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‘That’s not a proper messy ponytail! That, like, completely violates the international convention on messy ponytails.’
Sixteen-year-old Kaitlin O’Dúlaing wiped saltwater from her eyes and struggled not to spray her mouthful of Seven-Up through her nose from the force of laughing.
‘There’s such thing as a proper messy ponytail?’
‘Yeah. Here, give me that comb.’ Her friend Anna pulled some tendrils loose from the front of her head, twisted them into distinct locks, and scraped the rest back in a tight ponytail. ‘Ok, give us that gel.’ Anna took a handful of the wet-look gel and began carefully rubbing an even layer into Kaitlin’s red-gold hair.
‘Ok, you’re good to go.’ Anna looked Kaitlin up and down from all angles. ‘No, wait. You totally need some of that neon blue eyeliner.’
‘I’m wearing some.’ Kaitlin pointed to the thin electric blue lines around her eyes.
‘Yeah, but those are way too subtle. They, like, whisper. They don’t shout. Here, stay still and don’t blink.’ Anna grabbed the bottle of blue eyeliner and added Egyptian-style wedjet ovals to the area around Kaitlin’s eyes. ‘There you go.’ Kaitlin looked in the mirror. The girl staring back at her looked like a character from Aeon Flux or Ultraviolet: hair scraped back and drenched with gel, a few locks spilling into her face as if escaping from something, eyes ringed with hyperreal blue and head to toe skin-sticky black synthetics.
‘Sweet.’
Anna nodded. ‘I don’t think you should wear those heels, though. You’re, what, five-nine-ish without them? They make you about six feet two.’
‘And what’s wrong with being six feet two?’
‘Well...you’ll tower over him, won’t you?’
Kaitlin grinned. ‘I’m a modern woman, Anna. You won’t get me to agree that towering over someone is wrong.’
Anna rolled her eyes. ‘You and that feminism stuff. Go on, you’ll be late. He’ll be wondering where you got to.’
Kaitlin left, grabbed her motorbike and took off into the haze of engine noise and cold post-rainstorm blue.
His eyes. Despite all the visual noise of the place, those eyes stood out like sun discs at ten feet away. His eyes were the colour of common switchblade metal: storm grey at first glance, but made up of multiple rainbow shades – neon blue, jade green, soft yellow, red-gold. Cybernetic eyes, Kaitlin used to joke.
‘Oh, my god. You look amazing.’ He gave her a quick hug. His hands felt incandescent on her back. She imagined they’d leave third degree burns, except when they closed, they’d leave shimmering gold scales instead of scar tissue. Angel skin.
‘Can I get you something?’ Jake asked in that rough lilt of his. ‘Seven up? Some flavoured water?’
‘No, I’ll get you something. You paid the last time. I insist.’ Kaitlin grinned. ‘I don’t do that helpless maiden shit.’
Jake laughed. ‘Okay then. You can get me some Seven-Up.’
‘Ok. Two glasses of Seven-Up, please.’ Kaitlin handed the young man behind the counter a note.
‘Let me guess, you’re going to insist on taking me home on the back of your motorbike, too?’
‘Hey, why not?’ Kaitlin handed Jake his Seven-Up. ‘Real men don’t mind sitting on the back of their girlfriend’s motorbike.’ They laughed. Kaitlin flicked her tongue suggestively at him and they melded lips, setting nerve ends ablaze.
Kaitlin eased on the brakes and pulled up outside Jake’s house to let him off. Suddenly she really didn’t feel like saying goodbye. They’d been in another world all their own for the last few hours. That world was tenuous, and reality was all too concrete. It could wait. It would still be there tomorrow.
‘Can I come in for a lil’ while?’ Kaitlin asked.
‘Sure, but won’t your dad freak out?’ Jake frowned.
‘Let him freak out. He needs to learn to treat me like a damned human being. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t dye your hair one tiny shade darker, don’t pierce your ears. Yeah right.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard how he talks to you. Like he owns every molecule of your body. It’s creepy, actually.’
