It took me over an hour to get there. I’d put in a call to Tom Lee and been unsurprised when he wasn’t available. I’d left a message to say it was Luna, not me, who was in trouble but didn’t place much faith in his help. Then I took the bus to Sutton Central and another out to the north-side, where the General was the last hope of the poor and friendless. A desperate hope. The hospital looked as sick as the people who crowded inside its open doors. It relied for security on big men with big weapons.
The shoreside fire seemed to be their worst emergency at the moment. Most of the bodies on trolleys smelt of smoke. At least one was beyond any help from the hospital. I pushed my way through clamouring minor injuries to a desk. No one there. I drew a breath and started searching.
The entryhall to the General is big enough to hold two or three hundred people – on their feet or squatting against a wall or lying across a row of seats – as well as a couple of dozen trolleys. The place is so primitive I doubt if it’s changed since it opened. There are probably still 20th-century accident victims waiting for attention there, patient skeletons. I peered behind curtains and through starred glass viewports and grew so used to the smell of blood and piss and disinfectant that I stopped noticing it. I’d almost given up when I found her.
Kids like Luna are low priority. One look and anyone could see no rich relative would turn up to sue because she’d not been treated quickly. They hadn’t even left her on a trolley: someone else needed it. She was in an alcove formed by two vending machines where at least she was in little danger of being trampled – had she dragged herself there? – and was half-curled, her arms across her belly, her breathing shallow and careful. There was no colour at all in her face. No recognition in her eyes when I knelt beside her. All her concentration was on the next breath.
“Luna?” I touched her cheek. It was almost as cold as Blue Eyes’ had been. “It’s Humility. I’ll get help.”
No way to know if she heard or understood.
I didn’t want to leave her but there was no safer place to take her. Yet. I pushed my way back through the crowd. Couldn’t find anyone who looked like a medic but there were plenty of guards around. I went up to one of them.
“I need help.”
He looked down at me. I tried not to stare at the weapon holstered beneath his arm.
“You can still walk. Round here, that’s healthy.”
“Not for me. A friend. Caught in the fire.”
“He’ll have to wait.”
“She’ll be dead if she does.”
It was a story he must hear a hundred times a shift. If he’d ever had any sympathy for the people who came here, he’d had to lose it if he wanted to stay sane. He shrugged. He had nothing else to offer.
“I can pay.”
That changed things. “Should have said so. There’s a half-and-half not far from here.”
Half-private, half-public. Underfunded, and not for the rich or choosy, but better than I’d hoped. Far better than here. It might be Luna’s only chance. Tom Lee might not be taking my calls but the credit he’d traded for my wine could fund this.
“How do I get there?”
“You said you could pay?”
I showed him my credit. He checked it out, nodded.
“Wait here.”
It took another hour. I went back to Luna, checking every few minutes that the shallow breaths were still coming. There were beads of sweat on her forehead and she was shivering. I stole a blanket from a man on a trolley who’d never need it. I don’t know if it made any difference to Luna but it was all I could do.
“Told you to wait over there. This her? Looks bad.”
He was shouldering me aside as he spoke, making room for a man with a floater. He even bent and helped lift Luna, who moaned as they put her down. It was the first sound I’d heard her make and it frightened me more than her silence. It told me she was losing control.
“You coming with her?”
That was the man from the clinic. He wasn’t going without me: I was the one paying. I nodded, turned back to the guard.
“Thanks. I owe you.”
I held out my wrist, credit up. No point in haggling at this stage. When he put his scanner away he’d taken far less than I’d expected. He saw my surprise.
“It’s enough. The clinic gives me a cut, too.”
I guessed it was as small as the slice he’d taken from me. If he did this often I suppose he earned enough to make up whatever they paid him into something he could raise a family on. But he wasn’t getting rich doing it.
“Thanks.”
“You’d better get going. She doesn’t look good.”
She didn’t. I went with the floater and out into the van. It took ten minutes to reach the clinic and the people in there showed so little reaction to our arrival that I wondered just what percentage of their patients they got this way.
They took Luna away and told me I could wait. Then they took my bracelet and returned it with enough left on it to keep me for a couple of days if I was careful. A good thing I’d stocked up the Pig.