ALLEGIANT PART II
chapter fifty-one
FOUR
"First I lost my heart. Then I lost my mind." ― J. Salvato Doktirski
note: I have made a small(big) change in the direct lift from chapter fifty-one, so reading it is strongly advised.
We drive past the fences and stop by the front doors, which are no longer manned by guards. We get out, and Zeke seizes his mother's hand to steady her as she shuffles through the snow. As we walk into the compound, I know for a fact that Caleb succeeded, because there is no one in sight. That can only mean that they have been reset, their memories forever altered.
"Where is everyone?" Amar says.
We walk through the abandoned security checkpoint without stopping. On the other side, I see Cara. The side of her face is badly bruised, and there's a bandage on her head, but that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is the troubled look on her face.
"What is it?" I say.
Cara shakes her head.
"Where's Tris?" I say.
"I'm sorry, Tobias."
"Sorry about what?" Christina says roughly. "Tell us what happened!"
"Tris went into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb," Cara says. "She survived the death serum, and set off the memory serum, but she . . . she was shot. They don't know if she's going to make it."
Most of the time I can tell when people are lying, and this must be a lie, because Tris is okay, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed and her small body full of power and strength, standing in a shaft of light in the atrium. Tris is still alive, she wouldn't leave me here alone, she wouldn't go to the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
"No," Christina says, shaking her head. "No way. There has to be some mistake."
Cara's eyes well up with tears.
It's then that I realize: Of course Tris would go into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
Of course she would.
Christina yells something, but to me her voice sounds muffled, like I have submerged my head underwater. The details of Cara's face have also become difficult to see, the world smearing together into dull colors.
All I can do is stand still—I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right. Christina hunches over, unable to support her own grief, and Cara embraces her, and
all I'm doing is standing still.
three and a half months later . . .
The room is dark when I wake up. The only light comes from the crack underneath the door that occasionally darkens when somebody walks by. I don't know how long I lay there, on the tiny cot that has become sticky with my sweat. Watching that tiny crack darken then glow again. There are no windows in this room. I think it was a storage closet once. But I don't care; I don't think I even remember what it looks like with the light on.
It's ironic how one of my fears has become my sanctuary.
I sit up, ignoring the nagging feeling to stretch, and leave the room in darkness. I've been living in the same clothes for three days now, I should probably shower.
I trudge down the hallway to the showers, not caring if I bump into anybody's shoulders. I have become cold . . . numb. I don't even know who I am anymore. Am I still Tobias Eaton? The 16 year old boy who sliced his hand and held it over hot coals, desperate to start again?
Nobody looks at me anymore. I can make it there without being given the slightest attention. The first week I barely left the storage closet I claimed. The stares were too much; every eye was on me. Wondering how I was holding it together, how I could no show emotion after what happened. How Four of Dauntless, didn't snap . . . but he did. It was only a matter of time.
The second after the words came out of Cara's mouth, "They don't know if she's going to make it" I felt the weight of the world crushing me. I couldn't see, couldn't breathe. I don't even know how I got to the side of the compound where the makeshift hospital is. I just remember seeing her, as I ran through the doors of the entrance. She wasn't even in a private room yet. They were still working on her in the middle of the floor, on a stretcher too big for her small body.
I took it all in; her tiny face covered in her own blood, her broken body in stripped clothes. The voices instructing one another, the clinking of metal tools; the sounds of the small team of doctors trying to fix her. Trying to keep her alive.
The opposite side of the compound wasn't affected by the memory serum, thinking about it now as I turn the hot water on I have no idea why. Caleb, Matthew, and Cara were on the opposite side. They weren't affected because of the counterpart inoculation serum, did they inject other people? In the short amount of time until I returned the serum's effects had worn off, but still. I let that thought dissipate as I step into the shower, hot water scalding my cold body. Somehow, the soldiers that went into the weapons lab were coherent enough to recognize injury and bring Tris to the hospital wing. Were they injected too?
I stared at her, frozen in time, as I watched her die in their hands. Tris. My Tris was going to die. When the lost seconds finally caught up to me and I felt my legs unhinge from the floorboard, I rushed to her side.
"Tris! Tris!" I screamed, searching her face for any sign of life.
I was pulled back by small arms belonging to a female doctor with red hair and green eyes.
