by Lydia Hope
She needed neither.
Calmly, she erased the missive and logged off, and then gave a small self-deprecating laugh. Was life unfair or what?
She exited the Comm Center before tears came, and when they came, cold wind blasted them off her face. Gemma walked slowly in the dark, her right ankle giving in with each step.
Strangely enough, Zeke’s marriage and personal happiness didn’t affect her too deeply, and Gemma chose not to analyze that fact yet.
But his invitation to dance on Meeus hurt.
She would never dance again. Earth, Meeus, asteroid belt - the location didn’t matter. Her injury had brought her stellar prima ballerina career to a grinding halt. Worse, Zeke knew it, he had been there when it happened. He had tried to set her bones, for God’s sake! There wasn’t much he was able to do without surgery, and the bones mended as they mended. Even teaching dance was a tentative option. Yes, she’d taught dance at a school here in the City before the class got canceled, but the level of agility required to teach ten-year-old girls how to do arabesque was nothing compared to the demands the Meeus dance troupe would place on her body.
She exhaled and told herself not to blame Zeke too harshly. Dancing was the only qualification Gemma could offer - or had been able to offer - in life. Maybe Zeke assumed that she’d gotten the much-needed surgery, and even though Gemma might not be great anymore, she could pass muster for being good enough.
She couldn't. She could barely walk without limping.
At home, the entire McKinley family was waiting for her with impatience.
“I will not be going to Meeus,” Gemma announced from the threshold.
Uncle Drexel opened his mouth to say something, but Aunt Herise elbowed him into silence. Gemma was grateful for her aunt’s unexpected display of tact. A fresh wave of tears flooded her eyes as this paradigm shift of her life rocked her anew.
She dashed into her room, or more like stumbled drunkenly on unsteady feet, and shut the door. She let the tears fall in silence, her emotions a tangle of pain, disappointment, and crushed hopes. And loneliness. She hadn’t realized before what a huge amount of comfort thoughts about Zeke were giving her. The notion that she mattered to at least one person in the Universe had made her life in the City tolerable.
Now she was truly alone.
Miserably dejected, she took her calendar off the wall and flipped through it with hateful nostalgia thinking of ways to dispose of it. She could tear it in a million tiny pieces, each for the piece of her broken heart. She could burn it in the woodstove, like she burned two years of her life nurturing hopes, waiting for Zeke’s promises to come true. Or she could open the window and simply throw the calendar out to the cold like Zeke had thrown out their love.
The calendar’s grid of tight little squares, one for each date that she had meticulously outlined and filled with numbers, jumped at her from the pages. Each square represented a day of her life. Each day had been a struggle. And she survived all 782.
She flipped to the new page and outlined tomorrow’s date.
Day One.
“Gemma McKinley, a third floor helper. Here to receive a set of clean scrubs for an inmate in cell 35. Underwear, socks, shoes. Bed linens.”
The supply closet lady, who’d become way too familiar to Gemma in recent days, squinted with frank suspicion. “Aren’t you a hoot. Fishing for favors for an inmate?”
“Nope.”
The lady, whose appearance brought to mind no flowers contrary to what her name Marigold suggested, checked the schedule in a dog-eared ledger.
“You’re full of shit, helper McKinley. The third floor received clean linens last week, and their personal hygiene day is tomorrow. You’re not on schedule, and you ain’t getting nothing from me.” The ledger closed with a loud snap.
“The inmate in cell 35 is handicapped. He skipped several laundry days and personal hygiene cycles.”
The same hear-hear look from Marigold.
“Go on, check the ledger if you don’t believe me.”
The lady wasn’t in a hurry to do as Gemma asked. “If he waited that long for a bath, he can wait till tomorrow.”
“I won’t have time to take care of him tomorrow along with other inmates,” Gemma patiently explained. She detected a slight give in Marigold’s rock-hard refusal and zeroed in for a kill. “I have instructions to take care of the invalid today,” she impressed on Marigold without elaborating on whose instructions she was carrying out.
