She rushes up the lawn, because she doesn’t know if they’re here. She doesn’t have a clue if they’ll be watching this place or not. It depends on where they think she is. They might not even know that she made it off the island; this might give it away. Doesn’t matter, she thinks. So little time to go. So she runs across the lawn, patting her clothes down, and she smiles at the lady at the front desk, who smiles back. She doesn’t know if she recognizes her, and that’s fine, or if she just notices the burn marks on her head, so visible now. Vic comes just behind her, and the woman doesn’t bat an eyelid at that, but Beth doesn’t expect her to. She’s used to this now.
She follows the sand-coloured line, even though she knows the way, but she’s always followed it, like a habit. She doesn’t wait in the doorway because she doesn’t know how long she’s got.
Hello, she says to Vic, lying on his bed. He doesn’t answer, because he can’t. She can’t remember what happened the last time she was here. She was going to come and get him, and something changed. She wishes that she could remember what that was. How far she got, even: if she stood here and helped him dress and then chickened out, because it would be too much. And would it even work? And did she want it to? She puts her hand on his leg, which is thin and weak and soft. I’ve come back for you, she says. The other Vic – the one that she’s brought with her, who is somehow a part of her and nothing else – doesn’t say anything. He stands by the door and watches her, and he looks at her from underneath his eyebrows, tilted forward.
Are you okay? she asks them both. Neither can answer her, so she carries on. I love you, she says. That’s why I did this. That’s the only answer, isn’t it? And would you want this? She sits on the edge of the bed.
They said to her, when it happened, that there was nothing left of him inside. This isn’t your husband, they told her. This is a body. And it’s alive, and it’s learning, but it’s nothing like him, and it’s nothing to do with him. You asked us why so many people find it easy to divorce their loved ones when this happens. That’s why. There’s nothing of him left any more.
So, she says to Vic, I don’t know where to go from here. But I have an idea. She squeezes the body’s hand. I really do love you, she says. She kisses him on the forehead, even as his head moves of its own accord, left to right, and her lips smear on it. Okay, she says. So I should go. I’ll see you soon.
She gets out of the room and doesn’t follow the sand-coloured line back to the entrance. Instead she follows the black line. It takes her up another flight of stairs, and down a corridor, and then to another flight behind a door, and she expects this to be locked but it isn’t, because who is going to break in to get to this? It gets warmer as she climbs: no air conditioning up here, and the warm air from below seeps up through the building’s floorboards, and by the time she’s at the top of the last staircase she’s almost broken into a sweat and she’s breathing heavily through both her mouth and nose.
There’s a door that she opens, and there’s nobody in here. There’s a cordon that she steps over, and there, at the back of the room, stands the Machine. The same model, which she knows is right. It would have to have been, really. She doesn’t know if it’s plugged in, and it doesn’t matter: because she steps to it and puts her hand onto the screen and it starts up. The screen lights up and the metal buzzes as the fans work. The dust and warmth in the room swirl around, so fast that she can see them moving, the fans behind the Machine churning them into something like a wind, and the vibrations of the metal – because this hasn’t been used in so long, and somehow it’s hungry, somehow – make the floorboards shake and the dust in the air shake. She knows it isn’t real. Vic, her Vic, the one inside her head, watches her. He doesn’t say anything, because there’s nothing left for him to say. But he stands in the light coming through the windows and he watches.
She pulls the Crown down from the dock and adjusts it, moving the arms and the pads. There’s no lubricant here, no painkillers, nothing to make this easier. She thinks that’s about right. This should hurt. So she puts the pads onto her head with the Crown itself, and they sit in the same space as the bruises, as she knew they would. She moves a chair from the side of the Machine and then thinks better of it, taking just the cushion instead, and the cushion from another chair, and puts them on the floor. When she’s started she’ll sit on them, or maybe lie down. Whatever feels most comfortable. After a while it won’t be her choice anyway.
So then she flicks through the menus. PURGE. COMMIT. The vibrations through her fingers. One hand on the screen, the other on her chest, where her heart is. She can feel them both, pulsing together so quickly. She slumps down and starts to talk.
If they come in now, and they ask her what she is doing, she’ll tell them. And if they ask her why she’s trying to wrench Vic out, she’ll say, Who said anything about Vic. And she’ll plead with them to let her finish; and she’ll ask for a room here, and tell them about her savings, and say, That should be enough. Put me with him. Let us be whatever.
This is what I want, she will tell them. And she’ll pray that they let her keep on talking, lying there on the floor in agony, screaming the words out, thinking it all through, all about her and about Vic and about everything she can draw on from her entire life, and she’ll beg them to not put her back in, because even though they know how to, now, they would ruin this; and she’ll say, This is what I want.