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Careen blinked up from staring at Pietre’s face, which looked pained even in sleep. Rash was walking next to me, unabashedly staring at her breasts as they bounced up and down with every footfall. “Can you?” she asked.
Matthew’s brow was tight, and he looked like he might be sweating slightly. This didn’t seem like a good sign. “Until we x-ray it, I can’t be sure, but the infection from the exposed bone is getting worse.”
Careen worried her brow. The expression made her look like a cute, perplexed doll. We tramped towards the bottom of the hill with purpose until the sight before us stopped us all in our tracks.
Up until now it had looked like everyone had just evaporated mid morning tea. Like a magic spell had made them all disappear. But the hospital was a disaster. Whatever happened, it happened right here.
The glass doors were barricaded. Piles of furniture and medical equipment blocked the entrance. Once we broke our way inside, it was like viewing a torn-apart book. Everything was pulled to pieces. The decimated spine lay open and devastated, the pages incomplete or missing. The story no longer making sense. It was the kind of destruction you’d expect when someone was out of their minds looking for something. Every bed was upturned. Every cupboard door swung on its hinges. Matthew’s face drew down in horror. His hospital was in shreds.
We cleared a space and lay Pietre down, still on the carrier I’d made, on top of a bed. He was still out cold. As we started moving things aside and cleaning up, a bedpan slid off the debris and scuttled across the floor, hitting a hospital bed leg with a loud clang. Under an upturned bed, movement caught my eyes. I ran towards the source. Please, please, please be Joseph.
A weathered hand reached out, and then an irritated voice crackled through a pile of bed sheets. “Well, aren’t you going to help me, you dull girl?”
Addy’s skin was close to black. Purplish stains ran across her face and down her arm. I pulled her gently to sitting, and she arranged her legs, pulling them up to her chin. Her stick-like figure jutted out at all angles, like a sharply folded piece of paper. She shook from cold, shock, or both, and I gathered a clump of sheets to throw over her back. When they landed on her, she let out a horrible cough and blood sprayed across the back of her hand. My heart went cold and shivery. Panic was smothered by dread.
Old blood crusted in the corners of her mouth, like a wolf in need of a stream clean. I didn’t used to be a screamer. Most of the time, it seemed pointless to carry on like that, but when I took in the full devastation of Addy, I sat down in front of her like a child awaiting a lesson and screamed my lungs out.
“Matthew! Matthew! Matthew!” I held onto my chest, because in that moment, I felt like every emotion was fighting to get out, like there was a stag ramming the inside of my rib cage with his bony antlers.
“They’re still alive,” I whispered to myself.
I heard clattering. Matthew and Rash came ru
“Shh,” Addy managed, her voice sounding like air being let out of a tire.
Matthew lifted her arm and put his fingers to her wrist, shaking his head. “What happened? Where is everyone?”
“They came. But we saw them coming. Everyone evacuated. Retreated to the hiding place. I’m sorry, my good boy. I was already in here when they arrived. I’d had a fall.” She tapped her leg listlessly. “They weren’t interested in this old girl. They were after…” I felt a surge of hope. They were alive.
“The healing machine,” Matthew interrupted, cursing under his breath.
“Don’t use that kind of language,” Addy chided.
Rash stood back, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. I glared at him. I didn’t want anyone to cry. She wasn’t dead. She was still here, talking to us. Why was everyone looking at her like it was already over?
“It’s destroyed,” Matthew whispered.
Addy nodded. “Yes. They destroyed it with their bombs.”
Matthew scooped her up, and I righted a gurney. He placed her gently on the mattress. She looked like part of it, thin as the sheets. Her breath slow, her bare feet sticking out the bottom of a nightdress, cracked and scabbed. But she looked whole. Battered, but whole.
“What should I do?” Matthew asked, lost, his voice snagging on fought-back tears.
“Get the others and go to the hiding place. It’s time to fight back,” Addy said, her hand clasping around something. “Leave me,” she said, forcing a smile.
Matthew nodded, but didn’t release her hand. I shook my head, hoping I’d heard wrong. “What? No. What are you taking about? We’re not leaving her here,” I yelled.
Addy’s bright, scrunched-up eyes snapped to me. “I’m dying, dear.”
I felt thrumming and crashing in my ears, like they were filling up with water. “No you’re not,” I said stubbornly. “You’re fine. Just bruised.” I laughed weakly. “Don’t be such a baby.” Every word felt like a stabbing.
Matthew grabbed my arm firmly and dragged me away from the bed. He took me behind a fallen-down partition and said, “Rosa, Addy’s bleeding internally, everything’s destroyed, and the healer is in pieces. The emergency medical supplies have been taken. There’s nothing we can do.”
I covered my mouth, as if I could stop the grief from sliding out. “Please. We have to try something, anything. Matthew, it’s Addy.” Tears were pouring down my face, as everything tuned out and in. I could hear yelling outside, then Rash and Addy having an uncomfortable conversation on the other side of the partition.
“Garbage?” I heard Addy say, and then Rash laughing at his own joke.
I knew if there were anything Matthew could do, he would do it. And there wasn’t. There was nothing.
My home was rubble, and they were telling me Addy was going to die.
*****
We walked back to Addy and stood over her. It felt wrong, like we were standing over her grave. She grimaced, pulling that wrinkly face together like purse strings in dissatisfaction. “Don’t just hover over me looking miserable,” she snapped. We shifted uneasily but didn’t move. She waved us away with effort. “Go and make yourselves useful. I can’t look at those depressing faces another minute!”
Matthew was the first to move, falling into disaster-containment mode. He contacted everyone via handheld and told them to meet us at the hospital.
The rest of the group filtered in. Various levels of gasps, cursing and outrage thudded against our ears when they saw the destroyed hospital. When everyone was gathered, Matthew wandered off, angrily kicking over trays and upturned beds. I thought he was having a tantrum until I realized he was searching for something. Finally, he held up a glass bottle and a syringe, drawing the liquid from it. He put it to Addy’s arm, and she struggled against him. Her physical strength was akin to dry grass snapping under my boot, but her mind was never stronger.
With a fierceness only Addy could pull off, she said, “No, dear. I want to feel. I want to feel it. If my life’s about to end, I want to be here right ’til the last second.”
Something like an unreleased hiccup wedged in my throat.
Matthew turned to the group of Spiders and Survivors, saying, “The settlement has evacuated to the hiding place. Most of us can stay here. I need about four volunteers to come with me to recover them.” My father put his hand up.