Control

CHAPTER 2

THE COFFEE DISPENSER IS OUT OF COFFEE.

Every hour, the silver boat-like machine with its garish sign, DRIP SHIP, floats by the rainbow of frosted glass doors of the ICU. Every hour I’ve run for a refill after being kicked out when Dad’s glass wall darkens to blue—a sign that no visitors are allowed in. I circle the Drip Ship and press the coffee button again. The walk-the-plank output tray stays empty.

Click, click, click, click. My finger is getting sore now.

“Miss?”

I spin around to see a young doctor approaching. She has a kind face, with dark shadows under her eyes and brittle, brown hair. We could battle royally over which of us looks more exhausted.

“You can come back in now. Your father is waking up.” She motions to his room door, now glowing pink.

“Let me get my sister.” I sprint into a waiting cubicle ten feet away. Dyl’s head rests over her folded arm on a white desk. She seems so tiny in her chair. Her monitor shows my father lying in his ICU bed, hiding under a million tubes and wires. There’s a pink microphone on the monitor so you can whisper nice things into the speakers by Dad’s head. But as far as I know, Dyl hasn’t uttered a word since the accident seven days ago. She’s also been too upset to go to his bedside, but I keep trying anyway.

“Dylia. We can go back in now.”

Her only response is to turn her head to the wall. A damp tear darkens her sleeve. I head back alone to the ICU.

In a long archway, colored lights zap the harmful bacteria off my skin and clothes before I can step into Dad’s room. I lean on the edge of the bed and peer at him. Half his head is covered in bandages, including his eyes. One arm is missing, leaving an angular stump wrapped in beefy red, artificial skin, “curing” under a special growth light. No legs. During the hysterical first three days, I could barely force down the bile that rose when I saw him. Now I only feel heaviness inside my stomach. After seven days of this, it’s a cold, pure sensation. Distilled sadness.

“Zel,” he croaks.

“I’m here.” I put my hand on his cheek, the closest part of him that’s not covered. My fingertips tremble, either from the caffeine or my sleep-deprived state. The oval ventilator buckled around his chest emits a low hum. It’s helping him breathe, since he can’t do it himself.

I don’t ask him how it feels to be like me, for the first time in his life.

Dad seems to fall asleep, and I let my rib cage rise and fall in unison with his. I’ve done this every minute I’ve spent with him, refusing to sleep so I can breathe alongside him. I can’t stop thinking irrational thoughts, like maybe if I breathe hard enough, I’ll do the work for two and he’ll get better. Then again, Dad has a machine keeping him alive, which is infinitely more reliable than a daughter.

Normally, I’d take comfort in the science of his condition. The percentages, the statistics of his body fluid measurements. Normally, I’d have Dad tell me what it all meant. But now? Science and numbers don’t hold my hand while I stand watching him, alone.

The tubes and IV lines rustle and part to make way for his good hand, which moves toward me. He can’t yank out his tubes; they are embedded with motion-sensors and are too smart for him. His clammy hand lands on mine.

“Promise,” he whispers between breaths.

“Okay,” I say reflexively. I’m used to agreeing with whatever he asks of me. But this time, I don’t know what I’m agreeing to. I lean forward, my lower lip already trembling. Tears blur my vision until they fall over and sluice down my cheeks. Every time he’s spoken, I’ve turned into a walking puddle.

It takes several breaths before he can utter anything else. “Take care of yourself.” I wait for the corollary to his request. Take care of Dyl. But he doesn’t say it. He shuts his eyes, remembering something. “Stay safe, no matter what.”

“Of course, Dad.” His hand jerks and claws into mine. I am surprised by his strength, by the pain he inflicts. His nails dig in hard, as if he’s trying to imprint his message into my body.

“Safe,” he gasps. A few more ventilator breaths and he chokes on his saliva. “But you—I have to tell you—” He swallows the words that come next.

“What, Dad? Tell me what?” I ask, when I notice his nails aren’t hurting me anymore.

On the screen at the foot of his bed, white lines of his heart rhythm turn crimson and zigzag all over the place. The monitor alarm sounds like a horn.

“Dad!” I turn around and scream, “Help him! Somebody!”

Four doctors and nurses rush to his bedside and I am pushed away, my hands clamped over my mouth to keep myself from wailing. Already the bedside pharmacy bot, a black mushroom-shaped machine with tentacles attached to my dad’s body, is clicking like mad, sending liquid medicines into his IVs, trying to reverse the inevitable.

