Chapter Thirty-Nine
Thirty-Nine
There’s no time to savor the fact that I’ve essentially brought someone back from the brink of death. Every second pushes me further toward unraveling. The throb in my hand pulses strong and steady with my heartbeat, and I’m sluggish.
While no alarms went off in the room when I woke Sloane, I have no way of knowing whether that means anything. For all I know, Holden has some special app on his phone alerting him to any changes, announcing what I did. He could be on his way to finish us all off.
I help Sloane out of the vat. She’s as unsteady as a foal, unable to carry much of her own weight. She ends up clinging to the exterior of her chamber as I move to Aisha’s tube.
I haven’t gone over to see if Jasper and Finn are inside the other vats.
I crack the lid of Aisha’s chamber. Let it hiss and rise, revealing another half-dead girl inside.
Aisha. Smarter than even she knows, curious and kind and mature for her age. A little form on this mattress, hooked up to machines, adrift.
I dislodge the same lines from Aisha. She’s smaller than Sloane; I don’t know how so many needles and tubes could be pushed into such a small person. Looking at them, at the collecting pile growing next to Aisha, makes me dizzy.
Her vitals jump a bit more than Sloane’s after the last line is removed, this one from her neck.
But as quickly as they speed up, they start to drop, fast, lower than when I found her.
“What’s happening?” Sloane murmurs, words slurring.
“I don’t know,” I say, and hurry for the intubation tube. I’m still cautious, but a bit more desperate. If she wakes up with this thing in her mouth, she could panic. Panic and fight me and draw even more attention to this room.
Once the tube is out, she doesn’t twitch and jerk awake like Sloane did. She doesn’t move at all.
Seconds pass. A few more and Sloane whispers, “Why isn’t she waking up?”
Then Aisha does, all at once, with less fervor than Sloane. Her eyes snap open, immediately inquisitive. She pushes up slowly. For a moment, she does nothing but inspect all four of her limbs, pressing her fingers into her knees, her elbows.
She sees Sloane first. They move, both off-balance and weak, reaching for each other. Sloane catches Aisha as her feet hit the floor, and her knees buckle. The girls grip each other as Aisha’s small frame trembles with the strength of her sobs.
This is extensive, extended care. To keep them like this for so long, to keep them in some state of health to keep on with these extractions. Nutrition, bedsore prevention, and clearly joint exercises, seeing as Aisha and Sloane have some level of mobility.
Aisha and Sloane end their reunion quickly. Aisha addresses me, all business, despite the fact she’s wavering as she tries to stand.
“You found us. I can’t believe you really found us.” Her words are slow, a tad slurred; she and Sloane are clearly still under the effects of whatever drugs have been pumped into them for years.
Honestly, it’s a miracle either of them is on their feet and talking.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I say, and leave it at that.
Sloane and Aisha don’t protest or fuss. Sloane beckons for Aisha to sit on the ledge next to the chamber and begins to remove the tube from down her nose.
I pulled a dozen tubes from each of them, but watching someone else do it makes me queasy. Maybe that or the fact I have to do it all two more times.
I approach the first chamber on the other side of the room. Two options. I’m not sure which is worse. The little brother who wrapped his tiny hand around my finger after he was born. Or the boy who brought me back to life, the one I think I might—
It’s Jasper. Everything in me sinks at the sight of him. He looks exactly as he did a few days ago, apart from the addition of the wires and the tube down his throat.
I swallow back my nausea. He’s alive.
This time, Sloane and Aisha keep their focus on the monitor, giving quick updates with each needle I pull from the skin.
It’s easier to think of it, of him, as skin and muscle and bone than to accept that it’s my baby brother. I don’t let my gaze wander higher than his lips and only let it go that far to pull the tube out.
By the time his eyes flutter open, I am exhausted, my adrenaline well past its peak and beginning a slow leak out of me.
Jasper blinks, dazed. He has deep bruises around his wrists, like he was grabbed hard or cuffed. But he’s mostly unharmed.
“Jo?” he asks in a tiny voice, the one he uses when he seeks me out at night after having nightmares.
“Hey,” I say, sweeping the sweaty hair off his forehead. “It’s me.”
He frowns, straining to sit up, looking around the room. His nostrils flare, eyes widening to the whites, and I make a shush sound, guiding him up with my hands.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right,” I say. “You’re all right. I’m going to get you out of here.”
He shakes his head. Tears well in his big brown eyes, spilling down his cheeks.
“Jo, Mr. Holden was outside the house, and he grabbed me—”
“Shh,” I say, pulling him close. I’m taking too long and I know it, but I can’t stop myself from taking five seconds. Five seconds to hold him and tell him everything is going to be okay, even if that turns out to be a lie.
But after five seconds, I pull back.
I take him by the shoulders, and say, “I need you to be brave right now. Can you do that for me?”
His lips part. “Jo, I’m scared.”
Tears burn the backs of my eyes. I blink them back.
“I know you are, Bubs. I am, too. But we can be brave together, okay?”
I help him out of the chamber. He eyes Sloane and Aisha warily but doesn’t protest when Sloane takes his hand and guides him against her side.
One vat left. I know what I’m going to find when I peer through the glass, but it doesn’t make the pain in my chest any less sharp.
Finn. Eyes closed, sweat-dampened curls pressed to his forehead, a tube protruding from his lips.
Out of the four, Finn has the tightest grip on death. The fact he isn’t solidly in its arms is a miracle.
He’s more bruise than skin, and thin. The Finn I knew was no bodybuilder, but he had a lean, muscular look to him. Now he’s just lean.
“Finn,” I whisper, pressing my palm to the glass.
The panel near the glass tells me his heart rate is much slower than Sloane’s, Aisha’s, and Jasper’s.
He really is dying.
Aisha has an arm wrapped around Jasper, holding him steady, but Sloane joins me at the vat.
A muscle clicks in her jaw as she clenches it tight.
“Open it,” Sloane says.
When I was in the hospital, the doctors and nurses’ ability to compartmentalize shocked me. To see so many broken, dying beings every day, to witness so many goodbyes and last moments. To let it all slip over your skin like water and deal with the task at hand. Staying calm amid chaos.
I get it now. Someone in the room has to hold it together.
I begin pulling out tubes and Sloane monitors the vitals, both of us without emotion—at least externally.
“His heart rate is still falling,” Sloane says as I near the last lines poking out of Finn. “Jo, I think you should stop.”
She may be right. But Finn will die on this table, either by my hand or not. In a morbid way, I think it’d be better to go surrounded by people who love him.
“Not an option,” I say.
“Jo—”
“Not an option,” I say again, and pull the last IV from his neck. Blood spills from the puncture, red dripping onto the white bed beneath him.
Maybe getting the other three out safely makes me cocky. But I pull the intubation tube out, tossing it aside.
And Finn flatlines, the previously silent heart monitor letting out a long, continuous shriek.