“Elder, this is your job. You can’t decide when you’re Eldest and when you’re not. You. Are. Always. Eldest. Even if you don’t take the title. ” Ah. There’s the berating I’d been waiting for.
I sigh. “Fine. Be there soon. ”
Doc’s apprentice, Kit, meets me in the garden. Doc didn’t want to take on an apprentice, but he’s of the age that he will need a replacement, and I insisted. Of all the nurses that applied for apprenticeship, Kit was the best. Not the best with medicine—Doc constantly complains about what a slow learner she is—but she’s the best with the people, and I decided that Doc needs someone more human beside him as he works. Doc wasn’t happy with my decision, but he accepted it.
“Thank you,” Kit says. “We just weren’t sure what to do. ”
“What’s going on?” I ask, following her down the path, past the hydrangeas and the pond to the metal wall behind the garden.
Doc crouches on the ground, for once negligent about the dirt and grass stains that must be seeping into his pants.
A woman kneels in front of the wall. She looks a little like some of the pictures of people praying on Sol-Earth—her hands rest on the ground, palms up, and her body bends forward, her face resting on the metal wall.
“She won’t get up,” Doc says.
I squat down beside her. “What’s wrong with her?”
Doc shakes his head. “She just won’t get up. ”
I put my hand on the woman’s back. She doesn’t flinch—she doesn’t acknowledge my presence at all. My hand creeps up to her shoulder, and I apply as gentle pressure as I can until her body weight shifts back. She leans away, sitting on her ankles.
I know her.
I try to know everyone on the ship, but I can’t. There are too many of them, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t know them all. But I do know this woman.
Her name is Evalee, and she works in the food storage district in the City. I stayed with her family when I was a little kid; I don’t remember exactly when. I don’t think she was on Phydus when I lived with her family, but she definitely was on it later, when I visited her before moving to the Keeper Level. Even so, she was always kind to me. She put salve on my hand when I burned it while learning how to can string beans, and she ignored the way I cried even though I was old enough to know that such a small burn didn’t deserve tears.
“Evie,” I say. “It’s me. Elder. What’s wrong?”
She looks at me, but her eyes are as dead as if she was still drugged. Deader. Evie doesn’t turn away as she reaches one hand up and scratches against the wall in front of her.
“No way out,” she whispers.
She turns her head, slowly, to the wall. Like a child sinking into her pillow, Evie rests her face against the metal. Her fingernails scrape slowly down the wall, so softly I can barely hear it. Her hand hits the dirt and relaxes, palm up.
Doc watches us with a grim expression on his face. I look up at him.
“What’s wrong with her?”
Doc’s mouth tightens as he breathes a heavy sigh through his nose, then he speaks. “She’s one of my depression patients. She went missing yesterday; I think she was just walking along the wall until she got exhausted and wound up here. ”
I glance at Evie’s feet. They are stained reddish brown, even in the arches, and dark lines of mud cake under her toenails.
“What can we do?” I ask. But what I really want to know is: Will everyone else react this way when they find out that the ship is stopped? I always thought the worst that could happen was a rebellion, but this dead-inside depression makes me feel hollowed out too. Would it be better for us to rip the ship apart in rage or silently scratch at the walls until we simply quit breathing?
Doc glances at his apprentice. Kit reaches into the pocket of her laboratory coat and pulls out a pale green med patch.
“This is why I commed you,” Doc says as Kit hands the patch to me. “I’ve developed a new med patch for the depression patients. ”
I turn the patch over in my hand. Doc makes them himself, with the help of some of the Shippers in the chem research lab. Tiny needles adhere to one side like metal filings stuck to tape; when you pre
ss the patch into your skin, the needles stick to you and inject medicine directly into your system.
“So use it,” I say, handing it to Doc.
Doc takes the patch, holding it carefully. “I have to ask you—I wanted you to see why it’s necessary, but then I have to ask you—I made the patches using Phydus. ”
I stare at Doc. Phydus? I’d told him to destroy all the stores of the chemical. Clearly he hasn’t—and he doesn’t fear me enough to lie and say he has.