PATIENT
Minerva never, in her entire life, would be able to fully recall what happened over the next couple of weeks.
She made it back on the hovercar to Columbia, obviously. But she must have stumbled from place to place in a catatonic state or something, because all Minerva could remember was lying on her bed in Valentino, and not much else. She didn't recall eating anything, but she must have, at least a little bit. She probably only got up to go to the bathroom. The pings came fast and furious, but Min took her interface ring off and put it on the nightstand to ignore them. She ignored all of her calls, too, and the constant knocking on her door. All she did was watch it, covered on almost every single feed on her wallscreen. The failed shot. The humiliation. Eventually, Minerva turned that off, too.
And what did she feel during this time in exile? Oddly enough, nothing. She must have been crying some, because there were mounds of used tissues all around her. But that was all she could remember. Her sleep schedule became rather strange. She slept during the day and was wide awake in the middle of the night. And her sleep wasn't exactly regular, either. It was on a couple hours, off a few more, on again…
During those hideous few hours she spent awake, Min did nothing but stare straight ahead at her blank wallscreen. She didn't feel horrible pain, the kind that made you want to scream and cry and tear up the room. She was numb.
Until the day that her hand wandered into her nightstand drawer to find more tissues.
Minerva turned her head to the side, because her sense of touch was unsuccessful in uncovering more tissues, and then she saw them: the packets of calorie purgers. Hardly any were used, because unlike most pretties, Min burned calories naturally.
The doctors always warned you not to take too many. They were dangerous. Good, thought Min. And then she snapped out of it: Minerva grabbed the box of purgers, and leaped off the bed and into her bathroom, where she got a cup of water. Min popped the little pills out into the palm of her hand, faster and faster until the whole packet was gone. She shoved them all into her mouth and took a good, long drink.
Almost instantly, Min's breathing quickened, and she felt alert for the first time since that fateful night. She took out another pack from the box and did it again. And maybe even again, she didn't know.
Because before long, Minerva's previously sharpened vision was becoming fuzzy at the edges. Her head hurt, and she sat down on the tile, dizzy. Her heart was beating quickly at first, but now it felt like it was trying to hammer its way out of her chest. Minerva began hyperventilating, then panicked, because it felt like she just couldn't get enough oxygen…
000
She awoke in a padded cell.
This must be a dream, Min thought. Except it wasn't. It was all real: the scratchy hospital gown, the sterile smell, the muted pastel colors.
Minerva sat up in her bed and looked around, surveying her surroundings. The room was as spare as it could possibly be, with not even a wallscreen. The few pieces of furniture, as well as the walls, were rounded and soft, like the foolishly childish dorm she had lived in as an ugly.
Suddenly, a door slid open in the apparently seamless walls, and Min's heart skipped a beat. She saw the back of a white-coated doctor.
"…She appears to be awake now, finally, if you want to see her," he was saying. The doctor turned, and her parents appeared. Her mother gasped, and ran towards her immediately, sobbing. "Oh, Minerva!" she cried. Her mother sat right on the bed, practically smothering Min in her arms.
"Back off a bit, Skye," came her fathers voice from above them. "You should probably be careful."
"Of course, you're right," her mother was saying. "Min, honey," she gasped between sobs, "We tried to get in touch with you for weeks! And then…we got a call from the hospital!" She wept hysterically, then caught her breath. "That's where you are, of course, sweetie, the big hospital downtown. Are you okay? Oh, of course you're not, what a silly question! You're just lucky it happened in your bathroom. That room was able to read your vital signs and send an emergency ping, unlike everywhere else in that stupid old house!"
Min didn't say anything for a while, partly because her mother's ridiculous riffs always exhausted her ears, and partly because she was still kind of wondering what the hell was going on.
"Why am I here?" Min asked, in typical monotone fashion.
"Oh, sweetheart! The good doctors told us that you were probably suffering from depression, which led to…attempted suicide!" More weeping.
Was that what it was? Min wondered. Attempted suicide? Maybe. She just knew that the pills would do something bad, and she was feeling self-destructive. Come to think of it, she wouldn't have cared if she did die. Why didn't she go back out into her bedroom when she did it?
"Skye, love, our visiting time is almost up, and we don't want to exhaust our poor daughter. And Min, don't worry, they'll take care of you here. They know what they're doing. You just have to prove to them that you're…mentally stable again, and you'll be out in no time." Her father gave her an encouraging smile. Then the door slid back open, an orderly beckoning her parents away.
