Hiya, Ruby! yells the rain. It is falling on my face.
It is pouring down. Where’d that come from?
It is pouring down. I feel each drop—I swear,
EACH DROP—land on me.
I am going to die.
I AM GOING TO DIE.
“Sorry,” I say to myself, to my life…to the nurse,
who’s standing—looking utterly horrified—at the door.
But I don’t want to die! No. NO.
I’m coming back in—right, Nurse? And you’re gonna
cure me.
I don’t want to die. I do not want to die.
That nurse sees me coming, and she’d love to shut
the door, but she can’t because she’d have to reach out into the rain—but her
face—her face. The terror on it!
Too bad, lady—comin’ in… She looks down; I
look down. I see small kids coming up, clustering around her. I see the terror
on their faces and—
“Hey,” I say.
I stop where I am…right in front of them all,
getting rained on.
I’m great with kids, me.
I try to smile at them.
“Hey.”
My own stupidity pours down on my head harder than
the rain itself.
What did I think they’d be able to do for me
anyway? Cut my head off?
I feel…how I suppose Simon, my stepdad, must have
felt…how a ton of other people must have felt…like I just wanna go home. To
die. Only I will never make it home.
I’m never going to make it home.
I sit down. I do not fall to my knees. I just sit.
And it rains on me.
Hiya, Ruby! shrieks the rain.
I hear the nurse swear, calling on a God I can’t seriously believe
she believes in anymore. She pulls kids away from the door.
I am not offended. I am not emotionally
hurt in the slightest. I’m going to die. That’s all.
I get it.
Who would want to see this?
Those kids shouldn’t have to see another person die.
I stare into the face of the sky. To every side of
me, I can see scraps of blue sky, clouds that have yet to decide to become killers.
But—hey!—hello you, cloud that is raining on me.
Cumulus congestus. I get the difference between
congestus and mediocris now. Yeah, I get it.
I stumble, roaring—finally roaring!—through the
rain…and around the corner…
“RUBY!” I hear this shout so muffled it seems to
come from somewhere inside my own head. “RUBY!”
I turn. I look. I see this wibbly-wobbly shadow
person, hands pressed against the plastic of an army polytunnel walkway.
D-A-R-I-U-S S-P-R-A-T-T
Wibbly-wobbly shadow Spratt.
“DARIUS!” I run at him—
His hands and mine, they press together through
the plastic, palm to palm.
“You were right,” he is shouting. “Saskia was
right. I checked. They’re killing people. They’re killing kids. The numbers I
was crunching, they’re doses. Bacteria doses, survival rates—oh, Ruby, I…”
I’m doomed. It’s going to hurt a lot.
I wipe my hand across the plastic so, for one last
moment, I can see his face more clearly. He has no words left, so I must find
some for us both.
“Get out of here,” I tell him.
The rain pours down between us.
“JUST GO! PLEASE, DARIUS! JUST GO!”
I close my eyes. I do not want to see this…but I
feel it anyway. My heart lurches at the change of pressure. The gentle warmth
under my palms is lost. He has gone.
I open my eyes.
Gone.
