Chapter 9: Subterranean Homesick Blues, Pt. 2

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 came 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.