The Seventh Hour

by Tracey Ward

  It kills me, though, and I make sure she knows I’m never far away. I’m always just on the other side of that wall. All she has to do is knock and I’ll be there.

  Knock! Knock!

  “Just a second,” I answer, sitting up slowly in my bed, tossing off the blanket. I’ve been laying down, resting my back after a long day hunched over the table at work. I took my meds when I got home because I can’t stand to be alive when I don’t, and I don’t want to put Liv through another night like the one she spent getting me back on track. I owe it to her and to myself to get well. To stay steady and keep moving forward instead of wallowing in the past, wishing things could be the way I wanted them to be. I’m not healthy, but I’m happy. I can’t complain, not even on a day like today when my back is screaming, burning, and I want to lay down forever to make it stop.

  Knock! Knock!

  “I said hold on!” I shout in irritation.

  I swing the door open, ready to lay into whoever is on the other side, but I hesitate. Krysan is there in the hall, his eyes alight with excitement.

  “You gotta head to Kanden’s office,” he tells me eagerly.

  I shake my head. “I don’t have an appointment with her today.”

  “She asked me to come get you. She needs to see you immediately.”

  “It’s not a good time, man. I just got home. I’m beat.”

  His shoulders sag impatiently. “Why do you have to make my life difficult? You know I’m scared of Kanden. No way I’m telling her I couldn’t get you, so get moving. She said she has good news.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. That’s all she told me on the radio and I came down here during my time off to deliver the message so maybe be a little grateful. Let’s go!”

  I reluctantly grab my keys off the counter, following him out the door.

  Dr. Kanden is waiting for us in the lobby when we get to the hospital. She’s smiling, her face bright like the sun.

  “Grayson,” she gushes when she sees me. I’m stunned when she hugs me. “I have such good news.”

  “What’s happening?”

  She steps back, clapping her hands together. “You’re going to Porton. We got funding for your procedure.”

  “For my back?” I ask excitedly. “They can fix it?”

  “They can try. Remember, it might not make it perfect but it will lessen your daily pain. You’ll feel stronger. You’ll rely on the medications less.”

  “What about the people ahead of me?”

  She practically bounces on her feet. “They’re going too. Crestin told me this afternoon that they got the funding for all of you. I’ve already wired the clinic in Porton. You leave in five weeks.”

  I chuckle breathlessly. “That’s awesome. How? Where did they find the money?”

  “She didn’t say. She only told me that the funding is there and to go through my list of patients waiting for treatment. She told me to arrange visits for all of them.”

  I pull her into a hug again, both of us laughing like idiots. Like happy, drunk, lucky idiots.

  ***

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” I ask Liv. “You’re where they got the funding.”

  She brings two cups of tea to the table, sitting one in front of me. I’m careful not to stare at the yellowing bruises up and down her arms.

  I hate tea. It’s watered down coffee and it’s disgusting. But Liv drinks it when she’s stressed. The girl’s had a pretty rotten year and if me drinking tepid tea does her any good, it’s worth it.

  “I didn’t know what they’d use it for,” she explains, lifting her mustard yellow cup to her lips. “I wish you would have told me. I would have donated it months ago.”

  “Which did you use? Yours or your mom’s?”

  “They’re the exact same necklace.”

  “It was your mom’s,” I groan, falling back in my seat.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you just told me by not telling me.”

  She laughs quietly. “You’re a sharp one, Grayson.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that. It’s all you had left of her.”

  “But it wasn’t her. It wasn’t anything but a bunch of stones. Now it’s a leg for a little boy. It’s lungs for someone’s daughter. And it’s relief for you.” She takes another sip of her tea. “Consider it a belated Christmas present. I never got you one.”

  “This is a hell of a present.”

  “You’re worth it, Grayson.”

  I grin, lifting my cup. I take a sip, straining to keep a straight face.

  It is so disgusting.

  “Dr. Kanden made my appointment already,” I tell her.

