Let it Be Someone Else

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice cracking. Disinfectant coils through the air; there’s grime all over the examination room walls. She is slumped in her chair, head bearing the weight of despair.

He leans back, this medical man, and if he tries to hide his trembling hands, the cops sure notice them. He hazards a glance at one of them, greeted by the blank stare of the dark-tinted helmet. Glossy, impassive, impenetrable. At medical school he learned to wield authority; authority that melts into sludge when the black armor of the law comes around. He sweats a little harder.

The doctor gestures, a wounded animal, at the police, but his eyes are on his patient. He stutters, half-whispers, but they still hear just as well as she does: “I really am sorry. The law is unbending. I do what I can, but I’m a healer – you understand.”

The way they loom over him; it almost seems like he, and not his patient, will be their victim. She doesn’t respond; the platitudes are bullet shell hollow.

One of the officers takes her by her dreads and jerks, pulling her to her feet. She cries out, claws at his grasp, the surgical gown hanging loose on her flesh. The other officer jerks her arms behind her, cuffs her wrists. The spasming flicker of fluorescent lights casts a sea-sick sheen on her dark skin.

“You’re under arrest for soliciting pre-birth murder. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be held against you in a court of law.” That impassive helmet comes right up to her face, cheeks scarred by trails of tears. “Do you have any questions?”

She looks off into space, won’t make herself stare at that mask. She can feel his smirk beneath it, the way he enjoys his power.

A shove, she’s stumbling forward, through the door and into the clinic hall. There’s old, broken medical equipment here and there. Somewhere in the distance a patient moans like a broken beast, and no one comes to help.

The cops send her before them, grabbing and pulling when she falls. Behind them, the doctor peers out of the doorway. His face is taught and puffy. He knows what is coming next, and he wonders if this counts as another violation of the Hippocratic oath. The feeling grinds like rust in his mouth.

There’s a smattering of patients in the waiting room. A wheezing older man, slumped on the handle of his oxygen tank cart. A weary young woman, eyes vacant, rocking in her seat, a broken heart-shaped locket around her neck.

The TV in the corner tubing infomercials, propaganda for the ruling party, promos for a megachurch. A lurid warning against “the terrorists;” a montage of riots, fires, executions. “They could be anyone!”

No one looks as the two officers and their prisoner go past. No one wants the cops to look back. The cops, with their straight spines and armored carapaces. The prisoner bending forward, stumbling, bare feet, legs protruding from the scant cover of the gown.

No one looks. Seen it before. Let it be someone else. A mother clucks her tongue, rolls her eyes, when her jaundiced child points at the passing sight. The kid gets the message well enough, averts his gaze.

The doors open automatically, but they’re as weary as most technology now. There’s a whine like a bone slowly breaking as the panes slide apart. The air conditioning inside is anemic, but it must still be doing something because when the doors gape, the dry blast of heat makes the prisoner wilt.

The cops have her under her armpits, half drag her straight to their vehicle. Sun seethes like a nuclear scrambled egg. The sky, which is cloudless, lifeless, a sick grey-green. Everything is covered in that pallor; the hot, broken asphalt, the prisoner’s feet as they burn with each step. Only the cops look the same, impassive and faceless, black gloss of their armor eating the light.

The police vehicle is military grade, steel-plated, tracked. It looks like it could crush an elephant, if any still exist. She’s wincing and gasping with each step, soles of her feet searing. One officer enters the access code, swings open the rear door; the other hoists her like a tattered piñata and shoves her in.

She lands face-first, recoils as the door slams, a metallic impact through her bones. She rolls onto her back, jaw tight. She allows herself a moment and the shudder comes, a brief, fierce sob. Squeezes her eyes shut as the vehicle growls to life. She bangs against the wall, holds on for dear life.

Then a deep, slow exhale. This is what she’s been waiting for. She can feel that they’re driving frantically. The siren goes on and it makes her teeth bounce together, her ears ring. The sinking sensation in her gut. She knew the risks, knew them well enough from seeing what happened to friends, people she knows.

She didn’t imagine the reality of this. Couldn’t have, really. Seems to her that there are no good choices, just the ones she has to make. She nods to herself and sets aside the weight of future thoughts.

Reaches under the medical gown, hands twisting in their cuffs. Pulls at the slight pouching on her stomach. The vehicle bounces and lurches, makes it hard to do what she needs to do. Picking at something, fingers slipping, cursing to herself, just needing to get things to the right level of looseness.

As the police vehicle hurtles through the streets, she feels her fear, her despair, her anger crouching through her shoulders, her collarbones, down her spine. After one particularly violent turn and impact – she hears the wall echo against her skull – she wonders if they’re trying to do to her what it is illegal for the doctor to do. Marvels at the contradictions of being pro-life.

