Breaking Point

was a girl in yellow scrubs sitting in a plastic chair facing the side window. Her blond locks, once so long and beautiful, had been shorn to a tight cap around her skull.

Rebecca.

Suddenly, I was bombarded with memories. The first time I’d seen her, with her springy hair and plastic smile. Her unstoppable love for the sandy-haired guard, Sean Banks. Sitting beside her on my bed late into the night strategizing my escape. The night I’d told her about Chase.

She was not a friend at first, and she might not be now, but for a time, she was all I had.

I took a step forward, feeling a cool drip of nerves slide down my spine. If the Sisters were so casual in their supervision, there had to be another security measure in place. Maybe there were cameras, or another posted guard that I’d missed…. They were insane if they thought a girl who’d snuck out of her room at the reformatory every single night would stay, unguarded, in a space like this.

“Rebecca,” I said cautiously.

Ahead of me, I saw her slender body grow rigid.

“I don’t want to pray today.” She did not turn around.

My heart cracked at the sound of her voice.

When I rounded the table, Rebecca’s nose was down. Even though she wasn’t looking at me, I could see a bitter expression pulling at her once angelic face. She was repotting the pansies. Her fingers were black from the soil.

But she looked okay. No broken neck. No feeding tube. With the exception of her hair, she looked exactly as she had when we’d parted. A single wave of cool relief washed over me.

“Let’s go,” I said, focused again.

Her head shot up, and her pretty blue eyes went round with shock. The mustard-colored remnants of a bruise along her chin and jaw became apparent and elicited a strong twinge of guilt.

“Ember?” She kept the flowers on her lap.

“We’re getting you out of here,” I whispered.

“What? You… wait… no.”

I must have looked surprised, because that’s what I felt. “What do you mean no? We’ve got to hurry. Sean is—”

“Not Sean,” she said firmly, but there was an edge to her voice. “Ember, you have to leave.”

“What?” She was mad at me, that was the only explanation for why she was acting this way. She had good reason, but still, I was here, I was going to get her out. Surely she had to see that.

I realized she was probably afraid, but this seemed crazy. She’d attacked Brock and the guards with her bare hands for what they’d done to Sean, and now she was too scared to leave a hospital?

“You’re not taking me anywhere. You’re leaving. Now.” Her voice hitched. If she kept this up, the Sisters were going to hear her.

My brain couldn’t wrap around this. “You don’t want to leave?”

“No. I want to stay,” she said resolutely.

“We can’t talk about this now. There’s no time.” I glanced over my shoulder. No one was coming. Yet. I snatched the flowerpot off her lap.

“No! You don’t understand!” Her voice cracked. “He can’t see me like this!” Her perfect cheeks were splotchy red now. They stood out in sharp contrast to her yellow jumpsuit.

“Like what? With short hair? Rebecca, he won’t care.”

“That’s not what I mean!”

Sean burst through the door at the same time I jerked Rebecca to a stand.

Only she didn’t stand. She fell flat on her face.

“What the…” I knelt to the ground to pick her up.

“I told you!” She was crying now.

Time slowed, and everything became crystal clear.

There was absolutely no concern that Rebecca was going to run because she couldn’t run. That explained the limited military presence. That was why Sisters ran this place.

I closed my eyes and saw it happen, just as it did at the reformatory. Rebecca in her gray uniform charging Ms. Brock, the headmistress. The guards trying to contain her. Then crack! A baton colliding into Rebecca’s back. Her sharp cry of pain. We’d been separated. I’d never known the extent of Rebecca’s injuries.

“Sean!” I snapped. “I need your help!” I tried to pull Rebecca up, but she couldn’t support herself. Nothing below her knees moved. Her thin legs splayed limply to the side. Paralyzed. I heard the word in my head but it was wrong. It had to be wrong. She could walk, she just wasn’t trying.

Rebecca moaned softly, a terrifying, desolate sound, and I knew then that she could try all she wanted; she’d never walk again.

At that moment the fire alarm went off.

“Becca?” Sean asked, confused. He knelt beside her.

“G-get a wheelchair. Where is it, Rebecca?” The blood had drained from my head and extremities, and I felt very cold. The siren bit into my eardrums, and a bright light from above the door began to flash. Fear of another kind filled me. I had had about enough burning buildings to last a lifetime.

“She doesn’t need a wheelchair,” said Sean. “Get up, Becca.”

She didn’t get up. She was wailing softly into her hands. He reached for her arm but didn’t touch her. Like he couldn’t. Like there was an invisible wall between them.

I scanned the room, landing on a pair of crutches and leg braces against a cabinet on the opposite side of the room. Whoever had brought her here had left them far out of her reach. A surge of fury rose within me so immediately that I nearly screamed.

I sprinted toward them, gathering the intricate black plastic braces and the modified crutches, and returned to the floor.

“How do I put these on?” I demanded.

“Becca, look at me,” said Sean.

A Sister, about my age, pushed through the door.

“Oh dear!” she said. “Did she have a fall?”

“Back off,” I growled at her. She stopped short.

“There’s a fire drill,” she said cautiously, as if we couldn’t hear it. “We’ve got to move everyone we can outside.”

I shuddered to think about the people that couldn’t be moved.

“How do I put these braces on?” I demanded of the Sister.

Sean didn’t wait for an explanation. He scooped Rebecca up off the floor and carried her out of the room.

“She’s being transported to another facility,” I said between my teeth. The Sister’s mouth had formed a small o.

The siren was much louder in the hall. I stuffed Rebecca’s crutches under my arm and clapped my hands to my ears. Girls darted into rooms, shouting directions at one another. I inspected the chaos, convinced that this was some ploy to catch us.

Tucker was nowhere to be seen.

“The stairs are that way!” shouted the doctor over the noise. “The elevators shut down when the alarm is pulled!” He was pushing a man in a wheelchair toward the emergency exit. The patient cried out in pain, pressing his hands to his ears.

My breath was coming fast, raking my throat. We hurried to the emergency exit and joined the crowd of Sisters assisting amputees and wheelchair-bound patients down the stairs. Two girls had dropped their sweet Sister facade and were snapping at each other about how to get a patient’s walker out of a crack in the handrail. I prayed that this was simply a drill; they were leaving a lot of people behind.

“Blend in,” I told Sean unnecessarily. I might be able to do so, but not him. He was the only soldier in sight.