The Migration, page 7
For the first time since Kira died I feel strangely excited. Almost happy.
* * *
—
The road to the JR Hospital is deserted at this time of night but I take it slowly anyway, watching the streets grow less and less familiar further from the city centre. The view through the windshield looks all wrong from the driver’s seat on the right side, a weird sense of dislocation. I haven’t practiced driving since I got here. The car nudges over too far, the centre line a thick blur as the night rushes by like water.
There are more scattered cars than I would’ve thought outside the trauma ward. I park about fifty metres from the entrance, in the gloom of a broken overhead light.
Inside the foyer the glare of lights blinds me. I pass by orderlies moving supplies and more than a couple of volunteers who look dazed by the late hour. It’s strange that they’re here but the more I wander the more I get the sense of the scale of the crisis. The patient bays are mostly full and more people are trickling in, clutching snotty kids complaining of bad stomach aches. One father grabs an orderly by the arm. “For Christ’s sake, my daughter won’t stop bleeding,” he’s shouting. His shirt is stained with red.
I follow a long hallway past the triage station. Head tucked down, dodging the glance of the on-duty nurse. The chaos helps. No one stops me.
At East General the morgue was in an unmarked room in the basement. The philosophy was that no patient wants to be reminded of unpleasant possibilities. From the hall you’d see a door that led to an office like any other—except several metres down was a large metal slide door leading to the adjoining fridge where the bodies could be wheeled in. All I have to do is watch, wait, listen for the hospital codes. At Toronto General, code black meant a death on the ward. But the meaning would be different here. I have a hazy memory of the ER after Kira’s death—code green, the covered stretcher.
It’s easy to be a ghost here: thin, insubstantial. I float through the hallways, keeping close to public toilets where I can slip in if someone looks at me too closely.
I check out the exits. It’ll be difficult to get past the waiting rooms near the trauma ward without being seen. The hospital map shows nothing but the outlines of buildings. No help at all, so I range through the corridors furthest from the outpatient areas and head down the stairs. The traffic is lighter here, good. I’m near the Resonance Imaging Department when a tinny voice announces over the PA system: “Attention, code green, bay four.”
I freeze and glance around. This is my chance.
The back elevators are largely unattended. Only a few orderlies in drab uniforms and the odd nurse. Restlessly I circle the area until I see someone wheeling a stretcher with a white sheet draped over a bulky form.
The orderly is a few years older than me, nut-coloured hair tied back loosely. She hardly glances at me as she passes by, one wheel of the stretcher squeaking. What’s one more ghost in a place like this?
I follow about twenty paces behind her, tracking her when she turns corners by the sound of that squeaking wheel. She arrives at a sliding metal door, waves a plastic chit across the sensor pad and carefully hauls up the door. A cold breeze wafts into the hallway and the hairs on my arms prick up.
After a few minutes she’s back in the corridor, sans stretcher. She closes the sliding door behind her, then pauses to stretch the muscles in her back. It looks like it’s been the longest day of her life. Then she’s gone.
The hallway is empty. I pull out Aunt Irene’s keys again and work my way through the plastic security chits. Most of them are emblazoned with the university’s blue coat of arms but there’s a chit here without any markings on it at all. I take a breath. If I swipe this chit and nothing happens then I’m done. And standing here in the hallway, nostrils sharp with the faint whiff of disinfectant, I almost want to fail. At least then it would be over, just like Dr. Varghese said.
I do it and wait. One second passes, two. Relief floods my system. That’s it then. Fine.
Then a faint snick startles me. The light on the pad flashes green.
I lift the door, duck inside and carefully lower it behind me. The morgue feels slightly warmer than a meat locker. Its ceilings and walls are covered in galvanized steel. Cold bites the inside of my nostrils, my lungs. I remember a news story in Canada about a toddler leaving her house on a frigid winter night, being found the next morning frozen nearly solid. But she was resuscitated, brought back to life. For dead flesh a place like this would be protective. Decomposition slows as the fluids in the body begin to gel and eventually harden but it doesn’t stop. I can still smell rot mixed with formaldehyde: vinegary, like day-old wine, spoiled meat.
