Glass Cage

by Emmy Chandler

  Holy shit, why? Did they take his lung? Can they even do that?

  Panic fires through me, burning in my veins as if the butcher has just injected something new into my IV. And to the left of my head, I hear a sudden rapid beeping, from whatever monitor I’m hooked up to.

  Kat’s hands go still, then she suddenly lowers my leg onto the bed. “Your pulse is racing. You okay, Beau?”

  I hear the whisper of a door opening from somewhere on the other side of whatever room I’m in—which must be huge, based on the soft echo of sound. Footsteps rush toward us, and a familiar male voice orders Kat back.

  “What happened?” he demands, and my mind assigns a name to a voice I heard earlier: Dr. Herrington.

  “I don’t know. Nothing,” Kat says. “I was just exercising his legs, like Emily showed me, and the monitor started beeping.”

  “His vitals are fine,” that other female voice says, and a second later, the beeping stops. “Except for his pulse. And that’s steadying off now, too.”

  “Okay. Let’s give him another little bump of sedative, to make sure he’s sleeping soundly. And I’ll keep a close eye on him for the next few hours. Dr. Borden will have my head on a platter if something goes wrong with this one. He’s—”

  There’s a sudden burning in the crook of my right arm, then the voices start blurring together. The light shining from outside my eyelids begins to fade.

  Then I am simply floating in the dark...

  4

  KAT

  “Hey,” Lara says as I step into our dorm room. She frowns with one look at my face. “You look shell-shocked. What happened?”

  “Nothing, really.” The door slides closed behind me, and I take a seat on the bottom bunk next to her. “But in the moment...I thought I was going to be fired. And I’m not even sure what that means, around here.”

  “Gen pop.” Ava leans over the edge of her top bunk on the other side of the room to peer down at us. “That’s what happened to Penny, the girl who used to sleep in your bed.”

  It didn’t occur to me that I’m someone’s replacement, but that makes sense.

  “Penny worked the main floor?” I ask, and Ava nods. “Why did they send her away?”

  “Dunno.” Ava shrugs.

  Lara pulls her dark hair back and twists it into a loose bun. “One day Penny just disappeared before lunch, and no one would tell us why. All Tinsley would say was that they put her in gen pop, and it took Nan a couple of blow jobs to get that much out of him.”

  I shudder at the thought.

  Ava swings her legs over the side of the bunk and drops onto the floor. “So, what happened down there today?”

  “It was nothing, really.” I shrug. “It’s exercise day, which is basically a futile attempt to keep those poor vegetables from atrophying before Dr. Borden and her staff are done cutting pieces out of them. So, I was exercising this guy’s legs, and the monitor they have him hooked to started beeping, out of nowhere. Dr. Herrington came running out of his office with a couple of interns, but they said there was nothing wrong with him. The donor, I mean. There’s obviously something wrong with Dr. Herrington. I mean, why would a normal, perfectly competent physician want to work in a creepy place like this when he could work in a regular hospital or doctor’s office, anywhere in the galaxy?”

  Ava snorts. “You could ask a similar question of anyone who works on this fucking rock. We were sentenced to this shit. What’s their excuse?”

  “Exactly. Anyway, there was nothing wrong with the donor except a rapid pulse, but Dr. Herrington seemed all freaked out. He said Dr. Borden would have his head on a platter if something went wrong with this particular donor. He’s evidently a perfect specimen.”

  Lara tilts her head at me. “Perfect, how?”

  I shrug. “He looks pretty healthy. Pretty fit. Actually, he looks pretty...period.”

  Ava’s brows rise, and I can feel my face flush. “You’re saying the vegetable is hot?”

  “As horrible as that sounds...totally,” I admit with another shrug. “He may be the most attractive man I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s such a shame, what they’re doing to him. I mean, it’s a shame, what they’re doing to all the donors. But it’s particularly heinous of them to cut into a body as beautiful as this guy’s.”

  “But he was okay?” Lara says, just as the door slides open and Nanette comes in, wiping at a marinara stain on the front of her shirt. “The hot vegetable?”

  “I don’t care if I never see another vegetable,” she says as she sinks onto her own bottom bunk, shoving back several blond strands that have escaped from her ponytail.

  “This vegetable is a man,” Ava explains. “On the main floor.”

  “His name is Beau.” And I feel guilty referring to him—or anyone else—as a vegetable. They’re still people. Which makes what’s happening in the organ farm all the more horrifying. “And yes, he was fine. It’s just weird that his pulse started racing like that when I was…”

  “When you were what?” Ava’s brows rise again. “Were you washing his junk? Because I hear guys can get it up, even when they’re in a coma.”

  “No, bathing day was yesterday.” And “junk” isn’t a very accurate description of the top-quality equipment Beau’s working with. “I was just talking to him, and there was no erection. Just that pulse anomaly.”

  “You were talking to a man in a coma?” Nan stands and pulls her shirt over her head, then drops it into the laundry chute built into the wall. They don’t issue us pajamas, so she pulls a clean tee from the closet to sleep in.

  “I’m not sure they’re actually in comas. But they’re definitely heavily sedated.”

