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The angels descend on a cold afternoon, the light fading beyond the mountains, a thin layer of ice sharpening every tree. The noise they make screams, and Shauna crouches down, holds her head in her hands and stares at you, uncomprehending. It takes a moment for your mind to catch up, for the word helicopters to make sense again. People flow out of the helicopters, more people than you can remember ever seeing, and they speak to you in splintering, hard words that drift past like dreams.
Oh, you think when one takes Shauna, when Lottie stumbles out of the horrible makeshift cabin, oh.
/
They take you, one by one by one, into a room that no one comes out of. Hospital, you think, and for one insane, hysterical moment, you want to tell someone you don’t have your insurance card. It’s in my wallet, you want to say, but you don’t have a wallet. You don’t have much of anything, except Van’s hand gripped in your own, her fingernails digging into your skin. The woman (nurse) who’s taken Misty and Travis and Natalie away comes for Van, and distantly, there is someone screaming.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” someone says in a gentle voice, like she’s talking to a feral animal. “Look, the room’s big enough, you can come with your friend, okay?” and Van’s teeth snap shut next to you, you only nod, your throat aching. You catch Shauna’s eyes for a half-second and she’s staring at you, eyes almost all white.
The nurse does your exam first, gently asks you to take off the grimy clothing that’s become a second skin, weighs you, takes your blood pressure, tests reflexes, her hands foreign and cold on your skin. You have not let anyone except Van touch you with such softness in months, in lifetimes, and the woman’s hands hurt.
“Malnourished,” she says to the man who’s standing behind a screen.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, you think, a scrap of something you once knew.
“Minor frostbite on extremities,” she says, and you glare at your fingers.
Van’s sitting in a chair, her knees pulled up to her chin, watching every tiny movement the woman makes, bares her teeth when the nurse feels for your pulse under your jawbone. The woman doesn’t notice, just marks down meaningless numbers.
“Okay, Taissa,” she finally says, and you slowly remember she’s talking to you. “There’s showers outside, if you’d like. You can also wait for your friend here,” and Van nods quickly, her eyes tracking the woman as she hands you a t-shirt and a pair of too-soft sweatpants, tracking the woman’s hands on your shoulders, tracking her like prey.
The procedure is the same with Van, except when they get to her face. The scars have melted into her, are as much Van now as her red hair, or the dirt under her nails. Even now, when you remember before, her scars are there, carving canals across her face.
“Can you tell us what happened here, Vanessa?” the woman says, glancing down at a folder on the table next to you.
Van presses her fingers into the pitted skin, and glances at you.
“Wolves,” she says finally. “Um, like two years ago. Or something.”
The woman nods shortly, and you can see Van’s teeth, nestled into the gash of her cheek like pomegranate seeds. You shake your head, and her face is back, whole, her teeth tucked away in the warm red of her mouth.
“And are you experiencing any pain still?”
Van shakes her head, and then shrugs.
“I don’t know,” and the nurse is about to let her go, about to release her back to you when her eye jumps a little, shivers in the socket.
“Did the attack impact your vision?” the woman says, pulling Van back to sit. Her hands stay on Van’s arm, and you can’t close your eyes.
Van shrugs again, shaking the hand’s pale pink nails off. You blink.
“Okay, Vanessa, I’m going to need you to sit back down,” and the man behind the curtain pokes his head out.
“A more serious injury?” he asks, and you want to grab Van and hide her away. His voice is calm, and even, and you think he sounds almost excited.
“It um,” Van says quietly, scraping her nails against the rough scar-skin on her arm, “the right eye is like completely fine.” She looks at you helplessly, eye quivering, hands shaking. You are not a violent person, no matter what people think of you, but you need the nurse to realize that you know what bone looks like ripping through skin, you know just how hard to press to get a knife through cartilage. You breathe as Van does, and try to keep your hands where she can see them.
“Okay Vanessa,” the nurse says, sickly sweet, lying. “Everything’s going to be fine, we just need to take you in for some more tests,” and she gathers up her papers, remembers you’re still sitting there.
“You’ll have to wait a while longer for your friend,” she says to you, an afterthought. “She’ll be out in a bit, if you could go and wait with the others.”
She holds Van’s shoulders with her nails, and motions toward the door for you, where the hallway gapes, where Misty and Travis and Natalie should be sitting, but there’s no one there.
