Tabula Rasa

Hobbes woke up every day and wondered why he kept that group photo of his Team displayed on the commode in front of his and Daphne’s bed. He looked at the picture in the frame. His Team with a capital T. A bunch of losers, really, Losers with a capital L –except for Marlene, of course. After their immense success with the improvised way he led them through the mission on the Moon, what had followed had been a series of disasters one after the other. Evidently, they were staring back at him for reference, their faces similar to the fishes in the tanks of the fancy restaurants where he used to dine with his late wife, places where he didn’t dare set foot right now, fearing monumental embarrassment.

His biggest worry was to end up on the front page of the news, not the websites on the World Wide Web, but the paper version that Daphne used to read at breakfast with her tea and her one freshly-baked cinnamon roll, an expression of sadness on her lovely traits when she saw her husband’s picture there with headlines following the gist of The Trungsten Man, Super Hero who Didn’t Give a Fuck or Billionaire with Mutant Abilities Makes Donation to the Wrong Charity. She would push her little cup away with disgust as if it was responsible for this deplorable content and she couldn’t bring herself to have one more sip of it, and she would say, “they just don’t understand you, darling”

He felt like she was still watching, from above, frowning at such contents. For now, he had to face one that he personally disliked, a small column in the middle of the paper, with the pixelized portrait of Barry Masquevert as its hat, probably fetched from some old Facebook profile online: Victim of Shooting at Grand Central Station identified. Now they wanted to know why he, Barry Masquevert, had been there. They were the police, Hobbes scratched his head nervously. They were making him feel uncomfortable. They were inclined to investigate the reason for someone, whose record showed he had barely made it out of high school and that, the seven years following that, he had engaged in no post-secondary universities studies, no training, and withheld non job, to be there while the whole area had been evacuated an hour before.

Marlene and he were the only two superheroes of the Team to have their real identities known by the public, simply because the manner he had become Trungsten Man had taken place very dramatically on everyone’s television sets twenty years earlier with absolutely no privacy. When it came to Marlene, her Uberwoman persona being recognized helped her raise awareness for the thousands of issues she cared about and after that, she retreated inside her castle with her fifty cats and activated the electromagnetic field around the little forest she owned over 5 hectares, so it was all good. The rest of them had professions and families who didn’t suspect a thing, including Barry Masquevert. He was jobless and Hobbes hoped that he wasn’t ready to make little Barries with a wife and he was, without a doubt, the biggest loser of them all, but he needed his secret double life protected. Anyone exposed put the group in danger.

He was not feeling it, as he entered into the briefing room. All those idiots were sitting there waiting for him, eating his shrimp chips and leaving so many greasy crumbs on his table. Except for Marlene, who was standing in the corner, all suited-up, her face relaxed; she stepped forward when Hobbes appeared, indicating she was ready for action. The light from the ceiling chandelier glared benevolently on her, highlighting the dazzling sparkle in her eye and the glistening of the wide necklace around her muscular neck. She was Hobbes’ biggest asset, she had been Daphne’s best friend before she had passed, she spoke one hundred and fifty languages, some of them extinct, and she would always be his first choice when it came to any endeavor of the Team but this, time, he knew things would be different. His biggest wild card would have to be the insufferable Eugenie White. He sighed when White’s and his eyes met.

She always made a point to look straight at him like she thought she had the might to destabilize him, which was ridiculous but also incredibly annoying. She had no power, no mutant skill, she was pretty much useless but she kept on being cocky and confrontational with him, as if she knew and enjoyed the fact that, in his current position, he couldn’t get rid of her yet. ‘She doesn’t enjoy that at all actually, Hobbes’ Marlene kept telling him.

The funny thing was indeed that Eugenie White, with her huge eyes and her severe eyebrows, possessed in her heart the hope that soon, the Team led by Hobbes and Marlene, who was kind of like vice-Hobbes, would ditch her for good, so she and Hobbes were on the same page about that point for sure. But she was his link to Barry, she had been for two years now, some sort of mentor that kept him in line. ‘Why do you need Barry so much in your Team?’ she had asked him directly one day, calling it your Team like it was a product of his delulu.

