UnWholly

“I’m going this time,” she tells Co

Co

“Too much of a burden?” Risa finishes.

“I was going to say too much effort when every second counts for this kid.”

But her mind is set. “After what happened the other times,” she tells him, “I have to go.”

“It won’t change the outcome either way,” Co

“I know,” she tells him, even though she’s not entirely sure he’s right. He backs away as two of the medics lift her chair into the van.

“Even if they catch me, they can’t unwind me,” she reminds him. “I’m seventeen. And besides, the disabled can’t be unwound.”

“What if they recognize you?”

“Oh, please,” Risa says. “It’s our names that people know, much more than our faces. I’ll be fine.” Then she offers him a slim but sincere smile, and he reluctantly returns it. It doesn’t bridge the gap between them, but at least it marks the spot where the bridge might be built. She closes the van’s back door without saying good-bye, because they share a secret superstition, never saying good-bye to each other. Risa will soon regret that she didn’t.

•   •   •

It’s a bumpy ride out of the Graveyard with no paved roads, just the hardpan desert flattened by the wheels of jets. There’s more than a mile to the gate. In the back, Dylan moans with every bump. As they approach, the guards on duty, notified of the emergency, quickly open the gate.

Once they’re on paved roads, the ride is easier, and Dylan quiets down. Risa comforts him and monitors his vital signs.

The first time they had to bring a kid to the hospital, Kiana went with one of the other medics—a kid who panicked whenever Band-Aids didn’t stick—but he was the only other medically-experienced kid willing to venture out of the Graveyard on what was potentially a suicide mission. That first time, a new arrival had climbed to the tail of a cargo jet on a dare. He fell and cracked his skull. Risa would have gone, but everyone convinced her there was no point and it was too impractical. Kiana and the nervous medic had taken the boy to the hospital with a whole fake story of what happened and documents to back up a fake identity. The boy died in the hospital. The second time it was a girl with a burst appendix. Again the girl was rushed to the hospital, again Risa stayed behind, and again the girl died.

Risa doesn’t know what her presence at the hospital can do. All she knows is that she can’t sit back and wait to hear about another kid’s death.

•   •   •

Kiana helps Risa out of the back, then single-handedly carries Dylan into the ER waiting room, with Risa rolling in behind her. Now Risa must display her acting skills. She thinks about her friends in the band who had been playing in the Chop Shop when it blew—the ones who died—and the memory brings necessary tears to her eyes. Then she dredges up a character that saved her once before: the ditzy girl who talks in questions.

“Hello, can somebody help us? My brother was on the roof fixing tiles? And he fell from the roof and got hurt real bad? And we didn’t know what to do? So we brought him here, but there’s a lot of blood and we’re really scared? Can you help us?”

She hopes the tears plus the ditz can scramble anyone’s BS detectors as effectively as Hush Puppy once scrambled radar. There are rumors that the Juvies have started using DNA decoders in the field. She can only hope that they haven’t trickled down to hospitals yet.

Emergency room staff drop whatever they’re doing and rush to their aid. In a second Dylan’s on a gurney, being wheeled through the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY doors.

“Is he going to be okay?” asks Risa, in panic that’s only partially feigned. “Because our parents are out of town? And we didn’t know what to do?”

“We’ll take care of him, honey,” says a nurse in a comforting tone. “Don’t you worry.” The nurse glances at Kiana, who has Dylan’s blood on her clothes, then heads off into the emergency room.

The doors swing closed, and Risa rolls over to the admissions desk, with a carefully pla

“We’ll sort this all out later,” the admissions clerk says, giving up and getting on to the next person in line.

•   •   •

An hour of waiting with no word. Kiana’s been pacing, no matter how much Risa tells her to calm down, but perhaps being nervous just plays into their cover story. Finally the same nurse comes out into the waiting room. The woman is slightly teary-eyed, and Risa feels a pit in her stomach, as if Dylan, who she didn’t know before today, really is her brother.

“Honey, I’m afraid the news isn’t good. You’re going to have to prepare yourself.”

Risa grips the wheels of her chair, feeling a well of emotion begi

“I’m sorry,” the nurse says, “but your brother was just too badly injured. We did everything we could. . . .”

Risa just looks at her in disbelief and shock. The nurse puts her hand on Risa’s, patting it gently. “I can’t imagine what you must be feeling right now, but we’re going to have to notify your parents. We’ve been trying, but no one picks up at the numbers you gave us. Do you have any other way of contacting them?”

Risa, her hair dangling in front of her face, shakes her head.

“Well then,” says the nurse, “we’ll have to keep trying. In the meantime, if there’s anyone else you can call . . .”

“Can you give us a few moments?” Risa asks quietly.

“Of course, dear.” The nurse squeezes her hand reassuringly and goes back through the emergency room doors, where Dylan’s body waits to be claimed by parents that don’t exist. Risa wipes her tears away, trying to find comfort in the fact that she did the best that she could.

And then Kiana says, “It’s just like the other times.”

That makes Risa look up, and something occurs to her. She wonders how similar it is.

“Kiana . . . you do know we’re supposed to go to a different hospital each time, right?”

By the look on Kiana’s face, Risa can tell she never learned that particular protocol. “Shouldn’t it be the closest hospital in an emergency?” Kiana asks.

The sudden dread that Risa feels is balanced with an equal amount of hope. “The other times you were here, did you see that same nurse?”

“I think so. At least once. That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. I’ll be back.”

Risa rolls herself toward the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL doors and pushes her way through. She finds herself in a hallway that’s more starkly lit and even less inviting than the waiting room.

While hundreds of people flow through an emergency room, there aren’t many teenage kids with parents who mysteriously can’t be reached, and whose “siblings” vanish upon pronouncement of death. This nurse must have recognized Kiana—there is no question in Risa’s mind. Which means there’s more than one level of deception here.

“Excuse me,” someone says from farther down the hall, “you’re not supposed to be in here.”

But Risa doesn’t care. She rolls into a large room marked RECOVERY. It’s subdivided by curtains into cubicles with hospital beds, and she begins to pull back each curtain one by one. An empty bed. An old woman. Another empty bed, and finally, Dylan Ward. His wound has been dressed; an IV leads into his arm. He’s unconscious, but a monitor shows a steady heartbeat. He’s anything but dead.

Just then the nurse comes up behind Risa and turns her chair around. The woman is nowhere near as teary-eyed as before.

“You need to leave right now, or I’ll call security.”

Risa locks the brake, so the chair can’t be wheeled away. “You told me he was dead!”