Above

by Isla Morley

  “We were—” Hostages doesn’t seem like the right word. Captives neither. “I was taken. A long time ago. We’ve been kept.” Surely she can see how relieved and grateful I am.

  But Harriet Fletcher seems to be distracted by a spot on the cuff of her coat. “I see.” In the middle of explaining about Dobbs, she asks me my name.

  “His name is Adam, and mine’s Blythe,” I tell her. “Blythe Hallowell.”

  “Well, Mrs. Hallowell, once we get the wound tended to, we’ll have him up and about in no time.” She replaces the mask over my mouth.

  I couldn’t have hoped for greater news, but I need to correct her on one point. “Miss,” I say. “My mother is Mrs. Hallowell—Irene. Hank Hallowell is my father, from Eudora.” I lift the mask slightly so she can hear me better. I tell her my phone number.

  “You are very lucky we found you in time,” she says, not, “I’ll bring you the telephone.”

  “There is also a cut on his leg from a rusty piece of metal.” When I get no response to this other than a curt nod, I have to add, “He’s never been vaccinated.”

  “We will continue to keep a close watch.”

  “Shouldn’t he get a tetanus shot, just to be on the safe side?”

  She cocks her head to one side. “You’re not from the Renu Project, are you?”

  I frown. “Where?”

  She fastens her hands on her hips. “If he’s one of Renu’s people, you need to tell me right now, and we can make arrangements to have you transferred.”

  I don’t understand. Have we done something wrong? “Where are we?” Because, come to think of it, this is like no hospital I’ve ever seen. An army barracks, more like it.

  “The infirmary at Sunflower.”

  “Sunflower Ordnance Works?” “The scab of the county” was what Grandpa used to call it, telling us how Eudora’s folks resisted the building of a munitions plant in the Second World War. Not that they had anything against bombs or war for that matter. What they didn’t want were empty stores, abandoned trailers, and unused Quonset huts when the war was over.

  “We don’t call it that anymore, but yes.”

  The confirmation brings me close to tears. Six miles, that’s how far we are from Eudora. Only six miles!

  “Are we at war?” I ask. That would explain the blackout, the exodus of cars, the graves. Hadn’t I smelled gunpowder in the air?

  Perhaps I have asked this with a little too much eagerness because the lines on Harriet Fletcher’s forehead have bunched together. “You said you’d been ‘taken.’ How long ago exactly?”

  “Seventeen years.” She doesn’t seem nearly as interested in the other details—who took me and why—as she is in the date.

  “And you said your son has never been outside?”

  “That’s right. As I said, we were locked away in a missile silo. It’s off County Road—”

  “And you can confirm this by what means?”

  “Confirm?”

  She excuses herself without answering my question and walks over to Adam.

  Beside him is a portable table with instruments and jars. She speaks to Adam in a soothing tone, asking him the very questions for which I have just given her answers. In response, Adam draws the sheet over his head and remains silent.

  “Okay, we will save the questions for later.” She picks up a syringe and instructs the nurse to pull back the sheet. Adam’s arms are doubled over his head. “Now, we’re just going to take a little blood from your arm. Okay?”

  I lift the mask. “He’s not going to let you do that.” Adam is terrified, and the mention of blood does not help. I fight to get the covers off me so I can get out of bed.

  Harriet Fletcher touches Adam’s arm, and he knocks the needle straight out of her hand. He bolts off the bed, landing hard on his bad knee. He yanks out his IV and scuttles under the bed.

  “It’s okay, young man. A little prick, that’s all.” Harriet Fletcher’s knees creak something terrible when she crouches next to the bed. She reaches her hand toward Adam. Her voice becomes high. “Come on, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Adam is making growling sounds. I can’t seem to get myself untangled from the tubes. “Adam, she’s a doctor; it’s okay.”

  “I have something for you, if you come out.” Seeing Adam is not about to take the bait, the woman rises to her feet with some effort and gives her instruction in a tone that means business. “Two milligrams Lorazepam. We’re not going to get anywhere without sedation.”

