TW: Drug consumption.
Sorrow and Salvation
My heart pounds against my chest as the palm of my hand runs over the button of the door. It only takes a short press to open it. It's just this piece of metal that separates me from the outside world. The thought makes my hand retract.
I don't know what I'll find on the other side, and a little part of me doesn't even want to know. It's too afraid of being deceived again. What awaits me on the other side? Just another cell corridor in a Capitol jail? Or an infirmary?
My eyes travel to the white curtains hanging in front of the glass front, hiding the answers to my questions. I pull the closest curtain aside without hesitating again. This time I don't give my fear time to think twice. The windows open onto a wide, gray hallway and I catch my breath. On the left side of my room, it leads into a small, round foyer. None of it looks particularly inviting, but it's definitely not a prison. I exhale relieved.
Now that the fear of the unknown is gone, I have the courage to open the door. With slow steps I move out into the corridor and carefully look around. There are no guards anywhere. A murmur of voices can be heard from far away. They echo back to me from different directions. It's not dead quiet like in the Capitol, and now that I'm standing in the hallway and taking a closer look at the corridor, I realize that this must be a fairly modern medical facility.
Small displays hang on the walls that point the way to different parts of the ward, and vending machines are embedded in the wall that allow various medicines or aids to be called up as required. Unlike in the Capitol, the lights don't change with the time of day, but there aren't any windows, so it's not noticeable.
At that moment something flickers in the right corner of my eye and I turn to the side. A tall white figure scurries around the corner and my heart stops for a second. My eyes widen and I take a hasty step back, only to collide with the door, which must have closed behind me. It takes me several moments to realize that this isn't a Peacekeeper at all. It's a tall man in his early twenties, and like Dr. Jennings, he wears a white coat over a gray uniform. He seems stressed because he almost runs down the hall, straight at me. When he sees me, he gives me a half-hearted smile and then, without hesitation, rushes past me through the foyer. He disappears around a corner down the passage behind.
He's just a doctor. The thought that he could have been a Peacekeeper came so naturally, so clearly in my mind. Now that I'm alone in the hallway again, I wonder how long it will take to break these patterns. I lift my head from my feet and look down the hallway he's disappeared into. Like the one I'm standing in, it's maybe twenty meters long. Both are lined with doors and windows, so I suspect they must be more sickrooms. At least six other patients live here.
I turn back to the door and notice another display set at head level next to the metal door. A room number lights up at the top and below that, in the center of the screen, is a name. My name. Euphemia Trinket. The name sends a shiver down my spine, and I turn around quickly.
Two corridors lead to the foyer. The one on the right leads me back to my room, from where the doctor came running. Voices can be heard from the hallway to my left and there is another door on the opposite side of the foyer. The word Exit 2 can be read on the display next to it. Another mechanical door that will probably open as soon as I get within range of the motion detector. There are round benches at the outer edges of the foyer. Who would sit here?
In the middle of the foyer, I find a podium with a large screen mounted on it. It shows a map of the entire infirmary. My room is located in the monitoring care unit. The nursing ward is down the right hallway from where the doctor came. The corridor on the left leads to the lobby, the heart of the station. The emergency room and intensive care unit are adjacent there. I suspect that Johanna will be in intensive care. I can't get the story Haymitch told me out of my head, that Johanna is in critical condition and treated with morphine. They certainly won't place her anywhere else if she needs high-maintenance care.
I don't even know when exactly I decided to look for Johanna. It somehow seems like the right thing to do. The connection we have is still so pervasive that sometimes I turn around and expect to see her sitting next to me. With a mocking grin on her lips and a bitter comment on her tongue. At night I miss her body heat next to me. I decide to take the left corridor to the lobby. I read each of the few signs, looking for Johanna's name. Just to be sure, in case she isn't in ICU after all. Neither name has a familiar ring to me until I get to the last door in the corridor.
Annie Cresta. Suddenly my pulse quickens. Johanna once told me about her. The Capitol picked her up in District 4 for Finnick's sake. I didn't know Annie Cresta and never met her in person. Only a few times had I seen her from afar on official occasions during the Games. Haymitch had told me years ago that she avoided trips to the Capitol. Finnick did everything to keep her out of there because her mental state was very unstable and all the hustle and bustle around the Games was too much for her.
