- XXIV -

* * * * *
         God, she hates waiting.
         God, she hates hospitals.
         God, she hates waiting in hospitals.
         The chair is a cruelly cushioned piece of plastic, made perhaps for people who prefer to sit on their heads. The thermostat apparently can't decide whether it would rather be too warm or too cold and so she goes from crossing her legs tightly for warmth to having to grip the sides of the seat to prevent herself from finding the nearest door and running outside to throw herself face down in the snow to cool off.
         The lighting is too bright, and flickering on a level that doesn't register consciously but must resonate in her head somewhere because it's giving her a headache, the generalized, aching kind, like you've been struck by a falling brick and haven't bothered to start bleeding yet. It's hurting her eyes too, but her eyes were burning already. They always hurt after she cries.
         She feels numb as well, like her insides were all shattered and broken and now she's been emptied out, opened up and poured onto the ground. But at least the broken glass gave her something to feel, now it's just nothing. Nothing when she should be feeling something. Her mother used to tell her that crying always made you feel better, that it was always good to let it out because holding it inside just made you feel worse. But there's a certain point where all the tears inside of you are drained out and the tap runs dry and you've got nothing left. When you very much want to keep crying. But you don't have enough energy for it, collapsing two steps away from the finish line, not even able to pick up your head, let alone drag your tired body those last few feet.
         Jina isn't sure how much she's cried tonight. Enough to fill a bathtub perhaps, if contests were held for that sort of thing. The ride here remains a blurred and watery journey, striving to see the road through oceans of tears, highway lights stretched out to streaks in the air, slashes on the sky, passing cars masses of dark shapes and pasted on red and white blinking jewels. Barely able to concentrate on driving, she turned the radio on to give herself some sorely needed focus. And a tape that was still in the player started blaring, a holdover from the longago trip up here and it reminded her of a time when the two of them had driven down to the beach and that same song was playing. A memory of that trip rose to the turmoil racked surface of her mind, gasping for breath. Images flared like fireworks in her mind, of closing her eyes and leaning her head against the window, feeling the chilled air conditioned breeze curling around her legs, listening to her friend talking, the vibration of the moving car a cushion and a counterpoint. In that moment it all seemed so real again.
         And she pulled the car over and placed both her forearms on the steering wheel and her head on her arms until her hair was tickling both cheeks and shuddered until she had vomited all her tears through her eyes. Lights from speeding cars kept strobing her, silent spotlights, uncaring voyeurs flashing photographs of her sorrow. No one stopped. She didn't want them to stop. No one cared. She didn't want them to care.
         Right now Jina can't remember ever being happy. Someone excised the emotion right from her mind, all her memories of joy are just pantomime motions created by someone she hired to take her place. A standin for all the tough parts. Plastic smiles and robotic embraces, but enough to fool people. Because we're wired to be unhappy, it's the way we are. We have to work at being happy but misery pulses through us like the coolest of rhythms, we can't help but follow its beat. The band sinks its teeth into a groove that just won't let go, no matter how many limbs you amputate to escape.
         Leaning her head back, she shifts her weight in the chair yet again, her butt making an embarrassing squeaking noise as her dress rubs against it. The rear cushion presses into her back and it feels like she's sticking to it. Lights beat into her head and she closes her eyes, trying to take only deep and even breaths, forcefully inducing a calm that just won't come.
         Sleep won't come. It dances out of her reach, an elusive insect, multiple tapping feet performing complex evasive motions. And she's too tired to lunge forward and grab it, to clutch it to her breast and let it take her into brief oblivion. Too tired to sleep. Oddly enough. Weary and drained and tired just isn't the right combination anymore.
         Her ears are attuned to any sounds but all she hears are the soft sighs of the hospital, hurried footsteps, hushed voices, the scraping rolling of wheels on tiled floors. Somewhere a baby starts crying and then is cut off. Jina can't even imagine why. If she was more awake, if she wasn't so worried, she'd concoct scenarios to help her sleep, just listen to the world breathing around her and make up stories about where they came from and where they were going, all to keep her mind active and occupied until sleep descended on her. But it won't come. And her mind won't work. Trapped between gears, it all just grinds together nosily, whirring and scraping, sparks flying but no movement happening. All that useless thinking.
