Fic: Too Heavy For Me Part One
Prologue
Trent’s parents came up from Philadelphia to plan the funeral. Pete helped pack up Trent’s belongings and tried to stay out of the way. Trent’s father, Roger, said little to him, except for things like “Don’t put the books into the big boxes, they’ll be too heavy to lift,” and “you might as well send all this kitchen stuff to Goodwill.” Trent’s mother Diane tried, she’d say “oh, he always loved The Eagles, you must remember...” and then trail off into wistful contemplation while Pete tried to think of something comforting to say. Really, he couldn’t look at either of them without wanting to throw himself down and beg for forgiveness, for letting Trent die, for choosing to save himself instead.
There seemed to be so much to do. So much that needed to be attended to straight away, but Pete wasn’t in any condition to do anything for a couple of days. He’d heard that breaking a bond was painful and disorienting, but nothing could have prepared him for it. His head hurt like it was being split in half. It was hard to keep food down for a while, and there was a ceaseless, nagging sense of something being wrong, like he had his shoes on the wrong feet or couldn’t remember if he’d turned the oven off. He knew what was wrong, but it didn’t help. His caseworker told him that the feeling would lessen with time. Pete knew he was lucky to be young and healthy. It wasn’t uncommon for Sentinels and Guides whose health was more frail to follow their partners when a bond was broken.
The police were dismayed that Pete couldn’t give them a description of the car. At first the headlights had blinded him, and then he’d been looking at Trent’s body on the ground, not watching to see where the driver had gone. The minister for the funeral service wanted to know what hymns they wanted sung. Pete stayed out of that discussion entirely, leaving it to Trent’s parents. The lawyer read the will. There wasn’t much to it; Trent hadn’t had any children and left everything to his parents. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to leave anything to Pete, but Pete took Trent’s favourite baseball cap out of the closet and stuffed it in his bag anyway. He wasn’t sure why.
Pete’s G-TAC caseworker explained that a new assignment had been arranged for him, in Washington D.C., and he would be picked up the day after the funeral.
While Pete was clearing out the kitchen he found a new roll of trash bags, right up the back under a pile of instruction booklets for every appliance they owned. He fell down right there on the tiles, gripping the bags in one hand and the drawer handle in the other while he tried to figure out whether he needed to breathe in or out.
Unbidden, a memory sprang into Pete’s mind. There had been a story Trent had liked to tell, about sneaking into a club when he was sixteen and making himself sick on cheap beer. He’d told it so many times that Pete remembered not just what had happened, but the funny mannerisms and turns of phrase he’d always used. He’d heard it so many times he’d become tired of it, could have recited the story himself word for word. If he closed his eyes he could picture Trent standing in front of him telling the story, but he was never going to hear Trent tell it again. It wasn’t as though it was a good memory, nothing that should have brought Pete to tears, but it didn’t seem to matter.
During the nights, when he couldn’t sleep, Pete wrote page after page of angry, desperate poetry, and then ripped them to shreds in case someone put together the vague references to the car accident and Pete’s state of mind and figured out what he’d done. In the mornings, his hands were always covered with pen ink, but Trent’s parents never noticed.
He sent an email to Mikey, the day before the funeral. There were lots of things he could have said, but in the end he just wrote ‘Trent’s dead’ and hit send. Mikey emailed back with a million questions which Pete couldn’t answer, or didn’t want to. ‘I need to see you,’ Mikey said, and Pete replied, ‘I can probably get away for an hour or two after the funeral. Meet you at the usual place?’
The morning of the funeral, Pete was putting on his tie when he heard the doorbell ring. He went to answer it expecting a flower delivery or yet another neighbour with a casserole, but when he opened the door two men in cheap suits were standing on the other side.
“Guide Lowery? We’re here to transport you to your new assignment,” said the older man, holding up a G-TAC ID badge.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said automatically. The caseworkers merely stared at him uncomprehendingly, so Pete added, “I thought you were coming tomorrow? The funeral’s today.”
They looked down their noses at him. “We can’t really help it if you provided G-TAC with the wrong dates,” the older one said dismissively.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said again, even though he was sure he’d given the right date.
The younger caseworker shifted on his feet. “Uh...” he said.
“What?” snapped the older one.
“We could wait a couple of hours, come back after the funeral?”
The older caseworker’s face turned an interesting colour. Pete watched as he spluttered. “Is that meant to be a joke, newbie? This is going to take long enough as it is, you know.” He glanced at Pete. “If you’ve got anything to bring, why don’t you go get it now?”
At that moment Trent’s mother stepped into the hallway. “Who is it?” she asked.
The caseworkers shuffled their feet awkwardly. “We’re sorry to interrupt, ma’am,” said the older one. “We’re here to collect the Guide.”
She looked at them. “We’re about to leave for the funeral,” she said, her voice becoming strained.
“We’re very sorry for your loss,” he said uncomfortably. “Unfortunately, it seems we were given the wrong information.”
“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes,” she said. “Pete, tell them.”
“We don’t want to delay you. We’ll collect the Guide and be out of your way very quickly.”
