The Swailing

ECCO: Enough

Finn wakes me up a couple times during the night, asks me my name, has me count to 10. I obey groggily, and then he wraps me up in his arms again and I fall quickly back to sleep.

In the morning our bodies are still intertwined. I smell the aroma of coffee. I don't drink coffee, never have – caffeine and stimulants are listed – but the thought of something warm, anything warm, entices me. Finn and I disentangle our limbs without speaking. It feels like something has changed during the night, shifted while we slept wrapped around each other. I put down my hood and run my hands through my hair. I touch the growing bump on my forehead and wince, but drop my hand when I see Finn watching me.

"Thanks for warming up my feet," I say to distract him before he starts apologizing again.

Finn smiles and nods. "My pleasure."

No, I think. The pleasure was all mine.

Jordan doesn't have much food – his cabinets are fairly bare and I wonder if it's a guy thing or if it's because each citizen gets a rationed amount of food, just like the heat. Maybe Finn and I being here, eating Jordan's food, would put a dent into his monthly allowance. I whisper to Finn that we should eat on our own rather than use up any of Jordan's supplies. He agrees.

We shower quickly in barely warm water and, with stomachs grumbling, Jordan takes us to the university where he is studying. It is in the middle of a huge medical complex consisting of fifty square blocks of hospitals and research facilities. I am amazed by the scope of it. In Optima hospitals are small – like an average-sized office building – and mostly exist for people who have had accidents or very minor health issues. Here Finn tells me there are floors and floors of patients with cancer, heart disease, mental health problems and illnesses I've never even heard of.

"And they treat everyone?" I ask, amazed.

Jordan nods.

"How do they pay for that? Who insures all these sick people?"

"It's like the heat in my apartment," Jordan explains. "Everyone is covered by the government. But everyone pays for it." He lowers his voice a little. "I've even heard that other sovereigns pay ECCO to take their sick."

"What?"

"Places like Optima give ECCO money for the people who come here for treatment. Like a medical subsidy. It's cheaper than treating them themselves."

This floors me. And makes me angry. "Optima knows that people come here for treatment?"

"Oh yeah. They know."

Then I remember a friend of mine whose dad had a heart attack, and how he got great treatment in a state-of-the-art hospital up near San Francisco.

"But Optima treats some people."

"Minor illnesses or injuries," Finn says. "Or wealthy people who can pay for it."

I think about my friend. They live in a house similar to ours, but she does have new clothes more often than I do. Maybe they are wealthy – it's hard to tell in Optima, where consumption is so limited and regulated. In Prospera it was easy to identify the rich – they made sure you could, with their huge houses and cars and closets full of clothes, their identifying mounds of garbage on their curbs on garbage day. But in Optima wealthy people blend in with everyone else. My friend's dad may have made a lot of money – if what Finn says is true, that's probably why he could afford medical treatment – but I never knew it.

I think of my mother, who left Optima because of Camden's size and her health, and suddenly I'm filled with disdain for the place where I grew up. A place where the government has been hijacked by the health insurance system so that the two are so intertwined there is no difference. Just like the South, with their God and government all jumbled up together.