         Every time footsteps squeak near the open door, she tenses, opening her eyes just a touch, letting a sliver of light through. But the hazy rectangle of doorway she sees remains empty. She remains the sole occupant of the room. She wishes someone would come. She wishes someone would come and tell her something about Lena. How's she doing, if she's awake, if she's stable, anything. But nobody gives her any answers. All they give her are more questions. Firing them at her before she even ejected Lena's name from her mouth. Peppering her from all sides. Nearly cornering her, wanting to know who she was, how she knew, what had happened, all of them, crowding her, plucking at her skin with velvet hooks, trying to deconstruct her and squeeze her dry of usefulness, until it was all she could not to curl up on the floor and seal out the entire world. Just for a moment of peace. But in the end she couldn't tell them anything. And they wouldn't tell her anything. Tit for tat. The petty games we play. As if it's her fault that she doesn't know. And even after all this time all Jina knows for sure is that her friend is in the hospital somewhere. Which is slightly comforting. But they wouldn't even let her see Lena. That hurt the most. It really did. Her best friend could have been waking up alone and confused in a dark room, in a hospital, with no idea on how she got there and would have had no idea that Jina was even there, wanting to see her. She fought with them bitterly on that one, nearly screamed raggedly at the nurses until her throat felt scrubbed with a cheese grater, her voice a hiccuping, pathetic ghost of its usual tone. When it almost bordered on whining, when she found herself almost begging, that's when she had to stop.
         Just thinking about it gave her the familiar heavy feeling in the back of her throat. She has to swallow hard and squeeze her eyes shut tightly to keep anything from escaping. God, she feels so wasted, paper thin and almost gone, every precious drop of liquid has to be retained. Otherwise she can't go on. And she has to. Jina bends forward, lifting her heels to press them against the legs of the chair, resting her elbows on her knees, using her hands to prop her head up. Opening her eyes, she stares down at the space between her feet. Her head is wrapped in gauze, a scratchy and dry sensation every time she blinks. Her stomach gurgles a little, reminding her of the last time she ate. But she doesn't know where to go to get food, if there's anywhere even in the hospital. She has no idea, Jina's never been to a hospital before. That she even found the place has more to do with luck and the fact that there was hardly anyone on the road than her directional sense. She didn't even know what hospital Lena had been taken to, it was just a wild guess.
         She remembers her heart pounding violently in an attempt to mount a prison break and her stomach probing frantically along her insides for an opening as she dropped her car into the lot and ran into the hospital, nearly throwing herself against the front desk, her words all running together like a watercolor painting held under a faucet, a breathless exhalation of fear and anxiety and pain. She barely even remembers what she said, just the pain of the edge of the desk biting into her cold arms, the brief throbbing as her knee struck the wooden front, the wide eyes and confused facade of the desk clerk, the distant and clinical realization that the strained voice was hearing speaking this desperate language sounded absolutely out of her mind. And it sounded just like her.
         But that's all she remembers, just the sensations, all floating in a memory capsule bordered by the constantly shifting and fragile surface of a bubble. Looking at it now, holding it cautiously in her hands and turning it this way and that, the blurred images she sees inside don't look familiar at all. Got the wrong memories. Switched at birth. Living your entire life as someone else's lie.
         Expelling a breath that's only outwardly calm, she gathers two handfuls of hair, pushing her hands back, feeling the grittiness rubbing against her fingers. Not filtered by the dark strands anymore, lights streams into her face, causing her eyes to tear as she blinks rapidly. She has to get a grip. She has to. But this room isn't helping, she can't get past the crappy lighting and the bland paint job and the television up on the wall that someone left tuned to the public broadcasting station and is only showing what appears to be a marathon of some awful British sitcom. The kind of things that insomniacs would watch. Insomniacs and people trapped in the waiting room of a hospital, starving for just one simple morsel of information. Just one.
         Just tell me that she's okay. Please? That's all I want to know.
         The memories are the worst, this room is full of them, splattered on the walls in Rorschach patterns, sprayed with invisible ink. They keep creeping into her thoughts, whispering siblant phrases, fingerpainting the stories of all the others who passed time in early hours of the morning here, just waiting to hear one simple fact. Jina should feel a kinship with these people, a bond borne of shared pain and heightened worry. But mostly she just wants it all to go away and leave her alone. She doesn't want to hear about the millions of people who are experiencing what she is churning in her gut right now, she doesn't want to take comfort in their support, or immerse herself in the network of linked suffering. She doesn't want any of that.
         Letting her arms drop to her sides, releasing her hair, Jina places a hand in the pocket of her jacket, fingers exploring the soft space crusted with dust and lint. No quarters. Nothing but air and her hand. Before, she raided the entire car of change and used an entire half hour just calling all the people she knew, trying to find somebody to tell, a disembodied but friendly voice to reassure her that everything was going to be fine. Lena's parents were first, but she had forgotten they were away and she didn't know where to reach them. So that attempt went nowhere. That had been the worst failure because she felt like she was only making the situation worse, that when they came home and found out that their daughter had been in the hospital and that Jina hadn't told them they would blame her. Make her wither under pitiless gazes, draw blood with a million razor words instead of just crushing her instantly. The phone just kept ringing, endless chiming for ears that weren't around to hear it. And Jina just hung onto the line like they were going to walk in at any moment and pick it up. Hell, if someone robbing the house had picked it up out of sick curiosity to see who would call at that godforsaken hour, Jina would have babbled the whole story breathlessly and shamelessly, just to expel it from her system. But it just rang. It rang and every ring was a coded cry for help. Until the voice came on and told her to try another number, the dispassionate voice not even bothering to shield a lack of concern. Lack of care. Jina wanted to scream to that heedless operator that she had to let it keep ringing, she had to, for a week if necessary, until someone picked up, until the ringer burned itself out, until Jina stumbled into exhaustion and collapsed, the useless receiver clutched like a lifesupport device in her pale hand.