This question is gravely out of your fucking business, he had been tempted to reply ‘Uh, Have you ever heard? Barry can stop time. He had the strongest power of the group, after Uberwoman’

‘Can’t Alphonse make up a device that does the same?’

‘Uuuuh’ he had pretended to think about it just like every time he found himself around one of those dreadfully slow civilians, ‘no. Eugenie White, this place, here, is my house, our headquarters, kind of like, the siege of Macintosh or like, Quantico. Not Wonderland’

‘Can’t Robortor create a freeze bubble or something similar?’ The fact that Marlene compared Eugenie and Barry’s side-kickerie to his and Alphonse’s was utterly bonkers. Alphonse was a useful man, Alphonse played around with cutting-edge technology, Alphonse had fought in several twentieth-century wars and faced death, Alphonse could cook a soufflé, make tiramisu!

Even Alphonse thought that Eugenie White was deader weight than the back part of a mullet, with her total absence of superabilties, the difficulties to carve her out of her eight-to-four schedule, the test copies she brought to their lab because she had to correct and grade them, her saggy boobs, undyed hair and the boring blouses she was always wearing. And yet everyone shared the same unspoken feeling –unspoken because it was disgusting— that she was Barry’s biggest crush on earth, God knew why. It was plausible that the two had bonded during the time Barry had crashed at her place and that the confusing episode had stirred some passion into the boy’s naïve heart. Had they slept together? The idea brought revulsion to Hobbes, and he thought that Eugenie White could sense that, because she crossed her arms on her chest at the table in front of him, enduring through the staring contest. He didn’t even bother and looked away.

“Everyone listen up, don’t fuck around” Hobbes said firmly, feeling a headache starting to materialize at his brows. He dropped the newspaper opened at the middle page where Barry’s photo was, “what we have to do is NOT to demolish the house, this is not a wrecking ball mission, we have to be subtle. You understand that word, right?” They all nodded like obedient children, even Eugenie White. “We have to retrieve Barry from the hospital, and this is not a simple task” Could they handle the nuances of what he was about to explain? Marlene’s eyes shone fiercely at him, giving him courage. “It goes without saying that Uberwoman and I can’t be part of that assignment, as it is capital that no one associates Barry Masquevert with our Team, you see? I repeat: not representing the Team there. You will be dressed as prison employees”

“Prison employees?” Ivan cut him off

“Jail guards” Marlene corrected Hobbes. Regular humans had jobs with such disconcerting titles, especially seeing that nothing civilians were doing in their daily lives was as useful as what a superhero was accomplishing in the time frame of half an hour.

“Eugenie White, who is the oldest of all of you dumba— guys, will represent the fake correction officer there to pick up Barry and Alphonse will print us out a paper that says that the boy is being placed under arrest” How old could she be? She looked old. Like fifty, but that was impossible, because Hobbes himself was fifty years old. She was at least fifteen years older than Barry, “Robortor, you will make sure they can scan those ID’s and don’t ring any alarm bells, get into the system tonight. We go tomorrow. Darlene, who is the most attractive of the rest of you, will keep the doctor or whoever there, occupied while you load Masquevert into a wheel chair and then, you will be out of there”

“Why do I have to go?” Eugenie White asked, “I don’t know anything about jails or guarding jails or prisoners”

It was fascinating that she and Hobbes actually agreed constantly about the futility of her presence, “Alphonse will brief you”

“And it will be fun” Robortor mentioned

“See here is the problem we have been encountering during the past year. You imbec— my fellow mutant men and women, seem to consider everything in terms of fun. I want you to try to see the stakes of—”

He was interrupted again, this time by Marlene, who added, looking straight at Eugenie’s face, “and by the way, we are not sure that Barry will follow if you’re not there”

Darlene whistled from the corner of her table, where she was admiring her polished nails, “Whoop! We have a Barry whisperer here” Hobbes watched Eugenie White dart a somber look at Darlene but they exchanged a smile. The fact that those two ladies, so dissimilar, had struck a friendship was a mystery to him, “I think we need you to be the correction officer, Hobbes, and Eugenie will be a nurse” Darlene proposed

“Why”

“Cause she’s a nurse”

“I don’t imagine a hospital will let discharge a patient that’s barely out of intubation without a nurse” Robortor agreed

“Plus you’re way easier to disguise into something else than Marlene” Darlene concluded.

