Chapter 32
32
Marcelis
I had my head leaning back against the wall. I don’t know how long we’d sat on the floor in the room. No one came to kick us out, so we stayed. For all I knew, we’d been forgotten.
My chest felt like someone had already reached in and plucked out Torrin’s heart. But I knew that wasn’t true because when I pressed my fingers to my ears, shutting off the song Lyric softly sang, I heard the steady beat.
I’d never truly appreciated Lyric’s voice before, but in the near silence, I heard what Darwin did—a trueness in Lyric’s voice that spoke to my soul, that sang to me and about me at the same time, righting some of the many wrongs.
But not all of them.
Definitely not all of them.
Toorin’s steady, strong beat pulsed behind my eardrums, bringing him closer to me. He could have been in the same room instead of wherever in the stars they’d taken him.
A soft knock came at the door.
Bodie scrambled to his feet. “Come in.”
A man opened the door and stepped inside, his eyes darting around the room, determining who to address. His eyes stopped when they landed on me. I must have looked the most distraught.
“He’s alive,” the man said, but not with any kind of inflection that garnered much hope. “I’m Doctor Lux. Tilmann Lux. Dr. Hahl is my mentor.”
I stood, gripping the back of the chair. Why did my mind immediately take his measure and think that this man was young enough and strong enough to make the journey to Toonu? Though with his pale skin, he’d have to bathe in zinc salve to keep the sun from scorching all the layers off him. “You’re a surgeon?”
“In training,” he qualified.
That didn’t sink my hopes. Maybe he’d agree to journey to Toonu. But that was a question for a different time. “Can I see him?”
Juniper stood, her eyes red and puffy, her defiance shining, her voice steady when she said, “I want to see him, too.”
“We all do,” Bodie added.
The doctor seemed reluctant, then finally relented. “He’s on bypass in a medically induced coma. He can’t respond and also can’t remain on bypass for long. We’re buying time. That’s all.”
“Time for what?” Juniper asked.
Lux rubbed the back of his neck, then said, “For you all to decide what happens next.”
I glanced at Bodie. The muscles in his jaw flexed, and his lips pressed into a thin line. Between the two of us, I didn’t know who had the most right to decide what happened next. I loved Toorin more than my own life. And Bodie loved him like a brother.
“Take us to him,” Bodie said.
“Aye,” the doctor said as he turned toward the door.
We all followed. Bodie was a step behind me, with Juniper, Darwin, and Lyric falling to the rear. We went upstairs, down halls, through single and double doors, passing people walking fast or running. People with walkers and people on gurneys. Somewhere down a hall, a person yelled, his words incomprehensible.
My breathing had increased when Lux stopped at a door with his hand on the knob.
“Be careful of the tubes. They are literally his lifeline. Dr. Hahl will be in when she’s out of surgery.”
He held open the door, and we all filed in. I went to the closest side of the bed while Bodie went to the other, carefully avoiding the machines and tubes. Toorin had a tube filled with blood leaving his body, running through the machine, then returning.
I pulled my gaze away. I couldn’t focus on that without going to my knees and completely breaking down.
“He’s pale,” Lyric said as he, Juniper, and Darwin gathered around the foot of the bed.
Taking hold of Toorin’s hand, I gasped. “And so cold.”
Bodie touched the tube of blood returning to Toorin’s body. “This is chilled. I drowned in the IP as a small boy in the middle of winter. Toorin’s sire pulled me out. I only survived because the water was so cold. Perhaps this is doing the same.”
Perhaps. But it was a shock not to feel Toorin’s warmth coursing through his body. I leaned in to kiss his temple, thinking I’d mentally prepared myself for the chill, but it nearly gutted me. Juniper scooted a chair beneath me, and I sat hard enough to hear it crack.
“What’s the plan,” Lyric asked.
“We’re not going to let him fucking die,” Juniper said. “Right?”
She needed that confirmation as much as the rest of us did.
“I’m not going to let him die.” I'll never know how my voice came out so strong and sure when all I wanted to do was break down and cry. “I’m giving him his heart back. That’s why we came here.”
“But you can’t—”
My gaze shot to Bodie. He was the last person I expected to fight me on this. “I can. I will .”
“He’ll die if you die,” Juniper said as if she were the wise old woman who’d lived a thousand lives.
The stricture in my throat had a near-perfect stranglehold, and I had to force the words out with a thick, dry tongue. “H-he might think he will, but he won’t.”