I stare mesmerized at the display for several seconds before I tear myself away from thoughts of Finnick and the Capitol and my legs move of their own accord. Away from Annie Cresta's room. Around the corner, I find myself in the large lobby. There is a waiting area to my right. Some seats are occupied by people in gray uniforms who look up expectantly as I enter the hall. They are probably waiting for a nurse or a doctor. At the sight of me, the expression in their eyes changes to polite disinterest and they lower them again. At this moment, I'm relieved. Because if this really is District 13, then most residents aren't going to be very fond of a woman from the Capitol, no matter what she's been through.
But of course, they don't recognize me. How could they? Effie Trinket's true face was hidden under layers of brightly colored makeup for years. Her real hair hidden under fake wigs. Nonetheless, a part of me finds it odd: It's been years since I've been able to take to the streets without being recognized by anyone. Everyone in the Capitol knew me. I was one of the twelve it-girls in the Games. In the eyes of the residents of 13 I don't see a glimmer of recognition.
There's a lot going on in the lobby early in the morning. People stream into the infirmary through the open main entrance next to the waiting area and go their own way. Maybe to work, maybe to visit someone. The registration area is a round counter in the middle of the room. Behind it sits a woman with pinned up, white-blonde hair, probably in her late sixties. She is typing on a keyboard and her brown eyes are fixed on a wide screen that takes up at least a third of the table. She doesn't pay any attention to me when, at the front of the queue, I slowly walk towards her.
I have to pull myself together to raise my voice. When was the last time I spoke to someone in public? Aside from Haymitch, it must have been a sponsor at the time of the Quarter Quell. I can feel the curious looks of the other people waiting behind me. I'm probably just imagining it in my nervousness. "Excuse me, I'm looking for the intensive care unit. Can you show me the way?"
My voice sounds reasonably stable. It hesitates a bit, but the receptionist will assume I'm here to see a loved one. My tone can be traced back to a general concern. She doesn't know me, how could she then imply anything else?
The woman is slow to respond. Her fingers fly swiftly over the keyboard, and she doesn't let herself be disturbed, as if she hasn't heard me at all. My palms start to sweat. Just as I take a breath to repeat my question, she finally raises her head. Her empty eyes look me up and down and linger on my hair towel for a second. Then, without a word, she raises her bony left hand and points behind her to a hallway on the opposite side of the room. I nod my thanks and then make my way around the counter. The more time passes, the more people enter the lobby.
In intensive care there are a lot more doctors and nurses than in my unit. They walk past me at a brisk pace, ignoring me. Everyone I meet seems busy and avoids my gaze, as if trying to avoid any possible conversation with concerned family members. It's still early and on most I meet, it's visible. Unlike in the Capitol, none of them carry coffee mugs or pastries to get their blood sugar up, and I haven't seen a single vending machine yet, but the bags under their eyes and the messy uniforms speak for themselves. No one seems to mind how slowly I walk down the hall, reading every display with the utmost concentration.
The intensive care unit has a similar structure to the monitoring unit. With one major difference: none of the rooms have a door. You can peek inside each as you walk past, but the bed is out of sight and the white curtains are drawn all over. At this moment I'm glad not to have been admitted here.
It doesn't take me long to find Johanna's room. It's at the end of the first hallway and for several minutes I just stare at the name, unsure if I'm allowed to just enter the hospital room. Only when two sisters have disappeared around a corner and I'm sure that no one is watching me do I slip into Johanna's room.
To my surprise, Johanna is awake. The alert look in her eyes suggests that she's actually quite sane. At least it seems so at first glance. Quite the opposite of what Haymitch told me. Her brown eyes are fixed on me and her pupils are slightly dilated. She recognizes me immediately, I can see it in her eyes. The moment seems to drag on for an eternity. We look at each other, trying to understand how the other ended up here since we last met and how much strength it took to survive. Then Johanna bursts out laughing.
It's a raspy but genuinely amused laugh. She sounds relieved. "I was wondering if maybe you just died and they didn't want to panic me."
"They only let me out today," I choke out, finding my voice again. I slowly approach her bed.
"And out of all the beautiful places you could have seen in this turd, you chose to come to my place, seriously Trinket?"
I delay my answer. Johanna looks terrible. Her head is shaved, but this time in an even and careful manner, unlike the guards in the Capitol did. Like mine, her cheeks are sunken from long periods of malnutrition and her body is covered with the same scars and bruises. But beyond that, her left arm is surrounded by a cast. The sight makes me cringe. So Johanna's Peacekeepers must have been even rougher than my own that night. "I didn't know where else to go," I say after a while.
