by R. Lee Smith
“What the hell is this?” A human male in white, stinking of fear and adrenaline, stormed over just in time to distract the guard from keeping T’aki on the ground with the butt of his gun. “Get those…things out of here!”
“They have a pass,” their guard said, shouldering his gun.
“I don’t care if they have the crown jewels of fucking France! Get them out! This is a hospital! I’m not going to have those disease-ridden parasites in my hospital!”
Sanford kept his head bent, trying to sort the scents of this awful place with furtive flashes of his claspers, needing to know which room was hers.
“Your hospital, huh?”
“I’m not arguing with you, get your bugs and get out!”
“I ain’t arguing either. They got a pass. That means my job is seeing they get their time on that pass,” the guard went on, talking straight over the other human’s angry stammers. He was enjoying this. Good. Any prey would satisfy a stupid man, and as long as it was human, it was not his son. “I like my job. I like it well enough to shoot the guts out of college-boys who want to give me shit over it. Are you giving me shit?”
Anger. Fear. Mean enjoyment. Stink of chemicals. Stink of men. Sanford waited, wishing she would sing.
“You’ve got five minutes,” the white-clothed human said. “Five. Then I want you all out of here or I call the cops.” He backed away, pointing at them with his short human hands. “All of you! Fucking bugs!”
T’aki snapped angrily. Sanford hushed him.
“All righty, roaches,” said their guard, in a good mood as only one like him could be. Not as good as if he’d been able to crack a head or shoot someone, but good. He continued on down the halls, smirking at the guards who came skulking out to watch them, until he found the door he wanted. “Knock-knock, Pollyanna,” he called, boldly pushing it open. “You got visitors. Christ, every time I see you, you just look more and more beautiful.”
The pleasure in his voice was as good as a warning. Sanford braced himself and went inside.
Sarah lay in a small bed, surrounded by machines, most of them shut off, as if medics had given up on her healing. They’d put her in an oversized wrap from which her arms and head jutted like two sticks and a rock from a snowbank. Her skin stank of blood and chemicals, and had been dotted by bandages. Her face—swollen, cut, ghastly with damage—stretched into an expression of horror when she saw him.
“What…” She struggled to sit up, caught at her belly with a grimace, and then just stared at him. “What are you doing here?”
T’aki leapt up, jerking Sanford roughly around at the end of the tether. He stared out the window while his son jabbered in Sarah’s embrace, telling her how they’d seen her in the papers, telling her about all the lights on the street driving up here, telling her he’d tried to bring a plant and the mean man—
“Aw, they got rules here, jellybean,” Sarah interrupted, as the ‘mean man’ stuck his head around the door. “The hospital wants you to buy their plants, not bring your own. Besides, I’m sure it was pretty, but you—” She wrapped herself around T’aki and rocked him while he chirped with delight, suffocated in Sarah. The boy didn’t see her face, contorted by pain in this embrace. He knew only her touch. “You are the best present. And you really didn’t have to come. I’ll be back soon.” She smiled, scrabbling her fingers all over T’aki’s chest. Tickles, she called that. It distracted the boy, that was enough. “I’d better, anyway. I’ve used up all the vacation days I have for, like, a year. I’ll be back. Oh, easy! Easy, jellybean, that’s tender.”
“I’ll bet it is. Just have to watch your step for a while, eh, beautiful?” The guard at the door laughed. “Make sure you don’t walk into any more doors? Fall down some more stairs? Or did you trip over your fat mouth?”
Sarah still smiled, but wanly now. Sanford watched the window, watched her pat T’aki’s head, then lift him up and set him down on the floor.
“How could you fall on your mouth?” T’aki asked, baffled.
“I didn’t, jellybean.”
“Oh yeah?” The guard grinned, showing rows of bony teeth. “What did happen? I’m dying to know.”
“Something just as stupid, I’m sure,” Sarah said. She spoke without hesitance, staring boldly at the guard who grinned at her. “I came home while some guys were robbing my place. I’d left the back door open…for my dog.”
