Marie's Journey (Ginecean Chronicles)

by La Porta, Monica

  “What?” Marie looked at Verena. The frightened look in her friend’s eyes scared her.

  They stood like that, frozen, for a long moment, then started firing questions at each other, shouting to be heard over the loud noise. Once in a while, Marie would look at the glass panel, hoping the darkness outside would lighten and show her what was happening on the ground. Meanwhile, the buildings in front of them had come alive. People appeared at the lit windows, anxious faces scanning the night for answers. A girl holding hands over her ears was rushed back inside by one of her mothers; the other remained to watch over the farm. The alarm was abruptly shut off, but it took several minutes before Marie’s heart slowed down. One by one, the opposite buildings’ lights were shut off as well, and she turned to face the normalcy of her room.

  In the awkward silence that followed the blaring of the siren, a knock resonated from the hallway and startled Marie and Verena. Before they could answer, a girl flew into their room. “Rane wants you downstairs. Immediately.”

  Marie gave one look at Verena, who nodded at her and then followed the messenger. The girl didn’t know anything. “I was just told by Madame Lana to get you there.”

  “Madame Lana?” Marie was surprised the command had come from the rector, but the girl was reluctant to talk. Either she didn’t know anything or she had orders not to say more than necessary. Her ears still ringing, Marie was disoriented by the absence of life permeating the building. Normally, girly chatting would be heard reaching the stairs from the dormitories. The silence was eerie and she was scared by the stillness in the air. At the infirmary door, the girl without a name—she hadn’t offered one and Marie hadn’t asked—left her with a nod and a “good luck.”

  “Are you out there?” Rane’s voice cut through the wall and there was a note of panic in it Marie couldn’t ignore.

  She entered the room to find a scene she couldn’t understand. Everywhere she looked, there were wounded men. Some of them looked too broken and pale to be alive. Others were crying. One wailed, right there before her eyes. A sound she had never heard before. She froze. Rane ran to the man.

  “Need help here.” The doctor screamed to be heard and several workers stepped forward and hurried to her. “Keep him down.” The men crowded around the doctor and bent over the worker who had let out that horrible cry a moment earlier.

  Marie felt threatened by the army of men filling the room. Her legs didn’t want to sustain her, and she was sweating.

  “Marie! Come here!” Rane was hidden behind the wall of men, but her voice was loud and clear.

  Marie tried to walk, but the trembling in her legs worsened. Someone approached her but stopped a few inches away from her. She turned and saw Grant.

  “Don’t be scared.” He raised one hand as if to reach for her, but let it fall by his side as he had done earlier.

  “I can’t help it.” She hated to admit that, but most of all she hated to admit the fact she had longed for his touch.

  “It’s okay. It’s understandable.” Although he looked tense, his voice was warm.

  She focused on the calming quality of his voice. “I’m better.”

  Grant tilted his head toward the corner where the doctor was. “Are you going to be okay?”

  Marie nodded.

  “I’ll be around if you need me.” His hand hovered close to her arm, but once again, he lowered it and slowly walked away from her.

  She went to don her scrubs and gloves, her eyes on him the whole time.

  “Marie! I really need you here. Now!” Rane emerged, the men opening to give Marie space.

  She looked down at the thrashing figure on the floor. “What’s happening to him?” The man’s eyes were wide, his mouth was open, and a foamy trickle ran from his bottom lip to his chin.

  “Gas.” Rane beckoned her to come closer to the man. “Take that belt and put it between his teeth.”

  “I heard shooting…” Helped by one of the workers who kept the man’s mouth open for her, Marie inserted the belt as the doctor had asked. She removed her fingers a moment before the man closed his jaws around the leather strip and his head shot backward.

  “He was one of the lucky ones who got gassed,” the worker who had helped her said.

  One brief look at the rest of the room and then at back at the worker, she saw he wasn’t being sarcastic. “Why?”

