Chapter 21: Fragments

The first person I see is Haymitch.

If I've died, this is not heaven.

"Well, well. Back from the dead, are we, sweetheart?" he says, peering down at me. I can smell the alcohol off his breath, but I'm too weak to recoil from it. His face blurs in and out.

The room is full of bright, white lights and buzzing and beeping and there are tubes and wires snaking their way all over my body. I feel lost in a bed that seems too big and too soft. Aside from Haymitch's acrid breath, the room has an overpowering antiseptic odor that is so strong it hurts my throat. The whole place is invading my senses with its noise and stench and obnoxious, fluorescent lights, all of which I am not used to after living in the quiet depths of the forest for nearly two years. And where is Gale?

"Gale?" I try to call out, but instead I wheeze. My throat is dry. There's a tube under my nose forcing oxygen into me. I need Gale. Where am I?

My vision keeps blurring in and out and the beeping is getting louder.

"Get a doctor," barks Haymitch. I want to, but I can't seem to move. It takes a moment for me to figure out that he wasn't giving the order to me - I'm the one who needs help.

For a while, consciousness comes and goes in disjointed bits and pieces. I never quite know where I'll wake up next. At one point I find myself in a narrow tube that is scanning my body, and I scream until something cold is injected into my arm and the blackness pulls me under once again. It's safe and predictable and quiet in the dark. Almost comforting, except for the queasy feeling that accompanies it.

One day, I open my eyes and notice that some of the wires are gone, and I feel less dazed than before. But as soon as I realize that I'm still in some kind of sterile, unfamiliar hospital room, it feels like I've been punched in the stomach.

There's a doctor and nurse nearby, looking at some paperwork. They're talking about me.

"… A simple miscarriage, but in her malnourished and weakened state the hemorrhaging and subsequent uterine infection…"

Simple miscarriage? Who is this jackass. I want to punch him. There is nothing simple about losing your baby and bleeding out in the dirt. The physical pain, the searing loss, the guilt of not being able to carry it and keep it safe. He knows nothing.

I want Gale.

At that moment I start to cry, and the doctor finally seems to realize that I'm actually in the room.

"Katniss Everdeen," he says formally. "I'm Doctor Aurelius. Do you know where you are?"

No.

"Do you know what day of the week it is?"

No.

"Can you tell me how many fingers you see in front of you?" He holds up four, all squished together. I blink past them and stare at his face, but nothing about its features are familiar. I just want Gale.

I halfheartedly lift four fingers in response. It takes Dr. Aurelius a moment to look down and see my gesture. He then returns to writing on his clipboard papers and I stop existing, yet again.

"She's disoriented but doesn't appear to be suffering from any head trauma. Potentially avocal, but we'll have to test... "

It's been days, but I haven't seen Gale or a single familiar face since that first encounter with Haymitch. I also still don't know where I am. The nurses regularly and predictably hook up bags of liquid that drip down a tube and through a needle embedded into the back of my hand, but they won't say anything. For food, I'm eventually given some kind of mush that Dr. Aurelius says is bland and will help my body recover from starvation, but it's overpoweringly sweet to my palate and I refuse to eat it. I hurl my pillow and my bedpan and rip the tubes out and try to run away, but my legs collapse beneath me as soon as I stand. The nurses hear my monitors beeping angrily and come to lift me back into the bed. I scream my head off for Gale the whole time, yet they still tell me nothing and finally resort to strapping me down and sedating me. When I awake, the tubes are back in, and Dr. Aurelius is hovering nearby.

"Katniss, your fiancé is here to see you."

For a brief moment, I think he means Gale and has just gotten the title wrong. Instead, Peeta emerges from behind the green curtain, approaching slowly and apprehensively.

So he is alive.

I guess in some perverse way, we are still engaged and the doctor is technically correct. But the person I see in front of me is not the boy with the bread, or the broken one who I survived the arena with, but a tired looking young man in a nondescript uniform. The circles under his eyes stand out like bruises in the fluorescent light. When it becomes apparent that I'm not going to pitch a fit, the doctor looks pleased that his idea to calm me is working and finally leaves us alone.

