Survivor Song(29)
“In the desert she has to live in misery.”
Natalie has her back pressed against the far wall. Dr. Awolesi shields her and speaks rapidly into her radio. Stephen has his Taser gun pointed at a teenage boy standing a few stairs below the platform. The boy wears a fitted gray hooded sweatshirt adorned with a sneaker-brand logo and black skinny jeans, both showing off his wiry frame. Gauze bandaging is visible, a secret peeking out from under the sweatshirt at the base of his neck.
“The beautiful bird isn’t singing in the nest,” the woman says. She has stopped slamming the door and her heavy, descending footfalls vibrate throughout the stairwell’s exoskeleton.
Stephen scoots to the edge of the landing, talking to the boy, telling him to turn around, to walk downstairs, telling him they can get him help if he goes downstairs.
Wild-eyed and as twitchy as a short-circuiting electrical panel, the boy snaps and growls, atavistic in his new animalness. He does not turn around or walk down the stairs. He holds his ground. His legs are spring-loaded. His fists are rocks, his teeth bared in deimatic display, broadcasting the threat of our most primitive weapons.
“The cat got it.” The woman jumps onto the platform between the second and third floor. She cries out as she thuds and crashes, landing on all fours judging by the sounds of her scrabbling hands and feet, but quickly gathers herself and continues progressing down the stairs.
The boy leaps and wraps his arms around the guard’s legs. Stephen cries out and falls backward, onto his butt. There’s a pop and rapid ticking from the Taser gun. The boy and Stephen stiffen and then convulse in thrall to 1,200 volts. As the ticking slows and ceases, the boy slumps, slides off Stephen’s legs, and rolls into a fetal ball. Dr. Awolesi rushes to Stephen’s side. His eyes are closed and he is groaning. The boy unfurls and lies facedown on the platform, crying.
“It’ll scratch out your eyes too!” The woman rounds the corner onto the second-floor landing above them. Her feet are bare and dirty, and her hospital johnny hangs loosely around her shoulders and chest. Her forearms are streaked with blood. She points at Ramola, rooting her to the spot. The woman laughs; a terrible hitching, grinding gears within her chest, and her sputtering, sickly engine springs a leak and she hisses and spits, flailing one arm as though it is a trebuchet.
Ramola backs away until Natalie grabs her arm and says, “Let’s go.”
Stephen is sitting up and shaking out his left hand. Dr. Awolesi has his right arm draped across her shoulders, urging him to get on his feet. Natalie and Ramola scoot by and descend the flight of stairs to the first floor, pausing at the fire door.
Ramola calls out to Dr. Awolesi, “Where are we going? Which way?”
The guard and the doctor slowly make their way down the stairs. Their three-legged race is awkward and out of rhythm.
The boy remains on the landing between floors, whimpering and belly-crawling in aimless circles. The woman crash-lands on her knees next to the boy and rains two-fisted punches down on his head and back. She spits in his face and pulls his hair, lifting his head off the platform. He squeals a younger child’s squeal, one of heartbreaking shock and despair at the physical realization of the pain and horror of the real world.
Natalie yells, “Fucking where? Come on! We need to go!” but she doesn’t move to open the door herself.
Dr. Awolesi is at the base of the stairs and says, “Take a right, follow the main hallway to the other side of the hospital. Central Street exit. We’re right behind you. Go.”
Holding his head up, the woman leans in, spits in the boy’s face, and bites his ear. He screams and writhes, twisting out from underneath her. He briefly holds a hand over his ear before launching shoulder-first into her chest, bending her backward, her legs pinned under her, driving her into the stairs. The woman arches her back, thrusting out her torso, but then sags, slides, and pools at the bottom of the stairs. The boy blurs with his own attack. The uninhibited ferocity is breathtaking. He punches her head repeatedly, hopping into the air with each strike. He grabs and pulls and shakes her, and he alternates those terrible, full-body-weight strikes with bites of her arms and shoulders and face, latching onto the same area with two quick strikes before moving to the next and the next. There’s no apparent strategy or reason or order to the violence beyond the existence and the instance of the acts themselves.
Ramola opens the door to the first floor and leads Natalie by the hand.
Standing within the ground-floor elevator vestibule is an EMT, the name of his ambulance service written in script across the chest of his white button-down shirt and the company crest patch on his right shoulder. He’s a lanky man, built like a puppet with extra joints and hinges in his limbs, with shaggy brown hair and facial features crowded together but not in a wholly displeasing way. Looking at Natalie and Ramola but shouting into his lapel radio, “This is her? The pregnant one, right?” and then he looks past Ramola and says, “Hey, are you Natalie?” sounding more stern than he looks, like a new mathematics teacher students instinctually know they do not want to piss off.
“That’s me.”
Any air of authority or expertise he has dissipates as he exhales and deep-knee bends with a celebratory fist pump. “Thank Christ. I’m your ride.” He shakes the hair out of his face and strides into the main thoroughfare running the length of the hospital from the ER entrance across to Central Street on the opposite side of the structure. Staff, security, and two soldiers in camouflage fatigues wash past him without regard. He settles against the far wall, holds up his hands at the height of his head and points down the hallway to their right, his long index fingers flipping up and down, a human directional signal.