by Sarah Noffke
When the doors open everyone empties out. I remain frozen. Not seeing. Content with sliding up against the walls of the elevator. Sinking into a safe place inside a dark room in my subconscious. Instead, I remain still, watching fuzzy figures lumber away. The smell of burning flesh is stuck in my nose. A violent shiver reaches into my being cutting parts of me. The silver doors are almost closed, trapping me inside the box alone. And still I can’t move. Can hardly will oxygen into my lungs. A hand grabs the door pressing it back. His eyes reach out to me, trying to capture my attention and I swim in a sea of blue.
“Come on, Roya,” Aiden says, his voice gentle. He tugs the sleeve of the white coat I’m wearing, careful not to touch me, coaxing me out of the elevator. Like a dog on a leash I allow him to lead me a few feet. And then a force crashes down on me so violently that inside and outside I crumble. My emotions and mind feel like they’ve finally unloaded the strain of holding up a boulder. And the only option is to collapse. Against my every effort my legs sag and I almost fall to the ground. Aiden catches me, scooping me into his arms, cradling me against him. My head slumps beside his shoulder as he carries me down the silver hallway. His heartbeat assures me life still exists in the world. And his words assure that maybe life still exists within me. “It’s all right, Roya. Everything’s over. You’re safe. So safe.”
Gentle as a lamb, Aiden lays me down in one of the beds in the infirmary. I’m only aware of some things, like the look of concern in his eyes, and a dull beeping sound in the distance. My thoughts are clouded somehow. I’m stuck in a weird consciousness, like I’m sheathed behind a layer of plastic.
“She almost passed out just now,” Aiden informs someone, pushing hair back from my face. I want to look at him but my eyes stay locked on the ceiling. Unable to navigate anywhere else.
“She’s in emotional shock,” Shuman’s voice replies.
“What can we do?” Aiden asks, his fear pushing my insides around.
“Nothing. She has to come out of it on her own,” Shuman says and I sense or see her clap a hand on Aiden’s shoulder as he kneels down lower to my bed. “For now you must leave her. There is much work to be done to reinforce the Institute.”
Aiden agrees with a reluctant nod, eyes hovering over me anxiously. And when he turns and leaves, I lose my motivation to remain conscious. I float away.
♦
When I awake, a part of me stays asleep. I walk through the infirmary. Ignore the calls at my back. Trudge through the hallways. Take the elevator. And disappear.
Even when I show up at meal times or walk through the corridors, I’m gone.
♦
It had been just over a week since the devastation to the Institute happened and nothing felt normal or like it ever had a chance of returning to that. We had no leader, no one delivering mail or goods. Everywhere were broken fixtures and columns, patched walls, and places where the bloodstains refused to come out of the blue carpet. Ren and Shuman were now making regular appearances at meal times, which just made what they were doing feel more contrived. They were trying to boost our confidence and prove there were still reliable people left at the Institute who the Lucidites could believe in if hard times returned.
Rations and morale were running low for everyone as we ate our rice and frozen vegetables. Most people wondered when the submarine would return to the surface of the Earth for fresh foods. I wondered when my father would return from his catatonic state and take back the reins that belonged to him and no one else.
He broke. The unbreakable man broke. During the battle something in Trey fractured and now the light inside him was extinguished like a burnt-out bulb. His injuries had been treated and Mae was certain he’d make a full physical recovery, but she couldn’t fix what had cracked inside him.
Trey was released from the infirmary and escorted straight to the mental ward. There the nice therapist with the wiry hair and droopy eyelids observed him, scribbling notes on a clipboard. Nurses in lavender scrubs made sure he was bathed and his needs met. Trey was a fighter. I knew that. But there was now a look in his eyes that said he was tired of fighting. The staff in the mental ward didn’t know what to do to wake Trey up, to reinsert the life inside him. And although I was moving around and feeding myself, I was as lifeless as him, so I definitely had no answers.