         But, no, numbly she hung the phone up. And then dug for a quarter and called her neighbors. Who didn't pick up. And then some friends. Who weren't home. By the time she got to the idea of calling her parents, the well of change had run dry, she was too tired and upset from a string of dismal failures to even think about going back to the desk and asking for change, and her parents never would have answered a collect call anyway, even if it was from her. They would have thought it was a joke. Dryly sniffling, wanting to cry again but unable to muster the energy to do so, she had replaced the phone back on the hook, feeling like the metallic click of money sliding into whatever holding pen the pay phone trapped it was the stark clang of finality.
         And so she had shuffled back to the waiting room, ignoring glances from passerbys, and sat back down in the uncomfortable chair to stare at ugly walls and listen to bad television.
         "Oh God," she whispers to herself, eyes faintly closed once again, fluttering slightly, trying to find some relief for her headache in manufactured darkness. "Oh God, I don't know what to do."
         She doesn't know who to trust anymore. Tristian has been nowhere in sight the entire time, she assumes that he went with Lena and that he must be around somewhere but wouldn't even know where to start looking for him. Frankly she half expects him to find her, either to walk in any second with that typical befuddled expression on his face, like he had no idea he was going to walk into the room before he did so. Or run into him when she turns a corner, mumbling apologies while getting out of her way in that too fluid fashion of his. But Jina doesn't really want to find Tristian, because she doesn't want to run the risk that Tristian might have some of his special friends along. More and more she's wondering how much of what Tristian does is planned and how much thought does go into his seemingly random actions.
         But he did help save Lena.
         So she was told.
         But she doesn't really know.
         Dammit, why can't she be sure about anything? That's all she wants tonight, just to be sure.
         Will's words press into her head like a patch of diamond thorns, she can feel herself bleeding but doesn't remember the incisions. He was drunk, she knows that. He wasn't thinking clearly, she knows that. But it still hurt. Jina thinks that the next time they meet is going to be very awkward. If that ever happens again. If she ever gets out of here. If. If. If. A little angrily, she pushes the thought out of her head, there are more important matters to worry about right now. That's the problem with waiting, too much time to think. Her thoughts are feeding on themselves, a self fulfilling prophecy that becomes more garbled the more often she looks at it. A dyslexic view of the world, colors all wrong, faces not in the right places, and everyone has their own funny walk.
         God, she has to get out of here. Or talk to someone. Something. Anything.
         Even Brian or Jack would be welcome right now, but they were passed out when she stormed out of the party and she doesn't want to call over there again. Maybe they'll find her and they'll come sit with her and she can spread some of the worrying around. Because right now it's just too much for one person, she can hear the floor creaking under the weight of it. The pressure makes her feel so small, a midget in a very large chair, the cushioning swallowing her up to the neck. She can't take this. Her bones are too brittle, her mind is too battered. Jina rubs her face, giggling in that extremely nonhumorous way people do right before they get hysterical, the kind that turns into frantic sobbing seconds later. Barely she halts her fall with the bottom still in sight, glistening just inches away.
         Oh God, someone take it off. Take the weight off before I'm crushed.
         Above her someone cracks a joke that might have something to do with the military but with the accent it could be about pottery for all she knows. Canned laughter erupts anyway. For a second she tenses, thinking they're laughing at her. The absurd image of someone walking in only to see her screaming at the television strafes her head, all too possible in her hypersensitive state.
         She needs to get out of here. She needs to stand up and walk around, go outside, have a cigarette, do something. Anything. But it won't relieve the tension. It won't pass the time. And they might try and find her to tell her something about Lena. If she goes outside Jina knows what she's going to do, she's going to have a cigarette and stare upwards at the rows of darklight windows and try to figure out which one is hiding her friend. Stare so much until the next thing she feels is the cigarette burning her fingers. Distantly she rubs her hand, as if that future event was somehow impacting her life now. The ghosts of burns to come. Ghosts are all over the place, filling the room, crowding each other for space, jostling phantom elbows, pulling at their phantom IVs, crying out for help that never came. All their voices sound the same. All their voices are the monotone blare of the flatline. Filling her head. Streaking her mind. Somebody make it stop. Please. Just somebody make it stop. Almost panting, Jina puts her hands to her ears, as if to block out foreign sounds, keep them from corrupting her. They keep telling her how useless she is. The same voices from before, lined up like pretty maids, with their sunken eyes and forked tongues, shriveled skin and blackened teeth, telling her that it's all her fault. Should have been paying more attention, should have done something more. You sit there and think that driving to the hospital and sitting here waiting like a useless fool is enough to make up for all you didn't do, all that you were too busy having fun to do. Friends don't matter when you're trying to get some, isn't that how it works. Friends are people who are there for you but you're only there for them when it suits you. When the boys aren't around and you figure what the hell, it can't hurt. Right? Isn't that right, Jina? Isn't that how you are?
