Chapter 7 - Inertia
A voice.
Summer stirred lightly. Cotton muffled her hearing. She felt heavy, and tired, and suffocated.
The voice called louder.
Was it God? But didn't Rick repeatedly insist that there was no such thing as god?
And finally, the voice—Rick's voice—broke through. "SUMMER!"
Summer gasped as reality sharply insinuated itself into her consciousness. She recalled where she was, but as her eyes finally adjusted, she could no longer recognize the former dance floor, now littered with dust and debris, which made the long cut on her back sting severely. No more were the wild lights; they were shrouded in twilight darkness, and around her, the grimy scents of a losing fight pervaded her senses: centuries worth of dust, disturbed; traces of the toxic drug; alien blood. She peeled off the gas mask, threw it off to a side, and instantly regretted it, if not for the relatively "fresher" air compared to when she had worn it.
She got up laboriously, ignoring the hot pain in her back. Following the grating voice to its source, she found Rick cradling Morty next to the wall, his back turned to her.
"Rick," she breathed.
Rick turned partly to her, and something in his mien chilled Summer: what might have been melancholy or rage shrouded the hard eyebrows, making him look older, feeble.
"Let's go," he said, "Federation will be swarming here soon; no doubt Joel has called for help after hearing the Flooble's war cry."
As he hoisted Morty up into his arms and led the way outside, Summer realized for the first time that he hadn't been stuttering, twitching, nor walking in zigzags.
~o0O0o~
Jerry stared hard at the phone, which innocently reposed on its hook on the kitchen wall. He brimmed with excitement at the prospect of calling Beth and letting her know that Rick got Morty in trouble again: and then Beth's anger would be redirected elsewhere, and he could keep his sink!
On the other hand, Morty probably wasn't in any danger, as Rick had repeatedly assured them—and hate him though he might, Rick always delivered. Nodding to himself, Jerry picked up the receiver, sucked in a deep breath, and dialed Beth's office.
"St. Equis Hospital, Dr. Smith speaking. How can I help you?"
He grinned. "Beth! It's me."
He could hear his wife smacking her forehead with her palm. "What do you want? Didn't I tell you not to talk to me until you put back our old sink?"
"I just wanted to let you know that our son is perfectly safe. There's nothing to worry about. Zero! So just leave it all to me."
"Okay then. Carry on," Beth said, impatience trickling into her voice. "Gotta go; I have an operation in ten minutes."
Jerry hung up. He puffed up his chest and pumped the air victoriously. He talked to her! And she wasn't too angry anymore. That was good. All he needed to ensure now was that Rick and Summer brought Morty back before she got home.
As soon as he had walked back to the couch, the phone rang again. Begrudgingly did he get up and yank the receiver from the base.
A rough, largely obscured voice spoke to him in what he supposed was a greeting.
"Who is this?" Jerry imposed prudently. He had expected it to be Beth, for some follow-up nagging.
Some adjustment seemed to have been made, for the line crackled and beeped uncomfortably in Jerry's ear; he remained riveted for some seconds.
"Dad," came the clearer, but breathless, reply. "Dad...can you hear me now?"
He recognized Summer's voice through the warble of intervening space, but more than that, her tone was grave; that couldn't be interference. "Summer? What's the word? Did you find him?" he inquired warily.
"Dad," resumed Summer after a pause, "please don't worry any more than you need to. But please get mom right away. It's important. We'll open a portal in the garage for you in five minutes."
"Five minutes! And what about Morty?"
"Dad, please. We'll meet you soon."
With that, the line was dropped, and Jerry was left gaping at the lifeless phone in his hands, unable to process the urgency in Summer's words. Nonetheless, he let the panic seep into his nerves to the ends of his fingers and toes. Was something wrong? What was wrong? Why didn't Morty say anything? Why couldn't they just say what happened? Why, furthermore, couldn't they say where they were going?
A dark cloud stormed over his head and followed him as he paced the length of the kitchen, trying to shave off the excitable energy in his chest; he turned off the television, sought the quiet of his room, and, finding no solace in those places, found his way to the eventual meeting place, the garage.