Trent’s mother drew herself up to her full height, which was more impressive than it had any right to be. “No,” she said firmly. “I’m burying my son today. I have to go to the cemetery and put him in the ground, and the funeral is going to be exactly like I planned. Pete is going to be there to read the twenty-third psalm and act as a pallbearer for his Sentinel, and you are just going to have to wait.” Her voice rose as she spoke, not quite to the level of shouting but enough that the caseworkers looked remarkably uncomfortable.
“Er... we’ll come back this afternoon,” said the older one.
“You do that,” said Trent’s mother, and shut the door in their faces.
It was a closed casket funeral, and Pete stood by it to give the reading. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,” he read, and felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to crack the lid open just a little. Just enough to check, make sure Trent was really dead. Instead he clutched the Bible harder with both hands and finished the psalm with a shaking voice, crumpling the edges of the pages between his fingers.
At the gravesite, they played Take It to the Limit and the minister went around with a shovel loaded with soil. He brought it first to Trent’s mother, then his father, while Pete watched and knew that really, the first handful had been his.
***
The caseworkers were waiting outside the house when they got back from the funeral. Pete wasn’t going to get time to see Mikey. There would be no time to send him an email. It was probably better that way, anyway. Better than pretending things were better than they actually were.
Pete distracted himself by eavesdropping on the caseworkers’ conversation. He personally thought that eavesdropping wasn’t the right term for overhearing a conversation held in the same car he was sitting in, but that was what someone who worked for G-TAC would call it, so whatever.
The older one was called Nagel, and the younger one was Ridley. Ridley was to be Pete’s new caseworker, which Pete learned not through being told but from overhearing Nagel explain to Ridley what his job responsibilities would be. Ridley had only been on the job for a few weeks, apparently.
It was after six in the evening by the time Pete caught a glimpse of their destination. Walter Reed Army Medical Center was gleaming and white, sitting in beautifully manicured grounds. From the car window, Pete could see a pond, and beyond that, a massive tower looming up from the surrounding buildings. The trainers drove on and turned through a gate a little further down the road.
They continued on and Pete began to see that Walter Reed was almost like a little town in itself. Nagel was muttering directions to Ridley, and Pete caught a glimpse of directions written on a scrap of paper in his hand. They stopped outside a large building, and the two trainers got out. Pete opened his own door hesitantly, because he wasn’t sure if the trainers expected him to follow or to wait until he was told what to do.
“Come on, come on, hurry up,” barked Nagel, and Pete relaxed a fraction. At least he’d called it right.
“This is where the outpatients stay who live on base,” Ridley explained. “You’ll stay here, in shared quarters with the other Guides.”
Ridley took a breath to add something else, and Nagel said, “Come on, kid, let the other Guides walk him through all that stuff, huh?”
Ridley went quiet and they led Pete inside. It was laid out like a large apartment complex, with a few open areas spaced around for socialising. There were rails on every wall and the staircases had chair lifts. Nagel made his way around a few turns and eventually knocked on one of the doors.
A Guide opened it and looked out at them. He was a bit older than Pete, with perfectly groomed brown hair and dressed in a G-TAC uniform. Pete fingered the hem of his own shirt, wondering if he was going to have to start wearing uniform too. He hoped not, but on the other hand it was better than fatigues.
“The new Guide is here,” said Nagel. “You guys need to show him around, right? He’s your responsibility.”
“Yes, sir,” said the Guide seriously, and he stepped back to let Pete into the room.
Pete stepped through the doorway, glancing over his shoulder quickly to see whether the caseworkers were going to follow him in and keep bossing everyone around, but they didn’t and the Guide closed the door behind Pete.
“Hi!” he said. “I’m Edward. This is Sharon and Linda.” He gestured to the other two Guides in the room, a tired-looking older woman, and a woman slightly younger than Pete who smiled at him shyly.
“I’m Pete,” said Pete. He looked around the room. It wasn’t very big; there was a kitchenette on one side where Sharon was stirring something in a frying pan, a little table big enough to seat two, and then a couch and television against the opposite wall.
“You’ll be sharing with me, come on,” said Edward. He showed Pete to a small bedroom. “They dropped off some uniforms for you, but you might want to order more or change the size. I can show you how to do that if you want.”
“Awesome,” Pete said gloomily. Edward didn’t seem to take any notice of his tone, and left him to unpack.
From the main room, one of the women - Sharon, Pete was pretty sure - called out, “Have you had dinner, Pete, or do you want some butter chicken?”
Pete’s mouth watered. “Yeah!” he called back. The food smelled amazing. Trent had hated Indian food.
Sharon and Linda ate at the table, while Edward and Pete sat on the couch. They had the TV on, playing the news, but no one was paying much attention to it. They were too busy talking, about the day and the patients and the work they needed to do tomorrow. Pete listened, trying to pick up something that would help him, but it sounded overwhelming. There were almost five-hundred outpatients living in other apartments in the building, and about twice as many inpatients in the hospital. Out of those patients there were fifty-four Sentinels.
“Fifty-five,” said Linda. “Remember that new guy who just arrived today?”
Fifty-five Sentinels, and four Guides. How were they supposed to cope with the workload?
“Are any of those Sentinels bonded?” Pete asked.
