NUMB

Day Twenty-Two (pt. 3) - Elyse

I am given a small, round white pill to take. The nurse says it will settle my stomach and prevent any further vomiting today. I swallow the pill and then I am told I can leave. Edie and I leave the patient room, but linger in the hallway.

"What did Jet say to you?" Edie speaks in a hushed tone, standing close to me.

"I don't know, he was not able to finish his sentence. He thinks the antiviral is not what we are being told it is. We should—" I stop talking as a couple of nurses walk past us. "We should find him."

"We can check the courtyard, maybe he's posted there today."

I nod and we begin to head down the hallway, towards the double doors at the end. But something stops me halfway. I recognize the kid that is sitting in one of the chairs lined up against the wall. He looks sweaty, his face blotchy and his nose is chapped. His copper hair is greasy and a strand of it keeps falling over his eye. He pushes it away and then notices me staring at him. His pale blue eyes meet mine.

"Hey," he says. "Dead eyes."

"Your name is Quinn, right?"

He nods and wipes his nose on his sleeve. "Yeah." His gaze drifts over to Edie, but then shoots back to me.

"Are you sick?"

"Ugh," he scrunches his nose up and frowns. "Hard core. I woke up this morning and blew chunks all over my bed. It was nasty, all brown and rank smelling. You'd think something died in there."

Edie inhales sharply, and I nod my head. Quinn experienced the same thing I did. Although, I wouldn't have said something died in my room. "Have any other Ones been in for the same thing this morning?"

"Uh," Quinn stares up at the ceiling as he thinks about it. "Yeah, I think so. Maybe four or five of us? Why?"

"Just asking." I look over at Edie. Her eyes are wide and she bites at her bottom lip. I look back at Quinn again. "Have any Two's come in with the same sickness?"

"Yeah, a bunch of them. Whatever is making everyone sick, it hit them hard. That girl, Krysta, the one who beat the crap out of me, was in here earlier." Quinn laughs and his smile spreads across most of his face. "She looked like garbage. Just awful. I say it's payback for her attacking me. I didn't even do anything to her that day. She just walked up to me and hit me." He wipes his nose again. "Well, looks like it's come back to bite her in the ass."

"Thanks, Quinn." I turn to Edie and gesture for her to keep walking.

"Hey! I still don't know your name!" Quinn calls out after us.

I look over my shoulder, but do not stop walking. "Elyse."

"You're pretty okay for a Three, Elyse!" He laughs, but it turns into a coughing fit.

"I hope he's going to be okay." Edie says, her fingers hovering near her mouth, like she wants to chew on them some more. "He's just a kid, Elyse."

"I know. Let's see if we can find Jet."

///

Jet is not in the courtyard. My only thought is that he is back on post at the East Gate. There's no way we would be able to get to him over there. Numb are not allowed near the Gates.

Edie and I sit in our usual spot in the courtyard, trying to come up with a plan.

"We could try to sneak out to the East Gate." Edie says.

I shake my head. "There are too many Wardens over there. We'll have to try to catch him when he is not on post." Only I have no idea when that is. My chest flutters and I press my hand against it. That has happened three times now. "Edie?"

"Hm?"

"What does your heartbeat feel like?"

"My heartbeat?" She presses her hand to her chest and sits like that for a minute. "I'm not sure. It's not something I can really feel. I mean, that first day, the day when I started to feel things, I could feel it beating quickly. But I was panicky then. I don't think you feel it normally."

"Oh." I let my hand fall to my lap, push the imaginary feeling to the back of my mind.

"Why do you ask?"

"No reason." I turn my attention to the courtyard, all the Numb mingling with one another. It's too early for there to be a lot of people out here, but the few that are play cards or toss a ball back and forth.

There are blood stains on the concrete from Quinn and Krysta's fight. Everyone avoids walking over them. I stare at the stains, the droplets that spread out across the ground.

The Wardens had come rushing into the courtyard that day to break up the fight. If there was another fight, would Jet come running to break that one up as well? I scan the Compound's walls. He would not be able to leave his post if he were on the East Gate right now.

But he had come to the infirmary when I was there. Where had he come from then?

"Did you notice Jet in the infirmary when we got there earlier?" I ask.

Edie turns her head in my direction, squints her eyes and then shakes her head. "No, he wasn't there when we got there."

"But after we got there, when we were going to the patient room? Did you see him come in then?" I think about his flushed face and the way he was breathing heavily. Could he have ran all the way to the infirmary from the East Gate? He would have had to have gone all the way around the Compound, to the north side and come in through there, then run to the back of the building. I cannot imagine why he would do that.

"You know, I think I might have seen him. He looked kind of out of breath, right? He came in from the east side of the building."

"What?" I think back to when I had seen him. He had come in from the east side corridor. There is no outside access to the corridor though, and you can only get in there if you are in the building to begin with. "Then he was already in the building?"

"He must have been." Edie says.

I stand up and dust my pants off, hold my hand out to help Edie up off the ground. She pulls herself up and looks at me, asks, "What are you thinking?"

"That we should go see if he's in the east corridor."