“Steela, how are you?” the doctor says in falsely bright tones. “Amy, I can handle her on my own; you go on back to your chamber. ”
“No, thank you,” I say as Steela’s hand clenches on my arm.
“What?” The doctor looks surprised.
“I’m sticking with Steela. ”
“But—”
“I want her to,” Steela says without a quaver in her voice.
The doctor frowns.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
There is a thin white line around the doctor’s lips. “Fine,” he says. He looks down at the floppy in his hand. “Bed 36 is available. ” He turns to the third door in the hallway. There are no biometric scanners on the door—instead, the doctor withdraws a big iron key from his pocket.
The large room has ten beds, five against each wall. The doctor leads Steela to the bed all the way across the room, the only one not occupied.
“We were waiting for you,” the doctor tells Steela. A chill goes down my spine. “It’s so much easier to do a room all at once,” he mutters.
The doctor indicates a neatly folded hospital gown on the bed. Steela looks at me. She doesn’t want to let me go; I don’t want her to let go. When her hand releases my elbow, it is like a goodbye.
The doctor just stands there as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Steela’s hands shake as she unfastens the top button of her tunic.
“Give her some privacy,” I hiss at him. When he doesn’t register what I’ve said, I take his elbow and turn him around. While we’re waiting for Steela to change, I inspect the doctor—his back is turned as he fiddles with the instruments on the table by the wall. He’d not intended to peep on Steela—why would he want to? She’s so old. No, he’d just forgotten that Steela might be sensitive about undressing in front of him. He doesn’t look at her as a human with feelings. He’s been playing doctor too long with the simple Feeders, and forgotten what a real person is like.
“I’m done,” Steela says in her crackling voice.
She sits on the hospital bed with her legs sticking out straight in front of her and the sheet pulled up to her knees. Glancing around the room, I see that every other patient in the room is doing the same, but that they are all, as Steela would say, “brainless twits. ” She’s emulating them, perhaps unconsciously.
Her tunic and trousers are folded neatly on the end of the bed. The hospital gown, so much thinner than her regular clothing, makes Steela look smaller, weaker, sicker than before. And so much more scared. She is shivering, but I don’t think it’s from the cool air blowing through the room.
“What are those?” Steela asks, her voice catching.
“Just IVs. ” The doctor holds them out. “For . . . nutrition. ”
“Why can’t you use those med patch things?” I ask.
“Med patches are just for simple things, like headaches and stomach aches. This is more serious than that. ”
“None of the others have three IVs. ” Steela says.
The room is so quiet I’d almost forgotten that anyone else was here. The elderly in the other beds are meek, staring at the ceiling. Feeders. But Steela’s right—the others have only two IVs—one each in the left hand and the left forearm.
“The third one’s special, because you’re special. ”
“Hogwash. ”
The doctor grins wryly. “It’s because you’re the only one here on mental meds. ”
Steela bites her lips. Like Elder, she believes she’s as crazy as the doctor’s been calling her all her life. And now she’s uncertain—now she thinks that she needs to be here, cloistered with the others who are staring blankly straight ahead.
“You haven’t even examined her yet,” I say.
“Hmm?” The doctor doesn’t look up from rubbing Steela’s arm with disinfectant.
“You’re jabbing her with needles and IVs and you haven’t even examined her. What’s going on?” My voice comes out low and deep. I wonder if the doctor realizes that this is how my voice gets before I get very, very angry.