by JJ Pike
“But Midge is in surgery,” said Petra. “I can’t leave.”
“You can’t do anything for Midge here and if they’re already rationing drugs this far north, we need to change gears right this instant. Jo was right, we’re under attack. We need to plan accordingly.”
“Jo? As in crazy-neighbor Jo who sees a conspiracy around every corner?”
Jim raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
“What?” Petra tried to keep her voice from going all reedy and annoying. Paul had practiced with her. “Modulate your tone,” he’d say, “keep the pace even. People respond better if they think you’ve kept it together. I don’t know why. You’d think they’d want to help if you’re having a meltdown, but they don’t. They back away. Pretend you’ve got it together until you see me, then you can lose it.”
She’d lost it so many times in the last week she’d stopped counting. “But,” she thought, “in my own defense, there’s been plenty of real stuff going seriously wrong, so I had every reason to cry.” Paul, who practically lived in her mind, was right back with another round of advice, “Doesn’t matter if you and I think it was totally within reason. What matters is how you get people to help you when I’m not here. You can do it, sis. You’ve got this.”
Petra eased her shoulders down and forced a smile. “Tell me what you’re thinking so I can help.”
“Manhattan is collapsing,” said Jim.
Petra flushed. Not my fault, not my fault, not my fault. Don’t let the crazy thoughts get a toe-hold. Once they did, she’d be a cray-cray catawampus and off the charts fruitloop. She kept her eyes on Jim, rather than letting them slide over to the TV where more horror unfolded.
“With the city in freefall, we’re going to see even more panic.” Jim rubbed his temples and rolled his neck. “The hospital is already out of antibiotics. Ordinarily, I’d say we should sit tight, but we need to get Betsy and Midge out of here.”
Petra drew a blank. They were drilling a hole in her sister’s head right now this very minute. How could they take her home?
“We can halt the surgery,” said Betsy. “She’ll be in pre-op now. She’ll be asleep, but not completely under. If, as Jim says, they just took her down it will be a while before the surgeons are scrubbed up.”
Petra blanked. Another decision. This one worse.
“We need your permission to tell them to stop,” said Jim.
“She needs the operation.” Petra wasn’t even sure she’d spoken out loud. It was a scratchy squeak and nothing more.
“They don’t have all the medications she’s going to need during recovery,” Jim whispered. “We have them at home.”
“But…” Petra didn’t know how to formulate the question. The surgeons had not sugar-coated their recommendations. Midge was blind and would stay blind until they relieved the pressure on her brain. Did Jim and Betsy not get it?
“Betsy has performed more surgical procedures, and under worse conditions, than most of the doctors in this hospital.” Jim was not pulling her leg. He wanted her to believe that taking Midge home and doing—what had they called the procedure? A crainiectomy—at home was a good idea? Childbirth, maybe. That was sort of natural. She could see an argument for having a baby at home, but brain surgery? Were they going senile? Dad would never okay that. They were nice folks and she was half-way to believing that her parents had talked to them about acting in their stead, should they ever be “away” from the family, but was this what they meant? Her mind twirled and turned, threatening to swallow her down a rabbit hole of such gigantic proportions that she’d never get out again.
Jim put his hand on her arm, landing like a hesitant butterfly. “We need to act quickly.”
Everyone needed to do everything “now.” What had happened to being deliberate and cautious and weighing all the facts?
“Once they begin, we won’t be able to stop them. But even if they operate here, they’re going to run out of many more medications within a couple of days.”
Glory be, there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that light wasn’t a train coming to obliterate her. “A couple of days. That’s good. We can keep her here for a couple of days, then bring her home.”
Betsy leaned forward in her bed. “The recovery time varies, of course, but she’s young and otherwise healthy. We’re going to have to keep her quiet and stable and monitor her closely. We can do that at home. Once they run out of all medications here, it’s going to be a madhouse.”
“More like a slaughterhouse,” said Jim. “I don’t want to be an alarmist, but people don’t behave well once their basic needs aren’t being taken care of. Unless they’re trained, and most of them aren’t, these people you see around us are not going to have the first clue what to do about their husband with sepsis or their daughter with a herniated disc or any of the other millions of reasons people come to a hospital.”
“But we’re fine now.” Petra knew she was whining, but she couldn’t help it. She’d already made one decision that had made her half-insane. Why were they making her go through that again? “Wouldn’t it be better to have the experts do the surgery, then take her home?”
Betsy shrugged. “Not in my opinion.”
“Nor mine,” said Jim.
If Midge died during surgery in the hospital she could, hand on heart, say she’d made the most conservative decision available to her at the time. But…Midge would still be dead, so that wasn’t much good. But how could they ask her to move Midge? After brain surgery? She needed more data. “Couldn’t we bring the drugs here?”
“We could,” said Jim, “if we wanted to invite people to attack us, follow us, try to work out where we got them. We can’t appear to have anything, you understand. If you want to survive what’s coming next, you need to be invisible. We’ll talk about all the ways you can achieve that as soon as we get home, but right now, we have to stop this surgery.”
