LJ Idol Exhibit B: Week 1: Intersections. I'm writing with mezzogiorno
He was still warm. Clara sat still, so still, holding his hand. The machines were quiet beside her, their presence unwelcome and somehow still intrusive, the slow flicker of an orange stand-by light as garish in the corner of her eye as a police-car's lights. His skin felt... ordinary. Everyday. She wasn't sure what she had expected, before she'd taken his hand, but nothing about his body had changed. There was the scar on his thumb, right where hers rested against it. It had killed him, and it was so small.
The man at the door was being kind. They didn't have to let her have this time with him, not with a hundred reporters downstairs, hungry to feed on the death of a monster. Not with the police presence in the building, as obvious in their bullet-proof vests as fleas on a white cat. They were here for him, even if they were too late. She didn't matter.
She was still staring at the scar, at her skin against his, his gradually losing color when the man in the suit came. He stood by the door, one hand on his belt. "Mrs. Doe?" He waited a few moments, but she never looked up, so he had to go on. "Mrs. Doe, I'm afraid that's all of the time we can give you. They have to take him downstairs."
To quarantine and autopsy, she knew. But he was still warm. She rubbed her thumb across the knuckles of his hand, and finally began to feel the difference. The skin slid across the flesh in a new way, as all of the connections in his body were beginning to slowly, silently fray. "He won't be contagious. See?" She lifted their linked hands, his arm heavy and trailing its tubes and leads. "There's no hurry." He'd been past the stage of contagion by the time she'd brought him to the hospital. By the time she'd gotten him to come out of his lab, three days after the broken pipette.
"Protocol, Ma'am," he said, a world of discomfort in a word. She knew the protocols. They would take him into a sealed room where doctors in papery hazmat suits would cut him open, pull him apart and weigh the still-cooling pieces. They'd speak terse notes into recorders and take a saw to his skull and reduce him to a dozen samples in plastic bags and twice as many vials of fluid. Brain, bone, kidney, lung. Blood, bile, choler and phlegm. And then they would burn him. Probably before he was even cold, because it wasn't him they were burning, it was Clarastridium tetani, his creation, his weapon, his death. Protocol meant ashes and samples. And she knew that well.
Gently, she unfolded her hand from his, laying his on his stomach. It felt so still under the thin blanket; warm but immobile. Like an empty chair that someone has just left. And curiously hard, in a way that made her glad they had not allowed her to see him die. Selfishly glad, she thought, and then quashed it. He would not have known she was here.
Her handcuffs clinked as she stood up and she eased them, taking a long moment staring down at them to get her face under control. She walked forward, and he stepped aside, out of her way, then took her arm. Two of the four guards outside the door joined him, their guns slung on straps over their shoulders. She let them shepherd her through the hospital's cleared hallways, staring at the white and gray tiles, taking turn after turn. If she kept looking at her feet in their white prison-issue shoes, she wouldn't look back.
Their warning was a crackle on the man in the suit's radio. "The press found the exit," said a terse voice, sounding a thousand miles away. The hand on her shoulder tightened.
"We planned for that," he said, though he sounded angry. "Mrs. Doe, don't stop, don't speak to anybody, do you understand?"
She didn't say a word. But she would, soon. A lot of words. They knew their protocols. She had hers. She had his. And his protocol was for the world to learn.
[And mezzogiorno's companion piece to this can be found here, so please makes sure to read that one too.]
The man at the door was being kind. They didn't have to let her have this time with him, not with a hundred reporters downstairs, hungry to feed on the death of a monster. Not with the police presence in the building, as obvious in their bullet-proof vests as fleas on a white cat. They were here for him, even if they were too late. She didn't matter.
She was still staring at the scar, at her skin against his, his gradually losing color when the man in the suit came. He stood by the door, one hand on his belt. "Mrs. Doe?" He waited a few moments, but she never looked up, so he had to go on. "Mrs. Doe, I'm afraid that's all of the time we can give you. They have to take him downstairs."
To quarantine and autopsy, she knew. But he was still warm. She rubbed her thumb across the knuckles of his hand, and finally began to feel the difference. The skin slid across the flesh in a new way, as all of the connections in his body were beginning to slowly, silently fray. "He won't be contagious. See?" She lifted their linked hands, his arm heavy and trailing its tubes and leads. "There's no hurry." He'd been past the stage of contagion by the time she'd brought him to the hospital. By the time she'd gotten him to come out of his lab, three days after the broken pipette.
"Protocol, Ma'am," he said, a world of discomfort in a word. She knew the protocols. They would take him into a sealed room where doctors in papery hazmat suits would cut him open, pull him apart and weigh the still-cooling pieces. They'd speak terse notes into recorders and take a saw to his skull and reduce him to a dozen samples in plastic bags and twice as many vials of fluid. Brain, bone, kidney, lung. Blood, bile, choler and phlegm. And then they would burn him. Probably before he was even cold, because it wasn't him they were burning, it was Clarastridium tetani, his creation, his weapon, his death. Protocol meant ashes and samples. And she knew that well.
Gently, she unfolded her hand from his, laying his on his stomach. It felt so still under the thin blanket; warm but immobile. Like an empty chair that someone has just left. And curiously hard, in a way that made her glad they had not allowed her to see him die. Selfishly glad, she thought, and then quashed it. He would not have known she was here.
Her handcuffs clinked as she stood up and she eased them, taking a long moment staring down at them to get her face under control. She walked forward, and he stepped aside, out of her way, then took her arm. Two of the four guards outside the door joined him, their guns slung on straps over their shoulders. She let them shepherd her through the hospital's cleared hallways, staring at the white and gray tiles, taking turn after turn. If she kept looking at her feet in their white prison-issue shoes, she wouldn't look back.
Their warning was a crackle on the man in the suit's radio. "The press found the exit," said a terse voice, sounding a thousand miles away. The hand on her shoulder tightened.
"We planned for that," he said, though he sounded angry. "Mrs. Doe, don't stop, don't speak to anybody, do you understand?"
She didn't say a word. But she would, soon. A lot of words. They knew their protocols. She had hers. She had his. And his protocol was for the world to learn.
[And mezzogiorno's companion piece to this can be found here, so please makes sure to read that one too.]