Chapter 12 - Misery

3457 Words
............. Harlow ............. “Oh, my God!” I gasp, dropping my bucket by reflex before crawling over to Grace as she suddenly collapses to her side before scrambling to her knees again, looking dizzy. “What’s wrong?” I ask, placing my hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes as she closes them before opening them again. “I’m-I'm alright,” she stutters, placing her hands on top of mine but they are trembling. I reach for her forehead, placing the back of my hand against it and she’s burning up. “Hey! What the hell do you think you are doing? Get back to work!” “I’m okay, I promise. Go,” Grace says, removing my hands, but I ignore her and turn towards the guard who just spoke. “She needs help. She’s sick,” I plead, looking at him, still keeping Grace's hands that are still trembling in mine. “Get back to work!” “Please!” “Back to work! Now!” he roars, taking steps towards us, and Grace pushes me away, begging me to get up and go. I get up and walk back to my position, my heart breaking for her. It's clear she's not well. I hope I didn't infect her. I was also burning up with fever at the beginning of this month. It started at the end of last month and I was even throwing up. Luckily, Alice, one of my cellmates had some medicine she got when she also had flu. I took it and I got better. You have to drop dead before any attention is paid to you when you're sick in this place. The guard walks back to his station and I get back to sifting but I keep looking over at Grace, worried. I'm going to ask if Alice's medication is finished when we get back to the cell. Grace is the old woman that’s in my cell. When I got here three months ago, I was a mess. I spent nights crying myself to sleep, broken and Grace was always there, holding my hand. She became the mother I never had. She helped me accept my situation and because of that, I’m able to cope. Yes, it’s still hard, in fact, it seems to get harder every day. This place is hell but I have made peace with it. I have no one, so it’s not like there’s any hope of me ever getting rescued or getting out of here. I have also gotten good at collecting the stones. I've been getting the required number every day this month, so I haven't gotten any beatings lately. Last month I only fell short five times and it was mostly under ten. So, I got plus-minus fifty lashes. Grace says I’m a fast learner. She says it took her six months of severe beatdowns before she was able to finally make the target. I don’t know how she survived that. I also found out that when wolves are too sick or too injured to work. They are taken to a room called the Operating Room. When I heard the name, I thought they were taken to see a doctor. But it’s not even close. I was taken there at the end of my first month. The OR is a dark, small room with steel walls that are lined with silver. It’s got heavy steel doors that lock from the outside and one unbreakable glass window. I collapsed after getting my last beating and I passed out as I was being dragged out of the cell. When I came to, I was lying on the cold floor of the room, my wolf screaming at me to wake up. I didn’t have my collar on, and the wounds on my back had healed. I got to my feet, and the guard ordered me to shift, but I didn’t. My wolf and I were still going through problems back then, so she didn’t take over. The guards tried to force me to shift but I just curled myself into a ball on the floor screaming as he turned on the noise that made my eardrums feel like they were going to explode. After I don’t know how long, he turned it off and ordered me to sit up. I did as commanded and just then a dart pierced the back of my neck and my lights went out. When I came to, I was back in my cell. My wolf did heal me, she just refused to take over. My head was on Grace's lap when I came to, and that's when she explained more about the room. It's where wolves are healed. They are given tranquilizers so that the guards can safely remove the collar. After the collar has been removed, their wolves wake up and heal them. They are forced to shift so that the healing process can be quick, and then they are shot with tranquilizers again once they are done shifting. When they lose consciousness, they involuntarily transform back to their human form. The guards then enter the room and secure the collar around their necks again, and drag them back to the cells. The next day the wolves go back to work feeling brand new. Even though Grace is the one who told me about the room, she’s never been inside or seen the room. She's not a wolf. When I asked her how she knew about the room, she told me Devaar told her. Devaar is the middle-aged man that tried to save me from the beating when I first got here by trying to give me his bucket. After the incident, I didn’t see him for two months until earlier this month. Devaar and Grace were neighbors before they were brought here. The night they were kidnapped, they were coming back from the hospital after Grace’s youngest daughter had given birth. Devaar had given Grace a lift to the hospital. They were on their way back and were going to return to the hospital in the morning to pick up Grace’s daughter. They got into an accident and when she woke up, they were in a boat, tied with chains. Grace didn’t know Devaar was a werewolf, she didn’t know anything about wolves until she got here. This place harbors no secrets. We are all slaves down here, so wolf, human, it doesn’t matter. The enmity that exists in the free world between our species doesn’t exist here. I’m snapped out of my thoughts by a splash in the dirty water and I turn my head to find Grace falling again and this time she doesn’t get up. “Grace?!” I call out to