An amused grin spreads across Johanna's lips, but at the same time she narrows her brows in a dissatisfied gesture. "Haymitch wasn't there to pick you up?" As she speaks, she gestures with her right hand to the foot of the bed. Of course, I know what she's trying to tell me, so I sit carefully down so as not to hurt her. After all, I have no idea how bad she actually is. Johanna has always been good at hiding her pain.
"He was there once, but I sent him away. He promised to come back, but I haven't seen him since." I shrug. I still have trouble pronouncing his name. Johanna knows about it. She doesn't dwell on it any further. She just shakes her head.
"He must be stuck in some meeting."
"My doctor keeps calling him General Abernathy."
Johanna snorts and winces the next moment. Her fingers clutch her stomach. Then I guess I'm not the only one with fractured ribs. Her fracture must be more complicated if she's still in such pain. I ignore her movement and just nod. "While we were fighting for our lives, this bastard was promoted to General."
She's not really upset about it. It's just her way of processing the things that have happened to us: glossing over and drawing attention to the trivial. "How are you, Johanna?"
The young woman shrugs, then narrows her eyes. She looks so much older than 21. She looks so scarred by life like she has centuries of life experience. As if she lived a terrible life, full of fear, pain and death. Most of the time I ignore the look in her eyes when she's failing to maintain the barrier that's burying her emotions. Sometimes though, I can't help but wonder how she's surviving coping with everything she's been through. I know I couldn't.
"The two Peacekeepers went out of their way to make my last day hell," she scoffs. "It's too bad that they already knocked me out in our cell, and I only regained consciousness for the grand finale." She lifts her cast arm and briefly waves it in the air. I can't help but grimace in disgust.
"Did you know that they would come for us that night?"
Johanna shakes her head and stares past me into the distance as if trying to recall old memories in her mind's eye. "I was hoping they would come at some point. That was part of the plan. But no one knew when exactly. It had to fit in with the rest of the rebels' plan, alternatively if liberation became inevitable." Then she grins again. "I understand the latter was the case. Your girl must have missed Peeta too much." A snort escapes her throat.
It takes me a while to realize that she means Katniss. "Are they okay? Have you seen them?"
"I haven't seen Katniss or Peeta. Peeta is supposed to be really bad. I don't know what exactly they did to him, but I hear we can both be thankful that we got away unscathed."
Her answer makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I open my mouth to ask, but Johanna waves it away. Suddenly she looks incredibly tired. She closes her eyes briefly, leans back against her pillows, and then presses a button on the wall behind her. A clear liquid immediately begins to flow through the venous catheter into her right arm. A soothed sigh leaves her lips. Now I'm beginning to understand what Haymitch meant.
"Ask Haymitch, he knows everything about the two of them. I only hear the few snippets of words that the nurses exchange when they gossip in the corridor and think that no one will hear." Johanna rolls her eyes in annoyance and twists her face into a bitter grimace. "Nobody wants to tell me anything."
I lower my head and watch the morphine coursing steadily through Johanna's veins. An incessant stream that ignites its effect almost immediately. No wonder so many victors were addicted to it before the war. And just as Johanna relaxedly closes her eyes, she surrenders to the sweet escape of pain without thinking about it any further. She is well on her way to joining this list of victors.
"Wanna have some of that too?" Her question makes me wince and jerk my head up. My eyebrows shoot up in amazement. What do I want some of? "From this stuff," she explains, pointing in the direction of the drip next to her bed.
"But won't they notice?"
She just laughs a throaty laugh that sounds almost merry. "The infirmary is understaffed, almost every bed is occupied. Nobody here thinks twice when they swap bags. I just have to press this button."
My wide eyes stare from the tube in Johanna's arm to the IV and then back to Johanna. In prison they gave me morphine a few times and I remember how it numbed my pain. Not just the physical pain. This medicine makes you feel like you're underwater, everything feels dull, even your own thoughts and dreams. Morphine makes it impossible to feel fear. It feels like being wrapped in cotton. There's a reason the drug of choice for many victors was morphine.
A tingle runs down my arms and spreads to my fingers. A small voice in my head reminds me that I may have to endure this fear in my chest for the rest of my life. A small amount of morphine here and there might not do much harm if you know your proper dose. But my mind is wide awake and at this moment neither pain nor fear is omnipresent, so I can think clearly. So I shake my head.
"As you wish. Then I'll have more for myself," she says impassively, smiles slightly and pulls the blanket up to her chin. Her childish movement now elicits a grin from me. Johanna's entire presence relaxes me so much that I feel like I'm already drugged. Until we were rescued from the Capitol, she was an enormous part of my life. I got used to her. The way she moved her body, how she put weight on her legs when she walked, and how it sounded when she turned over in bed at night. I'm missing all of that here in District 13. From the start, something seemed to be missing in my immediate surroundings.