“Yeah, sure,” said Sharon. “There’s twenty-six unbonded Sentinels. Or twenty-seven, now, I guess.”
“When unbonded Sentinels get injured, they send the Guides off to new assignments and get us to take care of them. More efficient, you know,” said Edward. “We’re each responsible for specific Sentinels to make things simpler. David left the day before yesterday, so we’ve been covering his Sentinels since then, but now that you’re here you can take a couple of Sentinels off each of our hands. Let’s see, Evan’s not too much trouble, he’s just kind of old...”
“Edward,” said Sharon, “don’t give Pete all the assholes just because he’s new. Don’t be a jerk.”
“I’m not!” Edward said indignantly. “You can handle Evan,” he added, speaking directly to Pete.
“Wouldn’t it make sense for Pete to just take responsibility for the Sentinels that were David’s?” Linda wondered.
“But Linda,” Edward whined. He glanced at Pete from the corner of his eye. “I don’t like Evan,” he muttered.
“It’s fine,” Pete said, not wanting to cause problems on his first night. “I don’t mind.”
“Great!” said Edward, cheering up considerably.
“That’s one,” said Sharon with a smirk. “And what about Julia? I’m sure Pete would like her.”
“Like hell!” Edward looked warily at Pete, then sagged. “You can have Cassidy,” he said. “That’s my best offer.”
Pete shrugged. The names meant nothing to him; he had no way of knowing whether he was being screwed over until he met the Sentinels in question. Sharon and Linda both named two of their own Sentinels and that rounded out Pete’s workload.
“I can’t believe you tried to dump your crabbiest Sentinels on Pete,” Sharon grumbled, once everything was organised. “I gave him the two that are the farthest away from the others. All this walking is killing my legs.”
Pete grimaced, reminded of the impossible task of learning his way around the enormous facility. Linda must have noticed his expression.
“Don’t worry, it’s not so bad,” she said. “We’ll help you find your way around.” She pulled out a map and showed Pete roughly where each Sentinel could be found. Pete kept busy for the rest of the evening making sure he was ready for the next day and trying not to think too much.
***
Being a Guide generally meant working long days. Guides assigned to one Sentinel were always on duty, or at least, needed to be available whenever their Sentinel wanted. Otherwise it was G-TAC who had oversight of their schedules, and they weren’t known for being easygoing. Pete had expected to be kept pretty busy, and so when he heard the other Guides moving around early the next morning, he wasn’t surprised, and dragged himself out of bed.
Edward made a point of taking him around and showing him which rooms were occupied by Sentinels, and at the end of the tour said, “Evan’s in this room. Just had a hip replacement. Why don’t you check on him and see if he needs anything, and I’ll go help Julia with her breakfast?”
“Sure,” Pete said with a tolerant smile.
He knocked on the door and a gruff voice said, “Yeah? What is it?”
Suddenly nervous, Pete cleared his throat. “Uh... it’s Pete? I’m a Guide? Just checking if you need anything?”
Silence ticked by for a second or two, and then Evan barked, “Well? The door’s not locked, or do you want me to hobble over there and let you in?”
Pete wiped his hand on his pants and opened the door, trying to look friendly and helpful. An elderly man sat in an armchair and glowered at him. “You’re new, ain’t you?” he asked grumpily. “Can’t keep you all straight, changing all the time.”
“Can I help you get some breakfast together?”
“What do you think, genius? Maybe I’m happy to starve to death.”
Taking a deep breath, Pete struggled to maintain a cheerful attitude. “What do you feel like?”
“Two poached eggs on toast. With ketchup. And coffee.”
So Pete made the coffee and got the eggs cooking, fielding a barrage of suggestions from the Sentinel about all the ways his cooking didn’t quite measure up. He got the food plated up without dumping it on Evan’s lap, which he considered achievement enough for one day.
Pete was about to excuse himself to go check up on the other Sentinel he was responsible for in the building, but Evan said, “Since you’re just standing there, you might as well empty the dishwasher.” And after that, he wanted his bed made and the trash emptied, and before he knew it, Evan was saying “I’ve got an appointment with the physio in fifteen minutes, are you taking me or am I supposed to make my own way there?”
Crap. The day had barely started and he’d already fallen behind. Pete helped Evan into his wheelchair while Evan grumbled and groaned and complained that Pete was doing it all wrong. Once he was settled, Pete grabbed the handles to push him out into the hallway, but Evan twisted around, trying to swat his hands away. “I can manage, I’m not feeble!” he snapped.
Pete let go and Evan wheeled himself through the door and then stopped. “Well? Come on, help me around the corner! It’s not exactly a piece of cake, you know!”
“Sorry,” Pete muttered, taking hold of the chair again and ignoring Evan’s muttering about incompetent Guides. No wonder the old man had never bonded.
Pete passed Edward in the hallway and sent the other man an urgent look.
“Hey,” Edward said. “I saw you’d been held up, so I asked Jon if he could sit with Terri for a while. She’ll be fine until this evening.” He pointed down the hall to a small alcove with some chairs and a television. A Guide turned in his chair to look at them and gave a small wave; he wasn’t wearing a uniform like Pete and Edward, but Pete had always been able to identify Guides on sight. He tried not to glower.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Come on, what’s the hold up?” Evan complained. Pete grimaced and pushed Edward on down the hallway. How nice for Jon, that he had an hour to sit and watch TV with a Sentinel he wasn’t even bonded to.
