by S. L. Naeole
“Yeah,” I answered, following her.
She was old, but she was quick. Her spotted legs moved her quickly to the passenger side, and she flung open the door with one hand while shaking open the sheet with the other. She covered Audrey as if she were a mattress, quickly tucking in the corners of the sheet around her feet and head so that no part of her could be seen.
With each touch, Audrey snarled, but she was in too much pain to do anything else. Dr. Phan reached into her pocket and pulled out the small bottle. She inserted the syringe into its cap and then pulled back on the plunger. I’d seen this repeated so many times that I could probably do it myself if I knew that it wouldn’t hurt Audrey.
But it did. That small needle prick in her arm must have felt like fire. She roared. I was afraid that one of the trogs would hear and come, curious about the sound and what we were doing. But, in less than a minute she was quiet, and Dr. Phan made room for me so that I could carry her into the clinic.
“Put her on the last bed,” the woman told me as I walked toward the curtain. She flipped over a small sign, telling everyone outside that the clinic was closed, and then opened a cabinet filled with bags and boxes of medical supplies. “What happened this time?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, surprised. It wasn’t the truth, but it felt like the truth. It came out so easily, it might as well have been the truth. “She was with this human girl when I got to the house. The girl was screaming for help. Audrey was on top of her.”
“She didn’t see what happened, did she? She didn’t see Audrey change?”
“No.” Again, it sounded like the truth. It felt like the truth. But was it the truth?
“Well, good. I don’t want to have to explain another missing person on this island.”
Dr. Phan unwrapped Audrey, the fur on her arms and face already starting to fall off in clumps as the stress began to take its toll. White foam clung to the corners of her mouth, and her tongue – half human, short and fat, and half Panthus, long and thin – hung out limply over her teeth and lips, pale as sand.
“It’s bad,” the doctor said as she began to shave away a spot in Audrey’s arm to put in an IV. “She’s feverish and she’s molting. I need to get fluids in her now and I need to cool her off. Go to your grandmother’s place and get me some ice. Lots of it.”
“You’re gonna freeze her?” I asked, shocked at the idea of covering my sister in ice like she was some stupid fish.
“No, you stupid boy, I’m going to cool her down. Now, are you gonna stand there and ask me stupid questions while your sister dies or are you gonna get me that ice?”
I wanted to claw out her eyes and eat them for that comment, but she was right, and that’s why my hands did nothing but follow me into the truck. It was still running, the smell of the exhaust masking the smell of my fear. It took several minutes for me to get to the restaurant, and I stopped the truck in the middle of the road. I ran into the place named after my mom, shoving the trogs aside and rushing into the kitchen where my grandma was busy plating up some fish sausages.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she shouted at me, her hand holding a hot, oil-covered spatula.
“It’s Audrey,” I said breathlessly as I began shoveling ice into whatever containers I could find.
That was all I needed to say. Ignoring the plates of food and the sizzling of frying fish, she started lugging plastic bins full of ice to the back of the waiting truck. She ignored the complaints of her customers and didn’t stop until all of the ice from the restaurant was in the truck bed, already melting underneath the hot summer sun.
“You make her better,” was all she said to me before disappearing back into the restaurant to deal with the angry crowd that had begun to gather inside.
The short trip back to the clinic felt like a marathon. Crowds of trogs were walking from one side of the road to the other. I shouted at them to move, but no one walked any faster. No one hurried up. No one even looked at me.
“Get the hell out of the way, you damn trogs!”
It did no good. I couldn’t run them all over so I just waited, each second ticking by another second where I hated them even more. I was so full of rage by the time I reached the clinic, it took every ounce of control I had to keep from tearing out Dr. Phan’s heart just for being one of them.
“I’ve done everything I can,” she said when she saw me, taking one of the containers of ice that I had in my hands and quickly dumping it all over Audrey’s body. “I’ve given her the shot and something for the pain. The ice should bring down her fever. You did get more ice than this, didn’t you?”
Nodding, I left the containers of ice near the bed and went back to the truck, repeating this until I’d emptied the truck bed. I then helped Dr. Phan dump container after container of ice over my sister’s body until there was nothing left and our feet were swimming in what was quickly melting onto the floor.
“Now what?” I asked nervously.
“We wait. Sit there, if you want. But we wait,” came the stiff reply. “You know how this works. If she wakes up before the sun goes down, there’s a good chance she’ll be okay. If she doesn’t, well…”
I sat down beside the bed on an upturned crate and took Audrey’s hand in mine. She was asleep but her body still hummed with energy, the basic need to change fighting against her will to live.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, looking up to see if the old doctor had heard me. She was too busy looking out of the window to care anymore about me or Audrey.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
It was the same thing every time. Sometimes Dad would be with us, but usually he wasn’t. Mom couldn’t even bring herself to look at Audrey when this had happened while she was alive, and she’d leave. It had always been me that Audrey had woken up to. It had always been my hand that held hers. It had always been my voice that apologized over and over again for her being different from us, broken…
No one understood what she went through. Even me. I saw the things that happened to her. I heard her crying. I watched her body burn and freeze. But I didn’t understand what it was like inside. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t dance. When we’d go to the maze, she’d just sit on the sand and stare at us in the water until one of us carried her into it. She didn’t know what it felt like to have sand between her toes. She didn’t know what it was to cool her feet off in the blue water.
