Because none of this is real.
It’s just another nightmare.
8 ELDER
DOC IS IN THE LOBBY OF THE HOSPITAL, HELPING ONE nurse lead an old man toward the front desk where another nurse starts to check him in. When Doc sees me, he heads my way.
“Have you seen Harley?” he asks.
“No.” I can’t help but smile. Harley’s famous for escaping Doc when med time rolls around.
Doc runs his fingers through his thick hair, then notices my smile and scowls. “It’s no laughing matter. Harley needs to take his medication on a regular schedule.”
I make an attempt to sober up my expression. Harley does sometimes get intense and dark, but I think that has more to do with how artistic he is than how crazy Doc thinks he is. Besides, he’s my best friend; I’m not going to scamp him out to Doc.
“I ain’t going!” the old man at the front desk yells. Doc whips around. The old man has shaken off the nurse who helped him walk in and is leaning toward the one sitting at the desk. “You can’t make me! I ain’t going to no ’spital bed, I ain’t sick!” He punctuates this with a hacking cough and spits out a mouthful of phlegm on the floor.
“Now, now, calm down,” Doc says, striding over to the man.
The old man turns his cataract gaze to Doc. “Where’s my wife? You got her?”
“Ms. Steela isn’t here,” Doc says, putting his hand on the man’s arm. “She isn’t sick. You are.”
“Ain’t sick!” the old man roars, but immediately after he speaks, a glazed expression falls over his eyes. His breathing calms, and he sags under the weight of his own clothing. When Doc moves his hand, I see why: Doc has slipped him a med patch. The lavender square of sticky cloth on the old man’s arm is already calming him into submission.
Doc shoots me a triumphant grin as he helps the man settle into a wheelchair and then sends him and the nurse to the elevator. I swallow, hard. Doc is a good man, but his answer to everything is always medicine. He doesn’t like emotion, any emotion. He prefers things quiet, controlled.
That’s why he’s so frexing close to Eldest. They think alike.
“So, what are you doing here?” Doc says once the old man is safely ensconced in the elevator and on his way to treatment.
I scuff my shoes on the smooth tiled floor. There’s no way I’m going to tell him that I’m off to explore a secret elevator on the fourth floor. I’m not even sure if I believe Orion enough to try it.
“Just thought I’d see Harley,” I say finally.
Doc frowns. “If you find him, send him straight to me. It’s long past med time.” He glances at the clock over the nurse’s desk. “For that matter, have you taken yours?”
I flush. I’m not proud of the year I lived here. On the third floor, the Ward. Where the mental patients are. I think living with the Feeders cracked me. It was fine when I was little, but the older I got, the more I felt like I was different from the rest of them. I couldn’t make myself care about crops or cows the way they did.
(I remember, when Doc first made me start taking mental meds, I asked: Should I still be Elder? I was on mental meds, after all! I spent a year at the Ward! I was all ready to step down. But Doc and Eldest wouldn’t let me.)
“I took them this morning,” I mutter, my face hot. I hope the nurse at the desk hasn’t heard. What would she think of a future leader who’s on mental meds?
Doc scrutinizes me. “Is there anything wrong?” he asks.
Eldest lied to me about the stars, and there might be a secret level on the ship, and Orion looks more like me than I’d ever care to admit, but no, nothing’s wrong, because if Doc thinks anything is wrong, he’ll just give me more meds. I shake my head.
Doc doesn’t look convinced. “I know it’s hard on you. You’re different.”
“I’m not that different.”
“’Course you are. You know you are.”
I shrug. The elevator, now empty, returns to the lobby. I want to escape to it, and Doc, mercifully, lets me go.
Inside the elevator, my hand hovers over the round number four, then slides down to three. If Harley’s off his meds, maybe I
My spirits lift with the elevator. Despite Doc, one of my favorite places to be is the Ward. All my friends are here. The elevator bobs to a halt, and the doors slide open to the third-floor common room. I grin so hard it hurts. The Ward feels more like home than any other place on the ship, even if it’s filled with crazy people.
Paint splatters onto my sleeve; I look up and see that Harley is attacking a canvas, letting his brush flick off the side of it. There’s a ring of splattered red and blue paint all around where he’s sitting.
“Hey Harley,” I say. “Doc’s looking for you.”
“Haven’t got time for him”—he spares a glance up at me—“49 and 267,” he says before turning back to the canvas and attacking it with his paintbrush again. I grin wryly. You can count on Harley to know exactly when the ship’s going to land. Most people — I mean, most people in the Ward — keep track of the time until the ship lands, but I bet if I asked, Harley would know not only the years (49) and days (267) before we land, but also the minutes and seconds.
I dodge the flying paint and peer around to see what he’s painting. A koi fish floats in a sea of bright blue, but the light from the fish’s scales and the sparkles on the water’s surface intermingle, as if the fish is a part of the water and the water is a part of the fish. Harley’s used these amazing colors — colors that no one else would think of. The fish’s eyes are bright, bright green, almost yellow, like jade swirled with gold. The scales are shiny and bright, too, but they’re all edged in blood red that looks like it should clash with the lighter colors, but it doesn’t. The red makes it seem more real, somehow, as if the water could spill from the canvas and the fish could swim past our feet.
