The Wounded (The Woodlands Series)

by Taylor, Lauren Nicolle

  I didn’t know what time it was, but there wasn’t even a hint of light. I closed my eyes and felt her pulling the blanket over my shoulder. I didn’t like it. I was the one who should be doing that. I should be taking care of her, of Orry. I clenched my fists. I hated my weakness. I hated how tired I was that, even in my anger, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I returned to sleep, tense and angry.

  *****

  A thin amount of light shone through the thick curtain of our hovel, as Rosa liked to call it. She despised living down here. She needed to be close to the sky. How else was all that lightning and fire going to escape? I grinned and sat up, letting the blanket fall to the floor. The grin left me as I remembered last night, and the one before that. I quickly splashed some water on my face, feeling what was once stubble turning into a full-blown beard. Fumbling around, I found some matches and lit a candle.

  It displayed my fit of anger in all its glory. Shattered wood, and toppled cans in the corner. I growled and grabbed a can of juice, piercing the lid and downing it quickly. I was ashamed of my behavior. The thing was… I knew she didn’t care. But I did. I destroyed something important to her.

  I swept up the splinters and threw it in a bucket. Hastily tossing a shirt on, I went to make my way down to one of the fires to destroy the evidence.

  I swung the bucket through the entrance, and it collided with something soft. I heard a slight thump, and the air being pushed from her lungs. “Damn it!” I said loudly. I swept the blanket aside. Rosa lay on the rocky ground, propped up on her elbows, looking like she was glued to her place. She stared up at me, her eyes round and red. “You ok?” I asked, even though I knew the answer was no.

  She shook her head as if trying to clear it. Opening her mouth to speak, she stopped and then bit down on her lip. I ran my hands through my hair. I didn’t want her to say anything. Not one word.

  It came out funny, the words, the meaning. It was like each word was stamped in the air, hard. Because it was so final. They just hung there, both of us staring at nothing but stale air.

  “Apella’s dead.”

  I pulled her up, and we stumbled towards the infirmary. The rocks beneath us, sharp under my bare feet. I wanted to see for myself. Rosa could have been wrong. She wasn’t a doctor. I knew Apella’s lungs were giving out, I knew that searching for a cure for Orry was taking what little strength she had left, but dead? No.

  I clasped the door and paused for a second. I prepared for the worst. Rosa was clutching my shirt like she was drowning. Her tiny fingers pressed into my chest. I opened the door and strode inside.

  *****

  Would this be me? If I lost her, would this be what everyone saw?

  There was no sound but for the small, breathless whimpers of a man who had lost everything. Alexei sat next to a lifeless shell folded over the desk, his head in his hands. “No, no, no, no…” he whispered, over and over, and my remade heart started breaking. My mentor, my friend, my almost mother, was dead.

  We broke apart. I went to Alexei, and Rosa to the other side of Apella. I patted Alexei on the back and carefully reached under Apella’s hair to find her pulse. She was cold. My fingers pressed in deeper, but there was no blood pumping through her veins. I looked to Rosa, and it was like she had stopped breathing. Her face was so still, her expression unreadable. Her eyes scanned the desk. She placed her hand over Apella’s wrist and lifted it, sliding a piece of paper out from under the cool, white arm.

  Right then, Matt walked in. It took him two seconds to work out what had happened, and his wrinkles deepened. He carefully lifted Apella to the bed. Her arm fell limply, blue ink marking her fingers and hands. I watched Rosa react and suppress, react and suppress. The piece of paper scrunched in her hand. Her eyes flitted to the writing, and confusion spread all over her face. She shook her head slowly and let it fall from her hands.

  “That’s it then. It’s for nothing.” She heaved a breath and wrung her hands, the tears she was trying to hold in just pouring from her eyes now. She kind of hiccupped and put her hand to chest. “Oh Jesus, he’s going to die.” I could feel everything she was feeling. The devastation, the fear of what we were about to face. I reached out to grab her but she backed away, turned, and ran. She was a shadow as she slipped out the door.

  I kneeled down and scooped up the piece of paper, as it danced across the floor from the gust of Rosa’s departure. My eyes went over each word.