Oh , you think. This is a test . Months, weeks, hours ago Lottie had whispered to Natalie about a dream she had, freezing to death, where Laura Lee had saved her. It wasn’t a story for you, but you were awake, and Lottie’s whispers carried.
She didn’t let them take me , Lottie had murmured, and Natalie had tucked her head against Lottie’s collarbone and whispered something like I won’t let them either, and then you had stopped listening. But it stuck with you: Lottie, dying; Laura Lee, forcing her back to life.
You look at Van, fingernails curling into the soft skin inside her elbows, and you think real . You look at the woman, whose face slides to empty, and realize not real .
“No,” you say suddenly, “no, you can’t have her.” The nurse already has her baby pink nails wrapped around Van’s arm, and she looks at you, face flat.
“You friend could have permanent damage to her eye,” the woman says, except you would have noticed , of course you would have, you would have seen if she was hurt.
Wouldn’t you?
You’re on your feet before you recognize it, and claw the woman off of Van, your nails leaving long red ribbons on her too pale skin. The woman gasps, and the doctor is wrenching you away from her, his hand perfectly encircling your upper arm.
“Carol,” he says to the woman, holding you too too tight, “take Vanessa into the other examination room please, we’ll take care of Taissa here.”
The woman’s hands are back on Van, and you think take care of, you think of the gentle hands of the veterinarian who let you hold your dog before taking him into a back room, you think your teeth can break skin.
The man screams when you bite him, and his blood tastes of absolutely nothing at all on your tongue, and you pull Van behind you into a corner. She’s gasping a little, and has her thumb pressed hard against the tiny burn scar at the base of her wrist, white and star-like.
“Call security,” the doctor says, and you want to spit his blood on the floor. You barely touched him. You can do so much worse.
“I said,” you say to them, endless and empty in front of you, “don’t take her. Take me,” and maybe you’re begging, maybe you’re as dead as poor burned-up Laura Lee, maybe this is all you can do to finally save Van.
“Tai,” Van says, “Tai,” and you let her hold your hand.
“It’s okay, baby,” you say, “cross my heart,” and she nods a little behind you, you run your fingers across the sparkling scars on the back of her hand. The doctor reaches out to pull you away again, and Van tugs you closer and curls her lip at him, flash of teeth. He backs away, holds his hands in front of him, appeasing.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says, not to you. “What the fuck happened to these girls,” like maybe you can’t understand him anymore. Van stiffens at that, and you can tell she’s about to throw herself out from behind you, and you hold her tighter. Don’t you understand, you want to tell her, they’re trying to get you, you can’t get any closer, except she relaxes, and tips her mouth into your ear.
“What’s happening ?” she says quietly, quiet enough that they can’t hear, that it’s only you and her and if you close your eyes it could all be real again.
You shake your head. If you look back, she’ll disappear, if she eats the fruit, she’ll be trapped forever, if she opens the door, she’ll be sliced up and dismembered, a hundred stories jumbled up in your mind, telling you to hold her tight.
The nurse is back, holding something behind her back that the doctor nods at.
“The biter first,” he says, and before you can process who that is, the woman has grabbed you and pushed something sharp into your throat, and Van’s screaming and screaming until you can’t remember anything.
/
When you wake up, the floor is so soft below you, and you’re warm for the first time in ages. And then you open your eyes, and it’s so so bright, and you remember hospital , you remember the doctor’s flat, cold hands, you remember Van.
Van.
The bed holds onto you when you try to get up, and it’s a long delayed moment before you notice the padded restraint around your wrist and Shauna’s brown eyes watching you.
“They said you bit someone,” she says, impressed. She’s sitting up in the bed, her mouth wrapped around a straw in a bottle of blue Gatorade, Jackie’s favorite and you think they’ll never stop trapping each other.
Poor Shauna, you think. Poor, poor Shauna.
“Okay,” you say instead, panic slick in your throat, and hold down the bright red help button until a nurse runs into the room. Her smile is the same as the other woman’s, like a Barbie doll, like you ran out of faces to paste onto bodies.
“Why don’t you get some rest, Taissa,” the nurse says, and she’s tapping something into the IV bag bleeding into your arm. “Your parents will be here later this evening, and I’m sure you’ll feel better with some sleep.”
