Ninety-two: Giving up

In the hospital, brown eyes flickered over me. They looked both worried and annoyed.

"Darling," Dr Eisor said from where he was reading a monitor, "what have you done to yourself? You're all over the place. Do you want to die that much? You realise that the longer you are here, the better chance I have to continue to upgrade and fine tune you? Not that I haven't already."

I closed my eyes.

"You are not dying on my watch," the doctor's voice turned savage. Fierce. He gripped my shoulders hard and gave me a tiny shake, so that I opened my eyes to look at him again. "I hardly did anything to you with the Crippler. It shouldn't have sent everything so out of whack like this. I don't know what game you're playing now, but I'm not letting you go. I've had too many lives slip away under my fingers these last few days as it is. I won't let you be one of them or Kiran will almost certainly kill me. He'll think I did it on purpose. Stop running away, darling. You still have a lot of things to face and deal with. Your parents are hoping you'll stabilise so that we can send you back to the mountains where they are. Your brother is getting married next year. Kiran's at his wits end."

Ignoring him, I closed my eyes again. My parents? Brother? He was lying. He just wanted to make me do what he wanted again. I wasn't going to let him do that.

Dying? Why not? I had nothing left to live for. Smelly, dirty piece of trash that I was. I'd been used and abused so many times. I'd had enough.

"Fine," the doctor dropped me and his voice sounded sulky. "Fine. Look. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let Whistlor touch you. I'm not sorry for anything else, because you need to be kept under control, but letting Whistlor touch you was, I agree, going a bit far. I was too desperate to stop you from completing your heinous plan to think over it too much. All right. You know what? Fine. I admit I set you up. I'm not sorry though, or we'd all be regretting it right now. You're really - really going to be this childish?" Something started beeping. "Darling, I'll tell Kiran I tried." another alarm began to beep. It had a different rhythm and tone to the first. The sounds clashed. "I give up. You do what you want -" Dr Eisor said and I heard his hurried bustling. Another alarm beeped and then suddenly, there was a chorus of discordant alarms whooping and beeping their worry. "NO, WHOA, STOP THAT. YOU ARE NOT DYING ON ME, MISS JEAN WALLACE. Not now. Not ever."

I wanted to laugh, but couldn't. Ludicrous, little man. What did I care? I just wanted to get out of here and this life anyway I could. Get away from his control. Get away from Kiran, who used me like a chess piece. Get away from the war, its aftermath and the bright grabs of memories that took me at the slightest sound. I needed to escape walls and rooms and prison cells. I would not be a prisoner. Nobody was going to control me, ever again. This time, it was my choice. I'd had enough.

Running feet and rattling trolleys. Voices and noises bustled about me. If I was going, I was going out on my own terms and this was it.

"Prep for surgery -"

"Blood test results are worrying."

"Do we have enough anaesthetic for this?"

"Local anaesthetics will have to do."

"Someone tell Kiran-"

"Hand me that scalpel."

"Tweezers."

"Don't drop that or you'll blow us all up."

"Can't undo -"

"Unexpected side effects -"

Then a sharp pain bloomed and shot straight through me and I screamed, arching, trying to escape the lava that was eating me alive.

"Hold her down! Hold her down! Quick or she'll bleed out. Hold her down!"

Fire and lightning crackled and desperation lent me strength.

"We don't have anymore anaesthetic!"

"Stop panicking and put pressure back on that artery."

"She fainted."

"Oh, for mountain snow -"

~~~

Drifting, I dreamed of my parents and Henry sitting by my bed. I dreamed of Kiran deep in conversation with my father. The Chief sat with Kiran and hugged his crying son. Mr Raring held my hand, while Kiran looked on.

I dreamed of Aylissa telling me her wedding plans and what she still had to do. Henry told me about Aylissa. He never stopped talking about her.

A warm log house was furnished with furs. The house was warmed by a hearth fire that burned nearby. A woman I didn't know made a fuss. There was a party and people congratulated me. On what, I didn't know. It was somebody's wedding. Surely not my own. My mother wiped her tears from my face, bidding me farewell. My father kissed me and said they were being sent back to their home in the city. They might not see me again.

Kiran, with a twisted face, told me that the slave trade had been outlawed as part of international agreement. Peace talks had been largely successful.

"Dr Eisor has disappeared," he said, "and gone into hiding. Alistair says he'll probably be somewhere in the mountains, which means we may never find him. The mountains have many places a person can hide in."

I'm not sure what that had to do with me, but he thought it must be important if he was telling me.

"We'll find him," Alistair squeezed my hand. "Don't you worry. He managed to remove the bomb and the Crippler once he worked out that the Crippler had malfunctioned and you were allergic to the chemicals it used. Your body's response to the allergy created chemicals that were eating away at the bomb casing. Something went wrong during the surgery, but he didn't say what. None of his staff are. He walked out once you were stable. We haven't seen him since."

Somehow I managed to return the squeeze he had given me.

I woke up screaming and crying. Whistlor had been on me, and then the doctor had me. The pain and the fear had been more than I could bear. The world whirled around me and Kiran sat up beside me, holding me tight before I fell. I cried into his shoulder and he patted my back gently until I fell asleep in his arms.

This happened for many days and nights and I could see his worry when I couldn't talk. Wouldn't talk. Wouldn't do anything. Yet he was patient with me and took the time to coax food and drink into me. The best times were when he just let me lean on him and he would hold me tight in silence.

"If you can't talk," he said one day, propping me up with pillows behind me, "maybe you can write?"

A lap table with pen and paper was placed before me and I held the pen for a long time. My mind had gone blank.

Kiran left and when he returned, found that I had fallen half asleep. He eased me back into bed with a heavy sigh, taking pen and table with paper away again. I tried to speak, but no words came out. He held me tight.