The Seventh Hour

by Tracey Ward

  He groans grumpily. “I hate being weak.”

  I lean down to kiss him gently, understanding that sentiment better than most. “Everyone does. It’s only temporary.”

  “I’ve been like this for two weeks. Two weeks doesn’t feel very temporary.”

  “It does when you consider it in the span of your life. Two weeks out of how many? Three thousand or so? That’s not long at all.”

  “Where are you getting that number?”

  “I did the math.”

  “Just now? In your head?”

  “It’s easy. Fifty-two weeks in a year, a seventy year life span. Three thousand six hundred and forty weeks.”

  He stares up at me through the drugs, amazed. “Wow. Eventide schools are way better than ours, aren’t they?”

  “My education might have been a little more in depth than yours. Who can say?” I head toward his bedroom. “Do you want a blanket?”

  “Yeah, please.”

  In all the time we’ve known each other I’ve never been in his room before. I’ve only seen it from afar, like mountains in the distance or the surface of the sun.

  It’s very telling. Very revealing.

  Very messy.

  The bed is unmade, the red comforter tossed from sleep. A stack of books sits on the table next to it. Clothes are scattered over the floor, probably all dirty. All in need of washing. I fight the urge to quickly clean up, instead grabbing his comforter to drag it out to the living room.

  “Hey, Liv, while you’re in there can you get me something?” he shouts.

  I halt midstride. “Sure. What?”

  “My gun case. It’s on the top shelf of my closet.” He pauses. “Can you reach that high?”

  I roll my eyes, not bothering to answer him. I also don’t tell him I have to open the bottom drawer of his dresser to use it as a step to reach the top shelf.

  I bring the blanket and heavy black case out to the living room, draping one over his lap and depositing the other on the coffee table.

  Grayson fishes his keys out of his pants pocket, pulling the case closer to him.

  “Gav should have one of these in the apartment now,” he comments.

  “He does.”

  “Perfect.”

  He pops the lock. Flips the box open. Inside is the matte black body of his gun resting in a bed of gray cloth.

  It reminds me of the night he was shot. Of the gun Fuller held in his hands. His own weapon responsible for the near death of one of his men. I still can’t wrap my head around it all. The searches turned up nothing. The rollcall brought more of the same. The town’s numbers were dead on, and not a single person appeared suspicious. The main suspect in the shooting was Fuller, but after hours spent behind closed doors with his fellow Elected, he was declared innocent. Easton believes he’s guilty, Grayson believes he’s innocent, and I don’t know what to believe other than I’m angry. Angry and scared.

  Grayson lifts his pistol, pulling the bundle of gray cloth out from under it before replacing it in the case.

  “Here.” He offers me the bundle, his eyes tightening as he stretches his arm up toward me. “This is yours. I’d put it in Gav’s case. It’ll be safe there.”

  I know what the bundle is. Still I unwrap it, unveiling the large, clear stones strung together with heavy silver chains. It’s bigger than I remember. Gaudier. I can’t imagine ever putting it around my neck again. I wonder how a heart could ever beat beneath its impossibly cold weight.

  Grayson clears his throat, pulling my attention. He’s holding something in his hand. Something so small I can’t see it around his fingers.

  “I have this too. I was going to give it to you for Christmas, but, uh,” he chuckles nervously, “I kind of slept through Christmas.”

  He opens his hand, exposing another silver chain. This one is miles thinner than the one on my necklace. It’s delicate and glistening as I pull on it. At the end is a stone. A dark one.

  I hold it up to the light coming from Grayson’s bedroom, gasping when it suddenly bursts to life. It’s not a stone at all. It’s a piece of smooth glass. When the light streams through it, it lights up in breathtaking blues and blacks. A gentle, promising yellow. Brilliant white stars.

  “It’s the morning sky,” I whisper, utterly awestruck. “It’s just like that morning when we went outside.”

  “I was hoping you’d get it.”

  “I do, and I love it,” I laugh giddily. “Where did you get this?”

  “One of the welders that worked on the doors plays with glass blowing on the side. He sells things like that for extra money. He made it for me. For you.”

  “It’s beautiful.” I lean in, kissing him soundly. “Thank you, Grayson.”

  “You’re welcome.” He reaches out to take it from me, offering to put it around my neck. I eagerly sit with my back to him, piling my hair high out of the way. “I wanted you to have something to remember Gaia by. I know there’s been a lot of ugly for you here, but maybe you can remember that morning. That can be what you take with you when you go. Something good.”

  When he finishes with the clasp, when his fingers run gentle and lingering down the back of my neck, I turn to smile at him. “I’ll take more than that morning. I’ll take everything. Everyone. Especially you.”

  Grayson lifts the blanket, offering me a spot on the couch curled up in his side. I accept it greedily. I snuggle in close, being careful not to put too much pressure on him. Laying down low with my ear on his chest so he doesn’t have to raise his arm to drape it over me.

  “I’m gonna miss this,” he tells me quietly, his voice vibrating low against my cheek.

  “Me too.”

  “I’m gonna miss you.”

  I smile sadly. “I’m going to miss you too.”