  “A small group of workers were caught trying to break free and the rest of them fought the women to give their mates time to clear the breach in the wall.” Rane emptied the whole content of a syringe into the man’s right arm and waited a few seconds for the thrashing to diminish. The man relaxed on her arms and she sighed in relief. “Thank the Goddess, I thought he was gone.”

  Memories of the conversation Marie had heard only recently came back to her. “Did any of them…?” She wasn’t sure she should be asking those kinds of questions.

  “None of the workers who were trying to escape survived.” Another of the men surrounding the doctor raised his head to look at Marie.

  “I’m sorry.” She lowered her head, soaking in the sadness permeating the room. It was a palpable element, impossible to tune out. It wasn’t just the cries or the moaning. The despair and the hopelessness hung heavily over her heart and darkly colored her thoughts.

  “Triage all the new arrivals.” Rane, followed by the same handful of workers, went to the next patient, a man who lay preternaturally still on a stretcher, blood dripping from a gun wound to his left leg. A small pool of dark-red, viscous fluid had formed on the tiled floor.

  Marie averted her eyes. “We’re expecting other patients?” She had thought the whole farm’s male population was already there. She hadn’t finished asking when the infirmary’s door opened. Several men entered the room in haste, some showing wounds so severe she wondered how could they be walking, let alone carrying others. Pain etched in their faces, they were careful not to mishandle the unconscious in their care, but they left bloodied prints in their wake. The dreadful parade was closed by five guards ready to shoot anybody who disobeyed. Marie saw how the men at the back of the line trembled any time the women raised their guns or used them to better convey their orders. One of the improvised porters stumbled and almost dropped his cargo. She was at his side without thinking, helping him up by hoisting his weight with her whole body. She was taken aback by how heavy he was, but what surprised her the most was the terrified face the man made a moment before understanding she didn’t mean to harm him.

  “Why are you wasting time and effort on these animals?” the oldest guard asked Marie, her cold, blue eyes staring unblinkingly at her. The focus of her disgust seemingly limitless. “I can’t believe you found another willing to help you,” she said to Rane, but still looking at Marie, her patrician features expressing her feelings as well as her tone.

  From the number of barrettes on the woman’s grey-and-black, tightly fitting uniform, Marie knew she was the one in charge. The pure breed guard, captain, or lieutenant—Marie could never remember the order—coiled and uncoiled a whip around her hand in a sickening display of power. The man Marie was holding stepped back and tripped again, his body shaking in fear. She let him go, her own limbs slightly trembling. It wasn’t the first time she’d been in the presence of a pure breed, but she had never interacted with one before. The kid-snatchers—as she called the pure breeds who visited the Institute—rarely exchanged words with the girls.

  “Do you have an estimate of how many men you’re sending here, Callista?” Rane, displaying an impressive calm given the way the pure breed had addressed her, gave the woman a brief nod in salute and then turned to face her patient once again.

  So you’re the famous Captain Callista. Marie had heard of her since the first day at Redfarm and wondered about the woman. Now, she was more interested in understanding what kind of relation there was between the doctor and the officer if Rane could use her given name with such familiarity.

  “We should be done soon.” The pure
breed seemed annoyed by the doctor’s lack of proper fear. “There aren’t many left standing anyway.” A malevolent glee illuminated her blue eyes.

  Marie shivered even though she wasn’t under the woman’s stare anymore.

  “Send them over once and for all, then. Haven’t you had enough fun already?” Rane kept her body at an angle, her face hidden from the pure breed, but visible to Marie who saw how repulsed she was and how her words betrayed a history between the two.

  Callista raised one meticulously trimmed eyebrow—probably to maximize the sharp angles of her high cheekbones—and shot back immediately. “At my own pace, mind you, dear Rane. And be thankful I’ve already taken care of the lame and old—”

  “Have you? How considerate.” She dragged her last words more than necessary and closed her right hand in a fist only Marie could see. “Have you informed the morgue already?”

