The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

It was almost like sleeping on a bed last night.  A thin pad of blankets and a pillow make a wonderful difference to hard floors and lumpy packs.  I don’t think I’ve slept that well – or that long – in weeks.  The others were talking quietly when I woke up, and that was a comforting sound.  I just lay there for a little while, listening to them, to the cadence of their different voices.

They were talking about the doctor.  About how it might take him days yet to get over the withdrawal. 

Masterson started begging for more drugs last night.  Begging to go back up to the reeking rooms upstairs, he had a secret stash, he’d be willing to share.  Please, please, he just needed some more, it hurt so much. 

I did feel sorry for him.  He has his own winds that he’s prey to, only his are on the inside.  Ours are on the outside, blowing us from disaster to disaster.  All he wants is some relief from the pain.

We need him, and we need him sober. But I couldn’t bring myself to be the monster, to say no to him, to lock him away because it’s best for everyone.  Who am I to do that?  Who am I to force someone to my will, just because I can?  Even with Nugget still fast asleep, even with Ben barely able to lie still with his burning chest.  Even with the support of two big guys and their strong arms.

Sally took him into the next room when he started whining and moaning so loudly that none of us could sleep.  I think she stayed with him for the whole night.  There’s no lock on the door.  There’s no-one holding him back.  He can go and get his fix if he wants it.  It feels like giving up, but sometimes you can’t save a person from themselves.  Sometimes, it’s up to them to do it. 

Will he be sober in time to make a difference?  Will he get sober at all?  I don’t know.  It’s not up to me, and I hate it.

Nugget woke up.  I can’t believe it.  She just stirred and opened her eyes, without warning.

Sax was closest – he usually is – and the first the rest of us knew was his deep voice saying, “Well, hello there, little one.”  Then he asked for a bottle of water and gave her a drink, very gingerly.

She’s still pale and so terribly thin.  She is sitting up, though, and she’s gone through most of a bottle of water in the last little while.  I gave her a small section of a muesli bar to eat, to get her stomach off to an easy start.  It hasn’t had much in it for a while now.  She ate very slowly, but she put it all away.

We asked what her name is, and she just looked at us.  She doesn’t seem to remember the attack, though she recognises us, I think.  Mostly, she is sitting and watching us, drinking us in.

It’s hard to believe that this is a good thing.  I mean, of course it’s good, but there’s a part of me that is wondering if it’s the prelude to something awful.  Waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Wondering if maybe she has woken up only to leave us properly.

I shouldn’t think like that.  I’m not wishing it on her – of course I’m not.  I should be smiling and thankful, I should be walking with a bouncier step, like Dillon is right now.  I should take this as a sign to be optimistic.  This is a good thing.  She’s brighter than she ever has been, and she has been awake for hours – the longest since I’ve known her.

Maybe she won’t die.  Maybe she’ll make it.  After all this time being carried and cared for, after making it all the way to our ruined mecca, she might finally be getting better.

I feel too old and dented to hope, but I want to.

Doctor Masterson is feeling better.  He came in to see us today, standing straight and looking alert.  A little too bright-eyed; I’m fairly sure that he got some of this drugs.  He didn’t smell good – I think he did something disgusting in the room next door.  I guess you can’t have everything.

He almost bounced over to examine the injured and the rest of us followed him; I don’t think any of us trusted this new, alert doctor.  I was a little afraid of what he might do, due to the drugs.

He seemed to be thorough and on-topic, though; he chattered the whole time, and it was all about the patients.  He looked into Nugget’s eyes and asked her some questions.  She didn’t speak, but she did shake her head in answer.  I heard him take Sally aside and tell her that the kid might have some permanent damage from the impact to her skull.  That she might not ever speak or come ‘quite right’ again.  I don’t know what I think about that, yet.

He made faces over Ben’s burns and showed us how to dress them properly, and then went through the whole thing again for Sax.  There are no painkillers left, he said, but if we keep the wounds clean and dry, they should heal just fine.  I’m not entirely convinced – there was something in the way he said that, entirely too cheerful – but it’s worth trying.

Finally, he looked at my arm.  I didn’t really want him to, even after all this time of struggling to get here, fighting to get seen to.  I was afraid of what he’d say, what he’d find; so afraid that I almost refused entirely.  I wanted to, I really did.  I caught myself holding my arm against my chest, looking at him, ready to tell him no.