The door was messed up from Rick's previous entry. He recalled the jarring crash from very early that morning; that was the only possible reason a hole this size would appear in the otherwise sturdy white metal. It looked like a hurricane had gone through the place: clothes, tools, broken glass, spilled liquids decorated the once-pristine floor. The only livable area was Rick's workstation, where an unfinished robot was being assembled.
Jerry gnashed his teeth and resisted the urge the throw the mess into a further, irredeemable mess. Instead, he gave the work table a grudging kick, and another follow-up, which did nothing to calm his nerves.
With the five-minute deadline ticking away—and Beth's operation in less than ten!—he had no option but to call her once more, admit his folly, and beg her to come home soon. There was no hesitation in his mind as he, for the third and final time that afternoon, picked up the phone.
~o0O0o~
Summer exhaled. I can do this, she repeated to herself, I can do this...
Rick knew for a fact that she could do it, seeing how she knew her way around the ship controls enough to crash it on purpose, so maneuvering the thing should be of no consequence.
Rick had bypassed the driver's seat and went to the back, where he gingerly laid Morty and began to apply first aid. He laid out four syringes filled with a deep blue liquid on the floor (kicking aside as much litter as he could under the seat for space). With as much haste as he could afford without sacrificing precision, he emptied three of them into Morty's arm, close to the wound. Immediately, Morty's contorted face relaxed into one of slumber; Summer exhaled slowly and tried to relax on the driver's seat.
She gave the keys an experimental twist. The engine came to life with a satisfying, gentle whir; the sound, no longer drudging and laborious, was a gentle hum under her hand, as if urging her on. Before she could press down on the gas pedal, a sharp prick registered on her right arm.
Rick stowed the fourth syringe out of sight, but she had seen its glint under the darkening sky. "You're still hurt. But it should help with the pain," he explained briefly, "Now get us out of here."
Summer looked back at Rick. He was busy bandaging Morty's shoulder wound with—no!—his lab coat, now torn into strips and dyed a dark red. He worked quickly: now he was applying the heated end of a glue gun to seal the stomach wound; now he was rubbing a balm, or gel, that made the bleeding stop; now he propped up Morty's torso, Summer presumed, so that the blood flow there was minimized.
"What are you waiting for?" barked Rick.
Summer complied: she brought them up into sky, and soon the patchwork gray melted away into the black emptiness of space. Five minutes, she recalled; they had to open a portal in five minutes. From Treicel to near the familiar spiral arms of the Milky Way took a short journey of half a minute, with the hyper lightspeed boost on. With the aid of a hologram on the dashboard, Summer navigated to a space station that she recalled having visited once before.
Summer unclenched her white hands from the wheel and let out a long, tremulous breath. In the back, Rick sat on the floor by Morty. There was nothing more he could do, and his face said as much. Morty's chest rose and fell in shallow, but even, breaths; Rick, looking equally pale, did the same.
"Let's go," urged Rick.
Summer turned back to him. "The portal."
"Oh yeah." Rick unpocketed his portal gun, now stained blue from the contact it made with Luria's Flooble material as it disintegrated. "We should park first."
"You said five minutes."
"We were still on Treicel when we told them that. Who knows how long it's been."
"You do, of course," Summer jested lightheartedly with a roll of her eyes. She refocused on docking at the outer wheel of the space station, where at one of the giant rings, the sign "EMERGENCY ROOM" was printed.
~o0O0o~
Beth and Jerry flowed anxiously into the familiar waiting room of that hospital. That they were here, that some emergency had required a visit to this place, rather than an ordinary hospital! Such trepidation overcame them. They looked around for any nurse that might assist them, but finding none, they contented themselves to find a seat among the cold row of chairs praising the television. In holding each other's hands in the freezing air conditioning, Beth found a warmth in Jerry's concern that she thought had been replaced by antipathy toward her endless nagging, her unrealistic expectations of him, her desire to be loved above and beyond her own merits. Her heart brimmed with discomfort, which resting her head on his shoulders temporarily alleviated.
