Onus 06

A line graph. I couldn't see it through a scrim of angry tears. "By becoming the most criminal group in America!. Onus fill the streets like detritus, stealing, loitering, begging, assaulting who they can get away with, and Desta has the goddamn nerve to try and push this cancer of a bill through barely a month after the Detroit Massacre. Twenty-eight humans dead by the hands of Onus thugs.

The shouting man had a partner. A younger thinner man with wire-rim glasses and lines around his mouth. "It would have been bad timing whenever, Roger, the crimes from the Onus community have always been constant. The last time they were as low as the crime rates from the regular population is when they were all under twelve years old. Just five months ago, there was that crime spree in Colorado..."

"Exactly my point Jenk. And this lunatic doctor wants them walking among us. He wants them serving our food, teaching our children, infecting our hospitals."

Jenks let out a low laugh. "At least it's not like they could have gotten a worse spokesman than 'Doctor' Desta." He started mocking Sam. Thickening and imitating his small speech impediment until it became a brogue. The other man was laughing. His face was so red and shiny, the skin almost translucent, like a tomato close to bursting.

I fumbled with the remote, finally managing to turn the TV off with my shaking hands.

I slowly brought my knees up to hug them. I clenched my wrists in my hands as hard as I could. I felt a buzzing in my ears. A ringing. Was it just the blood going through my ears? Was my heart beating that hard? It felt like it. It felt like I could feel my temples pulsing.

"No." I mouthed, not making a sound. "No. Don't. Don't."

My wrists hurt from how tight I grasped them. I felt the plastic of my walking boots clack as they were pressed together. It hurt, but I couldn't let go of my arms. I had to hold on.

The thin noise in my ears wouldn't go away. Neither would the pulsing. I moaned softly and let go of my wrists. My right hand was in my mouth and I bit down, stopping just before drawing blood. I whimpered a little, muffling the sounds on the webbing between my thumb and index finger.

I had a callus. The buzzing didn't go away until I broke that callus. Until my hand stung and I tasted blood.

I looked down at my forearms. At my freak-white bite-stippled skin. The red oozing out. Red and white. Red and fucking white.

I could feel my mouth trembling. I was so angry with them. Those men. I wished that they were bleeding. The fat one was so red he probably wouldn't notice if not for the pain.

I wanted to do it again. When I was with the ordinary man, I never bit myself only once.

I shook my head so vigorously that my hair flopped back and forth and my neck hurt. "No!" This time I whispered it.

The second time, it was easier to listen to myself. By the time I clopped myself to the kitchen to wash my hand in the sink, I didn't want to bite myself at all.

I told myself.

--

I could hear the door lock clicking, and when I glanced at the wall clock, it was about eight. I shakily stood up from the couch. My legs felt wobbly. My chest felt hot and achy. I must have been getting sick.

I waited for the door to open. He shouldered in. The wind was howling outside, his coat was crusted with snow, even though he had just left his car. He was carrying a large grease-spotted brown bag.

He shut the door behind him. His back was facing me. My face flushed. I suddenly felt stupid. Just waiting here for him. How pathetic did that look? Like a dog running to the door when master comes home. My chest, under my arms, my groin, all felt swampy and hot, but suddenly I shuddered. I was cold with unease. I twisted the long baggy shirt around my right hand, hiding it from him.

I took a step backwards, then I had to grab the back of the couch to keep my balance. The walking boots were so clumsy. I still wasn't very good at walking in them.

He slipped the coat off and turned around. He jumped when he saw me. Startled. He had high red patches on his cheeks from the cold wind. He smiled when he saw me. "Wasn't expecting you." He said softly. "It's hard to get used to someone at home. Did you see the speech?"

My throat felt swollen up. I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out. Making me flush darker yet. I leaned against the couch back. I felt like if I let go, I would flop down to the floor. I only nodded. Cold air emanated from the foyer, and I realized I was still only wearing a sleeping shirt and a pair of boxers.

His smile was slipping a little. He seemed concerned. "Are you in pain? I have some pain pills with me, could you tell me when you dosed yourself last? It's not good to have them too close together." He took two small steps towards me, hesitating where he stood. He had snow crusted onto his boots. Making small piles of slush on the floorboards. Melting into dirty puddles. His good eye was brown and warm and worried about me.