I knew I was being stupid, though.  So I took a deep breath and I let him.  It’s been days since it was unwrapped; the bruising is much less vivid than it was the last time I saw it.  My forearm doesn’t look like a graffiti artist vomited on it any more, though it’s still weirdly yellow and green in places.  It still hurts like hell, especially when he poked it.  No X-ray machines, he said, so he had to do it the hard way.  ‘Painful way’ is what he meant.

He rubbed his fingertips over a spot in the middle of my forearm and I couldn’t breathe.  It hurt so much I was seeing spots and I thought my heart had stopped entirely.  “There it is,” he said, and did it again.  I pulled out of his hands then; that was all the motion I could force my body into.  I thought I was going to pass out.  The only reason I didn’t fall down was that I was already sitting.

He was talking – babbling again – but I couldn’t hear the words.  Blood rushed in my ears; all I could hear was my heartbeat and the fire in my arm.  I couldn’t even see him.

Was he that rough with the others?  To the boys with their burns?  I can’t imagine what they must have felt.  Why the hell did we let a high doctor look at us?  Why did we trust him – because of his stained white coat?

He tried to wrap my arm up again and I wouldn’t let him.  Don’t touch me, get away from me.  I might have been more forgiving if he hadn’t poked it twice, on purpose.  It still aches now, hours later, where he prodded and rubbed on the bone.

He backed off.  It took a few minutes and several deep breaths for the blinding pain to subside, and by then Thorpe was telling him that it was about time he got the hell out and back to his stinking den upstairs.

I still had questions; I didn’t want the doctor to go.  But Thorpe was escorting him out of the room and I couldn’t fight both of them.  I just sat where I was and watched them, with a creeping, numbing feeling sneaking out from my stomach.  Like everything was wrong.

Dillon came up to me a little while after that and sat down next to me.  He had been out to check the supply rooms again, and he’d brought something back for me.  He didn’t say anything, he just gave it to me: a proper forearm brace, with velcro straps.

I hadn’t wrapped my arm up after the doctor looked at it; I didn’t want anything to touch it.  And he’d gone and got me what I needed for it.  On his own, without being asked.  When I looked at him, he seemed nervous and shrugged at me, answering a question I hadn’t asked.

Dillon told me that the doctor had said my arm had definitely been cracked, but it was knitting and just needed support.  That’s why he went out and got the brace.

I put it on – it feels so much better with it on – and then gave him a hug with my good arm.  He didn’t know what to do with that, and it was a bit awkward, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I’m not good with kids.  They’re like little aliens with desires and expectations that I can’t quite get hold of. I thought teenaged boys were supposed to be brats; Dillon hasn’t been like that once.  He’s trying so hard with me.  His gift was so thoughtful that I burst into tears all over him in the middle of the hug, and he patted my back until I was done. 

I never thought I’d say this about a kid, but I’m glad he’s here. 

It feels like we’re in limbo now.  A grey-walled, dim-lit limbo with chocolate and caffeinated beverages we’re sucking down at a great rate.

The injured are being tended, and Nugget seems to be losing that awful pallor.  The food might be the reason for that.  The little one is so thin that she seems to be made of bone and air.

The doctor’s visit seems to have achieved nothing.  He didn’t do anything we hadn’t already been doing, and all he told us was what we already knew, or had been hoping was true.

He allayed fears, I suppose. I won’t worry about my arm so much any more; I can feel the lack of that crawling, nibbling rat in my abdomen.  The rat has lots of friends still there, but that one is gone.  It’ll heal in a few weeks.  It’ll be okay.

So maybe he was of some use after all.

Thorpe asked me why I didn’t get the doctor to look at my back, and I just stared at him.  I had no idea what he was talking about at first.  When I realised that I still had the scraps of a dressing taped on it, I laughed.

I think it’s the first time in a long time that I was honestly amused.  Really laughing, without any hysteria or the threat of tears.  Of course, Thorpe didn’t take it well; his face closed down like a trap even as I tried to explain.  It didn’t help that I saw that Ben was watching us and smiling; he knew why it was funny.  He asked me about it once, forever ago.

I had forgotten about the tattoo again.  So much has happened that I hadn’t even felt it being taut, or painful, though sometimes it itched.  Now it’s healed and doesn’t bother me at all.

Thorpe didn’t find it funny.  I think he thought I was laughing at him.  He stormed off and I felt a little bit guilty.  Sometimes he’s so touchy.