Rick had been retching in the restroom when they arrived, and as he emerged, he walked over to them, wearing no trace of remorse. "Follow me," he said, with no greeting or formality. But the Smiths were used to that; they trailed him through several pristine halls that each smelled like death, as calmly as their anxious hearts permitted. But they looked left and right at every moment to ascertain that the nurses rushing dead bodies past them were not carrying Morty or Summer.
A powerful, utterly irrational love, such was natural to mothers and fathers, bloomed in their hearts and welled up through their eyes in hot tears as they came to the intensive care unit. They saw Morty hooked up to more wires and machines than they could count.
Rick held his hands behind his back and allowed them to enter ahead of him. Beth wanted to rush in, but Jerry found his courage from this morning, held Beth's arm, and confronted Rick once more.
"You said nothing was the matter, that Morty was just being 'pathetic'! How did this happen?"
Rick shrugged.
"And they had to operate on my son!"
"I know, I saw it."
"You were responsible for him!"
"And I failed. Big whoop for the most astute father of the century," and Rick raised his hands in mock celebration.
"Dad!" Beth stepped forward and slapped him. She gasped at her own boldness, held her stinging palm to her chest, and looked away. "Did you know? You could have done anything, literally anything you wanted, and I would forgive you: because you're my father, and I love you—need you, wanted you back in my life for more than ten years. But this... This has to stop. I won't let you put Morty or Summer in harm's way. No more exceptions. I don't care what the benefits are, nor if you disagree with school, nor if it doesn't suit you to have your own grandchildren safe and sound! They're mine! And I won't let you do to them what you did to me!" Her strength deserted her at last, and she covered her face with both hands.
Rick found a misrotated tile on the floor rather interesting at that moment. He refused to meet the hurt in his daughter's eyes, and therefore his own. "Just say the word..." he paused.
Jerry steered his sobbing wife away from Rick and into the ICU, where, previously out of sight, Summer sat on a bed in a hospital gown. She was awake and playing with her phone. She brightened when she saw them.
"Mom! Dad!"
Judging by her tone, both parents assumed that she was fine, but when they ran and embraced her, she grimaced in pain.
"I'm gonna get the coolest scar when this heals," she excused herself weakly, pointing with her thumb at her back. "It's really not his fault," she whispered, as if she had heard the conversation outside. But at this point, she knew that they were beyond swaying.
~o0O0o~
Morty opened his eyes and had to shut them immediately: the lights overhead were blinding—was he still on Treicel? Had all that been another starvation-induced nightmare? Did he imagine Luria's horrible laugh? Did he imagine Summer's bravery? Did he imagine he was saved? That he was safe?
He wanted to sob away those concerns and just go back to sleep, wait for nightfall. No matter what Luria wanted, he wanted no part of it: he just had to find some stranger to beg for a ride, and he'd hitchhike back home if it took him years. He could stand being a beggar, working for scraps, maybe selling his organs or his voice or his brain for a chance to get back home. If Rick wasn't coming, he himself was all he could depend on.
But something warm was laid on top of his left shoulder. He flinched in pain, and remembering the reason that pain existed—he sat up with a start.
On one side of him sat his parents; Beth rested her head against Jerry's shoulder, while the latter looked manfully proud at being able to support his wife at such a crucial moment (and unbeknownst to them, happy that his sink might get a chance to stay after all this hubbub). On the other, Summer was playing with her phone on the next bed. The smell gave it all away: the psychedelic scents of Treicel were replaced by the clean, sterile smell of rubbing alcohol. He recognized this place, only because he'd been here once before: St. Gloopy Noops Hospital, reputedly the best hospital in the galaxy.
He was safe, he was safe, his brain cried, but after being so greatly betrayed in the past week, he kept his celebration in check. Luria was a traitor, Rick cared nothing for him... He vaguely recalled the old man's face looking over him with something akin to sadness in his eyes. But that couldn't have been possible!
"Good to have you back, son!" Jerry ruffled his hair fondly.
Morty smiled meekly at them, then he looked at Summer. She had noticed him moving and was now searching the little drawer between their beds for something.
