by Kat Zhang
Because at that moment, the door opened, the nurse froze, and Mr. Conivent walked in. Immediately, the atmosphere in the room twisted. Mr. Conivent didn’t fit in here. Despite the cold tile floor, the blinding fluorescent lights, and the observing nurse, something about all fourteen of us eating at one table created a sense of intimacy that mixed about as well with Mr. Conivent as water did with oil.
No one spoke as he surveyed the room. He nodded at the nurse, who gave a twitchy nod back, like a bird. Many of the kids weren’t actually eating, just pushing their food around. Hally looked just as confused as we felt. Devon’s head tilted down toward his tray, but we could see his eyes fixed on Mr. Conivent.
The three of us sat on the side of the table opposite the door, so we all had a perfect view of the men and woman who entered next. They were only four altogether, but they moved with a power that gripped the room, made them seem to take up more space than they should have. The men were dressed sharply in ties and creased pants, the woman in a dark pencil skirt, a small diamond winking from each ear. They stared at us openly, like the lanky delivery boy had our first morning. As if they were taking a tour of the zoo and we were the next animals on the itinerary.
Mr. Conivent spoke softly to one of the men, who nodded without looking at him. They stayed perhaps two minutes, just watching us pretend we didn’t notice them. Then they and Mr. Conivent were gone and the whole room resumed breathing again as one, as if we shared common lungs.
“Who was that?” Hally said as a hum of conversation sprang up around the table. The nurse had wilted slightly by her chair and didn’t seem to be listening.
“The review board,” Kitty repeated. “They’re from the government.”
“This is the government,” Devon said, and she shrugged.
“They’re from the government government. They’re important.”
“How often do they come?” Hally said.
Kitty shook her head and scooped up some oatmeal. She held her spoon the same way Lyle did when he was playing with his food, as if it were a shovel. “I’ve only seen them once before, about a year ago. After I first got here.”
The nurse had regained her color—too much of it, in fact. Her cheeks were flushed. She rubbed at her forehead, then clambered back onto her feet and clapped her hands like the nurses always seemed to do. “Come on, children. Eat quickly.”
No one spoke again. The silence left me to digest, slowly, just how long Kitty had already been at Nornand.
Study time and lunch passed without the review board’s intrusion, as did dinner. But we didn’t head for the Study room after our last meal, as we had the previous day. Instead, we ended up in a sort of waiting room.
Addie and I had been in countless waiting rooms over the years. Ones with coffee tables covered with glossy health magazines. Ones with wallpaper in cool, calming blue. Ones with those silly blocks-on-rails play tables for little kids. This room had none of those things. There was a row of chairs pressed against one wall, facing the two doors cut into the opposite wall. We could just see what looked to be bright white examination rooms beyond the doorways. And that was it. But the entire setup screamed waiting room anyway.
Dr. Lyanne, Dr. Wendle, and Mr. Conivent stood inside, a strange trio in the corner of the room. Dr. Wendle was flushed, Dr. Lyanne pale but speaking quickly and passionately, Mr. Conivent cold, his words colder. Their argument, never loud, stopped immediately when the nurse cleared her throat. The three looked up. Dr. Wendle blanched. Dr. Lyanne faltered. Mr. Conivent’s expression didn’t change.
“Good, the children are here,” he said, and though his tone was polite and his face smooth, it sounded like a dismissal. “Would you two get started, then? The board will arrive in a moment.”
He left, and all the kids parted for him at the door, no one touching even the edge of his shirt. For a moment afterward, no one spoke. Dr. Lyanne stared at the wall.
It was the nurse who finally broke the silence, drawing on the endless reservoir of smiles she seemed to possess and pasting one onto her face. “Right, then,” she said. “Children, find a seat and sit quietly. The doctors will call you when they’re ready.”
Slowly, everyone settled down. Addie sat in a chair close to the door, and Kitty grabbed a seat next to us. Lissa took the one on our other side, Ryan the one beside her. He glanced at us, but only for a moment. We hadn’t spoken much the whole day. All the nurses were too tense, cracking down on the slightest whisper during study time, patrolling the table during meals.
Ryan had touched our shoulder as we left lunch, and when Addie hadn’t immediately jerked away, he’d asked, softly, if we were okay. Addie had nodded. He’d squeezed gently before letting us go. And that had been all.
We had to tell them what we suspected about Sallie. This wasn’t just one boy anymore. This procedure, this surgery, had happened more than once. And neither Jaime nor Sallie seemed like they were coming back. Not if the doctors had told everyone they’d gone home.
Dr. Wendle disappeared into one of the examination rooms. Dr. Lyanne stood in the adjacent doorway—not even leaning against the wall or the doorframe—just standing there, holding up her own weight.
Eli whimpered. A ripple ran through the room, but no one spoke and only a few heads turned to stare.
“Cal’s just scared of needles,” Kitty said, catching our expression. “He always cries when they take blood.”
“Cal?” Addie said.
Kitty wavered, then said, “I—I meant Eli.”
“You mean you made a mistake?” Addie frowned. “You thought it was Cal, but it’s Eli?”