Edward had given Pete directions to the physio, but Evan didn’t seem to accept that and kept telling Pete to ‘turn here’ and ‘slow down on this hill, what do you think this is, NASCAR?’
Pete stayed with Evan through his appointment, which wasn’t so bad because at least Evan was too distracted by the physiotherapist to give Pete any trouble. Then the physio suggested that they link up while Evan worked through some particularly difficult exercises, and Pete realised that he hadn’t linked with anyone since Trent had died over a week earlier. He hadn’t linked with anyone except Trent in almost a decade.
He took Evan’s hand and it ended up being not that big a deal. The link felt different to Trent, but not bad. He could tell that Evan was tired and sore and worried, and was surprised to feel a surge of pity for the old man. Afterwards, Pete had to take Evan back to his room and then hurry back to the hospital.
Pete found the right ward thanks to the map Linda had given him, and looked around the room. He approached a nurse standing by a trolley and cleared his throat. “Uh, I’m supposed to sit with Mr Stillman while he has dialysis?”
“Just a second,” the nurse said, making notes on a clipboard. She looked up after a minute and said, “Never interrupt a nurse while they’re doing medications. Now, what do you need?”
“Uh, sorry. I’m Pete? The new Guide? And I’m supposed to sit with Mr Stillman...”
“While he has dialysis, right. They’re running behind. Why don’t you help me take around the lunches?” The nurse pushed the trolley into a room and locked the door, then led Pete to another, larger trolley. “I’m Viv, by the way,” she said. “Take the other side of this, okay?”
Pete helped her wheel the trolley a few feet down the hallway, where they stopped.
“Patient’s names and room numbers are on here,” Viv explained, pointing to a chart hanging off the side of the trolley. “Always make sure you match the right tray to the right patient. Some of them have allergies or dietary restrictions. Here, this is the one for this room. You take it in and I’ll do the other side.”
They handed out the meals. Every so often Viv would point out patients who were Sentinels and Pete would take a few minutes to talk to them. They all seemed decent enough, but most of them were on some type of pain medication and not very talkative.
At one of the last rooms, Viv handed him a tray and said, “This patient just flew in last night, so he’s still a little jetlagged.” She tapped on the open door and called out, “Patrick? It’s Viv, with your lunch.”
A moment passed, then a male voice called back, “Yeah,” with complete indifference. Victoria led the way into the room.
“This is Pete,” she said to Patrick, wheeling his table into place. “He’s new here, just like you.”
“Hey,” Patrick said, glancing at Pete for less than a second before turning back towards the window. Pete put his lunch tray down on the table and took the chance to get a closer look. Patrick had fair hair, cut short, and blue eyes, and Pete would have bet he was good looking enough under normal circumstances, but mostly he looked terrible. His face was gaunt and his eyes had huge shadows under them.
“Try to eat something this time, okay?” Viv suggested, taking the cover off the plate to reveal sandwiches and a muffin. “You didn’t have breakfast. Your body needs fuel to heal.”
“Yeah,” Patrick said again, in the same flat tone. Viv walked out of the room with a glance at Pete, and he’d learned by now to recognise the cue.
“So,” he said, standing by the bed, “Where did you fly in from?”
For a minute it seemed like Patrick wouldn’t answer, but eventually he replied, “Nowhere.”
“O-kay,” said Pete, when Patrick did nothing else to prod the conversation along. “So. You must be hungry, if you didn’t have breakfast.”
“Not really.”
“Oh. Well.” Pete tried to figure out the right thing to say, feeling slightly desperate because Patrick was too thin as it was, and figuring out how to get a finicky Sentinel to eat was definitely in his job description. “If you’re having issues with your senses...”
“I’m fine.”
“You heard what Viv said. Don’t you want to get better?”
Patrick shrugged with one shoulder. “Don’t really care. Not much point.”
Pete gave up. “Well, if you’re just going to let these sandwiches go to waste, do you mind if I eat them? I haven’t had lunch yet, and I’m really hungry.”
Patrick barked out a surprised laugh, and Pete was startled because it was so unexpected. He’d thought that Patrick would be pissed off with him for being a smartass.
“Why not,” Patrick said. “Someone might as well eat them.”
So Pete picked up half a sandwich and bit off the corner of it. “It’s good,” he said, surprised, because he’d heard a lot of things about hospital food, all of them bad. He wolfed the sandwich down, making appreciative noises. From the corner of his eye he could see Patrick watching him and glancing at the remaining sandwiches on the plate. Eventually Patrick grabbed the other half of the sandwich and began to eat it; it must have been awkward because an IV was stuck in the back of his hand, but he kept his left arm tucked under the blankets and didn’t move it.
“Pete,” called Viv from outside the room. “They’re taking Mr Stillman to the dialysis unit now.”