  “No need to waste your time in expensive and useless autopsies. I’ve sent orders to dig a mass grave outside in the desert. Much more practical, don’t you think?” Callista waited for a response from Rane, and when the doctor remained silent, she turned on her heels, the clicking of her steel-reinforced boots accompanying her exit.

  Marie watched as the pure breed was silently followed by her minions. A collective sigh of relief became audible when the door closed behind them. A loud clank made her jump out of her skin and she swung toward the point of origin of the noise. A tray of surgical instruments lay on the floor by Rane’s feet and she looked distressed. Marie ran toward her. “Let me—”

  Rane looked at Marie as if she had forgotten she was there too. “Thanks.” Her voice shook and she couldn’t keep still.

  Marie picked up the instruments, placed them back on the tray, careful not to cut her fingers with the knives’ sharp edges, then located the big pot Rane used as a sterilizer and dumped the contents of the tray in it. She tried to assess what she should do first, but after one gaze at the room, now overcrowded, she felt lost.

  Rane had slowly composed herself and was now bent over a man who was holding the left side of his stomach with both hands. “I wish I could do more for you.”

  Marie felt sad at the doctor’s statement. She met Grant’s eyes for a moment and saw the rage burning in them. She understood him.

  “Can you give this man something for the pain?” He looked down and she saw him carefully holding someone’s hand in his.

  “Yes—” She was going to ask Rane permission to give the man a painkiller, but then thought better of it and went for the cabinet where all the medicines were kept. From the cries escaping the man’s mouth, his pain must have been excruciating. If she wanted to become a nurse, she had to also to become accustomed to making decisions. Better sooner than later. “Here.” She brought the two innocuous-looking pills to the man’s mouth.

  “Are they strong enough?” Grant didn’t seem impressed by the medication’s appearance.

  “Opiate,” was all she said, wondering if maybe she had brought too much. The man gave a shout that pierced her ears and she felt better. “Enough, but the effect won’t be immediate. The pills need to break down in his stomach.”

  Grant whispered something to the man and then looked at her. “How long?”

  “Twenty, thirty minutes.” She pulled the answer from what Rane had recently told her and her memory of the first time she had taken a painkiller for a strong headache. Madame Carla would have never permitted her to contaminate the holiness of her body with anything chemical. She had felt guilty at ingesting the medicine for a whole half an hour. Then the headache had lulled to nothing more than an afterthought and she had wondered why on Ginecea Madame Carla didn’t believe in painkillers. “Nothing else we can do for him, but talk to him and try to distract him from his pain.”

  Grant whispered to the man, “Joe, you’ll feel much better soon,” and then raised his eyes to her. “Thank you.”

  “Just my job.” Urgent cries called her to another corner of the infirmary. “Must go.” She went to take care of the ones in more pain, meticulously assessing their wounds and what could be done for them. Once or twice she had to ask Rane about the best line of action, but for the most part, it only took a bit of common sense to be of help. Madame Carla’s teaching came handy once or twice. Hours passed; more men arrived. Some of them showed signs of torture. Marie didn’t rest the whole night. She kept moving from one bed to the other, and when the beds were all taken, she crouched on the floor from one thrashing form to the other. She crossed paths with Grant several times. He too had been moving from one man to the next, helping the two women. He wasn’t the only worker doing so; others followed his example as soon as they got back on their feet.

  Feeling rather worn out, Marie glanced at the clock on the wall and discovered breakfast had already passed. Her eyelids were heavy and she struggled to keep them open. Even her ears weren’t properly working because all she could hear were muffled sounds. She scanned the room, looking for Rane. “Doctor?” She couldn’t see her anywhere. “Rane?”

  “You should sit.” Grant was at her side, a worried look on his face.

  Marie swayed and steadied herself by reaching for the back of a chair standing nearby. “Can you see where the doctor is?”

  “She left a few minutes ago.” He reached for the chair as well and turned it for her. “You should sit.”