I asked Ben to take the dressing off for me.  It was so good to feel the air on my skin.  It’s funny that sometimes you don’t realise how much you’ve missed something until you get it back again.  He said that it looks good, that the design hasn’t been damaged despite all the abuse of the past few weeks.

It’s something.  It’s something that this whole mess hasn’t ruined.  I can’t see it without a mirror, of course, but I know it’s there.  Maybe I’ll go find a bathroom and take a look, see this fire bird rising for myself.

For some reason, I feel lighter.

I should have paid more attention.  I should have known that this place has a different meaning for one of our number.  I should have known not to let her look after the doctor, not to let her go off on her own.

Sally has been missing since yesterday.  It’s hard to say who noticed first; I was just starting to wonder why the group seemed small, and then Sax said she wasn’t here.  No-one can remember when we saw her last.

As soon as we realised she was gone, I knew where we’d find her.  I remember the way she used to claw at her arms and shiver, even though it’s not cold.  She had always hung towards the back of the group, but when we got to the hospital, she was up at the front.  I hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but I should have.  I should have noticed her more, the way she looked around here with alert eyes, the way she offered to help me find supplies.  The way she was quiet when we found the doctor and his fellow escapees.

I guess I was too wound up in myself, my problems, and the shattering of my own hopes to notice hers blossoming.

Thorpe said that we shouldn’t bother to go get her.  That she’d made her choice and to hell with her.  And as awful as it sounds, I agreed with him.  Sally’s an adult (though I don’t know how old she actually is), and can make her own decisions.  But she’s still one of us.  She might need our help.  And if we leave her up there, she’ll die; they don’t have any supplies beyond the drugs.  Nothing to live on but plenty to die with.  I couldn’t live with that, with just leaving her to a short fate up there.

There was a huge argument.  I think the only one who didn’t get involved was Nugget; the girl hasn’t said a word yet and I don’t know if she even understood what was going on.  Even Dillon weighed in, defending me when Thorpe started to loom over me.  I think he was trying to protect me, a terrier against the tiger.  The tiger ignored him, of course, but I appreciate that he tried.  And as much as Thorpe might tower over me, I don’t think he’d ever actually do anything to hurt me.  Either way, I wasn’t going to let him intimidate me.

It’s not like I’m going to go up there and drag her back down here, or lock her in the next room until she’s clean again.  I just have to try.  I have to try to get her back, to pull her out of that stinking place, to save her from starving to death while she’s too high to care. 

Ben backed me up, and Sax said that Sally had to make her own choices.  And he’s right!  I don’t want to force her.  But I don’t want to give up on her.  I can’t.  What if she was duped?  What if this isn’t what she wanted?  What if she ends up like the girl with the empty eyes?

This group, the seven of us, we’ve looked after each other through this nightmare.  That’s how we got this far, that’s why we’re still alive.  Thorpe might ask what the hell it matters, but we’re here and we’re doing all right.  Not many can say that.  So many were lost, so we have to hold on to everyone we have while they’re still here.  We have to.

He went quiet and just stared at me as if I had just said something terrible.  “Fine, do what the hell you like,” he said, and walked out.  I wanted to go after him, I wanted to fix it, even while I was still angry with him for trying to write her off.  I don’t know why he was so angry with me.  Sally is a person, not an asset.  There was no point pursuing it with Thorpe, not then, so the door closed behind him with an empty swish.

Ben and I are going to go upstairs, to see if we can find Sally.  He’s feeling well enough and says that he wants the walk.  Sax disapproves and is scowling, but he won’t get in the way.  I think there’s something personal about this for him; I’ve told him that I’m going to leave it up to her, but he still doesn’t want us to go up there.

I’ve asked Dillon to stay behind and look after Nugget.  I don’t want the kid to see any more of what’s up there and he likes to have responsibility.  I told him to go look for Thorpe if he isn’t back in the next half an hour, too.  Just in case.

Almost time to go.  Time to see if our group is splintering.  Time to see if we’ve lost one more of our already small number.  I put the knife in my bag; that’s not what I’m going to do up there.  I don’t need it.  I just need her to come back.

Yesterday was harder than I thought it was going to be.  The doctor’s den was as wretched as I remember, and quieter.  Some of the people there hadn’t moved since the first time we were up there – literally in a couple of cases; they had an awful kind of stiffness about them.  I feel like we should do something about it – something more – but I don’t know what.