Pete stuffed the remainder of the sandwich into his mouth and chewed it as fast as he could. “I should probably go,” he said, “but I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
Part Two
Trent’s parents came up from Philadelphia to plan the funeral. Pete helped pack up Trent’s belongings and tried to stay out of the way. Trent’s father, Roger, said little to him, except for things like “Don’t put the books into the big boxes, they’ll be too heavy to lift,” and “you might as well send all this kitchen stuff to Goodwill.” Trent’s mother Diane tried, she’d say “oh, he always loved The Eagles, you must remember...” and then trail off into wistful contemplation while Pete tried to think of something comforting to say. Really, he couldn’t look at either of them without wanting to throw himself down and beg for forgiveness, for letting Trent die, for choosing to save himself instead.
There seemed to be so much to do. So much that needed to be attended to straight away, but Pete wasn’t in any condition to do anything for a couple of days. He’d heard that breaking a bond was painful and disorienting, but nothing could have prepared him for it. His head hurt like it was being split in half. It was hard to keep food down for a while, and there was a ceaseless, nagging sense of something being wrong, like he had his shoes on the wrong feet or couldn’t remember if he’d turned the oven off. He knew what was wrong, but it didn’t help. His caseworker told him that the feeling would lessen with time. Pete knew he was lucky to be young and healthy. It wasn’t uncommon for Sentinels and Guides whose health was more frail to follow their partners when a bond was broken.
The police were dismayed that Pete couldn’t give them a description of the car. At first the headlights had blinded him, and then he’d been looking at Trent’s body on the ground, not watching to see where the driver had gone. The minister for the funeral service wanted to know what hymns they wanted sung. Pete stayed out of that discussion entirely, leaving it to Trent’s parents. The lawyer read the will. There wasn’t much to it; Trent hadn’t had any children and left everything to his parents. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to leave anything to Pete, but Pete took Trent’s favourite baseball cap out of the closet and stuffed it in his bag anyway. He wasn’t sure why.
Pete’s G-TAC caseworker explained that a new assignment had been arranged for him, in Washington D.C., and he would be picked up the day after the funeral.
While Pete was clearing out the kitchen he found a new roll of trash bags, right up the back under a pile of instruction booklets for every appliance they owned. He fell down right there on the tiles, gripping the bags in one hand and the drawer handle in the other while he tried to figure out whether he needed to breathe in or out.
Unbidden, a memory sprang into Pete’s mind. There had been a story Trent had liked to tell, about sneaking into a club when he was sixteen and making himself sick on cheap beer. He’d told it so many times that Pete remembered not just what had happened, but the funny mannerisms and turns of phrase he’d always used. He’d heard it so many times he’d become tired of it, could have recited the story himself word for word. If he closed his eyes he could picture Trent standing in front of him telling the story, but he was never going to hear Trent tell it again. It wasn’t as though it was a good memory, nothing that should have brought Pete to tears, but it didn’t seem to matter.
During the nights, when he couldn’t sleep, Pete wrote page after page of angry, desperate poetry, and then ripped them to shreds in case someone put together the vague references to the car accident and Pete’s state of mind and figured out what he’d done. In the mornings, his hands were always covered with pen ink, but Trent’s parents never noticed.
He sent an email to Mikey, the day before the funeral. There were lots of things he could have said, but in the end he just wrote ‘Trent’s dead’ and hit send. Mikey emailed back with a million questions which Pete couldn’t answer, or didn’t want to. ‘I need to see you,’ Mikey said, and Pete replied, ‘I can probably get away for an hour or two after the funeral. Meet you at the usual place?’
The morning of the funeral, Pete was putting on his tie when he heard the doorbell ring. He went to answer it expecting a flower delivery or yet another neighbour with a casserole, but when he opened the door two men in cheap suits were standing on the other side.
“Guide Lowery? We’re here to transport you to your new assignment,” said the older man, holding up a G-TAC ID badge.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said automatically. The caseworkers merely stared at him uncomprehendingly, so Pete added, “I thought you were coming tomorrow? The funeral’s today.”
They looked down their noses at him. “We can’t really help it if you provided G-TAC with the wrong dates,” the older one said dismissively.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said again, even though he was sure he’d given the right date.
The younger caseworker shifted on his feet. “Uh...” he said.
“What?” snapped the older one.
“We could wait a couple of hours, come back after the funeral?”
The older caseworker’s face turned an interesting colour. Pete watched as he spluttered. “Is that meant to be a joke, newbie? This is going to take long enough as it is, you know.” He glanced at Pete. “If you’ve got anything to bring, why don’t you go get it now?”
At that moment Trent’s mother stepped into the hallway. “Who is it?” she asked.
The caseworkers shuffled their feet awkwardly. “We’re sorry to interrupt, ma’am,” said the older one. “We’re here to collect the Guide.”
She looked at them. “We’re about to leave for the funeral,” she said, her voice becoming strained.
“We’re very sorry for your loss,” he said uncomfortably. “Unfortunately, it seems we were given the wrong information.”
“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes,” she said. “Pete, tell them.”
“We don’t want to delay you. We’ll collect the Guide and be out of your way very quickly.”
