757. Hope and despair, 5
(Temee)
The road toward Xoiba is tiring. I keep my good health, and my small burns are gone. The ones of Glasgow however heal poorly.
The stains of acids have spread, but her skin grows back. She will heal I think, much to my relief...
I expected she is like me now, but I still felt uneasy.
The poison that reached her has spread, but it weakens slowly. I sigh my relief at last.
I see very well that Glasgow is in pain and uneasy. So I regularly take a break to clean her and calm her down, in a variety of ways. At night I put her necklace onto her tummy to appease her. It works well.
We leave the great valley where the megalopolis was swallowed back by nature years ago. We climb up our ways into the mountains, toward the nearby region. And after another day, the mountain pass of collapsed roads is behind us as well.
We’re reaching the domain of Xoiba.
~
A river flows down from upper peaks and falls. Very far from us but visible, a dam oversees the area, by a few hundred metres.
Behind a hill and a good distance away from this landmark, the city gleams in the night. They have electricity all year long. This makes it an important region.
I don’t know if this help or deserves the surrounding counties that are depopulating.
This city has a good hospital. It’s obvious...
Me, I’ll be fine. Glasgow... It’ll be ok. But I realise her immunity isn’t like mine. I must be more careful with her against the poisons.
At least I won’t have to take the risk of going to the hospital to find medicine this time.
The road toward the city is peaceful. I make myself discreet and enter it, after noticing there is no nervous guard along the perimeter.
The local lord must have heard about me, as a unique chance of survival to subdue, or of a murderer to kill. But he probably didn’t estimate I would arrive any time soon. Anyway, I’m not planning to go ask him about it.
The small city has good activity and even some cars circulating on occasions, overloaded with merchandises.
I can have a stroll around.
Young people born before me live around there, generally smaller in height than me. Next to them I don’t look that young, and thus not that strange. I smile stupidly at this satisfaction.
I take advantage of it even. I chat a little with them.
The travellers, women moreover, remain rare. I’m rather well welcomed and the young people, although older than me, treat me with a lot of respect. They help me visit the surrounding and even give me some food.
My face without the sunglasses spooks them, so I wear them again even if the night has settled in town.
One of them suddenly remembers something and invites me to follow him to the hospital.
- We have a celebrity to have you meet Hoatra!
Someone famous? A surprise? Why in the hospital?
The surprise blocks my thoughts and I let myself getting carried away.
~
The hospital looks deserted. But it’s on the ground floor, turned into a luxurious apartment, that lives their important person.
It’s not their lord.
A married man living there accepts to invite me to this meeting.
The doors are opened to a warm living room, and a medical bed standing there where rests a pregnant woman...
My heart is squeezed. A future mother.
She is aware and smiling to me, but she’s already looking weak and pale like a European.
I have emotions shoving each other in my throat as I’m looking at her, stepping closer.
I shake the hand she’s offering me and I start crying.
Mom...
~
Mom was a little surprised at first but still consoled me. She isn’t much older than me, but still understand my sorrow as an orphan.
A big machine next to her permanently does to her what she calls a dialysis. It cleans her blood that quickly becomes dirty nowadays, as she and her husband explain to me.
I very much want to discuss with them, even if I won’t dare speak of everything.
She is at six months and a half. Almost at my mother’s time.
It’s a competition against death. She, Mom, believes in her success. Her husband as well. I would never dare trying that. But her courage and her destiny make me shiver.
The husband is a doctor. Him and others are looking after her.
I didn’t notice on that evening her bluish necklace.
~
The next morning, I woke up in a room of an abandoned floor of the hospital. It’s where I settled.
It’s raining a lot outside. I’ll probably wait another day before I leave.
I go down to see Mom and have lunch with her. We chat. She looks at my face with a smile. I blush, shy, avoiding her gaze. And then I notice her necklace. A crystal of Uranite.
T - That necklace... That stone...
- That? My husband found it on an angel, and gave it to me. It keeps me in good health he said.
A cold shiver ran along my back, small step after small step. No. The colour isn’t exactly the same.
Mine was unearthed by fire. Him, it’s just a pretty story.
Right?
I meet the husband alone at his desk in his study. He reminds me of Conrad... I ask him.
- Oh. You saw one too. No, it’s more subtle than that. What? Uranite?
He laughs gently at it.
- No, not at all. Come, I’ll show you.
We go through other parts of the hospital and downstairs, to the morgue in the basement.
He asks me if I wouldn’t be scared seeing a dead person.
T - Scared, no... Sad, yes...
The drawer he opens is still refrigerated.
He opens the body bag. A piece of cadaver is lying in there exploded and jagged.
He points at something inside of it. I notice some sparkling fragments incrusted into the flesh.
I’m not sure what I’m looking at.
- I analysed the tissues of that body, and what remained of its blood when it was found. It’s very weak.
T - I don’t understand.
- This is a biotechnology. A little like an artificial organ. This machine that looks like a crystal, it’s like a concentrated stock of nourishment, vitamins, medicines and energy, created artificially.
T - But... By whom?
He shrugs it.
There was only one civilisation with such an advanced level of technology that made miracles such as this become possible.
On the other side of the world, there had been a nation, very hostile, but so incredibly rich.
For me, it’s akin to mythology of Antiquity.
But sometimes, we might believe that little things from their home could reach us?
I was so confused. The implications and possibilities lost me.
T - Mom will survive thanks to that? It’s... A remedy?
- Hm... I hope so...
In his light smile, I saw my father. His optimism was still alive and there.
But this stone is in truth a machine? A medical machine... I couldn’t quite believe it.
Him, he was testing his faith. And he attempted with his spouse the unthinkable.
~
I decided to stay for a few more days after that.
While avoiding carefully to encounter the lord or the communication engineers.
I wanted to learn more.
I wanted to learn as much as I could before having to run again.
And then... It warmed my heart to discuss a little with Dad and Mom...
But the health of Mom continued deteriorating. The unavoidable end was being drawn.
Dad and his colleagues were doing all they could.
I ended up suggesting in a whisper a blood donation.
They listened. Soon after, they even ended up trying.
Mom soon wouldn’t wake up anymore.
Volunteers were giving their blood at another place.
Dad ended up incising the thorax of his spouse, without even giving her anaesthetics. She wasn’t responsive to pain nor anything else any longer. She was falling along the ladder.
It was for a desperate last move, to make her organism more directly in contact with the odd medical machine he had found. He took the crystal away from her necklace and inserted inside the opening, near her heart.
It had some effect, her heartbeat increased soon after.
Dad was sweating and sobbing. It was the day or hour of truth.
I was also moved in all sorts of ways, and as teary if not more than him.
Hang in there... You and the baby...
Hold on...
The brain activity was gradually dimming. The cardiac rhythm was going haywire.
The body of the woman was reacting either to the crystal, or to a sudden drop of her condition.
Her veins under her skin began to change colour and expand visibly.
She was dying, like every other.
Her blood became thick as plaster, and all went faster once the heart had burst.
I heard the final clack, just before the apparatus on the side would show it on the screen.
It was over. Her skin was now deformed by all the blood vessels now swollen and coloured.
Nothing had worked...
The shocked husband called with a weak voice his colleague to help him evaluate the health of the foetus.
They attempted an echography, but couldn’t see a thing.
The full tummy of the woman then broke its waters and emptied itself entirely before their eyes, but no foetus remained there.
Some darker stains and fluids were spreading along the ground, like animated shadows, without body to accompany them above.
We gazed at that, petrified.
~
