Nieve fully expected Frances to be expelled from the OR, but that hadn’t happened. Neither she nor Lias knew what to do. They had considered sneaking in themselves to look for her, except that an orderly who more resembled a bouncer – all muscle and tattoos – had arrived to stand guard at the double doors. Nieve hoped he wasn’t there because Frances had been caught. More likely he was the heavy sent to prevent other patients from escaping. Secretly, she had cheered on the man who had jumped off the gurney, keeping her fingers crossed while he struggled with the nurses and thinking go go go! And he did! They had him pinned down and were about to haul him back onto the gurney, when he wrenched himself free and tore off down the hall, his blue, open-backed hospital gown flapping and revealing peeks of his hairy bum as he ran.
She couldn’t help but laugh. Just a little. Funny things still happened even when you were surrounded by nothing but bad ones. Like flickers of light in the dark, she thought. Like good luck charms, only more effective.
Turning to Lias she said, “So what’s the big deal with the arrowhead?”
“Elfshot.” He kept his voice lowered, although the guard was more interested in the nurses than in them. “Might come in handy.”
Nieve sighed. “Whatever you say.” She studied him for a minute, “Why do you sound like a normal kid sometimes, and other times like a . . . I don’t know what?”
“A freak?”
He did have only eight toes, hair that looked like the hair version of fire, and clothes that were several centuries out of date. “No. I mean that sometimes you sound old, really old. The way you say things.”
He shrugged. “Old Country ways.”
“Where Gran’s from, you mean?”
“Listen, Nieve,” he said, dodging the question. “Frances isn’t coming back out. We’ve got to find her, and all your other friends, before we disappear ourselves. That’s one of the things cunning folk do, find what’s missing.”
“Agreed, but I’m not one of them. And I’m not a hag, either, thanks. Or that other thing, what was it?”
“Megrim. Doesn’t mean you’ve got warts and ride a broomstick. Only means you can do some things that other people can’t. It’s a talent. Like being good at music. So do them. You know, the way you sent that silver car spinning into the ditch, and the way you helped that man escape just now.”
“Don’t be silly. That had nothing to do with me.”
He only smiled at her and shook his head.
“Look,” she said, “you’re the one who got the fire going at Gran’s, and you’re the one who can see in the dark, and you’re the one who totally vanished in the car. Remember? You do something.”
Lias gave her such a vexed look that she thought he was going to smack her (if he dared). Instead, he smacked his own knee, and said, “I’ve the brains of a nit. Here, hold out your hand.” He reached into the pouch on his belt and fished out the silver cannister that Gran had given him. Turning his back to shield what he was doing, he twisted off the lid, and tipping it over, very gently tapped the bottom so that whatever was inside – fern seeds Gran had said – fell onto Nieve’s palm. She had to assume that’s what was going on because fern seeds – spores, aren’t they? – are so tiny as to be almost invisible. “There!”
“What?” she said, a little grumpily.
“You’ve gone.”
“Gone? What d’you mean?”
“Close your hand, hold it tight, and don’t lose it. See, like this?” Lias tapped a fern seed onto his own palm, closed his fingers over it, and immediately vanished.
Nieve stared at the space where he’d been, then stared at herself, her arms, her legs. She wiggled the fingers on her other hand, the one that wasn’t holding the seed. She didn’t feel the least bit different, but she was definitely gone. The seat was visible, but she wasn’t. So that’s how Lias had done it in the car. She reached out and touched his sleeve to make sure he was still there. “Holy smokes,” was all she could say.
“Aye,” he whispered. “It’s muckle cool. ”
“Will you look at that,” one of the nurses said. “Those two brats have taken off. Didn’t see them leave, did you?”
“Sneaks,” the other said. “Bad as the mother.”
“They got that right,” Nieve whispered back to Lias. “Let’s go.”
Another gurney had appeared, one wheel squeaking loudly as it rolled along, as if protesting its destination. This patient, however, was too sedated to cause any trouble. The orderly who was piloting the gurney grinned at the burly one guarding the OR doors as he passed through. Nieve didn’t think he’d be quite so smug if he could see who was trailing behind him.
“Whatever happened to that yappy woman?” one of the nurses said.
“Who cares,” the other answered. “She won’t last long anyway. Not with her attitude.”
If Nieve found this disturbing, there was worse to come. Much worse.
At first everything beyond the doors appeared as she imagined it might. Sterile, uncluttered, starkly lit, busy. Nurses and doctors – masked, gloved, and gowned – moved in and out of operating rooms with an air of brisk efficiency. It was cold, which she hadn’t been expecting, although she supposed that wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the smell that tweaked her nostrils. Not the typical hospital odour (overcooked stew), nor the smell of antiseptic and bandages, but a sweet, flowery fragrance, cloying and somehow familiar. Was it anaesthetic? She shivered, not sure if she was ready for what she might see? People cut open . . . lots of blood?
