What's Left of Me (21 page)

Twenty-five

H
ey. Hey, remember?

Remember when we were seven and those kids locked us in that trunk?

We were playing hide-and-seek, remember? And that kid—what was his name? He told us to hide in the trunk because no one would ever look in there.

He was right, wasn’t he?

No one found us.

Not for hours.

Waking up. Pressure. Pressure and pain in our head. Dizziness. Nausea. We tried to move—Lissa and Hally. The man had Lissa and Hally. I tried to move. Everything was blurry.
“Lissa?”
I said. Hands pushed us down, held us still. A new prick of pain. Something pulled us back under, burying us in the darkness.
Shh. Shh . . .

I woke, pulled from one kind of darkness to another. It took a moment to remember what had happened. Memories of today mixed with those of yesterday and the days before, slippery silver fish in a murky pond. It was a little hard to think—thoughts dissipated, half formed. But one thought lingered through it all.

Lissa. The men in black uniforms closing in on the rooftop, one of them clutching her as she screamed and twisted.

I jerked upright—and nearly cried out as the nausea hit, stone-fisted against our skull. Our breathing was shallow. Our head pounded, each heartbeat sending another burst of pain shuddering through us.

We weren’t in our room. Something crinkled under us. Paper.

I clutched our head and fumbled off the examination table, nearly crashing onto the cold ground. Our fingers pressed against something cottony and soft on our right temple. A bandage. I winced. There were more bandages on our legs and one wrapped around our left hand and—

And
I
was the one moving.

Addie . . .

Oh, God, no—

I screamed.

She answered.

We crouched there on the floor, assuring each other that we were still okay, both of us, still alive and present and
here.
The bandage tore against our skin as we peeled it off, and we almost cried when our fingers brushed against the open wound beneath, but it was just that—a wound. No stitches, even. No surgery. I went weak with relief.

“Lissa?” Addie whispered.

No answer. The pain was receding enough for us to stand and keep our balance. We looked around and saw the big light on a swiveling arm, the monitors, the abandoned silver trays. The examination table.

A surgery room.

I said.

She stumbled toward the door and ripped it open.

The hallway was dim, lit only by emergency lights. Addie looked right, then left, using our shoulder to prop open the door. The sickly, pallid light didn’t reach very far. Darkness loomed on either end of the hall. Other than a faint buzzing, all was quiet and still.

Addie edged out into the corridor and eased the door shut. We didn’t recognize this hall.

I didn’t see a difference, and I told her so. It was hard to think straight. Our head still pounded. The nausea came in howling waves. Our hand throbbed.

Addie hesitated, then turned right. The silence amplified our breathing, the rustle of our clothes, the sound of our footsteps on the tiled floor. Doors flanked us on either side. Like people. Like soldiers.

Was Lissa inside one of those rooms? What about Ryan? Had they taken him, too? Addie checked the chip still tucked inside our sock, but it sat cold and blank. Wherever he was, he wasn’t nearby.

If this was the third floor, it was a wing we’d never seen before. The walls looked different—somehow starker. Maybe it was just the sallow light. The doors, though, were clearly metal, not wood like the ones near the Ward, and there were no windows at all.

Addie kept staring at one of the doors, as if looking at it long enough could make Lissa appear beyond it. On the left, there was what looked like a small speaker and two black buttons. Another button, red and shaped like a triangle, sat a little on the side. The door itself was plain but for the
B42
stamped high on the frame and a small, rectangular panel at eye level. A keypad was installed above the doorknob, taking the place of a normal lock.

I said.

Addie nodded. She grabbed hold of the panel’s metal handle. It was cold in our palm. We’d check every room if we had to, if that was what it took to find Lissa and Hally.

But there were so many rooms. What else might we find first?

We swallowed.

Addie said.

She pulled. The panel slid smoothly aside, revealing a glass pane underneath.

At first, we saw nothing but a pinpoint of light shrouded in darkness. When we squinted, we realized it was a night-light—a little kid’s night-light in the shape of a sailboat. It illuminated the corner of the room farthest from the door, but the room wasn’t big; soon our eyes adjusted enough to see the bed.

And the boy sitting on it.

His head was bent, his shoulders slightly hunched. Thin legs hung over the edge of the mattress. We couldn’t see his face clearly, only enough to tell that—

Addie whispered.

But whatever the boy was muttering didn’t stand a chance of making it past the thick door.

Addie said. She reached over to the small, circular grate and its accompanying buttons. Neither was labeled. She jabbed the one on the left before I could protest.

Immediately, a boy’s voice filtered out of the speaker: “. . . and . . . uh. And, uh, they, on—on the day before. Before yesterday. We . . . we, uh . . . again. Again, and, uh . . . when they . . .”

Addie pushed the button again. His voice cut off.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Our eyes flickered back to the window and the boy still muttering inside.

I said.

It did. There was a popping, crackling sound when Addie first pressed the button, then quiet.

“Hello?” she whispered.

Inside the little room, the boy looked up.

And immediately, immediately, we recognized the boy from the gurney. Jaime Cortae. Age, thirteen. Jaime. Before and after.

Surgery.

Jaime, who stood and limped toward the door. Every step rocked so badly he listed from side to side like a sinking ship. But his eyes were bright, and there was a grin on his face when he stepped up onto something and pressed his forehead against the glass.

And oh, God—oh God, the long, curved incision line. The half-shaved head. The staples in his skull, holding it together.

Our stomach rebelled, acid rising in our throat.