It took us a while to find Sally.  It was getting dark and we only had one flashlight with us.  I found the cubicle where Dillon saw the doctor; the girl was still there, looking like she was sleeping except for the grey tone to her skin.  If she wasn’t dead the first time I saw her, she is now.

We found our lost one in another cubicle, scooted down between a cupboard and the wall, folded up inside the circle of her own arms.  There were tears on her cheeks, but her eyes were disconnected.  I looked at Ben and he shrugged, motioning me forward, as if I would be better for this.

I don’t know why.  I’ve never been on drugs – not like this – and I don’t know her that well.  The group doesn’t speak about the time before this; no-one wants to dig it up, and that means that we don’t really know each other.  Not well enough to know where on earth to begin a conversation like this.

I sat down next to her and propped my braced arm on my knees awkwardly.  I had to try a couple of times to get her attention; a touch to her arm was what made her finally blink at me, wide pupils attempting to fit the whole of me inside.  It took her a moment to smile and say my name, and it was a relief; she was still in there, still floating somewhere within the world’s reach.

“We missed you downstairs,” I told her.  I didn’t know where else to start.

“Had to come,” she said.  “Promised me I could fly again.”  That made her smile dreamily; I was losing her again.

“You can’t fly forever, Sally.”

Her face crumpled then, her head bowing so that the dregs of her hair fell over her face.  I felt like I’d just popped a child’s balloon.  “I know,” she said.  “But I’m not strong like you.”  She was scraping at her arm again, her nails raising red marks in their wake, the need crawling under her skin.

“Me?  Strong?”  I shook my head; I’m a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m strong.  I’m frightened and I complain, I try and I fail, I scrabble and I don’t know what I’m doing.  “I’m not that strong.”

“Then how do you do it?  How do you keep going?  How do you stand this?  You don’t understand.  None of you understand.”

She was curling up on herself, withdrawing, trying to hide inside that inner buzz.  From the marks she was making on her arm, it was fading now.  I hoped that meant that she could still hear me.  I’m not experienced with this kind of thing and I don’t know the things that you’re supposed to say.  I looked over at Ben, but he shrugged again and seemed as clueless as I felt.  She had asked me questions, so I decided to start there.

“I keep going because I have to.  If we stop… well, we’ll die, just like all those other people.  And I don’t want that.  I’m not ready to give up yet, even though… even though sometimes I want to.  Even though it all seems too much, even though it seems pointless.  We’ve come so far, all of us.  And we’re still alive.  That has to mean something.  We have to make it mean something.”

“Make it mean what?  There’s nothin’ left.”

“I… I don’t have all the answers, Sally.  We’ve just gotta keep pushing.  Even though it’s hard, even though none of this is what we want. I’d love to forget about everything, but that’s just not possible.  I wish there was something to take all of this away, too, but this isn’t the answer.”

“Yeah, t’is.”

“Only if you want to die, Sally.  Did you look around up here?”  I could feel myself getting angry, could feel it rising towards my throat so it could spill over her bowed head and defeated shoulders.  But I didn’t want to do that.  I tried to press it back.  “Sally, they’re all dying.  There’s no food or water up here.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s true what they say about addicts: they are all fucking selfish.”  I was losing my temper again and closed my mouth before anything else snapped out.  It was frustration and I knew it.  It was anger at the way she looked like she did the first time I saw her, rather than the girl with the clear grey eyes I had been used to seeing over the past couple of weeks.  I should have paid attention; I should have tried to talk to her before this.

I swallowed and tried to latch onto something else; anything else.  “There are people downstairs who miss you, Sally.  We don’t want to lose you.  We’ll help you.  Just… just don’t forget that.  Don’t forget about us.”

She tucked her face down into the circle of her arms, her shoulders hunching up defensively.  There was a spurt of anger again, furious that she could dismiss us so easily.  Doesn’t it make a difference that we cared enough to come up here?  Doesn’t any of this make a difference to her?

I stood up then; there wasn’t much left to say.  She knew what she was doing enough to make a choice and I didn’t know how to change it.  I think I was clumsy; my hands feel too big and heavy for this kind of thing.  I felt like the things I really should have said slipped through my fingers and were trodden underfoot as I stepped away from her.

“I’m not strong enough.”  It was very quiet, but I heard her say it.

“All you gotta do is walk downstairs, Sally.  That’s all.”  I knew it wasn’t that simple, but in a lot of ways it was.  Walk away from this, go down to where people were ready and willing to accept her again.  “We’ll help you with the rest.”

