“I believe that you are. You are a good man, Carter.”
“I don’t want to hear that,” I growl.
“Nevertheless.” He squints at me. “I understand why anyone would be afraid. Your sister is significantly below Care Standard. You know that they come for the family members when they can’t get what they want from the mothers? The penalties. They accrue to loved ones, too. Another reason you felt you needed to go, I’m sure.”
It’s time to go. Past time to go. I edge past him, reaching for the door like it’s a glass of water in a goddamn desert. Then I remember. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” It’s hard, but I make myself turn and look at him.
“Carter, I wish you would stay. You don’t look well. Please let me help.” He’s got his hand out to me.
“No. No more helping, Major. I want to know what you already did. What were these steps you took—what did you do after I saw you yesterday?”
He looks at me gravely, sadly. “The only thing I could do in good conscience, Carter. These are women’s lives at stake. This is the good of humanity, the survival of humankind we’re talking about.”
“Christ, nobody’s killing anybody there, nobody’s—” I stop myself before I say it. Because it’s not exactly true that nobody’s hurting anyone. “They are just trying to help, the same as you think you’re doing.” I take a step toward him, and I see him recoil, and I can’t help that. “Just tell me you didn’t . . . report them, or something. Please just tell me that.”
Major Rafiq says, “That nurse, the pretty black one I spoke to. Natalie is her name? She begged me not to tell anyone I’d been there. She came flying out of your examination room, put her hand on my arm. Told me women were dying, women were actually dying beneath this burden that has been placed on them—the burden of Care Hours, the burden, as she called it, of consecrating your life to a child’s. Well. I’ve seen men dying for worse reasons. Believe me. I’ve seen more than enough of that.” He’s reaching out for me, but I’m already leaving. “Please don’t leave like this. You make me afraid for you, Carter. Don’t make me call your father and tell him you left my office looking like you might not make it down the street.”
“I’ll make it.”
• • •
I make it, in fact, as far as the playground above Gard and Natalie’s clinic. As I’m passing through I manage to keep myself from looking for the sack with the beer can under the bench, although I won’t lie and say I’m not thinking about it. Everything’s pounding in me in that one particular way that a beer can really help with, the softening of internal blows.
The air smells burned.
As I approach the far side of the playground, the burned smell grows stronger. In the street leading to the long brick building there are stains, char marks, like things were set on fire and dragged. There is broken furniture in the road. Scattered among the smoking unrecognizable objects there is glass, milk-white, probably the remains of the globelike overhead light fixtures I saw in the passageway. And the flyers are fluttering everywhere, so she’s gazing at me from a thousand places, the woman who’s looking straight at the camera and holding her own arm like a wounded animal. Meeting the Standard of Care.
The door to the building, the one I was led through by the hand, has been replaced by a new door—gray metal, shiny new hinges, shiny new lock. The old door must have been destroyed. There’s a notice posted. CLOSED BY ORDER OF DOH.
Someone’s inside-out purse is in the road, near the curb. Near someone’s shoe, a rubber flip-flop.
Someone else has left a note, too, wedged into the seam where the door meets the frame, on paper that looks like it spent a good amount of time at the bottom of a backpack. When I pluck it out to read it I see that the note is written in pencil. It reads Please help me.
I’m too late to help. I’m the wrong person to help, anyway. I destroyed it. It wasn’t Rafiq’s good intentions—it was mine. I did this. I didn’t mean to, but I did. It was me.
FREDERICKA QUINN
135 PAULINA NORTH, #4B
NEW CHICAGO 0606030301
NEW STATES
PFC C. P. QUINN 2276766
MCC 167 1ST MAW
FPO NEW CHICAGO 06040309
May 1, 11:13 p.m.
Hi CQ,
Hello, it’s me, your oldest (and prettiest) sister, the one who loves you and messages you often, even though You Never Message Me Back but okay I get it just try not to get shot.
It is, as you know, Pop’s birthday, and if you don’t know, I wanted to remind you, but don’t worry, it’s handled. I got him something nice from the three of us. I assumed you would have other things on your mind, like Not. Getting. Shot. And Gard is unusually unusual these days. She needs more sleep. She looks like shit. I don’t know how much she’s told you about what she’s been doing to herself, working sixteen hours a day, but it’s hard to see her being able to sustain that. Maybe you can talk to her. It probably wouldn’t sound right coming from me, it’s almost midnight and I’m just home from work—which is really good, by the way, just busy.
At least I get paid. Gard is still just scraping by.
The last time I heard from Gard, just to give you an idea, she was trying to tell me about something that happened at the clinic where she does her night shift—and, honestly, the thing that upsets me most about it is that it’s apparently in the middle of this seriously extremely unsafe part of town and she takes the bus there and then walks. She won’t let me pay for an autocab for her, either. She’s such a little shit.
Anyway, she was telling me, or trying to tell me, about something she’d seen once, at work, but she kept breaking down and bawling. She couldn’t get through the story. Finally I managed to get it out of her and I guess a young mother with a newborn came in late one night. The baby was fine, but the mother had disfigured herself. Cut off one of her own fingers. Among other things. With a kitchen knife. I was like What The Actual Fuck, Gard? If the no sleep doesn’t get her, the crazy shit she’s seeing will.