"You need to back off!" She said sternly. "Or you will be removed."
"Tell me what's going on!" I can feel tears forming in my eyes. Don't cry, don't cry. "What's happening to her?"
She didn't answer, just stared at me. Oh God, Oh God. But before she could say anything somebody called out to her and she looked away from me. The second her eyes left mine I choked back the bile of reality.
"Four!" Christina called, running into the room full tilt with Caleb and Cara on her heels. I hardly noticed them reach me, looking around for something. My thoughts were overwhelming me.
Tris was going to die.
And I wasn't there. I wasn't there to protect her from him. The monster known as David was wheeled in, behind us. Still stunned by the serum to even speak. I was seconds away from killing him with my bare hands when I noticed what the others were looking for. To my right, the doctors were almost out of sight, wheeling Tris's stretcher away.
"Where are you taking her?" I cried out frantically, afraid of the answer. "Tris!"
When I was met with my own silence I bolted after them, grabbing somebody's arm – a doctor maybe – and whipping them backwards into my face.
"What are you doing? Where are you taking Tris?"
Another doctor, a man, yelled something over his shoulder then turned to me. Probably the one I grabbed. "We managed to extract the bullets from her but the damage was severe. We were not prepared for a surgery in the middle of the hospital, mind you." He took a breath. "We were successful in removing the bullet from her skull but there was-"
"Her skull?" I swallowed back vomit, and staggered backwards, putting my hand against the wall for support. Behind me I hear Christina wailing.
"Cerebral hemorrhaging or swelling of the brain." He dumbed it down for me, aware I couldn't possibly handle big words while I was trying not to throw up. "We won't know the extent of her injuries until we run scans, which we will be doing right now. Now please, stay here and out of the way. It's the best thing you can do right now."
"He's right, Four." Caleb said, face red from tear tracks. "It's the best we can do right now."
Anger filled my entire body in an instant, tingling and pulsing and radiating heat. My hands almost vibrated as I reached out and grabbed his throat. I snapped.
In one quick movement I had Caleb practically lifted off the floor and slammed into the wall. My hands squeezed his pathetic, skinny neck as my eyes, wild and deranged, locked into his. I was both too strong and too angry to register Christina and Cara pulling at me.
"The best we can do? Are you fucking kidding me?" I roared, forgetting Tobias and becoming Four. Quiet threats were beyond me. I was screaming. "You were supposed to be in there, not her! You were supposed to die, and now she might!" Caleb didn't fight me, didn't try and breathe. He just looked at me, afraid. Always afraid.
I felt large hands encircle my torso and pull me back, hard but gentle. Amar struggled briefly but threw me to the side, away from Caleb who stood there, still not breathing.
"You let her die, you fucking coward! It was supposed to be you in that bed!" I hollered, throat burning, as Amar dragged me out.
The last thing I remember seeing was Caleb slide to the floor, sobbing loudly. Christina falling to her knees in front of him and Cara watching me get dragged away.
Just before I was out the sliding doors I turned to the direction Tris's bed was in, but it was already gone.
I stood under the water until my thoughts took over and I leaned my head against the shower wall, water pouring down my face, the heat almost too much to bear. Tris . . . you've been gone too long . . .
I spent the last three and a half months either in the closet or the hospital chair that has a dip from my weight in the material; where I've slept and stared at the girl in front of me.
Three months can really change a person's appearance. Her face is smooth, from the still expression. Not a crease in sight. She looks peaceful, the most peaceful I have ever seen her, which I realize is horrifically sad.
The back of her head had to be shaved for surgery, where David's bullet entered. The hair, once shaved was fuzzy and short has now grown to the length it was when she cut it months ago during our stay at Amity. I didn't realize how fast her hair grew. The rest of her hair has grown too, passing her chin, almost half way to her shoulders, but still the choppy way she cut it. I wonder if she would like it.
The redhead doctor told me after all her scans and tests, after she was admitted to her own small bedroom, that she would live. It was at that moment I let myself cry. Not caring who saw my tears, I proudly let them fall down my unshaven face. My relief was short lived though. Christina grabbed my hand when she realized there was more to tell us. I found myself squeezing it back when I didn't think it could be half as bad as dying.
I was so wrong . . .
