Utopia

Chapter Twenty-Four - Some and Now

She was drunk. She was so drunk she couldn't see, but Lys still hadn't come.

Susannah was still stopping by her room. Before work, after work, sometimes during lunch. Kira had all but barred her door, but the lawyer didn't give up. Because the door was locked, she had to knock, and she called consolations through the wood, hoping to entreat Kira out of her den.

The traveler registered her attempts with the same depth in which she felt the gravity of her own mass. She hardly missed it when it was gone.

The impression of a ghost beside her told her in Kira's own voice to let Susannah in, but a ghost could do nothing, and Kira didn't listen.

~/~

Lys falls three times before she stops getting up. It isn't all at once.

At first, it's only missing the last step. Stumbling over her own feet. Catching her hip on the corners and her knees buckling the first time she tries to stand, so that she falls back into her seat.

The second time, she is walking down the hall, and she has to brace herself against the wall to stay upright.

The final time, it's morning and Lys putters in the kitchen. One of them has told a joke—it doesn't matter who, and it doesn't matter what the joke was. It only matters that they're laughing. It only matters that Lys is looking at Kira, and Kira at Lys.

She collapses then, without a word more and a slight look of shock upon her face. Kira spends too long trying to help her back up.

Then she yells for the phone to call 911.

Lys is being loaded into an ambulance ten minutes later, and Kira can't go with. There are too many things to pass through, there's enough of a ruckus to make it a risk, and Kira doesn't even care, but Lys cares.

She chases the ambulance for as long as she can, then asks passing pedestrians for directions to the hospital. It's by luck alone that they live anywhere close, but it's still noon by the time she reaches the building.

Lys has already been there alone for hours.

The waiting room is almost empty, and Kira walks right up to the desk.

"Can I see Ly- Elyssa Murphy please?" she asks, her voice shaking.

The woman—Maddie by the name on her badge—gives Kira a single, sympathetic frown and checks her computer.

"Murphy... Murphy..." she mumbles. "Elyssa O. Murphy?"

Kira nods.

"Are you her granddaughter?"

"No," she answers without thinking, and it's the wrong answer to give, but Kira cannot help but refuse the implication. She quickly lies, "I'm her caretaker, unofficially. She's the only one left and I have a lot of free time, so I look after her. Please, she's really important to me. Can I see her?"

Maddie's frown turns pitying, "I'm sorry sweetheart, but only family can visit at this time."

Kira bites down her quick frustration. "And that would be great, but her family is gone. I'm the only one she has right now. Please, can I see her?"

"When her family retur-"

"She doesn't have any family!" Kira nearly shouts, nearly crying, and the woman's eyes flash with surprise.

And yet Kira can't cry. There aren't any tears, but her breath is catching and releasing from her chest in sobs, her eyes are burning, and she can't stop her shoulders from shaking. "Her family's gone, don't you get it? It's just her and me, and I want to see her."