I swerved my head, searching for those twin snakes coiled around a scepter. Or just a cross. Or would they have marked it at all? The hallways all looked the same. Americana and wood. Porcelain and precious metal. Paintings and sculpture. My feet were starting to hurt. The strokes Abe had drawn across my back were beginning to feel moist. My eyes were drooping. Until I turned corner and one side of the hall opened into a courtyard.

Bright greens and carnation whites gently waved. Late morning sun enhanced the sunshine yellow of the wall. Girls frolicked in the gardens, smelling flowers, dancing, giggling. On the other side of the courtyard, past the silver fountains, I saw a man in a white coat. That was what doctors were supposed to look like, right?

I forgot the mounting pain for the moment and took the shortest path through the garden, cutting through the giggling. Some of them peered at me, their eyes gleeful crescents. Others made kissy noises at me. The older ones aww’d. There was nothing romantic about this. Lyssa’s breathing was slowing, and I was nearing the end of my rope. For such a skinny girl she was awfully heavy. The sun began to brighten. My vision was scattering and focusing. The ground seemed to come closer.

The weight suddenly lifted.

“Get in too, boy,” the doctor said as he took Lyssa into his arms and towards a set of red double doors. The word ‘infirmary’ was written in italics on top.

The doctor brought us to a pristine bay. The first thing I noticed was the long row of beds, many of which were occupied by women with swollen stomachs. The apprehension towards my presence was palpable. I avoided them, following the doctor through a doorway into a separate wing. More beds, bigger, some partially covered with curtains. Metal rings rattled as the doctor threw them aside and set Lyssa on the bed. It was surrounded by a whole host of machines and monitors. A proper hospital bed.

She had made it. She was safe.

The floor was rising. As if Nathan’s hands were on my shoulders, weight was pushing down on me. Stumbling, I felt around for a chair and barely made it onto the seat. Static was creeping around the edges of my vision.

A bright light. The fog cleared instantly. I began to hyperventilate. My hands gripped the armrests. The plastic creaked. The doctor pulled back from me and returned his attention to Lyssa.

“Biolibrapathy,” the doctor said. “You owe me three months of youth.”

I felt strong. My heart felt like a hammer. All my pain was gone. Whatever the doctor just did, I wanted more of it.

“What did you do to me?” I asked.

“For you,” he said. “Accelerated your own natural healing. Life for life.”

I noticed his appearance for the first time. What little skin his coat and tie combo exposed was wrinkled. The years drew striations on his face, especially his forehead. His hair was a dense, platinum color. But it felt like a façade. He had a lean, powerful body underneath the aged skin, almost like one of us ‘steadhands.

“Can you-?”

“No. Not for her,” he replied. He was busy putting things on Lyssa’s body. Pads were slipped under her clothes and onto her skin. One by one the monitors flickered on. Data I couldn’t understand scrolled past. A big annulus lowered from a mechanical arm anchored above the bed, and hovered a foot above her. A long, vertical screen flashed on. I recognized that one immediately — skull, bones, organs, those lines must be the blood vessels, or maybe the nervous system? Maybe I didn’t recognize anything after all. Anatomy was difficult to remember.

“What on God’s Earth?” The doctor said.

I was almost afraid to ask.

“What?” I asked.

“Well, explains her weight,” he said, more so to himself than me. “Her tissues are dense. Look, boy.” He pulled the monitor closer. It whined on its hinges. I flinched as the see-through body was thrust in my face. Was this an invasion of privacy? “What is that?” He asked.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Uh…”

“Scar tissue,” the doctor answered. “Branching from that hole in her back like cracked glass. This girl’s been shot. A couple months ago, even.”

Bullet wounds I’ve seen before.

“This doesn’t look right,” I said.

“No, it doesn’t. This looks like-” Something dawned on the doctor. It was apparent on his face. He muttered something. I heard ‘tox-’, but that was the only syllable I caught.

“What?”

“Nevermind,” he said. “The damage from her bullet wound is flaring up.”

“You can’t heal it?”

“Not this kind of damage,” he said quietly. He looked very sad, like he just left the room but his body stayed. “This is from… a darker time.”

Without thinking, I pointed at the screen.

“What’s that?” I asked. “A liver?”

“One of them at least.”

“We have two?!”

“No. We have one. She has two, though I’m not sure they both do the same thing.”