The door opened without a knock, and Lux held the door open as Dr. Hahl rolled in. She had the telltale imprint of a surgical mask across the bridge of her nose and a line from the cap across her forehead.
Before she said anything, I stood and said, “I’m giving him his heart back. That’s decided. When can we do the surgery?”
Bodie made a noise like he was about to say something, but I shot him a look that shut him up. I wish I’d been able to do that all those weeks on the Lark.
“You won’t survive,” Dr. Hahl said. “At least not long.”
She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. “I’m aware.”
The effectiveness of my look must have worn off because Bodie said, “Toorin’s going to curse you until you’re bloody blue when he wakes up with your heart.”
I glanced up, meeting Bodie’s eyes. “His heart. His heart. It was never mine.”
Dr. Hahl rolled back half a turn. I wondered if she realized she did that when she finished a conversation. “Fair enough. We’ll schedule surgery first thing in the morning.”
“ Fair enough? ” Juniper’s incredulous voice pitched higher. “None of this is fair .” She grabbed my shirt, the threads snapping under her grip. “I don’t want you to die. I don’t want Toorin to die.” The tears came, but she didn’t swipe them away. “I—”
Lux cleared his throat. “There is one possibility.”
All eyes turned to him.
With one hand, Dr. Hahl spun her chair around to face him. “Speak.”
“What about the 300 series?”
She considered him. “Go on.”
“It passed all the preliminary in vitro tests. The metalloprotease enzymes didn’t affect it.”
“That’s in vitro. We don’t know what it will do yet when placed in a human body.”
“It’s been approved for trial.”
“What are you talking about?” Bodie asked because I couldn’t find my voice to ask the same. I was too caught up in the thought that there might be an option we hadn’t considered.
Dr. Hahl spun toward us. “There is a new mechanical heart. It’s experimental. It’s coated to protect it from the enzyme. However, it has never been used on a live subject.”
“I’ll do it.” There was no question. It might work. It might not. But I had to try.
Bodie held up his hand to shut me up. I mentally cursed him but didn’t say anything else. “How long could this experimental heart last him?”
“Years,” Lux quickly said. With one look from Dr. Hahl, he amended his statement. “Maybe months.”
“Or weeks or even days,” Dr. Hahl added. “It’s experimental. There are no guarantees. I can’t even guarantee you’ll survive the surgery.”
“That’s not good enough,” Bodie said as if we had any other option than to do the surgery.
I almost laughed.
Bodie’s reservations had etched themselves in his features. I didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want Toorin to die, but I’d never expected him to be on my side. Bodie turned to me. “Listen—”
“No. You listen.” I used my index finger for emphasis. If we didn’t have the bed between us, I’d be poking him in the chest. Probably for the best that the bed was there. “He’s getting his heart. That’s final. I don’t need years, months, weeks, or even days. I just need enough time to tell him that I love him.”
Toorin
“You’re a tough person to kill,” the man’s voice said. “You died twice on the table.”
Though he wasn’t talking to me, I didn’t recognize the voice. Then again, I didn’t even know where I was. Vaguely, I became aware of a weight on my chest that left a burning, tingling sensation on my skin. My head had that wobbly-bobbly feeling like I’d been sailing in rough seas for a month before stepping on land.
“I try not to make it easy,” Marc said.
Wait. What?
“He’s awake,” Juniper said.
At least I hadn’t forgotten Juniper’s voice. Or Marc’s. A hand grabbed mine, and from the size of it, it had to be Juniper’s.
I tried to sit up, but a firm hand landed on my shoulder and held me down. “Stay down. You’re safe.”
Bodie .
Why were my eyelids too heavy to open?
And if Juniper and Bodie were by my side, why wasn’t Marc standing with them?
“M-Marc,” I managed. More of a croak than an actual word.
“I’m here.”
Marc sounded off. I couldn’t put a finger on why. But whatever it was, it spiked my heart rate. It was pound, pound, pounding in my ears.
Wait.
Pounding?
With what little strength I had, I struggled to open my eyes. I squinted at the bright sun as it shined through the window.
“Oi,” Bodie said, his smile tight and his eyes brimming with moisture. “About time you were awake, you bloody lazy bastard.”
I glanced down at my chest and found a thick plate resting on it, that hot, tingling buzz in my skin not abating. I tried to shove it away.
“Leave it be,” Bodie said. “It speeds your healing.”
Off to my side came scuffling. And the man’s voice I hadn’t recognized said, “Same for you. The Regeneration Laser can’t work if you’re not under it.”
“Fuck off. I’ve been under it for twenty-four hours already. Let me up.”
