A/N: I honestly had no idea what to expect when it comes to burning alcohol, only that alcohol is flammable. So I did some research and lit a shot glass of isopropyl alcohol on fire (turns out Malibu doesn't have a high enough proof?). Turns out, it doesn't seem to just burns up the alcohol and I think that, especially if there is a source other than alcohol (e.g. epidermis), the flame would keep on burning provided it has enough oxygen to feed it. I'm not sure, though. I've never actually lit myself on fire. Any pyros (or, um, bartenders or chemists) that would like to share their wealth of knowledge on this subject? ;)
Thanks once again for the 4 reviews- I think that's the most I've gotten for a single chapter so yay! Very exciting for a yucky and (sigh) snowy Monday. You are lovely!
CHAPTER 34
I don't know if the smell of burning flesh alerted her, but not long after I light the ethanol, Hazelle bursts into the room. She looks at my leg and her eyes grow wide.
"Katniss!" she cries. She looks around the room and her eyes settle on the dense wool Saltillo blanket at the end of my bed. She smothers the flames with the heavy wool blanket and I am surprised to find that I once again feel nothing…not even pain.
Hazelle puts her hands on either side of my face.
"Katniss, Katniss, honey! What did you think you was doin'?" she asks. I say nothing because I can think of nothing to say. She shakes me.
"You tryin' to hurt yourself? Hm?" My blank eyes shift to her face. I…I don't know. I just had to do it. I felt like I had to do it or I'd disappear into nothing. Have I lost it?
Hazelle wraps her arms around me in a tight hug. She holds me and rocks me like a little child. I don't cry. I just sit there.
"We gotta get you to a hospital, baby," she says, stroking my hair. My muscles instantly stiffen and I struggle to break free of her grasp.
"No!" I scream. "No, no, no, no, no! No hospital. No hospital! Please!"
"Shh, honey, honey…" she tries to calm me.
"Please, Hazelle. Please!" I plead with her.
I can't go to the hospital. I'll be found out. I'll be admitted. Haymitch will come get me and I will have to go back to a non-home where the one person on whom I could count is in the arms of every girl within a 100-mile radius, giving all of himself to them in the way that he did to me. He gave everything to me. Everything. Now I have nothing of him. I have nothing left to give him. I will have to be this person forever. I will have to be Madge Undersee forever and hide in District Two, waiting for peacekeepers to find me and bring me back to Haymitch in handcuffs where I will probably become some social experiment. What am I talking about? I don't know where to turn. I just feel like a wild animal that's been backed into a corner and there's no way out.
"Honey, shh," she tries to soothe me with the same words over and over again. "I'll call Gale, honey…he'll know—"
"No! No!" I begin to cry, openly and hysterically. "You can't tell Gale. Please, Hazelle!" I grasp at her blouse, nearly tearing the material. "He's—you're—all I've got now. I can't have him know…"
Hazelle clearly doesn't know what to say and she's frightened. She knows I need medical attention in more ways than one but she also knows that Madge Undersee has no insurance because she's already dead. The hospital wouldn't take me.
Instead, Hazelle just shakes her head. "Child, what happened today?"
"I don't know," I whisper. I shake my head, my face burrowing into my palms. "I don't know…"
We sit in silence for some minutes, Hazelle cradling me in the bed. I would have never pictured this situation but the mothering is oddly comforting and I wonder what it would feel like to have my mother's physical affection in this way. Hazelle pets my hair and smoothes out the tangles. She avoids removing the blanket, probably fearful that the fibers have already fused to my wounds.
"We don't gotta tell Gale, pretty girl," she whispers. "But you can't do this again. You gotta get to a hospital."
"I can't go to a hospital, Hazelle. You know why."
She nods in understanding.
"I'm gon' let you rest. Try to calm down and sleep some."
I don't sleep. Instead, various scenarios play out in my head. My thoughts are racing and I just can't slow them down enough to rationalize each one. I'm sweaty yet chilled. I must fall asleep eventually because the next time I wake, the sun is once again an early-morning sun, beckoning me to rise for the day. I see a bottle of sleep syrup on the night stand next to my bed. Hazelle must have given it to me while I was dazed, staring straight ahead, eyes glazed over. I can only hope that she told Gale that I was ill and that he left it at that and extended my sick day.
I hear a knock at the door and soon, Hazelle peaks her head in.
"Mornin'," she greets me with a glass of water. "How's the leg? It hurt?" I shake my head no.
"I told Gale you was sick with a fever and he didn't ask no questions," she offers, patting my hand.
"It's okay," I responded. "Gale already knows."