Two of the walls are filled with steel drawers, and there is a closed door and clouded glass window leading into what I assume to be the office. The orderly’s stretcher sits in the middle of the room. Several sets of portable mortuary racks, heavy duty shelves on wheels for extra body storage. A quick tally shows me there are close to thirty bodies here. Each is bound in shiny black vinyl with three straps tightened against the chest, the waist, and the thighs.
I examine each bag for a label that says KIRA PERELLA. It takes me a minute to find it. Her age and date of death have been noted in blue pen.
With numb fingers I unbuckle the straps. Start to tug the zipper along the J-shaped path. Then a sound comes from the office. Oh no, Jesus. I crouch down beside the rack and glance toward the window. Someone has entered the office from the other side. A lab technician? The shape lingers and I will it not to enter the morgue. “Go on,” I whisper. My breath is a bright cloud of white. “Go back the way you came.”
At last the figure does head back into the hallway. I slip into the office, desperate for the heat. There’s a lab coat on a hook and I put it on, rolling back the too-long sleeves.
Then I head back to the fridge. Staring at the mortuary racks, the flesh on my arms goosebumped. My grief has hardened into a thick, immobile mass: I can do this.
Her body bag is light, so much lighter than I expected. It reminds me of Jaina’s thirteenth birthday party. We’d stood around her chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board” while we tried to raise her up with nothing but our fingertips. It didn’t work. Of course it didn’t work. But Kira is weightless. I wrestle her onto the orderly’s stretcher and cover her with a sheet. There.
It isn’t enough. What if they notice her body is missing?
CHRISTINA VASCO is the name on the bag beside Kira’s. Aged nine, died the same day as her. She looks roughly the same size too. She must have been tall for her age.
There is a set of small shears on a shelf. I snip off the identification tags and tie Kira’s information to Christina’s bag, tucking her label into my pocket. Let them ask about Christina Vasco. Let them wonder what happened to her, if they ask anything at all. As many new people as there are here, and with the increasing number of JI2 diagnoses, it could be days before anyone notices.
I lift up the sliding door and peek out into the hallway. Bright lights and clean, pastel colours. Empty. I gently pull the stretcher through the door, pausing as the wheel lets out a long, vicious k-k-kreeeeeeeech. My stomach drops but I quietly lower the door and push the stretcher through the hallway.
The blue line marked PARKING guides me through the maze of corridors back toward the trauma exit. There must be back ways for the movement of bodies, but I don’t know them. People whisk past me and I keep my head down, hope no one can see how badly I’m shivering.
The double doors are visible at the end of the hallway. I’m almost there, almost there, when—WHAM!—a heavy mass slams into me.
“Sorry, bloody hell, sorry!” he murmurs.
I’m yanked up by the arm. Staring face-to-face with a volunteer, maybe a couple of years older than me. His dark eyes blink slowly with concern.
No no no…
He takes in my sneakers, jeans, the oversized lab coat, my face. I watch the recognition travel through his synapses. “You…”
What’re you staring at, freakazoid?
I squeeze the hand that’s pulling me up, squeeze it hard. “Please. She’s my sister.”
His mouth opens. He seems to be listening to some voice that isn’t mine, a voice far away. Then, very slowly, he nods.
He points down a turn-off to the right. “That way,” he whispers, “no one uses that exit at this time of night.”
I don’t know what to say to him.
“Go on. Hurry!”
I’m shaking but I turn right again, then left. Walking as fast as I can. The stretcher squeaks past signs for the Co-operative Childcare and the Eye Hospital. He was right. This wing is mostly empty.
There—the exit leads out to a bus parking lot. I keep to the far edge where the street lamps don’t cast their light. I manoeuvre the stretcher under the parking gate, then I head around to the back to the lot where I left the Renault. I wrestle the plastic sheeting into the back. Tears slide down my cheeks, the wetness cool on my skin. The lot is empty.