Jaime’s mouth worked even more furiously now, opening and closing. When he saw us staring at him, he flapped his right arm and jerked his head to the side.

Addie managed to say.

But when she pressed the receive button, there was nothing but more gibberish: “I—always, I—and, um—uh . . . please . . . I, I need—”

His feverish words reverberated in the corridor.

Jaime started laughing—or crying—or both. He turned his face away from the window and the speaker, so it was hard to tell. All we could see were his shoulders trembling. Jerking. He was always jerking.

Then he put his mouth against the speaker again. He whispered. “Gone . . . gone . . . they—they cut him out. Out. He . . .” He moaned. “He’s gone.”

Addie slammed the window shut.

A terrible, crippling nausea sucked the breath from our lungs. We pushed past it, gagging as we tore down the hallway. Jaime’s quiet, stuttering voice rang in our ears, pounded in our veins, vibrated in our bones.

We ran until we smashed into someone barreling down the hall in the opposite direction.

Dr. Lyanne cried out, but her arms wrapped around us—entangling us. I screamed.

Everything was cold sweat and hot fear and the inability to breathe.

He’s gone.

He’s gone
.
He’s gone.

His fellow soul, born with ghost fingers clutching his. They’d cut him out. The surgery had succeeded—if this could be called success.
Success!

Dr. Lyanne held our limbs still, yelling at us to
Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.

Someone was crying, and it wasn’t until the haze cleared a little, until the pain receded a little, until we could breathe, breathe, breathe again, that we realized it wasn’t us.

We’d forgotten to switch off the speaker to Jaime’s room.

Dr. Lyanne’s hand was a shackle around our wrist as she led us back to Jaime. We didn’t want to go, held back by fear and shame. Shame for being afraid. For having run. For having left this boy who was already more alone than he’d ever been in his life.

“Jaime,” Dr. Lyanne said. “Jaime, shh. It’s all right.” She released us in her haste to enter a code into the keypad, unlocking Jaime’s door. We hung back, pressing against the wall, trying to shove away the throbbing headache and the dizziness.
Run
, I thought, but it didn’t transfer to our limbs. “Shh, Jaime. Sweetheart, it’s all right. It’s all right.”

Slowly, we pushed ourself from the wall. We held the side of the doorway for support as we turned and looked into the room.

The little blue sailboat night-light shed a soft glow. Together with the yellow emergency lights, it was enough to show us Dr. Lyanne on the bed, her arms around Jaime, rocking softly, softly, softly.

“Shh, sweetheart. Shh . . .”

Dr. Lyanne shone a penlight in our eyes. Addie squinted and turned away, our fingers curling around the examination table. Jaime had quieted, and Dr. Lyanne had locked him in his room again before pulling Addie and me back to the surgery room where we’d woken up.

“Do you feel dizzy?” Dr. Lyanne said. Her voice was missing some of its normal authoritative edge, like a knife that had gone dull. “Nausea?”

Addie shrugged, though our head pounded and our stomach rebelled. “Where are we?”

“The basement,” Dr. Lyanne said.

“Where’s Li—Hally?”

Dr. Lyanne turned away from us, fiddling with a tray of medical equipment. She dropped something and had to bend down to pick it back up. Her movements were jerky, her usual mantle of composure ragged at the edges. “In bed, probably. It’s late.”

Was she lying?

Addie swallowed, then cleared our throat softly. “Is she okay?”

Dr. Lyanne didn’t turn around. “She didn’t fall off any roofs, so I’d have to say she’s doing better than you are. You and she are both lucky not to have ground any glass shards into your skin.”

“But she’s okay?” Addie said. “She’s in her room? They haven’t cut into her? They haven’t operated on her?”

The woman looked at us sharply. Maybe we shouldn’t have revealed how much we knew, but at the moment, neither of us cared.

“She’s fine,” Dr. Lyanne said.

Addie looked down at our lap, at the smooth blue cloth of our skirt, the dull faux leather of our school shoes. The black socks. Our chip was still tucked against our right ankle. Ryan’s chip. Our fingers slid down, tracing the outline of it. No light at all.

But the feel of it, the solidity of it, gave her the strength to say, “Jaime.” Dr. Lyanne stilled. “That was Jaime. He didn’t go home. He was the one we saw the first day. He—” Addie looked up. Caught Dr. Lyanne’s eyes. Whispered, voice hoarse. “You cut into him. You—
”

Dr. Lyanne grabbed our collar and jerked us toward her. “No.” Her voice shook. “I never laid a finger on Jaime Cortae. Understand me? I never laid a finger on
any
of those children. I
didn’t do
this
to any of you
—didn’t prescribe the vaccinations, didn’t hold the scalpel, didn’t—”

Addie twisted away. “Then
help
us. Don’t let them do it to Lissa—you
can’t
let them do it to Lissa—”

The anger in Dr. Lyanne’s eyes dimmed, replaced by something quieter. “I
am
helping. You know what they do to kids like you—throw them in some middle-of-nowhere holding bin and forget they exist. I work here because we’re trying to make things better, Addie. We’re figuring out ways to
fix
you. Why can’t you see that?”

“Like how they fixed Jaime?” Addie said.

Dr. Lyanne’s cheeks were splotches of red, stark against the rest of her pale skin. Her eyes were huge and dark and fierce. “We’re getting better. We’ve come a long way already. Someday—”

“Someday,” Addie spat. “What about
now?
What about Lissa?”