He had developed the Kinicke treatments.

He had spoken for me.

I tried to say how grateful I was. How much I thanked him. But my stupid throat felt swollen shut. My eyes felt hot.

I did something else.

I felt like I was a stranger in my own body when I stepped forward. Towards him. He looked just as surprised as I felt. I closed my eyes.

His chest was surprisingly slim.

My arms crossed at the wrists. behind his shoulders. He was warm. His sweater smelled like him and detergent. I could hear the thump-thump of his heart below his sweater and below his skin. Feel it thump faster and faster. I was doing that to him, I realized.

For a split second, the shock of his body in my arms was almost enough to make me let go. To run. But after the moment passed, I only squeezed tighter. My chest felt hot and tight.

He carefully put his hands on my shoulders, then he draped one arm around my back. I could feel the heavy heat of the paper bag against my back. "I... I guess you watched it then." His voice was soft, and kind, if surprised. I didn't want to let go. I didn't want him to see the way my eyes were leaking.

We stood in the foyer for a long time.

--

He gently untangled me and I wiped my eyes, embarrassed and looking at the floor. "I was going to bring some supplies to the clinic, but first I wanted to have dinner with you. I brought some chinese?

My head was still swimming. There was something confusing and intoxicating about how hugging him had made me feel. I shrugged my shoulders and nodded. Now that I was less distracted, I could smell the hot greasy food from the bag and it was making my stomach grumble.

He sounded so calm, as if nothing had happened, but I was still a little shaken up. I had hugged him. Squeezed him. It had felt so nice. I wanted to say something but I didn't know what to say and I felt so flushed and embarrassed.

I didn't know what to feel.

I clumped over to the table on my walking boots and sat down while he pulled some sodas from the fridge. I reached and put my fingertips against the stained paper bag. Tasting the grease and the salt. My mouth watered and my stomach cramped up.

"Open it up, if...if you want to." His speech was a little slower and clumsier than usual. I stole a glance at him from the corner of my eye, and he didn't look quite as calm as he seemed. He kept staring at me and back at the fridge. He seemed nervous. I wondered if it was because of me, or the speech, or something else.

--

He did a lot of the heavy lifting. I helped him when I could. My boots made the trip up and down the stairs overlong and unbalanced. My sensitivity to the cold made trips to the car impractical.

We brought down the boxes and boxes of supplies from the storage room. Me, at my own pace. Disinfectant and insulin and IV bags of saline. The saline boxes were the heaviest. The hypodermic needles were the lightest.

I had a wide-tipped red marker, and Sam told me to check inside each box, and write the number of units, as well as what was in the box.

16 liters, Saline IV fluid. I wrote. The marker squeaked. 1 oz bars of soap, 116 count. Boxes of latex gloves, 112 per box, 36 boxes. I tried to make my letters as big and neat and square as I could.

Once he had moved all of the boxes into the foyer, he started taking trips outside. While I finished labeling. I saw a flash of bright yellowish headlights in the windows. The car we had driven had blue-toned headlights. I peeked out the window and saw him driving a different vehicle out of a low barn that I hadn't been able to see from the upper floors. This was a big white van, with enough room to actually carry all of our boxes.

"Part of why I had to sneak you into the hospital." He murmured while I helped to stack a box on top of the other boxes in his arms. "My field hospital was burnt down. But I have a new one, and this first batch of supplies is mostly for the new location."

I caught the emphasis, but not the significance.

He never asked if I wanted to go outright. But around nine, I bundled up and clopped through the bitter-cold snow to jump into the passenger seat of the big white van. I carried a large box of surgical dressings on my lap. My feet rested on a soft bulk-sized package of sanitary napkins. The back was stuffed with boxes, save for a narrow gap so he could see through the rear window.

The heat was roaring. We started to move and I jumped a little at the engine sound. The blue car was almost silent, the white van, less so.

The day of my surgery, I had been sick, and scared and tired. Today seemed different.

His patch was facing me. I could see just a hint of his long eyelashes past the bridge of his nose. I looked at it out of the corner of my eyes. It was advantage that Onus had. You could never tell if one of us was looking directly at you or not. I had learned that full-humans got angry, or uncomfortable if I didn't face them directly when speaking.