But she dreamed that one day she would. She hadn’t yet learned that dreams die. She didn’t know what that kind of disappointment felt like, yet. She would soon, though, I had to admit. Soon, she’d have her test, and then she’d find out for sure whether or not she’d be a breeder or just a breather.
“It won’t matter,” she’d said last night as she cried on my bed, telling me why it was wrong to be mad at Jameson. “Even if I can have kids, who’s gonna want to have them with me, the crippled cat?”
“You’re not crippled, Aud,” I had argued, but she was just as stubborn as I was.
“You have two legs and four paws to get you around. I’ve got wheels. You don’t need to have someone lift you in and out of the bathtub. I do. You don’t need to wear diapers when you go to bed at night just in case you can’t make it to the bathroom in time. I’m crippled, Liam. I’m broken. I’m a monster.”
She cried for a few more minutes before she started to laugh and then tell me about something that Fallon girl had told her at dinner.
“Ugh…I’m sorry,” I said again, remembering the scene in the house and finally seeing it without panic or fear turning my vision red.
Fallon had been calling for help, but I thought it was for her. I thought she was scared for herself. But I could see clearly that she wasn’t. She’d been holding Audrey still, trying to keep her from hurting herself. She was…protecting her.
“I’m a jackass, Audrey,” I admitted, knowing she couldn’t hear me. “I don’t know what happened, but I
know that tro…that Fallon wasn’t hurting you. There. I said it and I’m not gonna say it again. It’s a good thing you’re unconscious.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening. My sister was sick, maybe dying, and I was admitting that I was wrong and that a trog had tried to save her life. It was only one damn day. If this kept up, I’d be marrying the stupid girl by the end of the week.
“You’d best call your dad,” Dr. Phan said, mercifully breaking into my thoughts.
“He’s on the boat getting ready for a trip,” I muttered, not even looking at her.
“And if she dies while he’s on his trip?”
My ass would be litter. Dammit. And then I remembered Jameson. He’d shouted at me when I’d left the house.
“I’ll get your dad.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and then kissed Audrey’s hand. “Jameson’s gonna get him.”
Dr. Phan laughed, the kind that was full of doubt. “You put a lot of faith in that boy and no faith in me. Maybe if I grew a tail, you’d finally learn to say thank-you, eh?”
I snorted. “Dogs have tails, too. Do you see any on this island?”
“One day I’ll be gone, and then you’ll wish you had learned to be polite, boy. Your sister at least has some manners. We can thank your mom for that, eh?”
I was on that woman so quickly I caught the glass bottle of medicine she had dropped when my hand went around her throat. “You don’t talk about my mom, you hear me? You don’t ever, ever talk about her. You didn’t save her life. You let her die and I’ll never tell you thank you, no matter how many times you save Audrey’s life, because you let our mom die.”
The doctor was calm, her eyes showing no fear as she whispered a reply. “It was her or you. I saved the one who could take care of your sister; your mother was already dying. I chose to save you so that you could help keep Audrey alive. Don’t make me regret it.”
I let her go and she took the bottle from my hand, continuing on as if nothing had happened. I sat down next to Audrey again and tried not to make the doctor regret it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FALLON
I did my best to clean things up. I pushed the wheelchair by the front door, and then cleaned up the kitchen, washing the dishes and putting away the remaining pie. When I was done, I walked outside to my bike, stopping at the bottom step when I saw that I wasn’t alone. A boy stood beside my motorcycle, his brown hair clumped in his hands as he held them against his head.
“What are you doing here?” he asked me angrily.
“You know, I’m getting really tired of being treated like I’m committing some kind of crime just by being here. I’ve only been here for one freaking day. Give me a week before you start hating me, okay?” I barked, shoving past him and grabbing my helmet from its place, hanging on my handlebars.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, taking me by surprise.
“Oh.”
“Oh? I just said I’m sorry and all you can say is ‘oh’?”
“Sorry. I’m just a little upset, okay? I’m worried about Audrey.”
He nodded, a look of surprise sending his eyebrows shooting upward. “So…you know Audrey then?”
“Yeah. I was having pie with her and she just…she…” I couldn’t find the words. The way her body just seemed to leap out of her wheelchair, the way her expression turned blank, and then full of nothing but pain…the hairs on my arm stood up at the fear that spread beneath my skin.
“She’s always been like that. Don’t worry too much about it,” the boy said with a casual shrug.
“You act like you don’t care,” I told him, this time surprise marking my face.
“I do. I love Audrey. But like I said, she’s always been like that. She’s got health problems, had them all her life. Dr. Phan knows what to do, and Liam’s pretty quick with his driving so she’ll be fine.”
As he explained, I could hear the way his voice shook, and I knew that he was worried. He might be talking like he didn’t care, but his voice was telling me something completely different.
