by Sharon Webb
Light suddenly splashed from an alleyway and washed the street just ahead of him. He veered sharply, skidding to the right along the gutter nearest the alley. Backpedaling, he slid to a stop, crunching a pile of dry oak leaves under his tires.
The light bobbed and swung toward him, away, toward him again. His heart pounded in his ears. No place to turn off. No side street, only driveways. He'd have to turn around. He slid off the bike, turning it back. He moved in a creeping arc, praying, cursing silently, as leaves shattered in his wake exploding the silence.
Light sprayed over him. "Got one!"
He leaped on the bike, pedaling frantically as something hissed through the air.
The length of chain sang against his ribs snapping two of them as it wound in tight embrace. His breath escaped in a high-pitched wail before clenched teeth choked it off in an agonized spasm.
Off-balance, he veered to the left, gripping the handlebars savagely as if to contain the pain. The chain fell away and clanked to the ground in stop-motion action as if each link struck pavement separately.
His legs pumped in nightmare slow motion. Each breath shrieked against the stab of his ribs. The bike crawled.
A shout behind him-meaningless syllables buffeting: "St- ah-ah-p-p-p h-h-h-i-m-m-m. …"
Whine. A hot whine. It buried itself, its whine, in the flesh of his shoulder. Hot. Hot. Keep going. Got to keep going. Hot. Dark street. Dark place. Dark…
* * *
He never remembered how he got home. He remembered compulsively pushing a blood-stained bike into a lock-slot. And then-What then? Crouching. Crouching in a room. Elevator? In the elevator. Sick in the elevator. His shirt was off
He dabbed at his mouth with his shirt, trying to wipe away the sour vomit. Blood trickled down his chest. His pants were soaked. Oh God, his pants were soaked. He rubbed at the wet with his wadded shirt, staring at it foolishly as it turned red in his hands.
The elevator opened to the night-lit hall. He teetered toward his door. How to open it? He swayed in confusion. Had to use his card, but his pants were wet. Couldn't he… Knock. He could knock. His fingers splayed against the door in a sticky pat. Oh God, oh God. Please.
He leaned his head against the jamb. Please? His fingers stretched along the unyielding door. He drew them up into a red claw that scrabbled against it.
The door fell open.
He swayed in the entrance. "Mama?"
Carmen Kraus stared at her son. Her mouth twisted open; her throat muscles worked, but the scream aborted in a horrible gagging sound.
"Mama. Help me-"
It was Eric who pulled him into the room. Eric who stood staring for a moment and then eased him to the floor and ran for towels. He threw a pile of them beside him, pressing one against the wounds, sliding another under his head. "We've got to get him an ambulance."
She stared at Eric as if he spoke a foreign language.
"Call an ambulance."
She began to shake her head. It moved back and forth like a wind-up toy. "Mama!"
"I can't, I can't, I can't." She pressed both fists against her face as if to stop the terrible shaking of her head.
Eric pressed Kurt's hand against the wadded towel. "Hold it. Mash hard so the bleeding stops." He scrambled to his feet and ran to the telephone.
Carmen Kraus stood over Kurt. White streaks curved around her mouth and nose, enclosing them in a blanched parenthesis. It was something for him to focus on. The mouth was a dash within the parenthesis; it began to work, "I can't. I can't go back there. Don't you see? Don't you?"
He clutched the wadded towel to him and stared at the mouth, at the white lines that punctuated it. Sweat trickled over his scalp drawing dark hair into damp curling tangles.
"I've already gone to the hospital today. I sat at a bed. I can't go back there. You can't expect me to go back there." Her voice grew fainter as if she were going away, but the mouth still hung over him, moving, stretching itself into different shapes: O's and -'s, a thin dash. Then he couldn't hear the voice at all, but only the rush of his own blood pulsing in his ears, a shaggy windy sound that blew a faint F sharp through his head.
When the two men came, pushing a stretcher between them, he felt a hand clutching his. He came back from somewhere far away and looked up into Eric's face. "Grandma-"
"What? What, Kurt?"
"Grandma-" He strained to project his voice past the rushing note in his head. 'Tell her-Tell her I'm all right."
* * *
The doors marked EMERGENCY splayed open. Hands lifted him from the ambulance stretcher to another. Someone switched on the stretcher radio receiver. Over the faint hiss of static, a woman's voice murmured in his ear, "…welcome to Tampa General Hospital. Be calm. Do not be afraid. You will receive the best of care. Be calm…" The voice dropped fainter until the message became subliminal.
Someone covered him with a red blanket. Then the stretcher turned crazily and jogged onto a track. Only half-aware, he felt himself moving.
