If I offended May at all, she didn’t act like I did. She continued on with her polite tone, “I think I should have you walk around the room one more time before I send you back to your quarters. You okay with that?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
During my stay in the infirmary, I’d grown fond of the time I spent with May. Grace was lucky to have her for a mother. She was kind, generous, and selfless. I truly appreciated all the time she had taken with me these last few days.
May strolled over to the side of my bed. “Place both of your arms over my shoulders,” she instructed. I made a circle with my arms and lopped them over May’s head. “Okay. Good,” she said. “Now on three, you’re going to stand.”
“Got it.”
“One… Two… Three.”
I squatted and pushed with my legs as hard as I could. When I stood, I latched my hands onto May’s shoulders and steadied myself. I beamed proudly. My legs felt sturdy, not at all wobbly like they had been the day before. I almost thought about jogging from my bed to the opposite side of the room, but I didn’t.
With May guiding me, I walked slowly, deciding to play it safe. “Did you ever figure out why I couldn’t use my arms or legs when I came in?”
May put a tighter grip on my shoulder as we glided across the floor. “Without a cat scan, I don’t know for sure, but I will say that you took a very hard hit to the head. And you’d be surprised how that can affect the brain. When I worked in surgery, there were a lot of brain injuries and I’ve seen much stranger things than a person not being able to use their limbs for a day.”
That was interesting. I assumed that my immobility had something to do with the hard hit I took to the head. “Really? Like what?” I asked as we turned to walk back the way we came.
“This one time, they rushed in this woman who had a skull fracture and a piece of the skull about a half an inch long got lodged in her brain. She actually started barking at me.”
I laughed. “Like a Golden Retriever?”
“I’d say more like a Yorkie. She was very yippy.” May laughed with me when we stopped at the foot of my bed. “You’re as good as new,” she complemented.
I beamed. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
May hand delivered me to my mother, who was waiting just outside my room. “Look at you!” my mother squealed as she enveloped me into her arms.
“Back to normal again,” I joked
My mother kissed my hair. “I’m so glad.” She turned to May. “When will the stitches have to come out?”
May smiled. “They are self-dissolving so we don’t have to take them out.”
“Great,” I commented. I had stitches cut out once. I didn’t want to go there again.
“Sweetheart,” my mother began, “why don’t you go into your room? I’m going to walk May back to the infirmary.”
I peeked inside the empty room. “Where’s Frankie?”
My mother smiled. “It’s a Wednesday, silly. She’s in school.”
“Oh.” I had completely forgotten about school. In the back of my mind, I hoped that she wouldn’t make me go back until next week. “Well, I think I’m going to walk around then. I’m so sick and tired of lying down.”
She gave me a stern look. “You’re not going anywhere by yourself. When I come back, I’ll take you on a walk.”
I placed both of my hands on my hips. “Mom, are you serious! Quit treating me like a child! I’m seventeen years old!”
She wagged her finger at me. “Let’s get two things straight. I don’t care how old you are, you’re always going to be my child. Also, you have just been through something traumatic and you need to take your time and recover. I don’t want you running around here making yourself sick.” My mother gave May the come-on-back-me- up look. “Right May?”
May nodded. “Listen to your mother, Georgina.”
I sighed, defeated. “Fine. But can’t I walk with you guys?”
My mother smiled. “Sure.” My mother laced an arm through mine and May did the same with the opposite arm.
As we walked through the chilly, empty hallway I thought that it was kind of nice that nobody was around. Even though we were a small group of people it got overly crowded down here
sometimes. Usually the worst when it was around meal times. I wondered why the people here were still so obsessed with food. True, it was a luxury, but we had been eating good for the last two years.
In that moment, I thought of the cannibals and outsiders who lived above us. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. The outsiders, because they would ultimately become a meal for the cannibals. And the cannibals because they were just doing what they had to survive. Eating other humans was grotesque and disgusting, but it made me think of what I would do in their situation. Would I resort to eating my own kind?
A queasy feeling bounced off the walls of my stomach. Never. I just couldn’t do it. No matter how hungry I was, I’d rather starve to death than kill and eat another human. I stole a glance at my mother and May, who were chatting quietly amongst one another. Would they? No. I knew my mother and I knew May. They wouldn’t be able to do it. Then again, you’d be surprised how fast the people you knew could change when they’re starving to death.
Since the Great Famine began, I’d only seen a couple of things that made my heart break in such a way, that the only thing I could think about doing after witnessing it, was curl up in a corner and ball my eyes out.
One time, in particular, was right before the colony had been built. Two little boys, who couldn’t have any older than six and four years old, laid beside a rotting corpse, hysterical. The woman was their mother. “Mommy!” they wailed—all day—and all night.
Nobody cleaned up the body. Nobody cared. They were way too worried about taking care of themselves, and the fermented dead were useless to cannibals. Human organs rotted just like old meat.
Most of the time, I’d sit in the hut with my hands over my ears and my eyes squinted shut, humming quietly to myself to drown out their torturous cries.
During the day it was impossible to avoid them. I couldn’t face them. Somehow, I saw me and Frankie in those little boys. And even being a teenager, I didn’t know how I would survive if I was in their situation. The answer was I wouldn’t have.
Then one night their cries started to weaken. Starvation was sneaking up on them and pretty soon they would join their mother, rotting away from the outside in. That was when I broke. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I needed to feed them. They needed a home. And I swore that I would kneel on the ground until my knees were bloody at my parents feet, begging, until my parents helped them.
First, I did the unthinkable. I stole food from my parents little makeshift garden inside of our hut. Since I took food before the rules were established, I’d gotten away with it. Then, I stalked across the street, in the dead of night, clutching what I could and knelt down to the little boys.
Both of the boys had ivory pallor’s and big, round blue eyes that stared up at me. They whimpered softly. Their teeth were cracked from eating rocks and their bones were showing through their thin, translucent skin. The stench from their mother’s corpse wandered up my nostrils and I gagged, turning my head away.
Sharp sobs caught in my throat and I sucked them back, trying to be strong. I smiled, tears watering up in my eyes as I handed each of them two large carrots. “Here you go, little guys.”
They snatched the carrots from my hands and gobbled them up in one breath. “Do you have anymore?” the elder one asked in his soft child-like tone.
“Not right now,” I said tearing up again. “But I’ll tell you what, if you’re good little boys, I’ll bring you more tomorrow.”
They smiled and nodded.
I didn’t hear a peep from them the rest of the night. When the following morning came, I begged my mother. I begged her for hours to let us take them in. “Mom, they’re two little boys! How much could they possibly eat?”