The images on the TV weren’t getting any less horrifying. In addition to the bridge collapsing there were fires dotting the city. There were no reporters talking, so they’d either evacuated or couldn’t broadcast from their location.
“Remember the snow storms that came through here a couple of years back?” Betsy had eased her way off her bed and was walking towards Petra with Jim propping her up on one side and her IV stand acting as a cane on the other. “You didn’t even make it to the cabin. You had to stay down in New Paltz. Do you remember?”
Petra nodded. It had been a lot of fun. School had been canceled and they’d gotten their sleds out and made snowshoes out of their tennis rackets. Dad had taught them how to start fires using laundry lint, and they’d cooked squirrels over an open fire. Mom said the supermarkets were packed with people and the shelves empty, but it hadn’t made much difference to their lives.
“There were seventeen deaths recorded that weekend alone.”
“In New Paltz?”
Betsy shook her head. “In New York City. People don’t know how to take care of themselves. The heat goes off for a day or two and there are those who literally freeze to death in their own apartments. They’re domesticated. And I don’t mean that in a good way.” She was panting.
Petra scanned the room and grabbed a chair. Jim lowered Betsy into it. It was stunning that she was talking, let alone walking around. Betsy was a powerhouse. They’d underestimated her all along.
“She’s right. Humans have lost the ability to take care of themselves. You’re lucky. Your family is not the same as most families. You’ve learned some basic survival skills. You all know how to handle a gun, you know how to hunt, you know how to do some preserving…” He patted Betsy, Queen Canner, on the shoulder. “But imagine what’s going to happen when hundreds of thousands of helpless people come streaming up here. I give it a day, perhaps less, before there are riots in every city in a fifty-mile radius of Manhattan.”
Betsy nodded throughout Jim’s speech. “Here, there are doctors but few medications and while Midge will get what little they have b
ecause her case is acute, that’s not going to last long. Within a day this hospital is going to be overrun with idiots.”
Jim let go of his wife’s hand and joined Petra by the window. “The choice is simple, sweetheart. We either stay or go. Both choices have their pros and cons, but in my opinion our chances of survival increase exponentially if we get the hell out of here.”
Petra could see her reflection in the window. She looked as panic-stricken and freaked out as she felt. She was cornered, trapped, being forced to choose between impossible alternatives. Stay and have Midge die of an infection because there were no meds (her fault), or leave and let her die of her brain injury?
Paul, ever her savior, reminded her for the thousandth time that it didn’t have to boil down to either/or. The two of them had played “either/or” all the time when they were kids.
“Would you rather be Batman or Spiderman?” Paul was spectacular at not getting trapped. He could take charge of the question and twist it to his purpose. That’s when he taught her the power of and/and. “I want to be Batman on even-numbered days and Spiderman on odd days. That way I have the deductive reasoning of Bruce Wayne but the spidey sense and regenerative power of Peter Parker.” He’d smiled at her and the world was right. That was what it was like when you had a twin brother who had all the charm and charisma. You got to hide under that sparkling umbrella, where you were safe from notice. She could wrap herself in his confidence and pretend that her anxiety wasn’t a raging, festering basket of vipers, ready and willing to strike at her heart. But she had no Paul to guide her, help her, shield her now. She had no clue how to fashion an “and/and” response that kept them all safe and made sure Midge lived. She had two very opinionated and seemingly-sure adults whittling her to a nub with their arguments.
“Fine. Tell them to stop.”
Jim hobbled as fast as his hips would allow to the nurses’ station, while Betsy lunged at her bedside and grabbed the alarm, pressing the button a hundred times in four seconds.
Petra was rooted to the spot. If they were right, this was the only way to save Midge in the long run. If they were wrong, she might have just killed her sister. She was going to throw up again if she didn’t find a way to calm herself. As soon as they got home she was going to ransack the meds stash and find herself some Xanax. This was all too, too much.
The nurse came. Petra did what Jim and Betsy advised. She told the startled nurse that she wanted to revoke her permission to operate on her sister.
“You can’t,” said the nurse.
“She certainly can,” said Jim. “And my lawyer can be here within the hour. In fact, we can get him on the phone this minute, if you like.”
At the mention of lawyers, the nurse fled. The three of them sat in a terrified silence, waiting to hear whether they could leave with Midge or if they were too late.
Petra’s phone rang. She jolted so hard she almost dropped it. It was Jim and Betsy’s number. “Mimi?”
“Where are you? You had me worried. You should be home by now. I want to get up there and see my grandbaby.”
Tears slid down Petra’s face. She didn’t know what to say. She’d made a mess of everything. She’d hesitated to send Midge to surgery, then she’d hesitated to revoke that permission. She barely knew what her name was, let alone which way was up. She handed the phone to Jim and slid to the floor.
