Monday morning Mark awakens on the narrow couch, surprised that he fell asleep in the first place, to Elisabeth and Jim speaking in hushed tones in the kitchen. Still half asleep, Mark watches the pair, waiting until Jim disappears in the bedroom to get up himself. "Morning," he tells Elisabeth who smiles in return.
Mark is running his hands through short cropped hair as Maddy stumbles down from the loft, still sleepy. "Mom?" she asks Elisabeth, who is making a quick breakfast. "Do I have to go to school today?" she mumbles as she wipes the sleep out of her eyes.
"Of course," Elisabeth says quickly. A sudden shadow then crosses her face. "Why? Are you alright? Do you feel okay?"
"Yes!" Maddy blurts, suddenly wide awake. "I … I didn't mean like … that. I've been fine. I am fine."
"And you'd tell me, if you weren't?"
"Yes, mom," Maddy moans. "Stop doctoring me." She turns to flop on the couch and almost lands on Mark. He grabs her arm to balance her. "Sorry!" she squeals, but Mark just laughs. Maddy moves to another chair and Mark folds up the blanket he was sleeping with. He eyes Maddy's attire out of the corner of his eye, noting that she usually gets ready before coming out to the living room in the morning. Now she wears a teal tank top and dark, short sleeping shorts. Her hair is in a messy, lopsided ponytail but her eyes are already clear and alert, all remnants of sleep gone. Focus, Mark tells himself. Focus on anything but her, think of anything else. You are being ridiculous.
Elisabeth asks to speak to Maddy for a moment and Maddy wanders into the kitchen and helps get breakfast together. Elisabeth explains that the shelter Mrs. Young was staying at messaged them early this morning since they were her emergency contact. She started coughing up blood in the middle of the night and was sent to the hospital. Maddy drops the bowl she's holding, and Mark rushes to help her clean it up. "Just let me stay home!" Maddy says. "I've already done all of my work for today, and turned it in. Do you want to see my Plex? I can show you that everything was sent!"
"Maddy, that isn't the problem, and you know that. Dad can't take off and I … I don't know if I will be able to call out of the hospital at such short notice." Maddy and Mark exchange a glace, Mark understanding the problem.
"Mrs. Shannon," Mark starts, still looking at Maddy who's violently shaking her head. But how can he just stand there when he has a solution to their problem that wouldn't mess up everyone's schedules and make population control suspicious? Elisabeth raises her eyebrows. "I … If Maddy is done her work and you want someone to stay, we can. There's no rule that says I have to force her to go to school."
"Mark, thank you for trying to help, but the situation is complicated."
"I … I understand," Mark tries.
Amused, Elisabeth laughs. "No, really you don't. Now thank you for being so polite and helpful, but-"
"Mom," Maddy interrupts with a sigh, not looking forward to how this will play out. "He knows."
For a moment, Elisabeth remains frozen. "Pardon?"
"I know about your daughter," Mark says awkwardly. "Your … other daughter."
Jim, who evidently was listening to the conversation, rips back the curtain that separates the bedroom from the living room. "Excuse me?" he asks, red in the face. "Are you accusing us of something?"
"Dad," Maddy quickly tries to calm him down. She takes a small step between Mark and her parents. "It's fine. He won't do anything! He promised."
"YOU TOLD HIM?" Jim practically screams. Elisabeth snaps at him to be quiet but also looks at Maddy like she doesn't recognize her.
Maddy blanches. "I didn't mean to! It was an accident." She continues to ramble, "We heard a thud when we got back from school so I asked him for a spare data card so that when he left I could check to make sure that she didn't hurt herself it's just that he came back too early and saw her and evidently I can't lie very well and I'm really really sorry but I didn't have much other choice than to explain although he already figured it out once he saw her I mean she looks just like me but Mark already promised me that he wouldn't do anything like report us to population control and she's even met him after when you two weren't here and they got along really well so please don't do anything rash and just remain calm."
Mark raises his eyebrows. He's heard Maddy ramble before, but never like that. It's a miracle she didn't pass out from lack of air. Both Elisabeth and Jim seem to be trying to digest what they just heard.
Jim is the first one who regains his bearings. He starts on Mark, "If you do anything that hurts my family, I swear to God I will hunt you down and make you pay." It isn't a threat spit in the heat of an argument, but one stated slowly and rationally. And that is what scares Mark. As Jim glares at him, Mark swears he can see right through him. He sees, not only the whole mess with him finding out about Zoe, but also the impure thoughts that had crossed his mind about his other daughter earlier that morning.
Elisabeth sighs, seemingly more reasonable than her husband. "None of the others know do they?" Mark and Maddy shake their heads quickly. Jim mutters something about how it better stay that way. "Well," Elisabeth says, "if Zoe is comfortable, then Maddy and Mark will just stay here with her today."
Josh wakes up and everyone finishes getting ready. "Wait, why isn't Maddy going to school?" he complains.
At that point, the two other guards had come in for breakfast, so Elisabeth lies, "She isn't feeling well. I've already contacted the school." Josh still tries to put up an argument and claims he might be coming down with something too. That is until Elisabeth adds, "It's her chest." Josh then fall silent and Elisabeth, Jim, and Maddy all look very guilty, much to Mark's confusion.
Everyone but Jim, and obviously Mark and Maddy, runs out the door. Jim hangs back for a moment until everyone else has left. Maddy is in the bathroom getting ready and Zoe is still sleeping. "Uh, Reynolds," he says. Mark looks at him uncertainly, trying not to shiver under the other man's gaze. "I'm trusting you with my daughters," he says evenly. "Both of them."
