What's Left of Me (18 page)

Twenty

W
e were numb for the rest of the day. There were too many people, too many pairs of eyes. The other kids. The nurses. Mr. Conivent. We were never alone, and we wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Instead, they shoved us from one room to another, one meal, one activity, to another, always under surveillance, always watched. Everything was background noise, like static on a radio. Again and again, Ryan or Hally tried to speak to us. Addie fled whenever either came too close, turning our face and threading through the crowd of kids until we were as far away as possible. I didn’t try to persuade her otherwise.

Finally, night fell and a nurse lined everyone up, leading us through the now quiet halls to the Ward. Beyond Nornand’s windows, a yolk-colored sun dropped slowly below the horizon. Some of the kids took their medication while the rest of us milled around. We sat in one of the stiff-backed chairs, staring at the carpet.

“Addie?” Kitty said, breaking us from our reverie. “We’ve got to go back to our room now.”

Addie followed her silently. Hally walked beside us, too, her hands twisting one in the other, her eyes darting between us and her brother, who kept a greater distance. She seemed ready to say something just as Addie reached our door, but she didn’t, just looked at the ground and disappeared into the room next to ours.

Kitty shut the door after we entered. Our duffel bag now sat beside the second bed, a folded white nightgown laying on top. Addie didn’t bother changing, just crawled beneath the covers without even kicking off our shoes.

After a few minutes, the lights clicked off. Finally, there was darkness and no more watching, no more meaningless noise. Addie gritted our teeth, but the tears strained past our eyelids anyway.

Silence. Then a whisper in the night.

“Addie?” Kitty had slipped from her own bed and padded over to ours. Darkness shielded her expression; we saw nothing but the soft shape of her nose, the roundness of her cheeks and chin. Her voice was reedy, like a sad lullaby. “Addie, are you crying?” Addie turned our face toward the wall, but a hand brushed against our cheek. “Addie?”

“Yes?” Addie whispered.

For a moment, Kitty didn’t reply. I almost thought she’d returned to her bed. But Addie looked up, and Kitty was still standing there, more fairylike than ever in her white nightgown.

“Sometimes . . .” She hesitated, then went on. “Sometimes it helps if I think about what they’re doing at home.” When Addie didn’t break eye contact, Kitty swallowed and said, “I used to talk with Sallie about home. About my brothers and sister.”

“Sallie?” Addie said.

Kitty nodded. “She was my old roommate. But she hasn’t been here for months.”

“Where did she go?” Addie said, pushing ourself slowly up. She leaned backward until our shoulder blades pressed against the wall. Our eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to make out Kitty’s trembling mouth.

“They told us she went home,” she said. “Like Jaime.”

Jaime again. Should we tell her? Would it do any good?

“Addie?”

Something in her voice made us bite back our weariness and the stabbing in our gut. It was the same voice Lyle used when it was just him and us and he was too tired to worry about sounding tough.

Thinking about Lyle made our chest clench again. If there was anything good coming out of this hell, it was the chance that our little brother might get the chance we’d all been aching for.

Addie patted the bed next to us. Kitty hesitated, then sank onto our mattress, tucking her legs up beneath her.

“Tell me about home,” Addie said.

“Home?”

Addie nodded. “Home. Family. Tell me about your brothers.”

“I’ve got three,” Kitty said. “And a sister. But Ty’s the nicest. He takes care of us since Mom. . . . He’s twenty-one.”

“Oh?” Addie said. Gingerly, she reached over and ran our fingers through the girl’s long hair. It was tangled, and we had no brush, so she began working the knots out by hand. Kitty stiffened, then relaxed.

“He plays the guitar, and he’s really good.”

Addie continued smoothing the knots from Kitty’s hair.

“He said he’d teach me to play, too,” Kitty said. “But that . . . But he’s in trouble now. Because he tried to keep them from taking me away—”

Our fingers stilled.

“Let’s talk about your sister,” Addie said. “How old is she?”