  Fava Beans

  Oranges

  Each underlined heavily. I smiled.

  Apella, your final gift to us was a good one.

  I could have screamed, but everyone’s eyes were on me as I walked away from the infirmary. How could this happen? How could it all end like this? With a grocery list scrawled over ink-smudged paper. She must have gone crazy, the sickness invading her brain or something. I was so angry with her… for not saving Orry, for leaving me with nothing but a useless scrap to hold onto, for dying. How could she just… die like that?

  I pictured her hanging over that desk. All the things that made her alive suddenly pulled from her like pulling a hermit crab from its shell. I thought she looked like a ghost when she was alive, now she was one. And she would always haunt me. Because I hated her and loved her at the same time. So much.

  I squatted down and put my hands to the wet rocks.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it, I thought as I wiped my sniffling nose with a shaky hand.

  Could this please be a dream? I wasn’t even half the person I would need to be to deal with this. I pulled my hair back from my face and shoved down the bile that was rising in my throat. I thought about Addy, Clara, Deshi, and now Apella. They were all gone, dead, lost. There was no fairness to this. People were going to drop away, dissolve into the stacks of bodies, because we were in a war. We could hide underground, pit ourselves against the idea of it, but it was always there. And it was going to take everyone and everything if we let it. I felt my organs seize in my chest, because now it was going to take my son.

  I punched the rock, my knuckles splitting, the skin opening, bleeding. The pain was a nice feeling. It was on the outside of me, instead of the pain that ran back and forth over my insides like a two-man saw.

  Stop. Just stop. Please.

  Whoever’s controlling this puppet show we’re all in, please cut the strings. Don’t make me do this. Go through this.

  But it was done. No one was listening. I was tied to the sky, and the strings that bound us together were breaking.

  Joseph

  Fava beans and oranges. I knew to Rosa this meant nothing, a grocery list, some random items. And on their own, they didn’t mean anything. But combined with Orry’s symptoms, they meant the world. Thanks to Apella, he would live.

  In those months before I found Rosa, I learned the process of how Orry was made, how they were all designed and produced. There were steps you had to follow, important steps. You couldn’t skip one. I knew Este had been in a hurry, that she’d doubled the amount of embryos to be produced and implanted. She’d also messed around with chromosomes, trying to make the offspring more All Kind, but I never thought she’d be this reckless. It was as obvious to me as it must have been to Apella… that Este had skipped over the pre-implantation genetic screening. This would check the embryos for predispositions to different intolerances and genetic disorders. One disorder, which had shown to be particularly common in the embryos that had been produced, was a G6 PD deficiency. It was a severe intolerance to fava beans that caused vomiting, seizures, jaundice, anemia, and eventually death if not treated.

  I stood over Apella’s body. She was almost grey. Alexei had stopped crying, but his face remained contorted in anguish. I put my hand on hers and mentally thanked her. I squeezed Alexei’s shoulder. He looked up at me and smiled. “So she did it?” he asked quietly.

  I nodded somberly. “She did.”

  “Good,” he said. “I knew it couldn’t be for nothing.” There was a glimmer of hope in his eyes, and pride. “I think sh
e held on as long as she could, so that she could find the answer. I watched her work. She wrote down the final word, smiled, and sighed her last breath before she laid her head down on the table.” He swept his thinning hair back and straightened his glasses. “I can’t believe I’ll never see that smile again.”

  My heart broke for him.

  Matt ushered me from the bed and pulled the curtain around them.

  I still gripped the paper in my hand. I wanted to find Rosa, but I needed to get Orry’s treatment organized before I did anything else.

  “G6...” I said to Matthew, waving the paper in front of him like it was made of gold.

  Matthew smiled. “PD deficiency. Of course!”

  I pulled up my sleeve. “Take as much as you can,” I said, flopping down in a chair.

  Matt already had a needle in his hand.

  To think, all he needed was a transfusion and to never, ever touch a can of fava beans again. He would have to be careful about too much vitamin C as well. I sunk into the chair and let some of the stress escape my wound-up body. My universal donor blood tracked slowly up a tube. I was the vaccine, the solution.