Sorry to worry you with this. I know you have enough to contend with. I just wanted to let you know.
But you know what, don’t—actually, don’t feel like you have to talk to her about it, or anything like that. Forget I said that. I’ll handle it. I just want everybody to be safe. And be good! You little shithead!
Love
Fred
Dec 20 11:03 AM
Natalie, please let me know if
you get this. I am looking for you. I know
what happened. Please please let me help.
If I can.
My sister, my other sister, she may be able to
help you, somehow. So please get back to me
if you can.
I am thinking about you. To tell you the truth
I am always thinking
about you. And I’m so, so sorry.
Dec 20 11:23 AM
Fred, I need your help again
Dec 20 11:23 AM
Don’t tell me that right now
Dec 20 11:23 AM
Gard’s friend, her coworker
I’m pretty sure she’s been arrested
Or picked up by DOH.
or something
Can you help me find her
Dec 20 11:25 AM
CQ how many women are you
prepared to save at one time?
Can I just remind you?
Gardner?
Our beloved?
Who even is this coworker
Oh wait
Oh shit
Dec 20 11:28 AM
Yes. Oh shit. Exactly.
Dec 20 11:28 AM
Is this bad? Tell me this isn’t bad.
Dec 20 11:28 AM
I honestly don’t know. It’s my fault.
I think I accidentally
I don’t know
revealed
let down
endangered
gave up
this person, who btw
I ac
tually gave a shit
about, and
who I know Gard cared about too
And everything Gard was working on
and everything she was trying to do
it all got trashed, closed down
I don’t know
I don’t even know half of what I did yet
All I know is I’m responsible
Dec 20 11:33 AM
You’re at a bar aren’t you.
I can see that you are
Dec 20 11:33 AM
So what if I am
Dec 20 11:34 AM
CQ get out of that place
isn’t that the place near Pop’s house
where everybody looks like a wadded-up sock?
Don’t stay there. Don’t stay there.
Come to me at the Walkers’
There’s something I need to tell you
Dec 20 11:36 AM
Fred I don’t think I can handle any
more surprises from you
Dec 20 11:38 AM
Oh you read the file, did you
Dec 20 11:38 AM
Yes.
But don’t worry
I think you’re a good person.
In a system that is bad.
And I’m sorry all this is happening.
And I know we’re not this kind of family
but I love you, Fredlet.
Dec 20 11:42 AM
I love you too
you little crapfuck.
Come over soon. I have some news.
Dec 20 11:43 AM
OK. Will be there in a little while.
Dec 20 12:48 PM
CQ, where are you
You said you were coming over
like an hour ago
and your geo status is still showing
you at the Wadded Sock
or whatever the fuck it’s called
Please tell me you haven’t been
drinking since then
Dec 20 1:04 PM
CQ, come the fuck on
answer me already
Dec 20 1:36 PM
You forgot, didn’t you
You forgot it was today
I honestly didn’t think you’d forget
Dec 20 2:07 PM
When you sent that txt this morning
I thought you at least remembered
what was supposed to be
happening today
Dec 20 2:17 PM
I honestly didn’t think I had to
remind you
Dec 20 2:22 PM
I honestly thought you were capable of
keeping your shit together,
at least for this
Dec 20 2:28 PM
I honestly thought you really meant it
when you said you’d help me find her
I can’t believe
how dumb I was
to believe in you.
Dec 20 2:38 PM
I never imagined that you would just
go to a fucking bar at 11 am
and sit there all day long
till you were too drunk to remember
your sister was supposed to be
getting married tonight
Dec 20 2:00 PM
23 15 42 02 52 53 87 69 23 92
Dec 20 2:00 PM
Natalie thnk god
thaaaaaaaaaaaaank
goooooooooooooood
are u ok
pls tell me
wht does that mean
Dec 20 3:00 PM
23 15 42 02 52 53 87 69 23 92
Dec 20 3:00 PM
i dont understnad
Dec 20 4:00 PM
23 15 42 02 52 53 87 69 23 92
Dec 20 4:00 PM
can u pls
answer
Dec 20 4:05 PM
please
ELEVEN
Dec 20 4:00 PM
23 15 42 02 52 53 87 69 23 92
I keep looking at it.
I’ve been messaging Natalie all day, on and off. She’s not responding. Maybe she can’t. But she keeps sending me this, the same thing, every hour.
It’s just a string of numbers, but I know it means something. It’s code, or meant to be code. I need Wash, but Wash is dead.