         No. No, it's not true.
         It is true.
         It's not.
         Every single goddamn day of your life, you know it's true.
         No!
         Then why is she here, little miss popular? Why is she up there wasting away with tubes poking out of her body while you're down here doing the easy stuff. It should have been the other way around, but you got lucky. Luckier than you deserve. That's the way it is, you just suck in everyone else's luck and leave them all gasping for air, unable to evade life. You nail their feet to the ground and dance out of the way when the train with its roaring horn and piercing lights comes screaming by.
         Jina. This is your life.
         "I'm sorry," she whimpers, her voice thick and breathless, "I'm so sorry, Lena, I tried. I really did. I tried to help."
         You did nothing.
         "No, I did, I did," she gulps, her eyes dry heaving with tears that are no longer there. Her entire body seems to be shuddering and she can't control it. Her friend is sick and helpless and she can only sit here and wallow in her own guilt. This isn't right. It's driving her crazy. Lena is going to wake up and need a friend and instead she's only going to find Jina, who can't even keep her own head on straight. How can she expect to provide comfort to Lena when she can't even keep herself together?
         Silent films of the bloody parking lot keep unfolding in her head, a movie screen that never stops playing. Year round engagements. Joe. Jina remembers him, so calm, collected even in the face of insanity. He stared down that . . . thing and screamed at it and didn't care about himself. Didn't care about what it could do to him, when it was all she could do to avoid running away shrieking. She can't even recall what he said, only the strength of his voice. The even tone and sharp cadence of his words.
         Jina very much wants him here. To show her that same kind of strength when everything seems to be falling apart around you.
         But he lied to her.
         It knew him.
         He lied to her, lied to all of them with a straight face. They all wondered how he and Tristian had become some good friends. There was the answer, the obvious answer was right there the entire time. But nobody saw. Nobody wanted to see. The two of them had plenty of shared experiences to talk about.
         Jina thinks about the two people she saw tonight, lurking in the same man.
         The old clown who danced with her and joked with her and even kissed her, his face outlined by darkness, described by thunderous music. The man she had gone out with five years ago and who seemed to have weathered the years without changing a bit, or only getting better in the good places. That man she could have easily fallen in love with.
         But there was another Joseph Brown.
         The man who faced down the Tristian-thing, who barked orders and carried himself like he was in the middle of a firefight, straight from some old war movie where the generals were grizzled and all knowing and the soldiers were fresh faced and eager to die for the cause. The kind of soldier you don't see anymore. Without any war there's no danger in joining the army anymore, all our war is bloodless and clean, done with distant bombs and pinpoint lasers. People don't enlist with the idea that they're going to have to die. But Brown had the mark in his eyes of a man who was completely ready to die. Someone who wasn't afraid of death, who had faced it and found it held nothing for him.
         Once she had interviewed veterans for the school newspaper, some retrospective on war. As they haltingly told her tales of a time and a place where logic wasn't wanted and insanity was the only order of the day, she took note of their faces. The clarity in their eyes, even when it didn't match the tone of their voices. The knowledge that they had seen things that few men would ever dream of facing and had come out alive. Battered, sometimes broken, nearly shattered but alive.
         Brown's face had the same look.
         Which was the facade? Or perhaps they both were. Or perhaps neither was. Jina doesn't know, it's hard to think, someone took out her brain and replaced it with a foam substitute. No nerves or neurons or synapses. Just fluffy foam. That's her head.
         Ah hell maybe Lena will be able to sort it-
         And she stops herself jarringly before the thought can go any farther.
         Biting her lip painfully she hangs her head again, moaning a little in psychic torment, as if trying to drip tears out of her body by sheer gravity. She slips a ring off her finger and plays with it absentmindedly in her hand, rolling it around her palm until the heat from her hand infuses it, a small ember fluttering against her skin. That's what she needs now. Embers. A spark to guide her. Something. Anything. Closing her hand tightly, she lets the rounded edges of the ring bite into her hand. Bleed. Do something. Sensation. Goddamn. Anything to banish the numbness. So she can feel something. For Lena. Not for herself. For her best friend.
         A shadow falls across her.
         Jina jerks her head up sharply, eyes wider than she'd like them to be. Her vision swims and the person standing in front of her blurs, like they're standing in one place and yet constantly moving. Vibrating. Everything feels so still. So quiet.
         "Oh, I'm so sorry," a gentle and older voice exclaims softly, "I didn't wake you did I?"
         The pieces settle back into place. It's nobody she knows, just some middle aged woman, looking like she just threw her clothes on before she came here, which at this time of the morning isn't all that unlikely. Her hair is barely combed and dark rings line her eyes. Still there's old compassion lurking in that face.
