She never learned to like hospitals, though.
Now the night world has crashed through the window and landed in the ward of the dead in the mid-afternoon light, and it’s Persephone’s turn to be the watcher floating through the corridors, observing and monitoring with a cold knot of horror.
The open window is one of three at the end of a hospital ward bay. There are four beds on the bay: two are occupied. It’s very quiet, but for the heartbeat beeping of monitors tracking pulse and ventilation rate. One of the inmates is sleeping, but the other woman follows Persephone’s progress with frightened eyes.
Persephone tugs her skirt down, hitches her handbag strap up on her shoulder, reaches for a convenient lie, and offers a smile that doesn’t reach the corners of her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m just taking a look around. Journalist.”
She walks towards the door at the end of the bay, then pauses as two slivers of fact slice through her mind. There’s a door. On a ward side-bay. You don’t put doors between a patient and the nursing station if there’s any risk of acute incidents. Doors are for privacy. And the woman’s eyes are still watching Persephone, but her head—
She turns and walks back to the woman. Who lies utterly still on the bed, breathing but unmoving except for her eyes.
“Can you speak?” she asks quietly.
The woman—girl, almost: late teens, early twenties—blinks at her with horrified eyes, then begins to silently weep. Her lips move, as if in prayer. But her body lies still as if stunned, bedridden. Paralyzed. Persephone notices the sealed port of a nasogastric feeding tube nestling by one nostril. No wonder she can’t talk: this is a long-term spinal injuries unit.
Persephone pulls her cameraphone out of her shoulder bag and captures the layout of the bay on a slow video scan. She spots the file by the head of the bed, medical notes. She has a queasy feeling. Something here is very wrong.
“You don’t mind?” she asks, taking the file. The woman’s eyes close. There’s a name on the cover: Marianne Murphy (23) Saved. Persephone’s brows furrow as she pages through the notes, reading and photographing the evidence. Yes, nasogastric feeding. Yes, physiotherapy. But, oddly, no medication. Nothing about vertebrae or spinal damage. Then Persephone comes to the ultrasound scan printouts. Images of a fetus, results of amniocentesis. Her skin crawls. She points her cameraphone at the woman. “Blink if you understand me?”
Marianne blinks. And now, Persephone realizes, the young woman has a name to her. “One blink for no, two for yes.” Blink, blink. “Are you held here against your will?”
Blink, blink.
“You’re pregnant, aren’t you? Did they make you pregnant?”
Blink, blink.
“You’re paralyzed. Was there an accident?”
Blink.
“Was it the ministry? They did this to you?”
Blink, blink.
The nightmare is solidifying around her. Persephone glances at the sleeper in the other bed, sees a nasogastric tube and a cervical collar to lock the woman’s head in place. She can see what’s happening here, although she’s reluctant to acknowledge it: in the combined spinal injuries and maternity ward the women are prisoners in their own flesh, arrow factories for the full quivers of the theocratic movement. “‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,’ is that what he said?”
Blink, blink.
Persephone swallows. Very gently, she reaches out and touches Marianne’s forehead. “Can’t stay. Got…got a story to tell. I’ll put an end to this. I promise.”
Blink, blink.
The crèches and kindergartens of a quiverfull movement, pious mothers raising bountiful families of young believers for the greater glory—ten and twenty children, far more children than most women can bear—need additional ammunition. So they look further afield, to the wombs of young unbelievers taken by the roadside, homeless runaways, addicts, prostitutes. Doubtless they’ve got a little list, of those who won’t be missed. Bait the line, spread the net; carry them down to a quiet hell filled with hospital beds, where they’ll be paralyzed and used like wasp-stung caterpillars to nurture their kidnapper’s spawn. She can hear Schiller’s apologetics echo in her mind’s ear: Nature is bountiful, nature gives us great examples of God’s meticulous design for life, including certain parasitic insects—
Persephone removes her finger, suppressing a shudder, suppressing thought, forcing her body into obedient calmness. She’d like to scream with rage, smash things, forget the job and rescue these women right now: it’s a fatal temptation. But it would be a mistake. In fact, if she leaves behind any sign that she’s been in this bay she will be signing their death warrants: Schiller will not suffer such witnesses to live and testify against him in Federal court. So she will be heartless and patient—for now.
There is a clipboard by the other woman’s bed. She takes it and holds it to her chest. No spare stethoscopes or white coats, unfortunately; the clipboard will have to do. It’s a Saturday, so the place should be running on weekend staff. Fifteen minutes have passed since she broke from Schiller’s bid to brainwash his new recruits. The alarm will be out. Escape is going to be difficult: it’s becoming clear that there is a lot more to this operation than just a rogue church.
She closes her eyes for a moment, composing herself and wiping the expression of feral loathing from her face. Then she opens the door and starts to search for an escape route.
The hospital, as it turns out, is running on a weekend shift pattern: the wards are almost deserted except for the hunched, unmoving forms of the inmates. There are no televisions, she notes, but a number of bedside lecterns feature bibles that are open at particularly educational passages, displayed before the captured eyes of the bedridden. One of the bibles sits beside an empty bed; acting on impulse she takes it, tucks it beneath the elbow of the arm with which she carries the clipboard.
As she nears the end of the ground floor ward she approaches a nursing station. Two nurses—both women, in green scrubs—are discussing something. Persephone’s breath catches, and she makes a peculiar gesture with the fingers of her left hand. Sounds flatten and footsteps fade away as she approaches the desk. Neither of them seem to notice her. It is Persephone’s privilege and her burden, to shorten her life’s extent in return for the grant of certain powers prearranged; it’s not unlike smoking.
“—bed in bay six,” one of them is saying. “And there’s a prep kit in ward two up back—Ilene will be able to show you.”
“When’s this new arrival due?” asks the other.
“Not sure, he said there’s been some problem—patient tried to run. Doesn’t want to comply.”
“Oh dear.”
There’s something wrong with their voices, Persephone notices, with the heightened perception that comes with her occult bargain. She should have noticed it before, the slightly mangled syllables of the believers. It’s the hosts, she realizes with a frisson of revulsion.
“Well, you go and get the prep kit. I’ll make sure the bed’s ready when they capture her.”
The taller nurse nods, then walks right past Persephone—unseen—in the direction of the lobby.
Persephone spins a blind spot in the remaining nurse’s mind and hides within, holding her rage in check. She barely allows herself to breathe until they are alone in the room. Then she lets the shadows slip from her shoulders. “Hello,” she says, smiling. “I don’t suppose you’d let me borrow your car?”