And even though we shared a cell for so many weeks, to this day I can't tell how much she actually knew about all of this. She must have known about Katniss's rescue in the arena, I had already found out that much in the Capitol. But how much did she know about the rebel movement in District 13? Did she know as much as Haymitch? In all her time she had hardly said a word on the subject. But the scraps of words she had shared with me are burned into my brain.
This is all wrong. Things shouldn't have turned out this way. I don't get why you're here.
"How involved were you in this rebellion before they caught you in the arena?" My voice is calm and doesn't reveal how much this topic moves me beneath the surface. They've kept me in the dark for too long. I've been through too much to continue to settle for lies.
But Johanna does not hesitate when she speaks the truth. She would never hold it back just to spare you the pain of reality. She doesn't even seem surprised at my sudden change of subject. "I knew almost everything: how Plutarch and his team communicated with us from the outside and what the actual rescue plan was, after all, it was my job to cut the tracker out of Katniss's arm. After that, a rebel hovercraft was supposed to take us to Thirteen, but the Capitol was quicker. They didn't have enough time to capture each of us. Katniss, Finnick, and Beetee were at the tree, while Peeta and I …" She shrugs, letting me know I know the rest of the story.
"What about District Thirteen? How long did you know of its existence? How did you manage to get so many victors on board?"
"You've been to all the Districts, Trinket. You've seen what it looks like there, how the people there live. It didn't take much convincing to get most of the victors on board. They let me in right after my win because they thought I might be the right person for the job. For the spark, I mean." Johanna purses her lips and I look away as I see the weight of her past burning in her eyes. "Snow killed my family after I didn't want to be his puppet. But I wasn't … I don't know … I think I was too extreme for them." She giggles.
We're both silent for a while. Everyone has her own thoughts. As I become more and more entangled in mine, the warmth of Johanna's presence slowly drains from my limbs. All of a sudden, the room temperature seems to have dropped several degrees. My eyes search the heating display, but the number on it hasn't changed. It actually can't be changed at all. They must be regulating the temperatures centrally.
"So you knew ... you knew it could have ended like this for you?" I stare at her with wide, shocked eyes. She knows, of course, that I'm talking about our fate in the Capitol's prison.
The expression on Johanna's face becomes serious. Her jaw is clenched and her already angular features look even sharper than usual in the white light of the room. She looks like the girl who had to kill to survive. She looks like the victor who once saved her life in her arena. "Anyone who was in the know knew the risk. We knew our heads would roll if even one person betrayed us to the Capitol. We all knew that if we fell into the hands of the Capitol that night, there would be a good chance of our deaths. So we included only the most essential people and left both Katniss and Peeta in the dark. Some people are not made to keep their mouths shut under torture. The less in the know, the less information the Capitol can loot."
I can't take my eyes off Johanna as her words swirl around in my head. I don't know if I would be able to: Participate in a plan in which Capitol imprisonment is a possible outcome. Just the thought of stepping foot inside this building again makes my body tremble. However, at the time, I never remotely expected that the Capitol would inflict such torment on me. Could inflict. My mind still associates home with the Capitol and I don't think that will ever change. Because isn't that how it is? Isn't there a difference between the Capitol and the government? Or are they one and the same because the people allow and legitimize whatever the government decides?
"This is madness," I whisper in a choked tone.
"Maybe," Johanna admits. After everything she's been through, she doesn't seem to regret any of it. "But now we're free. Soon everyone will be free."
"You don't even know that. The war isn't won yet." The mere fact that there is war doesn't want to get into my head. Apart from the helicopters circulating in the Capitol and Caesar's pictures, which could also have been staged, I didn't witness anything of this war, which is said to have been raging across the country for months.
"Freedom is near. The rebels are already in the Capitol. It's only a matter of a few weeks before this filthy city must surrender. Only District Two is still on their side. These suckers are turning against their own brothers and sisters."
I can't help but chill at her words. Freedom. But I was already free. Free until the Capitol locked me up. The dazzling skyline of the city lights up before my inner eye. It shines like jewels in the sun's rays. Childhood memories fly past me. A wave of homesickness hits me with such force that I don't get a chance to breathe. For a brief moment I feel detached, happy, carefree, content, dejected, fearless, confident, vulnerable, frightening, exhilarating. There are so many words I could use to describe my old life before it completely came apart. Then the image of my parents pops up in front of me and all those emotions evaporate. All that remains is a deep sorrow. And guilt.
