Chapter Two: Down Twisted — Part 8
Aside — The Choir Boy’s Tale
Part 2
“You know who he is, right?” Jimmy asks quietly.
“The second he told us his name. It’s why we called you.”
“I don’t like this.” One of the men says.
“You don’t like this?” Jimmy waves the key on its black leather strap. “Somebody’s gotta be more careful about our homeland security if we are to keep our advantage. Doctor Tee, if you’re quite done with your interview, could I have a moment?”
There is a hiss of argument, and though Blake cannot see it, The Doctor is smiling, though nobody else is. Something goes unsaid, and the Doctor moves quickly, quietly, and Blake is caught unawares. Blake feels the prick and burn of the needle, and finds his mind fading into darkness. He’s hearing things even as his body goes numb. The voices are clear, as if remembering every word will be important some day.
“He’s a good boy, even if he’s not one of us. And you better believe a sweet thing like him will never be one of us.” Jimmy sounds like he’s made a decision, like he knows something about Blake that Blake will never know about himself, and he says things to the Doctor that are blurred from Blake’s memory. “Make him as comfortable as possible before, during, and after. When you’re done, get him off this continent. Don’t treat him like he’s one of us — I’m serious, Doctor. There will be repercussions if you fail to listen.”
“The boy will feel no pain while in my care.” Doctor Tee says, sounding disappointed.
“Move the operations after clean up.” Jimmy says, and these will be the last words Blake hears for many long days. “Be thorough, all of you. I will be assigning a key master, who will keep the key in sight from now on.”
Blake doesn’t know the cop who killed Blake’s family is on Jimmy’s pay roll, and Jimmy doesn’t bother to let on. Blake doesn’t know why his father died, along with his mother and his sister. He doesn’t know why he will be left alive. He’s too young to know anything but fear, and fear is all he’s feeling when the medicine wins over his mind.
The darkness, when it comes, proves complete.
The only reason they found Blake’s box, set roughly inside their cargo bay just after the ship’s launch, is because inside it had been placed with a timed siren glued to the inside of the lid, set to go off once the ship was too far at sea to turn back. At first the Japanese sailors feared terrorists, and approached the screaming, coffin sized box with caution, until it became apparent that it was marked as having stand alone fire alarms in it, and they made the decision to find the culprit making all the noise and shut it off. Later, they would see that the box was not on their list. The midsized ship lurches slowly onward, its hold full. Forty men and ten women from China, Japan, Britain, and the US, work its engines from shore to shore, and they make a good living, an honest living, regardless of which national bank cashes their individual checks. The entire hold is filled with the screaming of an alarm whose box might as well be acting as an amplifier.
“Whatever you do, just turn it off.” The Captain, a man who once ran cargo for the military, shouts from the entrance. “I don’t care if we have to dump it overboard so long as we have peace.”
Carefully, a teenage boy fresh to sea pries back the wooden lid with a crowbar, and the alarm immediately stops its click and wail even as the lid falls off the top of the box and rattles to the floor, where the alarm is further crushed as it is sandwiched against the metal grating. The young man takes a quick step back and his eyes grow white and wide. He starts to scream something in Mandarin, shouting in fear for something or somebody, and now three more sets of eyes are looking into the box, looking down onto Blake, who stares back up at them, unable to move at all.
Blake is strapped to a paramedic’s back board, his body locked in place by straps, a tube shoved down his throat to keep him breathing, and eyes streaming tears, mouth streaming drool and blood. The box had been warm until it was opened, now, embarrassed and naked, surrounded by eyes, Blake can do nothing but cry and heave, wishing for death. He thinks he can hear one of the crew gasp and sob, and after what seems an eternity, a new face appears, a man who has brought him a soft blanket and a kind smile. Soon they are lifting him, and he feels a prick in his arm. The darkness comes again, pleasant only in that there is nothing to remember while in its embrace.
Blake doesn’t know how long he has slept, just that when his memory comes back, even for a moment, his neck is packed in ice, and he is in a bed in a hospital. He thinks he is dizzy, because there is a gentle rocking to his world. The pain overwhelms him, and he starts to cry despite himself. The pain in his throat is so severe, he doesn’t even dare to think of speaking. The ship’s doctor is over him, stroking his hair back with a cool cloth, genuine concern on his face. The man has a soft voice, and speaks choppy English, distorted by the influence of one of the Asian dialects, but he is kind and worried and furious, though all of it is bottled carefully in a way that Blake can’t see it. Blake has an IV in his left arm, and the man turns a valve, allowing the contents of a second bag to mix in with the first. Blake feels his thoughts shatter into darkness.
Though the good Doctor Wong has served five years at sea, tending to men and women both injured and sick, and though he has watched good men die, strong men broken to the cane and the crutch, the Doctor finds his usual composure slipping, and for the first time since he has taken up medicine, the man who wears the title puts his head into his hands, and cries. At his feet is a note, written clearly in English, and poorly translated into Japanese and Mandarin, hinting that whomever had dumped the boy on them had done a little research into which ship they were targeting, and the kind of crew that was in it. For the moment, none of this matters to Doctor Wong: His heart, having lost its faith in humanity, has shattered.