"Due to the extensive head trauma Tris suffered," She didn't bother using formalities here. I would rather hear Tris than Ms. Prior anyway. "The bleeding and swelling from the bullet and the fall to the concrete floor," Breathe, Tobias. Breathe. "I don't really know how to say this professionally, after everything Tris has done it seems ignorant and rude to speak of her like this."
She sighs. "Tris is in a deep sleep... a coma." Color drains from my face. "Before you feel helpless, let me tell you. The scans tell us that there is still brain activity, which is incredible and amazing. I've never seen anything like it before. Her chance of waking up is high and probable, it's just a matter of when."
"When? What do you mean when?" Cara asks but I feel like she already knows the answer. She's just asking for me.
"When her soul is healed. When she decides to."
The water is cold now. I turn the knob off and reach for a towel to dry myself off, trying to think of the last time I ate because my stomach is now screaming at me to fill it. I don't go to the cafeteria though, I almost never do. Usually somebody brings me food and I pick at it, or devour it, sometimes I don't even remember. I instead make my way to the hospital wing, the only place that makes sense being in.
When I walk through the doors to her room – it might as well be our room because I spend just as much time in there as she does – I remember the first time I visited her after being dragged out by Amar. She was cold, from loss of blood I imagine, but she is still cold. I wonder if her body will ever be warm again. I imagine it would be in my arms, but that day seems so far away I can't bear to think about it sometimes. Christina tells me to be positive, but I feel hope slipping through my fingers as each day passes and Tris doesn't wake up.
Its dark, to sit in front of my girlfriend and wonder if I'll be visiting her vegetated body every day for the rest of my life. Our lives… If time has changed her it's also changed me. I don't smile – not that I did much smiling anyway – I don't interact unless forced to, mostly by Christina. I don't live like I should. I'm too lost.
When I walk through the familiar doors and see her small body, thicker than before from all the liquids the hospital has fed her through IV's – she's probably eaten more in a coma than in her entire life – I see another body sitting with her. Not expecting me. Big mistake.
Caleb.
He avoids me as much as possible. I think I've only seen him twice since I almost strangled him to death and the blue-purple marks on his neck satisfied me in those two times I've seen him in passing. He fears me and I think I like that, I think I like being a wild animal, living in solitude with nothing to fear. But all fear me. I am dangerous again. I am Four, top of his class. Who almost lost himself to violence and fear sustained in anger. The Four before Tris.
Caleb still visits Tris, against my word. I forbid a brother from seeing his comatose sister, and I don't care. I know she wouldn't like it; if she forgave him for being a traitor and sacrificed herself for his cowardly ass she would want him to be near her. But I still threaten his life if he comes ten feet within the hospital wing. Maybe to spite both of them.
He sees me in the corner of his eye and almost jumps, eyes guarded and licks his lips. "Four- I didn't… I didn't think-"
I see his hand holding hers and my arm vibrates as I point towards the doorway. "Get. Out."
He scrambles out and I hear his sneakers squeak as he leaves the hospital. I turn to Tris, eyes softly closed and mouth open – there's a breathing tube in her throat, just as a precaution in case her body shuts down– and sit down on the edge of the bed and take her frozen hand.
"Tris." Saying her name hurts. "It's been almost four months. The doctor says your brain activity is getting stronger and talking to you could help you wake up faster. Sometimes I think… I think you don't want to wake up."
I have to look away and clear my throat. This feels stupid. "Amar is dragging me out of the compound at daylight. He was promoted last month to a staff sergeant. I'm going to the Fringe. They're still trying to start an uprising and it's getting worse. I'm going in his squad and they won't give me any details until we're there. I guess it's top secret. Amar thinks it will freshen me up but I think he's trying to recruit me."
The silence is deafening.
I get up and head for the door, suddenly feeling angry and selfish. "I hope you can hear me, Tris. I hope you worry I'll get hurt. Maybe I'll die."
I walk out of the room, immediately angry with myself for saying that. I don't want to die but I've thought about it. knowing there is still a chance she may never wake up, never smile again, never run, never live, it was enough to almost send me over the edge. I can't remember how many times I sat in the closet, in the darkness, falling apart. But if there's a chance she'll wake up I'll stay alive waiting for her as long as it takes.
One of us has to.