“Seventeen—no, I think she’s eighteen now.”

“I have a little brother,” Addie said quickly, ignoring the pain as it intensified in our chest. “His name’s Lyle. He’s ten.”

Kitty nodded, but I could feel the conversation ending, as tangible as the curtain fall at the close of a play. Addie brushed a strand of hair away from the little girl’s face.

“Think you can fall asleep now?” she said. Kitty nodded without meeting our eyes. But she didn’t move. “You can stay here if you’d like,” Addie said. The air was cold, and her nightgown looked thin. “I can go over to your bed.”

Another faint nod.

“Good night, Kitty,” she said.

Addie slipped off the bed, but hadn’t taken a single step when a hand shot out and grabbed our wrist.

“Yes, Ki—”

She pulled herself to our side, her mouth so close to our ear that when she spoke, we felt more than heard the word.

Nina
.

And then her eyes were huge and bright and intent on ours.

Waiting.

“Good night, Nina,” Addie whispered.

The small hand on our wrist squeezed, nails biting into the hollow between our bones. We heard a sigh like the release of a dream. Then the hand was gone. Nina turned and slipped beneath our blanket without another word.

Hours later, we were still awake. A nurse had just come by and opened our door, casting a quick glance over our beds before stepping back into the hall.

We could hear Nina breathing softly, her dark hair pooled across her—our—pillow. If the nurse had noticed the change in beds, she hadn’t tried to do anything about it. Maybe someone would reprimand us in the morning. Or maybe who slept in which bed was one bit of control we were allowed to keep.

Our head ached from lack of rest. We hadn’t slept more than four hours a night since we’d left home. I hadn’t spoken since last night. The wall between Addie and me stood sturdy and seamless, letting nothing through.

I told myself I was still angry with her. Angry at what she had said. Angry at what she had implied. But our parents were not coming. Our father was not going to whisk us away in his arms like he had when we were a child. We were alone. We had no one else.

We should have had each other.

Yet here was the wall and the silence and the anger getting in the way. Here were Addie and I, not speaking to each other. I could wait for her to make the first move, as I had for years.

But I was so sick and tired of the loneliness.

She flinched. For a second, I was terrified she would ignore me. I’d never ignored her when she reached out after a fight.

she said. The words brushed against me like tattered butterfly wings.

I said.

I fell silent. I knew she didn’t mean coming to Nornand, wasn’t talking about the doctors and the tests and the fear of never going home.

Addie said.

I said.

Addie climbed from Kitty’s bed, shivering as our feet pressed against the cold tiles. She crept to the window, staring out at the darkness and the pinprick stars.

she said.

If we’d never learned to hate ourself. Never allowed the world to drive a wedge between us, forcing us to become Addie-or-Eva, not Addie-and-Eva. We’d been born with our souls’ fingers interlocked. What if we’d never let go?

I said.

Addie rested our forehead against the icy glass.

she said again.

Her apology should have made me feel better. Instead, it only made the pain worse. How was I supposed to reply? Yes, I accept your apology? No, it’s not your fault?

It wasn’t Addie’s fault. I’d never thought it Addie’s fault. If anything, it was mine. I was the one who hadn’t faded when I was supposed to. I was the one who’d ruined Addie’s life forever. A recessive soul was marked for death before birth. I should have disappeared. Instead, I’d dragged Addie into this half life, this dangerous existence, forever afraid.

I reached for her, across the blank space between our souls. I said

We looked out at the world on the other side of the window. There was some sort of shadowy courtyard below, an irregular-shaped space bound by a chain-link fence. We could just barely make it out in the darkness. Nornand curved around part of the courtyard, half obscuring our vision. But there was a stretch of the enclosure blocked only by the fence, and beyond that—beyond that was just blackness. Not a single light.

I said.