With a long-suffering sigh, Marigold opened her ledger.
“If you’re lying, I won’t give you anything at all,” she warned Gemma as she turned the pages with the help of a finger wetted with saliva. “Wasting water on laundry is prohibited. Extra articles of clothing are not allowed.”
“What if they smell?” Gemma couldn't help but ask.
Marigold scoffed. “Ain’t no rose garden here. The third floor, you said?”
Finally, they got to the right section in the ledger. Marigold traced each entry with her finger, her lips moving as she read the notes. “Cell 35, cell 35… the last time he got a set was… three years ago. Good for him. Not a waster.” Marigold actually smiled and went to get the clothes.
Gemma kept her mouth shut, but her heart ached for Simon. No one cared. No. One.
That was about to change, she thought savagely, as she turned to carry an armful of clean items upstairs.
“Hey,” Marigold called out. “I remember they used to have a wheelchair at the medical bay. We had a paraplegic here once, and the warden ordered a wheelchair for him. Humane treatment and all that. I didn't know if you knew. Might help to move this one around.”
Softening toward the woman, Gemma nodded. “Thank you, Marigold. I’ll check it out.”
Gemma emerged from the elevator on the third floor pushing a wheelchair laden with Simon’s change of clothes. Startled looks greeted her from behind the bars, and Ruby came over to investigate.
“What’s this?”
“A wheelchair.”
“What’s this for?”
“For Simon.”
“Our Simon? That one in there?”
“The one and only. I need your help, Ruby.”
“What do you need?”
“I need a bucket of fresh water. The Marigold person won’t give me a bucket after she’s already given me all this.” She pointed at the clothes.
Ruby’s forehead wrinkled, but she didn’t refuse.
“What for?”
“I’m going to give Simon a sponge bath.”
“Oh, lordy.” Ruby rolled her eyes. “Our Gemma found herself a pet.”
Ruby promised to get the water, and Gemma hoped today it wasn’t too awful to use for bathing.
After the cellblock emptied out for their yard time, Gemma went to Simon. She tried to finger-feed him again while waiting on Ruby to bring up the water but had no more success than the previous day. He simply didn’t participate in the eating activity, and short of shoving the gruel down his throat, Gemma had limited options.
Today the gruel was thicker than usual, lumpy, and undercooked. Simon seemed to be having a particularly difficult time with it. He refused to swallow no matter how insistently Gemma rubbed his throat. She may have imagined it, but at one time she thought he pushed the food out of his mouth, quite consciously not liking it.
“Simon, you can’t be a baby about it,” she said to him after she wiped his chin for the fifteenth time. “This is real. You have to eat. I know the food’s gross, but you have to work with me here.”
But he refused to work with her, and his skeletal frame was beginning to put Gemma into a state of panic. If he died - when he died - she’d be disconsolate.
She didn’t know if she regarded him as a pet as Ruby had suggested, but the truth hit her on the head: she’d become attached to a being who could offer her nothing in return except anguish through his passing.
Angry with herself for picking the wrong males to get attached to, she re
moved the bowl from under his face. Fine, let him stay hungry. But she’d had it with his stink. The sponge bath was firmly in the plans, and he couldn’t say no to that.
Forcing him to lay down on his cot and not being as gentle with handling him as she could have been, Gemma briskly undressed Simon. A fresh wave of pity rose within her at the sight of his nakedness. She’d anticipated an anorexic display of ribs outlined in each prominent detail, and a sunken stomach that dipped all the way down to his spine, but she hadn’t expected scars. So many scars.
Swallowing thickly, she dipped his old shirt in the water and started at his neck, carefully swiping to clean the grime. He didn’t have facial hair, and his skin was smooth, hairless, and dry. The base of his neck sported a series of small hieroglyphic tattoos done in a bright indigo shade. He was cool to the touch, definitely a few degrees lower in body temperature than Gemma, and she was unsure if it was normal for him, or caused by his illness, or simply a reaction to the permafrost of his cell.