  “So, do you think he heard you?” Lara says on her way into the bathroom, where she stops in the doorway to wait for my answer.

  “I…” I frown. “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe he did. Maybe I scared him, and that’s why his pulse started racing.”

  “Why? What did you say to him?”

  “I just mentioned that the guy next to him was on a breathing machine. Because they took one of his lungs.”

  “Well, that’d scare the shit out of me, if I were lying on a bed, waiting for them to rip out my organs one by one.” Lara steps back and lets the door close between us.

  “Yeah, me too,” I mumble. I really hope Lara’s wrong. I hope Beau didn’t hear me. Because for all I know, he has no idea what’s happening to him, other than what he overhears from the doctors. And from me.

  For the next few days, I do my work in near silence, except to ask Jack to help me turn the heavy donors, because I’m afraid that my inane chatter might be making things worse for them. I’ve started to think of the donors as my patients, even though I’m not a doctor and they’re not actually sick. I feel like I’m helping them. Making their last days a little more bearable.

  That’s what I’m hoping, anyway.

  Every day, I check Beau’s chart and his monitor, even when Jack is actually the one to work with him, and every day, they tell me that Beau’s still getting that higher level of his sedative. There are no more pulse spikes from him, nor anything else odd. But I hold my tongue, just in case.

  Then, on the third day—a bathing day—Dr. Borden makes her rounds, and this time she stops at Beau’s bed, even though he hasn’t had another surgery. I listen as unobtrusively as I can while she questions the interns about his recovery. Which is when she discovers the higher dosage Dr. Herrington put him on.

  Since Beau hasn’t had any other trouble, she tells them to lower him back to the standard dose and to keep her apprised of any changes in his condition. His liver is in demand, but she has to know that he’s completely stable before she removes part of it.

  The liver, apparently, will regenerate in both the donor and the receiver. Because the human body is a fucking miracle. But that doesn’t justify what they’re doing to Beau and the others.

  The next day—an exercise day—I keep sneaking glances at Beau as I work my way t
oward his bed in the middle of the room, hoping to beat Jack, who started on the other side of the main floor.

  When I finally get to Beau, less than an hour before my lunch break, I immediately tap his headboard to check his file. He’s still on the lower sedative dosage. And though I was horrified, the other day, to think that what I’d said could have scared him enough to set off his monitor, today I’m more curious than anything. Can he hear me?

  If so, can the others?

  “Hey. Lookin’ pretty good today,” I whisper as I fold back the sheet and begin bending his right arm, careful of the IV still in place. His skin is a little puffy around the medical tape, and I wonder if he’s allergic to the adhesive. I was, as a child.

  Jack looks up from the woman he’s working with, and he seems amused to hear me talking to a man who can’t talk back.

  “They’ve lowered your dosage of sedative, and…well…my friends and I have this theory.” I move down to Beau’s wrist, bending his hand carefully back and forth in a circular motion. “They think maybe your monitor went off last time because you actually heard what I was saying to you. That what I said about that other donor scared you.”

  There’s no response from Beau. Of course there’s no response. They’re medicating him to make sure of that.

  “Anyway, if that’s what happened, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I shouldn’t have—” Shouldn’t have what? Told him the truth? “Well, I just shouldn’t have.”

  I finish with his right arm and move on to his left. “Still, talking to you makes this place a little less miserable. For me anyway. I guess there’s nothing that could make this less miserable for you, huh? Though if I could—if I knew how—I’d take you away from all this. I’d just…pull out all the wires and, I guess, since this is a fantasy anyway, I’d just pick you up and carry you out.”

  Jack snorts softly.

  And to my utter amazement, a tear rolls down from Beau’s closed left eye, to pool on the vinyl mattress beneath him.

  “Oh my god,” I whisper, giving my words even less volume than before. “Are you…? Can you actually hear me?”

  There’s no response. No more tears. But I know—I just know—that there’s something different about this man. Somehow, he can hear me. Which mean he’s awake in there, trapped in his own body. Helpless, when his physique tells me that’s probably never been the case for him before.

  I have to do something to help him. Even if the best I can do is keep him company.

  “…so I have to admit, I don’t really feel like I deserve to be here. I mean, it was just a tube of lipstick.” I shrug as I run the clean, wet rag gently over Beau’s eyelid. Always start with the donor’s face, and use a clean rag, Emily said. “Okay, technically, this wasn’t my first offense. But swiping a couple of lipsticks worth a handful of credits hardly amounts to grand larceny. Right?” In fact, it was petty larceny. I should have gotten a slap on the wrist.

  I stare at Beau’s face as I wash it, wishing he would open his eyes. I could open one for him again, but that’s not the same. I want him to look at me.

  It’s ridiculous, considering where we are and the fact that I haven’t heard him speak a single word, but I almost feel like I know him. And I desperately want to know him better. After all, if he really can hear me, he’s learned quite a bit about my life before prison—very little of which is flattering.

  “Evidently the severity of the sentence is entirely up to the judge, based on the sentencing guidelines in place on any given planet. In any given region,” I explain, prattling on about the event that brought me here, since he’s already heard about my childhood as the youngest of three kids—the only girl—and the only redhead in my entire school.

