Survival Kit

by Haga, A. H.

  “You should–” I began, but was cut off by a yell.

  “Hello there!”

  Shadia stiffened and turned so fast she almost pulled my arm with her. The sudden sound sent a shiver through my body, a forewarning of another seizure, but I managed to stop it before it got a firm grip. I felt it just under my skin, but as long as I kept my mind on not shaking, I could hold it. I hoped.

  “Who’s there?” Shadia called.

  “Just me.” It was a male voice. Youngish. “You need any help?”

  Shadia looked down at me, and I met her eye before she let my hand go and stood. “Yes.”

  “OK, just hang on.” Some kind of scuffling sounded before the man spoke again. “What’s up with her?”

  “She’s had a seizure and is sick. Will you still help?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Here, climb up.”

  “She can’t climb.”

  A silence before: “Then we’ll pull her up.”

  “She can’t hold on.”

  “Then tie her in before you climb up, and we’ll pull after that.”

  He didn’t sound angry or anything; more like he was unsure if this was a smart idea. If it was because of me and my condition, or something else, I didn’t know. Shadia told him to hold on before she crouched in front of me again. She didn’t say anything but held out my sunglasses. I let her pull off the eye-mask and push on my glasses and hat before she helped me to my feet. A small vibration started in my legs and arms, and I had no chance of controlling it this time.

  “It’s OK. We’ve got this,” Shadia whispered in my ear before she pulled me into her arms like a prince carrying a princess and started walking. I clung to her as my left leg started to kick the air.

  She continued whispering to me as she walked to the edge of the car and jumped. It wasn’t far to the trailer roof, but it must have been hard for her to jump with me in her arms like that, not to mention landing without toppling with my added weight, huffing and puffing with concentration, but she did it. She walked to the end of the trailer, and I looked up despite the sun.

  A rope with knots every meter or so hung over the edge of the roof, and I saw the shadow of someone looking down at us. Probably our savior.

  Shadia lowered me to the trailer and set me up straight. My foot was dancing again, but not as bad as earlier, and she hardly glanced at it as she took the end of the rope and tied it around my waist.

  “When we pull, you have to hold on, OK? Or you’ll slip out.” Her voice was stern but low. It was the voice she used when she was afraid for me but worked hard not to let me know. I nodded. She kissed my forehead before she stood, and I had to close my eyes against the glare of the sun.

  Curling into a small ball, I listened to her move about a little before she came to my side again.

  “I’m climbing up now,” she called to the man on the roof, and to let me know I would be alone a little while.

  My hand jerked, wanting to reach for Shadia. Then the rope started moving against my cheek. I listened to Shadia breathe and move above me before the man said something I couldn’t hear. Shadia answered in just as low a voice.

  “We’re lifting our stuff now, Kit. Ok?” I gave a shaky thumbs up. More sounds followed, and I recognized the sound of the wheelchair scraping against stone. More muffled words, then: “OK, habibi, hold on!”

  Unfurling, I gripped the rope as best I could, just over a knot so I wouldn’t slip. My fingers were stiff and the muscles in my wrists didn’t want to work with me, but I managed somehow. I yelled that I was ready. Within seconds, the rope grew taut in my hands, and I was lifted from the trailer, knots digging into my sides, almost numbing my legs.

  “You have to look,” Shadia called, “so you don’t hit the wall.”

  Tears spilled as I opened one eye and fought to keep it open despite the bright sun. It was a good thing, for I almost hit the brick wall, but one hand shot out and pushed me away. Above, Shadia called encouraging words, but her voice was strained.

  I reached the edge of the roof without any more problems and scrambled to grab it. A pale hand with long fingers and orange paint spots grabbed mine. I stared at that hand for a heartbeat before it pulled me up, and I all but fell over the edge.

  The hand was gone, but Shadia was there, untying the rope. She kept asking how I was doing and if I hurt, and I answered in a kind of daze. I could feel The Fog coming again and tried to fight it, but my sight was growing dimmer by the second.