They continued in the wake of the orderly, following directly behind him, so they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way. Even though Nieve was new to this invisible business, she knew enough not to become the unseen obstacle that tripped someone up. The orderly rattled past a couple of occupied rooms – doors closed, they couldn’t peek in to see if Frances was inside – then he stopped abruptly before another, wider door. Too abruptly, for Lias trod on the orderly’s heel.
“Hey! What the–?”
Lias backed off hastily, while Nieve clapped a hand to her mouth, stifling a nervous laugh.
The orderly was staring, puzzled, at the back of his shoe, which had gotten crunched, when the door of the operating room opened. A nurse stood in the doorway, grasping the handle of a shopping cart. Giving up on his shoe scrutiny, he said to her, “Done?”
“Done,” she responded in an oddly flat tone.
When the nurse started off down the aisle, Nieve had to clap her hand against her mouth again, but not to smother a laugh. She was shocked to see that the cart contained babies, newborns, all wrinkly and red, but utterly silent and still. About nine of them were heaped in the cart carelessly, in the same way the corpses had been piled in that coffin at Ferrets. But surely these babies weren’t . . . ? Her stomach clenched. During their tour of the hospital, the nursery in the natal unit had been unoccupied, all the bassinets empty and the room darkened. What was going on here?
Lias clutched her arm and pulled her forward as the orderly began to push the gurney into the operating room. Once inside, they saw that it was an operating theatre, with a bank of seats for observers located behind a glass partition. A full house of observers had filled those seats, too.
Nieve pressed herself against the wall closest to the door and gazed at them. Among the stone-faced medical staff in attendance, she located the ferrety features of Mortimer Twisden (handsome on a ferret, but not so fabulous on him). Seated beside him was his young, dark-haired fiancée. When he bent toward her to say something, she smiled with interest, but leaned ever so slightly away. Dunstan Warlock was present as well, jolly amid a gang of those putty-faced men with pointy teeth – deilers Gran had called them. Nieve was startled to see them here. The setting seemed too clinical and bright for figures so unreal. But she was even more startled when she noticed, seated off to one side, someone she definitely didn’t want to see, not here with the rest of them. Her mother! Still wearing her finery from the wake, Sophie sat clutching her glittery evening bag and staring fixedly at the patient who had been wheeled into the room. Nieve didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved that Sutton wasn’t with her.
Following her mother’s gaze, Nieve now turned her attention to the nurses, who were shifting the patient from the gurney onto the operating table and securing him in place with wide nylon straps. She felt jittery and anxious. If, watching, she got sick to her stomach would her sick be invisible, too? Please – she’d rather not find out.
More than anything, she felt anxious for the patient. If only there was some way to help him. He looked perfectly healthy . . . and terrified. His eyes were rolling in their sockets, but sedated and strapped in, he couldn’t move. Whatever was going on here was unlawful and hideous – she couldn’t understand why these doctors and nurses were involved. She couldn’t understand, that is, until the head surgeon pulled his mask down onto his chin so that he could speak to the audience.
Holding a syringe aloft, a very large syringe with a very long needle, he said, “Child’s play, anyone can do it, you all can do it.”
He had a black tongue.
The barrel of the syringe was filled with a bright green liquid, some of which sprayed out as he jiggled the base of the plunger with his thumb. He was clumsy, and as zoned out as Alicia had been when staring at that nasty black cake in Wis-hart’s Bakery.
The peculiar flowery smell Nieve had noticed in the hallway filled the room, and she took short shallow breaths to avoid inhaling it too deeply. Still, it tingled in her throat and made her feel dizzy. She pushed herself more firmly against the wall for support.
“You simply find a vein, any old vein will do.” The surgeon swivelled toward the patient and grabbed his arm. The man’s eyes were bugging out of his head. With a flourish, the surgeon took a jab at a vein. “Whoops,” he said. ‘Missed!” He took another swipe at the man’s arm and missed again. He gave the audience a goofy grin, then slurred, “Ah, what the heck, why not.” He lunged at the patient once more, only this time aimed for a vein that was pulsing in the poor man’s forehead. As the needle slid into his head, the man screamed. But only briefly – it was more a half-scream, followed by silence. His face was contorted and his mouth was opened wide as if he were screaming, but he was no longer conscious.
After the surgeon had emptied the contents of the syringe into his head, watching as the vein turned from a normal blue colour to a vivid green, he raised the man’s arm and bent the hand, palm upward, like a waiter holding a platter. The arm remained upright and the surgeon dropped the empty syringe on the man’s palm.
“As you can see,” he addressed the audience again, while peeling off his gloves and depositing them on top of the syringe. “Not a drop of blood spilled and the body is completely ready for processing.”
“Processing?” Nieve said aloud, outraged. She open her clenched hands wide, gesturing in dismay toward the unfortunate man.
No blood may have been spilled, but at that moment something else, much tinier than a drop of blood, drifted to the floor. The fern seed. She had forgotten about it completely.
The surgeon and nurses, the audience, everyone, began to shout and groan and gasp aloud, astonished to see a girl’s face appear by the door. No body had appeared, and no head, only a face, but a furious one. One with intensely lit eyes that raked the whole room over with a scorching glare.