"Press this button if anything volatile happens," he tells Peeta as he passes.

Peeta doesn't acknowledge Dr. Aurelius in any way, but keeps his eyes on me. His chair scrapes as he pulls it up near the side of my bed. Our eyes are locked on each other, each waiting for the next one's move. He's studying me like he's not sure if I really exist, like I might be a ghost if he were to reach over and touch me. I feel like I knew him in some other lifetime. Which, I guess I did. He's like a very familiar stranger.

Peeta clears his throat. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

"Where's Gale?" I blurt out, then feel a pang of guilt. I should probably be kinder to Peeta, since I did make him believe I was dead for the last two years. He's probably still in shock. I try to remember what it was like for me when I first heard his voice on the radio, then try again. "I… didn't think I'd see you again, either," I say softly. "Hi, Peeta."

"Hey, Katniss."

He sounds weary. I'm suddenly certain that he hates me for running away. He thinks I'm a coward. It's silent except for the machines' buzzing and beeping for a while.

"Where are we?" I finally ask.

"District Thirteen," he answers, running his hand through his messy hair. Blonde. I am a little distracted by it, since I haven't seen the color in so long. "Are you feeling better?"

"But how?" I start, ignoring his question. How did I get here, how did he get here, and how does here even exist when it was supposedly bombed off the map during the Dark Days? There are just too many questions and my tongue can't form them all.

Peeta sighs.

"There's a war going on, Katniss," he says, picking the simplest terms. "District Twelve was bombed. Some of us live here now."

"I know," I say. Peeta looks surprised, but I don't bother to explain about the radio. All of a sudden, a cold jolt pierces through me. "Why hasn't my family come to see me?" I ask.

Peeta leans his forearms on his knees and looks down at his hands. I have a terrible, sinking feeling.

"District Twelve is gone," he finally explains, his eyes glassy like the surface of Blue Lake. "I'm sorry," he adds softly. "So many people didn't make it out. We tried to-"

"And Gale?" I ask, gripping the rails on either side of the bed. I'm holding the tears at bay just long enough to ask this one question. "Where's Gale?"

"Katniss," he says gently, "Gale was the one radioed us to come get you."

"Where is he?" I demand. I can't do this without him. Peeta shakes his head as I run ahead of his explanation.

"It's not that simple. When we first got his signal, we thought it that maybe it was some sort of Capitol trick. That maybe they were using your name to try to lure me out there."

I still don't know exactly what he or Haymitch are doing for the Rebel Alliance, and should probably ask. But I don't.

"You were supposedly dead, so a call like that, out of nowhere… it was unreal. But Gale came clean and told us everything about the fire and how you both escaped in order to prove it really wasn't a Capitol maneuver."

I turn my head away so he won't see my tears. This is too much. Peeta lowers his voice.

"Katniss… when your house burned down and people thought you'd been killed, there were rumors that Snow had done it on purpose. That he'd set you up with a faulty house in Victor's Village and he'd planned your death. It was part of what contributed to the uprising against the Capitol in District Twelve. Just another reason for people not to trust President Snow's government."

I knew it. I killed my family. I'm responsible for all their deaths, for the bombing of the whole district. It's my fault.

"Gale said it was all his idea, and that you didn't even know and shouldn't be held responsible. He set that fire, he kidnapped you, and he was the one who made the Capitol look bad," Peeta continues. "He knew that they'd be after him if they found out that he was still alive, after pulling off something like that."

"So you left him out there?" I say frantically, whipping my head back and startling Peeta. He sits up straight and regains his composure.

"No. He volunteered to bait them. For the cause. He agreed to send interfering radio signals to the Capitol to draw their attention away and divert them to another location if we would just send a hovercraft out there to rescue you."

"So where is he now?" I repeat, one last time.

"We don't know."

"Can't you follow the location of his radio signals, just like the Capitol can?"

"Katniss…" Peeta rubs his eyes. "There are no more signals out there. Do you understand? We're not picking up anything."

I turn my head away and begin to weep, tuning out the rest of his words. All I hear is the end of his final statement.

"... He must've loved you a lot."