Hailstone (18 page)

“Not him.” Magda almost spat the words, but she didn’t as much as look at Zack. “Joseph. Just Joseph, and without the baseball bat. He’ll frighten the nurses.”

“Both of them will go with you.”

Before there was any further chance for conversation, the ambulance wailed into the street. The crowd parted to let it through.

Magda watched dully while the paramedics swarmed out. Her eyes stayed dry even when both body bags were zipped up. She and Kat climbed into the back of the ambulance with them and ignored Joseph and Zack when they followed. They found a space on a bench and sat, hand in hand, silent.

Magda knew Zack was staring at their joined hands. She stared at the broad zip that hid Adam’s face. She wondered if Kat was planning what they’d do when they got to the hospital, because she had no idea. Joseph was just a shadow to her right; he hadn’t spoken once.

The ambulance pulled into the hospital and the doors opened behind them. Magda and Kat climbed down into the sunlight without looking at Zack or Joseph. They watched the paramedics take out the stretchers and wheel them into the hospital. They followed, hand in hand.

An orderly stopped them at a set of double doors. Magda watched through the window until the stretcher was wheeled out of sight.

Zack laid a hand on her shoulder. “Time to go, Magdalene,” he said.

“Don’t touch me.” Magda knew every inch of naked emotion burned through her voice. She wasn’t surprised when Zack withdrew his hand as though he’d been burned. She wasn’t surprised either when the pain that stabbed through her head became so intense everything around her went black.

*

Magda blinked. Light shone through the cracks in her eyes. She
squinted and moved her head to the side. Her right arm was hooked up to a drip. She turned her head to the left; Kat swam into view. “Hey there,” she croaked.

Kat squeezed her hand, but did not smile. “You blacked out,” she said. She leaned across and pressed a button on the wall. “The doctor said to call her back when you woke up.”

Magda closed her eyes and felt her senses swim back. “How long was I out?”

“A few hours. Scared the shit out of me.”

Magda remembered why they’d come to the hospital in the first place. She looked around for Zack and Joseph.

“Joseph’s outside,” Kat whispered. “The other one went away when the doctor said you’d have to stay overnight. He said he’d be back in the morning to get you. Who is that guy?”

Magda turned her head into the pillow. “Some Congregation weirdo Preacher decided I should marry.”

“That explains a lot.”

“Let’s not be here in the morning.”

The curtain around the bed flipped aside and closed again behind the now familiar face of Doctor Baker. She laid her clipboard on the table by the bed. “Ms McAllister,” she said, her voice crisp. “How are we?”

“You tell me.” Magda took a deep breath, frightened suddenly the doctor was going to do just that.

“We ran a couple of tests
.” The doctor wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Magda’s arm and inflated it. “When you passed out, your blood pressure was pretty high.” The cuff deflated. The Doctor watched the figures on the screen. “It’s still a little bit higher than I’d like, but you’ve come right down now. You may be suffering from some hypertension, but this seems to be more stress-related.”

Magda nodded. “I’m going to be fine, right?”

Doctor Baker sighed. “If you’re very careful, Ms McAllister, you may be fine. The tests we ran showed some damage to your kidneys, and your liver isn’t in the best of shape either. I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me honestly. Do you have a problem with drugs or alcohol?”

Magda frowned. “I don’t use drugs, except for the valium prescription. And I drink some, but it’s not a problem.”

“Mags,” Kat said.

Magda looked at her. “What?”

“How often do you drink?”

Magda looked back at the doctor. She shrugged. “I’ve hardly drunk at all in the last couple of days. Or taken valium.”

“Before that?” the doctor prodded. “How many drinks a day would you say you had? A couple after dinner?”

“A couple,” Magda said.

“And before dinner? With lunch? Breakfast?”

“Look I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

The doctor gave her a look that made her feel like a naughty schoolgirl.

Magda scowled. “You don’t know what it was like! So maybe I had a few drinks to get me started in the morning. So maybe I passed out once or twice. You would too if you had to put up with their shit.”

“You mean the church?” the doctor asked.

“Them and Preacher.”

The doctor dropped into the one remaining empty chair and fixed her with a beady stare. “Ms McAllister, you have to stop. No more alcohol, no more valium, at least not for a while. Give your kidneys and your liver a break, because they can’t keep up with you. And you need to avoid stressful situations.” She held up a hand before Magda could speak, and lowered her voice. “I know that’s going to be almost impossible, given your situation, but that’s what you need to do. Ms Catrall, I read your website last night, so I know what’s going on out there. We’ve had a few admissions related to Congregation methods since you were last here.”

Kat moved closer to the bed. “Admissions?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss my patients, but I can tell you this, although it didn’t come from me.”

“Understood,” Kat said.

“We tested the water you two gave us. It came back as a positive for scopolamine.”

“What’s that?” Magda asked. Kat produced a notebook and started writing.

“It’s a drug that was banned at least twenty years ago. It was used medicinally as a sedative and anti-depressant, but the side effects had people hallucinating and suffering amnesia. It’s said to make people suggestible.”

“Christ.” Magda rubbed at her forehead. “He’s giving it to everyone in those centres. We have to find a way to stop him.”

“You, miss, have to rest and keep your blood pressure down,” the doctor said. “And you’ll be in here overnight so I can make sure you remain stable.”

“Fine, but if Preacher walks in, I’m going out the window.”

The doctor chuckled and collected her file. “You’re well over the legal age, you don’t have to go anywhere with anybody you don’t want to. I’ll be back to check on you in another hour or two.”

Magda watched until the curtains switched closed behind her. “She doesn’t get it
.”

