Survivor Song(61)
Luis slips his hands under Josh’s head and unties the gag. The sopping-wet bandanna slides easily out of his slack mouth. Luis drops it to the ground. He does not wipe away or clean the crusting foam from Josh’s lips. Josh coughs once, a dusty memory of a functioning body. Luis rolls up his right sleeve. He cannot see his own smooth, unblemished skin in the dark. It’s hard to believe it gets this dark every night. Placing a thumb on Josh’s chin, Luis pulls down the lower jaw, opening the mouth. He takes his thumb away. Josh’s face and body tremors, but he doesn’t wake and his mouth stays open. Luis places the soft underside of his forearm into Josh’s mouth, the inside of which is as hot and damp as a sauna. Luis positions his left palm under Josh’s chin and pushes, closing the mouth, forcing his friend’s teeth against his skin. It hurts, but he doesn’t know if the teeth have broken through yet. He pushes harder and Josh convulses, perhaps because the body’s main airway is being blocked. There’s still a spark of life within the engine. His jaws contract once, and hard. The pain is an electrical storm, and stars explode in Luis’s vision. He retracts his arm. When he finds the dark holes in his skin, he wipes the area with his fingers, mixing the saliva and blood together. Luis sits with his back against the rock, shoulder to shoulder with his friend. He initially planned to run and rampage through the forest like the monster he will become, but he doesn’t want to leave Josh alone, even if he’s already gone.
Luis has sweat through his clothes and he shivers as the temperature continues to drop. His teeth chatter. He hugs his knees into his chest, trying to keep warm. His wounded forearm throbs with his heartbeats. The times between Josh’s shallow breaths expand until the final, infinite time. Luis is then left alone to listen to the forest’s night sounds he’s never really heard before, a beautiful and sorrowful secret he will not have the privilege of carrying for very long. Luis closes his eyes, leans into his friend, and waits for the fire to burn through his head.
III.
Do You Become a Rose Tree, and I the Rose Upon It
Rams
Police cars slowly creep away, their drivers unsure of direction and purpose beyond clearing a path for the buses to roll out of the clinic’s parking lot.
A brown-haired, middle-aged clinician wears a white lab coat over jeans and a dark-blue button-down shirt. She holds a clipboard against her chest. Without an introduction she says, “We’ve been holding the buses for you, but we weren’t going to hold them for much longer”; an offhand accusation, attributing the irresponsibility of their lateness to Ramola. It’s not fair, and it feeds the roots of a forest of shame, sadness, and rage that she is not able to save Natalie.
“Thank you, and sorry, we were in an automobile accident.” Ramola shakes her head but not because she says anything wrong. It’s an impatient tic of hers, one that was more prevalent when she was a stressed-out medical student. Ramola and Natalie are not yet on the black-and-purple bus. They are still standing in the street, looking up at the woman stationed between the bus’s folding doors.
She asks, “Are you injured?”
Police officers shout, “Let’s get rolling” and “Time to go,” and punctuate with car-door slams.
Ramola says, “No, we’re fine.”
“Have either of you been exposed to the virus? We cannot risk—”
Ramola places a foot on the bus’s first step and says, “We have not. May we come aboard? The officers are telling us we have to go.” She climbs onto the second step, sure that the woman knows she is lying. How can she not? Ramola’s voice is a reedy screech and she overcompensates with a crumbling smile and a tractor-beam stare. Lying might be the wrong decision; perhaps if she tells the truth they’ll still be allowed on this or the other bus (gray, its doors already closed), or a police officer would take them to another hospital still open to the general public. With the memories of Norwood and how long it took to wade through the throngs and eventually get treatment cobwebbing her head, Ramola is determined to get on this bus by any means, medical-school oaths—and herself—be damned. Still, there’s a part of her that wants to be caught in the lie now, because being caught later is inevitable.
The clinician backs up, almost into the lap of the bus driver, to allow Ramola and Natalie passage. She complains they don’t have time to store Ramola’s bags under the bus and they’ll have to be placed in the overheads, if they fit.
Ramola positions herself so that she or her bags block her view of Natalie as she climbs onto the bus. As the clinician peers over her shoulder, Ramola asks, “What is your name again?”
“Dr. Gwen Kolodny.”
“Thank you, Doctor. And where are the buses taking us?” The police officer who led them to the bus already told her where it was going. The question is to keep Kolodny talking and not focused on Natalie shuffling into the aisle. Ramola tries to catch Natalie’s eye but her head is down, hair hanging loosely over her face.
Dr. Kolodny sputters a distracted answer, a fully secured hospital, transferring unexposed maternity patients and newborns, near the border of Rhode Island, and she mentions the town of North Attleboro as the bus driver’s two-way radio spews static and coded chatter. She turns to talk to the driver. The doors swing closed and the bus rolls forward before Ramola finds her seat next to Natalie.
Natalie is turned and facing out the window. Ramola assumes she’s doing so purposefully, to avoid being seen by other clinicians in white coats flittering up and down the aisle like hummingbirds. Perhaps it is time for Ramola to stop assuming fully rational decision-making in regard to Natalie’s behavior. She’s going to begin to suffer from cognitive deficiencies and delusions soon, if it isn’t happening already.