She curled up into her shell again, huddling tightly, and I knew the conversation was over. 

So Ben and I left.  I made it out into the stairwell before I burst into tears and he had to put an arm around me until I calmed down.  I wanted this to be easy; I wanted something here to be easy.  Talk to her, convince her that she should come down and join us again, that she didn’t really want to kill herself.  It seemed so simple when I was arguing with Thorpe, but what reasons did I have to give her to stay alive?  What hope was there that this would get better? 

I didn’t have any of those things myself.  All I had was the knowledge that I have to carry on, that I’m too stubborn to give up just yet.  All I knew was to keep on keeping on, one foot in front of the other.  All I had was a blind belief that there has to be something more out there, somewhere in the melting darkness.

Ben said I did the right thing.  He said that I had tried and that was enough, but if it had been enough, it would have worked.  Instead, I had failed again.

This is Sally’s strong one, reduced to tears in a stairwell and wondering if stubbornness is enough to carry us past all of our dead hopes.  

• Theme song: Want - Disturbed

I had to go back up there again today.  It was the last thing I wanted, but I couldn’t sit in that room any more.  We’re all catching our breaths and resting, but I’m still not good at staying still.  My mind keeps running over things and coming back to one question; the question that none of us have voiced out loud.  Not even Thorpe.  The question we’re all thinking about.

What do we do now?

We need purpose, we need direction.  We need to do something more than just think about where we’re going to get more food and water from (though we need to start thinking about that soon, too).  Like Sally, we need more of a reason for putting up with all this than just being alive.  We need a point to it all.

It’s so easy to get sucked into the bleakness of this place.  It’s so easy to see our hopes shrivelling up and dying here, like everything else, like the dream that this place once was.  It’s like a riptide, circling around us, sucking us down one by one and only letting us up once we’ve tasted a lungful of it.  The longer we stay here, the more I think we might just drift into its walls and forget that we’re still alive.

There was only one person that I could think of who might be able to help us figure out what to do next.  I didn’t expect him to tell us where to go or what we should be doing, but he might be able to give us some information to help us make those choices.  I hoped he would be able to help us see that we had choices.  Doctor Masterson.

So I trekked back up the eight flights of stairs today.  Dillon came with me; I never seem to be able to go anywhere on my own at the moment.  Ben was going to come too, but I told him to rest.  His chest is still bothering him badly.  I didn’t really want the kid with me either, knowing the sort of thing we might find, but I couldn’t think of a good reason to stop him.  I kept a close eye on him while we were up there and tried not to let him see the worst of it.

We passed the man who was giggling at the stripe on the wall the first time we were up there.  He was lying against the wall this time, breathing shallow and slow, staring into space.  He seemed paler and thinner than the last time I saw him, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it was since he ate. 

I was appalled to think that we hadn’t even offered these people some food, and that it had been this long before it even occurred to me.  What does that say about me?  They’ve chosen to do this to themselves, but does that mean that we shouldn’t try to save them?  Would we only be prolonging their fate?  I don’t know, I really don’t, and I hate these mental circles.  I know that the group wouldn’t want to give up our tiny food supply to these people and I don’t blame them.  We’re barely scraping by ourselves. 

But it was still there, that niggling feeling that I should be doing something to help these people.  It’s not just because Sally is up there now.  All through the city, I helped to pull people from the wreckage, set them on their feet and on their way.  I stopped people dying, I made things better.  But now… now they are standing in the fire and they don’t care.  They’re almost welcoming it, and I don’t know what to do about that.  It tears me up inside and I have no idea how to make it better. 

What was I suppose to do?  Dillon was there and I didn’t want him to start thinking about these things.  So I didn’t say anything; I just pulled us on to find the doctor.  He’s too young to stand there and think about how this man will probably be dead by dinnertime. 

It took us a little while to find him.  We didn’t see Sally; I wondered where she’d gone to, but we weren’t up there for her this time.  I didn’t really want Dillon to see her like that, either.

Masterson was sitting on a gurney pulled up by the window, gazing out.  He was smaller than I remembered, the spark gone from his eyes.  There was no bounce in him any more; instead, there was a heaviness to the way he turned his head when I said his name.  It took him a moment to focus on me, to struggle out through the fog.

I was glad to be standing by the window; the smell in there was only getting worse.  I tried to forget about how he rebounded about the room downstairs, gleefully dispensing advice about awful injuries.  I tried to forget about how he poked at my arm where it hurt, twice.  I tried to forgive him, but that part was hard.  I had to wait for his attention to come around onto me before I could ask him what I had come to ask him.

