UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

Connor throws a quick glare at him.

“Hey, I’m just saying.”

“I don’t care what it looks like,” Connor says forcefully. “I do what I have to keep this place alive.”

“Sorry, I mean no disrespect, I guess I just have a lot to learn about being in charge.”

Starkey nods respectfully to Risa and leaves, but what he said sticks in her mind like gum on her shoe—or at least how it used to get on her shoe when her feet actually touched the ground. Connor is right, of course. If he went to the hospital, it would be a foolhardy show of bravado—the sign of an arrogant leader, not a responsible one. But Risa, on the other hand, has nothing holding her back but her wheelchair. And when has she ever let that stop her?

“I’m going this time,” she tells Connor.

Connor throws up his hands. “Risa, no one expects you to go. No one is going to think you’re a coward if you don’t.” He looks over at the minivan. “And getting you there, it’s too much—”

“Too much of a burden?” Risa finishes.

“I was going to say too much effort when every second counts for this kid.”

But her mind is set. “After what happened the other times,” she tells him, “I have to go.”

“It won’t change the outcome either way,” Connor points out.

“I know,” she tells him, even though she’s not entirely sure he’s right. He backs away as two of the medics lift her chair into the van.

“Even if they catch me, they can’t unwind me,” she reminds him. “I’m seventeen. And besides, the disabled can’t be unwound.”

“What if they recognize you?”

“Oh, please,” Risa says. “It’s our names that people know, much more than our faces. I’ll be fine.” Then she offers him a slim but sincere smile, and he reluctantly returns it. It doesn’t bridge the gap between them, but at least it marks the spot where the bridge might be built. She closes the van’s back door without saying good-bye, because they share a secret superstition, never saying good-bye to each other. Risa will soon regret that she didn’t.

- - -

It’s a bumpy ride out of the Graveyard with no paved roads, just the hardpan desert flattened by the wheels of jets. There’s more than a mile to the gate. In the back, Dylan moans with every bump. As they approach, the guards on duty, notified of the emergency, quickly open the gate.

Once they’re on paved roads, the ride is easier, and Dylan quiets down. Risa comforts him and monitors his vital signs.

The first time they had to bring a kid to the hospital, Kiana went with one of the other medics—a kid who panicked whenever Band-Aids didn’t stick—but he was the only other medically-experienced kid willing to venture out of the Graveyard on what was potentially a suicide mission. That first time, a new arrival had climbed to the tail of a cargo jet on a dare. He fell and cracked his skull. Risa would have gone, but everyone convinced her there was no point and it was too impractical. Kiana and the nervous medic had taken the boy to the hospital with a whole fake story of what happened and documents to back up a fake identity. The boy died in the hospital. The second time it was a girl with a burst appendix. Again the girl was rushed to the hospital, again Risa stayed behind, and again the girl died.

Risa doesn’t know what her presence at the hospital can do. All she knows is that she can’t sit back and wait to hear about another kid’s death.

- - -

Kiana helps Risa out of the back, then single-handedly carries Dylan into the ER waiting room, with Risa rolling in behind her. Now Risa must display her acting skills. She thinks about her friends in the band who had been playing in the Chop Shop when it blew—the ones who died—and the memory brings necessary tears to her eyes. Then she dredges up a character that saved her once before: the ditzy girl who talks in questions.

“Hello, can somebody help us? My brother was on the roof fixing tiles? And he fell from the roof and got hurt real bad? And we didn’t know what to do? So we brought him here, but there’s a lot of blood and we’re really scared? Can you help us?”

She hopes the tears plus the ditz can scramble anyone’s BS detectors as effectively as Hush Puppy once scrambled radar. There are rumors that the Juvies have started using DNA decoders in the field. She can only hope that they haven’t trickled down to hospitals yet.

Emergency room staff drop whatever they’re doing and rush to their aid. In a second Dylan’s on a gurney, being wheeled through the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY doors.

“Is he going to be okay?” asks Risa, in panic that’s only partially feigned. “Because our parents are out of town? And we didn’t know what to do?”

“We’ll take care of him, honey,” says a nurse in a comforting tone. “Don’t you worry.” The nurse glances at Kiana, who has Dylan’s blood on her clothes, then heads off into the emergency room.

The doors swing closed, and Risa rolls over to the admissions desk, with a carefully planned wallet of false information, organized to appear disorganized, and intentionally designed to make Risa appear helpless and flustered.

“We’ll sort this all out later,” the admissions clerk says, giving up and getting on to the next person in line.

- - -