by Bina Shah
She’d thought they were escaping the system, but when it came down to it, she’d still had to ask Reuben for help. Truth be told, she was as dependent on a man as if she’d been married to one. For the first time, Lin broke down and wept freely. She wondered if she should turn herself in to the Agency before she slipped under the waterline of sanity.
At last, many hours later, the return message from Reuben finally arrived, the notification sending a jolt straight to her heart: “Located bird. All well. More later.”
Her fingers hovered over the device, but the words wouldn’t come to her head. She slammed her hand down on the desk, then screamed out in frustration and pain. Damn him! Why couldn’t he tell her any more than that? Didn’t he know she needed every detail from beginning to end? This was his way of keeping her under control, in breathless anticipation of his next message.
As she searched frantically for the right response, she heard a noise coming from the other side of the door. Damn them, she’d told them not to disturb her. She pushed her chair back from the desk, ignoring the ugly squeal as its legs scraped across the floor. When she reached her full height her head struck the Moroccan lamp overhead, sending it into a wild orbit that threw a kaleidoscope of stars jittering back and forth across the walls.
She threw open the door: nothing there. But she hadn’t imagined the noise. She was about to close the door and turn back into the room when she heard the noise again, coupled with a shadow crossing the wall across the door. She slipped out of her room to track it, followed it all the way down the hall, past the kitchen, and then toward Sabine’s door. Lin flattened herself against the wall, listening to the muffled sound of a hand trying out the handle cautiously against the electronic lock Lin had activated an hour ago.
Lin stood and waited until the woman turned around. She slowly met Rupa’s beautiful brown eyes, full of shock and fear.
“What are you doing?” asked Lin.
“Nothing.”
“Why were you trying to go into Sabine’s room? Answer me.”
“I wasn’t doing anything, I was just worried about Sabine, I came here to see if I could help, do anything …”
Something slipped just then from Rupa’s grasp, landed with a metallic thunk on the floor, and rolled towards Lin’s feet.
Lin bent down to pick it up. She held it up to the dim light of the corridor. It was Sabine’s flask, the one that Lin filled with tea and sent to her in the car every time she came home from a night with a Client. She turned it around in her hands, feeling its weight and circumference. It was still full; the mixture sloshing inside took on a new significance, now that Sabine was missing.
“Why do you have this, Rupa? It belongs to Sabine.”
Faces, stretched and pale, appeared in the gloom of the corridor: Diyah, Su-Yin, a few of the other girls. Lin searched for Sabine’s face among them, then remembered again that she was gone. “What are you doing with this?”
Rupa whispered, “It was in the car. I was washing it.”
“Why? It’s not your job to wash it.” She waved the flask threateningly in Rupa’s face; Rupa flinched and reflexively lifted her arms to protect herself.
“Please don’t … please, Lin. I came here to tell you something. It’s about Sabine.”
Lin moved only her eyes, but her sidelong glance made Diyah and the other women step back hastily. They’d all known fear and anger in their lives, but none of them had ever seen Lin like this, her features twisted with a fury they could not relate to the poised, dignified woman they knew.
“Go away,” Lin said to the other women, without looking at them. They skittered away like birds startled by a gunshot. She didn’t care where they went, what they would talk about among themselves. She needed to concentrate on Rupa right now.
Rupa sat on her haunches, her hands resting in her lap, the position of the penitent. Lin realized that she had never understood this girl, haunted by ghosts that she could not exorcise. Rupa had chosen to carry her secrets inside her skin, where they ate into her and poisoned her from the inside out. She mumbled over and over again something that Lin couldn’t make out.
“What did you say?”
“It’s my fault.”
“What?”
“It’s my fault Sabine’s gone. This happened because of me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Joseph. He’s in love with Sabine …”
“I know that. What does that have to do with you?”
Rupa raised her head to look at Lin, her rich, beautiful eyes red with embers of fear. “He’s crazy about Sabine, but she hates him, and he knows it. He asked me what to do, and I wanted to help.”
“I don’t understand. How were you supposed to help?”
“He wanted me to tell him how to make him like her. I told him to give her a drink and see if it helped her relax around him.”
“What do you mean, a drink?”
“You know, something with alcohol. Her assignations with Joseph would go better if she was more …”
“But she doesn’t drink!”
“I know. I told him not to get her drunk. I didn’t think it would do any harm.”
And then suddenly, Lin remembered. The drug. Sleep, the one Reuben had given her, that she’d been administering to Sabine. His warning that it wasn’t supposed to be mixed with alcohol.
Lin forced herself to think hard. Sabine only drank from the flask of tea when she was in the car, returning from a Client. But if the drug had been in her system over the weeks Lin had been putting it in the tea—oh God, what if she’d been giving Sabine too much? If Joseph had given her alcohol, could it have made Sabine sick? Could it have killed her, or was it more likely just to render her unconscious? Lin shuddered thinking about what Joseph might have done to Sabine, vulnerable and insensate.
Lin put her hand out to the wall to steady herself. “When did this happen?” she asked Rupa. “When did you tell him to do this?”
