UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

Finally, later in the afternoon, during one of her routine checks, his attending nurse takes pity on him.

“I was told not to speak to you about your brother, but I’m going to anyway.” Then she sits in a chair close to him, keeping her voice down. “He had a lot of internal damage. But luckily, we happen to have one of the best-equipped organ lockers in the state. He received a new pancreas, liver and spleen, and a sizeable segment of small intestine. He had a punctured lung, and rather than letting it heal, your parents opted to replace that, too.”

“My parents? They’re here?”

“Yes,” the nurse said. “They’re in the waiting room. Would you like me to get them?”

“Do they know I’m here?” Lev asks.

“Yes.”

“Did they ask to see me?”

She hesitates. “I’m sorry, hon, they didn’t.”

Lev looks away, but there’s nothing to look at. The TV in his hospital room has been disconnected, because there’s so much coverage of the explosion. “Then I don’t want to see them.”

The nurse pats his hand and offers him an apologetic smile. “Sorry there’s so much bad blood there, hon. I’m sorry all this had to happen to you.”

He wonders if she knows the whole of it, and figures that she does. “I should have realized they’d come after me eventually. The clappers, I mean.”

The nurse sighs. “Once you get wound in with bad people, the unwinding never ends.” Then she catches herself. “I’m sorry—that was a very unfortunate choice of words, wasn’t it? I should just sew my lips shut right now.”

Lev forces a smile. “It’s okay. Once you’ve almost blown up twice, you’re not so sensitive about word choices.”

She smiles at that.

“So what happens now?”

“Well, I understand your brother is your legal guardian. Is there anyone else who might come forward to help you? Somewhere else you can go?”

Lev shakes his head. Pastor Dan was the only other person he could count on. He can’t even think of Dan now. It simply hurts too much. “I was under house arrest. I can’t go anywhere without permission from the Juvenile Authority, even if there was someone to go with.”

The nurse stands up. “Well, that’s way out of my department, hon. Why don’t you just relax for now? I know they want to keep you overnight—it can all be sorted out in the morning.”

“Could you maybe tell me what room my brother’s in?”

“He’s still in recovery,” she tells him, “but as soon as they assign him a room, I promise you’ll be the first to know.” She leaves, and in comes a detective, with more ways to ask the same questions.

- - -

True to her word, the nurse tells him that Marcus is in room 408, and so after dark, when all the questioning is over and the halls have quieted, Lev ventures out of his room, ignoring the aches that fill most of his body. Just outside his door, he sees that the cop assigned to guard him is down the hall, flirting with one of the younger nurses. Lev quietly slips away to visit Marcus.

As he pushes open the door to room 408, the first thing he sees is his mother sitting in a chair, her eyes fixed on Marcus, who is unconscious and intubated, and connected to a hissing breathing machine. His father is there too, his hair looking a little grayer than it did a year ago. Lev feels tears threatening to rise, but he wills them away, sucking his emotions in and locking them tight.

His mother sees him first. She reaches over to get his father’s attention. They look at each other for a moment, sharing whatever pseudo-telepathy married couples have. Then his mother stands, crosses to Lev, and never once looking at him, hugs him awkwardly, then leaves the room.

His father doesn’t look at him either. Not at first anyway. He just looks to Marcus, watching his chest rise and fall in a slow, steady, machine-regulated rhythm.

“How is he?” Lev asks.

“He’s in an induced coma. They said they’ll keep him like this for three days, so the nanos can speed the healing.”

Lev has heard that the pain of nano-healing is unbearable. It’s best that Marcus sleeps through it. Lev is certain that his parents gave Marcus all tithed organs. The most expensive. He knows this, but he won’t ask.

Finally his father looks at him. “Are you satisfied now? Are you happy with the results of your actions?”

Lev has imagined this conversation between him and his father a hundred times. In each of those mental confrontations, Lev has always been the one making accusations, not the other way around. How dare he? How dare he? Lev wants to lash out, but he refuses to take the bait. He says nothing.