I visited him every day, sometimes with Joseph, but mostly alone. The conversation was nonexistent, since he wasn’t propelling it like he normally did. Mostly I just sat with him, silently reading and watching him in his vegetative state.
And every day Aiden was waiting for me outside the mental ward. He walked me back to my room, not saying a word usually. His presence was a comfort to me, and I wanted to allow more from him, but I was afraid his hands would feel like Chase’s on me. I was afraid he would touch me and think of how I kissed Chase with such intensity. I was afraid we were ruined. And there was no going public about a relationship to Trey, since he was hardly alive. In one hour, the events that led to Zhuang and Chase’s deaths warped us all. I never expected that by ridding myself of my enemies I’d ruin a place in me. Nothing comes without a price though.
Aiden knew I was lost, just like my father. Just like Joseph was lost. Aiden knew it and for several days he only walked with me, never voicing the obvious. Yesterday, though, when we paused at my door he leaned against the wall, staring at me with sorrowful eyes. “Is there more I can do? To make you feel better?”
“The problem is everything you do makes me feel better,” I said, slumping against the opposite wall.
“And why is that a problem?”
“Being happy right now feels like laughing at a funeral.”
Aiden nodded, instant understanding in his eyes. “I know firsthand that when you lose people you want to push everything that isn’t that grief away. You remember how I told you that I punished myself with my parents’ deaths, right?”
I nodded, displaced from my own anguish by a living memory that surfaced in his eyes.
“I can’t tell you how to grieve,” he continued. “All I can tell you is that when you do smile again it will not mean that you don’t still miss them.” The lump in his throat bobbed a few times before he managed to swallow it. A tragic smile actually laced across his lips. “I miss them every single day, but it does get easier.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
I don’t just want Trey to wake up, I need him to. The longer he stays locked away in his head, the longer I feel I’ll never find the part I lost after the battle. His recovery reflects so much on my own. And it reflects on Joseph too. During the battle we all cut out a part of ourselves in order to ensure our triumph. And not just the things we’d done, but the deaths we witnessed are scars on our souls. A person isn’t built to witness so much tragedy. That’s how I know without a doubt that war is wrong. If I’m pardoned from this pain, given a second chance to live, then I’ll fight no more. If my clairvoyance returns, then I’ll use it to stop every single violent act I can, because I’m utterly fed up with humans killing each other. To hell with the Lucidites’ laws, I’ll dream travel and intervene each time war is imminent.
But for now, I’m not a person who makes change. I can’t even news report, since my pain has shut down my sixth sense. Right now I’m a lost soul, but I keep searching…knowing there has to be a way to be found.
Every day I make out-of-the-way trips to haunt the lobby. No one comes here. Most make out-of-the-way detours to avoid this area. That’s how I know it’s a safe place to visit my emotions. The display case, which used to dazzle with hundreds of shiny objects, is boarded up now. The walls around it are coated in soot. The smell of fire damage drenches the air. All of the debris from the fight has been cleaned up and removed––everything but the leather couch that Shuman managed to peel herself out from underneath.
While I haunt the lobby I think about how hard it is to believe Patrick will never knock at my door. He will never grin and tip his hat at me. Harder still is that he’ll never de
liver another package from Bob and Steve. But I don’t want their packages; I want the love that accompanied them. I want the support that exuded in every single one of their notes. What I want is Bob and Steve alive. I want the chance that’s been stolen from us.
Every day I question my pain over their deaths, belittling it. I tell myself that to love and miss someone I only knew a short time is ridiculous. And still this reasoning doesn’t lessen the pain. The thing is, just because we’d only been acquainted for a short time didn’t mean we weren’t close. Half of my heartache is that they’d died so early into our promising relationship. Forever and ever I’ll suffer from what could have been. What would our lives have been like if they’d lived? Where would we have vacationed together? What would our summers have been like? What would we do on Sundays? At least if we’d had a year or two or ten, I’d have something to miss, but all I have is unfathomable aspirations that will never come to pass.