  Freed of mask and tubes and covers, I swing my legs over the side of the bed. As soon as I try standing, the ground begins to list. I try to catch my breath and realize there isn’t enough air to go around. Air is being drained from the room somehow. The floor begins to tilt to such an extent I lean back to avoid being splattered against the corrugated wall. There is nothing to grasp on to for balance, and the floor rises up and smacks me upside the head.

  I look over at Adam. “I’m okay.”

  He’s even more panicked now.

  I try crawling to him. “These people are nice, Adam. You’ve got to let them—”

  Something goes wrong with his face. His expression closes in on itself, and he slumps over. Hands latch onto his legs. They drag him out from under the bed and swing him back onto the bed as if he’s a sack.

  “What have you done to him? Don’t pull him like that! You’re going to hurt him!”

  I try rushing to him, but an arm fences me in and drags me back to my bed. I insist on my release and when that doesn’t work, I kick and pull and finally sink my teeth into the arm.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

  And then something very stinging happens to my thigh. The lights start to flicker and dim, and the voices run together in a dull drone. The baby I named Freedom, Charlie, Adam, Mama—they’re all calling me. I walk toward them and step into a very deep hole.

  THE BLACK PLASTIC curtains have been rolled up and fastened to hooks on the ceiling. The Quonset hut is the size of a warehouse, about a hundred feet long. Two rows of beds are separated by a wide center aisle. I could have sworn there were other people in here with us earlier, but now the beds are empty and the hut is silent except for the sound of snapping sheets. Across the way, a woman is making up a bed. She keeps looking over at Adam, who is still sleeping. The woman can’t take her eyes off him. There’s something peculiar about her expression, as though she can’t quite believe what she is seeing. Fixated, even though he is doing nothing more remarkable than snoring lightly in that puppy-dog way of his.

  The woman is afflicted by the same unfortunate color as Harriet Fletcher and also has very little hair, a fact she is trying to conceal with an ill-fitting headscarf. She wears a single item of clothing—a cross between a raincoat and a choir robe. Not once does she look at me, not even when I call out a greeting.

  I look around. Near the door is a rack of wooden crutches. Underneath the beds are old-fashioned chamber pots. No telephone, no television, no familiar face. Shouldn’t there be a policeman by now?

  “Do you know if they’ve managed to make contact with my parents?”

  The woman does not turn around, but a wisp of a voice flits by the window above me. Is someone spying on us?

  “Hello?”

  I strain the silenced air for other fragments, but there is nothing except the brightness. I can’t think straight with it being so bright. Even when you close your eyes, there’s no way around it—it bleeds straight through your eyelids. The brightness has a smell, too; sharp enough to make your nose sting. Unless you want it to stick to your gums, it’s best to keep your mouth closed. If only there were one giant lightbulb, I could smash it into a thousand pieces and be done with it; I could think. Instead, there is row after row of bulbs.

  “Hello? Excuse me?”

  It occurs to me when I start banging my hand on the bedside table that the woman is not ignoring me; she is unable to hear me.

  Adam wakes up disoriented. “What are you do
ing?”

  From his suitcase, I fish out his notebook and a pen. “Just a minute, son.” The woman turns when she catches me waving. I hold the sheet so she can read its emphatic demand: Please fetch Dr. Fletcher.

  She hurries from the room and returns moments later with a carbon copy of herself. They bring us trays of food.

  I wave the piece of paper again, but all I get is polite nodding.

  “We need to speak to the doctor right away. It’s very important.”

  Blank stare.

  I mouth, “Im-por-tant.”

  On the other side of the paper, I scribble my name, my parents’ names and telephone number, and in big beseeching letters, I add, Please call. One of them takes the paper. I start thanking her profusely until I see her fold it into an impossibly small square and stick it in her pocket as though she intends to forget it.

  “Why are they looking at me like that?” Adam is peering at them over the top of his sheet. Each time the one with the tray tries to hand him his food, he yelps in protest and raises the sheet again.