Hazelle brushes a stray strand of hair from my eyes. "Honey, listen—" she begins and I hear someone in the doorway. My attention turns to the entrance to my bedroom.
"Who's there?" I ask apprehensively and feel my heart begin to beat faster. I can't breathe. They're here to take me back.
A woman steps forward. I know her immediately…she's familiar and yet so very different somehow. She looks down on me in the bed and all the color drains from her face, as if she's seen a ghost.
"You…you…" she starts slowly toward my bedside as if she's approaching a wounded wild animal. "Is it really you, baby?"
She sits down at my side and as she studies my face more closely, the hint of smile that had danced across her delicate features fades. She squints a little.
"Kat—Katniss?"
"Yes, Mother. It's me. Not Prim."
She doesn't hug me but awkwardly pats my arm. She doesn't know what to do with me.
"But for all intensive purposes, I'm Madge. You can just call me Madge, if it's easier." I'm still protecting her from any sort of emotional turmoil. It's like a compulsion.
"Hazelle sent me a blip in District 0, telling me it was an emergency…that she needed a house-call as soon as I could get out on a train for District 2. I didn't…I didn't know…" my mother begins. It's obvious that Hazelle had purposely left out the important information regarding who the patient might be.
"Well, what is the trouble?" my mother asks, now using her professional voice.
I simply unpeel the blanket from my leg. It takes some doing and it's uncomfortable but not painful. The smell is terrible. Hazelle gasps, horror-stricken. My mother requests that Hazelle wait in the next room and tells her that she will call for her should she need anything.
My mother shakes her head disapprovingly. "These are third-degree burns," she comments.
She sets about debriding the wound with a steady pulse of sterilized saline water which she quickly suctions out. Afterwards, she smears a chemical ointment over the entire wound and covers it with layers of gauze.
As she carefully cleans my wound, she cautiously broaches the topic I knew would be inevitable.
"I talk to Haymitch, you know. I like to know how you are doing."
I say nothing. She is, after all, the one who relinquished custody of me to Haymitch.
"I know about you disappearing and leaving Peeta behind, Katniss. I know about Peeta and Johanna. He isn't taking it well."
So it is true. I want so badly to cry the memory of the picture away but I can't.
"Isn't taking it well?" I reply sardonically.
"Why did you leave?" she asks gently. I can't believe this woman is asking me all of this.
"I'm pissed," I say quietly.
"I'm sorry, what?" she asks.
"I'm pissed!" I scream in her face. "I'm angry that you would just sell me to Haymitch, mother! Just sell me like I'm nothing! After all these years of caring for you and Prim…you can't even see to it that I'm cared for. You can't even care for me, your last remaining child! You just cast me aside as if your life in the Seam never existed."
Her face betrays no emotion and it irks me.
"We aren't so different, you and I, Katniss," she says evenly.
"We're completely different," I bite back.
"After your father died, I nearly lost my mind. Peeta's not gone, Katniss. He's not completely gone. You've just had a misstep."
I roll my eyes. "It isn't that simple."
"But it is!" she says. "You're just making it complicated. Look, I knew I could do nothing for you if you stayed with me. Someone had to care for you, Katniss. You obviously can't care for yourself," she says, motioning toward the wound.
"How am I supposed to care for you, hm? How? I could barely keep you alive as it was. But Haymitch…Haymitch kept both you and Peeta alive in even more dire circumstances. Regardless of his methods, he never hurt you. He saw to it that you were looked after and care—"
"He sold us, Mother! He put us on display! He manipulated us and exploited our feelings!" She begins to attempt to protest but I cut her off. "No! Did you know that he allowed our most private moments to be filmed. Did you see that episode where Peeta and I had sex? We had sex for the first time on national programming, Mother. Did you know that?"
She looks away, ashamed, and admits, "No. No, I didn't watch that one."
"Ha. So you can sit here and preach at me about how effing thankful I should be to you for leaving me in the care of a money-hungry alcoholic and you can't even find it in yourself to care enough to take a half hour or hour or whatever the hell it was out of your day to even watch the illegal show about me to see how I was doing?" The words are just flowing from me. She has nothing to say. She just has that stupid blank stone face.
"Thank you for the medical care. But tell anyone that I'm here and I'll make certain that the cameras find me for an interview and I'll let everyone know how you stayed in bed for days on end, high on morphling, while your eight-year old daughter cried at the foot of your bed, begging you for something to eat."
My mother doesn't look me in the eye but instead packs up her instruments soundlessly and leaves the room.
I suck down another few drops of sleeping syrup and sink back into oblivion.