Addie pressed our fingers against the windowpane, and if I imagined hard enough, I could almost see it giving way, see us landing unharmed in the courtyard below, scaling the fence like it was nothing, and running, running away until the darkness enfolded us and hid us from view.

Twenty-one

W
e felt the change in the air as soon as we awoke the next morning. The nurse corralling everyone in the Ward didn’t smile like she had the day before, and when Eli stumbled rising from his chair, she yanked him back to his feet so hard he cried out. Kitty must have seen Addie staring; she sidled up next to us and whispered, “It’s because
they’re
here.”

“Who?” Addie said, but the nurse demanded silence and Kitty refused to speak again, no matter how quietly, until we reached the small cafeteria where we ate our meals.

Even then, Kitty waited until the nurse retreated to her chair in the corner of the room. “The review board,” she said, leaning toward us over her breakfast tray. A strand of her dark hair trailed through her oatmeal, and she squeaked in dismay.

Addie muttered, but there wasn’t time to say it aloud.

Because at that moment, the door opened, the nurse froze, and Mr. Conivent walked in. Immediately, the atmosphere in the room twisted. Mr. Conivent didn’t fit in here. Despite the cold tile floor, the blinding fluorescent lights, and the observing nurse, something about all fourteen of us eating at one table created a sense of intimacy that mixed about as well with Mr. Conivent as water did with oil.

No one spoke as he surveyed the room. He nodded at the nurse, who gave a twitchy nod back, like a bird. Many of the kids weren’t actually eating, just pushing their food around. Hally looked just as confused as we felt. Devon’s head tilted down toward his tray, but we could see his eyes fixed on Mr. Conivent.

The three of us sat on the side of the table opposite the door, so we all had a perfect view of the men and woman who entered next. They were only four altogether, but they moved with a power that gripped the room, made them seem to take up more space than they should have. The men were dressed sharply in ties and creased pants, the woman in a dark pencil skirt, a small diamond winking from each ear. They stared at us openly, like the lanky delivery boy had our first morning. As if they were taking a tour of the zoo and we were the next animals on the itinerary.

Mr. Conivent spoke softly to one of the men, who nodded without looking at him. They stayed perhaps two minutes, just watching us pretend we didn’t notice them. Then they and Mr. Conivent were gone and the whole room resumed breathing again as one, as if we shared common lungs.

“Who was that?” Hally said as a hum of conversation sprang up around the table. The nurse had wilted slightly by her chair and didn’t seem to be listening.

“The review board,” Kitty repeated. “They’re from the government.”

“This
is
the government,” Devon said, and she shrugged.

“They’re from the
government
government. They’re important.”

“How often do they come?” Hally said.

Kitty shook her head and scooped up some oatmeal. She held her spoon the same way Lyle did when he was playing with his food, as if it were a shovel. “I’ve only seen them once before, about a year ago. After I first got here.”

The nurse had regained her color—too much of it, in fact. Her cheeks were flushed. She rubbed at her forehead, then clambered back onto her feet and clapped her hands like the nurses always seemed to do. “Come on, children. Eat quickly.”

No one spoke again. The silence left me to digest, slowly, just how long Kitty had already been at Nornand.

Study time and lunch passed without the review board’s intrusion, as did dinner. But we didn’t head for the Study room after our last meal, as we had the previous day. Instead, we ended up in a sort of waiting room.

Addie and I had been in countless waiting rooms over the years. Ones with coffee tables covered with glossy health magazines. Ones with wallpaper in cool, calming blue. Ones with those silly blocks-on-rails play tables for little kids. This room had none of those things. There was a row of chairs pressed against one wall, facing the two doors cut into the opposite wall. We could just see what looked to be bright white examination rooms beyond the doorways. And that was it. But the entire setup screamed
waiting room
anyway.

Dr. Lyanne, Dr. Wendle, and Mr. Conivent stood inside, a strange trio in the corner of the room. Dr. Wendle was flushed, Dr. Lyanne pale but speaking quickly and passionately, Mr. Conivent cold, his words colder. Their argument, never loud, stopped immediately when the nurse cleared her throat. The three looked up. Dr. Wendle blanched. Dr. Lyanne faltered. Mr. Conivent’s expression didn’t change.