"Effie." Johanna's whisper barely reaches my ear. Like I'm on an express train and her voice is part of the background noise that fades away as quickly as it appears.
"What will happen to Panem if ... if you win this war?"
Johanna must see something in my eyes because she tries not to sound rude as she shrugs. "Snow will be executed. After that, the system will be transformed into a fair one. Power is distributed to all Districts. The Hunger Games are coming to an end."
As harsh as it may sound; I can't imagine a world without the Hunger Games. I can't imagine any other world than the one that already exists in my head. The Hunger Games are something horrible and I've come to loathe them over the years. Nevertheless, it was my life and many bolts of this life seem to be falling apart or deforming. If I ever return to the Capitol, if I live that long, I have nothing of value to live for.
"My parents are dead. My sister most likely is too," I whisper, pausing. So far I've been able to hold back the pain, but as the words roll off my tongue, I feel that control slowly but surely slipping away. The fear is like a rope that I feel between my fingers. And right now, someone is trying to snatch this one out of my hands. Every inch I lose means more panic. "I was part of the Games. They will take all my belongings away from me. If I survive this war, I will be left with nothing. There will be nothing left worth fighting for, or even living for. What place do I have in your new world? What will become of me?
Johanna is at a loss for words, but I didn't expect an answer. She doesn't know what to say because she probably has as little a clue as I do. "You hope for a better world because bad things have been done to you and I understand that. Believe me, Johanna, when I tell you I hated dragging those children to their doom every year. Is this my punishment for that?"
My hands tremble as my feet drag across the floor. I didn't even realize I got out of bed. Johanna opens her mouth, but then shuts it again as she realizes what I'm trying to do. She leaves me and an almost tortured expression lies in her wide brown eyes while I rip the vein catheter out of her arm in an unskilled movement.
"My life is a shambles," I whisper, trying to make Johanna understand what she has probably known for a long time. "The Capitol destroyed me. In so many different ways. They made me kill a man. I've struggled and so many times ... so many times I've been close to ... just surrendering to the darkness. To give up. I survived, look at me."
The catheter trembles between my fingers. The tip of the needle is warm and dripping with blood. Johanna's blood. The sight makes me stop. Other memories flicker in my head. Pictures I would rather forget. Some I didn't even know I had. "I survived." A choked sound escapes my lips, and I'm not sure if it's a sob or a laugh. I lack the strength for both. "How low are the chances of surviving something like that?"
Johanna mumbles something, but I don't understand her words. She has to clear her throat to find her voice again. That tells me she's on the verge of losing her composure herself. She avoids my gaze and fixes her gaze on the catheter in my hand. "You know how to use that, don't you?"
"And if so. I can't do more damage than shoot up wrong. We've been through worse." I only half-see her desperate grin as I focus my attention on the needle that's now touching my skin at my elbow. My fingers still tremble uncontrollably.
I'm about to slowly stick the needle into my arm when Johanna stiffens in bed. It's a small movement, but it's enough to make me stop. I lift my head to read the nature of the threat in her eyes. Her pupils pan past me to the door and her face goes neutral. The pain that just mirrored my own is wiped away; hidden under her mask of cold and bitterness.
I follow her gaze and spot Haymitch standing in the doorway. He must have heard us talking because I didn't see him step inside and every muscle in his body is tense. I don't know what expression I expected on his face. He looks like he's ready to kill someone right there.
"I was looking for you," he says mechanically, his silvery eyes fixed solely on me. Horror lights up in them. You can hear that he's struggling to control his tone because it's almost simmering.
I can't tear myself away from his gaze. The point of the needle has pierced my skin and I must release it before my trembling fingers do more damage to my arm.
"If you weren't kissing Coin's feet, you would have shown up to her room a long time ago," Johanna remarks in an accusatory voice. Her words don't mean anything other than If you had shown up here sooner none of this would have happened. Then she turns to me with a seriousness that I hardly know from her. She pulls the catheter out of my arm and rams it into her own with such force that I flinch at the sight. "Now go. I can't endure his presence and he won't go until you do."
With a mixture of amazement and uncertainty, I look at the blood trickling out of the crook of my arm in small drops, and then at Haymitch. Haymitch's face seems carved in stone, and I don't doubt the truth of Johanna's words for a second. I nod briefly, squeeze her hand lightly and promise to come back tomorrow.
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