'Emby's his son?' says one kid, and the rumor begins to spread through the crowd.
Whatever the Admiral meant, it's lost now in incoherence as he slips in and out of consciousness.
'If we don't get him to a hospital, he'll die,' says Risa, giving him chest compressions once more.
Connor looks around, but the closest thing to a car on the Graveyard is the golf cart.
'There's the helicopter,' says Hayden, 'but considering the fact that the pilot's dead, I think we're screwed.'
Risa looks at Connor. He doesn't need to read
Connor stands up and looks around him—the smoke-stained faces, the smoldering bonfires. After today nothing will be the same. 'Hayden,' he says, 'you're in charge. Get everything under control.'
'You're kidding me, right?'
Connor leaves Hayden to grapple with authority and finds three of the largest kids in his field of vision. 'You, you and you,' Connor says. 'I need you to come with me to the FedEx jet.'
The three kids step forward and Connor leads the way to Crate 2399, and Roland. This, Connor knows, will not be an easy conversation.
47. First-Year Residents
In her six months working in the emergency room, the young doctor has seen enough strange things to fill her own medical school textbook, but this is the first time someone has crash-landed a helicopter in the hospital parking lot.
She races out with a team of nurses, orderlies, and other doctors. It's a small private craft—four-seater, maybe. It's in one piece, and its blades are still spinning. It missed hitting a parked car by half a yard. Someone's losing their flying license.
Two kids get out, carrying an older man in bad shape. There's already a gurney rolling out to meet them.
'We have a rooftop helipad, you know,'
'He didn't think he'd be able to land on it,' says the girl.
When the doctor looks at the pilot, still sitting behind the controls, she realizes that losing his license is not an issue. The kid at the controls can't be any older than seventeen. She hurries to the old man. A stethoscope brings barely a sound from his chest cavity. Turning to the medical staff around her, she says, 'Stabilize him, and prep him for transplant.' Then she turns back to the kids.
'You're lucky you landed at a hospital with a heart bank, or we'd end up having to medevac him across town.'
Then the man's hand rises from the gurney. He grabs her sleeve, tugging with more strength than a man in his condition should have.
'No transplant,' he says.
'He doesn't want a transplant,' says the boy.
'You brought him in from God-knows-where with an underage pilot to save his life, and he won't let us do it? We have an entire tissue locker full of healthy young hearts—'
'No transplant!' says the man.
'It's . . . uh . . . against his religion,' says the girl.
'Tell you what,' says the boy. 'Why don't you do whatever they did
The doctor sighs. At least she's still close enough to medical school to remember what that is. 'It drastically lowers his chances of survival—you know that, don't you?'
'He knows.'
She gives the man a moment more to change his mind, then gives up. The orderlies and other staff rush the man back toward the ER, and the two kids follow.
Once they're gone, she takes a moment to catch her breath. Someone grabs her arm, and she turns to see the young pilot, who had been silent through all of it. The look on his face is pleading, yet determined. She thinks she knows what it's about. She glances at the helicopter, then at the kid. 'Take it up with the FAA,' she says. 'If he lives, I'm sure you'll be off the hook. They might even call you a hero.'
'I need you to call the Juvey-cops,' he says, his grip getting a little stronger.
'Excuse me?'
'Those two are runaway Unwinds. As soon as the old man is admitted, they'll try to sneak away. Don't let them. Call the Juvey-cops now!'
She pulls out of his grip. 'All right. Fine. I'll see what I can do.'
'And when they come,' he says, 'make sure they talk to me first.'
She turns from him and heads back into the hospital, pulling out her cell phone on the way. If he wants the Juvey-cops, fine, he'll get them. The sooner they come, the sooner this whole thing can fall into the category of 'not my problem.'
48. Risa
Juvey-cops always look the same. They look tired, they look angry— they look a lot like the Unwinds they capture. The cop who now guards Risa and Connor is no exception. He sits blocking the door of the doctor's office they're being held in, with two more guards on the other side of the door just in case.
He's content to stay silent, while another cop questions Roland in an adjacent room. Risa doesn't even want to guess at the topics of conversation in there.
'The man we brought in,' Risa says. 'How is he?'
'Don't know,' says the cop. 'You know hospitals—they only tell those things to next of kin, and I guess that's not you.'
Risa won't dignify that with a response. She hates this Juvey-cop instinctively, just because of who he is, and what he represents.
'Nice socks,' Connor says.
The cop does not glance down at his socks. No show of weakness here. 'Nice ears,' he says to Connor. 'Mind if I try them on sometime?'
The way Risa sees it, there are two types of people who become Juvey-cops.
Type one: bullies who want to spend their lives reliving their glory days of high school bullying. Type two: the former victims of type ones, who see every Unwind as the kid who tormented them all those years ago. Type twos are endlessly shoveling vengeance into a pit that will never be full. Amazing that the bullies and victims can now work together to bring misery to others.
'How does it feel to do what you do?' she asks him. 'Sending kids to a place that ends their lives.'
Obviously he's heard all this before. 'How does it feel to live a life no one else feels is worth living?'
It's a harsh blow designed to get her to shut up. It works.
'I feel her life is worth living,' says Connor, and he takes her hand. 'Anyone feel that way about you?'
It gets to the man—although he tries not to show it. 'You both had more than fifteen years to prove yourselves, and you didn't. Don't blame the world for your own lousy choices.'
