Her anguished tirade was immediately silenced when two policemen in their checkered hats burst into the waiting room. One stun-stick to the neck subdued her, and they dragged her off. The sister scrambled after them, tears streaming down her face.
The room was silent. No one made eye contact with anyone else. I pulled Dee close. “You shouldn’t have seen that,” I said. “Harriet, you should take her back to—”
“Nina, I’m staying here with you.” Dee was trembling, but there was a determination in the set of her chin. For a moment, she reminded me of Ginnie. “I want to be here when Gran wakes up.”
“I’ll get us something to drink,” Harriet said.
Dee and I took seats near the door. I kept my arm around her shoulder, and she didn’t protest. Harriet returned with Sparkles for all of us. I excused myself and went to the ladies’ room to throw water on my face.
Staring into the mirror, I couldn’t blink away the haunting picture of that woman’s daughter fighting off a gang of boys. I could hear my mother telling me how important it was to be on guard, not to act sex-teen—to push against the system, but not too openly. It wasn’t safe. Words. At the time, that’s all they had been. But since her death, and Sandy’s—my best friend who’d been raped and killed by Ed—and knowing what I now knew, what Ginnie’d uncovered about FeLS being a front for a sex-slavery network for high-ranking government officials, I wondered how long I could keep quiet. Someone had to speak up. I fingered the T on my charm necklace. Pops had given me the T, he’d said it stood for Truth. Pops spouted truth, my dad debated truth, my mother exposed truth… was I the Oberon who simply had to tell the truth? But how?
When I got back to the waiting room, Harriet was dozing and Dee had fallen asleep in her arms. I retrieved a rapido and sketch pad from my bag. The tormented face of the mother as the cop jabbed her flowed out of my fingers. I was still drawing when a nurse stuck her head in the door. “Is there someone here for Edith Oberon?”
I leaped up, stuffing my artwork away. “Me!”
VII
The nurse would allow only one of us at a time in the cube, so Harriet and Dee stayed in the waiting room. Gran was surrounded by a tangle of tubes and wires, hooked to a monitor that beeped and hummed softly. I scooted a chair close to her; wrapping my hand around hers, I sat, transfixed by the lines on the monitor indicating her heartbeat. Mine beat twice before the faint blip of hers registered. Even then, it barely made a bump on the horizontal green bar pulsing across the screen.
A tall man in a white coat, carrying some kind of digi-pad, entered. “I’m Dr. Silverman.”
Jumping up, I extended my hand. When he didn’t take it, I withdrew mine.
“You’re sixteen?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“We’d like your permission to try a new procedure on the patient. She is your grandmother, correct?”
“Yes.” I gulped. Who was I to give permission? Then I realized: Pops was in custody. Dee was underage. I was the only relative who could.
“The procedure repairs damaged heart tissue and…” He glanced at the pad in his hand—Gran’s chart—then back to me. “Given her age, it will add three, maybe five more years of life. There are, of course, risks, as with any new medical technique.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Risks? What if she doesn’t have the operation?”
“Without it she’ll be dead in a few hours.” He tapped his rapido against the chart’s edge. “I don’t have all night, Miss…” He consulted the chart again. “Oberon. Your decision.”
“Decision?” I stared at him. “There really isn’t any except ‘do it,’ is there?”
He raised an eyebrow, as if he hadn’t expected anything but a simple yes or no. “You could decide that the burden of caring for an elderly woman whose use in life—”
“She is not useless.” I glared at him. “And how dare you—”
“There are other patients who won’t hesitate.” He headed toward the exit.
“Wait. Please.”
He turned back.
“Yes. Do it. Please.” I was groveling. Gran was worth that, and so much more. “I’m sorry if I got out of line. I’m not used to making—”
The doctor snapped his fingers, and two orderlies hustled in. “Get this patient down to three. Stat.” Within seconds, they had trundled Gran out of the cube. Silverman was busy on his PAV. “Have Heart Team Fifty-ought assembled in three. We’ve got a live one.”
Live one? My eyes widened, and I swallowed another huge lump. What if I’d just sentenced Gran to die at the hands of some government quack practicing an experimental procedure?
“Are you sure this is—”
Dr. Silverman cut me off again. “This is science.”
I stuffed all my premature guilt down deep. He had to be right. Had. To. Be.
Cutting out of the cube as sharply as he’d entered, I hurried along behind. Terror crawling up my spine.
Dee ran up to me. “How’s Gran? Can I go see her now?”
“Not now,” I said. “They took her to the operating room.”
Dee clutched my hand. “She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?”
“Let’s sit.” I led her back to where Harriet was waiting. “It was definitely her heart,” I said. “This really great doctor is operating on her right now. She’s going to be better than ever when this is done.”
Dee threw her arms around me, squeezing tight. “She has to be all right.”
I couldn’t shake the memory of that awful night when Ginnie died. “It’s going to be fine,” I said, with much more conviction than I felt. Although there had been something about Dr. Silverman… I doubted he would allow Gran to die, simply because he couldn’t stand to lose a patient. Looking closely at Harriet, I realized how exhausted she was. As much as I didn’t want to be alone, I didn’t want to be a burden on her. And Dee, too, was obviously worn out. “You should both go home. It’s going to be a while. I promise I’ll call you as soon as there is news.”
“I don’t want—”
“Dee, don’t argue with me,” I snapped, and immediately felt awful. “I’m sorry. One of us needs to get some real sleep. I have to be here to sign papers or give permissions. Please go. I’ll call as soon as I know something.”
“We’ll go to my apartment,” Harriet said. “It will be fine, I’m sure. Your grandmother’s a strong woman.”
“Call right away. Promise?” Dee hugged me.
“I promise.”
When they were gone, I called Sal. No answer. I didn’t want to think about him with Paulette, or anything that had to do with his not being there with me. I finally called Wei.
“I’ll come right down to the hospital,” she said.
“It’s too late. I just wanted to talk for a minute.”
“Nonsense. I’ll have Chris drive me over. See you in a few.”
I called Sal again. Even if he couldn’t be with me, at least talking with him would be reassuring. No answer. I didn’t leave a message. Alone in the waiting room, I poured my fears and frustrations into the drawing I’d started earlier.
“Took me forever to find you,” Wei said. “The people working here are not helpful at all. Actually, the girl in intake was outright evil.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I met her. That’s how everyone treats low-tier and welfare people. And this is Metro”—I shrugged—“so those are the only people you’ll find here.”
“Really?” She tilted her head, casting me a quizzical look. “That’s no reason to be rude. People are people.”
It was my turn to be surprised at Wei’s naïveté. The thought had never occurred to me that Wei wouldn’t have any experience with life at the lower end of society. “Some people don’t consider anyone below tier three to be real people. Not worth much of anything, unless they’re doing them a common service, or, like Mike’s dad, testing out experimental meds for research.”