As the workers become more frantic, I feel the fingernail marks where Dad squeezed me. I stare at my hand, because I can’t see Dad behind the wall of people. The little crescents are pinkish, shallow, and perfectly curved.

They fade quickly. By the time the doctors leave his room one by one, heads hanging, there is hardly a shadow of a mark left on my skin.

But I can feel the sharpness he’s left behind. The memory is still there. Even after the last doctor pats me on the back and tells me he’s sorry, so very sorry for my loss, I can still feel the pain.

I DON’T MOVE FOR ALMOST AN HOUR. I don’t know what to do.

I know he was hardly around in my life. Sometimes he’d work so hard that a week would go by and I’d barely seem him. The relative difference is slight, but the absolute difference—Here versus Nowhere—is enormous. I waver on the chasm between the two, barely able to stand.

Finally, a young man in a crumpled tie and shirt gently ushers me into a pink room down the hall. “You need some privacy,” he says quietly, his gray eyes still and unemotional. We brush by a group of people clustered by the colored doors.

Of course. The hospital doesn’t want me to disturb the tenuous hope of other families milling about. I am so jealous of every one of those people who have a mangled, tube-filled family member in the ICU.

And then I remember. Oh no. Dyl. I push the man aside and run to find Dyl, still in her white cubicle. She stares stony-faced at the screen, which shows an empty, cleaned bed. No more miles of tubing. The pharmacy bot is shut down, tentacles neatly coiled on its dome, quietly awaiting the next patient. There are no traces of Dad.

Dyl watched the whole thing.

“Dyl,” I say, and sit down next to her. I put a hand on her arm but she shrinks away. I try to scoot a little closer. The world outside the space we occupy just got ten times more enormous. It’s just us and no one else anymore.

“Come, let’s go.”

Dyl doesn’t turn around. Under my hand, her shoulders start to jiggle. For a crazy second, I think she’s laughing at me, until I realize she’s sobbing. Her cry is quiet but high-pitched, sharply etched with despair. I know this sound. If you drained the blood out of my heart, it would be the sound left over, echoing in the chambers.

Dyl turns and pushes her head into my stomach, and I just hold her while she convulses with sobs. I can’t remember the last time we hugged like this. And yet, here she is, needing me again. Just like when she was littler, when I knew I was a good thing in her life.

Footsteps approach, then pause, waiting. I ignore the presence for as long as possible.

“Girls, you both need to come with me. You can’t stay here any longer.” The man stands outside the room, but his foot taps impatiently. He doesn’t step any closer, keeping us both at arm’s length, as if grief is a dangerous contagion. He tilts his head, watching us carefully.

“You’ll get through this.” He offers the words with a confidence that startles me. I’ve already forgotten what that must feel like, to possess certainty about anything. “You’re going to be okay.”

I want to laugh bitterly at his words. Nothing will ever be okay. Because the one person who held us dear, despite our limitless faults, is gone forever.

I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE’RE GOING, but I’m more than willing to follow him. I vaguely hear him introduce himself as a social worker. The words safety and concern are pitched out to us. I don’t really care. I’m just relieved someone knows what to do right now.

Dyl and I follow him to a bleak room where we sign some forms by pressing our fingertips into the electronic pad. Our F-TIDS, or fingertip IDs, are the summary of our very existence—our identity, bank accounts, and medical records, shoe size, even our newly orphaned status—everything.

Afterward, the man takes us to his office down the hall. For the first time, I notice his brown hair badly needs a haircut, and he’s much younger than I expected—maybe in his early twenties. His dull clothes and dull reassurances give him the illusion of age. He sits in the center of a round desk and computer screen that almost completely encircle him. On a happier day, I’d joke that he’s got a bad Saturn complex.

“Sit down, ladies.”

I cringe. I hate it when people call me a lady. I’m anything but, so it feels like an insult. I sit down in a corner chair. Dyl pauses to wipe a wet eye and surveys the empty seats along the wall. She could sit far away, as she’s been apt to do this year, or in the chair beside mine. I feel like I’m about to win or lose some big prize. I hold in a deep breath, waiting.

Dyl shuffles closer and plops down next to me. My chest shrinks with a glad exhalation. As we try to cover up our sniffles, tissues sprout from the armrests of our chairs. Apparently we are not this room’s first weepy clients.

The social worker starts touching the screens around him, ignoring us.

I blow my nose, then sit forward on my chair. “I’m sorry. What’s your name again?”

“John. I’ve been assigned to your case. I am truly sorry for your loss, but right now my main concern is your safety.” He smiles at us with only his mouth, while the gray eyes remain hard as cement. It’s as if he’s only been given a one-feature allotment of sympathy. “Your F-TIDS again, please.”