  She smiles. “That’s good news. When do you go?”

  “Five weeks.”

  Her smile fades. “How long does the procedure take?”

  “Ten days.” I set my cup down softly. “When I realized the timing I asked her if she could reschedule, but she can’t. I’d have to wait another six months if I don’t go now.”

  “You have to go,” she tells me firmly. “You can’t put this off. You can’t sleep because of the pain, Grayson. This is more important than anything.”

  I reach across the small table, laying my hand over hers. It’s so small it almost disappears under mine. “I wanted to be there for you when you went to the port to face your dad.”

  She puts her other hand top of mine, dropping her eyes. “I know you did. And I wish you could be there, but this is more important. And besides, Gav will be with me. I won’t be alone.”

  “And you won’t change your mind?” I ask, putting voice to all of my insecurities.

  Liv looks up, her eyes fierce. “No,” she answers soundly. “I won’t be moved. I won’t step on that ship. When Mayor Gustafson told me I could stay, that sealed it for me. Gaia is my home. This is my life. I can’t live the one my father wants me to. I know it and Gav knows it. Even he doesn’t want me to go back. He knows it will kill me.”

  I squeeze her hand, probably too tightly, but my body reacts to the memory of her confession. To the idea of her on the bow of a ship dreaming of diving into the cold water to disappear. To escape a world she didn’t belong in.

  Even if I didn’t love her I wouldn’t want her to go back to that.

  “Is it going to be ugly?” I ask gently.

  She closes her eyes, sighing heavily. “Everything my father does is ugly.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  SIX WEEKS LATER

  Gray

  The hospital in Gaia has seven rooms. That’s it. Seven beds, sevens room, one supply closet sparsely stocked, and a basement full of whatever.

  The hospital in Porton has seven stories. The outside of the building is impressive. Pure white on the outside, it’s made of smooth stone that shines like glass. It takes up an entire city block, surrounded on all sides by shorter but no less impressive buildings. They’re all built in the old style from the days before time slowed down. Boxy but ornate, full of old windows that have been maintained on the outside but are sealed over with metal and cement on the inside. Whatever it takes to keep out the heat, the cold. Some still proudly maintain signs on the outside that boast products no one has seen in six hundred years. I don’t know what a Sony was but it’s dead now.

  The first day we got here was a bust. It was all checking in and finding our rooms. Meeting the doctors. Going over the details of the procedure. They were glad to see Easton came with me to help out because they described my treatment as ‘tiresome’. I translated that to mean ‘painful’.

  I was right.

  I’m not allowed to be on pain killers while I’m here. They need to be able to ask me accurately about they sensation in my back and legs, so I stopped dosing the night before I came. I started feeling uncomfortable during the long truck ride over. I started to sweat and curse when Easton and I had to climb three flights of stairs to get to my room. And that evening when he took me deep into the city to help me spend my enti
re life savings on the biggest, most important decision of my life, I was practically crying. The pain was almost too much to bear, but the relief I felt when it was done put me to bed that night. I slept soundly all the way through, and I dreamt of Liv.

  Liv in the snow. Liv in the wind. Liv under the sky in the sun. In the dark. In the cave. In my arms.

  Liv with a needle full of feel good, chasing the pain away.

  “How much longer?” I grunt, my teeth clenched together tightly.

  Easton looks at his watch. He’s good enough not to grimace. “Ten minutes.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “I wish I was, Gray. I’m sorry.” He holds onto my hand, letting me crush his with all of my strength. “Talk to me about something. You have to distract yourself, remember?”

  “I can’t remember anything but pain!”

  I’m naked, nothing but a thin sheet over my butt as I lie face down on a hard table. Above me a monster of a machine hovers a robotic arm over me. It follows a pattern up and down my back, jabbing the needle inside every time. It’s small, barely enough to draw blood, but that doesn’t make the three hundred times it stabs me any less painful. I have to lay here for twenty-five minutes while it does it, constantly jabbing my already burning back. This is the seventh treatment. I have one more to go after this, then it’s a day of recovery before I’m sent home. In six months I have to come back for another ten days to do it again, assuming I don’t go raving mad from this round.

