, “I wasn’t trained to let anyone die on the side of the road like a stray dog.” He pulls on his hair so hard I’m amazed clumps of it don’t come away in his hands. He’s fidgeting, breathing heavily through his nose. But his eyes are intense, fixed on mine, and in that moment I believe him utterly.

  Still, dare I trust him? I’ve never heard of anyone in Green City acting unselfishly, putting someone else’s safety ahead of his own. “But that’s against the rules.”

  “I know. Well, we’ll see what happens. For better or worse, we’re in this together now.”

  I stand up abruptly in a show of strength to conceal the turmoil inside. “I have to use the toilet.” A cramp ripples across my belly and I grit my teeth, my vision blurred with tears of pain and confusion.

  “Do you need my help?”

  I use his offered arm to push myself away from him. “I can do it myself. Don’t look at me,” I add, and am pleased to see him flinch.

  He averts his eyes as I wobble to the small door of the bathroom cabin. Once inside, I lock the door behind me, lower myself down to the toilet. Relief is slow to come, stopping and starting, causing pain deep in my pelvis.

  I think back desperately to every assignation, every Client. I’ve been obsessing over it all the time—those men the only explanation I have for Julien’s wild assertions. But no matter how many times I go through the lists, the names, visualize their faces, nothing clicks. The answer’s not going to come to me like this. Maybe I’m just imagining it so this impossible scenario makes sense somehow.

  Grinding my teeth, I rip a piece of toilet paper off the roll on the wall and shred it to pieces, throwing them on the floor. The toilet flushes itself, and my heart skitters along uneven beats. I have to touch my face to reassure myself that I’m still here, alive, if not whole.

  A voi
ce calls out through the door. “Are you all right, Julia?”

  “Yes.” I unlock the door and go back to the room. Julien is standing at the window gazing at the sea, his back turned to me, as I’d requested. I walk slowly over to him and we stand side by side, looking in the same direction at the tall wind turbines, sentinels guarding the coastline against an enemy that might never come. We’re just like them, but we know the enemy is going to come, sooner or later.

  I lower myself down to the sofa. “So I was pregnant.” How hard it is to say the taboo word; in the Panah, we never talk about it, as if mention of the word is enough to bring about conception. I can’t look Julien in the eyes.

  “About five weeks, maybe six, yes.”

  “And it went wrong. So you had to take it out.”

  “I had to remove the fallopian tube, where the pregnancy had implanted itself. It’s not supposed to do that.” His tone is kind, but still professorial, a little condescending, as if he’s explaining things to a child.

  I’m struggling to not cry. “Why didn’t you ask me?”

  “I would have obtained your permission if you were conscious. But I didn’t have a choice. You would have died.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “It’s a medical fact. It’s one of those unfortunate risks of pregnancy. I know it’s a tough burden for women to bear.” He shrugs, then he sits down next to me again on the couch. “Did your Husbands know?”

  “I didn’t even know,” I say, needing to make it very clear to him that all of this is a lot more complicated than he thinks.

  He nods. “Sexual reproduction is far from perfect. But considering our circumstances, these days, it’s all we have, really.”