her but she doesn’t respond. “Please, help her! She's drowning!” I turn to the guards, my heartbeat accelerating, scared. “Pack up! Let's go!” he says, looking at me, disregarding what I just said and I get up and run over to Grace as everyone starts getting to their feet. “Grace?!” I call her, lifting her upper body out of the water and holding her against my chest, but she doesn’t respond. “What’s wrong with her?!” the guard asks, and I look up to find another one coming. I tell him, she’s burning up, tears now escaping my eyes. The other one kneels and checks her temperature before looking up at the other one and shaking his head. “Dispose of her,” the one who’s still standing instructs, and the one grabs her but I scream, holding on to her. “She can still work, please! She just has a fever, please!” I beg, holding on to her as he tries to rip her out of my arms. “Let go!” he orders, ripping her out of my arms, and shoving me back. I fall on my ass, but I don't stay down; I can't afford to. I get up and grab onto her shirt that's now clinging to her body but it tears. He starts to drag her away and I crawl after him, begging, before reaching over and grabbing onto her arm, angering the guard. He raises his hand to slap me but the other guard tells him to take her back to the cell. “Thank you,” I repeat, tears still flowing from my eyes, and he tells me to take the buckets and go join the line before he changes his mind. I take them and join the line and we make our way to the tunnel. I look back to find the other guard turning around the corner with Grace, heading towards the cells and I let out a silent breath, relieved. After what feels like forever, my turn comes to enter the shed and I do. I empty our buckets and head out when I’m done, feeling like I can’t get to the cell fast enough. When I do, I find Grace lying on the floor, and I rush up to her. I take her cloth and cover her before folding the other one and putting it under her head. Humans are given cloths to cover themselves when they sleep since they get sick easily. They don’t want to waste money on getting them medicine. Unlike us wolves, humans do see a doctor when they are sick or too injured to work, but only younger ones. The elderly, like Grace, is simply disposed of. We don't know exactly what the disposing of entails but we have an idea and we can't even bring ourselves to talk about it. That’s what they were going to do to Grace. I lie down next to her and bury my face against her back, begging God to please wake her up before breaking down crying. I can’t lose Grace. I hear the cell bars opening and closing as the guards let people in, but I don’t look up or stop crying. I can’t. After I don’t know how long, it goes quiet but a hailer speaker causes me to raise my head. We are ordered to stand against the wall, and just then, I hear the sound of pipes being dragged. I know what it means, so I run towards the guard at the gate, wanting to beg him to allow me to take Grace out first, but I don’t make it to him. The hose comes into my view and, please, is the only thing I’m able to utter as the force of the water knocks me on my back. “I said against the wall b***h!” I hear the guard yell, as I try to get up, coughing. I crawl over to Grace and hold her as the water continues hitting us hard. The others are told to do the rotations and when they are done, the water is turned off and the cell bars are closed, leaving us shivering cold in the wet cell. This is how they wash us. Once a week, the guards come with hoses and hose us down. We stand against the wall and turn when they order us to while they continue spraying us with the water. They drench us, including everything in the cell, and we don’t get dry clothes or anything after that. On my second day here, I was given a pair of tights and an oversize t-shirt and that was it. No shoes, no nothing. The people that have been here for a long time say we are only given one pair of clothing every six months. So, when the clothes tear from all the hard labor. You stay like that. When they come to hose us down, we are not allowed to take them off... and suppose it wouldn’t make a difference even if they did anyway, since they drench the whole cell. The clothes would still be wet. Others start taking their clothes off and hanging them to dry, but I don’t. I fix the cloth I’ve used as Grace’s pillow, after squeezing the water out, to make sure she’s not hurting her neck. When I’m done, I lie down, snuggling with her, but just then, the bars are opened again. It’s time to eat. The grits is poured on the still-wet floor and we start to move towards it as the guard continues pouring it. It looks nice and warm. We start eating and I look back at Grace, wishing I could save her some, but I don’t know where I’d put it. There’s nothing in the cell. We sometimes have old plastic containers that we pick up from the guards after they've had a snack or lunch. We would hide them and bring them back to the cells to use them to put our grits in, saving it to eat later. But right now there’s nothing. We lose everything when they hose down the cells. After eating with a heavy heart, I get back to Grace and take my position next to her. I feel her forehead and it’s still burning hot. I wish there was more I could do. If she isn’t responding tomorrow, how am I going to keep the guards from taking her? I call Alice and ask her if her medicine's finished and her sad expression gives me the answer before she even speaks. She doesn't have any more left. I feel tears burning my eyes again and I lace our fingers together. “Please wake up! Don’t leave me,” I whisper, burying my face against her back again, wishing I could just fall asleep, so I can see Arlo. I always see him in