Shauna’s watching something behind the nurse and smiling, teeth stained blue.
Poor Shauna, you think again.
“I need to see Van,” you say, “I don’t care what you do to me, but you need to bring me to her,” and you’re stranded up in a tree you can’t remember climbing, you’re desperately running through wreckage, the not-yet-familiar smell of roasting flesh making you gag.
“Vanessa?” the woman asks, and you apologize silently to Van and nod. There are rules here, and maybe keeping Van’s real name out of their mouths will keep her safe. Whatever the woman tapped into the IV is making your thoughts twist and all you can see are Shauna’s eyes, looking right through you.
“She’s having an operation currently,” the woman says. “We can tell her you’re thinking of her when she wakes up,” and they’re cutting into her, they’re taking their teeth and carving her face into tatters again. The sedative (sedative, you remember, like wisdom teeth) is making you heavy and so, so distant.
You close your eyes and Van’s still screaming.
/
You don’t fall asleep—or you don’t dream. The hospital room yawns around you, and you watch Shauna talk to herself, tuck her head against Jackie’s shoulder, braid their hair together, brown and blonde and brown and blonde.
“She should have died,” Jackie says to you kindly. “Just so you know,” and the restraint around your wrist feels like rope.
Finally, you manage to wrench your eyes open, and Shauna’s alone again, lips and teeth and fingers blue, writing something furiously and sideways in her journal.
“You’re back,” she says when she notices you. “Van’s out of surgery, they told me to tell you,” and she twists the end of her brown-blonde braid around her finger. You blink, slowly, and the blonde shutters off.
“Where is she?” you ask, and Shauna shrugs. Listen to me, you want to scream at her, there’s something wrong.
“Maybe in Natalie’s room? They said she’s not allowed to be in here cause of the whole biting thing,” and you flatten your thumb against your hand until you can slide your hand out, swing your legs onto the floor.
“Sorry,” you say to Shauna. “I wish you could come with me,” and she wrinkles her nose.
“We’re okay here,” and she turns her journal sideways, keeps writing in the spaces between the letters.
Van is in Natalie’s room, her eye taped shut, eyelashes twitching, and your whole stomach turns to acid when you see her, still and pale and unmoving. You don’t even notice Natalie watching you until she speaks.
“They said you bit someone,” and you have no idea how everyone knows. Maybe this isn’t Natalie , occurs to you in a panicky flutter, but you make yourself shake away that thought. If Natalie isn’t Natalie, then maybe you aren’t you, or maybe Van isn’t — no.
“The nurse said they almost had to take her eye, that I can’t let her take the bandage off,” and you watch Van, hold yourself still as hope until her breath ghosts out.
Natalie’s still talking.
“They had to sedate her, cause she tried to claw some woman’s eyes out. After they drugged you,” and you press the soft pads of your fingers against Van’s nails. She mumbles softly, and you ignore whatever Natalie’s saying now, climb into the bed next to Van. The side of her face is covered in gauze and bandages, ghosts of thick black thread looped through a fish hook. Almost , Natalie had said, they almost had to take her eye, and you trust her to slit a throat, but you don’t, can’t trust her with this. You think of Van’s eye, blue as a marble sitting in some doctor’s greedy hands, think of a gaping hole in her head, think of your grandmother, perfectly asleep until you peeled away her eyelids.
Your hands move without permission, and Van twitches away from you when you slip your nail under the tape.
She’s in pain, she’s in pain again and you’re not sure if any of this is actually happening, but Van flinching away from your hands hurting her: that’s real.
“Fuck,” you say, “fuck,” and it’s loud enough that her right eye blinks slowly, that you catch a glimpse of the whites of her eye, ringed with red.
“Tai?” she mumbles, and you remember months ago, infection making her delirious and frightened, and you make your face look calm.
“Yeah,” you say, “yeah, it’s me,” and she forces her eye open, the pupils wide and unfocused.
“What’s happening,” she slurs, and reaches up to try and touch her other eye.
“Nothing,” you say, “it’s okay, we’re okay,” and you lean down so Natalie can’t even try to hear. “You’re gonna get out of here, I promise . Don’t eat anything,” and her brown furrows.
“What?” she says, and you can tell she’s trying so , so hard to focus.
“There’s something wrong ,” you say to her, and she clumsily tries to take your hand and misses, grabs the bruise of your wrist instead.