  Shadia pulled me to my feet, and with the help of our savior, I was moved into my chair. I could feel the stranger’s clammy skin against my fingers and desperately wanted to clean them, but I couldn’t speak, much less do the cleaning, so I curled into a small, jerking ball instead. The Fog slipped in around me.

  9

  My memory after that is a mess of lights, smells, feelings, and The Fog.

  I remember sitting in my chair, curled into a ball, and shaking as the wheels rattled over uneven ground and the sun bit at my neck. Shadia was talking, but her words swam in and out of focus. Sometimes, a male voice would answer, but I didn’t always remember why there was a man with us.

  Then the biting sunlight was gone, and I lay wrapped around Shadia. She carried me like a child. My face pressed against her shoulder, and my feet kept hitting something whenever they kicked out.

  “Almost there,” the male voice said. I could hear worry dripping from every letter, and wondered what he was worried about.

  Shadia answered something I didn’t catch. The rumble of her voice ran through my body as a shake of its own, and I was lost to The Fog again.

  When I came to next, I lay on something hard. It smelled of mildew and wet stone, and the air was thick and clammy. But most importantly: my muscles were calm and still. I could feel my arms and legs splayed around me like dead weight. I wasn’t sure I could move them even if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to.

  Instead, I stayed completely still, just breathing and listening to the low voices. Shadia and the man who had helped us. They were talking about an experiment of some sort. I didn’t understand half of it, but it scared me.

  My breathing must have changed with my fear, for the conversation stopped. Shadia was by my side in a heartbeat.

  “Kit?” she whispered, her voice soft as puppy fur against my cheek. Her fingers were like pure rain against my forehead as she brushed my hair out of my eyes. I opened them and looked at her. She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Do you need anything?”

  I parted my lips to answer with a joke but was too tired. Instead, I croaked something that sounded like ‘ouch’. Shadia’s smile grew a little more real.

  “Hold on.”

  She disappeared from sight for a few seconds before she maneuvered herself to sit behind me, my head in her lap, and held a bottle to the corner of my mouth. I opened my lips and let her dribble some water onto my tongue. Swallowing hurt, but the cooling that followed was so worth it. When I opened my eyes again, Shadia held a small pill in front of my face. One of my pain pills. I wanted to ask if it had been three hours since I took the last one, but I trusted Shadia would know. I opened my mouth again and let her place the pill on my tongue before she dribbled more water into my mouth.

  My eyes closed on their own, and I stayed with my head in Shadia’s lap until I fell asleep.

  I woke again at nine p.m. when the alarm on my wristwatch beeped. Shadia helped me take the medication I needed before I fell back into The Fog.

  Days passed this way. I woke to my alarm at nine a.m. and p.m., and Shadia helped me take my meds. Even on the second day, when I could do it myself, she insisted on helping. So I wouldn’t strain myself.

  I didn’t soil myself. When I woke and needed to go, Shadia carried me to a hole cut in the floor leading into the sewers. It smelled like death and everything rotten that ever lived. Whoever made the hole had also added a chair without a seat, and Shadia helped me pull down my jeans before she left me to do my stuff. She still had
to help me up when I was done, but I got to keep the idea of dignity, at least. These trips were usually so exhausting I fell asleep the moment Shadia laid me down again.

  Almost every time I woke, she was sitting by my side, reading on her Kindle, but the moment I stirred or my breathing changed, she’d put it away to help me.

  On the third day, after a bathroom trip, I wasn’t so tired anymore. Instead of falling asleep, I looked around as Shadia curled up beside me, keeping me company on the small mat we’d been sleeping on.