         "No . . ." Jina answers, surprised to hear how her voice has deteriorated, a ramshackle shell masquerading as her. Taking a moment to quietly cough in an attempt to clear her throat, she continues with a wan smile. "No, you didn't."
         "That's good," the woman responds, shuffling further into the room. She picks a seat on the other side of the room, nearly underneath the television, which is now showing what appears to be a pledge drive. Jina is somewhat amused that she can get a sweatshirt for only a thirty dollar pledge. The thought reminds her of how cold she is and her pencil thin smile fades. Rubbing her bare arms, she tries to curl deeper into herself without contorting herself on the chair.
         "Awful hour of the morning," the woman mutters, settling herself into a chair with only a small grunt, nearly dropping the last inch or so. Jina notices without wanting to that the woman is slightly overweight. "Don't know how anyone can go and get sick now, you'd think they'd be too tired."
         Jina only smiles politely, returning her gaze to the door.
         "I guess I shouldn't complain though," she continues, either trying to make conversation or indulging in her own way of coping with whatever incident brought her here, "since Harold isn't really sick."
         Glancing at the woman even briefly might be taken as encouragement for her to keep talking but Jina finds that she doesn't really mind anyway. Hearing another voice other than the ceaseless echoing of her own guilt ridden complexes is a welcome diversion after spending the last hour trying to hold her face underneath an ocean of misery.
         "He fell," the woman clarifies, laughing a little, clapping both hands to her bony knees as she does so. "Can you believe that? Got up to go to the bathroom and he got dizzy and he fell over and hurt his arm." Shaking her head and glancing down at the ground, she states, "So now here I am, waiting for the doctor to tell us that he's going to live so we can go home." She leans back in the chair, sticking her legs out, crossing them at the ankle. "He wasn't even going to go, but I said, let's go. You can't be too careful. Not these days and certainly not at our age." Rubbing her hip a little, the woman smiles at Jina and says, "Don't get old, dearie. Most days it's hell."
         Jina does allow herself to laugh a little, but the sound is forced to her own ears. She looks at the woman and only sees Brown and Tristian arguing, their arms gesturing, mouths gaping silently, goldfish brains in human bodies, in a bowl as big as the world.
         "If it's all the same to you," Jina replies, bracing her head on her hand while resting her elbow on her knee, "I'd like to try it anyway."
         The woman chuckles, her eyes closing briefly. "By all means, dear," she tells Jina, "be my guest. But if you can find a way to get to my age without getting old, well you just go right ahead. The old fashioned way just ain't worth it some days."
         "I'll keep that in mind," Jina says, inadvertently sighing a little, as if expelling rotten air. She hopes it's not too obvious. Her eyes keep sweeping back toward the door, faster if someone passes by. She'd rather this woman kept talking, letting Jina just listen to her voice. It would help ground her. Another sane human being is just what she needs right now. Something to take her mind off of all this without getting her out of the hospital.
         "Are you okay?" the woman asks her suddenly and Jina inwardly realizes she isn't going to be playing along. Only half kidding she mentally damns the woman for caring.
         "I . . . I'm alright I guess," Jina replies, wanting to spit at her lack of conviction. But then she's lying something fierce, since she's very far from okay. Okay might as well be the next galaxy over for all it means to her. Her whole world feels compressed, the magnetic poles are switched and she can't get her bearings. Can't see the sky and the compass is useless. All the old guideposts aren't good anymore, there's nothing you can trust. Just your instincts and even those are suspect.
         "If you say so," the woman answers guardedly, slowly. "I was just wondering, because, if you don't mind my saying so, you don't seem the type that'd be waiting around the hospital because her husband can't figure out how to walk in a straight line in the dark." She pauses for a moment, her eyes seeming to bore into Jina's, who's trying very hard not to meet her gaze. Like her eyes are small needles ready to puncture the thin skin of her head and let all the dirty water pressing against her brain spill out all over the floor. All over her good shoes. "If you know what I mean."
         She doesn't have to say anything. Jina can just keep quiet and let that be the silent answer. All the answer this woman needs. Mind your own damn business. That's just what her silence would say. Keep to yourself and don't bother me. Silence is a many bladed sword sometimes. Slashing or piercing, just pick your poison, sir. Jina doesn't have to tell her a damn thing. All she has to do is continue to keep quiet.
         But she's so alone.
         And all she wants is someone to talk to.
         "It's my friend," Jina hears herself saying, a hand ramming the needle into the record, starting the playback before she's even finished recording. "We were at a party and she got hurt." There an analog hiss to her voice, a bad relay, all the snap and crackle that comes out over the headphones. Keeping it authentic. That's Jina.
         Saying it like that, even in her deadened scream of a voice, brings a new puncture to her chest, the needle slipping, scratching a ragged line, and she has to resist placing her hand there, as if blocking some invisible force. It's all in her head. Just keeping telling yourself that. All in your head.
