Big Machine (30 page)

-Sssswump!-

It’s true that Rose squeezed the trigger, but I sacrificed my sister to save myself.

Our community ended that night. News of the gunfight spread so fast that everyone in Queens claimed to have heard the shots thundering.

A cult called the Washerwomen committed mass murder. That’s how the papers reported it. That’s the story that stuck. Every adult who survived got jail time, including Sargent and Carolyn. Group homes for the children. Daphne and the other victims were given to the grave.

No mention of the lights was ever made.

HIGHGROUND HOSPITAL SHOT UP
before us, an off-white tower on a hill. It stood amid small, quiet, private homes and hovered just above busy 14th Avenue. Claude pulled into a curved driveway and stopped in front of glass admitting doors.

The Gray Lady leaned close to me so she could look at him around the headrest. “Why don’t you just park in the garage?” she asked. “We might be here for a while.”

“Parking on the sidewalk is free,” he said.

He remained there, clinging to the steering wheel just to make clear he wouldn’t be carrying me. I remembered that bus driver leaning forward as he drove us through the heavy snow. The Gray Lady would have to do the lifting, and I wondered how she’d manage the feat. I admit I felt a bit excited: we were finally going to touch! No getting out of it now. It wouldn’t be skin, I understood that, but the idea of her hands cupped under my arms moved me.

I took so long fantasizing about the moment that I didn’t notice the Gray Lady run into the waiting room without me. She returned moments later with a nurse pushing a wheelchair.

Ah, Ms. Henry, you got away from me again.

The nurse wheeled me inside the waiting room, and left me at a desk while she walked around to the other side. Asked for my name, my symptoms, a home address. Then she told me I’d have to wait. Wheeled me over to an empty chair and lifted me into it before I could protest. I looked worse than most others in the waiting room but better than a few.

You have to be catastrophically sick to pass to the front of a public hospital’s line.

A large crowd was waiting there. Half of them were children of patients who just couldn’t afford a babysitter. The kids tried their best to use the emergency room like a jungle gym, climbing onto end tables and hiding behind potted plants. Inventing fun is a child’s true genius.

I sat in one chair, arms balanced on each arm rest, with the Gray Lady beside me, hands in her lap. I tried to meditate, concentrate on my aches. I located that hot pain sitting between my shoulder blades and talked to it as if it was alive. Just leave me alone, I thought. Why not get out of here? I know it can’t be comfortable stuffed up in my narrow back. Wouldn’t you be happier somewhere else? You know, Claude has a very roomy belly.

But it didn’t work, of course. The fire in my spine smoldered.

I leaned back in my seat, pressing against my shoulder blades, and when I did that, my upper body twitched, nerves scrambling, all the way up to my neck. A jolt so powerful I jerked forward and took the pressure off. As soon as I did that, the harsh pain went away.

“What was that thing at my hotel?” I asked Ms. Henry.

That’s what I said, but my sentence came out mumbled. I had a lot of saliva in my mouth now, and it took concentration to keep the drool from spilling past my lips. I thought I’d throw up again, right there. Ms. Henry looked at me and scrunched her eyebrows. Had she even understood what I said?

“I saw you look up at the sky,” I explained once my mouth was dry.

The Gray Lady whispered, “I have to call the Dean and find out what to do about Claude. My phone won’t work in here. I’ll be right outside.”

“No,” I huffed. “You know what it was.”

She bounced the phone on her right knee. It looked as big as a bike engine in her fat little hand. My mouth filled with saliva and I sucked it down again, a little louder than I meant to. People waiting in nearby chairs looked at me with disgust.

Ms. Henry spoke softly.
“They,
” she said. “They’re called the Devils of the Marsh.”

“Come on.”

She looked at me calmly, like she wouldn’t bother arguing.

In the sewer I’d been sure it wasn’t Solomon Clay, wasn’t any human, and felt the same in the elevator at my hotel, but I couldn’t bear the idea now.

And yet. And yet. What had I
seen
in Cedar Rapids? Did “Devils of the Marsh” sound any more impossible?

“And what are they?” I asked.