  I was lost. Actually lost. In a stupor, I had dragged my sorry feet through several tunnels looking for a difference, a distraction. I kept seeing her head, her pale blonde hair fanned out like a silk, straw broom, her arm kind of stiff when I went to lift it. She was like a piece of wood burned in the fire, its whole body turned to ash yet holding its shape. All you had to do was poke it for the form to collapse and whir into the sky with the sparks and the smoke. I leaned against the curve of the tunnel, staring down at the steel train track in front of me. My feelings were a tangle, a mess. I wished there had been another way. I wished that my son wasn’t soon to be caught in the ashy swirl of death too. When he did, I could see myself turning to flame and joining him. It would leave Joseph alone, but he wouldn’t want what was left of me. No one would.

  I slapped the stone with my palms in anger, mossy green slime staining my fingers. I had to find my way out of here, I needed to find Rash and the others, tell them what was going on, and then I needed to spend whatever time I had left with Orry, with my family, before it all disappeared.

  I picked a direction, cursed, and started walking.

  *****

  Long shadows crept up the walls, people talking and jogging towards me. Each voice was high with emotion, accents clashing and words not making sense. It didn’t make sense because they sounded jubilant.

  “You go to the hospital. Here’s the list. They just need clean blood bags and needles still in their sterile wrappings.”

  Someone gruff and familiar said, “She can’t be too far away. That girl just has to stand still somewhere, and trouble will find her. But the boy will want to see her when he wakes.” Gus.

  I was beyond confused, but the words sounded good together. They glowed on the page in my head, when he wakes. Those words were golden and sparkling. I felt myself being pulled to the sky, that string I was attached to trying to make me dance.

  They finally collided with me, a few monkeys scampering around their feet. Gus saw me, stared at me, and then he did something I’ll never forget. He laughed. I peered into the yellowing enamel like his smile was a specimen to be studied. His eyebrows drew together, and then he grabbed both my shoulders and shook me with force.

  “She did it,” he said.

  I winced a little at the resemblance to Cal when I looked into his eyes. But this wasn’t Cal; this was Gus. Harsh, stoic Gus who loved Orry like the rest of them did.

  My lips were trembling, my whole body rattling like a wooden door in a storm. “She… did?”

  He nodded. “The boy will live.”

  The boy will live.

  Something snapped gently inside me, a door opening and filling me with floodwaters.

  The boy will live.

  Gus didn’t wait. He quickly explained his mission and ran past me, telling me briefly how to get out of this maze. “Just follow the monkey,” he said, tsking and clicking his tongue at one of them. It left the others and came to sit at my feet. I looked down at its ugly, pinched face, its yellow eyes bobbing like twin moons in its head. It blinked stupidly at me. I rolled my eyes.

  “Ugh! Well, lead the way,” I said.

  It yawned, opened its mouth, and let out a small screech before galloping off in the opposite direction to the others. I followed, lagging, but dripping in excitement, grief, and dread.

  Thank you, Apella. Thank you so much.

  *****

  Joseph and I held hands, standing over Orry. His tiny body thinner than just days ago. Matthew, Alexei, Pelo, Careen, Pietre, and Rash sat huddled in plastic chairs behind the curtain. I could only hear Rash, joking and making everyone uncomfortable.

  I said a selfish prayer. Orry stay, rest. Don’t let the best of me go with you. I know it’s selfish, but I need you to live.

  I watched Matthew add another bag of Joseph’s life-saving blood. I imagined the shreds of exploded blood cells being replaced and propped up by the healthy, plump, new ones. I thanked Apella over and over in my head as it tracked like syrup, dripping slowly down. I told Alexei how sad I was for him, for her, for Hessa. I lost track of it when it went into his tube, but I knew it was going in. I wished Deshi were here. I thought of Hessa and how lucky he was that he didn’t get sick. The relief was momentary when it dawned on me like the slap of an ice-covered branch, leaving stings and prickles in my cheek. There were so many children that would get sick. Every child created after Este took over could get sick. All of them could die. I remembered the cans of beans from when I lived in the Woodlands. It was a staple, and now it was a steady danger that would turn every baby into a ticking time bomb.