I laughed. It sounded rusty and hurt my throat, but I loved it when Marc got feisty. But that laugh rattled something in my sternum, and a zap of an all too familiar pain shot through my chest. Not as sharp as it had been at its worst, but there.
Bodie disappeared out of my sight. “You should stay in bed and—”
Marc cursed, and Bodie said, “Get his arms before he falls on his ass.”
Not long after, Marc took my hand. My eyes closed, and even though I’d heard him speak, feeling his warm touch calmed me in a way hearing his voice hadn’t.
“Out,” Marc said. “All of you.”
I opened my eyes again, and he smiled down at me. His shirt was off, and he had a fresh incision down the center of his chest. Well, maybe not fresh. There were no bandages, no blood or raw edges, more like a fresh red scar running down his sternum.
But why would he—
“What have you done?” I couldn’t keep the darkness out of my accusation. Marc’s hand went to my shoulder when I tried to sit again. I didn’t want to have this conversation lying down.
“You need your rest.”
“ Marc .”
The way he closed his eyes, the way he took in a deep breath and blew it out, the way his eyes swam in moisture when he opened them again told me everything I needed to know. I stopped fighting him. “You did it, didn’t you?”
He opened his mouth, then only managed a nod. I closed my eyes. My lungs seized, and I couldn’t take a breath. I wiggled my other hand between the plate and my chest until it rested over my heartbeat. A foreign sensation in my chest after only feeling the whoosh-whoosh of the mechanical heart for so long.
Clearing his throat and completely avoiding the question because we both knew the answer, he said, “Dr. Hahl fixed your scar. It looks better than mine now.”
I skimmed my fingers up my fresh scar. No puckers. No roughness. Just a smooth line.
I pushed at the plate covering my chest. “What’s this?”
“It speeds healing. We’re only a day out of surgery. It had taken me weeks to heal this much before.”
I tugged at his hand. “Get it off.”
“Only for a minute.” He swung the arm around and buzzed up the head of my bed. “Better?”
“Not until you’re in here with me.”
“I don’t think—”
“Don’t think. I need you.”
With a reluctant side eye, he lowered the arm of the bed and gently climbed in. I found the button and lowered the head again.
He placed his hand over my heart, and I covered it with mine.
Marc kissed the corner of my jaw. “How are you feeling?”
“Better than I did when Bodie and I woke up in the exclusion zone.”
He chuckled, but it died quickly. I pulled him close, his arm across my chest, one of his legs laid over mine, both of us very aware of our chests and careful not to put undue pressure on them.
We lay in the quiet room, ignoring the distant shouts and commotion in the halls.
“Why?” I asked at last. I didn’t need to say more. Marc would know what I was talking about. “You could have died.”
“You would have died. There wasn’t another viable option. Besides, this is why we came here. I needed to return what was yours.”
“I didn’t want it back. Not after… us .”
“I was born with a bad heart. Maybe I was never meant for this world for long.”
“Moon and mars, that’s the biggest bunch of bullocks I’ve ever heard. You belong here as much as any of us.”
I placed my hand over Marc’s chest where my heart should be. “How long do you have?”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter when it was the only thing that mattered to me. “It’s experimental. The 300 model or something like that. It’s not supposed to be damaged by the metalloprotease enzymes. I’m the first person they put it in, so we’ll see if it works.”
“It’ll work.” It had to.
“I only needed it to work until now.”
What was he talking about?
“I—”
I waited Marc out. It wouldn’t help for me to push him when he was hesitant.
“I never told you I loved you. I needed you to know that. So… I. Love. You.”
I cupped the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss. Our dry, chapped lips stuck together until we broke apart.
“Ouch.” Marc rubbed his lip.
I chuckled, then turned serious again. “I knew. I never doubted. Not for one second. You’re mine. For always. You have a problem with that, you should tell me now.”
The smile that spread across his face said it better than any words could. And the kiss that followed sealed it. I’d never expected to have my heart stolen twice, but it had taken Marc to make it whole long before he’d ever given it back, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“No. It’s not a problem. We’re more than a donor match. We were meant to be.”
“We need to get you back to Toonu and—”
“We’re not going anywhere. At least not until we’re healed. Crossing the badlands in our condition would be disastrous, even if we have camels the whole way.”
I couldn’t lay in that room for days on end. The boredom would kill me faster than my defective mechanical heart would have. “What are we going to do until then?”
Marc caught my hand and pressed it to the front of his trousers and his impressive post-surgical erection. “I can think of a few things.”