my dreams, standing by the lake in front of his family's cabin. “A family I killed,” I whisper, the tears I've been trying to hold back continuing to fall. “I'm sorry, Arlo. I'm so sorry.” . . . . I open my eyes, realizing it’s morning. We don’t have a clock in here but I always wake up just before the guards come to wake us up. “Grace?” I whisper, realizing our fingers are still laced together but something is wrong. Her hands are cold, too cold and she's stiff. “Grace?!” my thick, tremulous voice, comes out louder as I unlink our fingers before turning her face to find it pale. “No, no, no, please, no. Grace?!” I call out again, desperate and people start raising their heads, as I repeatedly call her, shaking her, realizing she’s gone. I place my head against her chest, fisting her damp shirt as I start audibly crying. I feel hands on my back as people start gathering around us. “She’s gone. She's at peace now,” someone says, pulling me into a hug, and I completely break down. She gave in. She’s gone. I’m back to being alone again. I hear the guards calling us to get up and the person I didn’t even look at that was holding me, helps me up. I stand, my body still shaking with sobs and she supports me. The guards are told that someone has died and they order us to stand against the wall. They do that whenever they come inside the cells, which they rarely do. Two guards enter and check her before grabbing her by the arms and dragging her out of the cell, like some trash that's being taken to the bin. I turn away, not able to look, and I bury my face against Alice’s chest; who’s now supporting me. We are ordered to make our way out of the cell in a line like we always do every morning. It doesn’t matter that someone has just died. It’s business as usual for them. We form the line and I start walking towards the exit but the cell starts spinning. “Harlow?” I hear someone say but their voice is faint. “Oh, God!” I hear her gasp and I groan as my head collides with the hard floor before my lights go out. . . . . “Mm!” I groan, opening my eyes. I raise my heavy head, looking at my surroundings. I’m in the OR. I feel my wolf but she’s quiet, causing me to reach for my neck, feeling for the collar and it’s off. “What happened?” I murmur and she tells me I fainted, but just then, I remember. “Grace,” I whisper hugging myself, suddenly feeling cold even though my collar is off. My friend is gone. She was like a mother to me. I confided in her, she even helped me accept what I was. She helped me stop fighting my wolf and accept her, and now she’s gone. “She’s gone,” I whisper, and my wolf lets out a whimper but the familiar screeching noise, pierces my eardrums, causing me to groan, covering my ears with my hands. A guard orders me to shift and I don’t resist. My heart hurts too much. I get to my feet expecting my wolf to start with the transformation since things are fine between us now, but nothing happens. I ask her why she’s not taking over and she says we can’t. What do you mean? I ask her, leaning my hands on my knees, still feeling exhausted, but she doesn’t respond. The screeching noise that sounds like a tuning fork rings again and I fall to my knees, feeling like my ears are going to bleed. “Ilaria, please!” I scream, but she says we can’t, he’ll die if we do. “Who? What are you talking about?” I cry out, the noise still ringing, but she goes quiet again. I fall to my side, curling myself into a ball and after I don’t know how long, the noise stops. “What is this?” I hear a familiar voice ask, but next, the microphone goes dead. I call out to Ilaria but she doesn’t reply and just then, I hear the steel bolts opening, causing me to sit upright, still hugging myself. The door opens and just then, I hear something snap on my left. I turn my head to look but something pierces the skin of my neck, and I already know what it is. I reach for the dart and pull it out but it drops to the ground as my body goes limp, causing me to fall on my side as darkness takes over. . . . . I open my eyes, and raise my head, expecting to be back in the cells, but I'm not. Where am I? There’s a drip attached to my arm and I’m strapped to a bed. I can see that I’m not in a hospital, so it must be the room Grace was telling me about. The room humans are taken to when they are sick but why am I here? I can feel the collar on my neck and I don’t feel my wolf. I look to my right to find a mirror and tears immediately pool in my eyes, looking at my reflection. I look like a skeleton, like how the people looked when I arrived here. I have a blue mark on the side of my head, and my hair is starting to grow back. We are shaved every time our hair grows back. The shed where we empty our buckets at the end of each day is where we are monitored. You go to another door, after emptying your bucket, if you are told you need a shave and you find a guard waiting to shave you. I look away from the mirror, unable to keep looking at myself, and just then, the door to the room clicks open, and a guy wearing a doctor's coat comes into my view. “How are you feeling?” he asks, but I don’t respond. I just look at him; trying to understand how someone can work in a place like this. How does he sleep at night, after patching up people whose eyes were screaming at him to just end it? Take them out of their misery. “What’s your name?” he asks, stopping next to me and placing down the folder he had in his hand. “Harlow.” “Harlow, my name is Dr. Brooks and I’m going to be your doctor for the next six months,” he says, turning my expression into a confused one. What does he mean, he’s going to be my doctor? What is wrong with me? “You are twelve weeks pregnant, Harlow.”
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