“Oh yeah?” The grin widened. “Some guys?”
“I didn’t get a good look at them, but there had to have been more than one. Worked me over pretty good, didn’t they?”
T’aki looked at her, at Sanford, at her. He backed up and tugged lightly at his tether, wanting to be picked up. Sanford ignored him. ‘Be quiet,’ his soft clicks said, and T’aki, mercifully, was.
“Oh, I don’t know,” the guard said. “You could look a lot worse.”
Silence, for a short while.
“They get anything?” the guard asked.
“No. A car pulled in…just turning around, but it scared them off. They split, didn’t take anything.” She paused. “Typical thugs. They’re all cowards at heart.”
‘Oh, be quiet!’ thought Sanford, rigid with dread. Did she think she was safe just because she was here? Did she really believe the other humans in this place would defend her if this man chose to raise the weapon he carried so casually and fire it right into her fearless face?
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the guard said coolly. “They shot your dog, I hear.”
Another tug at the tether. Sanford raised his bound hands and T’aki crawled beneath them. Now and then, he trembled.
“I heard they hung it up on a fence post and shot it ‘till it looked like, oh, fur and ground chuck.” He whistled, long and low, a mocking sound in any language. “I’d call that pretty bold. Hell, bold bastards like that, they might even come back.”
“If only you’d been there, Mr. Lantz,” said Sarah in a tight voice. “You could have chased them off for me.”
“Well…” He came over to the bed, smiling, to stroke his hand along her bruised cheek. “I can promise you I’ll be keeping a close eye on you from now on. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt again. That would be just tragic.”
She stretched her mouth in the shape of a smile.
“Mm.” Another grin, flashing white in the window. Then, “You got three minutes, buggies,” and he leaned up against the doorjamb to watch them.
Three minutes. Sanford ticked at the seconds to get a measure of them, then turned around and looked directly at her. After a moment, she returned his gaze. Her eyes were damp.
“The boy wanted to come,” Sanford said. “He doesn’t know better.”
‘I am not your friend,’ he thought. ‘You have no friends in Cottonwood.’
T’aki drew back, staring at him in dismay.
“Come here a sec, jellybean. Check this out.” Sarah turned on the television monitor mounted on the wall above Sanford’s head and gave T’aki the controller. “Put it right to your ear,” she said, smiling. “Right on it, okay?”
T’aki did, fascination in every twitch and stutter of his antennae as he stared raptly at the screen above, sound no doubt trumpeting through his head and chest as if by magic, overwhelming every other sound.
“He’s a kid,” Sarah said in a low voice, watching T’aki wring his hands and chirr at the monitor. Her voice was cold as well, cold but strained. “And no, kids don’t know better. But you do.” She looked at him with her damp eyes, only at him and not at the door where the guard waited, listened. “And just because you can use your cute kid to abuse the system doesn’t make it right. I d-duh-don’t w-want you here, you…bug!” She clapped her hands over her eyes and pressed them in hard. “What are you doing here?” she whispered, and that at least was honest. It almost bled in the air. “What are you doing here?”
He watched her fight in perfect silence to smooth her breath, to keep the water in her eyes and not on her face. He watched, and when
she had settled, more or less, he said, “We were robbed.”
“Some of that going around,” the guard watching them agreed.
Sarah nodded once and looked at T’aki. She reached out in a hopeless sort of way to touch his son’s back, but T’aki didn’t feel it. He watched, all eyes and wonder, as humans on the small monitor created fire from their bare hands and threw it into the snarling face of a huge, fanged monster. “Did they take anything important?” she asked. “I guess I can make some phone calls while I’m here.”
“They took our radio,” said Sanford.
She looked at him, her eyes over-bright. Of course she knew he had no radio.
“It is the only thing I have of any value and I want it back,” he said. He could not be more clear than that, not without great risk. “I want it back.”
Her eyes shifted to the guard in the doorway, then dropped. She touched T’aki again, stroking the high curve of the back of his head, unfelt.
