Rosabelle 13
Rosabelle
“All right, let me take a look,” says Aya.
She steps forward, taking my face into her hands with surprising gentleness, examining my damage broadly before meeting my eyes. “When were you attacked? These injuries seem pretty fresh.”
I blink, feeling unsteady.
I’m losing my grip on this mask, but I can’t afford to let it slip. I have no idea what I’ve just walked into, which means I can’t give in to this pain, not yet. I force myself to pay attention, turning to a new page in my addled mind.
I need to take mental notes.
Aya just freely divulged an assessment of my damage—one that exposed her doubts—and she didn’t ask why I was attacked but when. As if this happens all the time. The organization of her statements is interesting.
I decide to lie, a little, on principle. Because I don’t trust anyone, ever, on principle.
“A couple hours ago,” I say.
“Where? Not inside the building, right?”
Strange. A leading question.
I lie a little more.
“No,” I say. “Not inside the building.”
“Okay, but where exactly?” Jing steps closer. “Do you remember? Every incident we’ve ever had has happened while we were on break, like they somehow knew we were going to be out of the building.”
More free information.
An abundance of free information.
These people are not experienced interrogators: revealing valuable details without first claiming a price; guilelessly planting their preferred answer in the question asked. In my mind, I scratch the words assassins and double agents off a list of possible hidden identities.
My fears recede to a lower level.
“What kinds of incidents have you experienced?” I ask, twisting my head to look at Jing.
A mistake.
The action delivers me a fresh flood of pain, and I briefly lose track of my body.
It occurs to me that I’m still standing.
Aya returns my head to center. “Wait. Follow-up questions in just a second.” She tilts my face toward the light, her lips flattening into a grim line.
“All this swelling points to possible maxillary fracture,” she murmurs, drawing her fingers up my cheek.
“And this eye is already bruising pretty badly, so I suspect there might be a fracture in the orbital bone as well.”
Jing lets out a low whistle.
Aya moves her fingers gingerly along my jaw, then hesitates, drawing back to consider me.
She looks confused.
“What is it?” says Elias.
“I think your jaw might be broken,” she says to me, frowning. “But that should register as a severe injury. You should be exhibiting greater outward indications of distress. You shouldn’t be able to speak so cogently.”
I don’t respond.
She hesitates another beat, studying me.
“Rosabelle,” she says, the words coming out slowly, as if it just occurred to her I might be deaf, “are you experiencing any kind of heightened pain?”
Soledad’s voice arrives in my mind, uninvited—
Shouldn’t she be screaming?
“Yes,” I say to her. “I’m experiencing pain.”
“On a scale of one to ten?” she asks. “Ten being the worst pain you’ve experienced in your life?”
I don’t know whether to laugh or vomit.
The worst pain I’ve experienced in my life: my stomach pitches at the thought. A cold sweat breaks out across my forehead. The notes I’ve made in my mind blow away on a metaphorical wind. I am not okay. My right arm has begun to tremble violently.
“Rosabelle?” Aya again.
“She needs to sit down,” says Elias.
I was released from the hospital two days ago.
The healers’ work always revives me to great extent, replenishing vital nutrients and needs, repairing my body on a cellular level.
It’s the only reason I’ve been able to live so long on limited rations.
Even on the island I was revived and healed repeatedly; I’d never have survived their many experiments and interrogations otherwise.
But I haven’t eaten much since I was discharged from the hospital.
I’d been hoping to stop by the dining hall while I was here.
There’s water, but no food back at the house.
I’ve seen Nazeera only in interstitial moments.
The longest stretch of time I spent with her was when she retrieved me from recovery. She rode with me in the car back to campus, looking me over. I was wearing the standard-issue scrubs they always put me in. And I was clutching an opaque plastic bag.
“What’s in the bag?” she’d asked.
“Nothing,” I’d said.
She’d looked at the bag, then at me, then back at the bag. I gripped it tighter. She rubbed her eyes, obviously exhausted, and decided to let it go.
“You’re going to need proper clothes,” she said finally. “And underwear. I’m guessing you don’t have underwear?” She glanced again at the plastic bag in my hands. “No chance you’ve got clean underwear in that bag, right?”
I didn’t think the question deserved a response.
She sighed. “I have to leave immediately after dropping you off at the house, but I’ll see about getting some things figured out for you, okay? Most of my clothes won’t fit you, but when I get back I’ll pick out a few options that might work. Probably tonight.”
She did not pick out any options for me that night.
I still don’t have any underwear.
I found a faded, dark green sweatshirt jammed into the back corner of my empty bedroom closet. It was embroidered across the center in a casual, handwritten style. Unpunctuated letters in white thread. It read:
hang in there
it gets worse
I’m wearing that sweatshirt now.
Elias places a hand on my arm, startling me from my reverie, and I’m back in my feverish body again, feeling nauseous. He ushers me over to the bed as Aya heads into the adjoining bathroom, her voice echoing.
“Unfortunately,” she says, “there’s not much I can do for your injuries.
” She opens and closes a cabinet. “I can clean you up, but I can’t do anything about these fractures.
” Another cabinet door opens and closes.
“We can either let this heal on its own and risk overlooking nerve issues, airway injuries, or brain damage—or we can escalate the issue.”
Escalate the issue.
Alarms try to awaken my sluggish brain.
Elias frowns. “We should escalate the issue.”
“I already did,” says Jing.
“What?” I don’t know what escalate means in this context. I don’t know who these people are. I don’t trust anyone.
“No,” I say in a rush. “No escalation—”
“Don’t worry,” Elias says gently. “It won’t be so bad.”
I attempt to turn my head again, searching the room for its details.
There’s a notebook and pen on a desk pushed against the opposite wall; but there’s a framed photo, three bobby pins, and a glass of water on the side table next to the bed I’m currently sitting on.
The pen would work, but the side table is closer.
The bobby pins.
The water glass.
The picture frame.
I take a surreptitious look at the cheap frame: wood and glass; ideal materials; easily breakable. Then the subjects of the photo: two young boys smiling wide, teeth big and small like mismatched flagstones.
Eight? Nine years old?
I swallow back blood.
Family? Dead?
Aya emerges from the bathroom. “Rosabelle,” she says, “do you have any other injuries? Anything under your clothes I can’t see?”
I need to get out of here.