Rupa said, “My last visit to Joseph. A couple of months ago. I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I only wanted to help, I promise.”
Lin stared at Rupa. The girl’s words were an echo of her own thoughts. She’d been so worried seeing Sabine night after sleepless night, her cheeks drawn and dry with lack of sleep. Lin made so many decisions over the course of the day to safeguard the women of the Panah, over so many years. Sabine’s stubborn refusal to accept anyone’s help for her insomnia had irked Lin more than she liked to admit. She was no better than any Bureau worker, exercising her dominion over Sabine’s body. But now she knew she’d miscalculated. She should never have experimented like that with a drug without Sabine’s knowing.
Rupa was still talking, unaware of Lin’s inner tumult: “I thought she’d enjoy Joseph’s company more if she was less stressed about being with him. It’s not easy to do what we do, you know. It helps if a Client is—well, if you like the Client. And Sabine doesn’t like her Clients. She isn’t like me: she’s not as friendly as I am … or as open-minded.”
Lin heard the words through the fog in her head, and something in them made her realize that Rupa, too, had lived among them while not truly wanting to be there. Her heart had never been with them in the first place.
Whenever young women climbed down into the elevator shaft and knocked on the door of the Panah, they were always high on adrenaline, euphoric with triumph at having escaped. Their eyes shone and their skin glowed. It took a few days, maybe a week, for the high to wear off. Then the realization crept into their minds that their lives had been bisected by their escape into before and after. There would always be a date in each woman’s mind to mark the death of everything they’d known before entering the Panah. What came, usually after a few weeks, was a deep depression as the women came to terms with where they were now, as well as the constraints of life underground, the rules and the regulations of Panah
life. Those, like Diyah, who did well accepted where they were and tried to make the best of it, choosing to turn the date of arrival into a second birthday, a second chance. Once a woman was at the Panah, she was granted sanctuary for the rest of her life—if she wanted it.
But clearly Rupa had never really wanted this. She had come to the Panah by force. No wonder she’d held so little regard for its structure and rules. In her mind, she was only waiting for the day that she could leave the Panah and never come back.
“Come with me, Rupa.”
Lin took Rupa’s hand and pulled her down the corridor and into her own room. She prodded Rupa into the middle of the room and made her stand there while she checked her device again for news from Reuben. She already knew there would be nothing, but she couldn’t stop herself from pressing the device over and over, hoping that if she tried enough, a response would miraculously appear.
Her eye caught the tiny memory slip, resting in a small receptacle at the edge of her desk. Rupa’s diary! She’d put it there, meaning to confront Rupa after having worked out a rational response to its contents, but things had happened too quickly after Sabine’s disappearance.
Rupa’s words came tumbling into her mind again: “He was so good to me. So kind and gentle. And when it was over, he kept touching my nose pin and telling me how beautiful it made me look. Like a Gedrosian princess.” In light of everything that had happened, the words had new weight; they felt like murder instead of betrayal. Lin was certain now that Rupa had slept with Joseph and had sent Sabine to him for the same purpose. Either he was paying her, or she was getting some obscene feeling of power out of pimping herself and then Sabine to the same man. The very thought made Lin recoil in disgust. But Lin’s own guilt was clamoring at her now, whispering that she was the one truly responsible for Sabine’s disappearance. Not Rupa. Not Joseph.
She turned around to face Rupa, who was sitting on the floor, one knee up, her face hidden in the crook of her elbow. “You had sex with Joseph.” It was not a statement, but an accusation, savage and furious.
Rupa lifted her head, her eyes wide. “No!”
“I read it. In your diary.”
“What diary?”
Lin held up the memory slip to the light in front of Rupa’s face. “You should be more careful with what’s precious to you.”
It took Rupa a moment to focus on the tiny slip, but then her face darkened. “That was mine. You had no right …”
“You slept with him. And then you thought you’d give Sabine to him. I don’t know what kind of sick game the two of you thought up, but …”
“No, you’re wrong. I swear, I didn’t sleep with Joseph.”
“The truth? What is the truth to a Gedrosian princess?”
Lin expected Rupa to flinch, but to her surprise, a small, rueful smile crossed Rupa’s face. “That was someone else, not Joseph,” she said.
“Who, then?” Lin crossed the room and sat down next to Rupa. “Tell me. Sabine could be dead because of you.” Because of me, she thought.
The girl winced when Lin reached out to her, expecting a blow, but Lin held Rupa’s chin in her fingers and turned the girl’s face gently towards her. The nose ring sat delicately in the fold of her skin, the diamond mocking Lin and all her illusions about her role in these women’s lives.
“It was Le Birman.”
“Le Birman?” For a moment the name made no sense to Lin. Then she remembered: he was the head of a pharmaceutical company, a widower, innocuous. She’d even asked Reuben to check him out before she’d added him to her list of Clients. “The businessman?”
