It’s a horror beyond imagining.
Not even in my nightmares.
When Rusty doesn’t respond to my words, I wedge myself between the wall and his bed, settle my sketchpad over my knees, and work on Patient F. The nightmares I’ve been hoarding flow out through my fingers and flood the blank pages. I lose myself in the story of Patient F and his revenge, and of the Scythe’s wicked games. It’s all out of order but, if you think about it, life’s like that sometimes. Even though the man Stanley North and his perfect family are in the past, he has to earn them in the future. Killing the men on his list isn’t really revenge, it’s just the price Patient F pays for bygone happiness.
The nurse checks on Rusty, and I curl into a ball and hide. Under the bed, I see that she’s got thin ankles, and she taps her toes to music only she hears while she fusses with Rusty’s IV.
After a minute or two, she leaves, and Rusty says, “I know you’re there.” He whispers so softly that I’m not sure if it’s my imagination playing tricks on me. “Hey,” he says, a little louder this time.
“I’m here,” I say, so that he doesn’t raise his voice again. The nurse’s station isn’t that far away. “I’m Andrew. Or Andy or Drew. Whatever.”
“Rusty.” It costs him to speak, to say his name, but he sounds better than Trevor. When Trevor talks, it requires all his strength, and even then I’m not always sure it’ll be enough. Rusty just sounds weary, burdened by memories.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” Maybe it’s not the right thing to say, but it’s honest, and I think that he deserves as much honesty as I can give him. “You look like you could use a friend.”
“Friends let this happen to me,” Rusty says.
I look up, and he’s looking down. But not at me, at his right arm and his chest and his legs. He doesn’t see the bandages, only the burns. If Patient F is unstuck in time, Rusty McHale is stuck in one moment.
I try to give him my friendliest smile. “I wanted to be a firefighter . . . once.”
“Lucky me.”
I sit silently beside Rusty’s bed, thinking of something to say that won’t sound cliché. By now, I’m sure he’s heard everything: how he’ll be all right, and that everything happens for a reason. Those sorts of sentiments are bullshit. Even the people who say them don’t believe them. Not really. They want to believe, but there are too many villains in the world and not enough heroes for anyone to truly buy into the scam that is hope.
“You know why this happened to me?” Rusty asks. His question is a challenge. I look at him, and this time he is looking at me, craning his neck so that he can see my face. I scoot back so that he doesn’t have to work so hard.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“You think I’m some kind of pervert?”
“No,” I say.
Rusty looks away, rests his head upon his pillow.
“Not everyone is that closed-minded,” I tell him.
Rusty chuffs. “Yeah, right.”
“No one’s ever set me on fire,” I say. It’s direct and maybe a little cruel, but Rusty needs an anchor.
“Get out,” Rusty says.
I reach up and take Rusty’s hand. He pulls away, and my sweaty fingers slip through his. “Just because some ignorant assholes hated you enough to do this doesn’t mean that everyone will.” I stretch my arm up farther and grab Rusty’s hand again. This time, he doesn’t let go. He squeezes my hand tightly—so tightly, it hurts.
“You got anything to read?”
The sudden change of subject surprises me, but I’m grateful. “No,” I say, shaking my head to refocus. “But I’ve got this comic I’m working on. I could tell you about Patient F.”
“Yeah,” Rusty says. “Okay.”
Throughout the night, I tell Rusty every story I’ve ever written about Patient F: how he was born; his life before, when he was a man in a suit; and the experiments performed on him by the men in red lab coats, the ones who turned the man in the boring suit into Patient F. I tell Rusty about the names on his list, and the people he saves, and about the Scythe, who hunts Patient F through the streets of Maligant City.
At some point, Rusty falls asleep—I don’t know when—and I realize that I’m talking to myself.
“I killed my parents, you know.”
