"You're not allowed in there right now." The officer tells me. I am standing outside of Annie's hospital room, ready to see her. I even bought some flowers. She has been in her hospital room for 2 days and I still haven't been allowed to see her. I might have to buy new flowers.
"Can I? Please?" I beg him. She isn't awake right now but she isn't in surgery. She looks skinner but everyone is that way once they win. She will gain it back in a few months, when she has all the money to buy every food she wants.
"Sorry, Odair. As much as I would love to let you in, I can't." I sigh and turn around to leave.
"Sure?" I ask him one last time. He looks down the hallway both ways, three times. He twists the door handle.
"Fine. Get in there!" He ushers me in quickly.
"Five minutes." He whispers after me. He shuts the door and acts like nothing happened. Annie is still out. I put the flowers on the bedside table next to her. Then, I grab her hand, pleased that this is reality. I am not dreaming.
It seems like only five seconds have gone by before the officer opens the door again. He waves his hand at me. I brush a few strands of hair off of Annie's forehead and kiss her on the cheek. I head back to my room on the helicopter. Soon, Annie will watch the Games, all the way through. She will watch every death that occurred, the ones that she killed, and Kayne.
She isn't going to handle that well. She could barely watch it the first time and I am sure that she has been playing it over in her head at least a million times. It took me years to stop replaying them constantly. They still come, less frequently, but they still come. I hate them. I hate what the Capital has put me through. No matter how hard I try, I will never be truly relieved of them.
I find myself at my room. I open the door to find a meeting going on. In my room.
"Um, hi? Am I in the wrong room?" I am seriously really confused. I step back out and look at the sign by the door. It doesn't say that this room is anything else. I walk back in and take a closer look at the meeting. It is a group of six people. I only know Mags; the rest looked like doctors from the Capitol.
"No, you are not in the wrong room. We need to talk to you about Annie." I head over to the table and sit down. I look around the table nervously. What could they want?
"Is Annie doing okay?" One of the doctors asked.
"Um, I don't know. I haven't spoken to her yet." I am not completely lying. I haven't spoken to her but I have seen her. She looks okay on the outside.
"We think she might have a mental condition. She doesn't talk to anyone, just stares into open space. She won't even talk to us. Do you have any ideas about why this is happening?" I have never heard anything about this. I haven't seen her awake because guards always chase me off or the shades are closed. It has to do with the games. The last time I talked to her, she was perfectly fine. The times she shut down where when she killed someone or Kayne died. She is reliving those moments.
"She is reliving the moments in her mind. The people that she killed and Kayne's death. It happened in the Games, too." I can't believe the doctors haven't figured that out yet. Look at the facts people!
"Ah, that makes sense. Well, we have some issues because of that. We don't know if she will be able to go on the Victory Tour or in near events, the interviews after the Games." What are they going to do? No one, no one, has ever not been on the interviews.
"So?" I ask them. I need to know what is going to happen to her.
"You are going to go with her. You seem to be the only thing that brings her out, we think. We are putting you in training with her. The next few days, you are going to stay with her 24/7." This is going to be so strange. Translating for Annie? I can't process the thought. It is going to be like redoing my own interviews. I am happy I don't have to do that again.
I stay with Annie every day, all day. We eat our meals together. I don't get a lot of words out of her, with the doctors staring over us all day. The things that she does say are very random and strange. I am nervous for her to face all of the cameras and people gathering to watch her. I am nervous about myself, being the first mentor to still "mentor" a tribute past their victory.
I figure out the ways that she talks. It turns out that most of what she says is very smart. You have to process it. She doesn't speak directly to you, kind of off topic but still very relevant to the current world. She seems to take things in after they have passed.
The day of the interviews, our stylist gets both of us dressed in the same matching outfits. We are standing backstage when Claudius Templesmith comes up to me.
"You're going to do great out there. I know that you can represent her amazingly!" He cheers me up. I must not look like that helped so he pats me on the back.
"If she's anything like you, the crowd is going to love her. If she isn't like you, well, they are still going to love her because she is a winner. She is their winner." He heads off to talk to Tabia. I go off to find Annie. She is standing in a corner; no people are standing close to her.
"You ready to go on screen?" I ask her.
"Yeah, sure, Kayne." Kayne. Why would she think I'm Kayne? Then I realize that we look alike, in our outfit. The stylist dressed Kayne and Annie to match so Annie and I looking alike must make her believe I am Kayne. That's bad. I look up at the clock above the stage door: 5 minutes. I think I have enough time if I make a run for it.
I take off down the hallway and into my room. I take off the white dress shirt and blue suit jacket. I grab one of my t-shirts that Annie is used to seeing me in, the faded ones with images of the ocean and palm trees. I wash the hair gel out of my hair. Then, I take off back down the hallway. I get back just as the clock is hitting 30 seconds.
"Oh, hey Finnick. Is Kayne coming back?" Annie asks me.
"No, Annie, he isn't. I don't think you'll see him again." She looks at me with a confused expression. Just as she opens her mouth to speak, the clock hits 0.
Everyone turns to look at us as we push open the door to the stage. The last thing I see is the stylist getting very, very angry.