Predictably, because authority was a concept that was fading rapidly into the modern times, those wankers who were supposed to be his subordinates had utterly changed the plan and Hobbes was sweating under his bald cap. Alphonse’s magic had been able to turn him into a fatter and older version of himself, wearing a mustache and some thick glasses. He felt like he resembled the cliché character of the child kidnapper or the serial murderer in the movies, especially wearing this dumb onesie-like suit saying CORRECTION at the back.

A couple of words and dazzling smiles across the entrance hall and Darlene convinced the front desk secretary of their Step-Down unit floor that she was indeed leading a police transfer operation. The lady checked their credentials, encoded into their database in advance by George, and she called a doctor to join them shortly. “Do you mind if my guys go ahead and start getting the prisoner ready? It’s kind of urgent” Darlene explained.

“Stay with Darlene” Hobbes whispered to Ivan

“What why?”

“I have the feeling that we are going to have a crowd gathering here”

“A prisoner?” the secretary at the desk was shocked, her eyes as wide as a paella casserole while she lazily hung the telephone receptor at her neck, her finger hanging above the last digit that she was going to dial.

As Hobbes and George walked away from the reception, he heard Darlene’s perfectly well-tuned response, “Yes, the individual you have here, although I am afraid I cannot divulge the details, is actually under arrest at the moment and we are very grateful that you and your team blablabla…” Hobbes stepped swiftly into Barry’s room without ceremony.

Barry, that little shit, was not handling things well. Wishing to lead his interrogators on the wrong tracks, he had said that he believed he had survived a car crash –good— but also that the prime minister of his country of residence was named Crisjen Avasarala. Eugenie White had attempted to explain to him who that fictional character was from an obscure book series, some space opera, but Hobbes couldn’t force himself to give a shit. Barry was a moron, period.

“Is it Dune?” George had asked during the ride to the clinic. Inside the van, Hobbes had been stunned at the advanced state of tidiness and repair he witnessed on the urban landscape outside the window compared to a few days before. Humans were like those constantly resilient, usually reactive, never-so-proactive, creatures of rush and scramble, affairing themselves to clean and fix as fast as possible, and pressing collective memory to forget about destruction and death. It was arduous to believe that the street had been this tunnel of wildfire and poisonous air one week ago.

“Close enough, it’s from The Expanse” Eugenie had replied

“You know what book always made me think it could be a good prequel to the Expanse?”

“You’d have to go back to our… our present times, wouldn’t you?”

“Totally” George had paused before his reveal, “it was the Parable of the Sower”

Eugenie had shaken her head in admiration, “that is true” she said dreamily

“I thought you would say anything by Kim Stanley Robinson”

“Not bad either, Darlene. Somewhere between too”

“I’m not talking about Red Mars, Blue Mars and so on, I’m talking about one of his more kukoo-nuts books, 2312”

“Ministry of the future could go hand in hand with Octavia Butler”

“Nerd alert” Marlene had joked. Being the most intelligent woman on the planet, human jokes still continually proved a challenge for her, and she never stopped learning them the wrong way, delivering them in an offensive manner when she meant to be supportive, and complimenting people with accidental insults.

“Everyone shut the fuck up” Hobbes had put an end to this nonsense. Presently, he closed the door of Barry’s room behind him and turned around, “ah, Masquevert, you’re awake, that’s good” He didn’t bother himself with sounding compassionate or encouraging –that was Marlene’s job. They didn’t have to be best friends to cooperate and make his goal their mutual goal, on this day. And yet he hesitated, after one step. The boy was staring at him stone-faced, his eyes bulging in the middle of his face, in the middle of the huge pillow around his head that seemed to swallow it. Hobbes was stricken: he looked way worse than he had thought. “Masquevert” Hobbes repeated, patted the top of his skull like a little chinchilla.