“I’ve never wanted to rob someone so badly of the pain I feel from them,” he says in a careful tone from the other side of the lobby.
I don’t look up from my hands, where I’ve let the tears fall and dry.
Pushing back uncomfortably on the leather couch, I try to settle into a position that feels normal or comfortable or at least passable for human. Finally, I bring my eyes up to meet his. George wears a gray hoodie and looks somehow cozy as he stands a cautious distance away.
There’s a question in his eyes and I nod to him, instinctively knowing what he wants. He moves across the space, squatting beside the couch looking at my hands and then my eyes. I may have let him close, but I can’t be touched right now. And I know that’s the second question in his eyes. It hurts to look at him, but that’s true for everything I do lately. Truly, human contact just makes everything more difficult and that’s why I’ve shunned it off.
“Roya,” he says, loosening a breath. “I don’t have to leave the Institute. I could stay.”
I blink in surprise. “Why would you want to stay here?” I say, motioning around the lobby.
“Because I’m a Lucidite, and this place needs people who want to rebuild.”
“That’s honorable. I should have expected that from you,” I say, wishing I had something to do with my hands. “But this place is also a prison of emotions right now. More than anything, I don’t want you suffering from all of the sorrow you must be feeling from everyone.”
“The only grief I’m feeling that’s unbearable is yours. And that’s only because I love you so much.” He must sense that his words obliterate a part of my heart because he closes his eyes, looking deterred.
“You shouldn’t stay here for me,” I say after too long of a pause. That’s not what I wanted to say, but it’s what came out. Rejecting him right now is scoring parts of me that are still intact, but cutting him loose is the only thing I know to do. Taking a strained breath, I slide off the sofa and walk until I’m face-to-face with the boarded-up display case. Somewhere inside there are the ashes of the shirt I was forced to take off. An act of humiliation by Chase to disarm everyone in the room. Funny how stripping people of simple things weakens them.
As I let these thoughts reel through my brain, I hear George get up and do what he does best—try again. He’s going to try and make me feel better or try and make things between us better.
“What if I stayed here for me? What if I stayed because loving you is the only thing that’s ever made me feel alive?” he says to my back.
I force myself to turn, to look into his bronze eyes. “You didn’t want to be with me when I loved you with half a heart. I don’t even have that left anymore. You’ll be thoroughly unhappy with what I can offer you.”
“Maybe, but at this point, if I can make you better, I’ll do it. I’ll break my own heart to give you half. To repair yours.”
“You think I’d ever let you do that? I care about you too much. I want you to be happy. I want you to stop putting me first. I want you to live your life and stop looking to me to fulfill something in you.” I take in a long unsatisfying breath. “I want you to leave.”
“Roya,” he says in that stern voice I love so much, but can’t fully allow myself to appreciate right now, “I know you’re trying to save me, but not from this place. You’re trying to save me from breaking my heart again. Shouldn’t that be my decision?”
“You should go to Dartmouth. If you don’t go now, you might never. You and I both know that you need this. I can’t give you what you want, especially now. I don’t want you to stick around here and give me the selfish distance I’m going to ask from you. Leave.” His emotions push across the room, piercing my heart. “Please leave and go and live your life. You deserve to be happy, and I don’t think you’re going to find that here. You definitely won’t find it with me, not like how you deserve.”
“The irony is that you won’t find happiness with me, which is why I’d never be happy,” he says.
“Maybe the truth is, I will never be happy,” I say.
“I don’t think so…more than anything, I hope not.” He takes my hand, and I allow it, knowing he’ll keep a boundary between us that I need right now. Bringing the back of my hand up, he kisses it once. “I’ll always love you. I’ll always return for you.”
♦
For another week my life progresses into a cylinder of nothingness. George leaves, going away to college. I fold the frequency adjuster into a box with promises to put it back on if he ever returns. I don’t regret that I encouraged him to leave. I regret that I couldn’t tell him the one thing he deserved to hear. After everything that’s happened, expressing my love to someone is like marking them with a curse.