“What about these lines? The circulatory system?”

“That’s her lymphatic system.”

“Is it supposed to be…?”

“Beating? No. The lymphatic system is open. It drains and cleans the fluid from the between-spaces in our bodies and puts it back to use.”

“The innersti- interstish-”

“Interstitial spaces, yes,” he said, smiling.

He seemed energetic again. That was good.

“You study in your breaks, boy?” He asked.

“I like books.” They didn’t bark orders or hurt you. All books could do was teach. “I think the more we learn, the better we become.”

“It’s good to believe that,” he said. He changed topics. “This girl would make a poor subject for anatomical study. Her insides look like someone drew on top of a human diagram, erased part of it, then drew some more, rinsed and repeated several times. And that’s not even half of what happened to the wiring in her brain. She is a ‘steadhand?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you sound unsure?”

“There’s so many of us. I don’t know everyone.”

“Is that right.”

“You can’t,” I said.

“Can’t what, son?”

“You can’t-” Expose her? Tell the Werner’s that she was like them? I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say.

“Heal her?” The doctor finished for me. “I can give her a bed and monitor her condition until I understand how to even help her. In the meantime, you should go back to the dorms. Get some rest.” He quickly scratched something incomprehensible on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

“You’re not going to…?”

“Like I said, I need to know more before I can heal her.”

“Okay.” I got up and started to leave. By the doorway I looked over my shoulder. The doctor had transferred the screen to the tablet on his lap.

“Don’t worry, son,” he said casually.

“Thank you,” I said.

I returned to the dorms, relieved but confused. Though all questions seemed to melt away at the thought of sleeping in my bed. I simply showed Sebastian the doctor’s note, and he let me go for the day with a smile and a slap on the back. He probably didn’t even do that maliciously. Sebastian was an odd one among the Werner’s. He was good at yelling, but he never hurt any of us. We were all still scared of him. Or maybe we were scared of whatever he had hidden underneath that layer of rude-but-harmless uncle.

I went under my covers, my wounds stinging, and found it easy to sleep. It felt like a good day. When I woke up, it was from three ‘steadhands dragging me out of bed. I couldn’t breathe. Something was occluding my mouth. A thick cloth. It smelled bad. I tried fighting back.

“Shut it,” a whisper, followed by what I recognized as an elbow, burying deep in my gut. I dry heaved into the rag. They locked my limbs up in theirs until we left the lukewarm air of the dorm and into the night. A foot thrust me onto the dirt. My forearms slid. It was like rubbing against broken glass.

“Cassidy,” one of them said. I began to sweat. It was the lead ‘steadhand. He was a bigger man. His silhouette punched a black cut-out in the deep blue sky. Two smaller shadows flanked him.

“Farnoush?” I said. “Is this because I skipped a day? I’m sorry, I was just so tired. And-”

“No, son, you were excused by the doc,” he replied. His knees thrust outward as he knelt down. He looked like a demon trying to meditate. “And if it were up to me, I’d have let you off for the whole week.”

“Then why…” Even worse. Anything but this. I was tearing up. Again.

“It’s hard living here, son,” Farnoush said. “We remember what it used to be like. We had careers. Families. A life. Then- well, that’s pretty well trodden territory by now. We refugees who slipped through The Man’s hands just want a little relief.”

“I don’t…”

“Then let me finish. I’ve done a headcount on all of us. That girl you were buddy-buddy with ain’t one of us. No one will miss her. Arrange to have her meet us at night, whenever doc finishes making her healthy again.”

I nodded. They would kill me otherwise. I could tell. It was a sense sharper than the touch of rope or the taste of copper. I hated that I had learned how to tell when people meant such things.

“Alright,” he said, groaning as he stood straight again. “Get your sleep. Sorry for waking you. From this night onward, if you do this for us, we’ll make things easier for you on the homestead. In perpetuity.”

A part of me felt uplifted. I immediately wanted to strike myself for feeling that way.

“What do you want with her?” I asked.

“It’ll only be two or three times a week,” he said. “No more. Our protection would extend to her too. Don’t…” He sighed. “The Werner’s brought this out of us. We were law-abiding tax-payers before this. Don’t blame us.” He touched my shoulder. It was a gentle grasp. “Please.”

I was escorted back to the dorms. I would lie awake in my bed until the rooster crowed. Another day began.