She kept working quickly washing his chest and shoulders, his upper arms and pits, all of it dry and hairless except for random patches of delicate peach-fuzz that looked balding and reminded Gemma of a moth-eaten suede shawl Aunt Herise was so attached to.
But the numerous scars told the story of a life lived in fights. Most were old, pale, almost undetectable. Others were more recent but well healed. The scariest ones looked like surgical incisions, the roughly stapled ones, and they were made in odd places. Her stomach heaved. What had been done to him to bring him here, in this condition?
Enormous whitish eyes staring straight up, Simon never broke out in goosebumps or shivered, yet Gemma was freezing by just looking at him, naked and damp. Moving down to his belly, she took note of his navel, large and concave, sunken deeply into the skin without muscle to stretch it, but bearing testament that Rix were born like humans, after a gestational period within a mother. She was glad to have learned it from his anatomy. They had at least one thing in common - the belly button. She didn’t know how she’d’ve reacted had he hatched from an egg.
She scrubbed his stomach and flanks, rinsing her improvised washcloth in between the wipings. Done with the stomach, Gemma stalled. Indecision puckered her brow as she studied the area that waited to be cleaned next. His privates.
Or whatever.
Well, there was something, like a wrinkled bit of skin that could pass for… she wasn’t sure it could pass. Confused, she looked out of his cell to re-establish that this was a male cell block. And there was no question that Simon looked like a male, large-boned and markedly wide in the shoulders, with narrow hips.
Had he been mutilated? Horrified, Gemma inspected his groin area for telltale scars that would explain the missing equipment, but all she could observe was smooth papery skin over the protruding hip bones, slightly loose around the legs, implying that it had once wrapped around a much larger muscle mass.
No scars.
Shaking her head, Gemma resumed her sponge bath, carefully working with and around the body part that she was having an issue with. It wasn’t what she’d expected. Not that she had expected much. Meaning, she had had no expectations at all because she hadn’t given any thought about what lay underneath his dirty scrubs.
Discombobulated, she did a quick job of his legs noting that his kneecaps were three times the size of hers and patted him dry. Docile as always, he turned over at her urging. His back bore several long burn scars, something a laser weapon might leave if skimmed over the skin, but they all appeared old and well healed.
His arm dropped limply off the cot and his hand landed to rest on the floor, palm up, fingers curled in repose. All six of them.
When she finished, Gemma quickly dressed him up in fresh scrubs sending mental thanks to Marigold and propped him into his usual sitting position with his back to the wall. To say that Simon was now squeaky-clean would be an exaggeration, but she admired her handiwork anyway, noting how his skin was no longer grimy and sticky to the touch, and the rank smell disappeared from his cell. No more smell was important. And he had socks and boots now covering his feet, as well as a light jacket to go outside.
Hmm, go outside…
Chapter 7
"Do you expect me to sling him around like a discus thrower? This bag of bones ain’t that lightweight, Gemma.”
“No, of course not. I will push the wheelchair inside his cell, all the way to the cot, and all we have to do is transfer him from the cot to the chair. He can’t be that heavy.”
Arlo gave her a withering look. “You wait and see. We’ll throw our backs, and to hell with it. Why are we doing it, again?”
“He deserves to go outside like the rest of the population.”
“The green man over there doesn’t go, and he seems fine.”
A prolonged screech followed by a bout of maniacal laughter emanated from Little Green Man’s cell. The bars of his door rattled like crazy and something flew from there to splash wetly on the corridor floor. No, he was definitely not fine, but whether the lack of outside air had anything to do with his problems, Gemma couldn’t be certain.
“Please, Arlo. It won’t take but two minutes of your time.”
He scowled but moved to open Simon’s cell where her charge was waiting, boots laced up and the newly acquired jacket buttoned all the way to his throat by Gemma.