         The revelation elicits a mild gasp from the woman, a combination of surprise and sustained empathy, the kind that arises between two strangers sitting in a hospital waiting room. If there's a link, you can care. Jina finds herself warmed just a little by the muted intake of breath. It's a reaction. It's something.
         "Oh . . ." is all the woman says after a second. "Is she all right?" her quiet voice asks next, though Jina's face probably has told the entire story for her. Jina isn't just passing time, she's stopping time in her own head, dragging her life to a halt for a friend.
         Yes and no vie for domination in Jina's head and the silent battle renders her speechless for a few moments. Her eyes meet the woman's but no sound is coming out. She can't make her tongue act. Paralyzed, she blinks lazily, her mind fogged with the war raging there, finally clearing all the clouds away with a shuddering deep breath and the only words that can actually say are honest.
         "I don't know," Jina mutters softly, clasping and unclasping her hands like she's trying to determine if she's still real. Still there. Because nothing else feels solid. Not the chair under her ass, not the wall at her back, not the goddamn people strutting on the television, blissfully oblivious of their audience. "I don't know," she says again, reaffirming the loaded statement. Once is hearsay, twice is common sense. Three times is truth. Her mother used to tell her that. Jina always thought it was stupid and yet now she can't bring herself to say those three words again. Because maybe then she'll never know. Words change the world, action never accomplished a damn thing, it's the anger screamed to the world right before the bullet hits, the snarled curse, the coldly worded statement of purpose. We don't need magic, we don't need wands and charms to ward off evil spirits and send the laws of physics running to our beck and call, all we need are simple words. They call it magic so you think it's something special, so you think that you can't do it because you're only a regular person, that there's no magic in your life. But don't believe it. Because then they've won the pot already. Because there's no magic in their lives either, but they know the game and how it's played. In gritty midnight auditoriums where people gather to howl demands to the world, in locked basements with soundproofed walls, in all the playgrounds scuffed by cheap sneakers and cheaper dreams, that's where they pull out the board and roll the dice.
         Some days you can hear it clatter.
         Listen.
         So go ahead.
         Say it again.
         Jina.
         "I don't even know where she is," Jina is saying, her words muffled by her hand partially covering her face, as if trying to hold the phrases inside. But you can't. Words have mass, exert pressure. In high gravity you can't stop talking because you have to let it all out, otherwise it sinks down into your ankles and you swell up and explode and die. She's sure Tristian told her that one time. But maybe he was joking. But he doesn't joke. He never does. Brown would have joked about it but he's too busy lying, lies and jokes spewing into his atmosphere, a screen for the truth. That's what we do. We cover it up because we don't want people to stare too closely. We're afraid of what they might see.
         Jina always thought she had nothing to hide. But apparently that wasn't the problem. It was everyone else the whole time.
         "What do you mean?" the woman asks her, confusing peppering her voice. Eyes scan her face like ultraviolet searchlights. "Isn't she in the hospital?"
         "She is," Jina confirms, with more confidence than is really evident. "I just don't know where . . ." her voice seems to crunch up for a second as the weights hanging over her drop just another inch closer, the shadow growing wider, causing her to shiver as it chases away the heat. "They won't tell me," Jina continues, "but they said they'll come down when they know something positive." Her watch seems to itch on her wrist but she won't look at it. Time won't pass if she averts her eyes. Time is funny like that. "But I don't know when that'll be."
         "That's . . . absurd," the woman breaths after a second, old outrage swelling into her voice. "How can they do that to you? To anyone?"
         "I wish I knew," Jina murmurs, her gaze drifting back to the door, only half listening to the woman, shunted off into her own little world where it's all just congealing echoes of her own voice, sound made flesh, twisted into spectacular buildings and structures, all vying for the same spot of sky. The image chills her in its starkly alien beauty. And she's sure that Tristian told her that one. Or maybe it was Lena. Lena relating something Tristian had said once. Girlish laughter rings like crystal in her head. Lena reacting to a joke. Just a few hours ago. That long? That short? It must be close, the memory is burning her, jerking singed fingers away before the damage is done. But she can't get away. Not from anyone's lives, everyone is intertwined, connected, stretched out over the air by crosscrissed ropes. But the ones over your heart are tight, trembling with bitter energy, vibrating so fast that it's all a blur, a million wires occupying the same space. It's all pulling. Tearing. And all you can do is try not to grimace in pain. "I just wish somebody would tell me something."
         "You should complain," the woman insists, her voice a tapping finger against her shoulder, trying to prod her to action. "You really should. She's your friend and it's not right for you to have to sit here and . . . and suffer because of some useless rule . . ." she's shaking her head, absorbing Jina's latent exasperation, "damn hospitals, that's the problem. They're out of touch, people aren't people anymore, just lumps on beds that we stick needles in and attach devices to."