  I covered my mouth. Joseph looked up at me with concern, his eyes finally warming me, the gold solid, heated like the sun. The feeling reinvented itself to be something bigger, brighter after what we’d been through. “He’s going to be ok,” he said.

  I nodded. I could almost see the repair going on inside Orry. The blood cells inflating like balloons, bouncing off each other, and pumping stronger.

  Joseph’s arm grasped at my waist and pulled me close, until only a sliver of light pierced through the gap between us. I didn’t look at him. I gazed at my son and, through him, I could see other sons and daughters, babies dropping, seizing, and dying. It made me sick.

  I put my hand over his, tapping it gently. “What about the others? They’re not going to be ok, are they?” I said.

  I think he went to say something comforting, and then bit it back. He frowned and shot out the truth like a brick through a window. “No, they won’t.”

  Each time I watched the blood drip down into Orry’s IV, I saw them fall. I saw the White Coats scrambling to catch them, their hospital full of convulsing children. My mothering instinct spread wide like the wings of an eagle. I wanted to fold all of them under me, protect them, shelter them from the searing hospital lights, keep them warm and safe. But from here, I could do nothing.

  I ticked my fingers against my leg, counting down a plan.

  *****

  We ate greedily, sitting cross-legged on the infirmary floor. Joseph and I couldn’t remember the last time we ate. So it was a cacophony of snatching fingers and wiping crumbs from mouths. Alexei joined us, and he seemed surprisingly ok. He held Hessa in his lap and joined in the conversation. Maybe it was the wait that had sent his mind spiraling so deep down a hole that we couldn’t reach him. Even though he would miss her, love her forever, at least now there was an end point. That end point was the tip of the rope, one he could use to climb out and find a new beginning.

  Every now and then, someone would hop up to check on Orry. His vitals were strengthening, but he hadn’t woken up yet. Matthew said it could take a while. I was so anxious to see those funny eyes of his that I could barely contain my agitation. Rash sat on one side of me, making dancing feet from bread sticks jammed into potatoes, and Joseph sat on the other
side of me, his warm hand draped over my leg. It calmed my bouncing.

  We talked about Apella and Orry. Alexei told us stories about Apella, about how gangly and awkward she was when he first met her.

  “So she was like you?” I giggled. Everyone laughed. I couldn’t quite picture serene, porcelain Apella as awkward.

  Careen chirped up how she’d always admired Apella’s hair. I reached out to smack her, and Pietre grabbed my hand with a fierce grip. His hands were heated, his eyes as intense as always. But then it broke into a sincere expression. “She was beautiful.”

  I kicked his wooden leg. “Whoops! Wrong leg.” To which I received a scathing scowl from him and a wink from Careen.

  It went on late into the night, an ebb and flow of happiness and sadness. A big, soggy dough of mixed emotions. I found myself looking for Apella, waiting to see one of those rare smiles or hear her bell-like voice.

  I yawned and rubbed my eyes.

  Pelo, who had been fairly quiet, stood and walked around to me. He placed his hands on my shoulders protectively. “I think my daughter needs some sleep.” I let the words sit atop my head like a crown. It was strange and didn’t quite fit, but I was definitely tired. Everyone stretched and made their exits, leaving Joseph, Matthew, Pelo, and me.

  “Someone needs to stay with Orry,” I said. “I’ll…”

  “I’ll stay with him,” Pelo shouted before I could finish.

  “But…?” Somehow, Joseph’s arm was already around my shoulders, guiding me towards the door.

  I took a few steps towards the exit, so tired I would have let a monkey lead me to my room. But then I stopped.

  “No,” I said. Joseph sighed at me. “I can’t leave. I’m his mother; I should be the first face he sees when he wakes up.” Those words were like a hot coal in my hands. I’d never said them before, I’m his mother. But instead of juggling it and throwing it away before it burned me, I closed my fingers around it, let it warm me, and let it brand me with its meaning. I was his mother.