Us refugees only knew each other.
Management promised we’d have breakfast by morning, once they’d spent the night organising the remaining food and staff. They’d brought in more candles, and a handful of body heat flashlights from properly shielded cases in storage.
“But why wasn’t the full shelter shielded?” Inga said. She was a fifty-something Latvian-Russian woman from Salaspils, outside Riga. She’d been at a refugee centre on the Dutch coast, waiting on a boat to England that never came. Now, she sat cross-legged on the ground by our beds, along with two near-identical girls my age and a Finnish male couple she’d befriended at her shelter.
“There were a lot of shelters to build in a very short time,” Dad said. “These temporary shelters, the permanent ones, the ships. They might’ve made a mistake, or there weren’t enough supplies.”
“Bet there were supplies for those ships and permanent shelters, though.” I pushed my thumbs deep into the fleshy parts on either side of my spine. I wished I could reach in and around, cutting off the pain signals the way my implant was supposed to.
“They cut corners,” Mum said from the foot end of my bed.
“They wouldn’t. Not with lives at stake.” One of the Finnish men was sitting up all prim and proper.
“If our lives mattered, we’d be on a ship.” I turned my head to face them properly and pulled my lips into a distorted grin. “Sucks being left behind. Doesn’t it?”
It was one of my lyrics. Apparently, that did the trick: Inga’s daughters went oh!
“Iveta?” one said.
“Aren’t you? You are! I knew I recognised you.”
“I am.”
“I thought you’d be on a generation ship…”
“Me too.” I faked that same grin. It was nice being recognised, I had to admit. The novelty had worn off quickly for those at our refugee centre. I guessed that mimicked my career: from one day to the next, hundreds of thousands of people had known my name. That cute blonde girl in the wheelchair on that talent show from, what was it, Latveria? Did you see her audition footage? Holy shit, right?
Just as quickly, it dropped off. I’d floundered for a bit, but rather than push on in desperation, I had claimed to want to focus on school, and promised to pick up my career again at eighteen, when people might take me more seriously. I never imagined doing anything else.
Then July 2034 happened, and I found out the world would end three weeks before my seventeenth birthday.
I’d done free pop-up concerts in every major town from Riga to Amsterdam. I’d told the audience I wanted to offer a distraction—we need music at the end of the world, am I right?—and told my parents one of my fans might find us a spot somewhere permanent. Except no one did. The final truck we hitchhiked on dropped us off in the Netherlands, and not a single boat would take us further towards safety.
The girls crept closer while the adults talked. “Where’s your wheelchair?” one asked, switching to Latvian.
“Got stolen. I mostly used it during performances, anyway.”
She faltered. “You’re not really…?”
“I used it during performances, so I could save energy, and not have to worry about falling over.” I’d been lying down for the past hour, so they couldn’t have seen my unglamorous waddle, but even then, my shoulders were crooked as hell. You’d think that would tip them off I wasn’t faking.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Oh, okay.”
I pushed upright and grimaced. As if the pain wasn’t enough, my stomach was rumbling uncomfortably too. “Sorry. I’m being snippy.”
“I wondered because…” She pulled up her left sleeve. In the candlelight, I saw shining metal, matte plastic. A prosthesis.
“The EMP busted it,” her sister chimed in.
“I’m uncoupling it soon. Too heavy to carry around for nothing. I just hoped…”
I looked closer at the robotic arm. It hung heavily, limply, by the girl’s side.
“I couldn’t remember if your chair was electric. I was worried it might’ve broken down too. I saw someone else with that problem earlier.” She blushed, tugging the sleeve back down. “I can’t believe we didn’t recognise you. Without the chair, and in this light, and—”
“And under these circumstances. I’m not expecting to run into any colleagues. I get it.”
“I’m Ginta.”
Her sister added, “I’m Vera. We love your music. We went to two of your concerts.”
“Yeah?” My head tilted as I regarded them. “What about playing music?”
I woke early.
My parents were still asleep. All around were whispers, isolated pools of light. I gestured at someone a few beds down to shine their flashlight at me so I could light our candle. I put on my KAFOs, grabbed my cathing gear, and headed to the bathrooms.
I supposed the pain itself wasn’t so bad. It hurt, yes, but it was easy enough to cope with if I focused on something else. The problem was, I could only focus on something else for so long. The pain was too constant, like a fly whizzing around my head. Inevitably, the buzzing grated enough to become thunder.
The line to the bathrooms was short, twenty minutes at most. Afterwards, I lingered outside the med bay. I tried the handle. Locked. I knocked.
A baggy-eyed Samira opened the door. “Look, we’ll update you if… oh. You.”
“Me,” I confirmed. “Do you have a minute? I have a… problem.”
She stepped aside.
Inside, scattered flashlights lit the room from bizarre angles. Slowly, my eyes focused. A dozen people were laid out side by side. Some sat upright, reading a book; others were sound asleep. One woman rocked back and forth, the bed creaking underneath, as she sewed up a coat—at least, I thought she was; her hands holding the needle and thread were frozen still.
The door shut, locking away the noise. She breathed in shakily and resumed her sewing.
“It’s so quiet,” I marvelled.
“Meet my assistant.” Samira gestured at an older, severe-looking man holding a book that he paid no attention to. If not for the white coat, I’d have pegged him as a patient.
“Ex-military. No formal medical training, but I improvise.” He offered a nod in greeting.
“And we have two physical therapists and a trainee EMT volunteering.”
“That’s pretty good,” I said, relieved.
The man nodded a second time. “If only it convinced Samira to take a break.”
“You didn’t sleep?” I asked her.
“I napped.” She guided me into an open office so we could talk semi-privately. “What do you need?”
“My spinal implant…”
It took her a second. “Crap. How bad is it?”
“Not heart-attack bad. But not pleasant.” I described it—pricking nerve pain, centred around my lower legs—and Samira frowned.
“Is that part of the spina bifida?”
“My doctors were never sure. Just one of those things.”
“Well, I might have something mild to take the edge off. You’ll have to ration it.” She pointed a flashlight at a desk and started rifling through a stack of paper. “Dr Kring is recovering. If you still want to ask about your KAFOs, the physical therapists could help.”
I hesitated. “They don’t fit well. They might need readjustment.”
“Did you lose weight?” Samira grimaced. “That’s a silly question. I’ll ask the physical therapists.”
She found a form with my name on it and ran her index finger down the page, where her handwriting got increasingly squiggly to fit everything on. I assumed she was checking the information I’d given her to determine the medication, but the longer her finger paused at the bottom of the page, the less sure I was.