"Summer?"
"Wait." She found the item she sought and handed it to him gravely.
Morty accepted the item. "This...is my phone."
"You left it in the ship," she said. She returned to flicking on her news feed on her own phone, leaving Morty to wonder what her solemn face meant. In fact, everyone seemed to be wearing the same mask.
"What's going on?" he finally asked. He unlocked the phone with his PIN and saw that it was fully charged. Odd. It was drained when he last saw it.
The reason finally leapt at him—the grounds for everyone's silence: Rick's absence made itself felt in the static in the air.
"Where's Rick?" he demanded.
Summer pointed at his phone. Beth hid her face in Jerry's shoulder.
Morty looked at his phone and noticed an unread email from himself. "Huh?" He tapped the notification and began to read:
Morty,
I swore I'd never let anything like Jellybean happen to you again, and yet we found you stranded on Treicel like little sheep in a den of wolves. That place is horrible if you don't know what's going on. I call that place my home for the escape it brings me. You've seen your fair share of shit, but that place wasn't for your eyes to see, nor your ears to hear, nor your lungs to breathe in.
The air there might as well be poison. The lights are magnified tenfold, its loneliness unrivaled. Its gravity is a hundred times stronger than Earth's. Time flies slowly in that place. I left you there about six hours. You must have spent days, and as I calculate it, it was a week of torture to you.
I'm only stating the facts. I was responsible for your safety, and I failed. So let me tell you this, and I'll say it just once, with no room for argument. I'm leaving you and the family for good, because I am a lunatic who cannot and will not change—I refuse to. My mind is my prison, but I would rather die alone than bring down anyone else into a misery you don't want to be acquainted with.
I'm leaving my ship to you and Summer; she's a good pilot; maybe she'll teach you someday. Go home, go back to school. And pay attention, I won't bother you anymore. Grow up. Have an ultimately ordinary, mundane life, whatever you deem best for yourself. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
Good luck, and goodb—
A guttural scream escaped Morty as he tore his eyes from the phone and very nearly threw it against the wall. Words, questions, formed in his chest, but they got stuck in his throat. His eyes brimmed with tears, his face burned, his chest was so heavy that he needed to run, to jump, to fly out the window.
"How long have I been out?!" he begged, scrambling to escape the bed sheets that held him in place.
Jerry looked embarrassed; Beth answered for him.
"A day," she said gently, stroking his hair. "We...didn't try to stop him. And for once," she looked at her husband with glassy eyes, "I agree with Jerry. It was about time he left."
"Why did you let him?" seethed Morty. "I still need to give that piece of shit a piece of my mind!"
"Morty, son," Jerry began in a pacifying tone. "He put you in danger. I don't know the specifics; I don't think I need to."
"I do!" cried Morty.
"It had to stop," insisted Jerry. "Taking you out at odd hours? And now you're hurt beyond belief? That—" he pointed at Morty's stomach, where a spot of red was showing through his hospital gown, "—that is unforgivable."
"But what about me? You never asked me anything! I'm not done with that fucking bastard yet—Summer!" He sought warmth in his sister, but only found a similar distress in her brown eyes.
"I couldn't stop him, Morty," she said. She turned her back on the three and covered her head with her blanket.
"But you were there! What did he say?" No one answered him. "Did you all just let him?" He swiped at his tears with his arm; he saw how much weight he had lost, and the color he had gained under the unforgiving orange sun.
A few nurses and some neighboring patients came to inspect the noise at that point. Morty was put under sedation as an immediate treatment. The doctors deemed him delusional after the stress he'd been under. They agreed that Treicel was no longer a myth, despite its distance and its lack of residents; indeed, they had treated previous survivors before, but with little to no success. Thanks to the regeneration gel that Rick used to treat Morty's dangerous injuries, they promised Morty could be discharged within the week if he presented no further psychological breakdowns. He was only able to leave after three.
Up Next: "Morty liked to imagine that his patience was well-tested and rather malleable after enduring Treicel's endless day, but eventually, he realized he was quite the opposite." An epilogue.