Joseph and I are both lost in a daze and can’t find a way to return to the land of the waking. We’re our father in almost every single way. We’re zombies. Although Joseph and I decided to continue to move through the Institute, we’re effectively doing what Trey is doing—we’re paralyzed to the future. Joseph and I are afraid to act. We’re afraid to live. Very much like our father, we’re afraid to do anything because every time we do we cause pain to the people around us and that’s too much to bear at this point. Too much pain has occurred. We must have all taken a silent vow in that elevator to stop causing pain, and therefore, on some level, we all three stopped existing.
♦
The submarine has been repaired and a new operator hired. For some reason it signals hope to me, like if things can physically leave and enter the Institute, then there’s hope for my own healing process. That’s the reason I go to the dry dock. I had no reason to visit it before now, never curious about the way Bob and Steve’s packages entered the Institute.
And just when I thought the Institute had no more secrets to reveal, I step into a new dimension of this world. The arched, tunneled room is the size of a warehouse. Underwater lights illuminate the greenish water that half bathes the long, black missile-shaped submarine. I feel like I’m standing next to a whale and I kind of want it to swallow me whole right now. Stairs submerged under the water next to the submarine remind me of how this place transforms when needed. And I’m completely deflated to know that being here, seeing the submarine about to take its maiden voyage after the repairs, doesn’t make me feel better. It reminds me that I’m half submerged in a reality. And as much as I’d like to, I can’t surface completely from it. Disheartened, I whip around and charge straight into Ren. He’s wheeling a suitcase beside him, another one tucked up under his other arm.
“What are you doing here?” he says, the usual disgust not coating his words.
“Not finding what I was looking for,” I say dully. “What are you doing here?” I eye the bag under his arm, the traveling coat draped over the rolling case.
“I’m leaving,” he says with a shrug.
“Oh. For good?”
“Yes, for good. If you’re lucky you’ll never be graced with another of my handsome sneers.”
I almost laugh. Leave it to Ren to almost pull that emotion
out of me after everything. The saltwater lingers through the air, a welcome scent. A promising one. “But…”
“I promised a length of service to Trey and I’ve fulfilled it. It’s time I move on.”
“So you served the Institute all these years to make up for…for what you did?”
“No, I served your father. He asked me to help secure a certain future. For most, I would have told them to piss off, even after all I’d done. But Trey isn’t most people. Maybe one day you’ll see that.”
“Right now he’s hardly a person. How can you leave, when he’s in this state?”
Ren gives a knowing smile. “Missy, I’m not going to be the one to wake him up. I can guarantee that.”
“But…what is? I mean…how?” I don’t know why I keep speaking in abbreviated sentences, like a kid giving a speech in front of a distracted classroom.
Ren’s eyes fall on my forearm to the scar left there when he cut me during our first meeting. “You know, Mae could heal that ugly scar. One less blemish on you.”
“That’s all right. It’s a reminder of when I first learned this world was real.”
“Aw, you almost sound sentimental.”
“And it also reminds me that one day I should return the favor to you.”
“No, Roya, I’d say we’re finally even.” The marks around Ren’s throat have mostly faded but are still reminders of the strangulation which almost ended him. The one Chase stopped because of a convoluted plan which didn’t work and then did. If I’d acted faster, maybe more wouldn’t have died. Maybe Trey wouldn’t have been damaged so much.
“Can I offer you some advice?” Ren says, dropping his attention to his fingernails and then staring straight at me.
I brave myself for a diatribe spiked with insults.
“Most people aren’t happy. They sing songs like they are. Make up cute little stories. Post pics of the rare times when life wasn’t dreadful. Most people are stomaching this whole affair called life. Are these people complainers? Probably. Most are. But they’re also just blokes who’re too afraid to take a risk. So they live lives in a redundant cycle of complacent apathy. Then these people wallow around day after day in their unhappiness. The more you do that, the more you lose sight of the chances you could take to make things better.