  They say I’m already improving, I just don’t know it. I won’t feel it until I’ve been home for a week or two. Then I’ll notice the relief. I think they’re scamming me because after the torture I’ve been put through here, the old pain would feel like Heaven.

  When my ten minutes are finally up Easton helps a nurse roll me onto a stretcher. They wheel me through the halls, lights flashing above my tear soaked eyes. In my room the nurse rubs a balm on my back that takes away a little bit of the pain, but mostly it clogs the pinpricks and keeps me from bleeding all over their sheets.

  “It’s too bad you can’t go outside today,” she tells me, her thick fingers applying another blob of goop onto my back. “The souk tents are up. Every color of the rainbow up and down the streets and the smell of BBQ on the air. I’m getting a lamb kabob for lunch. I might even splurge and buy a peach. I passed some in a tent on the way in this morning and they were heavenly. Worth every cent.”

  Easton smiles at her graciously, feigning interest for the both of us.

  In fairness, I really do want to see the souk. I haven’t been here since I was a kid and I remember how much fun it was to spend the entire day lazily walking up and down the aisles. But right now I’m not in the mood. All I want to do right now is try very hard to fall asleep and forget everything that just happened to me.

  “The docks are in a rush,” she continues, capping the bottle of ointment. “The Eventide showed up today.”

  I jerk my head around to look at her over my shoulder. “They’re here? Already?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she hums. “It’s almost the Seventh. They’re a little early this year but better that than how late they were last year. We started to worry they’d never come. I don’t like them as much as the Morgantide. There’s something… I don’t know, nicer about the Morgantide. I think it’s the candy. They toss candy to the kids when they dock. It’s nice.”

  “It sounds like it,” Easton agrees vaguely.

  She smiles at him one last time before leaving the room.

  I go to sit up in bed, forgetting I can’t. I bite on a shout that threatens to erupt out of my mouth in a torrent of foul language and gibberish. It dies in a low, animal growl in the back of my throat.

  “We’ve gotta get down there,” I gasp.

  “Down to the docks?”

  “Liv will be there.”

  “Yeah, and when her dad leaves she’ll come here. You don’t need to go anywhere, Gray. Just rest. That’s what Liv wanted you to do.”

  I blink again and again, my hand pressing against the white bandage on my side. I flop myself to the side, rolling my body toward the edge. “No. I have to go.”

  “What are you doing? You can’t even walk!”

  Easton runs around the bed to help me. He tries to put me back in it, but I clench his shirt in my fist.

  “This could be one of the worst days of her life,” I tell him clearly. “And she’s had some seriously shitty days. I know that Gav is going to be there with her, but he’s leaving her too. She’s going to be on that dock watching her entire past sail away, and she’s going to be completely alone. I can’t handle that, Easton. I don’t want that for her.”

  Easton searches my face, his own torn between right and wrong. The bed and the door. Lucky for me, Easton has always been an impulse guy. Never one for rules or right. He’s the hero after all, and today I need him to be mine.

  “Wait here,” he tells me urgently. “I’ll make sure the hall is clear.”

  Under a minute later and he’s racing us down the hall, my arm thrown painfully over his shoulder as his feet guide us both down the stairs. In the lobby he spots a wheelchair, unattended and tempting, and he snags it, tossing my battered body inside. It’s smooth sailing after that. We’re out of the building, into the blinding, blistering hot day. We’re on the street. We’re passing the square. I’m about to pass out from the heat and the pain, but he pushes me on. He uses his strength to propel me forward, practically flying me to the port. To the water.