Beyond a doorway, another radio beacon. The voice was saying, "… now entering Triage Area One. A doctor or nurse will take care of you. You are in good hands. You are now entering Triage Area One. A doctor or nurse will…"
A nurse peered down at him. She threw back the blanket, snapped a pulse cot on his finger and wrapped a blood-pressure sensor on his arm. The sensor tightened, and he moaned. He felt the soggy towel peel away from his chest. The nurse sprayed something icy on his shoulders and ribs. Soft pink foam rose in a soothing blanket over his wounds.
"Can you tell me your name?"
He stared at her face. It blurred then focused.
"Tell me your name."
"K-Kurt."
Her soft fingers ran over his head, his neck. "You're going to be fine, Kurt. Just fine." Fingers probed his abdomen, his groin. A light blazed into his eyes.
The nurse pressed a button and gave the stretcher a shove. He trundled away.
"…entering Trauma Area Three. Be calm. All is well. You are receiving the best of care. Be calm. All is well. You are receiving the best of care…"
The brilliant lights overhead danced insanely above him, then everything went very black.
* * *
"Stop that." A restraining hand captured his flailing arm. "Lie still. You're going to pull out that tube if you don't lie still."
He blinked and tried to focus through a gray haze. Something stung his arm. He reached over to rub it.
"Lie still. You've got a unit of Hemodex going in that arm." The face of a young nurse came into focus. "You lost a lot of blood. That's what the Hemodex is for. You're going to be all right."
He tried to say, "Water," but it came out sounding like a croak. The girl seemed to understand though. She dabbed at his lips with something wet that smelled of lemon. "You can have some water in a little while. Now sleep,"
He did.
He woke with a clear head and a fierce pain in his ribs, but h
e felt much stronger. He lay in a hospital bed, and the nurse was removing the empty Hemodex container. "Feeling better?"
"Hurts. Can I have some water?"
She held a tube to his lips, and he sucked deeply. Nothing had ever tasted so good. "Where's the pain?" she asked.
His fingers traced a path across his ribs and came to rest on a thick dressing on his shoulder.
She swung a coder from the wall. "Coming up. We'll get you some Endo-M." She pecked out a message on the coder and impressed it with a marker attached to her uniform. Then she touched the marker to the hospital bracelet he wore. A small door slid open in the wall. She took out the skinny tube inside and held it to his nose. 'Take a deep breath." As he breathed in, she squeezed the tube. Pain stabbed in his chest from the breath, but it faded almost at once and receded in a dull haze. He felt lightheaded.
"You'll buzz for a few minutes," she said, "then you'll clear. Endo-M is great for pain. You're lucky. If it weren't for the process, you'd be hurting a lot worse."
He looked around the dimly lighted room. "Where am I?"
"Four West. Pediatric Trauma and Orthopedics. I’ll let you rest now. If you need anything, call me. My name's Betty."
She started to go, but he caught her arm. "Wait. My dad is a patient here. Richard Kraus. I want to see him."
She looked doubtful. "Nobody's allowed on this floor except staff, Kurt. Since the-the disturbances. Not even parents."
"He doesn't have to come here. I’ll go there." She shook her head.
"Please. He had surgery today-an implant. I don't even know how he is."
A line creased her brow, then smoothed away. "Well, I can find that out for you at least. What did you say his name was?"
He told her and she left the room. In a few minutes he heard her voice from the wall speaker. "Kurt. Your father's condition is satisfactory."
"I want to see him."
"I'm sorry. It just isn't permitted. Besides, your father isn't even in this section of the hospital. He's on the Hixon Oncology Wing. I'm really sorry, Kurt. But he's doing all right." The speaker clicked off.
* * *
He felt his heart scurry into his throat. No one was in the darkened hall as he slipped out. He stopped and listened for the faint squishing sound of shoes against polished floor. He heard nothing. The clock on the wall whispered as its display rolled another digit of time away. Three twenty-two.
He felt as if he were breaking the law. No one had told him that he had to stay in his room. But it seemed that in hospitals all the rules were backwards. If you weren't told it was all right, then it wasn't. He had no idea what he would do if anyone caught him outside his room. He had no idea what they would do. The point was to stay out of sight because if anybody saw him they couldn't miss those baggy tossaway pajamas that marked him unmistakably as a patient.
He looked around in sudden dismay. He didn't know how to find his father. The nurse had said the Hixon Oncology Wing, but where was that? He knew what "oncology" meant- cancer, another word for cancer, the kind they hadn't learned how to cure yet.
To the left loomed an EXIT sign. That would probably take him to the stairs or to those motorized evacuation ramps. The elevators would be to the right then. He'd have a better chance with those.
He made his way up the hallway, staying close to the gray shadows along the wall. He heard a soft thump and then the squeak of wheels in need of lubrication. An alcove was just ahead. He darted into the darkened niche.