  “He doesn’t like it if you get too close.” I flag them, then gesture. Somehow, the message gets across. They leave his tray on the bedside table and keep to the other side of the aisle, where they watch him with unabashed fascination.

  I tear out another page from Adam’s notebook. This time I begin writing a list of people from Eudora, starting with Mercy Gaines. This close to town, one of the names is bound to ring a bell.

  “What’s wrong with them, Mom?”

  “They’re deaf, Adam.” From the flapping of hands, they appear to be having a very animated conversation. As though choreographed, they lift imaginary spoons to their mouths, indicating for Adam to do likewise.

  Adam glances at his tray. “What is it?”

  He used to beg me for food stories when we were Below. I’d tell him about pies, and he’d savor my words as though they were loaded on the end of a fork. Now, you’d swear he was being served roadkill.

  “I don’t know, but you should probably get something in your stomach.” Only the carrots are recognizable. So that Adam will follow my example, I take a bite. The meat is gamy and tough.

  Adam accepts his tray this time and acknowledges the women with an ever-so-slight nod. “It’s good,” he mumbles, after a spoonful. He looks directly at them and is rewarded for this effort with applause. He gives them a thumbs-up, which they both find terribly amusing. My son is having his first conversation with deaf people.

  The women are elated with Adam’s progress until he pushes aside his tray, leaps out of bed, and retches violently on the floor.

  I shove another piece of paper at one of the women. Dr. Fletcher. Right now!

  * * *

  In a clean hospital gown and settled back in bed, Adam is still apologizing when the doctor finally comes. Ignoring me, she marches straight over to Adam’s bed. To her credit, she leaves a little room between herself and Adam and makes an effort to speak softly. “How is our patient doing today? I hear lunch didn’t agree with you.”

  Adam starts winding the twine into a ball. Even from here, I can see his hands trembling.

  “Don’t worry, young man. No more needles.” She apologizes for last night and tells him that it was necessary to sedate him to clean his wound and do the necessary blood work. She addresses me next, saying, “Fortunately, the laceration is superficial. Much of the redness and swelling has subsided, so I don’t think we are dealing with an infection.”

  “Thank you for helping us.”

  She acknowledges this with the slightest of nods. “You want to tell me what happened?”

  Adam has that wide-eyed look again. It’s about all he can do to shake his head, so I repeat the details—the date I was taken, a physical description of Dobbs, my parents’ address and telephone number. I give her a rough sketch of the last seventeen years, leaving out details Adam doesn’t need to hear, as well as the small matter of killing Dobbs.

  “You’ve been through quite a lot, haven’t you, Adam?” She’s good with him, almost maternal. “You don’t need to worry; nobody here is going to hurt you.”

  As reassuring as this clearly is to Adam, it awakens in me a possessiveness. Exactly how I felt whenever Dobbs took Adam into his private quarters is how I feel with her. I tell myself Adam is my son, not my property. I am going to have to share him.

  “We would like to do some additional testing on Adam.”

  Out the corner of my eye I can see Adam shaking his head.

  “It shouldn’t take long, and he’ll just be a few doors down,” she continues. “We’ll have him back by dinnertime.”

  Alarmed that they might have picked up something in those blood tests, I ask, “He’s not sick, is he?” Leukemia is all I can think.

  “No, nothing like that.” She turns to Adam, who looks like he might be a flight risk, and lowers her voice. I catch just a few words—something about him and her having a private talk. I realize suddenly what this is about. They want to question Adam without me being present, the way they do children who are abused by their parents. They think I hurt him.

  “The man who kept us did that to Adam. They were fighting. It all happened very quickly. I didn’t even know Adam had a weapon.” Why do I sound so guilty?

  “I see.”

  Surging inside me is a new fear. It is worse than being in the swamp in the dead of night or being charged by a wild boar or fleeing the phantom in the window. It is the fear of not being believed. “I would never do anything to hurt my son. Never.” Adam looks as horrified as I feel. “My whole life, I’ve tried to protect—”

  “My mother was only defending herself when she killed Mister!” Adam blurts.

