“Hey!” he shouts. Not at me. At the black eye above us. “Hey, a little help here!”
No help comes. He looks at the monitor, looks at me, and says, “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m okay.”
“Sure. You’re fine, just fine!” He goes to the sink, wets a clean towel, and lays it across my forehead. “Fine, my ass! Why the hell did they take you off the meds?”
“Why not?” I’m fighting the urge to hurl again.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you’ll die without them.” He glares at the camera.
“Maybe you should hand me that container over there.”
He dabs at the crud sticking on my chin, refolds the cloth, grabs the container, and places it on my lap.
“Razor.”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t put that back on my face.”
“Huh? Oh. Shit. Yeah. Hang on.” He grabs a clean towel and runs it under the water. His hands are shaking. “You know what it is? I know what it is. Why didn’t I think of it? Why didn’t you think of it? The meds must be interfering with the system.”
“What system?”
“The 12th System. The one they injected into you, Sherlock. The hub and his forty thousand little friends to supercharge the other eleven.” He puts the cool towel on my forehead. “You’re cold. You want me to find another blanket?”
“No, I’m burning up.”
“It’s a war,” he says. He taps his chest. “In here. You gotta declare a truce, Ringer.”
I shake my head. “No peace.”
He nods, squeezing my wrist beneath the thin blanket. Squats on the floor to gather the fallen chess pieces. Curses when he can’t find the quarter. Decides he can’t leave the vomit just lying there. Grabs the dirty towel he used to wipe my chin and swabs the deck on his hands and knees. He’s still cursing when the door opens and Claire comes into the room.
“Good timing!” Razor barks at her. “Hey, can’t you at least give her the anti-puke serum?”
Claire jerks her head toward the door. “Get out.” She points at the box. “And take that with you.”
Razor glowers at her, but he does it. I see again the tightly contained force behind his angelic features. Careful, Razor. That’s not the answer.
Then we’re alone, and Claire studies the monitor for a long, silent moment.
“Were you telling the truth earlier?” she asks. “You want to live so you can kill Commander Vosch? You’re smarter than that.” In the tone of a mother scolding a very young child.
“You’re right,” I answer. “I’ll never get that chance. But I’m going to have the opportunity to kill you.”
She looks startled. “Kill me? Why would you want to kill me?” When I don’t answer, she says, “I don’t think you’re going to live through the night.”
I nod. “And you’re not going to live out the month.”
She laughs. The sound of her laughter causes bile to rise into my throat. Burning. Burning.
“What are you going to do?” she says softly. She yanks the towel from my forehead. “Smother me with this?”
“No. I’m going to overcome the guard by smashing his head in with a heavy object, and then I’m going to take his gun and shoot you in the face.”
She laughs through the whole thing. “Well, good luck with that.”
“It won’t be luck.”
66
CLAIRE TURNS OUT to be wrong about me being dead by morning.
Nearly a month later, by my reckoning of three meals per day, and I’m still here.
I don’t remember much. At some point they disconnected me from the IV and the monitor, and the silence that slammed down after the constant beeping was loud enough to crack mountains. The only person I saw during that time was Razor. He’s my full-time caretaker now. Feeds me, empties my bedpan, washes my face and hands, turns me so I don’t develop bedsores, plays chaseball in the hours when I’m not delirious, and talks nonstop. He talks about everything, which is another way of saying he talks about nothing. His dead family, his dead friends, his squad mates, the drudgery of winter camp, the fights borne of boredom and fatigue and fear (but mostly fear), the rumors that when spring comes the Teds are launching a major offensive, a last-ditch effort to purge the world of the human noise, of which Razor is very much an active part. He talks and talks and talks. He had a girlfriend, her name was Olivia and her skin was dark like a muddy river and she played clarinet in the school band and was going to be a doctor and hated Razor’s dad because he didn’t think Razor could be a doctor. He lets it slip that his given name is Alex like A-Rod and his drill sergeant named him Razor not because he was slender but because he cut himself shaving one morning. I have very sensitive skin. His sentences are without periods, without commas, without paragraphs, or, to be accurate, it’s all one long paragraph with no margins.
He shuts up just one time after nearly a month of the verbal diarrhea. He’s going on about how he won first place in the fifth-grade science fair with his project about how to turn a potato into a battery when he stops in midsentence. His silence is jarring, like the stillness after a building implodes.
“What is that?” he asks, staring intently into my face, and nobody stares more intently than Razor, not even Vosch.
“Nothing.” I turn my head away from him.
“Are you crying, Ringer?”
“My eyes are watering.”