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“Thank you,” the young man says, a sigh of relief floating among his words. He turns to talk to his mother, then hands her over to a nurse who leads her to the elevator where Amy and I are waiting.
“You’re the Elder. The one who didn’t die,” the old woman says as she sees me. “And that’s the freak girl Eldest told us about. ”
“Hello,” Amy says with a smile, holding out her hand to the woman. If I had any doubt about something being wrong with Amy, it’s gone now. Amy—the normal Amy I’d come to know—would not have put up with an old lady calling her a freak girl.
“They say I’m sick,” the old lady tells Amy.
“This is the Hospital,” Amy says. Her speech has a childlike cadence to it, simple and factual.
“I didn’t know I was sick. ”
“You’re just confused, dear,” the nurse says. “You’re getting the past and the present mixed up. ”
“That’s not good,” Amy says, her eyes wide.
The doors slide open and we all step inside. I push the third button. The nurse reaches over and pushes the fourth.
“What’s on the fourth floor?” I ask. I’ve noticed that Doc occasionally takes patients—usually the grays—there, but never really noticed anything special about it other than the secret elevator.
“It’s where we’ve got rooms set up for the elderly,” the nurse says. “Sometimes, they get to the point where they can’t take care of themselves, so we give them rooms there. They need rest and peace, and we have some meds for that on the fourth floor. ” She pats the old woman’s hand, and the woman smiles up at the nurse, her smile shining through the deep wrinkles of her face.
My brow creases. Why were the doors on the fourth floor locked if they merely contained old people relaxing?
The doors slide open to the common room of the Ward. I step out.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” the nurse calls.
Amy is still standing in the elevator, staring vacantly up at the numbers above the doors.
“Three,” she says solemnly, reading the lit number.
“Yes,” I say. “Come on. ” I grab her wrist and pull her into the common room. Many of the mental patients are inside, dark looks on their faces, anger in their eyes.
Amy grimaces. I look down at her wrists and see greenish-purple bruises staining her pale skin.
“Did I do this?” I ask, gently lifting her wrist up for closer inspection.
“No,” Amy says simply.
The bruises are old, anyway, at least a day or more. “What happened?”
“Some men pinned me down,” Amy says. “But it’s okay. ”
My heart thuds. “Some men pinned you down? And it’s okay?”
“Yes. ”
“B-but—” I splutter.
Amy blinks up at me, as if she cannot fathom why anything is worth this much emotion.
“You don’t care, do you?” I ask.
“About what?”
“About. . . about anything. ”
“I care,” Amy says, but her voice sounds bored.