She squeezed the wheelchair through the door opening and parked it next to the cot. Gently pulling at Simon’s upper body, she made him scoot closer to the cot’s edge and swung his legs over the edge so that his feet were touching the ground.
Arlo observed Simon with squeamish curiosity like one would roadkill with guts on display. He certainly wasn’t in a great rush to touch him.
“The sucker does nothing but lay around like a pile of shit all day,” he remarked. “They should've left him to rot at the lab, but I guess he’s been a bad boy.”
Gemma straightened up to look at Arlo. “What lab?”
“There’s only one, by the hospital. You need research done, that’s where you do it.”
“And Simon came from the lab?” Just the sound of it left a sour taste in Gemma’s mouth.
“That’s what I heard. They experimented on him and messed him up. Or maybe he had an allergic reaction to peanuts.”
She felt nauseous. “What did they do to him?”
Arlo shrugged, as usual concerned with no one except Arlo. “Whatever it is researchers do to all them alien intergalactic captures. Poke them with needles and see how they twitch. Listen, unlike you, I have no plans to stand here gabbing till my break’s over. Do you need help or not?”
“Yes, please.” Sick to her stomach, Gemma let the lab matter drop only because Arlo probably didn’t know much more than he’d already shared.
Moving Simon into the chair proved a surprisingly easy task. When Gemma and Arlo took hold of him under his arms and under his knees, one on each side, he flexed his body and kind of went with their momentum to pivot and lower him into the chair seat.
His one good deed accomplished for the day, Arlo left her and bounded down the stairs.
Gemma took Simon downstairs in the elevator and, after navigating several sticky obstacles in the form of protruding thresholds, wheeled him out to the sunshine.
The two guards manning the courtyard looked up with curiosity. The inmates openly stared at Simon, indifferent as always to the world.
Gemma found a bright spot away from the crowd and engaged the breaks, leaving him to bask in the sunshine as she went to talk to the guards. She wanted to assure them that she was utilizing the wheelchair with full permission from the medical staff. She wasn’t worried about potential inquiries from the prison management, but if she could avoid dealing with OO and his oily sticky eyes, she’d rather do that. A little bit of prevention went a long way.
The weather was relatively warm, the day quiet, and the guards, bored by their uneventful supervision task, amenable to the conversation. Gemma didn’t know how long s
he’d been swapping small talk with them when her peripheral vision caught a movement. The guards noticed, too.
She turned around with foreboding.
Simon and his wheelchair had all but disappeared inside a dense circle of inmates. They surrounded him like vultures zooming in on a fresh carcass. Only Birdies hung back, cooing to each other and holding hands.
“I don’t think they like your handicapped guy,” one of the guards remarked.
“He’s never been a problem before.” Gemma sounded worried to her own ears. The inmates were behaving aggressively, shouldering each other and edging closer and closer to Simon, chattering in strange languages. “I’m afraid your help might be needed.”
The guards remained unperturbed. “Unless they attack a human or try to escape, we don’t interfere.”
Gemma was outraged. “But they can hurt him!”
“It’s his problem,” came the final reply.
A Perali kicked Simon’s shin. Gemma saw red.
“Hey, you!” She took off in the direction of the cluster. “Don’t touch him!”
She might as well have been yelling at the sun to stop shining for all the effect her orders did to halt the brewing violence.
Another alien, a stocky one with the face resembling an old frying pan seized Simon’s braid and yanked his head back, exposing his throat above the collar of his jacket. Gemma’s blood froze in her veins. She barreled into the circle, shoving the bodies aside and making her way to the center.
“Let him go! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The alien - a Tarai, if she was correct, - looked at her in surprise still gripping a handful of Simon’s beautiful hair.
The crowd gave a short ripple, and Number 34 appeared.
“You shouldn’t be here, Gemma,” he said quietly. “You need to leave. Go on your break.”
“Like hell I will. What do you want with Simon?”
Number 34’s black rodent eyes flickered. “The Rix is a threat. No one feels safe.”
“He’s unconscious! He can’t move! Leave him be.”