“Yeah, the little ones are cute, huh?” The guard, distracted by something the human medics were doing elsewhere in the hall, leaned out to watch them, then spat unselfconsciously on the floor. “Tell you what, Pollyanna, since I didn’t get you flowers, I’ll see if I can get you a baby bug when you get back.”
Sanford stiffened. Sarah closed her eyes.
“I bet you could teach it to fetch a ball if you tried. What do you say, little man?” The guard strolled jovially over and plucked the earpiece off T’aki’s head. “Want to go home with the princess here and live with her?”
T’aki’s eyes grew huge and round. He sprang up, bouncing on the bed in his excitement. “Oh yes-yes! Can I, father?”
Sanford said nothing. Sarah’s eyes, shut, leaked water in trickles down her soft cheek.
“That’ll be so much fun, huh?” The guard cupped T’aki’s head in his hand and gave it a rough shake. “Get you a collar and a license and a big red ball!”
Sarah took a deep, wet breath and let it out slowly. She opened her eyes. Her mouth smiled. “Thank you so much for coming to see me, Mr. Lantz,” she said.
“No problem, princess. I enjoyed it. Come on, buggies. Time to go home.”
T’aki climbed down from the bed reluctantly. “Goodbye, Sarah!”
“Bye, honey.” A ragged breath. She said, “I’ll be back soon and I’ll deal with you then, Mr. Sanford, all right? You people. You…aliens from outer space.”
My all-time favorite, she’d called that one. The one she would give anything to see again.
“Get out,” Sarah said strengthlessly. She lay down in the bed and faced away.
Sanford left, taking T’aki close behind him. The guard gave him a slap to the back as he came out into the hall, a hard slap. “Tough break, buggie. I could have told you it was all a waste. But a fun morning out, huh?”
Sanford said nothing. He went quietly back down through the screams and stink of the hospital, and into the armored van, which was by then something of a haven. He sat on the bench, leaning forward to alleviate some of the strain of his bonds, clicking wordless comfort at T’aki now and then, in between firm commands to sit still, to behave. They would not be out of danger until they were home and the guards away. They would not be out of danger even then.
But he felt better for having seen her, not unconscious and surrounded by strangers as she’d been in the news-sheet, but sitting up, holding his son, making her hurt attempts at a smile. He only wished she hadn’t felt it necessary to call him a bug. It didn’t bother him to hear it…but she was in enough pain.
* * *
The ‘good stuff’ at Sacred Heart wasn’t anywhere near as good as the stuff in IBI’s medical wing, but pain, Sarah soon discovered, had anesthetizing properties of its own. She had no idea how much time had passed since the attack. Directly across from her bed, mounted at eye-level on the wall where she could not but see it anytime her eyes were open, was a whiteboard with the date helpfully printed on it each morning by the nurse on duty, but the numbers made no sense to her. If the whiteboard told her it was a Thursday, that was fine, but the next time she looked at it, it would be Thursday all over again, for the first time. She couldn’t remember what day it had been when Piotr attacked her in her kitchen. She couldn’t count the days she had been lying in this bed looking at that whiteboard. She slept until the pain woke her up and lay awake until the exhaustion was enough to let her sleep past the pain, and those were her days.
Gradually, other impressions began to make themselves known. Thirst came first. The nurses brought her ice chips to suck on, which didn’t help at all. Sometimes she hid the cup under the blankets until the ice melted and she could drink the swallow or so of lukewarm water this deception yielded (and puke it promptly back up again, as often as not), but it wasn’t really worth the effort and the nurses scolded her whenever they caught her. The not-so-good stuff made her stupidly sensitive to being scolded, but just knowing intellectually that she was overreacting did not stop her from bawling all over herself at every sharp word that came her way.
