“Hey, Gabi,” she chirped as she bounced up to her and began jogging alongside. “I want you to know I think it’s awesome that you’re doing this. Everybody knows about your health problems, but here you are! Your faith is so inspiring. It’s really lifting up the other recruits, I can tell!” Gabi was saved the ordeal of responding by the “no talking” rule, but Ruth was content to hold up both sides of the conversation. “You know, being a Witness is prestigious, but it’s not the only way to be of value. Your call as a Messenger was strong, and I know your dad can’t wait until you start sharing your gift. Just think how much further along you’ll be than the folks who go off on Witness teams. You’ll have all of that extra time to practice!” For Ruth, as for Mathew, Gabi’s failure to make a team was a foregone conclusion, but Gabi didn’t have to have the best time to succeed. She just had to prove she was beyond failure.
Eventually Ruth tired of her monologue and left Gabi in peace. The course straightened out over an open plain. It had once been used for agriculture but was now a fallow field of rocks, mud, and biograss, so Gabi could see exactly how far behind she was. The closest recruit was at least a quarter of a mile ahead. The sides of her neck pulsed relentlessly, and the soft places behind her ears felt as though someone was driving bolts into them. Midway through the field, Gabi’s legs went numb. She could feel nothing below the abrading clench of the waist belt, and everything north of her hips felt like it was being squeezed in one of Trainer Foulkes’s iron fists. For the first time since Jordan left her, Gabi pried her eyes from the sneaker marks on the trail in front of her and raised them to the sky. The sun was a half wedge of tangerine on the horizon, veiled in swaths of garnet and fuchsia. What color was left in nature, in Alder at least, was in these glorious, gaudy sunsets.
“Pollution,” Gram would mourn when she and Gabi stood in their backyard to watch yet another stunning lightshow. “But we have to take our beauty where we can find it, don’t we?”
The memory of Gram shot a gust of air into Gabi’s lungs. Over the course of her preparations and the day’s trials, Gabi had lost sight of her true motive for taking the exam. With every leaden footfall, it came back to her: Gram, the Care Center, Marcus and Nicolas, the sanctioned torture of Consecration Camp—these were wrongs that had to be made right. Gabi’s pace increased, and soon she heard nothing, not her breathing or the faint shouts and whistles of the proctors herding recruits along the trail. Nothing but a refrain pounded out in the blood-dark mud beneath her. Run.
Chapter SIXTEEN
“DEHYDRATION. EXHAUSTION. Cyanotic when Foulkes found her. Lucky we didn’t lose her.” The voice, arcing toward Gabi from somewhere above meant only one thing. She had failed, and opening her eyes would make it real. She would see fluorescent light tubes affixed to the ceiling of a Care Center room, the beeping—why weren’t they beeping?—machines stationed nearby, and the faces of her caregivers. She knew too well the feeling of surfacing from one of her episodes, swaddled in heavy blankets with the sound of adult voices heard as if from the end of a cardboard tube.
“The blood tests confirmed there was no trace of the medication in her system. It’s possible she cleared it with all of that activity, but if she had taken a pill anytime in the last week, it should show up regardless. Her new prescription is very potent.”
Gabi clenched her fists under the blankets and felt the pinch at the inside of both elbows that told her needles had been inserted into her veins. IV electrolytes flowed through one of them, no doubt, and through the other? The poison that had stolen so many years of her life. Who knew how long the needle had been dripping its venom into her bloodstream, but it was long enough that Gabi felt dull and heavy, though the ache in her neck was gone. It took everything she had not to thrash herself free.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning before work to replace the bags and check her vitals,” the voice said. “I’m guessing she’ll sleep right through, which would be a blessing. Her doctor predicts she’s going to feel pretty awful until the medicine hits proper levels. He’s got her on a stronger dose for another few days.” Gabi recognized that voice. It was Noel’s mother, Nurse Sutton. What did she mean by “before work”?
“Thank you, Vera. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all this,” Sam’s voice replied. “I know you’ve got your hands full with the Returned situation.”
“I’m just sorry we couldn’t get her a bed,” Nurse Sutton said as their voices retreated. “We’re at maximum capacity on all floors, and that’s after triaging the noncritical cases to the clinic in Birch. I don’t know why they won’t open D Wing. It’s so badly needed, but they just keep saying something about construction debris. Could you pull some strings, Brother Sam?”
“I wish I could, Vera, but it isn’t fit for man