Barry squinted, “Hobbes?”

Hobbes had almost forgotten he was there under guise, nodded, “you’re alright, buddy?”

“No” Barry said

Thankfully, it was Robortor’s turn to enter the room, and George made sure to adjust the vertical blinds of the window separating them from the main hallway so as to increase their privacy while maintaining an eye on what was going on on the other side with Darlene and Ivan. Through the slits, Hobbes saw a young nurse bring a smoking cup of coffee to Ivan. Then without moving the top part of his body, George did a little dance with his feet, skipping and mixing chassé and heel turns, and he approached the bed as a conqueror, “my frieend, finally, we are reunited” he squealed, removed Hobbes’ hand from Barry’s greasy hair and grabbed his cheeks like a grandmother would a child she has not seen since last holiday, “my friend, my friend, listen closely, you pull out a thing like that again—”

Barry smiled at him, it was a faraway smile, dug from sleep, coming to the surface with eagerness, and some feeble light returned to this eyes, “yeah that was p pretty sttupid” Hobbes repressed a dramatic slow clap at the sound of that, pretended to inspect all the instruments that Barry was attached to through multicolored tubes of various sizes and thicknesses. In a way he looked like the bombs in the movies, which the protagonist has to disarm by picking the right color of wire to cut.

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“Here, drink your water” George seized the little plastic cup from the night table on the side of the bed and poked the straw into Barry’s mouth. The uniform on George’s big metal arms was too tight, threatening to burst, while Barry’s head at the end of the straw was rendered very small in the middle of all the white of his pillow. Hobbes pressed the button that lifted the top part of Barry’s bed while the boy dutifully sucked on the water, “would you believe that” George asked, “plastic cup and plastic straw, today! Man, do those people not care about the oceans and saving the turtles?”

“Thanks George” Barry said.

“Can you move a bit, like, are you able to walk?” Hobbes asked

Barry looked at him as though he had asked him if he could materialize a second nose at the center of his face, “walk?”

“How is your pain?”

“It is very high”

“Well, first thing we are going to do is load you with lots of drugs. Coming through” Hobbes switched another clasp on the main controller of the machines around the bed, releasing a shit ton of morphine into Barry’s veins.

George’s smile was cheeky, “yummy” and Barry’s face produced a little spasm before he closed his eyes, missing the massive thumb George was sticking out of his massive hand. Eyes shut and his breathing suspended, Masquevert’s face seemed to relax all of a sudden. A bit of pink drizzled on the top of his cheeks, as if dropping from the ceiling.

“We are here uh… to collect you” Hobbes explained. Silence. A small bleep from another device, this one wasn’t linked to Barry and had been abandoned in the corner of the room. George raised his eyebrows favorably, as if they were going on a big adventure.

“How the f f fuck are you gonna—"

“We have a plan” Hobbes said, “and oh! Here she is”

Drumrolls. Eugenie White was the last to join their party, slamming the door behind her. Now, all bets were off. “Eugenie” George scolded, “the door!”

“Sorry” she apologized, distracted. She was a mess, the belt of her jail uniform crooked, one shoulder maladjusted, her hair unkempt in a messy loose bun. A badge on her breast said nurse. Barry’s eyes, his bed lifted at a forty-five degree angle, fell on her, “good afternoon” she panted, “Barry you’re alright?” she asked the same question as Hobbes had.

“Yeah” she received a very different answer, “Oel ngati kameie”

“What’s he saying? Is it code for something?"

Eugenie chuckled horribly, “nothing George, he’s high, obviously” Hobbes knew that, at this moment of the plan, they had to rush, but he couldn’t help watching. Barry’s eyes and White’s meeting was fire, and the only reason the boy didn’t notice the wheelchair she was pushing right away. They appeared to always have to engage in an extensive eyelock every time they met again, and it was weird.