Rupa nodded. “He was kind to me. I wanted to know what it was like, and he was willing to show me. But he told me he was still in love with his wife, who died a long time ago, so I shouldn’t get any ideas. Lin? What does this have to do with Sabine? Do you think Joseph hurt her? I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Lin tapped her device to quickly check her records. The Client called Le Birman had asked for Rupa on three different nights in the last eight months or so. He was reluctant to talk, or to leave many messages, but he’d always paid for each assignation promptly and generously. Lin had studied him thoroughly, had even asked Reuben to run a security check on him. Reuben had said he was no threat: a businessman whose wife had died of the Virus, like so many women. Rupa would be safe in his hands.
Lin needed to think coolly and calmly, to get her mind around all the new information. She still wasn’t sure if Rupa was being honest. She let out a long, slow breath and touched Rupa’s nose ring with her forefinger. “This is so beautiful. Strange how I never saw that before. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, Rupa. And I’m sorry for all of them. But please, if we’re going to help Sabine, you have to tell me the truth about Joseph and Le Birman, about everything. I promise I won’t be angry anymore.”
Julien
Julien sprinted to Bouthain’s office, the muscles in his calves and thighs burning as he ran in long, desperate strides. He’d hated leaving Sabine lying there alone, but if he didn’t get to Bouthain, someone would alert Security and have them all arrested as soon as she was discovered. Julien would plead for a misdemeanor charge, arguing that he was a doctor, in the business of helping first, asking questions later. But god knows what the Agency would do to Sabine if they found her. Bouthain’s sympathy, if not his permission—he would certainly not give his blessing, Julien wasn’t naïve enough to imagine that, but he could promise to look the other way—might buy them a little more time.
Bouthain’s office was at the top of the building in a skyway that connected two wings of the building. He perched up there like a bird, keeping an eye on everything that happened down below. The room was simple and sparse, brightly lit. On one side of his wide desk was a bank of displays showing him different scenes of the hospital: he surveyed the operating theaters, the busy wards, the consulting clinics, and even the men trooping in and out of the staff rooms throughout the day. From his vantage point Bouthain could see if a doctor was sleeping too much, and make a note to have the doctor evaluated for depression. He could tell if a patient was being cared for properly or mistreated by the night staff, and he reprimanded or commended the supervisor accordingly.
He was standing at the window, looking up into the sky, when Julien burst into his office without knocking.
“What on earth—Dr. Asfour?”
“I’m … sorry …” Julien pushed the words out with effort, then bent over and clutched his knees, gasping for air. “Didn’t want to … disturb you …” He’d neglected his body during his medical training and his work at the hospital; there was never time to exercise, once meetings, rounds, clinic, and more meetings had eaten up most of his day.
“Is it an emergency? Tell me quickly.”
Bouthain had an unwritten rule: any doctor could interrupt Bouthain’s office time if a medical emergency presented itself and Bouthain’s assistance was needed. The medical emergency for Sabine was over, but Reuben’s threat had catapulted both of them into danger again. But how to tell Bouthain about Sabine? Where to begin?
“Dr. Bouthain, I … I’ve done something terribly wrong. Promise me you’ll hear me out until the end, and then you can discipline me, or kick me out if you want to. But please, I need your help.” His voice had risen as he shrank in both age and stature. He was no longer a junior doctor consulting with his superior; he was a desperate boy begging his father to step in and fix his mistakes before it was too late. Taking in Sabine, helping her, reporting none of it: he didn’t even know if there was any way to fix everything he’d done wrong.
Bouthain regarded Julien for a moment with an inscrutable expression. Then he went over to the display bank and waved his hand across it. All the displays instantly turned black. When he spoke, his voice was low and hoarse. “Is this about the woman in Room 3214? The unfinished floor?”
Julien blanched. �
��How do you know?”
“I saw her,” Bouthain said, simply.
“I tried to be careful,” said Julien. “I erased everything. Did I forget something? Did you get an alert?”
“No. I was working late two nights ago, and I went down to the reception to look for someone on the night shift I needed to speak to. I couldn’t find him. I was passing by the storeroom on my way back to the elevator. That’s when I saw her in there. I hid myself around a corner until she came out, and then I followed her up to the thirty-second floor. You were there, too.” Bouthain paused. “Playing doctor after hours, were you?”
Julien blushed. Bouthain was long rumored by the doctors to be superhuman: he could discern many hidden things about patients just by sizing them up with those pale gray eyes of his, half hidden by heavy, white-fringed eyelids that hid and revealed them like the blinking of an owl. “Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you report me?”
Bouthain shrugged. “Not until I spoke to you. I was just waiting for you to come and tell me. It wouldn’t have been fair. So who is she?”
The nights of disturbed sleep, the tension-filled days, and the fear and worry all gathered into a mass that hit at Julien’s knees, and he staggered. Before he knew what was happening, Bouthain was leading him to a chair and pressing a glass of water into his hands.
Julien felt thankful for the shelter of Bouthain’s momentary tolerance. Usually, when something was wrong, everyone rushed immediately to the authorities. People feared anything that would implicate them; they needed to announce their innocence as loudly as they proclaimed another’s guilt. Bouthain’s kindness made Julien want to clasp the man’s hands in his own and kiss them in gratitude. Instead, he put his arms around Bouthain and hugged him hard. Bouthain seemed nonplussed, but he held Julien for a few moments, then pushed him away.