After a few more uncountable days, they started bringing her drinks and soft foods that sat in her stomach like hot iron, when she could keep them down at all. They made her sit up all day, even when she cried, and with the help of a thoroughly unsympathetic therapist, she was soon walking herself to the bathroom and back. Ultimately, she was able to look at the whiteboard, see that it was a Thursday and know that yesterday had been Wednesday and tomorrow would be Friday, but her days were still little more than one long fog, broken by blood-pressure cuffs and electronic pinging, with pain the only anchor holding her to life.
She received a few dozen cards—mostly from people she worked with, some from complete strangers—and a handful of floral arrangements, including a massive spray of lilies and roses from Mr. van Meyer. Sanford wasn’t her only visitor, although he was definitely the best of them. Even during her worst days, when she could barely think, much less speak, she was vaguely aware of people coming and going around her. As her condition improved, the nurses would periodically come in to tell her that so-and-so from Channel Such-and-Such or The Blah-Blah Paper was downstairs and did she want to talk to them, but she never did, and by the time of Sanford’s surprise visit, they had stopped altogether. Found some other ambulance to chase, she supposed, and was glad of it. The only one she had to talk to was the cop.
He came soon after Sanford left, so soon that she wondered if maybe the hospital was trying to arrest her for bringing in a bug, but no. He said he was there to take her statement. About the attack, he had to amplify when she continued to stare at him in confusion. So she told him essentially the same story she’d told Piotr, with little embellishment and only when prompted by direct questions. She’d left the door to the backyard open for her dog. She’d come home after dark, seeing nothing unusual, suspecting nothing. Someone had covered her head from behind. She had been beaten until she fell to the floor and then kicked. She thought there had been more than one person, but she hadn’t seen them. Someone had knocked on the door (and no, she didn’t know them either) and her attackers had run off. She crawled to the van, drove to the hospital, and that was all there was to the story.
He brought out his paz and referred to it often as she talked, but didn’t appear to be making any notes. “You can’t describe them at all?” he asked when she was done.
“No, sir.”
“Male? Female? Black? White?” He pulled a chair over and sat down, making it clear that he had nowhere else to be. “Human?”
“Of course they were human! What else would they be?”
“You were at Cottonwood.”
“Yeah, but I was at home. The immigrants never leave the containment area.”
“Uh huh.” He did not pretend to look convinced. “So, three assailants.”
“Maybe. Maybe only two. I didn’t see them.”
“So how do you know there were three?”
“It felt like three when they were kicking me. I wasn’t
exactly counting them, though. That’s why I said, ‘Three, I think,’” she added waspishly. “You might want to be writing this down.”
“I will as soon as you give me something to write,” he countered. “Do you have any enemies?”
“No.”
“Do you work directly with the bugs?”
“Yes.”
That, he wrote down.
“Why didn’t you dial 99 from the house when you realized how badly you’d been hurt?” he asked.
“I wasn’t thinking. I was just trying to get away.”
“IBI has a world-class medical facility right on-site,” he said. His eyes were like bullets. “They were two minutes away at most. Instead, you drove thirty-three miles to Wheaton’s pissant branch of Sacred Heart.”
“I wasn’t thinking. I can barely even remember that night. I’m sure I wasn’t rational.”
“You’re sure. And are you sure you didn’t see who did it?”
She shook her head stubbornly.
“Did they say anything? Could you tell if they were male or female from their voices?”
“No. They never made a sound.”
“So, just to be sure I’ve got this straight, you came home and maybe three people grabbed you from behind, covered your head, and commenced to kicking the shit out of you without saying one word. You still can’t think of who this might be or what they might have wanted?”
“I’m sorry it doesn’t make sense. I’m sure most violent crimes do.”
“Lady, I get paid the same whether you’re a smart-ass or not.” The cop snapped his paz shut and glared at her. “You know, if it had been me getting beat to death on my kitchen floor, I’d want the guys responsible caught. Call me crazy. You sure you can’t remember anything useful?”
She had nothing to say to him. At last he let her go. She got the feeling he was a little disgusted with her, but just then the nurse came with another tray full of molten lead for her to eat, this time in the disguise of chicken soup and ice cream, so she couldn’t spare the strength to care.