Kitty looked at the little boy. He had his hands fisted, his short legs drawn up onto the chair. “It’s Eli,” she said, and her voice was deadened but sure. “It’s always Eli.”
The boy’s crying had caught Dr. Lyanne’s attention. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, then away again. Her gaze moved across the room, studying each of us in turn. Something in her seemed to slacken.
“Kitty,” she said, glancing down at her clipboard. “You’re up first.”
Kitty slipped from her chair and followed Dr. Lyanne into the examination room. Addie waited until Dr. Wendle had called someone in with him, too, until both doors had shut. Then she turned to Hally and Ryan and murmured, “It’s not just Jaime.”
“We know,” Lissa said.
“What?” Addie said. Ryan raised his eyebrows in warning, and she dropped our voice to a whisper. “How?”
“I’ve talked to some of the others,” Ryan said. He tilted his head toward one of the older boys at the far end of the room. “Some of the kids have been here a really long time. Years. And they’ve seen other kids disappear. Gone home. Except . . .”
“No one really goes home,” Addie said.
Eli was whimpering again. The blond boy next to him put an awkward hand on his shoulder, but everyone else pretended not to notice. Everyone seemed to spend a lot of time pretending not to notice Eli. He’d been oddly fumbling all morning, his steps uncertain, his words few and half slurred, but no one had commented.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ryan said under his breath. “Now.” There were no more questions of where we would go. What we would do. Anywhere was better than here. Anything was better than here. “This place has got to have cracks in the system. There are always cracks. We’ve just got to find them.”
Said board members appeared at the door just then, as if summoned by my thoughts. The nurse on duty let them in. Mr. Conivent didn’t lead this time. Instead, he followed after the others, whispering something to the same man he’d spoken to at breakfast.
All the kids hunched down a little. What little conversation had existed withered away. Like this mo
rning, the review board stayed a certain distance from us, hushed and watching. Our eyes darted toward them from time to time, and we caught a few of the other kids sneaking glances, too. But no one stared at them as they stared at us.
The minutes ticked past.
When one of the examination room doors finally opened, the rattle of the doorknob shot through the silence. Kitty walked out first and started at the sight of the men and woman in their dark clothes. Behind her, Dr. Lyanne was still filling out something on her clipboard.
“Eli?” she called without looking up. Then she did.
She froze, just as Kitty had. The little girl recovered first, hurrying back to her seat beside us. Dr. Lyanne couldn’t seem to make herself move again for the longest time, but then she cleared her throat and said, again, “Eli?”
Eli shook his head.
“Come on, Eli,” Dr. Lyanne said. She held out her hand but didn’t leave the doorway. Her jaw was tight, her voice almost hoarse.
“No,” Eli said, panic in his voice. He’d regained a little of the wildcat wariness I’d noted the first day. “No, no, no.”
Kitty’s hand slipped into ours. She didn’t look at us, didn’t look at Eli or Dr. Lyanne or the review board, just stared down at her knees. But her grip was so strong it hurt. There was a Band-Aid on the inside of her elbow, and for some reason, Addie couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Eli,” said Mr. Conivent, and Kitty flinched.
The entire review board was watching him now, this eight-year-old boy who refused to leave his chair, refused to do what the grown-ups asked.
“Is there a problem?” Dr. Wendle said, opening the other examination room door.
“Will someone just get the boy into a room?” Mr. Conivent said. He didn’t sound angry. Didn’t even sound upset or annoyed or frustrated. But his right hand was pressed in a fist against his side, and we saw the tension in his neck. “Dr. Lyanne? If you would?”
Dr. Lyanne came at Eli, who jumped out of his chair. He’d been wobbly all morning, his steps teetering. But we’d been distracted, and we hadn’t looked too closely, hadn’t seen the haze over his eyes. It fought with his wariness, opposing forces battling over his body.
Take care of it, Mr. Conivent had said that first day. Was this it? Was this taking care of it?
Eli lurched forward, stumbled, fell. Dr. Lyanne grabbed at him—whether to drag him into the examination room or just to keep him from hitting the ground, I didn’t know—but whatever the reason, Eli screamed like she’d sliced him open. She jerked away. He scrambled to his feet and ran.
Addie gripped our chair to keep from jumping up, from tearing out of Kitty’s grasp so we could dart over and scoop Eli up. He’d pressed into a corner of the room, trapped between the members of the review board and Dr. Wendle, who’d abandoned his own room to come chasing after him, and all I could think about was Lyle during his first dialysis sessions. He’d cried and cried and cried and the nurses had comforted him; our parents had been there to distract him; Addie had been there to read to him. And now this boy, screaming and kicking, was being manhandled by Dr. Wendle, and everyone was just watching—
“Let him go,” Addie cried.
We froze. Ryan’s eyes darted toward us. But the words had been spoken, and Addie couldn’t take them back. Mr. Conivent turned and stared, but Dr. Wendle didn’t stop—he didn’t let Eli go—and before I knew what was happening, we were out of our seat and across the room, because couldn’t they see how upset he was? Couldn’t they be kinder in this tiny way?