  He lowers his head, his lips in my hair kissing me softly. His breath hot on my scalp, giving me chills.

  “I love you.”

  His words melting my entire body; heart, mind, and marrow.

  “I love you too,” I whisper breathlessly.

  We’ve never said it before. It’s a first for me, a first for him, and I wish to the sun and the stars and the moon that it could be my last. That he’d be my last everything. My sweet ending, gathering every final moment of me with his gentle hands, his sardonic smile, and his fathomless blue eyes.

  He squeezes me tighter, his fingers digging into my shoulder. His hold is becoming desperate. Uncontrolled. I can hear his heartbeat against my ear, erratic and running, rushing. His breathing is getting shallow.

  He’s in pain. More than I know. More than he’ll ever tell me, not until it grows to be too much and he can’t handle it on his own. Until he needs help and finds the courage to ask for it. In the meantime, all I can do is be calm, be ready.

  All I can do is stay with him.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ONE MONTH LATER

  Gray

  How can you tell that your life has drifted off course?

  “Have a seat, Grayson. Take a load off.”

  Your prick of a boss is nice to you.

  “How are you feeling?”

  He takes an interest in your wellbeing. He doesn’t berate you for your poor performance. He pities you.

  “You’re looking better every day.”

  He lies to you.

  “I’m doing good, sir,” I answer, not taking the offered seat.

  It’s not that I don’t want to. Christ, do I want to. I want to collapse in that hard oak chair and let my back off the hook for even a second. Just one blissful second. But just because I feel weak doesn’t mean I’m okay with looking weak. In fact, the last vestiges of my pride demand that I put on a good show, so that’s what I do. I stand and I sweat and I hurt, but I tell myself I’m a man as I do it.

  “Suit yourself.” He sits back in his own seat, looking up at me appraisingly. “Do you know why I called you in here?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “Your performance is lacklus
ter.”

  “Yep. That’s what I thought it was.”

  He pinches his lips, not enjoying my glib commentary. I’m toeing a fine line, I know that. His compassion for my injury will only carry me so far in his good graces. I need to tighten up. End on point, because I have no doubt that that is exactly what this is – an ending.

  “You’ve been a good member of the crew. Stellar, even. One of the top men I’ve had. When you were injured I—“ he pauses, probably remembering with what I was injured, “it was devastating for a lot of reasons. That never should have happened to you. Or to Ms. Pamuk. It’s a tragedy and I’m sorry.”

  I swallow roughly, shifting on my feet. “It wasn’t your doing.”

  “No, but if anyone could have stopped it, it was me. The fact that it was my weapon is unacceptable. That we haven’t been able to find the man responsible is reprehensible, and for that I’m sorry. Please take my apology.”

  “Accepted, sir.”

  He nods solemnly. “Dr. Kanden told me she had high hopes for your recovery. That’s why I kept your slot open for you in Forces. I wanted to believe you were coming back, but now that you have I don’t see it as a good fit. We’re asking too much of you physically and it’s not fair to you.”

  “I can manage,” I protest uselessly. This isn’t a hearing. This is a formality. I’m already gone.

  “We can’t ask you to do that. It’s too much strain. You’re young, you have a chance to heal if you take the time to do it. If you commit yourself to it.” Captain Fuller’s brow pinches vaguely. “Are you trying, Grayson?”

  I chuckle without meaning to. “Am I trying to get better?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course I am. I don’t want to be a cripple.”

  “You’re not a cripple.”

  “I’m getting fired because I can’t handle the physical demands of my job,” I reply bitingly. “Sounds like a cripple to me.”

  “I’m worried you’re being too hard on yourself. And I’m not alone.”

  “I’m being realistic. I’m facing facts. I have limitations, and if I’m not capable of meeting certain marks anymore it’s a waste of time and energy to try to achieve them. Like you said, it’s too much strain.”

  “Sounds an awful lot like giving up.”

  I turn my face away, leaning forward on the back of the chair. “Which do you want me to do? Walk away because it’s too hard or keep fighting because I want it? Do I even have a choice? It seems like all of the choices are already made for me and I’m supposed to just nod my head and say, ‘okay’, and be good with it all. Only now I’m supposed to fight too, even when it’s a losing battle.” I shove off the chair, taking a step back toward the door. “Maybe all of you can get together and figure out where you think my life should be headed. Call me in for another meeting and let me know.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do with your life,” he replies calmly, “but I’ll tell you this. A battle is lost when you decide it is. If you have something you want to fight for, it’s never too late.”

  “This. My job. I want to fight for this.”

  “No, you don’t. You called this one done before you even came into my office.”

  “Then what the hell do I have to fight for?”

  “Anything in your life worth keeping,” he shoots back.

  I clench my jaw tightly, biting on her name.

  Captain Fuller lifts his pen, scribbling over a chart with my name at the top. “You have a month to sort out your employment,” he tells me. “Normally I’d give a man two weeks but I like you. I want to give you time to find something you really love. Something you can be happy with for the rest of your life.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I reply grudgingly.

  “You’re welcome.” He tears off a tab at the bottom of my file, handing it to me over the desk. He catches my eye when I reach for it, his expression deadly serious. “You have one month to find a job. By my count you have roughly three months to find something to fight for. Something you really love.”