  Losing her fight to keep upright, Marie fell back on it. “Where did she go? Why didn’t she tell me she was leaving?” The questions were more for herself. She didn’t expect him to answer.

  “She went to talk to the captain.”

  “Why?”

  “She needed to know which gas was used during the last attack.” His eyes went to a corner of the room where several men curled in balls or held their chest in pain. They were still and gray looking; none of them cried out or even whimpered. At Marie’s raised eyebrows, he added, “Nothing she’s given them is working. She’s worried it must be something lethal.”

  She tried to remember when those men had arrived, but the events of the previous hours had blurred together. At one point, there had been a constant stream of guards escorting workers, who in turn carried other workers on stretchers. She had heard Rane screaming orders and she had seen men running to help her. At the same time, Marie—per the doctor’s direct order—was too busy washing wounds, calming patients, and looking for clean dressings to pay any attention to anything else. “Are they dying?”

  “Yes, they are. If Rane doesn’t find out what they used… They don’t have much left.” His voice was sad and his expression resigned.

  Her head was light, and the rest of the room turned upside down, but she forced her tired body to respond and slowly stood on her legs. “Help me there.” She pointed at the men. She couldn’t bear to let them die alone.

  Grant opened his arm and slightly bowed to her. “After you.”

  Rane must have thought the dying men couldn’t stand the light because the corner where the men lay was dark. But Marie saw their puffy faces and the way their bodies seemed to be frozen in the most unnatural positions. She repressed a sob and sat on the floor by one of them, a young worker, maybe her age or slightly older, and without thinking, she took his hand in hers. “I’m sorry this happened to you. To any of you.”

  The young man’s eyes misted and two fat tears rolled down his otherwise still face. Marie felt anger building at such sufferance and being unable to do anything. She instinctively turned toward the medicine cabinet, but Grant shook his head.

  “The doctor has already given him three or four times the amount you gave Joe.” He passed his hand through his hair and sighed. “She said it’s too dangerous to give him more.”

  She wanted to scream. Any options she had to help these men had been stripped from her. Marie slouched against the wall. Her body was so tired it ached and her mind couldn’t articulate a single thought anymore. The night had drained her. A loud noise echoed through the room and she opened her eyes, her heart pump
ing against her ribcage. A second later, she realized it was the infirmary door swinging on its hinges after Rane had kicked it.

  “I thought she would listen to reason.” Rane paced like a caged animal, back and forth on the same three tiles. “She doesn’t even care the farm is under the minimum number of required workers—” She kept blathering, probably used to being alone in the infirmary and too distressed to realize she was talking out loud before an audience.

  Everything appeared to move in fast-forward. Marie’s ears and vision were adjusting to the new level of volume and activity. “Did the captain tell you what gas she used?” Marie saw a halo of dark spots around the edges of her sight when she tried to get to her feet.

  “Callista said, ‘Let them be an example.’ She prefers to lose good workers.” Rane had stopped pacing but was now tapping her clog on the floor.

  Marie hoped she would stop soon but didn’t dare ask her to settle down. “What can we do for them?” She checked on the young man; he had his eyes closed now and his breathing was shallower.

  “Nothing. We can do nothing but watch them die.” Rane finally stopped and Marie saw she had been crying. The doctor went to slump beside her and let her head fall backward against the wall. Eyes to the ceiling, tears falling down on her scrubs, she whispered, “I’m so tired of watching them die.”

  Marie couldn’t say anything. There were no suitable words for a moment like that.

  Grant left them and then came back with a few pillows and blankets he had probably taken from more fortunate patients. “We can make their last moments more comfortable.”

  “You’re right.” Rane left the infirmary before Marie could ask where she was going.

  Grant gave Marie a puzzled look and then proceeded to rearrange the men so that their heads were pillowed and their bodies were covered with the blankets. Then he sat by the young man and took his hand as Marie had done, and he started talking to him.