Someone grabbed us before we could reach him. One of the review board members—the man always speaking with Mr. Conivent—and his grip hurt. He yanked us, pinning us against him, and the first words we heard from his mouth were You will stop this. You will calm down. Right now.
His nails dug into our skin so hard it brought tears to our eyes, and we couldn’t see his face; we could only hear his voice in our ear. He spun us around, our back still against his torso but our face toward the other kids. Every single one of them stared back at us. Every single one of them wore a different expression. But in every one of them, the same current of fear. Ryan was half out of his chair, but he’d frozen.
Slowly, silently, the man brought Addie and me back to the row of seats. We were a doll in his hands, crafted of plastic and artificial coloring, every joint stiff. He shoved us down into a chair, and we did not rise again as Eli, cornered and captured by Dr. Wendle and a pair of nurses, was carried flailing and screeching into one of the examination rooms.
Twenty-two
Kitty was quiet that night after the lights clicked off. She curled up facing the wall, her knees almost pressing against her chest, her hair spilling like ink across her pillow. In less than half an hour, her breaths had slowed and evened.
We couldn’t shut our eyes, let alone sleep. I heard echoes of voices that weren’t there. Eli screaming. The board official’s words in our ear. They’d ended up not even finishing the testing. Instead, the doctors and the board members had disappeared somewhere with Eli, leaving the rest of us with a disgruntled nurse who shoved us in our bedrooms, muttering that her shift was supposed to be over.
No one had dared venture back out. Even if the nurse had left and wasn’t sitting in the main Ward, someone else was sure to hear a door open . . . and who knew if they would tell?
I didn’t need to ask who she was talking about.
Addie’s frustration buffeted against me, and I knew she wasn’t going to just let the matter drop. But before she could speak again, the chip in our hand began to pulse faster.
For a moment, we just stared at it. Then, without a word, Addie pushed back our covers and swung our legs over the side of the bed. The icy floor raised goose bumps on our skin.
Kitty didn’t stir. Addie crossed the room, our nightgown gleaming white under the moonlight, our bare feet whispering against the ground. By the time we reached the door, our chip was solid red. She twisted the door open, took a step—and almost crashed into Ryan.
Addie crushed our knuckles against our lips to hold back a yelp of surprise. Ryan wasn’t quite fast enough. He managed the first startled syllable of Addie’s name before she shoved our other hand against his mouth, dropping our chip in the process. Luckily, the corridor was carpeted, and it didn’t clatter.
We stood absolutely still for several seconds, trying not to breathe, trying to come up with valid excuses if someone had heard and came to check. But no one did.
Ryan stared at us. His hair stuck up in random directions, some of the curls crushed, others seeming to defy gravity. I could feel his breath against our skin, the curve of his lips fitting in the creases between our fingers.
Slowly, Addie lowered our hand from his mouth. She reached behind us and eased our bedroom door shut while Ryan bent to retrieve our chip.
Then, without a word, without even some sort of unspoken signal, Addie and Ryan turned and headed for the main Ward.
It seemed smaller in the darkness. There were no windows here, so the only source of light came from the glowing red chips in our hands. We sat at one of the tables, and still, neither Addie nor Ryan spoke.
I had a hundred things I wanted to say. A hundred little things I could imagine doing, that I wanted to do, if I could. If I just could. But Addie was in control, and she squandered her time sitting still and unsmiling in the darkness.
“The nurse will come and check on us soon, probably,” she finally murmured.
“Not for another hour,” Ryan said, look
ing at his watch. He seemed a bit relieved to have something to say. “Lissa said the nurses come about the same time every night.”
Addie nodded. Then, before things could lapse right back into an awkward silence, she said, “Well, what did you want?”
“Sorry?” Ryan said.
Addie spoke even more quickly. “You came by our room. You must have a reason. If you’ve got something to say, then say it.”
Ryan’s chip clicked against the table. “I don’t have a reason,” he said, “because I wasn’t coming to your room. I was passing by.” He jerked his head toward the alcove on the far side of the Ward. “There’s only one bathroom in this place.”
Our face heated. “Right.” She rose. “Well, then—”
“Addie—” Ryan said before she could slip away down the hall. He stood, too, more slowly. “Addie, I’m lying. I wanted to ask if you were okay.”
“You keep asking me if I’m okay,” Addie snapped. “I’m fine. You’re okay. Hally and Lissa are okay—”
“I’m not okay,” Ryan said. Even in the dim light, I could see, almost feel, the tension in his shoulders. His eyebrows knit. His fingers curled around the back of his chair. “I don’t have a plan to get us out of here. I don’t know where we’d go if I did.” He sighed and pushed at his bangs, making them stick up even more. “The more I see of this place, the worse it gets. And today, when that guy grabbed you and Eva . . . So, no, I’m not okay. And if you are, Addie, then you’re doing a lot better than I am, all right?”
If I’d been in control, I’d have told him it wasn’t his responsibility to free us. I’d have promised him we’d figure it out together. I would have sworn we’d all be safe, soon. I would have said anything to ease some of the worry lining his forehead.
Addie looked away, our eyes tracing the carpet.
“You don’t need to worry about Eva and me,” she said. “We’ve got each other.”