Disgusting, Hobbes thought, so he gestured toward the wheelchair, “this, you see, is your way out”

For an instant, the air was sucked out of the room everyone waiting in anticipation of Barry’s reaction, which was just what everyone had anticipated, “oh nonono” he said. His face was very alert now, following the relief the painkillers had delivered and scattered through his body, “I’m not going on this thing” so Hobbes sighed loudly, squatted next to Barry in the position of a statue of serenity, tapped the metal bar to direct the boy’s attention.

“Listen, you little shit. You fucked up when you said the Prime Minister in the dimension where you live is a stupid science fiction character from a book. One thing was the car accident, and you did very well, GOLD STAR”

“Oh wait, n—” Eugenie White tried to interject, but Hobbes wasn’t going to let her

“But then, you ruined it, so now, you have to suck it up, because otherwise, this room will soon be so guarded we won’t be able to break you out of here”

He saw that Barry was following his words with his head swinging like a pendulum, “no, you listen” he sniffled loudly, his nostrils flaring in anger, “I would not be here if you hadn’t ejected Eugenie White in the sky when you knocked over the wagon and—”

“Here, progress!” Hobbes stood up “you’re already better I see, forming complete sentences. Whole paragraphs of them!”

“I’m not—”

“Barry” Eugenie White spoke softly, “Hobbes is right. In the chair”

“Damn” George muttered

“It looks painful” Barry countered

“It probably is” Eugenie’s hands let go off the chair’s handles to juggle some invisible soda cans in the air

“Why can’t Marlene fly me out of the window”

“In this weather? The turbulence would be even more painful”

“How many times must I say it” Hobbes fumed, “no attracting attention to the Team” In an avid desire to take his power back, he signaled the beginning of action to the others. Robotiko nodded decidedly and hurried to get rid of the big comforter that covered Barry, rolling it precociously and revealing Barry’s pajama pants, snowflake patterns.

“You guys are crazy” Barry’s breath was wheezing “it is” he closed his eyes again, stuttering, “ c c cold wait… are those snowfl—”

“It’s going to go well” Eugenie White said, “you are in good hands” That’s a lie, Hobbes thought.

They all took an irrepressible second, Barry included, to admire the artwork of intricate mix of dressings and taped compresses all over Barry’s upper body. In addition to the damage he had suffered from the shooting, there was a long gash in the middle of his rib cage. “Wow” George mouthed, and Barry sulked, saddened, distraught. Some globules of sweat appeared on his forehead. He started hyperventilating.

“Let’s do it” Eugenie snapped out of it, sensing danger. She was a teacher, and she seemed to feel the risk of dispersion of the group, “you know what this is” she waved a roll of iridescent strips in front of Barry’s nose

“I don’t think I cc ccan do this.”

“Shhh, Barry be quiet. Do you know what this is? No way to guess where Alphonse got it but this is a roll of foam bandages, super comfortable and malleable. They’re usually employed on horses and cattle, sometimes buffaloes” She sounded like the bandage company had hired her for a commercial. Although he was a Black man, George’s face was becoming paler and paler.

“Buffaloes?”

“They have been utilized once or twice on giraffes”

“I don’t underst—"

“You see”, Eugenie White continued, “here I worry about the deep incision on your chest. Also, some of your ribs have been pulverized and I don’t want them to float around freely and poke through your lungs” and Barry looked down at himself again, losing hope, but Eugenie grabbed his chin and re-positioned it so he would face her, “the move will not be gentle, we just have to make sure you don’t crack open like a—” she looked like she regretted her graphic choice of words and was searching for something that would make up for them.

“Like an egg?” Barry was on the verge of tears

“Noo” she chuckled, “like a little door. Like a little loaf of br—”

“What do you mean pulverized?” he asked

Great, just great, Hobbes was irritated. Wasn’t there a nurse, a doctor, who had informed the boy about the extent of the destruction to his body? Barry looked completely taken aback. Fortunately, Eugenie White wasn’t about to waste time with that “Got it?” she said “Then let’s sit on the side of the bed, Hobbes and George, help me. George, grab his feet”

“Sit???” Barry choked on the words, “no please, please!”