Dyl’s on her fifth tissue already. One tumbles onto the floor, and a small four-armed bot shaped like a beetle picks it up, sprays the carpet with disinfectant, and fetches her an incinerator trash can from the wall.

“Thank you,” she whispers. Her nose is so congested from crying it sounds like “Dank you.”

A black shiny square pops up from our armrests and we press our fingers against them. The screens around Social Worker Guy (John is way too human a name) burst into various colors. He starts spinning around in his chair, searching the data. He coughs loudly, not bothering to cover his mouth.

“I see. Your mother died from influenza. Missed her annual vaccine packet. How irresponsible.”

It happened when I was only four years old. I barely remember her. Mom dumped our family when she couldn’t handle Dad’s moving-target jobs, then forgot her vaccines in the excitement of her newfound freedom. My resentment conveniently blots out any remaining memories. I’m even proud that I can’t recall her hair color.

Social Worker Guy does another nauseating spin, fixating on a new section of screen. “Yes, your uncle died two years ago. You have a third cousin in . . . Oh, no. That’s by legal fusion.” Hardly anyone calls it marriage anymore. Who’s fused to whom is always the newest stuff on gossip holo boards. Social Worker Guy keeps drawling on. “So, not a blood relative. Doesn’t count. Your grandparents had no illegitimate children, nor did your father, it seems . . .”

The guy commands the screen to turn off, and it transforms to a frigid scene of winter snowfall. How warm and fuzzy of him.

“Well. I guess it does look like it’s the two of you.”

Two. A hopelessly small number.

He stands up and opens the door. “Come, we don’t have much time. Are either of you hungry? Thirsty? I’m going to get myself a Vitalyte anyway.”

We stand up to follow him obediently, shaking our heads. He walks us to a nearby capsule-shaped transport, where we all grab safety handles sprouting from the beige-colored walls. The door closes seamlessly. We speed up, left, right, and down through several buildings.

The doors open onto a dim concrete hallway. I wonder what café is in this dreary place. We pass by twenty closed doors, all the same gray color as the hall. Even the ceiling is gray. I start to wonder if I’ve gone color-blind or if this building is just pathetically devoid of color.

Social Worker Guy stops at an unmarked door and presses his finger onto a wall pad. The door clicks open. Inside is a room with a scattering of century-old rickety chairs and a plain desk. An elderly lady sits at the desk, scowling at the solitaire hand on her holo. A blond boy and a girl sit in a corner pair of chairs. The boy looks my age, and the little girl is probably ten. They both glance eagerly at us. The girl gives me the up and down, then goes back to staring at the floor, the buoyancy in her face now gone. Clearly we’re not who she wanted to walk through that door.

“Is this the café?” I ask, confused.

“Of course not. Have a seat. The assistants will be with you in a moment.” He rummages inside his shirt pocket and pulls out something. “Here, this is yours.” He drops Dad’s wedding band in my hand. I’m shocked to see it perfectly intact after the accident that tore my father to pieces.

Dyl looks at the ring but hesitates. I hand it to her, and her eyes water at the offering.

“Are you sure?” she whispers. I nod. After spending a week with dad in the ICU, it seems unfair that I’ve got memories she doesn’t. She needs something real to hold on to. Dyl sits in a rickety chair and turns the gold circlet in her fingers. The corners of her mouth pull down so far, I wonder if I’ll ever see them change direction. In the corner, the blond boy has his eyes fixed on Dyl. No surprise there. Even in her misery, she’s so pretty. I want to smack his glance away.

Social Worker Guy turns to leave. I’m afraid to ask him, but I force myself.

“Please. What are we doing here?” I ask.

“This is the New Horizons Center of West Omaha.” I must look as stupid as he thinks, because he enunciates his next words very slowly. “So you and your sister can be placed with a new family. A foster family.” He gives my arm an unreassuring squeeze, so he can push me away to click the door shut.

I back away from the door. Foster family? Each day this past week, I doggedly assumed Dad would recover. I never considered that the sky would fall, or that the earth would stop rotating. And here I am, detached, orphaned, and missing that person who used to tether me to the world. My bones feel loose and disconnected beneath my skin at the thought.

The old lady at the desk finally switches off her holo game and serves us a prunish smile.

“Names please,” she orders. I step forward and quietly give her our information. She bobs her head, telling us to sit and wait.