“Good, the children are here,” he said, and though his tone was polite and his face smooth, it sounded like a dismissal. “Would you two get started, then? The board will arrive in a moment.”

He left, and all the kids parted for him at the door, no one touching even the edge of his shirt. For a moment afterward, no one spoke. Dr. Lyanne stared at the wall.

It was the nurse who finally broke the silence, drawing on the endless reservoir of smiles she seemed to possess and pasting one onto her face. “Right, then,” she said. “Children, find a seat and sit quietly. The doctors will call you when they’re ready.”

Slowly, everyone settled down. Addie sat in a chair close to the door, and Kitty grabbed a seat next to us. Lissa took the one on our other side, Ryan the one beside her. He glanced at us, but only for a moment. We hadn’t spoken much the whole day. All the nurses were too tense, cracking down on the slightest whisper during study time, patrolling the table during meals.

Ryan had touched our shoulder as we left lunch, and when Addie hadn’t immediately jerked away, he’d asked, softly, if we were okay. Addie had nodded. He’d squeezed gently before letting us go. And that had been all.

We had to tell them what we suspected about Sallie. This wasn’t just one boy anymore. This procedure, this
surgery
, had happened more than once. And neither Jaime nor Sallie seemed like they were coming back. Not if the doctors had told everyone they’d gone home.

Dr. Wendle disappeared into one of the examination rooms. Dr. Lyanne stood in the adjacent doorway—not even leaning against the wall or the doorframe—just standing there, holding up her own weight.

Eli whimpered. A ripple ran through the room, but no one spoke and only a few heads turned to stare.

Addie said.

“Cal’s just scared of needles,” Kitty said, catching our expression. “He always cries when they take blood.”

“Cal?” Addie said.

Kitty wavered, then said, “I—I meant Eli.”

“You mean you made a mistake?” Addie frowned. “You thought it was Cal, but it’s Eli?”

Kitty looked at the little boy. He had his hands fisted, his short legs drawn up onto the chair. “It’s Eli,” she said, and her voice was deadened but sure. “It’s always Eli.”

The boy’s crying had caught Dr. Lyanne’s attention. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, then away again. Her gaze moved across the room, studying each of us in turn. Something in her seemed to slacken.

“Kitty,” she said, glancing down at her clipboard. “You’re up first.”

Kitty slipped from her chair and followed Dr. Lyanne into the examination room. Addie waited until Dr. Wendle had called someone in with him, too, until both doors had shut. Then she turned to Hally and Ryan and murmured, “It’s not just Jaime.”

“We know,” Lissa said.

“
What
?” Addie said. Ryan raised his eyebrows in warning, and she dropped our voice to a whisper. “How?”

“I’ve talked to some of the others,” Ryan said. He tilted his head toward one of the older boys at the far end of the room. “Some of the kids have been here a really long time. Years. And they’ve seen other kids disappear. Gone home. Except . . .”

“No one really goes home,” Addie said.

Eli was whimpering again. The blond boy next to him put an awkward hand on his shoulder, but everyone else pretended not to notice. Everyone seemed to spend a lot of time pretending not to notice Eli. He’d been oddly fumbling all morning, his steps uncertain, his words few and half slurred, but no one had commented.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ryan said under his breath. “Now.” There were no more questions of where we would go. What we would do. Anywhere was better than here. Anything was better than here. “This place has got to have cracks in the system. There are always cracks. We’ve just got to find them.”

I said.

Said board members appeared at the door just then, as if summoned by my thoughts. The nurse on duty let them in. Mr. Conivent didn’t lead this time. Instead, he followed after the others, whispering something to the same man he’d spoken to at breakfast.

