Chapter 2
We head to the clinic at the edge of town, but the door’s been busted open, and it looks like it’s been looted.
People, I sign, disgusted, though we barely saw anyone on our journey here.
“They were injured and dying,” Mom says, getting Pop over the broken doorstep. “I can’t really blame them.”
“Is anyone around here going to blame anyone?” Max asks. “Pop won’t even let me hate Margery Wingard for stabbing him.”
“Because that would make you just like her,” Mom says. “And that would give her a victory, wouldn’t it?”
“The world is ending,” Max says. “We don’t really need all these lessons, you know.”
Pop lets out a huge call of pain as he bumps the doorframe.
I go to help, taking all Pop’s weight from Max and Mom and walking backward so we don’t have to squeeze through the door together.
Mom dashes to the back. Pop can’t make it much past the waiting area, so I sit him in a chair there.
I can hear Mom opening cabinets and slamming them shut.
“Max, can you help me?” she shouts, and Max goes to find her.
I can help, I sign after them.
“I’m feeling like I’m falling asleep, Ben,” Pop says to me, “and I need you to try and keep me awake, okay?”
Okay, I sign, trying not to make it look worried or frustrated.
“It’s all right if you can’t, but I’d appreciate having to watch your hands about now, eh, kiddo?”
He cracks a smile at me, but then he coughs and blood comes out in a little spray. Margery Wingard must have got his lung.
“Just talk,” he says, seeing my face. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
You know everything, I sign.
He laughs painfully at that. “No parent knows everything about a teenager. Not even when they’ve got Noise.”
You kept secrets from Granddad?
“Oh, yeah. It’s harder in Noise, but it’s not impossible. So, tell me a secret. Keep me awake.”
My mind races. I try to think of something worthwhile to say, something that will keep him awake.
Keep him alive.
So I have no idea at all why I say, I was afraid you’d throw Max out.
He looks confused for a second. “What?”
When he told you he was a boy. I was afraid you’d . . . you know.
“Ben,” he says, shocked, “we would never, ever throw either of you out.”
I know that, I sign. And Max told me he knew it, too. But knowing something ninety-nine percent isn’t knowing something one hundred percent. And you can really, really know something . . . and at the same time, you can be frightened you’re wrong.
“Yeah,” Pop finally says, “I can see that.”
And so I didn’t want him to tell you. I told him not to.
“Ben–”
And I think he’d been afraid I’d do the same thing, so when I told him to wait to tell you . . . I think I made it worse for him.
“Ben,” Pop says, his voice so soft. “Kiddo.” He puts a hand on my arm. “Max told us you were afraid of what we’d say. But he also said you didn’t even blink when he told you. That’s what he remembers. I promise that’s the way he thinks about you.”
Not always.
“When it matters.”
I’ll never know for sure, though. And I’m mad at him most of the time now.
He squeezes my arm. “Hey, look at me.”
I look at him. He’s pale now, worryingly so.
“The thing I fear most is you feeling like you’re alone. Ever. But you are never alone, even when you’re mad. And never doubt it about Max either. Biology doesn’t matter. Granddad wasn’t my biological father, but he was my father. He was my father from top to bottom. I loved that man.”
His chin wrinkles a little, and I don’t know what to say.
“And I love you both,” he says. “We’re not the most convenshunal family in the world, but we’re there when it matters.”
He’s said this before, so I sign what he always says next. And it always matters.
“It always matters,” he says with a pained smile. Then he sits back. “I’m sorry, kiddo, I don’t think I can stay awake any longer.”
Without another word, he shuts his eyes. I snap my fingers in front of them, but he doesn’t blink. I get up and start pounding on the clinic’s front desk.
“I’m coming!” Mom shouts, running back with a couple of small boxes. Max comes running behind her, arms full of towels and bandages.
“Wake up, Todd!” Mom yells, and Pop’s eyes snap open. “I’m not doing that again.”
Do what again? I sign, but she’s already at work.
She strips off the bandages Max put on him, wipes away the dried blood and dirt with a wet pad that makes Pop wince.
Then she takes out a small metal box, flipping open the top.
She hits a couple buttons on it, and two small drones come out.
She touches the box underneath Pop’s wound, and the two drones crawl up and into it, disappearing inside him. He cries out at the pain.
“They should be trailing lidocaine with them,” Mom says, and Pop nods as the pain passes.
Can they fix him? I sign.
“They’re minor surgery drones,” Mom says. “I hope they’ll be enough, because that’s all that’s back there.”
She watches the monitor on the metal box, nodding every few seconds at whatever the drones are doing.
“They’re fixing some of the internal bleeding, Todd.”
Pop nods again, his eyes closed, bearing what’s happening to him. His Noise is muted, though. Smaller than it should be. Grayer.
“Stay with us, Pop,” Max says.
“Not going anywhere,” he whispers.
The box beeps. Then it beeps again. “Dammit,” Mom says.
Dammit, what? I sign.
“They can fix a lot of it, Todd,” Mom says to Pop, “but your lung is damaged. That’s going to take bigger surgery.”
Is he going to be all right?
Pop arches an eyebrow at Mom like he’d like to know that, too.
“For now,” she says.
“But not forever,” Pop says.
Mom looks at him, then shakes her head.
“We’ll find a way,” Pop says, grunting and sitting up. “We always have.”
Pop? I start to sign, but he interrupts me.
“Let’s go kill some gods,” he says.