Except there, watching me. A silhouette standing outside the trauma exit. I recognize his face, his broad shoulders. It’s him. His fingers rise as the Renault glides by, a partial salute which I don’t take the time to acknowledge.
9
The road outside Oxford is dark, a handful of stars piercing the night sky. The car is thick with a gamy, animal smell, a whiff of storm-rain. Hot air shoots out through the Renault’s vents while the Common Misfits spill out over the speaker. Ooooh, baby, baby, where’d it all go so wrong? Nothing’s as good as it used to be.
I’ve got the music blasting so I can’t hear the noises—if there are any. From the back.
Exhilaration skates along my nerves. Through the front windshield I can see the two-hundred-foot chimney of the cement works silhouetted against the pearl-edged clouds. It’s halfway medieval in the gloom. Signs everywhere say KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING. But there’s nothing but a rusted padlock on the front gate. I stop the car, get out and bash off the lock with a chunk of concrete the size of a softball. Drag open the gate.
The Renault shudders along a shoddy gravel road, pitted and broken up, toward the cement works. Great tranches of water reflect the moonlight like giant silver platters. It takes time to navigate the car around deep potholes. I glance at the nearby buildings for something I can use, snatching glimpses of burnt-out silos with rotted doors. No good, no good. They’re all too exposed to the elements. But something about this place feels right: maybe just the wildness of it, the look of abandonment. No one will find her here. She’ll be safe.
Rainwater has lengthened the quarry lake, feeding into a labyrinth of ditches. The headlights shimmer on the bottle-green surface of the lake, tingeing it with an electric glow, and thick mist hovers over the water. I can make out a building the shape of a boot, an ancient conveyor belt and a flooded pit. There are jagged arches that look like an ancient Roman bathhouse.
This place reminds me of all those fairy tales I used to read her in bed. Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.
I’m out of the car and into the darkness, the body bag in my arms. Pressing my back against the rusted metal door. The hinges resist. I keep pushing and pushing and pushing. Finally the door creaks open. I have to struggle with her now, aware of the fungal softness of her body beneath the vinyl. My arms are rubbery with fatigue. I lower her to the ground and drag the bag inside, leaving a deep muddy groove behind me.
Inside the building there’s only a thin wedge of light from the car. The tower telescopes toward an open roof.
I can do this. I have to do this.
When I touch the zipper it isn’t cold anymore. I tug it most of the way down—there! The gleam of the shaved head, pale as an eggshell. Her skin is glazed and nacreous. She still looks like my sister. Her lips, her chin, the slight snub nose. Her eyes are closed.
Soff, am I playing dead?
No, Kiki-bird, the dead don’t talk.
Tiny tremors ripple though her muscles. I lean forward. Is this it then? Is this what I wanted to happen? A gust of cool, yeasty air escapes her lips. It happens again. And again. The smell is unfamiliar, faintly sickening.
What have I done?
I scrabble to my feet, my heart racing, numbness crawling across my skin. Kira’s body has begun to shake violently. The smell of decay. The noise of her limbs shuffling against plastic skritch skritch skritch. The sound of something coming awake, trying to free itself.
Oh god.
I thought I could handle this. That I would be strong enough. What is she?
Now I’m running through the door of the tower, slamming it shut behind me. Climbing into the driver’s seat of the Renault.
My foot slams the accelerator and the tires squeal. The headlights explode the cement works into blocky shapes, a strange geometry of angles and curves. I crack my head viciously against the window as one of the front tires drops into a gash in the broken concrete. My vision swims but I don’t slow down. I speed through the open gate.
Trees flash by as the car sails up Bunkers Hill. Mud gums up the tires, making the wheel jerk in my hand. I’m fighting for control now. I need to be careful. I need to concentrate.
