Burn (Pure #3)(47)

“Your parents must be proud of you,” Partridge says, maybe stalling—he’s scared of the condition he might find Mrs. Hollenback in. “How are they?” Partridge might not be sure exactly where Arvin stands, but his parents were both on his mother’s list—the Cygnus, the good guys.

“They caught colds, actually.”

“Colds? Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Nothing serious,” Arvin says, and then he claps Partridge on the shoulder. “Good luck in there.”

“I’ll stand guard,” Beckley says.

Partridge nods, takes a breath, and knocks.

“You’ll have to just open the door,” Weed says. “Her voice isn’t strong enough to tell you to come in. I’ll be down at the nurse’s station.”

“Wait,” Partridge says. “Are you going to tell me how she tried to do it?”

Weed shakes his head. “She’ll tell you if she wants to.”

Partridge puts his hand on the knob, turns it slowly, and walks into the room. It’s clean and white, brightly lit. He walks past two empty beds. The beds of the patients taken away for Partridge’s visit are fitted with straps loosely dangling by the bed rails, which chills him.

He hears Mrs. Hollenback’s voice, a hoarse whisper. “Is it you?”

He walks to the curtain pulled around her bed, reaches up—and thinks of his own mother, the hazy memory of the small room where he and Pressia found her again, the glass-covered capsule, her serene face, her eyes opening… He pulls back the curtain and says, “Yes. It’s me.”

She’s thin and pale. Her eyes are hollowed. She wears a hospital gown that’s too big for her and gapes around her neck so much that she holds it down with one hand, as if pledging allegiance. But the most disturbing part of her appearance is her mouth. It’s blackened—her lips look ashen, and when she smiles, even her teeth are dark as if she’s chewed a piece of coal, like her mouth is a dark pit.

She reaches out her hand.

Partridge walks quickly to her and takes it in his. Her hand feels bony and cold, like a child’s hand in winter.

She says, “Oh, Partridge.” Her voice is raw.

He’s not sure if it’s said in tenderness or if it’s edged with scolding. She’s been a kind of mother to him. Over the last few years, she was the one who set his presents out under the Christmas tree, who gave him a warm bed and fed him from their Sunday food rations. Julby and Jarv treated him like an older brother. “How are you doing?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m alive, right?” Her face tightens into a painful smile. “When you get better, we’ll have dinner together. Your family and me and Iralene,” he says, wanting to do anything to make things right. “I owe you so many dinners!”

She shakes her head. “Oh, Partridge.”

“You’re like family to me,” he says.

She turns her head to the pillow. “What do we know about family here?” she whispers.

“You taught me about family,” he says. “And Jarv is home, right? Don’t you want to go home to Julby and Jarv?”

“Jarv.” She clenches her fist on the hospital gown, twisting it tightly, and closes her eyes. “Don’t you know why he’s not right? Don’t you know?”

“No,” Partridge says softly.

“He comes from me,” she says, opening her eyes and turning back to him. “I’m sick inside. Diseased. If you cut me open, Partridge, there would be nothing but rot. Do you understand? I’ve been dying ever since I got into the Dome. Rotting from within.”

“That’s not true. You’re such a good mother and teacher. Everyone loves you.”

She shakes her head. “They don’t know me.”

“I know you,” Partridge says. “I know you, and I love you.”

“Do you know what I did to get in this hospital bed?”

He’s not sure he wants to know. “It’s personal. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I took all the pills. The ones for Jarv, the ones for my headaches, the ones for Ilvander’s back, even the ones to calm Julby when she gets into one of her fits. I took them all. I wanted to die. I needed to die. But they didn’t let me. They pumped my stomach and gave me charcoal tablets and tried to cleanse me. There is no way to cleanse me—not really. Not ever.”

“Mrs. Hollenback,” Partridge says. “Don’t…”

She reaches up and grips his shirtsleeve. “You spoke the truth,” she says. “It woke me up.”

He doesn’t want to start crying, but he can feel his chest tightening with guilt. “I didn’t mean what I said. Not the way you heard it. I didn’t mean it, Mrs. Hollenback. If I’d known anyone would do this, I wouldn’t have—”

“Do you know who I left to die out there beyond the Dome? My father was friends with someone who had spots reserved for himself, his wife, his two daughters. One of his daughters was a revolutionary, though. She told him she refused to go. I overheard my father and her father talking. He said, ‘If it goes bad suddenly, we’ll take one of your girls with us. She’ll take my daughter’s place. I wish I could offer more.’ I had two sisters. Which one would my parents choose? I had an advantage. I was the only one who knew we were competing. I didn’t want to let on that I knew, and so instead, Ilvander, who already had a spot, made a plan with me. I told my parents I was pregnant. I knew that this would never be exposed as a ploy to be chosen. There was so much shame in it, and yet I also knew that my parents would choose to send me if I was pregnant, a child inside of me. And then things happened more quickly than anyone thought they would. I was taken in. My sisters weren’t. They stayed behind with my parents and likely died. You said it—we are all complicit. I’m a murderer too, Partridge, like your father. I let them die. I should have died with them.”