Trent’s mother drew herself up to her full height, which was more impressive than it had any right to be. “No,” she said firmly. “I’m burying my son today. I have to go to the cemetery and put him in the ground, and the funeral is going to be exactly like I planned. Pete is going to be there to read the twenty-third psalm and act as a pallbearer for his Sentinel, and you are just going to have to wait.” Her voice rose as she spoke, not quite to the level of shouting but enough that the caseworkers looked remarkably uncomfortable.
“Er... we’ll come back this afternoon,” said the older one.
“You do that,” said Trent’s mother, and shut the door in their faces.
It was a closed casket funeral, and Pete stood by it to give the reading. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,” he read, and felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to crack the lid open just a little. Just enough to check, make sure Trent was really dead. Instead he clutched the Bible harder with both hands and finished the psalm with a shaking voice, crumpling the edges of the pages between his fingers.
At the gravesite, they played Take It to the Limit and the minister went around with a shovel loaded with soil. He brought it first to Trent’s mother, then his father, while Pete watched and knew that really, the first handful had been his.
***
The caseworkers were waiting outside the house when they got back from the funeral. Pete wasn’t going to get time to see Mikey. There would be no time to send him an email. It was probably better that way, anyway. Better than pretending things were better than they actually were.
Pete distracted himself by eavesdropping on the caseworkers’ conversation. He personally thought that eavesdropping wasn’t the right term for overhearing a conversation held in the same car he was sitting in, but that was what someone who worked for G-TAC would call it, so whatever.
The older one was called Nagel, and the younger one was Ridley. Ridley was to be Pete’s new caseworker, which Pete learned not through being told but from overhearing Nagel explain to Ridley what his job responsibilities would be. Ridley had only been on the job for a few weeks, apparently.
It was after six in the evening by the time Pete caught a glimpse of their destination. Walter Reed Army Medical Center was gleaming and white, sitting in beautifully manicured grounds. From the car window, Pete could see a pond, and beyond that, a massive tower looming up from the surrounding buildings. The trainers drove on and turned through a gate a little further down the road.
They continued on and Pete began to see that Walter Reed was almost like a little town in itself. Nagel was muttering directions to Ridley, and Pete caught a glimpse of directions written on a scrap of paper in his hand. They stopped outside a large building, and the two trainers got out. Pete opened his own door hesitantly, because he wasn’t sure if the trainers expected him to follow or to wait until he was told what to do.
“Come on, come on, hurry up,” barked Nagel, and Pete relaxed a fraction. At least he’d called it right.
“This is where the outpatients stay who live on base,” Ridley explained. “You’ll stay here, in shared quarters with the other Guides.”
Ridley took a breath to add something else, and Nagel said, “Come on, kid, let the other Guides walk him through all that stuff, huh?”
Ridley went quiet and they led Pete inside. It was laid out like a large apartment complex, with a few open areas spaced around for socialising. There were rails on every wall and the staircases had chair lifts. Nagel made his way around a few turns and eventually knocked on one of the doors.
A Guide opened it and looked out at them. He was a bit older than Pete, with perfectly groomed brown hair and dressed in a G-TAC uniform. Pete fingered the hem of his own shirt, wondering if he was going to have to start wearing uniform too. He hoped not, but on the other hand it was better than fatigues.
“The new Guide is here,” said Nagel. “You guys need to show him around, right? He’s your responsibility.”
“Yes, sir,” said the Guide seriously, and he stepped back to let Pete into the room.
Pete stepped through the doorway, glancing over his shoulder quickly to see whether the caseworkers were going to follow him in and keep bossing everyone around, but they didn’t and the Guide closed the door behind Pete.
“Hi!” he said. “I’m Edward. This is Sharon and Linda.” He gestured to the other two Guides in the room, a tired-looking older woman, and a woman slightly younger than Pete who smiled at him shyly.
“I’m Pete,” said Pete. He looked around the room. It wasn’t very big; there was a kitchenette on one side where Sharon was stirring something in a frying pan, a little table big enough to seat two, and then a couch and television against the opposite wall.
“You’ll be sharing with me, come on,” said Edward. He showed Pete to a small bedroom. “They dropped off some uniforms for you, but you might want to order more or change the size. I can show you how to do that if you want.”
“Awesome,” Pete said gloomily. Edward didn’t seem to take any notice of his tone, and left him to unpack.
From the main room, one of the women - Sharon, Pete was pretty sure - called out, “Have you had dinner, Pete, or do you want some butter chicken?”
Pete’s mouth watered. “Yeah!” he called back. The food smelled amazing. Trent had hated Indian food.
Sharon and Linda ate at the table, while Edward and Pete sat on the couch. They had the TV on, playing the news, but no one was paying much attention to it. They were too busy talking, about the day and the patients and the work they needed to do tomorrow. Pete listened, trying to pick up something that would help him, but it sounded overwhelming. There were almost five-hundred outpatients living in other apartments in the building, and about twice as many inpatients in the hospital. Out of those patients there were fifty-four Sentinels.
“Fifty-five,” said Linda. “Remember that new guy who just arrived today?”
Fifty-five Sentinels, and four Guides. How were they supposed to cope with the workload?
“Are any of those Sentinels bonded?” Pete asked.