He begged, but Hobbes noticed that Eugenie had become indifferent to his distress. That was funny to witness. Following her determined lead, the two men took a hold of Barry’s shoulders and pushed them up while George, gifted with strength as much as nimbleness, smoothly tugged at the boy’s socks. In the blink of an eye, he was indeed sitting on the side of the bed. The rapidity of the move forbade any reaction on the part of Barry but, suddenly, the upright position in which he was forced seemed to catch up with him and he lost his breath, folded forward in a low grunt similar to a very unhappy cat awaken from a nap. The air exploded out of his mouth with a flow of vomit, a watery melange that landed on George’s vest and legs.

As George recoiled in horror, Barry’s feet fell hard against the metal of the bed, “George, get control here!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay” Eugenie said softly. Hobbes was incredulous at the amateur level of his Team and with more bewilderment reaching his heart, he saw George crawl to bend over the little trash can under the sink of the room and retch something much more substantial than the content of Barry’s stomach.

“For fuck’s sake, George” Hobbes was at a loss for words. I work with children, toddlers.

“I a a apologi—” Barry held himself with both hands and spat out one last drop

“I’m sorry boss” George whined miserably, trying to get rid of the gooey liquid on his shirt, “I can’t stand the sight of vomit” He wiped his mouth and a tear that had escaped on his cheek, “Oh Lord” he whined.

Hobbes glanced outside the little window of the room with anxiety rising high, worrying someone had heard their commotion, but he only saw Darlene, one hand on her waist, charmingly running a hand through her lustrous red hair, still talking to the nurse in charge, now joined by a doctor in scrubs, all laughing at something hilarious. Another nurse came by their gathering and handed a cube of sugar to Ivan for his beverage. They are hanging out outside, drinking coffee, while I’m dealing with this shit. I can’t believe those wankers.

“George” Hobbes shouted, “your turn” and he handed Barry’s shoulder to Hobbes. The boy was shivering, his teeth producing some little clicking and rattling songs inside his mouth.

“I know you are cold” Eugenie White said, “but I have to wrap you up like this before we put some clothes on you. Hobbes, please, turn up the heat” and Hobbes did what he was asked, pleasantly intrigued by Eugenie White, a usually moody and useless specimen, and her being unphased. At least she wasn’t vomiting or arguing or getting distracted by the mission.

She unrolled the thick tape and threw one end to George, who was still frowning and swallowing hard from his puke episode, repressing another gag, “I feel terrible about that George” Barry whispered, his eyes closed in torment.

“No problem my friend” George said, “now, be strong.”

“Be strong w why?”

“Because it’s gonna suck”

“George!”

“Let’s pick up the pace here, everyone” Hobbes intervened, “Darlene is not going to be able to keep these people out of the room forever” The work on Barry Masquevert’s chest was beyond horrifying, some viscous blood mixed with some yellowish disinfectant oozing through the patches of gauze that were covering him. In any case and prioritizing efficiency over mercy, Eugenie White kept pushing her fingers on her end of the tape against Barry, received another end from George, snatched it mid-flight, and continued rolling the boy like a roast.

Barry was finally sucking it up like Hobbes had instructed, his head down, his breath whistling like a tea kettle at his lips, expelling drops of drools. He was trembling from the cold temperature on his bare skin while sweating profusely. “aiille Eugenie f f for fucksakes”

“Sorry” she said, but she didn’t seem sorry. Hobbes barely recognized her, although he had heard the same resolve in her voice when she had been barking her orders at him in Alphonse’s phone at the back of his van. She was entirely focused and her movements were flowing as though her hands were an extension of her brain “almost finished, just hang on”

To everyone’s surprise, she produced a mini stapler from her hanging pack and shoved in under the tight roll she had used to turn Barry into a mummy, “Jesus” the boy’s eyes popped out of his face as she stapled her work secured, and when she was through with that part, she released him from her grip and he leaned forward, his hands clenched in fists. Two pearls of tears dropped from his eyes at the same time, landing on the snowflakes pattern of his trousers, dissolving into the fabric.

“Are you sure—” Hobbes asked, but Eugenie White darted him a look that convinced him there wasn’t going to be any feedback allowed about her work, “no, it looks great, let’s move on then”

“I can’t breathe” Barry said, his eyes still closed, a line of saliva dangling from his mouth.