“Doctor Masterson, where did everyone go?”

He contemplated my second head as if it might hold some inspiration.  “We’re still here,” he said finally.

“I know you are.  I mean everyone else.  The other doctors, and nurses.  The other patients.  Where are they?”

“Went away.”  I thought that was more unhelpfulness, but he wasn’t finished.  “Went away when the call came.”

“Call?  What call?”

“Call from up high.  Up high and far away.”

“What did it say?  What was the call?  Doctor?”  He was going vague again, slipping off into the burnt clouds.

“Bad things coming.  Get to safety. Sucked everything dry.  No more generators, no more lights, no more light anywhere. No more help, no more anything.  No more, no more.”  He started rocking a bit at that.

“And everyone just left?  It wasn’t calling them somewhere?”  I could feel my stomach heading for my feet at that idea.

“Some went to find out what it meant.  The rest’re just gone.”

I had to mull that over for a moment before I could work out what to ask him next.  “They went to where the call came from?”

“Yes.”

“Where is that?  Do you know where it came from?”

He shook his head slowly, his eyes drifting back to the window.

“Why didn’t you go?  Doctor, why are you still here?”  I didn’t want him to disconnect again so soon.  It wasn’t enough; I needed more from him.

His eyes moved back to me, suddenly looking like an open wound.  There was such sorrow there, such pain.  His fingers were curling around his elbow, thinking about relief, and his voice was very small.  “They stood out in it.  Like it was a good thing.”

“Who did?”  I was going to ask ‘stood out in what’, but I suspected that I knew the answer to that.  And with his distracted twitches, I wanted to keep him focussed on one question at a time.

“My own, my sweet…  And… and the little one might not ever come right again.  Happy New Year.”  It took me a moment to recognise the words he’d used about Nugget.  His shoulders hunched as he started to draw in on himself.  I realised then that he was wearing a ring, a ring that meant he’d once had a family.  He was trying to tell me that he had had a wife and daughter, and… Happy New Year.  They stood out in the rain.  They had died, melted like Carter and Trevor.  So he’d stayed here, dwelt in this escape from pain, knowing it would kill him eventually.

I patted his arm and told him that I was sorry.  He cried and collapsed on my shoulder, so I patted him some more and held him until he was finished.  He stumbled back when I thanked him, looking around like an injured animal searching for an escape route.  Fingers clawed at his arms, like Sally’s used to do, feeling that underskin itch.

“Come with us,” I said on impulse.  I don’t know what made me say it.  Maybe because he was driven here by personal tragedy, because I knew what was going on in his head now.  And I didn’t want to leave him here, I didn’t want to go knowing that he’ll starve to death one way or another.  I wanted to help.

The look he gave me was brimful of horror at the notion.  He shook his head and backed away until he bumped into a gurney.  His eyes seemed to think that I was trying to haunt him, to torture him repeatedly. 

Maybe I only wanted to save him because I couldn’t save Sally.  But he wasn’t going to let me succeed with him; he was quite determined to be lost in his pain and his escape from pain.  I took the hint; I drew Dillon away and left him alone.

I looked for Sally on the way out, just in case, but I didn’t see her.

I told the others what the doctor said.  They weren’t impressed – well, Thorpe wasn’t impressed, and he speaks loudly in our small group.  He’s determined to think the worst of everything, it seems. 

There’s something in it, I’m sure of it.  In amongst his ramblings, Masterson knew something that we can use.  He said that people went to the source of the signals, and the patients didn’t just get up and walk out.  A lot of them died, but not all; some are just gone.  Where?  Who took them, and why?

Ben suggested that the call probably came from the Emergency Coordination Centre, the place set up to handle big emergencies.  Like, say, a huge bomb destroying the city and poisoning everything.  The ECC had been coordinating the firefighters and ambulances, before the radios all went dead.  He didn’t know much; Carter had been the one in touch with the organisation, not him or Thorpe.

It’s something.  It’s something for us to focus on.  Somewhere here, there should be the details of the ECC – address, radio details.  The phones are down, so numbers are useless, but the radios used to work.  Ben and Thorpe still have one, though the battery ran down a couple of weeks ago.

I asked Sax if he could rig a charger for it, like he did for my laptop.  Tomorrow we’re gonna try to put the pieces together, see what kind of shape it makes.  Tomorrow we might have a purpose and a place to go again.