“Yeah, sure,” said Sharon. “There’s twenty-six unbonded Sentinels. Or twenty-seven, now, I guess.”
“When unbonded Sentinels get injured, they send the Guides off to new assignments and get us to take care of them. More efficient, you know,” said Edward. “We’re each responsible for specific Sentinels to make things simpler. David left the day before yesterday, so we’ve been covering his Sentinels since then, but now that you’re here you can take a couple of Sentinels off each of our hands. Let’s see, Evan’s not too much trouble, he’s just kind of old...”
“Edward,” said Sharon, “don’t give Pete all the assholes just because he’s new. Don’t be a jerk.”
“I’m not!” Edward said indignantly. “You can handle Evan,” he added, speaking directly to Pete.
“Wouldn’t it make sense for Pete to just take responsibility for the Sentinels that were David’s?” Linda wondered.
“But Linda,” Edward whined. He glanced at Pete from the corner of his eye. “I don’t like Evan,” he muttered.
“It’s fine,” Pete said, not wanting to cause problems on his first night. “I don’t mind.”
“Great!” said Edward, cheering up considerably.
“That’s one,” said Sharon with a smirk. “And what about Julia? I’m sure Pete would like her.”
“Like hell!” Edward looked warily at Pete, then sagged. “You can have Cassidy,” he said. “That’s my best offer.”
Pete shrugged. The names meant nothing to him; he had no way of knowing whether he was being screwed over until he met the Sentinels in question. Sharon and Linda both named two of their own Sentinels and that rounded out Pete’s workload.
“I can’t believe you tried to dump your crabbiest Sentinels on Pete,” Sharon grumbled, once everything was organised. “I gave him the two that are the farthest away from the others. All this walking is killing my legs.”
Pete grimaced, reminded of the impossible task of learning his way around the enormous facility. Linda must have noticed his expression.
“Don’t worry, it’s not so bad,” she said. “We’ll help you find your way around.” She pulled out a map and showed Pete roughly where each Sentinel could be found. Pete kept busy for the rest of the evening making sure he was ready for the next day and trying not to think too much.
***
Being a Guide generally meant working long days. Guides assigned to one Sentinel were always on duty, or at least, needed to be available whenever their Sentinel wanted. Otherwise it was G-TAC who had oversight of their schedules, and they weren’t known for being easygoing. Pete had expected to be kept pretty busy, and so when he heard the other Guides moving around early the next morning, he wasn’t surprised, and dragged himself out of bed.
Edward made a point of taking him around and showing him which rooms were occupied by Sentinels, and at the end of the tour said, “Evan’s in this room. Just had a hip replacement. Why don’t you check on him and see if he needs anything, and I’ll go help Julia with her breakfast?”
“Sure,” Pete said with a tolerant smile.
He knocked on the door and a gruff voice said, “Yeah? What is it?”
Suddenly nervous, Pete cleared his throat. “Uh... it’s Pete? I’m a Guide? Just checking if you need anything?”
Silence ticked by for a second or two, and then Evan barked, “Well? The door’s not locked, or do you want me to hobble over there and let you in?”
Pete wiped his hand on his pants and opened the door, trying to look friendly and helpful. An elderly man sat in an armchair and glowered at him. “You’re new, ain’t you?” he asked grumpily. “Can’t keep you all straight, changing all the time.”
“Can I help you get some breakfast together?”
“What do you think, genius? Maybe I’m happy to starve to death.”
Taking a deep breath, Pete struggled to maintain a cheerful attitude. “What do you feel like?”
“Two poached eggs on toast. With ketchup. And coffee.”
So Pete made the coffee and got the eggs cooking, fielding a barrage of suggestions from the Sentinel about all the ways his cooking didn’t quite measure up. He got the food plated up without dumping it on Evan’s lap, which he considered achievement enough for one day.
Pete was about to excuse himself to go check up on the other Sentinel he was responsible for in the building, but Evan said, “Since you’re just standing there, you might as well empty the dishwasher.” And after that, he wanted his bed made and the trash emptied, and before he knew it, Evan was saying “I’ve got an appointment with the physio in fifteen minutes, are you taking me or am I supposed to make my own way there?”
Crap. The day had barely started and he’d already fallen behind. Pete helped Evan into his wheelchair while Evan grumbled and groaned and complained that Pete was doing it all wrong. Once he was settled, Pete grabbed the handles to push him out into the hallway, but Evan twisted around, trying to swat his hands away. “I can manage, I’m not feeble!” he snapped.
Pete let go and Evan wheeled himself through the door and then stopped. “Well? Come on, help me around the corner! It’s not exactly a piece of cake, you know!”
“Sorry,” Pete muttered, taking hold of the chair again and ignoring Evan’s muttering about incompetent Guides. No wonder the old man had never bonded.
Pete passed Edward in the hallway and sent the other man an urgent look.
“Hey,” Edward said. “I saw you’d been held up, so I asked Jon if he could sit with Terri for a while. She’ll be fine until this evening.” He pointed down the hall to a small alcove with some chairs and a television. A Guide turned in his chair to look at them and gave a small wave; he wasn’t wearing a uniform like Pete and Edward, but Pete had always been able to identify Guides on sight. He tried not to glower.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Come on, what’s the hold up?” Evan complained. Pete grimaced and pushed Edward on down the hallway. How nice for Jon, that he had an hour to sit and watch TV with a Sentinel he wasn’t even bonded to.