‘Tell me about it. Yesterday he threw a fit because I ripped the waistband off my old combat pants instead of buying new ones. I mean, they were slicing into my sides, and I didn’t want to get rid of them, so I cut off the waistband. And he started screaming about how I looked like such a slut and how no daughter of his was going out dressed like that.’
Jake’s mouth actually dropped open. Oddly, Kaitlin actually felt grateful to see him react so dramatically. It was validation. Proof that she was actually right, that it was ok to be angry. That this screaming bully in her life wasn’t in fact the one who was right. She took a long, loose exhale. She so rarely did that.
‘Ironic thing is, he hates if I waste things. If I throw out a pair of pants after having a huge growth spurt he screams at me for that too. Says he works soooo hard so I can have clothes on my back. Yeah, right. I get most of my own clothes second hand.’
‘He’s lucky he’s not my father. I’d kill him in his sleep.’ Kaitlin suddenly loved him ten times more strongly for saying that. She wasn’t mad. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t crazy and ungrateful for wanting to be able to move a little without having to hold her own in a screaming match. She melted on to the sofa beside Jake and laid her head on his shoulder.
‘Want to go up to my room? Mom’s going to be in soon with my baby brother, and he’ll drive us mad. Unless of course you like being squealed at and snotted on by a four year old.’
‘Sure’. Kaitlin followed Jake upstairs. She found herself instinctively locking the door to Jake’s room behind them. She pulled him to her and locked lips, and the next she knew she was blinded in all five senses by that incandescence as they revelled in each other’s skin. His fingertips were like ten individual sun discs, immensely hot. It was white heat that healed. She found herself melting on to the bed with him, easing off his faded Metallica shirt. She gently reached for his zipper, not sure how to ask. She didn’t have to.
‘You don’t have to,’ Jake reassured her. Jesus, he was noble. Even in the raging heat of the moment, he was still taking care of her, making sure she really wanted to do it and wasn’t just reluctantly turning a key and opening some floodgates to please him.
‘I want to,’ Kaitlin said softly.
‘What if you get pregnant?’ Jake pointed out.
‘That’s what this is for,’ Kaitlin laughed, and dug into her leather jacket for a condom. The minute he’d said he liked her back she’d gotten some just to be safe.
Jake’s eyes went wide; he laughed and flicked his tongue playfully at her. ‘Let’s do it, then.’ She helped him put the little membrane on, and then they melded for real.
There was white light, flooding her nervous system at 1,000 lux. Every last one of her nerve ends was singing a high wild crescendo. Her skin was blazing. Angel skin.
Except something was wrong. Jake rolled out from under her. ‘Shit, Kaitlin, I just felt something rupture.’
‘Oh no. Oh shit – ‘
Jake held up the condom, which contained a moderate-sized hole.
‘Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.’ Kaitlin let a long stream of obscenities spill from her mouth. Why this, why her? Why did it have to be her luck to buy that one packet with a defective one? Reason kicked in: emoting was no good. She needed to take some action, and fast.
‘I need to do something.’ Kaitlin coiled as if about to fight, reached for a scrunchie from her pocket and scraped up her hair in a tight bun. She always did that when angry or in get-shit-done mode. ‘If I take off right now I could get Levonelle from the pharmacy. You can get it without a prescription, I’m sure.’
‘Do you want me to go with you?’
‘No, it’s ok. You have homework and shit to do, don’t you? I’ll be fine.’
Kaitlin grabbed her motorbike helmet, gave Jake a quick kiss goodbye and took off.
Kaitlin pulled off her motorbike helmet and waited in line. God damn it, why did there have to be a whole slew of people queuing right now? She reached up and untied her hair then scraped it up into the tightest possible ponytail, hoping it would make her look older. She wasn’t sure if there were regulations about age, but ten to one there probably would be.
‘Next, please?’