         Jina doesn't say anything, just runs her hands along the sides of her face, pushing back some stray locks of hair behind her ears, absentmindedly twisting her short hair into a minor ponytail before giving up and letting go, the hair spilling back over her shoulders. Her eyes, vaguely unfocused, don't ever waver from the door.
         "Not even people anymore," the woman pronounces finally, settling back in her seat. It squeaks a little as she does so, melding with the scatter spray sound of hollow applause. Jina can feel the presence of the woman out of the corner of her left eye but to her it's little more than shadowed mass, crouching on a satellite as Jupiter fills your sky. Artist's rendition of course. Nobody's ever been to Jupiter of course. Except Jina might know somebody. Hell, two people. Two more than most people know. And doesn't that just make her special. Except it doesn't at all, it doesn't change the damning fact that her friend is languishing in some room in the hospital and Jina can't do a damn thing about it.
         "Hey," the woman blurts out suddenly, "why don't you ask, you know, those people who brought your friend in. The . . . ambulance people, they might be able to help you, I'm sure they'd know what to do. Hell," and she gives a barking laugh that's too loud in the stagnant aura of the room, "those people probably have to deal with this sort of crap all the time."
         "Probably," Jina agrees with a laugh that can at best be considered half hearted, shrugging her shoulders a little. It's too cold in here. She has to get out. But her voice keeps talking, keeps confessing to the world. Like it's her with the sins. Instead she's just witness to everyone else's. And they keep pasting their guilt onto her. It's suffocating, filling her mouth, her nostrils, expanding foam. She can't breath. "But she didn't . . . my friend didn't come in with the ambulance, another friend brought her here . . ."
         "Really?" is all the woman says. A raised eyebrow sounds the same no matter who is doing the talking.
         "It was faster," Jina nearly laughs, half sobbing as she says so, visions of a parking lot momentarily lit nearly bright as day flashing into her head.
         "I guess . . ." the woman pauses, tips her head to the side, hands resting flat on her knees. "You were at the college right . . ." she asks suddenly, takes Jina's barely passable nod of the head as an answer, and continues with hardly a break, whistling a little as she does so, "that's pretty close, I mean, once someone called, you'd have emergency people there in . . . minutes. Your friend must have been flying to get here faster than they would have."
         "No . . . no, he didn't fly," Jina corrects distantly, wondering what Lena might be going through right now, if anything. All the stories in all the magazines about being drugged are coming back to her, lining up in her head with their little paper pamphlets and reading them off to her while she's tied down into a chair, jaggedly shaking her head back and forth, trying not to listen.
         Memory gone
         It ticks off like a checklist of the crippled.
         she'll never wake up
         In her head she can see Tristian silhouetted against the window. Tristian and someone else with a profile very much like his.
         personality churned to so much clutter
         And Brown is talking to her as she's trying to back away from the man she thought she knew when the entire parking lot starts to
         cry herself to sleep for years
         melt
         therapy might work
         melting
         she won't be the same
         the air is
         she won't even be the same
         around her the air is melting
         And then she's hugging herself, trying to curl into a ball on the chair and failing because she just doesn't have the strength anymore, it's just not there, her breath is coming in waves, rippling along her entire body, tiring her out before she can even rest enough for the next volley. She's not getting a break, life is throwing arrows at her too fast and now she's pinned to the wall, blood running down her wrists, down her legs, pooling at her feet and all she can do is stare at the giant flint aimed right for her head. Getting closer by the second.
         "I'm so scared," a voice that sounds too much like hers hovers in the air, torn from clenched lips, flapping in a dead breeze, tattered and frayed. It hurts. Oh God, it hurts too much to breath.
         A chair scrapes. Footsteps plod near. A fleshy hand gently brushes her shoulder.
         "Easy," a voice advises above her. "Just take it easy, it's going to be okay . . . all right? Don't get all worked up, you're not doing yourself any good . . ."
         Like just saying it makes all the goddamn difference. Like Jina is going to stop seizing, blink oddly and look up at the woman before smiling broadly and admitting that she was right. That never happens. Only in the flashbulb fakery of television where you have to finish everything before the last commercial, put all your emotions safely in a box and get all the debris off the stage so the next crew can come in and convince you that their problems mean something. In the real world there's no deadline, the horizon keeps bending into forever and life can stretch out your misery indefinitely, pulling you until you fill the sky, spread membrane thin over the landscape. Invisibly everywhere. And as the years go on nobody even notices the pain anymore, they just accept it. They accept it as part of you. Until you either finish it yourself or the world finishes you off.
         But we never tie up all the loose ends. There are always dangling plotlines for the next generation. And if you didn't hang yourself on them, they most certainly will. Every mistake has to be made at least once.
         "That's the problem," Jina somehow manages to gasp out, her words waving feebly from underneath the smothering pillow, "I'm not doing . . . not doing anyone any . . . good . . ." she presses the heels of her hand into her eyes, trying to block it all out, trying to squeeze memory out of her head, send it out into the air, let it torment someone else. But there's a gash riven by the world in her head and everything is spilling out. Oil spreading over the ocean. "Nothing I could do, there's nothing . . ."