  “Which means there’s no consistency in sentencing. If I’d been from a different homeworld—or even a different region of my own homeworld—I might have gotten six months in jail. Maybe even just a fine. But because the judge hearing my case happened to be an asshole of astronomical proportions, here I am. Life on a prison planet. For stealing some lipstick.”

  I rinse the rag in the clean basin, then I run it over his scalp, careful to get all the little bits of hair that Jack missed when he trimmed Beau’s hair this morning.

  “Though I have to admit, I looked amazing in that shade.”

  “What shade was it?” Jack asks, but it takes me a second to answer, because Beau’s mouth just twitched. I swear his lips arced downward, as if he were trying to frown.

  “Um…it was a soft plum shade called Kiss This. I tried it on at the makeup counter, while I was working, and that was the only time I got to wear it, because they caught me the second I clocked out and left the store. I should have just put the lipstick back, but I was convinced I could get away with it one more time. So I just walked out. Dumbest thing I ever did.”

  “I would totally do that.” Jack looks up from the woman he’s bathing one row over.

  “Do what? Steal lipstick?” I smile as I pretend to study him. “You don’t seem like that kind of guy.”

  “No. Kiss this.” His gaze falls to my mouth and seems caught there. “I would totally kiss this.”

  I laugh off his flirtation. Jack’s really nice, but he’s not my type. Not that that matters. My dating days are over, at the ripe old age of twenty-four. Unless I feel like getting it on with a guard. Which I do not.

  A couple of the interns seem interested, but I highly doubt they’d risk their careers by messing around with an inmate. This is a temporary stop for them—one rotation out of several, in their medical training. In a couple of months, they’ll all be able to get laid on some other, normal planet, and we’ll have a fresh crop of interns. At least, that’s how it works, according to Lara.

  I have no idea how long the inmates stay here. We’re all pretty young, which tells me there must be a fairly swift turnover. But no one knows why Penny was sent to gen pop, and not one of my fellow inmates has been here for more than a year, based on their own estimates. So despite what the guard told me during in-processing, my days in the relative comfort of zone twelve are definitely numbered. And just the thought of being abandoned in the general population, somewhere on the other side of the planet, makes me a little sick to my stomach. There’s no electricity and a very little running water in the general population zones. If you want a bed, you have to fight for it, or spread your legs for someone who’s already secured one. Same goes for food.

  I shake off that thought and turn my attention back to Beau.

  Working with him is the best part of my day, and not just because he’s the least mutilated of the donors and the only one I can still hold out hope for. It’s mostly because I can’t help clinging to the possibility—however remote it may be—that he can hear me. That I might actually be making a connection with someone who really needs it.

  “Anyway, if you’re going to get caught stealing—” I say as I run the clean rag over his neck in slow, careful strokes. “—it may as well be for a really great color.”

  “Why do you talk to him?” Jack asks as he uncovers his patient’s left arm, from which she’s missing a long patch of olive-toned skin. “When you don’t talk to any of the others?”

  I exhale slowly while I consider my answer. “Because I think he might be able to hear me.”

  “What?” His rag stills on the poor woman’s cheek. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because the first time I spoke to him, his pulse spiked drastically enough to freak out Dr. Herrington.”

  “And you think that was a reaction to something you said?”

  I shrug. “I know that sounds stupid, but it’s not just that one incident.” I lower my voice, in case someone’s listening on one of the security monitors. “Sometimes he twitches. Like he’s trying to move. None of the others do that. I don’t know how it’s possible, but I feel like he can hear me.”

  Jack studies Beau for a moment. “It could be his size.”

  “What do you mean?”

>   “I mean…that fucker’s huge. If they’re giving him a standard dose of whatever sedative they have all the donors on, maybe that’s not quite enough to keep him completely under. Or, it’s possible he just metabolizes the sedative faster than most people. That happens sometimes. Everyone’s body processes things differently. If they’re not actively monitoring his reaction to what they’re giving him—and I don’t think they care enough to—they could easily be missing subtle signs that he needs a higher dose.”

  “So, you think he really could be hearing me? Reacting to my voice?” While part of me just knows that’s the case, the other part of me was half-convinced I’d imagined the whole thing. Until now.

  Jack shrugs. “I wouldn’t say it’s likely. But I also wouldn’t call it impossible.”

  “I don’t suppose you were a doctor in your pre-prison life?” Which would give his assessment some weight.

  “No, I was an ER nurse. I suspect that’s how I wound up here, instead of gen pop.”

  “I have no idea how I wound up here,” I tell him as I take a sponge from the clean water basin and begin to wipe soapy water from Beau’s neck. “I just woke up in a glass box, and the next thing I know, here I am, a caretaker at the organ farm.”

  “Glass box?” Jack’s rag pauses in mid-stroke.

  “Well, not glass, really. I think they’re made out of the same kind of metal as the walls around here. But it was totally transparent. You’d think they could at least set them to be opaque, considering that I was nude for transport.” I frown when I realize he has no idea what I’m talking about. “Why? How did you get here?”