“I think,” she says slowly, “I think we’re in Canada,” and Natalie stops pretending not to listen and chimes in with “British Columbia,” and you don’t even bother to look at her.
“Van,” you say, and you wait until her eye focuses somewhere close to your chin, “you have to wake up,” and she tightens her hand around your wrist.
“I am,” she says, “I’m awake, I am,” and that’s when a nurse runs into the room, frantic.
“Taissa,” she says, “Taissa, there you are,” and you hold onto Van so tightly she gasps softly. “You can’t be in here, your friend needs time to recover,” and the empty place in Van’s skull mocks you, even as her worried, confused hands try to hold you closer. The tape holding the gauze down peels slightly, and you let go of her waist to let your hand drift up, not sure if you need to press it back down or tear it off, make sure they haven’t taken her apart.
“Do not touch that,” the nurse says, much closer to you than you expected. “Taissa, you stand up and leave now or we’ll be forced to …” and Van looks up at the nurse.
“She can stay,” Van says, “please, can’t she stay,” and the nurse is already grabbing your upper arm, pulling Van’s hands off of you.
“Tai,” Van says, “Tai, Tai, Tai,” and your name blurs together into a wail, into someone crying, into Van crying. You don’t understand the rules here, you don’t understand why Natalie can stay with Van as she cries and you’re being dragged out of the room, the door shut between you before you can even catch a last glimpse of her. The room the nurse forces you into is empty, no Shauna, no Misty, no Lottie, no Travis, and she’s hooking you back up to the machines that drip confusion and sleep into you.
“Taissa,” the woman says, “if you don’t stop, we’re going to have to do a more in-depth psychiatric evaluation. We are genuinely trying to help you,” and you dig your nails into your palms, try to make it so the pain keeps you awake as long as you can.
“Your friend,” she continues, “is going to be fine. The damage to her eye is permanent, but we managed to save most of the vision she has left. She needs rest, she doesn’t need you bothering her,” and you would laugh, except the drugs are making your mouth hazy and needled.
“Please,” you say, and maybe you’re dead, maybe begging won’t do anything for you anymore, “please,” you say again, even though the nurse’s hands are too heavy on your shoulders.
She sighs.
“I’ll see what I can do,” and she looks a little like Jackie, you think, if Jackie wasn’t dead and eaten, if Jackie wasn’t frozen to death in the woods.
Maybe she’s just blonde.
/
You manage to keep yourself awake, the sharp edge of the metal bed digging into your wrists. You think most of the things you’re seeing aren’t real—you’re so good at filtering out things you don’t understand that the whole room becomes white and blank, that you can see through the dream. Akilah and Mari watch you from a window, whispering something to each other and glancing at you. That isn’t right though—Akilah wouldn’t gossip about you. You blink slowly and she becomes Laura Lee, and that isn’t right either, but it hurts less. People you don’t recognize come in and out of the room, and a man speaks to you at length, his words tangling into nothingness.
Van, you think, Van, Van, Van, Van and every moment you don’t chant her name to yourself, you’re sure they’ll succeed, that the last thing you’ll ever see of her is a closed door and Natalie’s concerned face.
Van, you think, and you see her shaking and bleeding, you see her pale and confused, wolves with baby pink nails ripping her apart. Jackie sits on the edge of your bed, and awkwardly pats your ankle.
“You’re imagining things, Taissa,” she says.
Leave me alone, you think, go back to Shauna, and Van’s name slips from your thoughts for a half-second.
“Fine,” Jackie pouts. “I’m trying to help,” and she crosses her arms across her chest, perches on a chair across the room, bouncing her head along to a song you vaguely recognize.
When you wake up, Jackie’s gone and Van’s somehow asleep in a bed that wasn’t there before, her hair so, so bright against the pale of her skin, the white of the sheets.
Real, you think looking at her, real, real, real, and it crowds out her name in your head. Real, you think, and the room chills around you into the damp of the woods. Real, you think, and Van opens her eye, the bandage tight against her skin.
“Real,” you say quietly, and she nods.
“Real,” she repeats, and you pick up the mostly-drunk Gatorade Shauna had left on the tray, and finish it in one long sip, the sugar painful against your tongue.
Real, you think, real, real, real, and maybe, one day, it’ll become true.