“You love her. So, are you…”
He shook his head, his hands in front of him crisscrossing as he denied it like his life depended on it. “No. No-no-no-no-no way. She’s like my sister.”
“And? This is a small island. You’re not gonna just date tourists all the time, are you?” I said, pointing down the street toward the pier and the people walking there, taking pictures.
“Are you…are you actually trying to set me up with my best friend’s sister? You don’t even know my name-”
“What’s your name?” I asked abruptly.
“Wh-wha? J-J-Jameson,” he stuttered, stunned at my question.
“Hi, Jameson. I’m Fallon.”
“Whoa. Whoa, hold on. Fallon? Liam’s Fallon?”
I bristled. “Excuse me?”
“You’re the one he’s all pissed off at? The one he said who made Audrey cry?”
“I didn’t make her cry,” I growled.
“That’s not what Liam told me.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should’ve asked the person who was actually there instead of listening to that talking anus.”
He grinned; that shit-eating grin that guys get when they realize something that no one else has. I wanted to punch him in the mouth.
“Look, if it’ll make you feel better, I’m the reason Audrey was crying, okay? She asked me out, and I turned her down.”
“You turned her down? Why?” I asked.
His shoulders hitched up as he looked away. “Like I said, she’s like my sister. She’s my best friend’s sister. That’s a line you don’t cross.”
“Uh-huh.” I didn’t believe him. Would you? Would anyone?
“Hey, I’m not gonna lie. Audrey’s hot. But she could be on fire and I still wouldn’t go out with her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said sharply. “You think it’s because she’s in a wheelchair. Well, it’s not. I wouldn’t care if she could run around the island in ten minutes and then swim to the mainland. She’s Liam’s sister and that means she’s off limits.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you trogs all speak like ditzes or is this a special talent of yours?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t waste my smartass answers on people who don’t know how to breathe without lying about it,” I answered angrily.
He glared at me, his gray eyes turning dark, almost stormy. And then, he laughed. “You know, I like you, Fallon.”
“Uh-huh,” I said stiffly before I smiled.
We stood there, Jameson laughing quietly, me smiling, the two of us staring at the wildflowers that grew along the edge of the porch. Finally, I chose to say something.
“What’s wrong with Audrey?”
He shuffled his feet and shoved his hands into the pockets of his cut-off shorts, his upper lip curling up as he struggled to tell me. “She…she was born wrong,” he said quietly.
“Born wrong?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know everything, just what Liam knows and even he doesn’t know everything. I just know that when she was born, something went wrong and her back was broken or something. Liam said that when she was a baby, she got this fever and after that she started having seizures. It’s been that way ever since.”
“Don’t they treat it with medication?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know. She doesn’t like to talk about it and I don’t ask. I just go and get help when I need to.”
“So where’d they go? I didn’t see a hospital here. Is there a hospital here?”
He hesitated before nodding again. “There’s a veterinary clinic at the end of town. Dr. Phan…she treats people, too.”
A fit of coughs hit me as I thought about Audrey lying on a bed next to cats and dogs, getting treated by the same person who’d just done CPR to a parrot. “Are you…are you for real?” I asked when I could catch my breath.
“Hey, we’re
not picky. Have you taken a look around here? We’re not a freaking city. We don’t have an ambulance here, we don’t have police, we don’t even have a fire department. What we got is a vet who doesn’t mind helping us out. She’s saved Audrey’s life, like, a thousand times already. She saved Liam’s life, too. I’m pretty freaking glad that we have a vet on the rock.”
I knew my face was red with embarrassment and guilt. It was easy to look down on places like this; I never knew what it meant to not have those things. There was always a universal care clinic or a hospital nearby growing up. Mom would say I was acting like a spoiled brat if she saw me now.
“I’m sorry,” I said honestly.
“Forget it,” Jameson said stiffly.
More silence passed between us before he looked up and then groaned. “Crap. I gotta let Mr. Mace know.”
“I’ll take you to him,” I said quickly.
“No. His slip isn’t that far. I can run.”
“I’ve got a bike,” I told him, pointing to my dirt bike and handing him the helmet. “It’ll carry two. I’ll even let you wear my helmet if you’re scared.”
“Ha-ha. I’m fine, don’t worry. It’ll take me just a couple of minutes to get to the boat. You…you go home or go shopping, or whatever it is that you do.”
I looked at the watch on my wrist and echoed his groan. “Crap. I’ve gotta get back home.”
“Good girl,” he said with a laugh.
“Shut-up.”
He laughed some more. “It was nice meeting you, Fallon. And just so you know, Liam was wrong. You don’t look like a dog.” He ran off before I could reply, disappearing between the houses.
I slipped the helmet on and stomped on the kick start. The bike growled like an angry beast, and then I was off, moving faster than anything. I took the bike down the street and past the pier. I got onto the main road and then followed it to the end of town, looking for any sign of the clinic. A truck was stopped in the middle of the road, its engine idling but its cab empty.
The building it was parked in front of had nothing painted on the window to let you know what exactly was going on behind it, but there was a closed sign hanging on the window in the door. I rode around the truck and continued on home.