         "Take it easy, dear, you're going to make yourself sick . . ."
         "She was drugged," Jina announces hoarsely, nearly spitting the words out, lashing the air with them as if that might erase the cause, erase the pain. "The bastard drugged her and . . . I couldn't help her, I couldn't do anything and now I can't even, I can't even be here for her . . ."
         The weight on her shoulder is suddenly lifted. "Oh my God," someone whispers. "Who . . ."
         Jina looks up to see the woman skewed through grainy vision, her face fluttering with mixed expressions of shock and surprise, the colors in the air running down like bleeding wounds, making her head hurt. Her eyes ache again. But she's not crying. She can't cry anymore. It's all gone.
         "Did they . . . oh God, did they get who did-"
         "We got him," Jina says softly, her nails biting into her palm. She likes to think the pain helps her focus. The world starts to fill with sand, proving otherwise. "The same friend, the one who . . . who got her here, he had another friend and . . ." her voice wavers, and Jina thinks she can smell smoke again. It was all so real. For a dream it was all so real. This must all be a dream. Just a cracked nightmare. "Oh God, he . . . it, right through the door, the door . . ."
         "Honey, you're not making any sense, you've got to calm down-"
         "He blasted him through the door!" Jina nearly screams, sitting up straighter in the chair, sending the woman staggering back a step, gale words swirling around the room. The moment of strength is only just that and Jina finds herself slumped over the chair again, trying to stop her hands from shaking. "That's what they do," she murmurs almost sadly. "Come in and think they're righting wrongs but they're just making our lives worse. I . . . talked to it, right over his . . . right over his body and it didn't even care, like it was all some sick joke that I couldn't get . . . right over my head . . ." Jina finishes forlornly, her hands clasped loosely between her knees, head bowed. Like prayer. But she's never really been convinced there was a God. At least now it seems she has someone she can ask. Take small comfort in that.
         "You want me to get a doctor, is that it . . . because you don't look so good . . . it's been a rough night for you . . . you're obviously not thinking clearly . . ."
         "They have no idea how Lena got here," Jina laughs mirthlessly, drowning in her own irony, bracing her head with both hands, pushing her hair back, stretching her face bizarrely. The world curves into a fishbowl. "That's the whole problem, he just, what the hell is the word, what the hell is . . . teleported her here, into a room and now they've got this sick girl that they can't figure out how she got there."
         Closing her eyes, she starts to sniff, a hiccuping sort of breathing that makes her wince in pain with each breath. "And now I can't help her. And I don't know where my friends are, or if I can even trust them and . . . oh God, you don't understand," hot tears are stinging the bottoms of her eyes, last resort reservoirs finally being opened, just when she had convinced herself there was nothing left, "I don't know . . . I don't even know what to think anymore, it's just that nothing, nobody makes . . . nobody makes any sense . . ."
         As her voice fades from the air it fails to mask the shuffling of retreating footsteps, growing faster as if through heated momentum. A shadow detaches itself from the room, mass ejecting from the pod.
         ". . . and I don't want to be all alone like this . . . please don't . . ."
         Her words are fragmented by a humming silence.
         The television is laughing again at stale jokes.
         Her body trembling like a tree caught in the rain, Jina finds herself crying again, almost forcing it out of her body, tensing and then relaxing in alternating patterns, gasping as she does so, not even gathering her thoughts together, she can't, there's bottled lightning in her head, scattering the pitiful reflections even before she can begin to put them together, a jigsaw tumbling helplessly through dead air.
         A tap cracks softly upon the doorframe.
         Fanfare erupts as the television ends its broadcasting day with a long shot of the local skyline backlit by the rising sun.
         "You want to talk to someone who understands?"
         Jina looks up sharply at the voice, sees the watery outline of a slim man standing in the doorway, a hand leaning on one side, his other hand apparently in his pocket.
         Blinking, once, twice, she clears the liquid from her eyes, resolving her vision, bringing it all once again into focus.
         "What are you doing here?" Jina murmurs, hardly even hearing herself, her hands gently and numbly settling into her lap, heedless of the stains and streaks of saltwater running down her face, her flushed skin, her reddened eyes.
         "What can I say," Brown quips, the edges of his lips curling into a faint smile, but his eyes deadly serious, "call me crazy, but I care."
         Jina slowly looks up at him, her hands kneading the fabric of her dress. Quickly she glances down at her hands and then back up at Brown, as if he might be some kind of weird vision torn from her fractured guilt.
         He only stands there, as if waiting for her to say something.
         She has to wet her cracked lips, as if stalling for a time that won't come, before she can even hope to get the words piling against the roof of her mouth out.
         But even coiled as they are, it takes everything she has to propel those words outward.
         "Get out of here," is what she says and her words have never sounded quite so clear and distinct to her own ears as they do in that moment.