Ash and Cinder

22| All That's Left

The room they stick us in is quiet, save for the soft beep of machinery from the hall. I shake away the chill that goes through me. The space is too small. Blinds are drawn over the only window, thin rays of sunlight stream in past the spaces between the slats. There are two hospital beds, the one nearest the door is empty. Two chairs with cushions sit in the corners. Elle rests on the bed, chest rising and falling in time with the beeping of the heart monitor.

Someone hits the lights, bringing the room into sharp relief.

They've stripped Elle down to a hospital nightgown and an oxygen mask is secured over her face, opaque condensation clouds the translucent plastic with every exhale. Without the added padding of the sweaters, she looks unbearably thin.

Pain sears my chest, and I crawl up on the bed to kneel next to her. It hurts seeing her like this, worse than the chainsaw. It always has. I sit at the end of Elle's hospital bed and watch her heart monitor. The thin green line spikes and falls and spikes again and falls again.

Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse Yana's red hair hovering near the IV pole. My skin prickles. Then Delilah appears behind her. Eight stitches, a bandage, and a sling holds her left arm in place, she has some nerve damage but I have no doubt she could put Yana through the window in a heartbeat if she tried anything fishy.

Yana has a tray full of plastic-encased medical tools. She rubs something into her hands and pulls on gloves. Plastic tears as she prepares the needle.

"What is she giving her?" I ask, I can hear the brittleness in my own voice. Both women look to me.

Turning to me, Yana switches to English.

"No worry, I don't know how to translate..." Yana slips back into Russian, turning back to Delilah.

"Delilah," I sound strangled. I feel strangled.

Spike, and fall. Spike. Fall. Spike.

"Liquid nutrients," Delilah answers.

Tension winds tighter and tighter over me. I've watched this same scene with Elle a thousand times. Latex-gloved hands, glinting needle points, Whitecoats handling her fragile skin. The needle sliding out. Delilah makes a small noise as the needle breaks Elle's skin. The cotton pad and bandage pressed over the bead of blood. I glance to the doorway—empty, to Delilah—she's facing the window, hunched over. I guess she doesn't like needles. Can't blame her.

The shivering is back—still there?—I run my thumb over the back of Elle's cold hand, watching the conversation. What I see when I lift my thumb makes my heart sink. A bruise is painted across her bony knuckles. I wasn't pressing that hard. I swear I wasn't. Flipping her arm, I look at the IV, and the dark purple bruise enveloping the crook of her elbow.

"What's happening to her?" I ask.

Yana reaches past me to take Elle's bruised arm. She examines it, a crease between her brows as she prods at the edges of the bruise. My heartbeat quickens as I follow her gaze to the newly forming bruise encircling Elle's upper arm, where the tourniquet had been tied. "Why don't we take history, it will help us help her."

She peels off her gloves and lays a soft hand on my shoulder. "It will be okay."

As if I could ever believe a lie like that. I slip off the bed, away from Elle so I can't bruise her anymore. Black crowds the edges of my vision for a minute, it doesn't quite fade away no matter how much I blink.

"Where you are here from?" she asks, "you do not look Russian."

"We're from Puerto Rico," I say.

The hospital around us buzzes with energy. The halls are full of people going every which way and that doesn't help with the way it feels like I'm swaying on a ship. I can't stop the glare that settles over my face when Yana doesn't back off fast enough.

"I'm so sorry. Were you traveling when it happened?" she asks, folding her hands together at her collar. I catch her gaze darting to the puffy pink scar tissue that creeps over the top of my shoulders.

"What do you mean?" I take a step back, reaching up to cover the edge of the scar. That whole area of my back is numb, not even the pins and needles spilling over the rest of my skin permeates the scar. Deeper down, where the muscle meets bone, hurts more than it used to though. I need painkillers.

"Were your parents at home? Is that why you and your sister are here alone?" she asks.

"At home for what? What happened?"

That seems to catch Yana by surprise, her brows draw together over her blue eyes. Her hands unravel from each other and slip into the pockets of her purple nurses' scrubs. "I think you should sit, please."

"No, tell me what's going on."

"You are sure?"

"Tell me."

"Trick, there is no more Puerto Rico."

Hm. I take my glasses off, clean them with the dirty hem of my shirt, and slide them back on with no hurry, stalling for time to figure out what she means.

"What?" I ask at last. Yana shakes her head, the bobby pins holding her hair back cling on, her hair sways with the motion. With her lips downturned and a sheen of tears gathering in her eyes, she looks more upset than I feel.

"I will show you." She pulls a smooth, flat square from her pocket and taps on it. A news article appears on the screen, the block-lettered title all in Cyrillic. I reach back and tap Delilah. I need her to translate. She over my shoulder to squint at the report. I wince hard and resist the urge to fling her away. This is Delilah, she's not going to crush me. It's just Delilah.

At first she says nothing, then she takes the newstab from Yana and scrolls. The minutes of silence tick past, each one winding me tighter than the last. I watch her reach the bottom, and when she scrolls back to the top I know she's stalling. I should've kept my mouth shut. I duck my head to stare at the floor. My right shoulder cracks, the noise loud in the otherwise quiet room.

At last, she says, "The Krovavaya Brigáda bombed Puerto Rico six months ago, there were no survivors."

I think I do need to sit. I turn on my heels and walk away, the beat of my heart striking the dent in my breastbone too fast. There's nowhere to go except to the window, the walls are closing in and in and in. Nobody says a word for a long time. This new puzzle piece hangs in the air, absorbing into our pores, into our bones.

"I feel like I missed something." Sky's voice at the door makes us both jump. He leans heavily on the doorframe, as if he's seeing the world tilted. A clump of hair at the left side of his head is missing, the skin underneath split by a row of centipede-ish staples. "Look at you all, acting like I ran off without you," he quips, stumbling further into the room. He throws his arms out to steady his swaying, nearly knocking Delilah over the head as he does. She steps out of reach, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Should you be walking?" she asks.

"'Course not," he says without hesitation. "Any idiot can see that."

I catch him by the wrist, directing him towards the chair, "You must be a special kind of idiot then. Sit." Thankfully, he obliges with only a mild glare at me for the insult. Looking at him slouched in the chair, legs sprawled and fingers tapping the seat anxiously, I'm aware of how little we see him down. Compared to pretty much anyone at the Compound, he's a ray of sunshine.

"So, I'm not dying," he sighs, "just a major concussion."

"Don't act happy or anything." Delilah crosses her arms. He flaps his hand at her.

Eight stitches, a concussion, a bruised nose. It all seems a lot less fatal than it did last night. I perch on the edge of the empty bed, my gaze finding Elle. She's the only one who hasn't shown vast improvement in the last twelve hours. I need her to wake up, now more than ever. She's the only family I have left.