  How do you know when your life has drifted off course?

  “Don’t waste your time, son.”

  Your prick of a boss is giving you love advice.

  “Yours or hers.”

  And it’s not half bad.

  ***

  I go to Tae because I don’t know what else to do. It took most of the morning to be stripped of my Forces gear. My uniform, my gun, my spare clothing. Three hours to reverse four years of my life and suddenly I’m back at square one. I’m fifteen years old without a job and only four weeks to find one. Only this time I don’t have a dream to follow. This time I’m totally lost.

  “Medical,” Tae suggests immediately.

  I scowl at him impatiently.

  “Alright, fine,” he mutters. “Not medical. Kitchen? Farming?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what? Helping?”

  “Listing off everything I don’t want to do.”

  “Because believe it or not, it helps to narrow it down.”

  He flips over the legless desk he’s working on, the motion kicking up a cloud of gold colored dust. It coats every surface in the room in a thick layer that smells warmly of wood. Tae’s area in the carpentry building is one of the largest and by far the most cluttered. Chisels, hammers, screwdrivers, nails, and vices are scattered over the workbench under various degrees of dust coverage. I don’t know how he can find anything but he moves around the space efficiently, his hands working of their own accord.

  “Okay, fine. I don’t want to work in the L either,” I supply.

  “Let’s rule out everywhere you have or have had a girlfriend.”

  “That’s all of them. Medical and Laundry.”

  He stops to look at me through his huge safety goggles. “So you admit Karina was a girlfriend?”

  “Does it matter now?”

  “Not really.” He hunches down over his work. “Okay, so no L. What about welding?”

  I shake my head, swiveling back and forth on his rolling stool, stretching out my aching back. “Can’t. They have to stand all day and lift heavy equipment. I just got fired from Forces for being too fragile for all of that.”

  “You didn’t get fired. Not really.”

  “Mostly, though.”

  “What about engineering with Easton?”

  “Put him in the category of people I don’t want to work with all day, every day.”

  “You should go home and rest. You have the day off. Take a nap, that’s what I’d do.”

  “Nah, I’d feel lazy.”

  Especially since my meds make a nap sound so enticing.

  “So what are you gonna do all day?”

  “Hang out here and harass you?”

  He laughs, grabbing a hunk of wood and tossing it in front of me on the bench. Wood dust explodes in my face. It coats my clothes and my skin, my hair. Some gets into my mouth.

  “Grab a chisel,” Tae tells me. “Make something pretty. It’s bad for morale if the rest of the guys think you’re just sitting around doing nothing.”

  I spit the dust from my mouth. I can still taste it. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “You know how you learn to do something new?”

  “You get off your ass and do it?”

  “Genius. Now wow me. I want unicorns and candy clouds.”

  “I can’t even draw a regular cloud.”

  “Good thing I didn’t ask you for one.”

  Three hours later Tae is ready to go home for the day. My hands ache from the unfamiliar task of wielding a chisel, but during that last hour I feel like I really got the hang of it. It’s not unicorns and candy clouds, but I have managed to border the piece of wood with a fairly convincing ivy scroll pattern.

  “It’s not total crap,” he compliments. “I’m sort of shocked.”

  “Really? It wasn’t that hard.”

  “It took you a year.”

  “You could have done it faster?
”

  “And better. But that’s a really good start. That’s better than a lot of new people come in can manage.”

  He tosses it back on the table top, kicking up a new cloud of dust. A new film for the inside of my mouth.

  I cough and putter angrily. “You gotta stop doing that!”

  “Get used to it. You’re coming back here tomorrow.”

  “Seriously? Why?”

  “How does your back feel?”

  I stop to think about it, surprised that I have to. I’m in constant pain. Not blinding, but annoying. Maddening. But while I was working on that carving I wasn’t thinking about that. I tuned it out, focusing everything I had on talking to Tae and chiseling out a decent pattern. I didn’t think about other things either. Other pains that plague me day in and day out with no end in sight.

  “I feel good,” I tell him honestly.

  “Yep. So you’ll come back tomorrow.” He claps me on the shoulder, sending dust flying off of me. “In the meantime you should get cleaned up. You’re a mess.”

  Tae goes up to his apartment above the carpentry shop, promising to meet me at dinner. I walk the short distance to Forces alone. The pull in my back builds the closer I get to the building. The more I think about the fact that this is one of the last times I’ll go in there. Once I pick a new profession I’ll have to move out. You’re only supposed to do that when you get married. When you find a new family. But now I’m going to lose this one with nothing to gain in return. It’s a sad, sobering thought, one that makes the stairs leading up to the second floor feel especially long. Impossibly steep. I’m dragging by the time I make it to the hall where I have to shove open that huge, heavy door.

  Where I get to come face to face with Liv.

  She looks as surprised as I feel, her eyes going wide. I stare down at her, seeing her in a completely unguarded moment that sends me back five months to when we were just beginning. To the first time I kissed her, the first time I held her. The first time I loved her. It all hits me at once, fresh as the day it happened, and it eases some of that sadness over losing Forces, because I still have her. She’s still here.