The wheels were coming closer. He looked wildly around. There were two doors in the alcove, one marked LINEN, the other said TRACTION. He pushed open the second door and slipped inside, pressed against an array of hardware. With a little pulling, the door would just close. In a moment, someone pushed a stretcher into the alcove, turned, and left.
When he was sure that no one was still near, he opened the door. The stretcher stood against the opening. It glided to one side at the touch of his hand. He began to sidle past it, then stopped and ran his hand over the pillow and the thin mattress under it. A little radio receiver was wedged between the mattress and the side rails. He held it to his ear. Nothing. But that didn't matter. It would pick up near a beacon. It was going to lead him to his father.
* * *
He stepped off the elevator, and glanced anxiously up and down the darkened hall. No one was around. He turned right and came to a T. The beacon whispered, "…entering Hixon Oncology Wing. You are entering…"
Behind a half-opened door, a light shone from a patient's room. He heard voices inside. He slipped past and the radio fell silent. Scarcely breathing, he scanned each door as he passed, looking for his father's name. He found it at the end of the hall.
He pushed against the door and it gave way at his touch. The room was dark, illuminated only by pink-hued streetlights shining through half-drawn blinds. The bed lay in stripes of shadow. He drew nearer, peering into the room, trying to see his father's face in the darkness. "Dad?" It was a whisper; it was a question. "Dad."
Richard Kraus stirred and looked at his son.
"Dad, it's me. Kurt. I came to see you," he added irrelevantly. He groped for his father's hand and found it. It felt dry and cool to his touch.
"Why are you here?" Richard Kraus's hand lay unmoving in Kurt's.
"I got hurt. But I'm all right now."
There was no response.
Kurt felt the silence thicken. "Dad, is everything all right?"
A short laugh as dry and cool as the hand he held came as answer. The silence pressed back, then the words, "Everything's fine, Kurt. Everything's wonderful. I even have a button to push to kill the pain." He laughed again. It ended in a spasm of coughing. The hand Kurt held pulled away and groped for a basin on the bedside table. Kurt held it to his lips while he coughed up a string of mucus.
Richard Kraus lay back against his pillow, catching his breath for a moment before he said, "I suppose I should ask how you got hurt." He turned slightly toward the boy. His face lay in shadow, with only a stripe of light across his lips. "Do you know something, Kurt? I can't really think about that now. I can't really care." His mouth pressed shut, then opened again. The tip of his tongue slid along his upper lip. "That's one thing about being sick. It makes you look inside. After a while what's outside doesn't matter anymore. You get selfish."
Kurt stared at his father and tried to understand how he felt. That must have been why he had never said anything about the process. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it was like for his father, what it was like to face the future and see it shrink down to months, then weeks, then less. "I've wanted to talk to you about-"
"About the rest of your life."
He reached for his father's hand again, touched it, felt it pull away.
Richard Kraus's lips pressed together, relaxed, pressed together again. "The truth is, Kurt, I just don't give a damn."
Kurt's face felt stiff and stran�
�ge to him. He was glad it was dark in the room. He heard the drone of his father's voice; he heard it say, "I spent the last of my passion the day I knew you were immortal." The voice stopped, then started again, heavier and slower, in a tone the boy would never forget. "I wanted very much to kill you."
The words were knives and ice. And Eric too? the thought screamed. And Eric too? He sat in the blackness. He sat and stared and found a voice, lower, calmer than he would have believed. "Why didn't you?"
"I didn't have the strength."
He stood up. Suddenly an overwhelming weakness struck him and he clutched the back of the chair for support. He squeezed the chair with numbing fingers; he squeezed out the words. "I'm glad you didn't." His new-found voice was smooth ice. "Because, now I'm going to live forever. I'm going to watch you die."
He turned and walked to the door. He stood there with his hand on the knob, staring toward the bed, toward the silent man who lay there. Part of him wanted to take it all back, run to the bed and cry, "I didn't mean it." But something in him, something cold and rigid, held him back, and he opened the door and walked out.
Chapter 7
The bulletin had been repeated hourly for nearly a week on the world and national news. Broadcast in all languages, it was duplicated in sign language and subtitles. It emerged on flexi-sheets from home computers. It was brailled. The message assaulted the ear from public transportation speakers and interrupted piped-in music.
NOTICE
As a result of the current emergency, it has become necessary to admit all citizens under the age of eighteen years to protective custody. All children are to be taken to neighborhood collecting points on SAFETY DAY. Children will then be escorted to designated encampments by government representatives. This is a temporary measure. All children will be returned to their parents as soon as possible. Failure of adults to comply with this ruling or to hinder its enforcement has been declared by World Coalition a felony bearing the penalty of fine and imprisonment.