Chapter 9: Subterranean Homesick Blues

Lily studied the crowd in the dining facility, savoring the last few spoonfuls of vegetable stew.

A handful of older teens were dotted amongst grey and greying heads, but there were no children. No babies. No pregnant women. Lily had never been in a gathering like this that didn’t include pregnant women.

It was hard to miss the air of desperate, forced cheer. The shadowed eyes, the too-wide smiles. The bandaged fingers. They must’ve thought they were the end of the human race, but they kept going and it was tearing them apart.

She wanted to stand up on her chair and shout the truth, but she didn’t want to die. And of course there were worse things.

Ishmael’s questions about pregnancy and siblings made sense now. If her mother had lots of children then she probably would too. It was something in the genetics, a profane Coalition word that Lily didn’t understand.

She’d gotten a red light, which obviously wasn’t a surprise — unless it was checking for general capability. Maybe Castor had done her one small, bleak favor before expiring.

Across from her, Abigail pushed her half-full bowl away.

Lily’s hand twitched toward it. She was so intent on the food that she didn’t realize Abigail had spoken. “Huh?”

“I asked if they were making you commute up from Supply.”

“Um. No. They said it was…too far to go,” Lily hazarded.

“Well, you can sleep in the bunk room tonight. There’s only one other person in there; I think he’s from Supply too.”

Oh. Wonderful. Lily’s new history had more holes than a slab of worm-eaten wood. It wouldn’t hold up to even casual questioning.

Abigail gathered their plates and stood. The uneaten food was dumped into a squat green barrel. Lily’s heart broke to see it go.

They squeezed into the corner of the lift together as it rocketed down; Abigail’s face was pale and queasy. They both breathed easier in the corridor outside Medical.

“Tomorrow it’ll be back to normal,” Abigail yawned. “Ok. That door’s the bunk room. Your card should work. See you tomorrow for first shift.”

With that she was gone, hurrying down the hall.

Lily assumed her new ID card was supposed to open the door somehow, but it was already ajar. Light streamed out into the corridor. She took a deep breath, tugged the hem of her shirt down, and marched in.

There were four bunk beds in the low-ceilinged room, made up with rough grey blankets, each with a small shelf for personal belongings.

Lily barely saw any of it. She couldn’t move past the doorway, couldn’t move at all.

He’d already picked the bed furthest from the door and turned the blanket neatly down. Maybe it wasn’t real, maybe she just wanted and feared it so badly that—

Michael’s head snapped up. He half-turned and saw her.

He blinked. Twice. Then, calmly, he lay down facing the wall.

Lily stared at his back and shoulders, frozen. Asphyxiating. What had he seen on her face? What had she looked like?

She turned off the light and took the bed closest to the door, curling up on top of the blankets. After a little while she heard deep, even breathing from the other bed. From Michael’s bed.

Lily lay her hand flat across her sternum, pushing down against the sharp, bitter ache building beneath it. He couldn’t be here, it wasn’t possible. He was dead out in the Wasteland or gone over the mountains without her.

The pattern of his breathing changed. Quickened.

If they’d found him, then it explained why Naomi thought there were more outsiders coming. But why hadn’t Ishmael mentioned finding someone else? Why keep it a secret and then put them in a room together?

She balled a pillow up against her stomach, holding tight.

Across the room, Michael sat up and screamed. Or tried to. She’d made sounds like that before.

Lily held still, heart pounding, eyes wide — he was a hunched shape in the dark, sucking in deep, shuddering gulps of air.

Then he rolled onto his face with a muffled groan, and didn’t move again.

“It’s called a malunion,” Abigail explained, pointing to two blurry lines in the short bone of Lily’s shin. “The pieces didn’t line up when it healed. When was this?”

“I was seventeen,” Lily said faintly, staring in awe at the image on the screen, rotating her leg and watching the inverted picture move too, the bones white shadows against the darker mass of her flesh. “Do you think…can you fix it?”

Abigail shrugged. “We’d have to re-break the bone, but—”

“No!” Lily jumped up. Her leg twinged and the screen blacked out. “I mean, I’ll have to think about it.”

She’d do nothing but think about it now, particularly at night, as she lay in her cot unsleeping. Maybe tonight she’d be the one with nightmares, and she could wake Michael up.