  We were in a small room with concrete walls, floor, and ceiling. When we went to the bathroom, we passed through two bigger rooms before arriving at the hole in the floor. All the walls were naked and dripping with condensation, and there were big metal doors between each of the rooms, but only one of them was closed. It was in the last room before the toilet, and it looked like a vault door one might see in a movie. Cheap lamps lined the ceiling, most of them blinking unevenly. They were fueled by a generator chugging away in a corner. My guess was that we were in a basement or a bomb-shelter. The town was full of them, after all. My chair stood by the door, strangely clean compared to its surroundings. Our bags were in the small room with us.

  Never once had I seen any sign of our savior. I knew Shadia talked to him every morning and evening, but he disappeared before I went to the bathroom.

  It was now close to the evening of our fourth day. If not for my medication routines, I would have no idea how long we’d been down there.

  “Who is he?” I asked, staring at the wall and playing with Shadia’s fingers. My body didn’t feel like a seizure was waiting to happen anymore, and most of my pains were dull and almost non-existent.

  “Who?” Shadia asked, voice sleepy.

  “The guy who helped us. Why don’t I ever see him?”

  She sighed and curled her fingers in mine, stopping my playing with them. “Because I was afraid meeting him would be too much in the state you were in. You know how you can get with new people.”

  It was true. After I got sick, meeting people became a chore. I put on a mask and smiled and faked it until I fell apart, crying from exhaustion and pain.

  “Fine,” I answered. “But what about now? I’ve rested, and I’m starting to get bored.”

  Shadia smiled against my neck. “Fine. I’ll introduce you tonight if you’re still awake.”

  “Why tonight? Where does he go?”

  “To do his experiments.”

  “What kind?”

  “He can tell you himself. Now try to get some sleep.”

  “No, then I won’t meet him.”

  “He won’t be back for hours yet. Sleep.”

  She kissed my neck, and I shivered, wanting to do everything else with her other than rest, but I closed my eyes anyway.

  “See? I told you fresh air would help,” Shadia said as she hurried up the steps before me.

  I wobbled after her, taking one slow step at a time.

  When we got into the building, I was taking the elevator. She might think I had to use my legs so they wouldn’t wither away, but she had no idea how much it hurt just moving them.

  Shadia waited on the top step and reached out a hand to help me up the last one. She didn’t let my hand go as she unlocked the door.

  “Mother used to say that good energy breed more good energy, and I think that might be the case here. You have to admit you feel better now than you did before we left?” That I couldn’t argue with, but she didn’t give me a chance to answer, so it didn’t matter. “I think you look better, at least. You’ve got some color in your cheeks again. I think you might even have a tan.”

  Her eyes kept jumping between me and the elevator as we walked, and I realized that she was talking so much because she was worried.

  “I’m fine,” I panted, gripping my cane to not topple over at each step. The cane had helped a lot around the apartment, but it didn’t seem to have done anything today. My legs felt like heavy bags of laundry. For every step, a spark of pain ran through my muscles, and they felt … slow. Like they were a lagging video game.

  Shadia had dragged me to the park, and while I mostly sat on the grass and petted the dogs that came over, the walk and tram-rides back and forth had drained me. It didn’t help that my mind was one big, foggy landscape from the sun, smells, and sounds.

  The elevator dinged, and I felt the sound vibrate in my bones. Shadia stepped inside, helping me as she went. As soon as the doors closed, I leaned against her and let her carry my weight a little. The sudden release on my legs hurt almost as much as if I’d stayed on them but in a different way.

  I’d tried to describe the subtle differences in pain to my doctor once. He just stared at me with worried eyes and said plainly that he didn’t understand. How could he? How could anyone, unless they lived with it?

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened with a hiss. I pushed away from Shadia, and she stepped out of the elevator, still holding my hand. I tried to move after her, but my legs wouldn’t listen.

  “Kit?” Shadia stopped and turned, her eyes narrow. I tried moving my legs again, but nothing happened. “Are you coming?”

  My hand had turned white in hers and around the cane’s head as I gripped them both with all the strength I had. I tried channeling that strength into my legs, tried with every fiber of my being to move them, but nothing happened. They started shaking, but I wasn’t sure if it was in response to my commands or from standing too long. Dizziness was creeping through the back of my mind, but my fear kept it at bay.