“You know how we go out in the field and do the Library’s will?”

“Yeah.”

She said, “They do the will of the Voice.”

“So they’re good?”

She touched her neck, covering the small, healed scars.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

I sucked in again and didn’t bother to register the loathing of those nearby. I wanted to know more. At least she was finally telling me something. But before I could ask, I coughed and couldn’t stop. It got so bad my throat burned and my eyes watered and Ms. Henry’s only reaction was to wiggle her big phone.

“I’m going to call the Dean. Find out how I should proceed. You heard what Claude said. He’ll turn us in easy as that.” She snapped her fingers.

The Gray Lady opened her green purse, rummaged around. Stared down into the bag. Meanwhile, I struggled to catch my breath.

“It’s our job to keep the Library secret,” she said, more to herself than to me.

She stood up. She looked at me. I’m sure I was a terrible sight, but she seemed unconcerned.

“Take care of yourself, Mr. Rice.”

She took a breath.

She left me there.

I NEVER SAW A DOCTOR WALKING
through the emergency room, and even once I was moved to the little examination stalls in back, it took a while for me to meet one. Nurses ran the show. Husky women in their forties who distinguished themselves with different sets of festive scrubs.

They wheeled me back before the Gray Lady returned, and even though I craned my neck to see through the big waiting room windows, I didn’t see her outside. I thought of leaving a trail from my chair to the back room, but I didn’t have any bread crumbs. Besides, how did I know she’d follow the path? Who was I kidding? That lady was gone. How could I have believed that nonsense about calling the Dean? She wasn’t off to deal with Claude. She’d abandoned me. In this condition I was more trouble than I was worth.

The nurse helped me into a stall, then pulled the curtain shut and left me alone again. Ten minutes may have passed, but it felt longer, and I couldn’t even lie down for fear of aggravating the sore spot between my shoulder blades. With each minute I imagined Claude and the Gray Lady driving another mile, another mile. By the time the nurse came back, they were far away. Even this stuff about the Devils of the Marsh seemed like part of the trick. A way to shock me into shutting up long enough for them to flee.

The nurse checked my blood pressure, asked questions about my pain. She took some blood. Left again and returned with a doctor some time later. Dr. Leonard France. White-haired and lean, his eyes as red as
radishes. The kind of man who’d been tired for years, maybe even generations. I heard patients in other stalls calling out for attention, and after checking me, the doctor went to them.

This back-and-forth, the same nurse and doctor leaving and returning to my stall, went on for another hour. They gave me a paper robe and told me to change. I kept looking at the double doors that led out to the waiting room. When they swung open, I hoped to see Ms. Henry’s round face there. But I never did.

My nurse might’ve gone on break, but Dr. France returned to me more often, even to the detriment of other patients. When he came to take my blood for the third time, one of the other patients, a muscular man, started yelling about why I got so much attention while he was left to sit there like a jerk. I wondered the same thing.

The doctor came again. This time he said, “Are you willing to go upstairs with me?”

“What’s up there?” I asked. “The morgue?”

He laughed, and I realized I’d come to like this guy. Whenever he did something, he asked my permission first, rather than just doing it and explaining only when it was done. Even something as simple as checking my pulse for the fifth time.

“Nothing like that,” he said. “I just want to rule a few things out.”

“Okay, then.”

I slid myself off the exam table.

He put me in a wheelchair, which I didn’t mind, and took me up himself. That part scared me. These doctors only paid such close attention to the real crisis cases. We passed through the waiting room quickly, less than five seconds, and I made one last sweep for the Gray Lady, but she wasn’t to be seen. That’s when I felt the deepest fear. That I was truly alone, penniless, had no one to stand with me.

“Ricky Rice! I’m back!”

I heard Adele Henry clearly, loudly. A shout so unexpected she must’ve shocked everyone else in the waiting room too.

“And I’m staying!” she said, just as loudly.

I put one hand on my chest to trap her promise there.

THE DOCTOR AND I
didn’t speak in the elevator. Not as he rolled me down the hall.