Kaitlin clenched her core and drew out her spine, drawing herself up to her full five feet ten. She purposely stood right under the harsh fluoro light so that the vertical shadows would make her look stark and harsh and therefore older. Surely the little lines around her eyes would make her look eighteen, or older? It had worked before when trying to get into discos...
‘Could I get Levonelle, please?’
The woman behind the counter nodded and disappeared into the back room, scoping among the hundreds of little white boxes containing medication. Yes! She’d done it! Things were going to be okay. She could carry on with her life as before. No deciding whether to have a baby at sixteen. No drugs, no invasive surgery, no screaming red-eyed father. Kaitlin almost melted to the floor with relief.
The woman came back with a white box containing the little progesterone-loaded pill that was about to save her life. The price was more than it would have taken for Kaitlin to eat for a week, but it was a cheap price for continuing her life.
Kaitlin walked outside into the darkening blue-grey evening. Her muscles had gone liquid with relief. Everything was okay. She could go on living.
Kaitlin tossed her bag into a corner, took a mouthful of Relentless, and began putting on her safety gear, first her head and mouth guard, then padding for her fists and feet.
She’d done kickboxing since she was thirteen. This tournament would be more like a dance than actual fighting, since you were only allowed to do light contact before the age of eighteen. It would still be fun, though, and sharpen her motor skills for when she was over the age.
She shook her limbs about and threw some kicks and punches to the air to loosen up, then went to find out when she’d be fighting. An official informed her that since she was the only girl in her weight division, she’d be fighting in the boys’ under-80kg class instead.
‘You nervous?’ Jake said thickly through his mouthguard. He was fighting in the heavyweight division today.
‘Nope. Sissy fighting for me today. We don’t get to hit each other hard before age eighteen.’
Jake laughed. ‘Good luck anyway. Not that you need it. You’re Lamia O’Dúlaing.’
“Lamia” was her nickname from way back when she’d started. What she’d lacked in strength as a little skinny thirteen-year-old she’d made up for in rabid aggression, and the ‘monster’ concept had stuck.
‘Ok, they just called my name.’ Jake gave her a quick hug and went off to compete in his first match.
Kaitlin reached out and touched gloves with her first opponent, and then coiled into ready stance. The referee was saying something, but she was already in seek-and-destroy mode. Hearing wasn’t important right now. Only her direct sight mattered, so her brain filtered the rest out.
The official tapped Kaitlin’s left glove. ‘You have to take that off.’
‘What? Oh. Sorry, I’ll tuck it inside my glove.’
‘No, you have to take it off.’
‘It’s a medical alert bracelet. It’s there for a reason.’
‘Sorry, you have to take it off. I’ll give it to the judges to look after it for you.’
Kaitlin sighed and unclasped the little piece of metal. ‘If I die, it’s your fault.’
She refastened her glove and coiled into her fighting stance.
The command rang through the air, and the game was on.
Kaitlin weaved under a round kick and scored a point with a quick hook to the guy’s head. A mercury-fast follow-up to his side earned her two more points. Agitated, the guy threw a flurry. He might have gotten one to her head; it was difficult to tell when you only had to get past someone’s guard to score. Another round kick scooped two more points for her.
Some forty seconds later, the fight was over as Kaitlin made it up to ten points. Someone up there definitely liked her today.
‘How you doing?’ Jake panted, pulling off his head guard and mopping sweat off his face.
‘Second place. One fight left. Ooh, shiny.’ Kaitlin pointed to the first place medal around Jake’s neck. ‘I see you blew apart your entire weightclass.’
‘So will you in a minute. Hey, are you okay?’
Kaitlin shook her head rapidly from side to side. Her heart was refusing to pump enough blood to her brain, and her vision was thick with little neon lights. ‘Yeah...just dehydrated.’
‘Here.’ Jake handed her his water bottle and she took a few mouthfuls. She heard someone talking behind her back. She looked over her shoulder. It was one of the guys from her weight division.
‘She’s a girl, man. What’s she gonna do?’
‘Watch her. She just wiped the floor with everyone in the under-80kg division.’