There’s a drop on the left of the road. Not a cliff, I remember, but a thirty-foot tumble through partial woodland. No safety rails, no shoulder, and the slick runoff makes it hard to stay in control. The Renault’s back end keeps fishtailing. Then the rear tires hit gravel, making an awful sound.
My fists clench as I try to wrestle the car back under control. Focus. The road curves, shoots up and then dips as the Renault crests the hill.
And all at once the fear drops away, transmuted into something else. A giddy, slaphappy high. I could loosen my grip on the wheel. And what? Disaster? The feeling is amazing. Adrenaline rattles my nerves but it heightens my senses too. Shadows peel away from one another beyond the circle of my headlights. A shiver slides along my spine, a watery feeling in my stomach. The thought of something moving out there, of Kira moving.
My eyes flick to the rear-view mirror. The tower has been swallowed by the forest and darkness. The beams of my headlights catch the thick bars of tree trunks as branches whip against the side of the car. My heart is pounding. The Common Misfits croon, Why can’t it be like it was, sweet baby? I would have stayed like that forever…
Then the wheel skitters in my hands. I have a drunk’s sluggish sense of things spiralling out of control. Headlights coming my way, so bright I’m blinded. Left is the edge of the road. Left is the thirty-foot drop. Veer right, I have to veer right…I don’t veer right—instead, I let go of the wheel. The car lurches into the trees like a rampaging animal. I should be terrified, but I’m not, not even a little bit. As branches splinter against the windshield and the night fragments into a spiderweb of cracks, my body lights up with a feeling close to joy.
10
Consciousness hits me like a bucket of cold water.
“Hold still, my love,” croons the voice of a woman I don’t recognize. The bitter smell of hospital-grade disinfectant stings my nostrils. A twinge of pain in my left wrist makes me squirm, but my arms lie awkward and heavy. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Sophie.” The words stick in my throat. “Sophie. Um. Perella.”
“Good, Sophie. You’ve had a nasty bang-up, but just a moment longer and I’ll have you sorted.” Darkness creeps across my vision. Heavy and claustrophobic against a bright fluorescent glare.
My brain goes soft and crackly. The low whine of a heart monitor bleeds out nearby.
* * *
—
“Take a deep breath now, that’s it.”
When I come to again, she’s next to me, face drawn and tired, deep grooves of sadness around her mouth, but she smiles when she sees me staring at her. “You’re at the John Radcliffe Hospital. My name is Nurse Rew. Dr. Perig asked me to handle this for him, but don’t worry. I’ll have you stitched up right fast, love.”
The tip of her tongue touches her lips as she concentrates on a cut that runs across the underside of my arm. The skin around it is abraded, red like hamburger meat. “I told you not to look,” she says with a grimace. “You won’t like what you see here, now will you?” She cleans the wound carefully and then prepares to suture it closed. Nurse Rew’s fingers are heavily calloused but they move daintily as she works. The anaesthetic must have kicked in because I feel nothing but the pressure as she tugs at a curved steel needle. She ties off the knot and snips the thread with surgical scissors. “There you go. All better.”
My thoughts are loosely coiled. I don’t want to think about where I am, what I’ve done. I don’t know what I’ll say if she asks me.
“Listen. There’s something I must speak to you about, my love. We haven’t been able to locate your medical records so I sent a blood sample in for testing.” She touches my forehead with the kind of casual ownership you take over the body of someone you’re tending.
“You didn’t need to do that.” A long pause as I try to bring my sluggish brain to bear on the problem. “I was tested back in Toronto. A few months ago. They said I was negative.”
“Just to be sure then. With things as they are we tiptoe round the grave.” I can’t help looking down at her handiwork. Little black stitches zipper up a length of about four inches. She dabs them with a cloth to get rid of the blood. There’s more of it than I would have expected. She wraps a white gauze bandage over the stitches, tapes it in place.
“We’ll keep you for a few hours for observation.” I want her to take my hand again. The craving for contact is so powerful that I can feel pressure mounting behind my eyes. “With any luck, you’ll be just fine.”
