“There are plenty of beds in the emergency room,” I said. “Pick one.”
We shuffled out of the exam room slowly. Exhaustion had caught up with all of us.
I found an empty bed and sat down.
Tori stopped at the next bed over, looked at me, and kept moving.
“I’ll let Olivia take that one,” she said.
“Tori!” I called but didn’t have the energy to go after her.
All the guilty feelings came flooding back. It wasn’t the kind of drama I needed. None of us did. There were enough challenges ahead.
I lay down on the bed and sank into the mattress. It had been a very long day that started before dawn, when we followed the busload of victims being taken to Fenway Park. That felt like a hundred years ago.
My thoughts turned to the decision we would face the next day. Should we head to Nevada, or investigate this so-called safe haven in Kentucky? To decide, we had to face the future. What were we doing? Were we still on a mission to discover the truth about the war? Or was it now about finding a safe place to hole up until the dust settled?
What exactly was our goal?
I didn’t have that answer, but it didn’t stop me from wrestling with the question.
It seemed as though we all had different ideas. Olivia wanted to find a warm beach and play it safe. Kent would join her there in a second. I don’t know what Jon was thinking. His mind changed with the wind.
Tori was angry, and not just at me. She was all about finding people who were ready to fight back. But against whom? The Air Force or SYLO?
And me? I wanted my life back. But with each passing day, that seemed less likely. Part of me wanted to accept that fact and move on, but I couldn’t. My anger was growing too. Someone had to be held responsible. I needed to find out who that was. Would I have a better shot at that in Kentucky? Or Nevada?
My head was spinning with too many thoughts, which made falling asleep impossible, in spite of my exhaustion. I don’t know how long I had been lying there, maybe an hour, when I decided to get up and walk around in the hope of clearing my head. No sooner did I get up than I heard whispering coming from the far side of the emergency room. It seemed as though I wasn’t the only one who was having trouble nodding off, so I headed that way.
A camp light glowed from behind a drawn curtain where the voices were coming from. They were talking softly so as not to disturb anybody. It wasn’t until I was a step away from the barrier that I recognized the voices.
Tori and Olivia.
I froze. Those two never talked to each other. At least not as far as I knew. Olivia had taken care of Tori when she got shot, but since then there had been nothing but tension between the two, and I felt as though I was in the middle of it. Because I was. My instinct was to stop and listen to what they were saying before barging in on them.
“I can’t say enough about him,” Tori said softly. Her voice hitched with emotion. That wasn’t like Tori. She had to have been really upset to let her guard down like that, and in front of Olivia, no less.
“He took care of me when I was hurting and never asked for anything in return. I guess the best word to describe him is ‘selfless.’ He always thought of others before himself. I can’t imagine having anyone else in my life who could fill his shoes.”
I couldn’t believe it. She was talking about me! To Olivia. She really did have feelings for me. It was a great thing to hear at the end of an incredibly crappy day. My spirits were lifted instantly, though I wondered what Olivia’s comeback would be.
“I’m so sorry you lost him,” Olivia said with sincere sympathy.
Whoa. Had something been decided between the two? Was Tori professing her love for me as a way to congratulate the victor in the Tucker tug-of-war?
Olivia added, “I try to imagine that my own father was that kind of guy, but I never met him, so I’ll never know. I guess I’ll just have to pretend.”
Crash. Burn. Tori was talking about her father. I felt like an idiot. At least nobody knew I had jumped to such a dumb conclusion. Fool. “Tell me about your mother,” Tori said, sniffing back tears.
Olivia took a sad breath and said, “We’re nothing alike. She’s always ready for an adventure, but I’d rather just hang out. It was her idea to come on this trip. I fought her. I really did. I didn’t want any part of Pemberwick Island, but she insisted. It’s the first thing I’m going to remind her of when I see her.”
“I like that,” Tori said.
“What?”
“You’re totally confident your mother is okay.”
Olivia chuckled. “I know she is. It’ll take more than a little genocide to stop her.” She sniffed. Olivia was crying too, but doing her best to hold it back. “I miss her. I wish we’d never come here. I don’t want any part of it anymore. I just want to go somewhere and hide until it’s all over.”
I saw the shadow of Tori leaning over to Olivia and giving her a hug. They were both holding back sobs. These two people couldn’t have been any more different from one another, but they were bonded by the loss of their family, their lives, and the danger that lay ahead. Who knew what would happen between them tomorrow, but for a short while at least they were able to give each other some comfort.
It felt wrong to be standing there. Not just because I was eavesdropping on a private moment, but because I had immediately assumed that they were talking about me. It made me feel small to think that that’s where my head went. I backed away, hoping they wouldn’t discover that I had been there.
I crept back to my bed without anybody knowing I had been up and about. In spite of the fact that I was reeling with too many thoughts, I finally fell asleep and didn’t wake up until early the next morning. The emergency room was still pitch black. A quick look at my watch told me that it was six a.m. I sat up, stretched, and grabbed my headlamp.
Everyone was still asleep, and I wasn’t about to wake them. I thought of Mr. Hartman. The poor guy had been living in the dark for too long. Maybe Kent was right. He might have been hallucinating. I decided to check on him and make sure he had enough water.
I picked my way through the dark emergency room, following the beam of my headlamp. Strangely, I was getting used to operating in the dark with only a narrow streak of light to see by. It was probably the way miners lived. I had no problem finding the exam area where we had left the old man.
“Mr. Hartman?” I whispered. “You awake?”
No response. I pulled the curtain aside to find him the way we had left him. Sound asleep. I didn’t want to wake him. He could get a drink later. I turned away and started for the exit to see if the sun was up when I realized that something felt off. It was the sound. Or the lack of sound. Mr. Hartman had trouble breathing, as if he was too weak to pull in enough oxygen. It was painful to hear his labored breaths.
But I didn’t hear them anymore.
I stepped back to him.
The bed was still up, which meant Hartman was in a near-sitting position. He lay perfectly still with his hands folded in his lap.
He wasn’t breathing.
I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. It seems odd to be bothered by the death of one old man, especially when so many millions of people had been wiped out, but this was different. Mr. Hartman’s death had nothing to do with the war. He had reached the end of his life and left it naturally. It was a reminder that we were still human. In some odd way it gave me hope. No matter how badly things got messed up, life would continue. Unlike the death of Tori’s father and my own parents’ betrayal, Mr. Hartman’s death was one of the few things that made sense. He was an old man who died because he had a bad heart.
I reached for the blanket to cover his head. As I brought it forward, I saw that he was holding something in his hands. It was a piece of paper. Had he written a note before he died? I took it with two fingers and pulled it away from his lifeless hands to discover it was a small envelope with the hospital’s logo. There were two simple words on it, written by the weak hand of a dying man.