Eugenie White brushed it with her own fingers which she dried on the front of her uniform “breathe with your belly Barry, come on. You can unplug him now” she indicated to Hobbes.

A bit flabbergasted by the episode of torture he had just been audience too, Hobbes executed the order and, with a new softness, he took care of the screen and removed the little IV on Barry’s hand, discarded it inside the trash bin from where the smell of George’s vomit was starting to expand in the room, “that’s probably good that you can’t breathe” Hobbes found himself having a disconcerting breach of humour. He rubbed Barry’s shoulder with more genuine encouragement, this time, “you’re doing well, Masquevert”

“Wow, queen of rolling” George took a moment to high five Eugenie White and Barry took the same moment to look murderously at the both of them.

“Don’t let the fat lady sing just yet” Hobbes opened the sports bag they were carrying on the bed, intending to move on to the wardrobe part of the mission. He noticed his fingers were trembling slightly above the Velcro hoop-and-loop.

“W what fat lady”

“It’s an expression, Masquevert, oh shit” Hobbes’s hands froze in the air with the two sleeves of the hoodie, “you said to pack a zipper, Eugenie White, I guess… this sweater doesn’t open in the front”

“Does that mean w wwe abort?” Barry asked.

“We’ll make do, don’t worry” Eugenie White wasn’t going to be troubled by a zipper issue “George, be ready to slide Barry’s head into the neck part at my signal”

“I hate… all of you” Barry hissed.

Hobbes wasn’t sure what to do with the boy’s right arm, the one where he had been shot between the wrist and the elbow, but White seemed to be reading his thoughts, “just shove it inside the sleeve, Hobbes, we are going to run out of time”

Hobbes threw a side glance at the exterior of the room where everyone still appeared to have a splendid social time, “I think for now we haven’t drawn any negative attention” he opposed

“I’m talking about Barry, at some point, he’s going to be out of juice” She massaged his fingers inside her hand, smile at him tenderly, like she had put her all-business persona on pause, “you’re hanging on, right? You still beat me at arm wrestle, right?”

“Fuck… you”

“Right. Now, your head, bring your little head into the hole”

“I don’t think—” Hobbes hesitated

“Do it. George?”

“I got the feet Eugenie”, George responded and, as they were pushing Barry’s head through the collar of the shirt, George worked on Barry’s trousers. It was like making a Christmas tree, until Barry’s knee jerked high and his foot hit George in the face. Robortor fell on his butt holding his nose, “fuuck! Can't you cooperate a li little bit here, Barry?”

Some blood spurted from his nostrils and mouth, and Barry’s emerging head from his shirt was awestruck and horrified “fuck, George, I’m so sorry. I am very t t ticklish, I’m—”

“Hmmmm my nose, motherfucker” George got on his knees and snatched a paper towel from the dispenser next to the sink, “my no-ose”

“Let me look at your nose” Eugenie White said, using the tissue as a sponge, she tapped it on George’s nose, “well, he just hit you in the nose” she confirmed, “you’re alright, just stick this into your nostril and tilt your head back” Hobbes was having the second most frustrating day of his Team leader career, after the one during which one of his concocted takes on action had caused the launch of Eugenie White in the air and triggered the Bolt, an elite member of his group, to come at her rescue and take in three bullets. I work with clowns. I work in a Kindergarten. This is a circus. I don’t want to be here. I really don’t.

“I’m soo sorry” Barry said again.

“It’s all good, my little friend” George inserted another tissue in his second nostrils, looked at the button-up shirt under his vest, covered in blood, “you’re just uh very difficult to uh… extract, that’s all”

After another eternity and another Olympic sport which was to get Barry Masquevert up and then down again, sitting on the chair, Hobbes whipped out the handcuffs from his inside pocket and locked one of them to the arm of the chair, the other one on Barry’s left wrist, “you’re going to cuff me?”