  To Liv.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Liv

  The hulking body of an Eventide ship is pulling into port. It’s sidling up its honey colored hull to the dock, sending men and women into a frenzy around it. A wooden lion looks indifferently out over the crowd that’s gathered to watch its progress, haughty in its demeanor and dismissive in its stare. The Portons cheer, waving at the boat. At no one on the deck. Not a single Eventide willing to meet them.

  “Liv, your hands are shaking.”

  “Are they?” I ask breathlessly. “I’m nervous, I guess.”

  Gav comes to stand next to me, his hands thrust in the pockets of his linen pants, his thin t-shirt flapping in the wind against his stomach. He looks so comfortable I want to kill him.

  We watch the dock workers tie off the lines cast down on them. Slowly, a gangplank is lowered, scratching angrily over the metal surface in a horrible shriek that echoes in my ears long after it’s over. Men exit the ship, the familiar clothes and color of their skin stabbing tears into my eyes.

  “Are you ready?” Gav asks.

  I nod my head, unable to answer but unwilling to turn back.

  He offers me his arm the way he used to offer it to Mother. I smile when I take it, a single tear escaping my eye. It’s not for the ship or the fact that I’m leaving it. It’s for my Mother. It’s for the woman who went before me. The one who couldn’t leave, even if she wanted to. I wonder as we weave through the crowd toward the dock if she ever wanted to escape. If she ever looked at her life the way I’ve looked at mine and found it lacking. Found it cavernous and strange, impossible to fill no matter what she threw at it.

  Gav rests his hand over mine, warm and strong, reassuring in a way only he can be, and I think that he was her strength. He was her escape. Her joy. And it doesn’t matter that she never loved me the way she loved him. What matters is that she had love.

  It’s more than some can manage.

  “Do you think he’s on this ship?” I ask Gav curiously.

  He chuckles. “No. Not a chance. These are laborers. He wouldn’t ride with them.”

  “They’ll have to call him in.”

  “We’ll have to wait for him. Assuming he wants to come.”

  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he didn’t?”

  “I’ve told you that you don’t have to do this. You could turn around, go to the hospital, and sit by Grayson’s side right now. You’d be happier there.”

  I shake my head, squari
ng my shoulders. “I have to face this fear. He’s my last one. He’s the biggest.”

  Slowly, we approach the crowd surrounding the dock. Merchants, men, women, and children, all eager to see the elusive Eventide. To watch us unload our cargo from around the world. We have to push through them at first, but then the whispers start. They run through the crowd ahead of us, making way. Giving people notice. They step aside, clearing a path as they stare. They murmur as we pass.

  Eventide royalty.

  The ones who were shipwrecked.

  They’re going home.

  They don’t look rich.

  We make it through the sea of people, stepping up onto the dock. It’s hotter out here, the sun’s rays reflecting off the metal surface like it’s hitting a mirror.

  “Stop right there,” an Eventide dockworker barks, rushing toward us. “No one comes—“

  He stops short when he gets a good look at us. His jaw drops in amazement.

  Gav reaches for him, offering his hand. He carefully chooses his right to make sure his tattoo is visible. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

  “You’re Council?” the man asks dubiously, his hold on Gav’s hand reserved.

  “In line to,” Gav corrects smoothly. “My sister and I both.”

  I wave to him, showing him my tattoo as well.

  “Our father is Allister Pamuk.”

  “But, you can’t be. His children and his wife, they died in the wreck last year.”

  “We washed ashore. We’ve been here all year, waiting for you to return.”

  The man eyes us doubtfully, his enthusiasm fading. “What are your names?”

  “Gavriel and Livandra Pamuk.”

  “Wait right here,” he tells us slowly, backing away. “I’ll call to your father’s ship. He’ll want to verify who you are.”

  Gav waves him on. “Whatever you need to do.”

  He hurries to another man, talking to him rapidly, pointing at us. He darts up the gangplank as the new worker slowly saunters toward us. He eyes us suspiciously, keeping his distance but putting himself between us and the ship.