He hadn’t spoken to her, even after Abigail introduced them on the first day and asked if they’d worked together down in Supply.

The question had made Lily’s heart stutter. Pieces were coming together, suggesting the whole shape of the problem. If Ishmael or anyone discovered that she and Michael had known each other before the Station, it would confirm Naomi’s worst fears. Whatever they were.

“No,” Michael had replied, to the wall past Lily’s shoulder. “It’s a big department.”

There was a Security man recovering in the ward with a broken arm, a concussion, and an orbital bone fracture. Apparently Michael done it; in spite of everything, Lily found this particular violence hard to visualize.

As a result, he could not enter the ward. He was stuck behind a narrow desk, transferring the contents of red folders into an ancient, humming machine with a staticky screen while Lily trailed Abigail up and down the rows of beds.

Lily wasn’t sure how long she could keep up the charade. Ironically, she knew a great deal about childbirth. She knew what germs were, how to treat burns and frostbite, and was intimately acquainted with how not to set a bone. Otherwise the medical arts were foreign to her.

She was given a patchwork of study materials: handwritten notes, worn textbooks, and a few step-by-step illustrated guides that she latched onto gratefully, along with the disjointed hands-on training she got from Abigail.

Thankfully, most of what came through the door were minor injuries. She changed bandages, checked vitals, and occasionally did terrible things with needles and tubes, jumping at any chance to learn or prove herself.

Once Michael’s hand shook when she passed him, rattling the paper he held. He made a tight fist, shook it out, and returned to work without looking up.

So it went.

Lily still couldn’t believe he was there. Sometimes she changed her route to take her past the desk, just to make sure he hadn’t evaporated. She ached to ask how he’d come to the Station, why he’d almost killed that man, whether Ishmael had told him to be a doctor too…

Abigail didn’t walk, she bustled — down the rows, into the supply room, past the pharmacy, over to the desk to lean over Michael and ask if he was having any trouble. And put her hand on his shoulder.

Whatever he said in response made Abigail laugh. Lily’s heart was rubbed painfully raw, and she soothed it by accidentally breaking a cup and sweeping it up with painstaking care.

Dinner.

Abigail took them both to the dining facility, as she did every day. If she stood closer to one of them in the lift, it didn’t matter. Lily measured her shoes against the floor tiles and said nothing.

“You ok,” Abigail asked as they joined the line. “You look queasy.”

Lily busied herself counting the number of red jumpsuits. “I’m hungry.”

A large, cheerful man in green with hair only on the back of his head hustled up to the line, and Abigail stepped out to hug him.

Lily thought there was some family resemblance, but all these people looked similar anyway, just like in tiny surface settlements where nobody traveled much.

“Uncle Alan, this is Michael and that’s Lily. They’re our new Med trainees.” Lily tried to smile as Abigail said her name, but if it came out as more of a grimace, Alan didn’t seem to notice. “Are you on break? Can you eat with us?”

“Sorry Abby. I’ll be down later, though.” Alan opened and closed his thick-jointed fingers. “I did what you told me, it’s not really helping.”

“I also told you to take a desk, but you didn’t,” Abigail said with mock severity, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.“It’s not just the arthritis. Don’t forget.”

He beamed down at her like a benevolent moon. “I can’t, you won’t let me. I’m coming down after work for my prescription, so feel free to harass me again then.”

Abigail said something else to Michael as Alan excused himself, but the line had moved up and Lily focused on the food.

She carried her tray off to a corner and didn’t watch Abigail lead Michael over to a different table. She didn’t watch them talking.

The lights flickered overhead, and the noise of the crowd ebbed before swelling up again, loud with relief. A red-suited woman playfully cuffed the shoulder of a reedy man in black, asking why he couldn’t keep the power on. What was next? Toilets reversing themselves again?

His indignant response was lost amid good-natured ribbing from the rest of the table.

Lily watched the lights.

Afterwards, outside Lower Med, Abigail pulled Lily aside. Her face was flushed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes,” Lily said warily, expecting what came next to sound like ‘you’re not from Supply, I asked and they said they’d never heard of you’.

“You and Michael aren’t…” Abigail blew stray hairs out of her eyes. “You don’t like him, do you?”