All the kids hunched down a little. What little conversation had existed withered away. Like this morning, the review board stayed a certain distance from us, hushed and watching. Our eyes darted toward them from time to time, and we caught a few of the other kids sneaking glances, too. But no one stared at them as they stared at us.

The minutes ticked past.

When one of the examination room doors finally opened, the rattle of the doorknob shot through the silence. Kitty walked out first and started at the sight of the men and woman in their dark clothes. Behind her, Dr. Lyanne was still filling out something on her clipboard.

“Eli?” she called without looking up. Then she did.

She froze, just as Kitty had. The little girl recovered first, hurrying back to her seat beside us. Dr. Lyanne couldn’t seem to make herself move again for the longest time, but then she cleared her throat and said, again, “Eli?”

Eli shook his head.

“Come on, Eli,” Dr. Lyanne said. She held out her hand but didn’t leave the doorway. Her jaw was tight, her voice almost hoarse.

“No,” Eli said, panic in his voice. He’d regained a little of the wildcat wariness I’d noted the first day. “No, no,
no
.”

Kitty’s hand slipped into ours. She didn’t look at us, didn’t look at Eli or Dr. Lyanne or the review board, just stared down at her knees. But her grip was so strong it hurt. There was a Band-Aid on the inside of her elbow, and for some reason, Addie couldn’t stop staring at it.

“Eli,” said Mr. Conivent, and Kitty flinched.

The entire review board was watching him now, this eight-year-old boy who refused to leave his chair, refused to do what the grown-ups asked.

“Is there a problem?” Dr. Wendle said, opening the other examination room door.

“Will someone just get the boy into a room?” Mr. Conivent said. He didn’t sound angry. Didn’t even sound upset or annoyed or frustrated. But his right hand was pressed in a fist against his side, and we saw the tension in his neck. “Dr. Lyanne? If you would?”

Dr. Lyanne came at Eli, who jumped out of his chair. He’d been wobbly all morning, his steps teetering. But we’d been distracted, and we hadn’t looked too closely, hadn’t seen the haze over his eyes. It fought with his wariness, opposing forces battling over his body.

Take care of it
, Mr. Conivent had said that first day. Was this it? Was this
taking care of it
?

Eli lurched forward, stumbled, fell. Dr. Lyanne grabbed at him—whether to drag him into the examination room or just to keep him from hitting the ground, I didn’t know—but whatever the reason, Eli screamed like she’d sliced him open. She jerked away. He scrambled to his feet and ran.

Addie gripped our chair to keep from jumping up, from tearing out of Kitty’s grasp so we could dart over and scoop Eli up. He’d pressed into a corner of the room, trapped between the members of the review board and Dr. Wendle, who’d abandoned his own room to come chasing after him, and all I could think about was Lyle during his first dialysis sessions. He’d cried and cried and cried and the nurses had comforted him; our parents had been there to distract him; Addie had been there to read to him. And now this boy, screaming and kicking, was being
manhandled
by Dr. Wendle, and everyone was just
watching
—

“Let him go,” Addie cried.

We froze. Ryan’s eyes darted toward us. But the words had been spoken, and Addie couldn’t take them back. Mr. Conivent turned and stared, but Dr. Wendle didn’t stop—he didn’t let Eli go—and before I knew what was happening, we were out of our seat and across the room, because couldn’t they see how upset he was? Couldn’t they be kinder in this tiny way?

Someone grabbed us before we could reach him. One of the review board members—the man always speaking with Mr. Conivent—and his grip
hurt
. He yanked us, pinning us against him, and the first words we heard from his mouth were
You will stop this. You will calm down. Right now.

His nails dug into our skin so hard it brought tears to our eyes, and we couldn’t see his face; we could only hear his voice in our ear. He spun us around, our back still against his torso but our face toward the other kids. Every single one of them stared back at us. Every single one of them wore a different expression. But in every one of them, the same current of fear. Ryan was half out of his chair, but he’d frozen.