I’ve never spoken the words out loud. They sound bare, hollowed out. They deserve better than to be whispered in a dark room to a sleeping boy. “I told you they died here in the hospital, but I left out that it was me who killed them. This was the last place they were alive, and now they’ll never leave. And neither will I. I don’t deserve to. There are people looking for me—at least, they were looking for me—but they’ll never find me. Anyway, I’m pretty sure they’ve given up.”
I don’t know what I want. Absolution? From Rusty? I barely know the guy. And I don’t think he’s in a forgiving mood right now anyway.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” I say.
There are no nurses at the station when I peek around the corner. They’re either on rounds or fetching supplies or doing another of the hundred things they accomplish at night while their patients sleep, lost in the snores of the machines. I scurry for the exit, anxious to escape before any of the nurses return.
“I heard you in there,” says a familiar voice.
I freeze at the double doors. My instincts urge me on, but I ignore them and turn around. Steven is standing a couple of feet away with his arms crossed over his chest. “Oh, yeah?”
“You’re not supposed to be here. The ER is one thing, but this place . . . if you get caught . . .” There’s something different about Steven, and I don’t mean the blue scrubs he’s wearing instead of his usual fuchsia ones. He’s quieter, smaller. He moves delicately, as if the floor is fragile ice that we’re all in danger of plunging through.
“He needs friends.”
Steven doesn’t argue—how can he? Knowing he’s not alone is as important to Rusty’s survival as the antibiotics they pump into him. Steven drops his arms, his shoulders. He’s defeated. “You’ve got to be more careful.”
“I’ll try,” I say.
“You’ll have to do better than try.”
I look toward Rusty’s room, remembering the way he squeezed my hand. “I won’t let anyone hurt him.”
Steven nods silently and creeps back to the nurse’s station as if I’m not here. I can only guess at Steven’s motives for not ratting me out, but I think it has everything to do with Rusty. Maybe he needs Rusty to live as badly as I do. Maybe for very different reasons. Or maybe he knows that just living isn’t enough and he thinks I’m the person who can give Rusty something worth living for.
Finding something to live for is hard enough for me. I’m not sure how I’ll do it for another person. But I damn well have to try.
I hate chocolate.
Beginning just before Thanksgiving and continuing through the holidays, my mom made sweets nonstop. Fudge, coconut balls, buckeyes, truffles, cookies. She’d sit on this little pink-painted stool in front of the stove and stir chocolate, humming songs that I can’t remember. Back then, I thought they were annoying. Now I’d give anything to hear them.
For weeks, the sickening smell of chocolate permeated the house. It was like this suffocating blanket that you couldn’t find your way out from under. By the time Christmas rolled around, you could’ve withheld all my presents and I still wouldn’t have eaten any of it.
Whenever I smell chocolate now, I’m sucked back to those days. The days when my mom sat on that stool, stirring a batch of chocolate with her wooden spoon—the one with the charred end—and humming. It’s the only way I get to see her now.
Sometimes, memories are all that keep me going, and I can’t help wondering what keeps Rusty going. What he holds on to. I’m afraid if I don’t find out, I’ll lose him forever.
“Try some fudge.” Arnold shoves a piece of dark brown,
crumby fudge at my mouth like he’s going to force-feed it to me if I don’t say yes. Walnuts rise out of the sickly sweet bar like surfacing submarines.
“Pass.” I hand a woman her credit card along with the receipt and a polite “thank you.” She hardly notices me.
Arnold offers the fudge to my one and only customer. “Fudge?” he says. “It’s on the house.”
The woman doesn’t acknowledge Arnold either. She’s Rusty’s mother, and she comes into the cafeteria every day at 4:35 for dinner, fills a tray, sits at a table for an hour, and then throws the food away without taking a bite. I’m not entirely sure she’s even aware of her surroundings. Each day, she’s older and farther gone. Occasionally, Rusty’s friend Nina or Rusty’s father joins her; usually she’s alone. Her boy, that’s what she clings to, and I get the feeling that if Rusty died, his mother wouldn’t outlive him long.
