“We’ll see when it’s weighed.”
“A little bit closer to your dream.”
Myra likes me, in more ways than one, and I know that she doesn’t want me to leave. It’s hard not to hurt her feelings about it. “Prices on passage off Brink go up every day.”
“How close are you?”
“About two years’ pay after today’s haul. One year if it’s a good year.”
“You could retire in ten years at the rate you’re saving. Who knows what Brink will be like then?”
“Who knows what Ryland or Mars or Earth will be like, either?”
“Exactly.” She adds, “Millions on Earth would kill to be here now.”
I’ve heard the argument before, and it’s true. Earth is overcrowded, underfed, and constantly plagued with warfare. The irony is that no one actually suffering from those problems can afford to leave. Just like here. “Isn’t that funny?” I say, “Our grandparents were all millionaires, and three or four generations later we’re killing each other over little bits of calcium.”
“My grandpa used to describe how crowded Earth is.”
“My mom never talked about it.”
Brink is a relatively young colony, and so nearly everyone here has a parent or grandparent from off-world. All of them were settlers looking to make their mark on a new world, and all of them had at least enough money to pay for the flight. Myra’s grandparents came from Earth itself, as did my mother. And father.
“The way he used to sit and just look at the open desert,” Myra remembers, “it made me think that maybe we really are closer to free. You know?”
“Maybe we are. We’re not under constant surveillance, there’s no licensing board for reproduction, and we’ve still got a lot of open land. The planet’s less seismic than others, and the weather’s pretty mild. But there’s a price. Things are desperate here. We both know it.”
“You and I are doing fine.”
Not in a mood to argue anymore, I down the rest of my drink and stand up, pulling on my jacket. “I want to go check on that little girl.” I pull a couple of cash tabs out of my pocket and place them on the table. “Thanks for the drink, Myra. Sorry I’m not better company.”
The little girl from the mine was taken to Bray Hospital, a care center on the poorer side of the city with a reputation for being overcrowded and understaffed. The desert night air is cold by the time I get there, and the sky overhead is a dark purple polluted with the lights of Oasis City. There’s no auto-valet at the underfunded facility, so I find a space in the packed parking structure, get off my ride, and walk between the old, beat-up vehicles of varying sizes and makes until I reach the entrance.
The scratched and scuffed glass doors open into a huge waiting area packed wall-to-wall with hundreds of the city’s poor and miserable, the dirty and desperate. Around three quarters of them are clearly hypocalcemic. They must know by now that no one gets free calcium, but I doubt they expect it anyway—they’re here for painkillers. What a waste of resources. The smell is offensive, and I try not to breathe too deep as I make my way to the reception desk, where a tired, irritated clerk greets me by looking up from her terminal.
“I’m looking for a patient who was brought into emergency by Collections earlier today.”
Seeing my blue-and-blacks, she doesn’t bother asking for ID. “Name?”
“Jessi Rodgers.”
She searches through her terminal, then without looking up again tells me, “She’s in room 537A. Elevators are down the hall.”
“Thanks.”
I push past the huddling, desperate, probably dying people calling for attention from the staff and go down the hallway to the row of elevators. I push the up button, and as I wait, a team of nurses rushes by, shouting and pushing a bed with a bleeding, unconscious patient on it. Probably an armed robbery gone bad.
The doors open, and I board the elevator by myself and take it to floor five. Gurneys line the walls, patients on nearly all of them, many moaning or complaining or cursing at no one in particular, ignored by the nurses and the occasional doctor rushing about their work. I walk until I find room 537A, which is little more than a big, open floor with maybe two dozen patients lying in care beds divided by rolling curtains. Before I can start searching for Jessi Rodgers among them, I’m approached by a doctor with thin, wavy hair and dark skin.
“Excuse me,” he says, “I don’t suppose you’re looking for a patient that was brought in by Collections earlier today?”
“I am,” I answer, hoping he’s not going to tell me she’s dead already. “Is she here?”
“Yes, she is. I’m Doctor Araya. I’m on call from Brink Planetary.”
“BPU?” Hearing that he’s from the largest and most prestigious academic institution on the planet is a bit of a relief. Jessi Rodgers must be getting good care for some reason. “Can I ask why?”
“This is the first documented case of chalk weevil parasitism in a living human patient. It’s of significant academic value.” As though aware that he’s coming off detached and cold, he inquires in a concerned whisper, “Are you the one who brought the girl in?”
“I’m the one that found her.” Anxious, I ask, “Can I see her?”
“Of course. But I think she’s sleeping.”
The doctor leads me between the curtains, and through the gaps in the fabric I catch glimpses of other patients. Some look fine but are hooked up to IVs, some look like they’re about to die. One is in traction, casts on both legs. The poor bastard will probably never recover; if he had that kind of calcium to his name he’d be in a better hospital. The doctor finally gets to a bed near the far end of the room where he draws the frayed beige curtain aside just slightly. Lying there is the girl from the mine, IVs in her arm. Her skin is pale, and her breath is weak and shallow as she sleeps, strangely peaceful in spite of her frailty. She does not wake, and I nod to the doctor, signaling that I’d like to let her rest. He draws the curtain closed again and walks with me out of the room.
When I’m sure we’re out of earshot, I ask, “How is she doing?” I truly don’t know why I care. I make a point not to get invested in the lives of people I encounter during my work. That well is deep enough to swallow up all my time and money if I let sympathy get hold of me, deep enough to entangle me in my own psychological scars.
“She’s on antiparasitics,” says the doctor. “So far that has been successful, but she’s suffered some serious internal damage already. I’m of the opinion that she needs a corrective lung surgery.”
“And she can’t afford it.”
The doctor frowns. “The government will do a forced sale of her family’s assets, but that’s not expected to cover the cost.”
“She gonna live?”
He hesitates. “Yes, though I don’t know for how long. She’s going to have some breathing problems.”
“She’ll go up for adoption,” I reason, half-heartedly, “or become a ward of the state. It’ll be taken care of.”
Apparently sensing that I don’t really want to get involved, the doctor backs away a step. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought perhaps you wanted to help. Thank you for your concern.”
He turns and walks off before I can respond to this little half insult, and I’m left with nothing to say and no one to say it to. The noise of the hospital drones on around me, the moans and rasps of patients mixing with the shouts and chatter of the tired, callous staff and the hum and drone of aging medical equipment. I shouldn’t have come here. There’s a sore spot in me that I refused to admit I had, and now that I’ve poked at it, it won’t be easy to forget.