‘Duh. Because guys don’t like hitting girls, so they went easy on her. I don’t plan on going easy on her. I may have to take shit from women every day at school, but I don’t have to take shit from that red-haired slut.’
‘Dude, calm down, will you? There’s really no need to talk like that.’
‘Oh give over. Little rabid bitch needs a reality check. Haha. Maybe I’ll let her suck my dick when I’m done with her.’
‘Dude, that’s not funny – ‘
Kaitlin rolled her head and took a long inhale and exhale to drive some more blood to her brain. She forced the obnoxious words out of her head and concentrated on the combinations she’d use in her last fight. No sense in getting emotional. It muddied up your judgement and ruined your performance.
‘All right, last round. Kaitlin O’Dúlaing, red corner. Jonathan Long, blue corner.’
Kaitlin laughed sulphuric acid at him as he went to his corner. ‘Watch out, baby. I’m not just a girl,’ she hissed under her breath. ‘I’m Lamia O’Dúlaing.’ It wasn’t smart, of course. The smart thing to do would be to talk with an official about the boy’s behaviour and his stated intention of harming her. It was a light contact contest, after all. But she didn’t come here so she could make it to second place and then give it away, and neither was she pleased about giving him what he wanted by backing down.
She came forward to touch gloves at the referee’s command, but locked eye contact as she did so and gave the kid an industrial strength sneer. Then she snapped back into fighting stance.
‘Begin’.
Kaitlin immediately launched into a textbook-perfect combination. Jab, rear hand to the face, round kick that just touched the edge of the kid’s helmet. Three points for her. Long rasped to himself in anger and gave her a look you’d usually reserve for murderers and child molesters before launching himself forward. Kaitlin laughed and swept him. Four points to none.
Long got up pulsating at the eyes with anger. He launched some kicks that failed to score but hurt Kaitlin’s radial nerves. Kaitlin lunged under his guard and scored with a kick to his abdomen. Now he was really pissed off. Too emotional to get his motor skills together, he continued battering at Kaitlin’s inner forearms. A jab failed to hit Kaitlin’s head or face but found its way past her guard to score. Then he uncoiled off his front leg and launched a round kick.
He hit Kaitlin beneath the floating ribs, right where her own immune system had attacked her. It would have hurt anyone. Kaitlin spasmed and almost threw up.
‘Are you ok?’ the referee demanded. ‘Would you like a minute to recover?’
‘I’m fine,’ Kaitlin spat, and shot forward. A jab to Long’s face snapped his head back. The referee opened his mouth to issue a warning for excessive use of contact. Kaitlin didn’t give a shit. She threw her centre of gravity forward and on the same surge of momentum launched a front kick.
Long’s head whiplashed at an angle human physiology was never meant to withstand. He spilled to the mat and lay unmoving for some ten seconds.
Kaitlin was suddenly dizzy. Dangerously so. Staying upright was a fight in itself. She shook her head to clear the starburst of neon lights from her vision.
Jonathan Long was helped up off the mat, and they were called together. The referee raised Kaitlin’s hand in victory, and an official brought her a first place medal and hung it around her neck.
‘Now shake hands,’ the referee said. Long reluctantly held out his hand for her to shake. Kaitlin laughed. ‘ “I’ll maybe let her suck my dick when I’m done with her?”’ she spat. ‘Told you, little boy, you don’t ever fuck with a Lamia. Understand?’ It wasn’t smart, and she normally would never dreamed of behaving like that, but she’d just torn up the entire division. She’d earned the right to be a little bit cocky.
The referee said something. He had cold eyes. Evidently he didn’t think much of their little pissing match. Too bad. She couldn’t hear him, and the neon lights were drowning her.
Kaitlin melted to the floor as the lights died.
She woke up briefly to white lights and white walls and sirens, to Jake’s voice talking to her, saying something she wasn’t lucid enough to understand. Then the world melted away again.
Kaitlin slowly came back to life. The world was quiet except for some low hypnotic machine noise. The walls were white, the lights were soft white. She was lying in a hospital ward.