“Margaret, it’s Jim.” He nodded while Mimi peppered him with questions. “She’s fine. We’re bringing her home. Yes, we’ve seen the news. I agree. Wholeheartedly. The sooner we’re all together and have the compound secured, the better.” He winked at Petra. “Absolutely. No, she’s fine too. Bit tired, but fine. We’ll be there in the next couple of hours. Paperwork, it always takes time. See you soon. Yes, we’re taking care of her. She’s a little overwrought is all. I’ll tell her. Yes. Goodbye. Yes, yes. Goodbye.” Jim handed Petra her phone.
“You didn’t tell her about Midge going blind or that we were stopping the operation.” Petra was back on her feet, her heart in triple-overtime. “Why didn’t you tell her?” More like, why didn’t you tell her, Petra? You should have kept trying. Eventually someone would have answered that phone.
Betsy cocked her head to one side. “No point worrying people when there’s nothing they can do. If we’d told her about Midge’s complications, she’d have made us walk through the argument again and we don’t have time.”
The room was suddenly swarming with people. They weren’t doctors or nurses. They were in suits and ties, heels and make up. The legal department had descended en masse to deal with “the situation.”
Petra tried to understand what they were saying, “litigation” “exposure” “prior approval” but there were too many people speaking at once and not a lick of sense between them. They thrust papers at her in massive sheaves.
Jim was right, the paperwork was overwhelming. Petra had no clue what she was signing, but she let her hand fly over the paper, praying all the while that she was doing the right thing.
Jim’s voice cut through the din of lawyer-speak. “What you’re telling me is they’ve already started?”
Petra’s pen hovered over the paper. Had she gotten it wrong again? Had she waited too long? If Midge was under the knife, that meant they were going to have to do the worst possible thing: they were going to have to move her home before she was ready.
She buried her face in her hands and wept. Midge was going to die and it was all her fault.
The lawyers weren’t there to release Midge from surgery. Their job was, as Jim put it, to “cover their asses.” The hospital, they argued, had secured permission and that permission could not be revoked once the procedure was in progress.
Petra wanted them all to shut up and go away. It didn’t matter what the lawyers were saying or that Jim was furious. Midge was in surgery. That was all that mattered. They needed to stop arguing. She didn’t know how to tell a gaggle of adults how to shut up and shoo, so she did the only thing she could think of: she left the room.
The corridor was blissfully quiet. She took the opportunity to shoot Paul a note across the ether: Glatramunis onkater, doloramat vanquesarum; make the happiness return and the sadness remain gone forever. He would know she was in trouble from that message alone. She’d messed up, twice. She needed a win.
She scuttled down to the family area, which was at the far end of the ward, away from all the sick people. The vending machines were crammed full of salty-sugary-fatty goodies which had to be the antithesis of “healthy options,” but they were exactly what she was craving. Start with crunchy-salty and move on to squishy-sweet. They’d balance each other out and the carbs would settle her nerves. She had a credit card which she was only supposed to use for emergencies. This counted, didn’t it? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. She swiped her card and punched a couple of numbers. A bag of chips fell into the well. She punched another combo and was rewarded with some Starburst.
“I should get something for Jim and Betsy,” she mumbled. But that wasn’t the end of the idea. If Jim was right and everyone who’d evacuated Manhattan was going to be here any minute now, she should empty the machine and hide the goodies in the car.
She and Sean had been brainstorming their bartering system as he recovered by Betsy’s fire. “Luxury items,” he said, “will not be what you think they’re going to be…” They hadn’t gotten too far into their planning, but her gut told her that anxious parents would give real money (or other goods and services) to someone who had the magic potion (read: sugar) that made their kids shut up for ten minutes.
She needed a bag if she was going to stock up. She trotted back to the cart close to the nurses’ break room and helped herself to a pillow case. No one was going to miss a measly pillow case. She kept punching numbers in the vending machine until she’d emptied it out.
Looking “innocent” was a lot harder than people made out. There had to be a neon light flashing over her head that signaled, “GUILTY! G
UILTY! GUILTY!” She did everything wrong on her way out to the car. She smiled too much and made eye contact that weirded her out, so it had to be making other people nervous. But she made it. The snacks were safely in the trunk and she was scott-free in less than fifteen minutes. Not bad for a spur-of-the-moment buying binge.
She trotted back into the hospital, popping corn nuts into her mouth as she went.
“Miss?” It was a security guard. Damn. He’d seen the pillow. She should have brought it back.
“I can explain.” She needed to get him off her case. They were waiting for her. Midge was counting on her. She couldn’t be arrested for petty larceny. She just couldn’t.
“If you could follow me, please?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
There were fewer boats the further south they went. Christine could see why. The water was choppier the closer they got to the sea wall. There was sloshing of the most severe kind, huge rises and dramatic falls. This was perilous territory. If only she’d been able to call Paul and tell him to hike half a mile up the east side to a place that was easier to approach.