“What? Oh. No. I barely know him.” It was the horrible, unfortunate truth.

“Oh. Ok.” Abigail laughed and sighed at the same time, a tiny explosion of air. “I thought — well, you’re always looking at him, and I don’t want to…”

She wasn’t always looking at him, he just got in the way of things she wanted to see. Lily thought of several colorful and descriptive things to say, but settled on, “It’s fine.”

It was fine. It was.

She glanced at the clock. It was five exactly. When it turned seven it would buzz, the night shift would come in, and she’d go back to the bunk room and try for at least three hours of rest before…well. Maybe tonight he wouldn’t come in.

Abigail hurried away to relieve the technician who’d covered their lunch break.

Lily pressed her knuckles into her stomach, watching Michael drop into the chair and drag his hands down his face before pulling over another set of forms.

When, Lily wondered, had she become so bitter? She couldn’t remember if she’d had the kindness ground out of her, or if she’d always been hard inside and her life had molded itself to that framework.

She hoped it was the first. She hoped it was reversible.

The clock read five-thirty.

Abigail swooped in while Lily was organizing medical supplies in the closet and said, “Go give Michael a break. We’ll get dinner, then come back and spell you.”

Before Lily could protest or make excuses she was stuck at the desk, flipping listlessly through the stack of folders. She understood the look of trapped boredom Michael had worn for the last week. She understood she was on very, very thin ice.

Lily touched the machine. It made a disapproving beep, and she jerked her hand back.

The clock read five forty.

Words squirmed across the page. Lily closed the folder gently and let her face drop into her hands.

The door opened and closed. She didn’t look up.

“Are you open,” a jovial voice asked. “Are you alive?”

Lily looked up. It was Alan, Abigail’s uncle. Time meant nothing without the sun; of course he would come now.

“Hi,” she said. “Yes. Do you need Abigail?”

“No, I’m just here for a pickup,” Alan said. He looked sweaty and tight around the eyes; Lily caught the comforting barn-smell of animals from his clothes as he settled into a chair, removing his outer layer. “It’s under R. Alan Rodriguez.”

Lily hesitated, biting the tip of her tongue. Then she got up and hurried to the pharmacy room anyway.

Inside, she pushed the heels of her hands hard into her eye sockets. A blurry afterimage remained as she surveyed mostly empty shelves with tiny outposts of bottles, each with its own neatly printed label.

R. It was under R.

It was going to be fine.

She found a bottle. The ink smudged a little against her sweating palm, but it was still legible. It rattled a little as she marched back out to face the music.

Alan took the bottle from her with a strained grin, popped off the lid, and immediately palmed two tablets. Lily’s nails dug sharply into her palm as he swallowed them dry.

“Do you think you could get me a little water,” he asked.

Lily’s anxiety lessened a little. She was still enamored by the novelty of plumbing, potable water gushing from the pipes on demand.

Ice-cold water numbed her fingers through the plastic cup as she hurried back through the ward.

She was waylaid for an eternity by an old woman with a sprained ankle who insisted it was really actually very broken. She wanted another pillow to put under it. She wanted some water also. Lily only escaped by virtue of being rude.

It had already happened by the time she got back. Alan was on the ground, stiff, the whites of his eyes showing horrible and blank. His heels drummed the floor.

The cup tumbled from her hands. She dropped to her knees, landing in the puddle. She’d seen this before. In a child. His little body had bowed into an arc and he’d clenched his jaw so tight that—

She had to put something in his mouth. That’s what everyone always said. Otherwise he’d swallow his tongue.

Lily scrambled to the supply cabinet, wrenching the door open, knocking a shelf of rolled gauze to the floor in her frantic search. There. Rags. Clean, folded.

She snatched one and grabbed Alan by the jaw. It was hard work getting it between his teeth, but she managed. She shoved it in and held his head between her hands, fingers splayed on either side of his sweating face, trying to keep him from hurting himself.

She should’ve just said something.

Lily wiped her sleeve across her dry eyes and hauled herself up, yanking the door open.

Empty. No one in sight.

The clock said six-ten.