They thought our eyes were emotionless. Dishonest.

Sam had his blind side facing me. When he glanced to look at me, I knew it beyond a shadow of doubt.

He smiled a little. "Do you want to listen to the radio? You can pick the station."

I fiddled with the old plastic controls, different than what I was used to. As I was scanning the stations, I felt him looking at me. I felt a sudden heady rush of blood to my head. I felt almost dizzy.

My fingertips were shaking a little. I left it on the station. The classical station that had given me my first music.

--

"I... I did something bad."

The land was mesmerizing, just watching it pass out the window. It took a moment to register his words. I sat up, and faced him. He had to keep turning his head. Turning to glance at me with his sad brown eye. Back to the road.

I wasn't afraid. I don't know why I wasn't afraid. His voice was taut with anxiety. His speech stiff and awkward because of it. I should have been afraid. It felt reckless not to be afraid.

"During the speech. For clause three. I..."

I realized why I wasn't afraid. He sounded afraid. Of me. I could barely wrap my mind around that concept, but I wasn't afraid.

He let out a long painful sigh, as if frustrated at how his voice failed him. I felt an instant rush of sympathy.

"I shouldn't have used that picture." He got the last phrase off of his chest in a quick rush of breath. I could see his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. He wasn't turning his head to look at me. He was afraid. Afraid that I would be angry with him.

My throat felt thick. I wasn't angry. I wasn't sure what I was feeling. All I knew was that it was good.

I felt my mouth curl up a little bit. I carefully reached over and touched his sleeve. His hand was on the wheel, so I touched gentle, slow.

"... 'S'okay." I whispered. I bit my lip for a second, this was important. He had to know. I had to tell him right, without wasting words.

He was about to talk, but he shut up when I started. He knew how hard it was for me. The headlights of the car lit up the cauls of fine white powder, snaking across the hard white snow-pack of the road.

"Was scared before." I mumbled. "But after... After the speech..." I shook my head, and smiled at him.

"I wasn't."

He turned his head back to the road, smiling. And we were both speechless for a small time.

It was hard to tell from the dashboard lights, but I thought I saw his eye gleaming.

--

We got into the city. The city proper. Into the slums.

There was a small section where five separate Onii were within a mile of each other. I had never slept in these Onii, but I recognized them. The trash, crude or makeshift shelters, long lines for water.

But now I saw something else. Something new.

A long white RV-type vehicle was sitting on a curb. One of the side panels opened, like a food truck, and a line of Onus, almost a hundred long was wending down the sidewalk. A smaller line was waiting by a door into the vehicle. The long line seemed to be moving quickly. The small line, not much at all.

"My field hospital was excellent." The bitterness in his voice made me feel his anger. "Now, we have a mobile one. Right now, my associates are giving emergency medical care that Onus can't really get anywhere else. A few will need surgery, a few always do. We have to perform those during the day, before curfew. The Mobile is only allowed inside the Oniis until midnight. We pick a different one every night."

He brooded for a moment, but then a he put a determined smile on his face. He held up a box of bandages. "Are you ready?"

I looked out at the line of Onus. Men and women, wearing dirty layers of clothes as protection against the cold. I saw several bundles against a fence. The clothed ones were sleeping. The naked ones were dead, their clothes scavenged to the last stitch.

They all looked so small.

I nodded.

--

The inside of the Mobile was tight, capable, and quiet.

Two full-human women, doctors or nurses, I wasn't sure, were manning two small stations. The black woman was shining a small flashlight into an Onus man's mouth. The man had missing teeth, and the few remaining were badly rotted. The look in his eyes was feverish and pained and grateful.

The Caucasian woman was asking an Onus woman questions, and writing things down on a chart. As I watched she stood up, whirled a curtain around the both of them, making a small private space. Through the thin curtain, I could see a shadow-woman taking off her clothes.

Sam and I had slipped in through a nearly seamless door in the back. "I can start taking patients." He murmured. I glanced at him, startled. His voice sounded smooth and businesslike. His impediment all but gone.

The black doctor looked up and smiled hugely. "Santa Desta, you're here. Did you bring me any presents this time?

I could see lines of strain around her mouth and forehead. She glanced at me, but the smile didn't slip.