“I need a new book, Arnold.” We’re in that peculiar time between lunch and dinner. The cafeteria is mostly empty, but the competing smells of fresh dinner foods wage war in the air.
“I gave you one on Tuesday.” Arnold pops the fudge into his mouth and grimaces. “Yum.” He spits it out into a napkin, wadding the whole mess up and tossing it in the trash. “Too much . . . something.”
“That was Tuesday. This is Saturday. I need a new book.”
“You finished 1984?” I nod. “And?”
“It was a book,” I say. “A long and boring book.” In fact, the only thing I actually enjoyed about it was the person I read it with. But I keep that to myself.
“Boring? You thought 1984 was boring?”
“Didn’t you?” I busy myself checking the hot trays even though they’re full of food and ready for the dinner crowd. The truth is that I can’t stop thinking about Rusty. Reading to him the last few days has been the highlight of everything.
Arnold looks like I just turned on the gas oven and tossed in a match. He’s so shocked, he can barely speak in full sentences.
“But 1984 . . . it’s a classic.”
“Which is just a fancy way of saying ‘boring.’ ” I lean against the counter. “What’s the big deal, anyway?” I’m not sure why Arnold’s getting his tighty whities in a twist. It’s a book. I read it because Rusty asked me to, and I did so happily. The longer I read, the more content he looked. Each sentence more powerful than morphine. I dreaded the last page more than Death.
“When my son, John, read it,” Arnold says, “we talked about it for days. We even started speaking in Newspeak until Mrs. Jaworski threatened to make us cook our own meals if we didn’t find a new book.”
“Good thing I’m not your son.”
Arnold’s eyes go flat. I screwed up. It was a joke, and not even a good one, but the emotion drains from his face—his passion for books, for being here and talking, all gone. The man standing before me is polished steel, and that’s my fault. Only, I don’t know why.
But Arnold will be back to his old self soon enough. It’s not the first time I’ve pissed him off, and I’m guessing it won’t be the last.
The dinner crowd hits full force, and neither of us has a second to spare for anger. I dish out food and ring up customers, while Arnold charms his hungry patrons, sharing his smiles with them but not with me.
After the rush dies, Arnold hands me my cash for the day and tells me to get lost. A few slow-eating stragglers remain, but Mrs. McHale is gone. I haven’t seen Death either, and that worries me. She could be with Rusty right now, but he was doing so well last time I saw him that I doubt it. Besides, I’m hungry and won’t be any good to Rusty if I pass out.
I grab some food and sit at a table in the corner, studying my most recent Patient F panels. In some ways, Patient F and Rusty are so alike, but at least Patient F has his revenge to keep him focused on living. I’m not sure what Rusty has, if he has anything at all. I know that his parents love him, and that his best friend, Nina, would do anything for him, but hopelessness infects him like an insatiable virus that devours all the good in his life, excreting fear. Fear of living, fear of dying, fear that he’s going to disappoint the people who love him, and even fear that their love is not enough. I see it, I recognize it. I draw that same hopelessness in Patient F’s eyes.
Father Mike strolls into the cafeteria, and I slouch, hoping he won’t see me. But he waves right away. I sigh as he grabs dinner and heads toward my table. “Hi, Andy.”
“Father Mike.” I keep my words clipped and try to send out major go away vibes, which obviously don’t work since Father Mike flounces down into the seat beside me and digs into his steamy potpie. All I want to do is finish eating so that I can visit Rusty, not spend my evening listening to Father Mike babble.
“How have you been?” I don’t know why Father Mike is asking, so I’m unsure how to reply. The way he shovels food into his mouth makes me think he’s genuinely curious. Or hungry. But I can’t forget that he’s friends with my nemesis: Death.
“Okay, I guess.” I try to cover my drawings with my arms, but Father Mike has already seen the sketchpad. He watches me while chewing a mouthful of potpie, wearing a goofy expression like he’s been huffing incense. He makes a grab for my sketchpad, his fingers harboring little bits of mushy peas and carrots on them—and I slide it off the table into my lap.