  “I can’t,” I said, voice barely louder than a breath as I looked up and met Shadia’s gaze. “I can’t move my legs.”

  10

  When I opened my eyes again, it was to the beeping of my alarm. I could still smell my own fear, but instead of dwelling on it, I looked around.

  Shadia was there, as always, pills in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. I took my medication dutifully, but couldn’t help looking at her expectantly. Her eyes were shining. As soon as my meds were out of her hands, she started bustling about our stuff, her lips twisting every now and again.

  No way was I going to ask. She had said I could meet our host if I was awake when he returned, and I was awake now. I was not going to ask her if he was back and I could meet him. Nope. No way was she going to win this game. I would just lie here and maybe close my eyes a little and wait for her to … no. If I closed my eyes, I might fall asleep again.

  I let out a groan. “Fine! Is he here? Can I meet him now?”

  Shadia’s twisting lips grew into a grin, and she gave a small noise of triumph. “Yes, he’s here. André, you can come in now.”

  Someone moved in the doorway, and I pushed up onto my elbows. Shadia rushed to let me rest against her, and I let her fuss over me as I took in the man standing before us. He couldn’t be much older than us, and he was way thinner than me but as tall as Shadia. It made him look like a stick. He was as pale as me, with strawberry blond hair that reached just past his hips. It hung in a loose ponytail, and I couldn’t help but admire it. His eyes were small and blue, and they kept jumping to mine before they jumped to a spot between his feet. He wore a threadbare t-shirt with some anime girl on it, worn jeans, and even more tired sneakers. The only thing that looked new on him was the scarf wrapped around his neck.

  He drew a deep breath and finally met my eyes properly, holding them. “Hi,” he said, stepping forward with his right hand out. “My name is André. You must be Kit.”

  Shadia helped me up to a sitting position. “Yeah, I am. Hey, André.”

  His grip was surprisingly strong, considering how small his hand was. It was dry, but I still pushed my palm against the blanket when we let go, trying to remove the feeling of his skin. He rocked back and forth on his toes a few times before he sighed and rushed out of the room.

  I turned to look at Shadia, but she only shook her head. Before I had turned around again, André was back, a dried bierwurst in hand. The scent of garli
c reached us before he did, and I almost gagged.

  “So,” André said, peeling the plastic from around the dried sausage with great concentration and plumping down on the floor by my feet. “She tells me you two are like a thing?” I raised an eyebrow that he didn’t see because he was so focused on the food in his hand. When I didn’t answer right away, he nodded and continued, “that’s nice. Nice. I’m not a thing. With anyone, I mean. Anyway. So what’s your problem?” He finally met my eyes and he pointed at me with the bierwurst.

  My eyebrows rose. “My problem?”

  He jerked his hands and head in an imitation of a seizure before he pointed over his shoulder with the sausage. Probably at my chair. “Why you in a chair and why you are twisting and such? She won’t tell me. Just said you were sick.”

  I guessed ‘she’ meant Shadia. This guy was really hard to talk to, never keeping his eyes on one spot and talking low but fast, like he was afraid we would hear him.

  Shadia snaked her hand around me and took one of mine. I’d been pulling at my fingers, but she stopped me by showing she was there for me. “I’ve got Myalgic Encephalomyelitis,” I said, almost stumbling over the words.

  “What’s that?”

  “A neurological condition.”

  “Sounds weird. Why do you have that?”

  I bit down on the laughter welling in my throat. I couldn’t keep back the smile. André blinked a few times before he started eating his bierwurst, not looking at me anymore.

  “I have it as a long-term side effect of chemotherapy. I survived Lymphoma some years ago but continued getting sicker and sicker after the treatment was completed. In the end, the doctors gave me the diagnosis for M.E.. What a price to pay for survival, eh?” I motioned to my legs as spite snuck its way into my voice.