Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

Monks blinked. He didn’t know much about Machiavelli, but he recognized the term virtu. It wasn’t “virtue” in its usual sense; rather, it was the power to govern effectively, requiring a combination of cunning and ruthlessness.

“What I’m saying is, if you got it, you get yourself through the hard shit,” Freeboot said. “If you don’t…”

Monks waited, expecting some platitudinous followup, like: the hard shit’s gonna get you.

But Freeboot merely shrugged. Then he pushed off the wall with his shoulder and padded out into the main room.

Monks wasn’t quite sure what that exchange had been about. But he knew he been told that he wasn’t as smart as he thought.

“Go find Taxman and get Monks’s watch,” he heard Freeboot say to Marguerite. “Then stay here and help him.”

“So you can get back to training?” she retorted, with a biting tone that was clear even though it came from the other end of the lodge.

Monks moved quietly to the blanket and peered out. Freeboot was advancing toward her with precise, noiseless footsteps, backing her into a corner. He did not touch her, but she wilted under his stare.

“I have had enough bullshit tonight,” Freeboot said. His voice was low with menace. “Don’t you fucking start in.”

She edged away sideways, her back still pressed against the wall, then turned and hurried out.

A few minutes later, Monks heard Marguerite’s quiet footsteps approach again. She handed him his watch, eyes averted.

“I’ll be in the next room, if you need anything,” she said.

“Find me something with sugar in it. Orange juice is okay, Gatorade’s better. Plain sugar mixed with water will do if you don’t have anything else.” If Mandrake’s blood sugar level started dropping dangerously, that could help bring it back up. “And you could stoke the fire. Try to keep it constant. I don’t want him going back and forth from hot to cold.”

She nodded, eyes still down, and left.

When Monks put the watch on his wrist, he saw that the compass had been pried off the strap.

Two hours after giving Mandrake the shot, Monks got a fresh lancet and strip and sat next to him again. The insulin should be peaking by now. Mandrake seemed slightly more alert, his eyes half open, although still dull and gummy with apathy.

“This might sting just a little, buddy,” Monks said. “It won’t be bad, I promise.”

This time the meter read 285. This was what he had hoped for-gradually bringing the blood sugar down, but not to a dangerously low point.

Things had been quiet in the next room for some time, with no more comings and goings. It had to be almost dawn.

Monks finally allowed himself to believe that Mandrake could survive an hour without attention, and admitted to the fatigue he had been holding off with growing difficulty. He was hungry, too. He decided, reluctantly, that it was time to give in.

He stored the insulin and syringes on a crude shelf, high up where Mandrake couldn’t reach them. Out of long habit, he had developed caution to the point of compulsiveness.

Then he uncovered the plate of food that Marguerite had left earlier. There was a chunk of well-done roast beef and some boiled potatoes, cold by now but still looking good. The mug was full of red wine. The utensils were plastic, picnic-style. He ignored them, picking up chunks of the food with his fingers and cramming them into his mouth. He eyed the wine longingly, but decided he had better not drink it. He rinsed his hands and mouth, realizing that he was going to have to negotiate for items like a toothbrush, soap, and toilet privileges. Reluctantly, he urinated into the slops bucket. It was another thing there wasn’t much choice about.

He programmed his wristwatch alarm to wake him up in fifty minutes, then took the pillows from Motherlode’s empty bed, formed them into a bolster next to Mandrake, and stretched out beside the little boy. He stayed half sitting up so he wouldn’t sleep too deeply, but finally let his eyes close.

The information he had absorbed so far played in his weary mind like flickering clips of tape on an old-time movie reel. His overwhelming sense was that he had landed in an Alice in Wonderland scenario of dreamlike madness-except that it was pervaded by very real violence, and the looming threat of a child’s death. It was presided over by a macho speed freak who dominated his followers, made allusions to Machiavelli, and hinted at the grandiose importance that he would enjoy in the eyes of history, yet expressed a simpleton’s distrust of medicine. His followers seemed to think they were on some TV show like Survivor, but they carried sophisticated weapons, and it looked like the men had deliberately mutilated their fingertips, presumably to avoid being identified.

On top of it all, Monks’s son was deeply implicated, and if Monks ever did get out of here and blow the whistle, Glenn would be in serious trouble.

He worked to push it all aside and courted the half-sleep he had learned to count on over many years in the ER.

Mandrake was lying on his belly, the side of his face pressed into the pillow and his arms down close to his body, in the seal-like posture typical of sleeping children. Monks kept the back of one hand pressed lightly against him, so he would feel any restlessness that might signal an adverse reaction to the insulin. So far, Mandrake had hardly stirred, except when Monks roused him to drink. He seemed to have drifted into a semiconscious state, perhaps caught in diabetic torpor-or withdrawn into some inner hiding place, to escape from this incomprehensible nightmare.

But as Monks drifted off, he felt a little hand touch his, then creep into it, like a tiny frightened creature seeking safety.

Monks awoke to the beeping of his wristwatch alarm. It read 3:00 P.M. He sat up, groggy and disoriented, uncertain of where he was. Then he remembered.

Mandrake’s bedroom was dim and quiet, and the little boy was lying curled up with his stuffed snake on the other bed.

Monks had continued to monitor his condition through the early-morning hours, giving him water and broth, until Marguerite had come in, at about ten A.M. and offered again to take over. Mandrake’s blood-sugar level had kept improving in the meantime, and so Monks had agreed. Rest was imperative in order to function with the clear-mindedness that the situation demanded. He had lain down on the room’s other bed with a pillow over his head and slept deeply, a measure of his exhaustion.

Marguerite was not in the room now. He hoped that she had kept her promise to keep Mandrake drinking.

He became aware of a faint sound, a sibilant murmur that stopped and started. Then he realized that Mandrake was whispering to the toy snake. It was the first sign of anything like liveliness that Monks had seen in the boy. He hesitated, reluctant to interrupt. But the monitoring had to continue, and it was time for the next insulin shot.

“How you feeling, buddy?” Monks said, sitting beside him. Mandrake’s eyes were open, but he didn’t look up. “You getting hungry?”

To his surprise, Mandrake nodded solemnly.

“Good job,” Monks said. “I’ll get you something in just a minute. How about soup? That sound okay?”

Another nod.

Monks kept up a patter of talk as he went through the now familiar process of getting Mandrake to drink and checking his blood-sugar level. That had climbed a little, to 289, but that was okay-it was significantly lower than it had been to start with, but not dropping dangerously. As best as Monks could tell, the three-unit doses he had given were in the ball park. He decided to stay with them.

When he went to get a syringe, he realized with unpleasant surprise that there weren’t as many left as he had thought. It had seemed that there were about twenty, but now he counted only fourteen.