“Just curious to see if you’ve come up with anything new. I’m a bit of a comic-book junkie.”
“Seriously? You?” I stifle a laugh, but the truth is that the thought of him holed up in his chapel reading comics doesn’t surprise me.
Father Mike smiles and breathes out a long sigh, clearing decades of dust from his lungs. He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes for a moment, summoning the memory. “I used to have a huge collection. Golden-Age stuff. Superman, Batman, Sub-Mariner, Human Torch. Nowadays, I read more modern books. Kick-Ass and Fables and The Walking Dead, but I miss the old stuff.”
While I can’t deny that I’m intrigued by the idea of this short, round, balding priest who’s into comic books, Rusty is waiting for me to bring him a new story to read. Steven told me that every time the ICU doors open, Rusty looks to see if it’s me. That’s a weight I’m not sure I’m able to carry. I’d love nothing more than to spend the rest of my life reading to Rusty, but it’s not enough. Eventually, he’ll get bored and slip away from me.
Then again, Father Mike might have an idea how to keep Rusty anchored. A priest must know everything about life and death. Or more than me, anyway.
“What happens to people who kill themselves?” I ask. He was right in the middle of a story I wasn’t paying attention to, and the question pulls him up short.
“Come again?”
“Suicides. What happens to them?”
Father Mike scrubs his face with his hand and pushes his tray to the center of the table. Clearly, this was not the direction he expected our conversation to take. “Suicide is serious. Taking your own life is considered a mortal sin.”
I shake my head, worried that he thinks we’re talking about me. “What if you don’t kill yourself?” I say. “What if you just stop wanting to live?”
“I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”
“Isn’t it? I mean, if something really bad happened to you and you stop trying to live, isn’t that the same?”
Worry lines crease the corners of Father Mike’s eyes. “Maybe, but I have to admit that I’m a little confused here, Andy.”
There’s no easy way to explain this without talking about Rusty, but Rusty’s secrets aren’t mine to tell. Anyway, I enjoy having him to myself. So I say, “Just . . . how can I find a way to make someone want to live who maybe feels there’s nothing worth living for? Like Patient F.” I put my sketchpad back on the table and slide it to him.
Relief floods his face now that he thinks we’re talking about Patient F. The hypothetical discussion about suicide wasn’t about me, but about a character in my book.
He wanders through the pages for a moment. If the drawings are too grap
hic for him, it doesn’t show on his face. Not that it’s any worse than flesh-devouring zombies, but still, he’s a priest and I’m not sure how much exposure he’s had to the real world.
“Your Patient F reminds me of the way they draw Batman now,” Father Mike says. He closes the sketchpad and puts it on the table between us. “All anger and rage and revenge. He saves Gotham from the monsters but destroys it in the process. That bothered me in the movie, you know? Sure, he stops the Joker, but at what cost? Life is about more than hate. It takes more than anger to make a hero.”
“What does make a hero, then?”
“Love.”
“Oh, come on.” At first I think he’s messing with me, but when he just gives me this you heard what I said look, I know he’s totally serious. “Superheroes are supposed to be badass, Father Mike, not all lovey-dovey.”
Father Mike rolls his eyes. “You don’t listen well, do you?”
I can’t help laughing a little. “You sound like my dad.”
“I’d like to meet him sometime.”
I ignore the comment and say, “We were talking about superheroes.”
Father Mike pauses, serious, like maybe he’s going to press me about my father, but he doesn’t. “In order for a hero to be a true hero, he’s got to have something worth living for. He’s got to love something.”
This isn’t helping. Part of me wishes I’d never brought it up. I know he thinks we’re talking about Patient F, but telling me that he’s got to have something to live for in order to have something to live for is like telling me water is wet because it’s water.
“In the movies, Batman cuts himself off from the people who care about him and from his own feelings, and, in my opinion, he becomes worse than the bad guys. Patient F is in danger of heading down the same path.”