‘Kaitlin? Are you ok?’
Jake was sitting on the end of the bed. His eyes were very soft. They seemed to draw her in, drug her, drown her, in the best possible way.
‘Yeah. I’m fine.’
‘You were under for hours. They were ages taking your blood and testing it. You had really low levels of some shit called cortisol – ‘
‘I know.’
‘You know? What – ‘
‘I have Addison’s disease. It’s a severe and dangerous form of adrenal insufficiency. I take this synthetic shit every day to avoid dying.’ Kaitlin laughed. ‘Well, the dangerous part goes without saying. You just saw me almost die. I had a medical alert bracelet with all that information, but the kickboxing people made me take it off.’
Jake was avoiding her eyes. ‘There’s something else...’
Kaitlin looked up sharply. ‘What..?’
‘The Levonelle..’
Oh no. Was he about to say what she thought he was?
‘It failed. The blood tests they did...they say you’re pregnant.’
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
She thought she could go on living. That she could have her normal life back, her normal life that consisted of school and tests and kickboxing and mulling over whether she’d do computer science or biology when she went to university. She’d been wrong.
She couldn’t even find the energy to cry. Easier and less draining to leave the floodgates shut. If she opened those gates she’d have to swim to avoid drowning, and that would take too much life out of her.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen my mom or dad?’
‘Your mom’s here. She’s talking with one of the nurses. Your dad just sounded cold when I called.’
‘Yeah, that sounds about right. I’m sure he’ll think of a way for it to be all my fault.’
It didn’t matter what he said by now. It didn’t matter if he screamed, or if he drove so much blood to his head that his eyes went red and his face swelled like he always did. The world was over. The walls and floor might as well be flames. This place was every bit worthy of the name hell.
‘You’ve disgraced everyone,’ Micheál O’Dúlaing roared, little blood vessels pulsating in the white parts of his eyes, while her mother shrank into the corner. ‘You have dragged this family into the fucking mud. You’ve brought shame on everyone.’
Kaitlin wanted to scream back at him. Maybe even give him a smack of two. She was physically as big as he was. But she realized that if she wanted to be taken seriously, she needed to use reason. Not indulge the fury that was building in her brain.
‘Sorry, Dad. I don’t buy that. I haven’t disgraced anyone. It’s none of the family’s business what I do with my reproductive system, and I don’t exactly plan on telling the neighbourhood.’
‘SHUT UP!’ he roared, saliva shooting from his mouth. ‘How dare you talk back to me, you little whore!’
Kaitlin snapped. ‘Don’t ever call me that again.’
‘I SAID SHUT UP!’ He reached up and wiped some strings of spit off his face. ‘Now, you had better find yourself a better job than that shithole you work at after school, because we’re not keeping you and a damn child.’
‘I won’t be having a ‘damn child.’ Kaitlin forced herself to keep her voice calm.
‘Excuse me! You expect us to pick up the pieces of your mistakes by helping you kill your own – ‘
‘I don’t expect you to pick up any pieces, Dad. I expect to use my own savings that I earned by myself at the ‘shithole’ as you put it, and go to an abortion clinic in England. The most I need from you or Mom is someone over eighteen to go with me.’
‘Are you joking?’ her father screamed. ‘You’re actually talking about murdering your own baby –‘
‘Baby,’ Kaitlin repeated calmly. ‘I’d remind you that at under two weeks, we’re talking a cluster of cells. Hardly a baby.’
‘Shut up!’ he screamed again. ‘You cold blooded little bitch! You want to kill your own baby so you can avoid the consequences of your own actions. You’re a selfish little whore –‘
‘I don’t have to listen to this.’ Kaitlin grabbed her motorbike helmet from the table, strode to the door and left.
Kaitlin sat curled on Jake’s bed, sipping at some lukewarm chocolate milk. They’d been sitting there for the past half hour trying to think of solutions. Kaitlin’s immediate thought would have been to simply book the ferry trip herself and ride her motorbike to the clinic, but she was under eighteen. Nobody would let a minor across the Irish sea unsupervised.
