Marcus's Home for Special Children (P.7)

I let my eyes slip closed again. “Thatcher, what are you doing here? You’re going to get in trouble… again.” My voice sounds absolutely languid. That nagging feeling that I couldn’t place about him was pressing against my mind.

“I’m sorry ma’am. I’m a maverick. I don’t play by the rules. I’ve got impunity.” I don’t respond to his hushed voice, only sigh. He presses on. “How are you?”

“Bleh.”

“Well, you should start to feel better.” His fingers touch mine lightly.

I twitch my pinky and ask, “Why? I just want to sleep. I don’t want to do anything or go Outside or vomit or hallucinate. I just want to sleep.” I remember that he still doesn’t know what’s wrong with me and I still don’t know about him.

“If I asked you to run away with me, what would you say?”

At this, I found the strength to recoil away from him. “I’d call you crazy.”

“But it’s crazy enough to work. We could escape and I could show you what’s really out there, across the ocean, off this island.”

“We know nothing about each other. We obviously are completely different Thatch. I can’t do it.” What I really can’t is believe he’s asking me to do this.

I see the outline of Thatcher’s head drop, feel his hands move away from mine. “The world is made up of nothing but people and the spaces between those people. Those spaces mean nothing. They don’t make us different. We’re all more alike than anyone seems to get.”

“I’m not getting in trouble again. And where have you been?” I try to keep all concern out of my voice. I just want to lie in this bed and do absolutely nothing. I wish he hadn’t come. I wish he hadn’t mentioned running away from the Home.

“All I’m saying is I’m glad you can’t see me.”

My voice colors with the worry I had been trying to hide. “Why? What did they do to you?” The helpers have always been way harder on the boys at the Home than girls, in case you hadn’t realized that yet.

A twinge in my stomach forces my attention away from what Thatcher is about to say. I interrupt him. “Move.” My strength returns in a wave.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Even as he asks it, he pushes away from me. I lean over and puke over the bed, where Thatcher had been sitting moments before. And I’m crying before I even know what’s happening.

I wipe my eyes but the tears keep coming. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I almost threw up on you.” I just feel so embarrassed and sick and insane all in that one moment, it’s overwhelming.

The bed beside me sinks a little as Thatcher seats himself there. I feel his palm rest lightly on my cheek. It’s unexpected and I smack his wrist, breaking the contact. Before either of us can speak, we hear footsteps.

“Someone’s coming,” I say, urgency flowering in my voice. I feel him roll off of the bed and there’s a quiet shuffling and then silence. I lay back and let the few drops of sweat descend down my face without wiping them away.

A lit lantern swings into sight in the door on the opposite end of the long room. I can see an elderly nurse wobble into the room. The hand wrapped around the handle of the lantern shakes violently. She slowly makes her way over to my bed. I silently will Thatcher to not make a sound.

“What have you done?” she asks, voice as shaky as her grip.

“I threw up,” I say and feel my cheeks redden.

“I can smell.” She avoids the vomit on the floor and sets the lantern on my bedside table. Her wrinkles are thrown into sharp relief, deep lines seemingly carved into her skin. As she bends to grab a basin tucked in a drawer in the table, I stop breathing for a full ten seconds. I’m guessing that Thatcher is underneath my bed and if she turned her head to the side at any moment, she’d spot him.

But she doesn’t.

She fills the basin up with a pipe sticking out of the wall. As the foaming water falls from the tap, she pulls a rope and I can imagine the bells tolling in the helpers’ quarters.

She tugs a towel from her shoulder and dips it into the water, proceeding to dab my sweaty skin. “Have you gotten any sleep at all, Rose?” I don’t even know this woman, though it’s not surprising that she knows me. Most who work in the Home do.

“No.” I don’t like the direction this conversation is going. I’m not ready to tell Thatcher about my problems, even indirectly. I never thought I’d care about someone’s opinion.

“Well, you should be getting there soon. You’ve hit the hallucinations and the—”

“Yes.” My abruptness stops her. Thankfully, we can’t finish the conversation because a duet of helpers enters. As the nurse turns to look at them, I hear a very quiet shuffling underneath the bed that one would only notice if they were listening for it.

The helpers stand aside my bed. One of them looks unfamiliar which is odd because I’ve met and become acquaintances with all of the helpers. That may not be obvious, however, seeing how roughly they treat me and my friends. But their jobs come first and I recognize that.

But this helper seems new. He’s young, probably in his twenties, and he’s attractive. He’s got a pair of deep scratches trailing down his face and I realize that he may have been the one to pick up Josh. Those scrapes were very much a signature of Josh.

“What’s wrong?” the new guy asks.

The old lady wrings out the towel she had been using to dab my face and says, “What do you think?”

The new helper turns to me. I tilt my head towards the puke on the floor. He pales and turns to the other. I hear their brief exchange. “This isn’t part of the job.”

“There is nothing we can’t be called upon to do.”

“Seriously?”

“Stop being a little bitch and do it.” I roll over as they kneel on the ground. I want Thatcher to get out and then I want to sleep.

My eyes slide to the space below the bed beside me. Thatcher lies below it, his palms pressed against its underside. He presses his lips together to suppress some kind of laugh. How he could be laughing at this point I don’t even know.

There are groans behind me and dripping noises. As New Boy lets out a small cry, I cover my mouth with my hand. Now I know what Thatcher is smiling about.

The lantern bobs towards the end of my bed and the woman says, “Hurry up. I’d like to return to bed.”

Finally, I see their large shadows fall across my bed and they head off. As soon as the lantern is out of sight down the hall, I watch Thatcher squirm and escape from under the bed in the moonlight that has drifted in through the window. He digs his hands into my mattress and leans in very close to my face. Centimeters away, he whispers, “I better go back to bed, shouldn’t I?”

I hold my own, not showing he intimidates me. I breathe back, “You should.” With the dismissal, he pushes off away from me and takes off at a silent jog. I let myself fall against the pillows stacked behind me. Every time he’s with me, he makes me feel… naked. Like he can really see me and that’s why he hasn’t asked about my messed up brain. I roll over in bed, again trying to hide a smile as I close my eyes.