There was an awful sound earlier, just after the rain started.  Laughter, echoing loudly in the empty air outside, and then a wet thump. 

I can imagine well enough what it was – the mental images won’t leave me alone.  The fascination of drugged eyes with tinted rainwater, the sensation of flying, of being so terribly free.  Not even feeling skin melting, or the impact with the ground.  Making maniacal, hysterical noises as blood and bone make a Dali painting in reality and bubble away to nothing.

I can’t figure out if that is a good way to go or not.  I can only hope that the cushion of drugs stole away the pain; otherwise, it would be a horror best left uncontemplated.  I would rather not contemplate it as much as I already have.

I wonder if it was Sally.  I wonder if I upset her so much that that’s what she chose to do.  I’m trying not to think like that, but how can I stop?  I didn’t make things better for her, and it’s possible that I made them worse.  I don’t want that to have been her choice.  Never that.

Or Masterson.  I’d be upset if I knew it was him, too.  Now I know about his family, about his pain, I can’t wish harm on him.  Especially not that.  I hope he’s all right, up there in his haze.

We all heard it, sitting in our cosy room and eating our muesli bars.  We all knew what it was, even Nugget; she went and huddled down in a corner, and refused to come out.  We were all thinking about it, imagining that last, doomed flight, like Icarus with his foolish wings. 

This place is sapping our wills.  I could feel it dying in that silence after that fall, feel the air being sucked out of the room.  It was leaving us gasping like fish afraid to go back into the water, twitching reflexively on the carpet.  We were fading, turning into the grey of the walls, into stains on the blankets.

I didn’t like it.  All of a sudden, I wanted to take in a deep breath and scream.  I wanted to get up and run around, I wanted to make noise and splash colour on our faces.  I wanted to be alive and bright and here.

But the hospital was a great weight on me, stealing my courage and audacity, keeping me crosslegged on my blankets as the rain hissed outside.  A thousand snakes making me huddle back from breaking out, like Nugget in the corner.

I looked around, and we all seemed to wear the same face over the same heart.  There was a metal bedpan in the middle of the room with scraps and rags burning in it, our only source of light, casting strange shadows on us.  It reminded me of camping with my dad. 

It’s been years since I’ve even thought about it – we haven’t been camping since I was ten years old.  Out there, it was dark like this, far from the city and the streetlights, starless when it was overcast.  We’d have a fire and uplit faces.  And these strange silences would descend sometimes.  We would listen to the sounds out in the darkness and wonder if there was something there that might eat us.  In those moments, Dad would start a song, something silly and made only for campfires.  We’d all join in and the world outside the firelight would fade away.

It was so incongruous that I smiled, sitting here in this odd camp of ours.  Dillon looked at me strangely, and moved over to ask what was going on.  I asked him if he’d ever been camping before and he shrugged.  Then I just started singing.  Not well – Dad always said I had more enthusiasm than talent – but well enough that the others perked up rather than looked annoyed with me. 

We’re a ragged bunch, but they all joined in eventually, except young Nugget.  She did move closer to listen, though.  Sax was first to join in, his bass voice rumbling in under mine.  Then Dillon, and Ben with an amused look.  I didn’t think Thorpe would, with his rolling of eyes and huffed sighs, but after a couple of rounds he decided to play along.

We filled that little ex-staff room up with sound, made it brim with our voices like we didn’t care what was happening outside.  We were unashamed, and some of us were even smiling, because the song is silly and yet all of us were singing it, even the adults.  But it didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter that the words meant nothing and the song slipped away from us as soon as it was finished.  It was worth it, for that feeling of lightness in my chest and the looks on flame-flickered faces.

I asked if anyone else knew anything else we could try, and of course, Sax stepped up.  And then Ben started one.  We kept going like that until our little fire burnt down, and then we slept.  All of us, breathing in time.

Row, row, row, your boat

Gently down the stream,

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

Life is but a dream

• Theme song: Row Your Boat

I had to ask Thorpe a favour today; always a tricky thing, considering his moods.  He’s been particularly grumpy ever since I relayed Masterson’s words to the group.  I suppose now, on reflection, it was the part about the doctor’s family that upset Thorpe the most, not the information about the call.

I’ve often seen him fiddling with something when he’s not busy.  He always puts it away when someone comes over, slipping it into a pocket that he checks regularly to make sure it’s still there.  I didn’t think much of it until I came around a corner and almost walked right into him, and saw what it was.