About an hour later, another orderly came in with a hovering tray. "Minerva Cable?" he asked in an irritatingly cheerful tone.
"Who else?" she answered dully.
"Just wanted to make sure we're giving you the right pill," he said. "Either I or one of my colleagues will be back at the same time every day to administer it to you." And he handed her a pill and a cup of water.
Min covered her mouth with her hand and placed the pill under her tongue. She pretended to take a sip, then gave the orderly the thumbs-up sign. He smiled and left, and Min spit the pill out into a tissue and placed it in the drawer of her squishy nightstand.
000
Max came by the next day.
As soon as she saw Max's face, her big brown eyes filled with concern, Min's mouth was forced into a smile. The ache in her facial muscles made her realize how long it had been since she had done so.
Max hurried over, sat down on the bed and hugged her wordlessly. Min uncharacteristically hugged back. Finally, Max pulled away and looked at her. Minerva decided that Max's face had never looked so pretty to her before.
"It's been all over the feeds, Min. Both the news and the gossip ones. Minerva Cable, soccer champion, locked up in a wacko chamber!" They both said nothing for a minute. "They don't tell it exactly like that, of course," she continued. "They say you're hospitalized for a nervous breakdown because of our defeat or something." Another long pause. "Oh Min, you've always been so intense. I'm not saying to let things go, but…oh, I know you hate it when people say things like 'it's only a game,' so I won't, but…" And Max sighed deeply.
"Your nails have dirt under them," Max said. "Oh," Min answered. "I haven't showered since…I guess I'll have to go take one."
000
Her third visitor was Az.
When the door opened, there was no screaming, crying, running, or physical molestation. Az was just like her. He calmly walked over to the bed, took her hand, and kissed her wordlessly. "I came as soon as I could," was all he said for a long time. "At first they wouldn't let me in, because I wasn't family or a teammate or something," he explained. "I brought something for you, to cheer you up," he said, smiling, and took a small box out of his jacket's pocket. It was wrapped in purple, Min's favorite color.
She took the gift and carefully unwrapped it. When she popped open the box, Min gasped. "Oh, it's beautiful…" she whispered.
On a background of black velvet was a necklace, the pendant a small silver heart. Min had always been a sucker for heart-shapes. "Let me see it," Az said, and he fastened it around her neck. His touch sent a thrill through her. "It looks great on you," he said, and Min smiled. Az sat with her until his visiting time was up, then he kissed her on the forehead. "See you soon," he whispered.
When her pill orderly came by later that day, his usual middle-pretty smile quickly turned into a look of horror. "Oh, no, no, no!" he cried, and reached for her necklace. "We can't let you have anything like that!" he said, unclasping it. "You can have it back when you're discharged." After he watched Min pretend to take her pill, he left, taking the necklace with him. She hid the pill with all the others.
Min wasn't quite sure why she didn't take the pills. But it probably had something to do with the fact that she didn't want to be doped up on happy drugs (which they undoubtedly were), she wanted to be real, with real emotions: pleasure, yes, but also pain when necessary.
And gradually, gradually, the pain faded all on its own. Her visits increased in length, and somebody finally deemed her "stable" enough to have a wallscreen. The feeds had stopped airing it, and seeing her friends allowed Minerva to think about something other than her soccer career's ignominious end. But she would never forget it.
Eventually, her release documents were approved. Before she left, Min flushed all the pills down her room's toilet.
When she walked out the front door of the hospital to her hovercar, a few hovercams watched. They were probably airing her face on the feeds, with some ridiculous headline scrolling underneath: "Minerva Cable Released from Rehab," or something like that.
But none of that mattered. Minerva still had hopes and dreams. She wanted to be with Az, and become a surgeon. She was human again.
Wow. Sorry for the long time to update, AGAIN. But this chapter was difficult and intense for me to write. And I never expected this story to go this far, so I kind of needed to think about where I would go next. It's all thanks to you, readers!
What inspired me to make this story was the fact that I feel like in all the books, Cable is painted as some kind of demonic monster. Which she isn't, really. I always thought she had a story to tell, and she always haunted me. So I wanted to show that she is, in fact, deeply human. Fun fact: I will not introduce any original characters in this story (besides her parents, but they don't do much). Please review, review, review! It's not over yet! In fact, it's just beginning. -Fanna