Biting her lip, concentration boiling down to a flawless point. Her nail finds the spot, finally, and there’s a faint ripping sound. She plays back and forth a little, nodding to herself. It seems about right.

And yet, there’s so much out of her control. She’s at their mercy and there’s no escape. It could get worse, and worse. Swallows those thoughts down; the lump feels stuck in her throat.

The vehicle halts abruptly; brakes screech like harpies. The door slams open, armored fists barrel her out into an underground car lot. Other police vehicles are parked here. The ground, sticky with oily reek, is at least cool to her feet.

Hustle her into an elevator, step in behind. Gauntlet punches a button and they’re ascending. She’s disoriented, half-bent, tensing up, half-expecting they’ll rip it away just because that’s what they are. The kind of thing she’s seen their sort do. Knowing the layers of bad that could entail.

Instead the elevator jolts to a stop; somewhere a corroded mechanism complains. Down a concrete corridor, and here it is shockingly cold; she could shrivel up after being in the heat of the day. The police, of course, ignore it; they have climate controlled armor, after all.

Clatter of keys, cuffs are removed. Thrust her through the doors, into the courtroom. She’s seen them on TV; the camera lights are bright, piercing her eyes, hands rising involuntarily to shield her gaze.

There’s a couple of camera operators, a tech holding a boom microphone. There’s an empty stool in a red circle on the ground, and she’s pushed down onto it. There’s the judge looming over her – pinched face, Botox brows, lips daubed with hot pink.

Perfect television-blonde hair.

“You’ve been charged with soliciting pre-birth murder. How do you plead?” The judge’s eyes are like broken flint. Her voice is a dying cat’s. There’s total silence. No studio audience. No lawyers. Just a small film crew, the judge, the two cops, the prisoner.

She sends a quicksilver prayer, hopes that she prepared right when she was in the vehicle. A second prayer, knowing that even if she did, it might not save her.

She meets the judge’s gaze, and she doesn’t flinch.

“Not as guilty as you are.”

She reaches under her gown, tears the plastic film away, raises it up for the judge, for the cameras. The film goes rigid in her grasp, and footage plays across it. The tiny speakers taped to her belly pipe up.

Two figures, one in a white coat, the other with pinched face and perfect television-blonde hair. White coat speaking, the sound buzzing: “Don’t worry, the procedure is quick and easy, and no one ever has to know. Discretion is part of the fee.” A swift, blatantly meaningful glace at the woman’s belly.

The judge is on her feet, pointing, red and spitting. “Terrorist! Get her!”

One cop is moving for the prisoner, baton rising.

The other is a moment slower. Absorbs what he has seen in the image. Gaze goes from prisoner to judge.

A railroad of habit and conviction propels him, also baton raised.

At the judge.

Film crew are rabbits frozen, the auto-tracking on their cameras smearing the signal, live and free, across the whole city.

The prisoner turning, pelting to the door, down the corridor. Steeling herself to find out the hard way if she memorized the building map accurately. To find out if the building map even was accurate.

The cop is right behind her, fumbling with the catch on his sidearm. He only needs one clean shot.

As the judge nearly takes a blow to her Botox face, the camera lead regains his senses.

Transmission cuts to commercial break.

*

The doctor is at the end of his shift. He emerges from the exam room, where he has been staunching wounds, setting bones, washing tear gas from swollen faces. This is a bad one. He doesn’t know if it is bad enough to be the one.

He walks slowly, bowed from the long day, the weight of the compromises, disappointments, and failures that his profession entails. Back in medical school it seemed like he could do something for the world. He doesn’t think about those days if he can help it. Turns out that the healing arts weren’t enough.

He hopes like hell she’s still alive. Wishes he hadn’t been the one to put her head on the block. Barely believes that their plan worked. Hates the zero sum game that the oppressors impose.

The waiting room television is on, but muted. He isn’t shocked to see scenes of street battles. Jaw drops at the footage of the cop going for the judge, the caption, “broke the very law she oversees.” Wonders what laws that cop breaks, and who’d beat him for it, given the chance.

No announcement in the headlines that they caught or killed his comrade. Barely lets himself have a sliver of hope.

Locks the clinic doors, shoos away a straggler or two. Coughs on the smog, the air hot even this late. Always hot. No stars in the city. There’s plenty of debris, and in the distance he can still hear the shouts, the gun fire, the chaos. Though not his choice, it didn’t feel good to close the clinic. He hopes the underground medics will be enough tonight.

As for that: there’s a mask in his bag, and gloves, and a medkit. Under that lurks a revolver. Fearing for his life, whispering a little prayer for mercy as he goes, he runs toward the strife.