Colleen put the scissors down and returned her attention to his forearm. Reaching into her bag, she produced a padded board splint, much like the ones he’d seen in Coach Jackson’s first-aid kit.
“I’m going to put this under your arm for support,” she explained. “Then we’ll tie your arm to the board with some gauze wrapping, and then we’ll put your arm in a sling. It will mend faster if it’s immobilized.”
“But it’s going to hurt,” Ryan said, cutting to the chase.
“Well… yes. I’ll have to move your arm a little, and I guess that has the potential to hurt.”
Potential turned to reality. The site of the break shot new lightning bolts as she slid the board into place, but in five seconds, it was over.
“Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Colleen asked.
“Says the chick with two good arms.” He said it with a smile. Jesus, he thought. How perverted could he be, getting a woody from the lady who’s hurting him? Well, she did say I have good muscles.
“Am I a User?” Ryan asked.
“Probably.” Colleen opened a white paper container that was marked KLING WRAP and revealed a cylinder of gauze. “Judging from your car and your clothes-and your mouth sometimes-I’d say there was a very good chance that you are a User.”
“What does that mean, though? User, I mean.”
“Can you hold your arm up for me?” Colleen asked. She demonstrated what she needed by raising his wounded forearm, using the splint.
Ryan slid his left hand into the spot where her hands were.
“Good,” she said. “Just like that.” Her fingers seemed to work automatically as she unraveled the Kling Wrap, binding his arm to the board. She carefully avoided the site of the break, leaving that part of his skin unbound.
“You have done this before,” Ryan said. “Thank you.”
Colleen kept her eyes on her work as she smiled. “You’re welcome. Here at the compound, we have to learn to do many things. I’ve even delivered a few babies.”
Ryan recoiled at the thought. “Eew. Really?”
She laughed at his horror. “What’s wrong with delivering babies?”
“They’re gross and slimy. Why not just call an ambulance? Or drive them to the hospital?”
Colleen shook her head. “Oh, no. Outsiders are Users. That’s no way to bring a new life into the world. We don’t want those hands to be the first to touch one of our infants.”
“There it is again,” Ryan said. “Users. I asked you before and you didn’t tell me. Is that some kind of secret word to you people?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Colleen said. By the time she rolled out the last of the Kling Wrap, the end of his arm looked like a giant Q-tip. It felt better, too. “It would be like explaining sin to a sinner. It’s difficult for people to understand what they are.”
“Try me.”
Colleen stopped working on his arm, and sat back to look him in the eye. “What prayer do you say before you eat a meal?”
He scowled. “What, you mean like grace?”
“I suppose.” Clearly, it wasn’t exactly what she meant, but her expression showed that it served her point.
“I don’t,” Ryan said. “Except, you know, sometimes at Christmas or Thanksgiving. It’s kind of part of the tradition.”
“So even when you say it, you don’t really mean it. It’s something you have to do to get to the food.”
“So that makes me a User? A User and a sinner are sort of the same?”
“We are all sinners, Ryan. Do you work for your money?”
He coughed out a laugh. “What money? Yeah, I work some during the summer, flipping burgers or stocking shelves somewhere. But I don’t make shit.” The disapproving glare told him that dropping the S-bomb was a mistake. “Sorry. Another sin for the list.”
“You’re not getting it,” Colleen said. “Of whatever money you get working whatever job you have, how much do you give to the poor?”
“I am the poor. I don’t have anything to give.”
“You have everything to give. Every day you get paid, you have money to give. Every time you put shoes on, you have shoes to give. You have clothes, and food and possessions that in one year’s time will cease to have use to you, yet you continue to accumulate more.”
Oh, man, he wasn’t getting this at all. “So anybody who has anything is a User? Is your enemy?”
Colleen rolled her eyes in that special way people do that really got his blood boiling. “Yes, you’re obviously one of them.”
“One of who?” He shouted that and, in the process, did something to make his arm bite him and he grunted against the pain.
“This is why it’s useless to try to communicate with anyone outside of the community. You refuse to see things as they are.”
“I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”
Colleen settled herself as if preparing to explain the obvious to a dimwitted child. “It’s not about owning anything,” she said. “It’s about wanting to own everything, and never being willing to give anything back. You’ll destroy other people, you’ll destroy other countries, you’ll destroy the earth itself, if that’s what it takes.”
Ryan felt like he’d entered the play of his life in the middle of the second act. “I’m sixteen,” he said, chuckling at the absurdity. “Even if I wanted to do some of those things, I couldn’t. Give me a break.”
“There it is again,” she said.
The second guard appeared in the doorway. “I told you it was a waste of time,” he said.
“Who are you?” Ryan said. He’d learned the hard way that when these nut jobs formed a crowd, life got difficult.
“I’m one you should be fearing,” he said. The guy was older and bigger than Ryan, but not by much on either count. “Brother Stephen was a friend of mine.”
“Then you should keep better friends,” Ryan blurted before his filter could slide into place. “He tried to rape my mother. What would you do?”
The guy smiled. “I guess I might have waited my turn.”
“Stop it!” Colleen commanded. She put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder as she spoke, as if to reassure him that this new guy was out of line. “This is Brother Zebediah. And sometimes he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.”
“The fact is,” said Brother Zebediah, “it’s not about you. Nothing in this world is about you. Nothing is about anyone. We live or die together on this planet, and you Users are so intent on owning the world and its resources for your own gain that you kill indiscriminately. Not just with guns, but with power. It’s time to return the power to where it belongs.”
“To you,” Ryan said, still trying to wrap his head around it all. “And you do it by killing others. Killing to stop killing. Am I getting it right now?”
The expression in Sister Colleen’s face hovered somewhere between hurt and disappointment, yet Ryan still didn’t have a clue why. She stood abruptly and threw a tightly rolled ball of tan fabric onto his lap.
“That’s a triangular bandage,” she said. “I think you should tie a knot in it and put it around your neck as a sling. Try to keep your hand higher than your elbow if you can.”
Clearly, she was done, and even more clearly, she was angry. She turned to the door.
“What did I say?” Ryan asked after her.
Colleen said nothing. She stormed out past Brother Zebediah, who followed her and slammed the door. He was still refitting the padlock when someone flipped a switch and Ryan’s world returned to blackness.
CHAPTER TWENTY – THREE
“At least we know that Ryan is in Copley’s house,” Venice said. “That’s important data.”