She wasn’t even going to entertain the thought of a self-induced abortion. Needles or wires might slip home without causing injury, or they might hit a major vein or artery. Things like chlorox would do it, but you were just as likely to kill yourself.
‘There are drugs you can get over the internet,’ Jake reflected out loud. ‘You’re gonna have a problem with that, though, because you’ll need a credit card, and since you’re under eighteen you’ll have to use your mother or father’s. That will inevitably let your parents find out...’
‘I know.’ Kaitlin laid her head in her hands.
‘I’m gonna talk to my sister.’ He said ‘my sister’ the way most people said the words ‘heroin’ or ‘manslaughter’. Jake left the room and went up to the attic to get better reception.
He returned in about fifteen minutes. ‘Okay, so she knows some people who can help you out . There’s a gang up in the city who call themselves the Omega Wolves. They can get you a drug called RU486. It’s gonna cost you, but she says other women have been to these guys and they do actually sell you what they say they’re gonna sell you. I think it’s your best shot unless you want to do something extremely stupid and dangerous, like needles or bleach.’
‘It’s called RU486, you said, right?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ll do some research on it. See if it’s dangerous in any way. I’ll let her know.’
Jake nodded gravely. Kaitlin felt a little bit better, as if she’d come some small step back to life. There was a way out of this. There was a way to keep her life and body intact. A way to get her normal life back.
www.google.com
Insert search term and press Enter
RU486
This term has been blocked by SafeSearch filter. Reason: Adult Content
www.google.com
Insert search term and press Enter
RU486
This term has been blocked by your school’s safe search program. Reason: Adult Content
She was on her own. It was either trust the Omega Wolves to sell her this RU486, or go through with the pregnancy. And that was not an option to her. She’d always found the concept hideous, not beautiful. Carrying something that was going to grow in her abdominal cavity and feed off of her bloodstream was not something she would consider doing to herself. That just seemed like mutilation, not something beautiful.
Kaitlin accelerated along the main road to the city, the wind screaming as it rasped along the surface of her motorbike helmet. Jake sat on the back, his arms locked around her.
She was on the way to the Omega Wolves. The way to saving her life.
‘So you’re Kaitlin?’ Jake’s sister held out her hand to shake Kaitlin’s. ‘I’m Ash.’
Ash was a tall, wiry young woman with a black mohawk and several layers of metallic blue and violet paint around her eyes. She was wearing a black PVC jacket over jeans that were ripped in so many places that they would have been more accurately called mesh than denim. Ash looked Kaitlin gravely in the eyes and cut straight to the point. ‘All right. We’re meeting the Omega guys in Liberty Park in an hour. They’ve got one dose of this shit for you.’
‘Where the hell do they get this stuff from?’ Kaitlin wondered aloud.
‘I’d like to know that myself. I asked Nem that once and he just said ‘don’t ask any questions and you won’t hear any lies.’
‘Nem?’ Kaitlin queried.
‘Nemesis. It’s his alias. None of them go by their real names.’
‘Great, and I’m trusting these guys to sell me RU486 that’s actually, well, RU486, as opposed to heroin or some shit.’
‘Nope, these guys are solid. Two of my girl friends got this stuff off them. It’s real 486, not random slush or poison.’
Was this possible? So far, every time she thought she could maybe have her life back, the universe had taken that hope and beaten her over the head with it.
Listen to the girl. These guys are the real deal. That’s real RU486 they’ve got for you. It’s going to be ok.
Kaitlin heaved a long exhale, and allowed another tiny part of her mind to come back to life.
Nemesis threw his hood back. The guy was pale as an ice sheet, over six feet tall with blue-black hair and facial bones you could cut yourself on. He held up a small package. Realizing she wasn’t the one with the power in this equation, Kaitlin pulled the notes from her pocket and offered them first.
