Page 35 of Lucy Undying

“Or I know a lot of genuinely horrendous people.” I smile like I always do when I’m telling the truth, a crooked smile that implies I’m lying. It lets people off the hook, lets them dismiss what I’m saying as a joke. No one ever looks past it.

Elle hesitates, though. Like she believes my words, not my smile. She nods. “Me, too. Is it all right if I get to work without you?” She’s so sincere, like she actually wants my permission to continue to do dull, dusty work for free. She’s too good for this world. Definitely too good for my world.

“Knock yourself out. But not literally, because we have almost no cell reception here, so it’d be a whole hassle to call 911.”

“999,” she says, “which you didn’t know, so I’ll be extra careful not to get injured.”

“Good idea. Don’t forget to look right—that’s my number one safety tip. Can’t remember where I learned that one, though.”

She laughs and leaves me to it, closing the door behind herself. I start stripping the second the latch clicks. The water’s not quite as hot as I like it—if I don’t leave a shower lobster red and parboiled, it’s not even worth it—but after the last two days, it’s a luxury. I use my tiny travel bottles of body wash and shampoo to scrub away the dust and sweat and bad memories.

Did Lucy use this tub? Did she come in here to escape her mother, to soak and dream? I have a nagging need to find out more about her life, her thoughts, her love. It’s like being in the middle of a good book, only instead it’s being in the middle of a good brain. A good life.

I hope she avoids those annoying men and defies her mother by marrying her secret paramour. I hope they lived to a ripe old age in this very house. No, that can’t be right, given the dates. The last people to live here weren’t long after Lucy’s journal years.

I hope she and her darling ran away together. Explored Europe arm in arm. Kissed in front of the Eiffel Tower, unbothered by the cliché of it. Found an old villa in Italy and painstakingly restored it. Worshipped the sunset over the Aegean Sea, arm in arm.

But I’m not picturing Lucy and her mysterious lover anymore. I’m picturing Elle and me, in love, escaping into Europe. Which is impossible. Both because Europe isn’t far away or remote enough to truly disappear into, and because I could never bring someone like Elle into my life. It would be cruel. To her, and to me, too. I know better.

Focus, Iris. At the end of two weeks, I’m gone, no matter what. That’s my deadline, so I’d better have some cash by then. Today I’ll go to a café to recharge my phone and portable battery and find some shops that might buy this house’s crap.

My phone makes me think of Dad, though. I should call and check on him, after yesterday. I sink lower into the bath, resenting him, resenting having to run away when I’d love to stay and get to know Elle better, resenting my whole fucking life.

I freeze as claws slowly scrape down the window above my head. Dad was right. I left him alone, and I failed him, and I failed myself, too, by believing I could escape. He’s probably dead already, and my desperate gamble for freedom is over before it ever started.

Because Mom’s found me.

32

Boston, September 25, 2024

Client Transcript

It turns out I’m quite good at sniffing out blood type. For example, you’re AB+, which makes you a universal recipient. I wasn’t, and I speak from experience when I say you’re fortunate, Vanessa.

The first time I brought back the blood the Doctor needed, still conveniently packaged within its original owner, who had, unfortunately, lost a good portion of the top of his head and wouldn’t be needing his blood for much longer—

Sorry, are you all right? You look pale, Vanessa.

Anyhow, I was horrified, too. I dropped the body in outrage when I realized what the Doctor was doing.

“You can’t put someone’s blood into someone else!” I shouted, quivering with rage. There was a whisper of a memory, the details lost but the pain and fear remaining. I raked my fingernails down my arms, trying to claw out the sensation of my veins being on fire, but I couldn’t, because it wasn’t in my veins. The pain was somewhere deeper that I couldn’t reach.

The Doctor inserted a needle without pause. “I use the same type of blood, so the body doesn’t reject it. You did well. This is exactly what the patient needs. Now please go stand in the corner and calm down while I work, or I’ll have to kill you.”

I didn’t think she could kill me, but I did as I was told. My shudders and shivers and flares of pain quieted. The man receiving an infusion of blood wasn’t in any discomfort. A flush of life returned to his sallow skin, and he looked like he was sleeping, not dying.

“Good,” the Doctor said, pleased. “Now he’ll live long enough for me to trace the course of the infection through his body so I can determine the precise point at which it can no longer be treated. I was wasting so much time retrieving supplies. You can do that for me now. You’re much more useful than I thought you would be.”

With that dubious praise warming my own skin much like an infusion of blood, I agreed. What else did I have to do?

Besides, it was marvelous watching her work. She let me study what she was doing as she traced and tracked and cataloged every part of a human body. Those she could easily save were dropped off far away from the front—that was my job, since the Doctor didn’t care about them once they were healed.

The Doctor preferred those she couldn’t easily save, though, both for the challenge and for the opportunity to study life on its way into death.

You might think it would be difficult to move so many soldiers under the noses of all that military might, but it was bleakly easy. That’s why the Doctor was there in the first place. An endless supply of broken bodies, and no one keeping track of where they went.

One night, months into my role as her courier, I was pulling a cart with two young men inside it. They were likely to make a full recovery, one without his right arm and one without his spleen. I didn’t know exactly what a spleen did, but the Doctor assured me that the human body could compensate for the loss.

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