“No, but at least she’s sane. This hospital feels like the last sane place on earth," Kat said.

Magda put her head in her hands. She told herself to be calm. She didn’t want to think about what the doctor had said. She couldn’t. She couldn’t stay in hospital either; she had to think what to do next. She sure as hell didn’t feel like resting.

“Mags, I need to get home and upload the footage to the site,” Kat said.

Magda stared at her. “The footage?”

“Everything you and I got on the camera. I was reviewing it while you were out. Once it gets out there, somebody from outside Hailstone’s got to realise we need help. They’ll come, especially when they see-” she stopped.

“Adam,” Magda said. “You filmed what happened, didn’t you?”

Kat nodded.
“I can’t let it be for nothing.”

“Be careful,”
Magda said. “It’s not safe on the streets today.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get a taxi a
nd avoid the city centre. Will you be okay here?”

“Yes.” Magda tightened her hand around Kat’s. “Don’t be long. And send in Joseph, I want to talk to him.”

“Really? Shouldn’t you be avoiding stress?”

“I’m not le
tting Preacher have him,” Magda gave Kat her best I’m-not-stressed smile.

“Okay.” Kat didn’t sound the least bit convinced. “Listen, if I’m not back by tonight, or if I come back and you’re gone, what do we do?”

“Tear apart Hailstone until we find each other,” Magda said. She pressed her lips to Kat’s hand. “Don’t be long.”

Kat gave her a fleeting smile and left.

Magda pushed the button to make the bed rise up behind her so she could sit comfortably. She took a few deep breaths and thought about being calm. Soon enough, Joseph parted the curtain, sporting a bandage across his nose.

“Come in,” she said. “Sit down.”

He obeyed. Magda looked at him carefully. His jaw was set in a stubborn line, but his eyes betrayed fear. She made her voice as gentle as she could. “Joseph.”

“Magdalene,” he said. “I – I’m-” he stopped.

“Well for starters, you can just stop calling me Magdalene, it’s creepy. You used to call me Mags.”

The shutters went down over his eyes; he just looked at her.

“Say it,” Magda said. “Or we won’t be having this conversation. It’s just my name, Joseph, the one I like. You can give me that much. Call me Mags.”

“Magdalene-”

“Mags,” she insisted.

Joseph’s shoulders slumped. “Mags,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She smiled. “What are you sorry for?”

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

Magda drew her knees up and watched Joseph. He shivered like a leaf in a strong wind. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “All he did was be the person he wanted to be, and he was murdered by narrow-minded bigots.”

“He sinned in the eyes of God,” Joseph said.

“Really? Is that what you think, or what Preacher told you to think?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Joseph,” she said. “There are lots of kinds of truth. What Preacher tells you is not one of them, it’s just a point of view. What is truth is that you have been manipulated. You were taken to an outreach centre, drugged and brainwashed.”

Joseph looked away from her. His arms folded across his chest. “They said you’d talk like this. It’s Satan working through you.”

“Are you telling me I’m lying? Did they take you to an outreach centre, Joseph? Did Preacher make you go, or was it your father?”

“My father,” he mumbled.

“Why? Why did he make you go?”

Joseph scowled at her. “Because he found me smoking. I’m glad I went, Magdalene, so just stop this.”

“Mags.”

“Mags
.” he muttered.

“So he found you smoking and took you to a centre. Then what happened?”

“We prayed some.”

“And?”

“That’s it.”

“They didn’t give you anything to eat or drink?”

Joseph hesitated. He flushed red. “We were in the prayer circle,” he said. “It was just like communion, only instead of grape juice, we had to drink holy water.”

“And then?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“There’s a drug in the holy water,” Magda said. “Joseph, I stole some and the hospital tested it. It’s called scopolamine.”

“You’re lying.”

“Really? Have you ever really thought about who’s lying, Joseph? Preacher says we’re all possessed by demons the minute we drink or smoke or have any fun, but does that really make sense? Can you remember why you used to drink and smoke? Did Satan sit on your shoulder and force you into it, or was it that your father kept hitting you and it was the only way to cope?”

“Stop it.”

“Joseph we’re very alike, you and I. We’ve put up with the same crap from fathers who hold too much power. Now they’ve gone a step too far and brought you under their control. What were you doing with the baseball bats today? Would you really have delivered me back to Preacher to be beaten and forced into one of those centres? Is that what God wants, for people to be forced to think one way and not another?”

“Stop it!” Joseph yelled. “Shut up!”

“Why? I thought you wanted truth in your life?” Magda reached out and grabbed his wrist to make him look at her. “Joseph I know you saw him die today. His name was Adam and he was my friend. He loved, just like you and I do. He was a good man who just wanted to be free. Did you see his face when he died? Did you see his eyes? He never expected to be shot by a girl who got fucked up by scopolamine and an outreach centre run by my ex-husband. Did you see her, just before she died? She was so convinced she could make a gay man happy she blew her own brains out. Is that where you want to end up too?”

Joseph snatched his hand from her grasp. He clutched his head and bent double. He balled a fist. Magda covered her head, a reflexive action she hated herself for, but Joseph swung around and buried the fist in the wall. Plaster cracked under his knuckles. He dropped his head. A strangled sob jerked from his ribs. “I hate them,” he said.

“Joseph
.” Magda could have cried blood for this boy, but only saltwater trickled down her cheeks.

Joseph collapsed by the bed and sobbed onto her shoulder. At first Magda had no idea what to do with the full-grown man crying on her. She tangled her fingers in his hair, thought about Adam and burst into tears herself. They sobbed together like that for what felt like hours, until she was empty of tears, and he was still, and a quiet space spread from her aching ribs to her mind.