The Wall (The Woodlands) (18 page)

There were people watching us, people of different ages mixing together.
Maybe I did invent this. I was the one in the coma and this was my dream. I shook it out with a light laugh.

Joseph took my hand and I
wound my fingers in his. Breathing in deeply, the smells of wet leaves, dirt, and wood smoke was unmistakable and wonderful. It brought me home. It swam around my heart like a warm drink and made me whole.

Stones made up the road. There was a track
cut down the middle and spinners moved soundlessly through the streets. It was a bizarre mix of old and new. Cottages were dotted against the backdrop of the ancient wall, each with a generous plot of land begging for vegetables to be grown when the sun actually warmed the earth, not just threw its light sparingly across it with distaste.

The
modest, wooden cottages stood on stacked-stone foundations, simply shingled, with thick, glass windows and smoke coming out of the stone chimneys. They must have been built individually, not by some Class team, as each one had its own personality. They were new too, maybe about five to ten years old. And the plants… My chest swelled at the possibility of it. They had the freedom to plant their own gardens. Any tree, any flower. It was too much to take in. Too much but not enough—I craved more.

This was what my eyes, my
heart, took in in the five minutes we had before we were ambushed by people in white coats. Before we were barreled into a spinner and rushed towards the grey, ramshackle town down the hill. I let out a strangled sigh as we got further away from the cottages, my hand pressed to the wall of the carriage, willing it to shatter. I put my head in my hands and swore I would get back there, somehow. Joseph’s hand made a fist in the small of my back.

Matthew explained that it was necessa
ry, that although it seemed like they had it all together, most of their technology was borrowed and pieced together. Survivors were scroungers; they had eked out an existence here after much trial and error and a new disease would devastate the community. He explained this as we were manhandled up the stairs of a dark, dingy building. He pleaded for our patience as we were stripped of our clothing and forced to stand before scrutinizing doctors, thrown white pajamas, and pushed down halls into a room where we would be separated by glass. Then they made him leave and I was glad. I was having trouble restraining myself. He had not been clear and I knew why. Because he knew we would say no. And they wanted us here. I wasn’t sure why, but they wanted something from us.

Now we sit.

Each room has a bed, a bathroom with a privacy curtain, and a chair. In the corner, to keep us occupied, are stacks of books and a device for playing music with headphones. My first modification to our accommodation was to throw everything at the humming air-conditioning vent and let it land in a pile by the door, which was always locked. Books flew like shot-gunned birds, flapping their wings once before tumbling inelegantly to the ground, bent and splayed open, spines twisted. The next morning when I woke up, they were neatly stacked back where they were originally.

I was
so unhappy, contained.

But they did one thing
, a thing that made their behavior unforgivable in my mind. They took Orry.

The books they gave us we
re all nonsense to me. Made-up stories. No history books, no how-to guides. They didn’t understand we knew nothing of this past world. Although it was interesting, coming from where we did, the ‘fiction’, as they called it, seemed frivolous and self-indulgent. Flicking through a book called ‘Alice in Wonderland’, I dragged my chair over to Orry’s cot. They had pressed it up against the wall so I could see him and he could see me. It was of little comfort. He turned his head at the sound of my muffled voice.

I read a little bit of the story to him out loud, but wh
en I got to the part where the Queen of Hearts started ordering beheadings for stealing pies, I slammed it shut. It sounded too much like Pau.

My mood shifted between periods of shaking
wordlessly, to screaming at no one, to trying to breathe and stay calm. I didn’t want to remember these things but being here in this sterile, scraped-down environment brought back memories I didn’t even know I had. Scenes that, up until now, had been pinned under a cloud of fog, started pushing their way up to the front of my already-crowded brain.

“
Rosa,” Joseph said, his voice throttling for attention. But I was gone; I stood in the center of the room, my body rigid. My face stinging from a memory that hit me like a broad board of plywood. “Rosa…?”

I was
lying on a metal table. My wrists and ankles tethered. My feet pushed up into stirrups. My head lolled around and someone dabbed at my mouth with a tissue.

“
Is she worth keeping?” someone asked.

“
For now she is—we’ll just have to wait on those eyes.” A pause and a sigh. “She’s ready for implantation. Transport her as soon as possible. Oh, and keep her heavily sedated; she keeps waking and fighting.”