"Yes, sir," Mark says. "Of course, I'll do my best by them."
Jim leaves without another word and Mark sinks into one of the chairs near the coffee table. Maddy comes out of the bathroom with a smile. "Maddy?" Mark asks. "What was your mom talking about … everyone just seemed very concerned when you didn't want to go to school. Even Josh shut up after your mom mentioned your chest …" Mark trails off, realizing how weird that sounded.
The smile immediately leaves Maddy's face. "It was … just over two months ago," she whispers, looking at the floor. "Almost three. I started coughing up blood. My rebreather had broken, but I didn't want to bother my parents with it." Mark's heart literally skips a beat; he knows firsthand what happens if someone waits before they go to the hospital. "Money's tight with three kids, you know? Well that turned out to just be ironic in the end considering how much the hospital bills cost …" Maddy trails off, hesitating. She glances at Mark shyly before continuing, "I started choking on my own blood. And my lungs filled with fluid." Maddy's eyes appear almost glazed over at this point. "I slipped into a coma for like … two weeks."
"Maddy," Mark breathes in awe. "I'm so sorry, you … you didn't have to tell me that, though."
Maddy shrugs and sits down on the couch next to him. "You asked," she says. "A coma is a prolonged state of unconsciousness in which a person is completely unresponsive to their surrounding environment and cannot be awakened with the aid of any known stimuli, including pain. I suffered from anoxic brain injury." Maddy's eyes flicker up to Mark. "That basically means my lungs were filled with blood and other fluid from the buildup of carcinogens that are in our atmosphere, the tropospheric layer to be exact, and that prohibited oxygen from reaching the rest of my body. But when your brain can't get oxygen, even the minimum we get today, it can't function, so it turns off, which in turn sends your body into a deep sleep."
"Maddy," Mark whispers again, for no real reason other than to confirm she's still with him and nothing terrible happened. Again.
"I'm actually really lucky," Maddy says as if she still can't quite believe it. "My lungs were reflated, and the excess fluid was drained. That allowed my brain to receive oxygen again. I am so lucky that was done quickly and efficiently. I could have slipped into persistent vegetative state and become brain dead so easily. Persistent vegetative state is just a fancy way of saying I would have been indefinitely unresponsive or, if by some miracle I did wake up, the recovery would have been more extensive. I swear it just means the doctors poke and prod a person in that state like a vegetable being cooked, and just like a vegetable, there is no response."
"Maddy," Mark says, slightly harsher this time. Maddy jumps out of her stupor. "Please stop talking."
Maddy tilts her head and studies the redness in Mark's eyes. Does he care about her for some reason? Or does he just not want to hear about those conditions in general. "Sorry," Maddy says staring at the couch beneath her. "It's just … weird now. To look back on it? I obviously know so many facts about so many different things, including comas and their causes and treatment options, naturally, but … I opened my eyes and I didn't know where I was. I didn't know who I was or who was around me and it was my own family. It's just surprising, I guess, that it's not at all like in the movies, where the tragedy resolves with the girl opening her eyes and seeing her true love leaning over her. And she remembers everything about what happened, and she can talk and sit up right away and then the credits role and there's happily ever after. Someone who wakes up from persistent vegetative state would have to learn how to do simple things all over again, like talk or eat. But I was just … confused. And there was a tube shoved down my throat that had been breathing for me, but when I first opened my eyes, I kept gagging on it and it was a miserable sixty seconds. People had to tell me how I got there and where there was. For the first time I can remember, I felt so helpless."
Mark really needs Maddy to shut up at this point. He really can't imagine this girl in front of him, the one who was volunteering just the other day to take her younger sister's place if he were to report them to population control, the one who puts up with the shit that the kids at school give her on a daily basis, he can't imagine her being so utterly helpless. And he doesn't want to.
On top of imaging what Maddy went through, Mark is stuck reliving his eighth birthday. That week his mom had died, and he vividly remembers standing in the hospital as a lady in a white coat explained that he will never see her again. And he swears that doctor had used some of the same vocabulary that Maddy just used, though his mom had never fallen into a coma. Her lack of oxygen to the brain led straight to prolonged cerebral hypoxia. She passed out and was dead a few minutes later.
Mark is so relieved that didn't happen to Maddy. That Maddy's okay. Yes, he wishes his mom hadn't died, but he doesn't miss her. He can't; he hardly remembers her. But here is Maddy, this beautiful, intelligent, loving girl right in front of him, saying that she almost died. Meaning there is a chance Mark would never have met her.
Why does it matter? Mark doesn't know, but he knows that he doesn't want to lose her. Stupid, considering she's leaving for humanity's second chance in two weeks, but Mark would rather have known her and live with the fact that she will live out a full life in paradise, than not know her as a girl who never woke up from a coma. Just one of hundreds of unlucky souls that leave the dying Earth too early.
"Mark?" Maddy says, and he realizes she must have been talking.
"Sorry," Mark answers. "I was just trying to digest that. My mom died of the whole lungs thing and-"
"I'm so sorry!" Maddy blurts. "I totally forgot about that. I wasn't trying to be insensitive or anything, and not many people even know that happened to me, I just-"
Mark cuts off her rambling, "Don't worry about it. I was just thinking … I'm glad that same thing didn't happen to you. I'd glad you're okay." Wait, did he just say that out loud? But Maddy has a small smile on her face and a cute blush, and Mark is pleased he did.
Awe Mark and Maddy! Seriously, Mark is such a gentleman. Why don't guys in real life act that sweet? Lol. Drop a review