Edward had given Pete directions to the physio, but Evan didn’t seem to accept that and kept telling Pete to ‘turn here’ and ‘slow down on this hill, what do you think this is, NASCAR?’
Pete stayed with Evan through his appointment, which wasn’t so bad because at least Evan was too distracted by the physiotherapist to give Pete any trouble. Then the physio suggested that they link up while Evan worked through some particularly difficult exercises, and Pete realised that he hadn’t linked with anyone since Trent had died over a week earlier. He hadn’t linked with anyone except Trent in almost a decade.
He took Evan’s hand and it ended up being not that big a deal. The link felt different to Trent, but not bad. He could tell that Evan was tired and sore and worried, and was surprised to feel a surge of pity for the old man. Afterwards, Pete had to take Evan back to his room and then hurry back to the hospital.
Pete found the right ward thanks to the map Linda had given him, and looked around the room. He approached a nurse standing by a trolley and cleared his throat. “Uh, I’m supposed to sit with Mr Stillman while he has dialysis?”
“Just a second,” the nurse said, making notes on a clipboard. She looked up after a minute and said, “Never interrupt a nurse while they’re doing medications. Now, what do you need?”
“Uh, sorry. I’m Pete? The new Guide? And I’m supposed to sit with Mr Stillman...”
“While he has dialysis, right. They’re running behind. Why don’t you help me take around the lunches?” The nurse pushed the trolley into a room and locked the door, then led Pete to another, larger trolley. “I’m Viv, by the way,” she said. “Take the other side of this, okay?”
Pete helped her wheel the trolley a few feet down the hallway, where they stopped.
“Patient’s names and room numbers are on here,” Viv explained, pointing to a chart hanging off the side of the trolley. “Always make sure you match the right tray to the right patient. Some of them have allergies or dietary restrictions. Here, this is the one for this room. You take it in and I’ll do the other side.”
They handed out the meals. Every so often Viv would point out patients who were Sentinels and Pete would take a few minutes to talk to them. They all seemed decent enough, but most of them were on some type of pain medication and not very talkative.
At one of the last rooms, Viv handed him a tray and said, “This patient just flew in last night, so he’s still a little jetlagged.” She tapped on the open door and called out, “Patrick? It’s Viv, with your lunch.”
A moment passed, then a male voice called back, “Yeah,” with complete indifference. Victoria led the way into the room.
“This is Pete,” she said to Patrick, wheeling his table into place. “He’s new here, just like you.”
“Hey,” Patrick said, glancing at Pete for less than a second before turning back towards the window. Pete put his lunch tray down on the table and took the chance to get a closer look. Patrick had fair hair, cut short, and blue eyes, and Pete would have bet he was good looking enough under normal circumstances, but mostly he looked terrible. His face was gaunt and his eyes had huge shadows under them.
“Try to eat something this time, okay?” Viv suggested, taking the cover off the plate to reveal sandwiches and a muffin. “You didn’t have breakfast. Your body needs fuel to heal.”
“Yeah,” Patrick said again, in the same flat tone. Viv walked out of the room with a glance at Pete, and he’d learned by now to recognise the cue.
“So,” he said, standing by the bed, “Where did you fly in from?”
For a minute it seemed like Patrick wouldn’t answer, but eventually he replied, “Nowhere.”
“O-kay,” said Pete, when Patrick did nothing else to prod the conversation along. “So. You must be hungry, if you didn’t have breakfast.”
“Not really.”
“Oh. Well.” Pete tried to figure out the right thing to say, feeling slightly desperate because Patrick was too thin as it was, and figuring out how to get a finicky Sentinel to eat was definitely in his job description. “If you’re having issues with your senses...”
“I’m fine.”
“You heard what Viv said. Don’t you want to get better?”
Patrick shrugged with one shoulder. “Don’t really care. Not much point.”
Pete gave up. “Well, if you’re just going to let these sandwiches go to waste, do you mind if I eat them? I haven’t had lunch yet, and I’m really hungry.”
Patrick barked out a surprised laugh, and Pete was startled because it was so unexpected. He’d thought that Patrick would be pissed off with him for being a smartass.
“Why not,” Patrick said. “Someone might as well eat them.”
So Pete picked up half a sandwich and bit off the corner of it. “It’s good,” he said, surprised, because he’d heard a lot of things about hospital food, all of them bad. He wolfed the sandwich down, making appreciative noises. From the corner of his eye he could see Patrick watching him and glancing at the remaining sandwiches on the plate. Eventually Patrick grabbed the other half of the sandwich and began to eat it; it must have been awkward because an IV was stuck in the back of his hand, but he kept his left arm tucked under the blankets and didn’t move it.
“Pete,” called Viv from outside the room. “They’re taking Mr Stillman to the dialysis unit now.”
Pete stuffed the remainder of the sandwich into his mouth and chewed it as fast as he could. “I should probably go,” he said, “but I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
Part Two