T
he memory pulled away like a blanket and I was standing back in the white room, shivering from imagined cold, with Joseph watching me. I ran my hands over my wrists, reliving the way the restraints rubbed away at my skin. They hurt still. I shook my head and made my way over to him, my eyes watery, my body feeling pinched and weak.

“
Get me out of here,” I said. “I don’t want a baby.”

“
What?”

Where did the old world end and the current one begin? I felt half
-in, half-out.

“
Oh, sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying.” I put my hand to my forehead, confused, like I’d been drugged.

Joseph
’s voice was calming, but had an edge of a grumble to it. “It’s ok. You’ll be ok. Just hang on.”

They said
two weeks. Joseph argued with them, especially on my behalf. Being trapped held a special sense of horror for me that it didn’t for the others. But I heard them all at different times, pleading and yelling. Deshi was beside himself too. They had placed Hessa on the other side of a glass wall as they had Orry.

The doctors were kind. They were patient with my attitude. They assured us we were safe. They encouraged us to ask questions, but my trust was not so easily won. Joseph tried to be more forgiving but even he found it frustrating.

Watching another woman feed my baby was agonizing. They gave me a pump so I could express milk for him, which I did. When I initially refused, thinking I could blackmail them into bringing him to me, they shrugged and said they would give him artificial baby milk. I was desperate to maintain any connection to him so I relented.

They took blood and did physical tests.
It all looked good
, they said.
We should be cleared in no time
, they said.
Now
? I would ask.
No, not yet. Soon
.

If Joseph wasn
’t there, I think I may have hung myself from the shower rail. He talked me down from my panic. We pushed our beds together and talked through the glass, our breath fogging around our faces. Joseph found music he thought I would like and noted the tracks, telling me to find them on my music device. I stared into his green eyes and counted the gold flecks. I put my hand to the glass and imagined I was touching his hand—that I was lying next to him.

He chewed through the books. I watched him read and wished I had the strength to sit still and try, but I didn
’t. My skin was crawling; the bugs and itches of the past ran through my body and surfed alongside me. I felt and knew I was one meltdown away from completely snapping.

W
hen they took Orry’s blood, the snap echoed like a tree falling, a dry crack and splinters creaked and cried out. He screamed and screamed as they pricked his little heel and squeezed drops of blood onto a piece of paper. All I could think was,
They took my baby
. And no matter how many times they told me he was safe, no matter how many times they pressed his little body up against the glass, I didn’t care. He should have been with me. I couldn’t take it anymore. It had been a week. The glass was smudged with my desperate, pattering hands. Layers of tears and terror clouded my view.

Bef
ore I knew what was happening, my body acted. I picked up a chair and banged it against the glass as hard as I could. It rebounded. The glass wobbled but it didn’t break. I smashed it again and again. The rubber stoppers on the legs squeaked down the pane. Joseph watched me, exasperated and helpless.

I hit and hit until my arms were
bowed and shaking from the exertion of holding the chair over my head.

I walked to the cent
er of the room, my hands in my hair, and screamed.

“
He should be with me! Bring Orry to me,” I yelled, and then I whispered to myself, to my body that felt fragile and broken, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Joseph
’s muffled voice called to me. “Rosa, come here.” He had his hand on the glass, bumping it gently with his fist. I didn’t want to look. I shook my head, listening to the rhythmic clunk of his hand on the glass. He wanted to calm me down and I didn’t want to be calm. I wanted to build angry flames around me, set the sprinklers off, and let the doors open. Let the whole place burn down for all I cared.

“
Rosa, come here!” His voice was more frustrated now, the word, “please,” choking on the way out.

He was kneeling on the
floor, banging on the glass, trying so hard to get me to turn around. Reluctantly, I shuffled over to him. This was unbearable. After six weeks apart, we only had a week together before they separated us again.

He breathed in deeply. I watched his chest rise and fall. The scar
from his operation moved as he talked. “Just breathe. It will be over soon.”

“
But, how can you trust them? How can you be sure...?”

“
It will be ok. You know this is killing me too.” He pulled his hair back with both hands, his muscles tensing, and whispered through gritted teeth, “Don’t you know how much I want to punch through the glass and touch you?” A shudder of agonizing pleasure ran through me. His eyes were so intensely focused on me, all of me. I couldn’t stand it. “But we have to wait,” he continued. “We agreed to this and now we have to wait.”

I banged my head on
the glass, a little too hard, the thud reverberating and rippling up to the ceiling. “I hate it,” I sobbed.