“You are technically” Hobbes explained, “our detainee. You have to play the part, you hear me? Say nothing, think nothing, just fall asleep inside your head, you hear me?” Everyone seemed in agreement of the relative simplicity of the next step of the plan and they finally exited the room. Most of Eugenie White’s hair was gone from her bun and Hobbes felt disheveled too, although his own hair was nicely tucked under the bald cap he was wearing. He threw an eye at George. George… Well. He hoped everything would just fly.

“So we are good, officer?” Hobbes faced Darlene as she turned around and shrunk away at the sight of George, “oh my god, what happened? Did the… prisoner try to resist arrest?” she asked.

George shook his head, his nose all swollen, “it’s a long story” he replied, “but now, everything is fine” Darlene’s reproach directed itself in the direction of Hobbes, something furious dancing at the bottom of her vivid eyes, What took you so long? He could almost hear. She looked like a little fox.

“The detainee is secured” he affirmed, feeling very tired.

“Do you want me to take a look at you?” the doctor proposed to George.

“No, he is okay” Hobbes replied, handling the wheelchair to Eugenie White and starting to pace forward. Then the man in scrubs, with his mask under his chin, gazed down at Barry, uncertain. Barry’s face was melting in sweat, his eyelids fluttering like the wings of a moth.

“Should I just… check the prisoner’s vitals?”

Darlene was looking at Barry in the same concern manner, mused, “I mean—”

“NO” Eugenie White elbowed her discreetly

“NO I mean no, don’t worry, we have our own medical staff” Darlene reassured the doctor

“So he is a criminal after all” the man squinted his eyes at Barry, hands in his pockets, operating in another parallel universe where the urgency of the group in front of him didn’t touch him, then he shook his head at the sight of the handcuffs, talking about the boy as if he were not present, “I can’t say I’m stunned, given the sort of injuries he sustained. I would be for gangs, yes, probably gangs”

“Yes, you guys did a great job keeping him alive” Hobbes landed a firm hand in Eugenie White’s back, pushing her politely into the stroll. Hoping to bring along the others, speedily, he spun on his heels, “now, thanks to you, justice will be served” No less! The doctor got the message and offered a rushed hand to Darlene, a constipated smile of greeting goodbye to Ivan, still busy sipping his coffee, and a general wave to the rest of the gathering, as they were finally darting out.

“Barry doesn’t look so good” Darlene observed, catching up with Eugenie White, her hair flowing behind her, “is he okay?”

“I don’t know” Eugenie replied, pushing the chair energetically, “we have to be quick now”

They reached the waiting spot for the elevator and Hobbes pressed the calling key ten or twelve times, the panic and trepidation now contagious “enjoying your hot beverage, Ivan?”

“It’s shit, Boss” Ivan lied, “it’s from a coffee machine down the hall. Please don’t tell Alphonse”

“I feel really weird” Hobbes heard from Barry, a mutter

“What?” Eugenie thrusted the wheelchair inside the elevator booth as though she was going to run with it until she and Barry took off from the ground.

“He says he’s feeling weird” Ivan said

“I know, just--”

“Wasn’t he supposed to be drugged?” Darlene asked

“Yes, but all the painkillers are running out now that we took away his IV”

‘You’ve got to be kidd—”

“Try to have a nap, Barry” said White, running her hand on her animated eyebrows to get rid of the perspiration. Going down the entrails of the building felt like an endless journey with Barry slumping lower and lower on his chair. The doors opened automatically halfway to their final stop, revealing a pair of hospital visitors with flowers in their arms, one gigantic octopus push toy and balloons, waiting enthusiastically for a ride up. On the balloon, the words were bouncing: It’s a Girl! “Sorry guys” Eugenie White yelped and pushed the closing button on the commands, shutting the door in front of the strangers’ faces

“That’s cold” George chuckled, holding on to the tissues in his nostrils

“What happened to your face?” Ivan asked, chugging the rest of his coffee

“Barry kicked me”

“He did what?”

“With his foot, right in my nose”

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Barry?”

“Go f f fuck yourself” Barry replied.

“What’s that smell?”

“It’s vomit, Ivan”

“Everyone, keep focused!” Hobbes ordered, and silence accompanied them on the last chunk of the trip down. A nice little cozy bell rang.