Meanwhile I am fantastically, gloriously, heroically lit. After I turned my back on Natalie and Gard’s closed-up clinic, I bought myself three ’neered beers for the autobus ride (and for the pounding headache and the screeching inner-ear static and the overall sensory shittiness), and drank them while headed back to Pop and Gard’s neighborhood, where I entrenched myself at the old-man bar near Pop’s house and ordered a fourth. That was around eleven this morning, and I’ve been here drinking steadily ever since. Pop and Fred both know where I am, I assume—I’m on their wearables, I haven’t moved; I’m an easy target. I’m half surprised that Pop hasn’t come around the corner and walked through the sticky door of this place just to push me off my chair. I wouldn’t blame him, wouldn’t even mind. And it wouldn’t take much to knock me off this chair, I admit it. But at least I’m not feeling the effects of withdrawing from Rafiq’s injection anymore, and I’m not feeling the effects of staying up all night with Fred’s Frankenportal crawling through my eyeball and my forearm. I’m not feeling the effects of having had my ass soundly kicked by Mr. Secure America for Americans, or knocking down my own father, or getting Natalie arrested and at the same time accidentally destroying something my sister cared about and might have even given up her life for. Or realizing that I maybe will never find her, never.
No, now what I feel is pleasantly buzzed, a good three-quarters of my consciousness plowed under, and I’m engrossed in the mystery of Natalie’s message to me. What does it mean? What would Wash say? I want it to be encoded coordinates for a meeting time and place, is what I want: 23 15, that could be eleven fifteen. Tonight? But couldn’t the entire message just as easily be an accident, a randomly swiped-and-sent string of numerals that ended up going to me, her most recent contact, just as she was losing consciousness in the back of some Security van on her way to be processed?
Part of why I came here: I’ve been watching the news portal over the bar all day. There’s been nothing about a women’s health clinic or a Nurse Completionist under investigation, nothing about arrests or detainments that match Natalie’s profile, or even possibly her colleagues’. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. The helplessness of suspecting it and being powerless to do anything about it is part of what drove me here and kept me here all day, ignoring increasingly despairing messages from Fred and an ominous wall of silence from my father. My worry about Natalie is like a dust cloud overtaking the horizon line: it has a nice way of eclipsing all the other things there are to worry about, and I’m letting it.
Because I can’t be this big of a failure, this gigantic and criminal of a fuckup. I can’t lose my sister and then lose Natalie, too. And I know she doesn’t like me, I know she doesn’t, but that doesn’t even matter. That, in fact, is just proof of the purity of my concern. My mission, as Major Rafiq would have it.
“You all right, Private?” The guy behind the bar calls to me. He knows me now, after the last couple of weeks they all know me, all the guys up and down the bar. The fact is this isn’t the first time I’ve been here. It’s not even the first time I’ve spent all day here. The table where I usually sit is against the wall, beneath one of the high, brick-framed windows hung with the glowing logo of a beer brand no one makes anymore, and I’ve found that if I come to this table in the early afternoon, a rectangle of light will sit on the chair, like a spotlight beckoning me to stand in it.
“I’m fine, sir,” I lie boldly.
“Go sani up, son. You’ve got blood all over your—” He makes a motion over his own face that looks like lathering up a beard that’s about to be shaven.
“I’m good.”
“Bring this over to the kid there,” I hear the barman say, and a few shumble-shuffle-staggers later there’s a s
mall haystack of sanifoam wipes in little foil packets at my elbow. The fellow who brought them to me at my table then lurches off to the men’s room. Godspeed, sir.
I tear open one of the saniwipes, and even though my eyes water at the smell, I keep my eyes on my hands, useless, untrustworthy. It is a colossal effort just to make them do this one fine-motor thing, pluck out a sanifoam-soaked tissuelet from a little foil-lined envelope. I’m not even sure I can do it. Closing one eye helps, because it brings my focus into line on one of the many little saniwipe packets, held by one of the many sets of five tremendous, fumbling fingers. I’m holding the saniwipe packet between the terrible fingers of one hand, and trying to line up my other terrible fingers to poke, pluck, pinch down into that little pine-smelling opening, it’s unspeakable somehow, like trying to pluck something from between the lips of a wound. But I manage to tweeze out the saniwipe and then comes the unfolding of the thing, the frankly impossible unlayering of a delicate square of foamy tissue. I get one layer opened and then bring the wipe, balanced on my shaking fingers, to my face. The familiar sani smell zings into my mouth and windpipe. The wipe is good for a couple of dabs, until it comes away bloody and dried out. And then to start the whole process all over again because now the blood on my chin and my forehead (it’s been coming from somewhere beneath my hairline again; I felt it earlier but didn’t do much about it) is wet again and it’s going to drip on the table or on my sleeve if I don’t get wiped up—oh, look, there it is now, I’m dribbling pink into my beer. I take a drink and put the glass off to one side. Then close my eyes. Then pick up another saniwipe packet.
I don’t want to face Fred like this. I don’t want to face Pop. They’d be better off if I just lived here in this bar, if I went back to the Wars without saying goodbye. Fred would have a nicer wedding, a nicer life. And Pop would be less worried about me over there than back here, I’m sure. That’s the strength of his faith in the service. For men like him the service is like having an extra backbone, it makes them stand straighter, live stiffer, hold tighter, and for guys like me it’s a prop for nothing—when you remove my Marine Corps spine I just end up flopping all over the place like a bad, mad rag doll. I want to tell him that. That’s what I want to tell Pop, right now.
The Completionist Page 22