He took me to a dark room and wheeled me to a mattress. Next to it a somber technician played with a large machine. It looked like a business-size copier with a little green display screen on top. When the technician turned to us, the light of the screen made him look sickly. I
lay down and felt the throbbing in my back again, just a little, so I didn’t go all the way flat.

“Ready?” the technician said.

But who did he ask? The man wasn’t looking at me or the doctor. Maybe he spoke to the machine.

Dr. France said, “Just lift your robe, if you would. Up to your chest.”

This was the first procedure the doctor didn’t explain, so I hesitated.

The technician said, “Let’s go.”

Once my gown was up, the tech squirted cold jelly across my stomach and then pressed a wand against my skin. He pushed the wand left and right. Murky objects floated around on the display screen.

“Anything?” the doctor asked.

“No liver damage. No gallstones. Kidneys look okay. You want to check his heart?”

As the technician spoke with the doctor, he smacked the keyboard, and the image shifted. Watching a mechanic check your car engine is just as mystifying, though at least you get to keep your clothes on. The doctor leaned closer to the tech. I thought he wanted to see the screen, but instead he spoke quietly into the man’s ear.

“What about that other thing I mentioned? You see anything like that?”

The tech turned and frowned at the doctor. “Of course not.”

The way the wand pressed against my skin really hurt, but these guys didn’t notice.

I waved at the doctor. “You’re going to have to tell me something.”

Dr. France looked relieved, actually, smiled widely.

“I’ll make this plain, Mr. Royce. Your blood volume has increased by about twenty percent. Glucose levels are quite high. Your leukocyte count has gone up to almost seven thousand milliliters.”

“That’s plain?”

The technician threw a few napkins in my direction and indicated that I could wipe myself off, which I did, but my belly still felt sticky and cold. I wanted to say something about it, but the question of my comfort seemed utterly irrelevant to my man at the machine.

I stood, and the doctor helped me into the wheelchair again.

As he rolled me back toward the elevators, he laughed to himself.

I hunched forward in my seat. Still felt the heat in my back, but at least it wasn’t moving.

“Why don’t you sit back?” the doctor asked. “Get comfortable.”

“I’m better like this,” I said.

“Thanks for being a good sport. We’ll figure out what’s going on, don’t worry.”

“What was that for?” I asked, pointing to the room we’d just left.

The doctor laughed loudly now.

“It was just for my own curiosity.”

I tapped my hand at my forehead, like I was doffing my hat.

“Glad to be of service,” I said.

He tapped my shoulder.

“No, no. I didn’t mean it like that. We had to check, of course. It’s just that looking at all your tests, and based on your symptoms …”

“Yeah?”

“It’s silly,” he said.

“Tell me anyway.”

He laughed.

“Well, if it weren’t
impossible
, I’d shake your hand and say congratulations, Mr. Royce. You’re pregnant.”

PREGNANT
.

Fucking pregnant!

After hearing the word come out Dr. France’s mouth, I fell into a quiet paralysis. He spoke to me on the elevator down, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t. My mind searched for explanations, theories, to help me understand his diagnosis. And, more than that, to understand why his diagnosis felt oddly, impossibly, possible.

Reading newspapers every day wasn’t a common occurrence for me before reaching the Washburn Library, but nine months of study had exposed me to important truths and worthless data in equal measure. Now one piece I’d read only a month before came back to me.

An article about a parasitic wasp called an ichneumon. The ichneumon flies around hunting for orb-weaving spiders. When it finds a target, it attacks and paralyzes the spider, then lays its egg on the tip of the spider’s abdomen. Soon the spider recovers and returns to its life, weaving webs and catching insects, but now the wasp’s egg is growing on the spider’s abdomen, sucking out the spider’s fluids all the while.

Just before the wasp larva finally kills the orb-weaver, it actually takes over the spider’s mind. It forces the spider to weave a sturdy web, one that will protect the wasp larva after the orb-weaver has died. This zombified spider works against its nature so it can weave what its parasite needs most. A home.

All this time I’d been trying to understand what had happened to me in that sewer.

What if I hadn’t been poisoned? What if I’d been made a carrier instead?