  Harriet Fletcher flicker-blinks. “I’m sorry—did you just say she killed someone?”

  Realizing his words have made things worse, Adam now clams up and winds twine for all he’s worth.

  I draw my legs to my chest. “Is someone coming for us?” I ask. Someone who can vouch for me. “I have a list of people’s names, if you can’t get ahold of my parents. Sheriff Rumboldt—I don’t know if he’s still in charge at the station—he’ll tell you.” The deaf women are peering at me through narrowed eyes.

  “The authorities have been notified,” Harriet Fletcher replies, her attention fixed on Adam. “It will take them a while yet to reach us, and in the meantime, we will continue with our tests.” She assures Adam that it is okay to come out from under the covers, that he isn’t in any trouble. When asked what his favorite thing to eat is, he murmurs through the sheets that he likes ramen and jerky.

  “Well, let’s see what we can do.” She signs to the women, and one of them scurries off. “Do you like technology, Adam? When my son was your age he was always into the latest gadgets.” She takes a walkie-talkie out of her pocket and turns the knob until a hiss of static fills the air.

  Adam can’t resist. He lowers the covers, brushes the hair out of his eyes.

  “It’s called a two-way.” After giving instructions about how to operate it, she hands it to him. She retrieves a second device from the deaf woman and proceeds to transmit a message to him. “We’re glad you’re here, Adam.”

  He stares at the device in his hand, seems incredulous that her voice can come out from its tiny holes. He pushes the button. “Hello.”

  She praises him for his effort. “I’m going to leave my two-way with you, so if you ever want to call me or talk to me, you just push that button.”

  The bribe works. Adam allows her to apply a clean dressing to his wound. Instead of looking at his injury, he stares intently at her, as though committing every blemish and wrinkle to memory.

  “Feel like stretching your legs now?” she asks.

  Getting out of bed, Adam has me hold the end of the twine. Spooling it out from the ball, he allows Harriet Fletcher to lead him down the center aisle for a stroll. If the doctor thinks this is peculiar, she does not remark on it. The two deaf women are observing the goings-on with t
he same enthused looks on their faces.

  “They seem quite taken with my son,” I mention as Harriet Fletcher passes by my bed.

  She can’t quite decide whether to put her hand on Adam’s arm, so it lingers in the space above it. “He is a remarkable find.”

  Adam is not altogether displeased with her pronouncement. I, on the other hand, feel this is an odd choice of words. Find? Like he’s some artifact from an archeological dig?

  “It’s rather careless what you did,” she continues, steering him past the deaf women.

  “What I did?”

  “Taking him out there without any means of protection.” She can barely conceal her disapproval.

  “We were escaping!” I try not to sound hysterical when I tell her once again that I was kidnapped, that we were held underground for years, and that I would like very much to speak to someone who can help me find my family. Raising my voice sets off another round of coughing.

  Handing Adam off to a deaf woman, she comes to my side and tries to get me to put the mask on.

  I push it away.

  “If you refuse your breathing treatments, your lungs will not get better.” Her expression means to convey just how much I am trying her patience, and I look back at her in such a way that she will know that I don’t care if my lungs harden, I don’t care if I turn into cement and crack in two the next time I cough, I’m not taking anything that keeps me from thinking straight.

  “I’m fine,” I insist, but she already has the blood pressure cuff attached to my upper arm.

  She goes from buckram to downright chummy. “Do you mind if I ask whether you have had any other live births?”

  I am still deciding how best to answer when Adam pipes up, “Tell her about Charlie.”

  Harriet Fletcher’s head swings from me to Adam and back to me. She already thinks I am capable of hurting Adam—what will she make of the dead child who doesn’t belong to me? What will she make of the baby I didn’t raise, whose whereabouts are unknown to me? My explanation—rambling and rife with omission—ends with where we buried Charlie.