Sam was unfolding a third bench from the wall. Setting up his own station. "We could have the security start bringing supplies from my van. Celine got her hands on a practical goldmine of Lidocaine, we'll have the stuff coming out of our ears, and she got twenty units of whole O- blood from the North Central Onii. Charlie and his gang have gathered more non-medical supplies. Camping blankets, socks, chemical handwarmers, clothes, menstrual supplies. Sami said that financial donations stopped trickling and started pouring today."

I felt a little bewildered. Not in a bad way.

Sam leaned out of the door. "I can help who's next?"

He helped a young Onus woman up. She was holding a dirty wad of cloth over her eye, and looking up at Sam like she had caught a glimpse of the face of God.

They found a place for me, in the tiny Mobile. Near the side window where another volunteer was distributing care packages to the long line. I helped to assemble them, and that freed another volunteer to help bring in more supplies.

The volunteer was a college kid with glasses, a heavy gut, and a shaved blonde head. He smiled a lot, and talked in my ear about some project they were working on. A trade school, for Onus who had been misplaced and undereducated their whole lives.

I listened to half of it. Nodding, putting together the simple elements for the packages. Food bars, soap, rain ponchos, foil body-heat blankets that folded to the size of a book of stamps. For women, I added a handful of sanitary napkins. For a limited number, we could give out OTC medications, from a dwindling bucket of samples.

The Onus were mostly as silent as I was. They were scared and mistrusting, most of them. Like half-feral dogs. Maybe one in five said thank you. Some snatched the care packages away from the volunteer, like they were afraid it would be taken away.

--

The EOs didn't talk to us. They just banged on the side of the Mobile with clubs, and all the Onus in line scattered, fleeing to the crude shelters that filled most of the Onii.

I sat up and my back creaked in protest. I had been sitting here for hours, only rising occasionally to grab a new big box of soap, or food bars. The time had just flown.

The volunteers were working to break up and store away the parts of the Mobile. Almost all of the supplies were taken out of it, given to Elise, the exhausted-looking doctor. She who could grin with pain in her eyes, and call him Santa.

"I'm glad you've been feeling a little better." Sam murmured to me. "You helped us a lot, and these are busy times." He grinned. "Things are really changing. For the first time. It's too late, and too little, but we can't waste a moment."

I nodded. We were walking to Elise's minivan with a small gaggle of volunteers. I was walking slowly in my boot-casts, carrying a half-empty box of disinfectant. I gestured with the box towards the van. Asking the question with my eyes and my shrugging shoulders.

"We can't leave the supplies in the Mobile. It's cheaper than the field hospital, and we can move it from night to night. But if it gets destroyed like my last facility, I want to at least not lose the supplies."

I shivered. I was sick and tired of the cold. It was very late. I felt a jolt to my stomach. I was going into a warm van. Back to a house that was more like a mansion. All the Onus that we had helped. They would be curled up under body heat blankets and ponchos, eating our protein bars, but still shivering out in the Onii. Sick, cold, afraid.

The thought had a bittersweet dissonance to it. I felt like a stranger, in my own life.

I set my box down, and slipped on a patch of muddy ice. Suddenly I was breathless, on the ground, with a fierce stinging from where I had landed heavily on my left hip. My air came out of me in a startled whoosh.

For two beats, I lay, frozen, waiting for a deeper pain to sink it's teeth, but it didn't come. I had landed awkward, but I had taken some of the fall with my arms. At least I hadn't dropped or broken anything.

"Jesus, are you okay?"

He was on his knees in less than a second. His boxes carelessly cast aside on the dirty icy ground. His hands were hovering, and his words with distorted with distress and worry.

I was surrounded by people. I was flushed and stinging so I just popped a quick thumbs-up with my gloved hand. Nuzzling down into my scarf to hide my face. Sam's gloved hands hovered for a second more, so I took them, to help me stand.

I hesitated when I was up, feeling off balance. I was very close to him, still holding his hands for support. I leaned into him for a second, to regain my balance. The wind blew a hard edge against us, and a wide bank of lights for the Onii faded into darkness.

I stayed against him for as long as it took my eyes to adjust. All of his friends were watching him. His peers. He didn't say a word to them.