After only a minute, a door opens in the back of the room. Two guys wearing ID badges around their necks walk in. One of them—tall, with broad shoulders and an aquiline nose—scans a list of names on his holo. He points at us while speaking to his younger coworker. “Take them to level F. There’s a vacated double there. I have to find singles for these two,” he says, motioning toward the brother-sister pair.

The younger guy steps closer to us. He’s wearing dark jeans and a black sweater. His short hair is perfectly mussed, exactly the way that Dyl likes. She takes notice, pocketing Dad’s ring and wiping her nose. I don’t even think she’s consciously doing it, but her posture straightens out.

Though I know she’s still sad—it’s in her face—it must be some innate reaction she’s been born with that only showed up a few months ago. The ability to react to cute guys like this. I am clearly missing this gene, because the reactive posture I have right now is an I’d rather be anywhere but here schlump.

The guy in black nods his head, acknowledging us. His light-brown locks splay across his forehead. “Come with me.”

Dyl stands up briskly to follow him. I shake my head. I want to follow because I want someone to take me away from the horror of the last two hours. Dyl wants to follow him because he’s cute. I want to tell her to be wary, but now is probably not the time for a lecture on the dangers of teen heartthrobs.

The guy lopes down the hallway. His holo is on now, and though I can’t see the face, the voice on the other end tells me it’s the same guy from the other room.

“Get them situated. The director will talk to them herself once all the data is in.”

“Shall I order the usual?” our guy asks. His voice is surprisingly soothing and calm.

“Yes, but let them rest first. Tomorrow we’ll do the tests.”

“Excuse me?” I interrupt, as politely as possible. “What tests?”

He stops and turns, and for the first time, we both get a better look at him. He’s pretty tall, towering over Dyl, who shifts her feet from side to side. She does this when she’s nervous. He stares down at her with a pair of warm amber-brown eyes, and smiles, then gives me an equal serving of perfect white teeth. There’s one dimple on the left. From the melting expression on Dyl’s face, I’m guessing that, for her, dimples equal trustworthy.

“It’s just standard stuff, to make sure you guys are healthy and find a suitable family. Nothing to worry about. Everybody gets it done.”

“Everybody?” Dyl says, her eyes wide. She hates needles, even the microneedle patches that you can hardly feel.

“Actually, I got tested too. I was in your shoes five years ago, so I know what it’s like.”

Both of us shut our mouths, feeling bad. He turns and leads us to a transport. Before long, he’s showing us into a bare-bones apartment with two beds, a table, and a bathroom. On the wall is a small metal door—an old but apparently functioning food service efferent, preloaded with food supplies so we can have fresh meals at the touch of a few buttons.

My caffeine buzz is wearing off, only to be replaced with a spectacular pounding headache. Combined with the lack of sleep from the past week and the realization that our new home doesn’t include Dad, I’m feeling pretty horrific now. I must look green or something, because the boy puts his hand on my arm.

“Are you okay?” His hand is so warm, it sends a strange tingle in my skin and I step back, embarrassed at the redness in my cheeks.

“Not really.” It’s not his problem. In two seconds when he leaves, he’ll forget us.

He studies me for a moment. “Every day gets a little easier. You’ll see.”

The canned feel-good line does nothing for me, but it works on Dyl and she practically liquefies, crying fresh tears. The guy closes the distance to pat her back, and she melts right into him. I don’t know whether to be jealous or disgusted. After way too long, they pull apart, and Dyl wipes her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Thanks,” she says, and edges closer to me. I put a protective hand on her shoulder. The guy doles out another kind smile.

“Hey, you have nothing to be sorry about. I was in worse shape than you two when it happened to me.” His smile disappears for a fraction of a moment, but soon his face returns to its normal beatific state. “Well, rest up. You have an allotment of three meals and three snacks from the efferent. I’ll come get you guys in the morning. There’s a ton of screenwork to do tomorrow.”

“And the tests.” Dyl can’t hide the crinkle above her nose, as if she can smell the needles from here.

“You’ll be just fine.” He smiles at us both. “I’m Micah.”

Dyl opens her mouth to respond, but he cuts her off before she can introduce herself. “I know you both, Dylia and Zelia Benten. Your names rhyme.”

Normally, I hate that. Dyl and I are more than a singsong-y, awful poem. But Micah says it in a way that is a hundred percent complimentary. Finally, he takes a step closer to Dyl and hovers next to her for a moment. Her eyes glaze over, and she’s in some faraway place where there’s no Dad to mourn, no nagging sister.

“Freesia. Nice.” And with that, he’s gone.

And from the look of her puppy-dog eyes, so is Dyl.