Alan’s convulsions had stilled and he was making an odd gagging sound, his eyes wide open and staring. Lily knelt and touched his shoulder, but was immediately overwhelmed with familiar revulsion at the sick heat of his body through the patched and faded jumpsuit.

The clock said six-twenty, and the door was opening. People were running. Lily found herself shoved unceremoniously to the side as Abigail crashed to her knees, grabbing Alan by the shoulders, peeling back one eyelid — when had his eyes closed?

“Never, never—” Abigail pulled breathlessly on the rag, her voice thick with tears. “What’s wrong with you?”

He hadn’t swallowed his tongue, but he had swallowed something else. The tang of vomit soured the air.

Abigail’s face was pale and horrified as she shook Alan harder and called his name. When he didn’t respond she unzipped his jumpsuit and clasped her fists over his sternum, pressing down, pausing to close her mouth over his and breathe. His chest moved bizarrely.

Michael appeared. They changed places, some wordless communication passing between them. Neither of them acknowledged Lily now; her throat tightened. Her mouth was drier than the Wasteland. She picked up the bottle of pills from the floor and held it, label turned toward her palm.

She thought she’d seen every kind of death, but she was wrong.

Afterwards it was very neat. Abigail wept silently as men in grey jumpsuits loaded the body onto a stretcher, covered it in a sheet, and wheeled it out. Michael tried to guide her over to a chair, but she shook him off and stared at Lily. Through Lily.

“You,” she snarled, stumbling towards her. “You killed him.”

“No,” Lily whispered. “He just dropped.”

“‘Just dropped’?” Abigail scraped her fingers through her hair. “He asphyxiated! How the fuck did you pass the aptitude test? He was all the family I had left, don’t you— what’s that. What’s that in your hand?”

She snatched the bottle of pills out of Lily’s unresisting fingers, swiping at her eyes as she read the label.

The entire range of human emotion washed across her face, and anger was left behind.

“This is a stimulant! How many of these did you give him?” She shook the bottle in Lily’s face. “They’re not even his! Does that look like Alan Rodriguez to you? Does it? Can’t you fucking read?”

Silence.

“You can’t,” Abigail whispered, eyes too bright, voice too calm. “Can you.”

Michael inserted himself between them. “Please, sit. Let me—”

“Get away from me!” She hurled the bottle at his head on her way out, and didn’t notice him catch it with inhuman quickness.

The door slammed so hard in her wake that Lily felt the vibration in the floor. She marched to the desk, jerked the chair out, and sat.

Numbers were easy, but there had been no one to teach her the rest. Illiteracy had opened doors, gotten her more courier jobs. Important, classified jobs.

She slammed her palm down flat on the desktop and focused on the sting.

Michael dragged a waiting area chair around and sat between her and the door. He set the pill bottle gently on the desk. “She’s getting security.”

“I don’t care,” Lily said, wondering if he was sitting there to stop her leaving. As if she had anywhere to go.

Lily didn’t fight. Strangely, Michael looked like he wanted to.

Even though Security ignored him he came along too, following two steps ahead of Abigail. One step behind Lily. She felt him there like a cold spot in the water.

Outside Naomi’s office she sat on the same hard bench, in the same silence. Michael and Abigail had gone in together with Ishmael, and through the closed door Lily heard indistinct raised voices. Her head was full of static.

When she was finally ushered in, she barely listened to the sentencing. Ishmael was in trouble too, for fixing up her aptitude test.

It was strange. Michael had been standing quietly next to Abigail, but when the order came for Lily to be taken to holding, she saw him change — an almost imperceptible shift from passive bystander to killing thing. Why? This didn’t involve him.

“She won’t be harmed,” Ishmael said, before there could be violence. He’d noticed. “It’s just procedure.”

Lily reviewed the past hour: Michael standing between her and Abigail, between her and the door, between her and Security. There had to be a different explanation for it. That couldn’t be why.

“You’re not being charged with anything,” Ishmael told him, over Abigail’s protests and calls for harsher punishment. “You’re free to go.”

Calmly, Michael hit him. Half-speed, closed fist.

Lily stared at him in disbelief, but she didn’t have time to ask questions before he was arrested too. They were herded off in separate directions, Ishmael pinching his nose as he shuffled Lily down the corridor to her old cell.

The door slammed shut, and she was alone.