It’s a ring, a gold band with a distinctive platinum strip inlaid into it.  I recognised it, and blinked as I tried to remember where I’d seen it before.  I’d seen someone else fiddling with it – it feels like a lifetime ago, though it was only a little over three weeks.  That someone else was Trevor, his fire-crewmate and, apparently, something a lot more.

Pieces fell into place then.  How he’d been so awful since the rain started, why he had reacted so badly to certain things.  Like his reaction to saving Sally, when he couldn’t save someone he cared about.  I remember having to hold him back when it happened; he had been ready to run into the rain for a chance to save Trevor and it had taken three of us to stop him.

He must have had to go through Trevor’s spent clothes to retrieve the ring, a strange thing for someone as unsentimental as Thorpe to do.  Trevor must have meant a great deal to him.  I can’t imagine what that must have been like, going through a familiar, empty shirt for a scrap of a keepsake.  Not even having a body to mourn over or say goodbye to.

He hasn’t cried, not once since it happened.  Not within anyone’s sight, anyway.  He keeps it all locked inside, like the fist that closed over the ring as soon as I came around the corner.  Not in time, but almost.  He knew as soon as I looked at him; my expression must have given me away.  He knew that I knew, and I could almost hear the shutters clanging down behind his eyes.

I didn’t know what to say to him, so I said the first thing that same to mind: “I’m sorry.”  Not for interrupting him, not for almost walking into him.  He knew I meant Trevor, and I think he knew that I meant it.

He didn’t break down; he didn’t even nod in acknowledgement.  He just looked away.  I don’t think he’s used to people talking about this kind of personal matter, and abruptly I could imagine the two of them as a couple.  Thorpe’s stoicism and Trevor’s levity, solidity and gentleness.  They must have made a good pair.  I’m sorry that I never saw them together the way they really were.

I wonder if anyone ever did.  I don’t think Ben knows; he would have said something, I’m sure of it.  Thorpe and Trevor worked together, so they probably had to keep it a secret; otherwise, one of them would have had to leave.  And Thorpe is so private; maybe that’s just how he is.  He’s still keeping that secret, not letting anyone see him grieve, not letting anyone know that he lost something precious, that it died right in front of him.

I’m not sure what made me do it.  A part of me wanted to cry because he hadn’t, because he couldn’t.  Instead, I took off one of my necklaces, unfastened the chain and let the pendant slither off into my hand.  Then I asked him if I could see the ring, just for a moment.

He didn’t want me to; he might hide the softer emotions, but he’s unrestrained with his distrust.  I promised that I would give it right back, please, just for a second.  I thought he was going to refuse, but he passed it over with a hand heavy with reluctance.

It was hard to know what to say, so I told him about the chain.  About how my grandmother had given me the pendant when I was four years old, a St Christopher’s disc worn so much that it’s almost blurred smooth now.  It had taken us seven years and five chains to find one that I couldn’t break after a few minutes.  Since then, I’d worn this one, and it hadn’t failed me once.  Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got another one I can put the pendant on, the other one I wear all the time, the same as this one.  And could he please bend down a bit, because he’s very tall and I couldn’t reach to fasten it.

He tucked the ring and its new chain under his shirt as soon as it was in place.  He didn’t say anything, but there was a restrained note to his frown, as if he was holding something back.  And that’s okay; that’s what he needs to do, I get it now.  There wasn’t anything else for me to say, so I gave a little smile and turned to leave him alone.

“Did you come and bother me for a reason?”  His tone wasn’t as sharp as usual, as if something in him had unbent, just a little.

“Um, actually, yeah.”  I had forgotten about why I had been looking for him in the first place, thoroughly distracted by his truth.  “We need a couple of car batteries and some parts.  Was wondering if you’d take Dillon and see if you can find them.”

He shrugged.  “All right.”

“Great, I’ll send him out to find you.”  On impulse, I added, “Hey, what’s your first name?”

“Jack.”

“But you prefer Thorpe?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.  Thanks.”

I’m not sure what made me ask, but I wanted to know who he was.  Calling someone by their surname always seems distancing, keeping people just that bit more at arm’s length.  I know it’s hypocritical of me because I used to do it, I used to go by Mac.  I never realised that about me before, but I guess it’s true.

But this isn’t about me.  This is about a man named Jack Thorpe, who lost a love he won’t tell anyone about, who carries a ring to remember him by.