‘Fuck, how old are you, kid? Sixteen?’ His eyes widened maybe two millimetres. ‘You don’t have to give me all that.’ He handed her one of the notes back and gave her the package with a cold but discernible smile. ‘Take care. Make sure you have someone look after you, right?’
The concern in Nemesis’s voice made Kaitlin snap. Her eyes erupted against her will with tears. Even this dead-eyed drug dealer had found it in him to care about her, and yet her own father couldn’t find it in his heart to do anything but scream abuse in her face.
‘Ok, you can stay here with me for the night.’ Ash grabbed a handful of gel from a bottle lying around on her bed and rubbed some into her mohawk, pulling it up into sharp spikes. ‘I don’t want you taking off all the way home on your motorbike at one a.m. when you’ve just taken an abortifacient.’
‘Thanks.’ Kaitlin impulsively caught Ash up in a tight hug. Again, it brought hot salt tears to Kaitlin’s eyes how this young woman she didn’t even know was letting her sleep in her small, crappy student room as a favour, because she cared, yet her own father could barely find it in him to not spit obscenities at her and her mother didn’t even dare open her mouth to him.
‘Are you going out somewhere?’ Kaitlin asked. Ash was going to huge lengths to look even more esoteric and outright dangerous than usual. She was wearing so many spikes that you had to be careful not to stab yourself hugging her, and she had three different-coloured bands of metallic paint around her eyes.
‘Yeah. Death’s Head Moth concert out on the industrial estate. I would have said come with me, but you’re not exactly in rude health right now, are you?’
Kaitlin felt a weird surge of intoxication and recklessness. ‘Hell, you know what? I’ll go with you anyway.’ It was stupid, but when had her best attempts to be wise and cautious gotten her anywhere? She should have felt fear, hesitation, but right now she only felt wildly grateful that she’d gotten her life back. She could go to school and worry about trivial shit again. Everything else was minor and barely mattered.
‘Hahaha. Go for it. Be hardcore.’
‘Ash, don’t. She might start hemorrhaging, or God knows what. Kaitlin, you should stay here.’
‘Fuck that. I’m alive. I’m going to enjoy it. Every time I’ve taken the safe and sensible route I just ended up drowning in more shit. Let’s go.’
Kaitlin and Jake careened wildly around the mosh pit, drunk on the double-bass tachycardia and wailing distorted guitars. She’d never felt so alive. She’d almost flushed her entire life in the drain, but now she had it back, and she’d enjoy every minute of it with the colours heightened and the sound cranked up. She’d never risk it again.
It was two a.m. Ash was sat back in her room with eight of her friends, laughing and talking shit and entirely too drunk. She hoped that girl with the red-gold hair was okay. What was her name again? Kathleen? Katie?
‘I’m gonna go back to Ash’s,’ Kaitlin yelled above the noise to Jake. The abortifacient was definitely acting on her. Vicious ripples of pain kept forming behind her lower rectus muscles. She needed to lie down and rest.
‘I’ll go with you,’ Jake yelled back.
‘No, it’s ok – ‘ but someone’s screams cut them off. A shout of ‘OH SHIT’ rang through the air, fuzzed out but discernible above the raging death metal. ‘Is he ok?’ someone else yelled.
‘Oh shit, I think Johnny passed out. He got way too drunk. One second – ‘
‘I’m going. See you in a while, okay?’ Kaitlin said and pulled on her motorbike helmet. She turned on the ignition and pulled away.
Jake gently slapped Johnny’s face to try and wake him up. No use. That was a serious head injury. He’d passed out from sheer drunkenness and fallen face first down the flight of steps on the way in.
‘I’ll call ambulance,’ Jake yelled above the noise.
‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ his other friend Denise yelled above the noise.’
‘Gone back to Ash’s. She was, um, not feeling well-‘
‘Yeah, Ash told me. She’s the one with Addison’s disease, right?’
‘Yeah...?’
‘And she’s just taken RU486?’
‘Yeah. Why? What is it?’
‘You need to go find her right now. Right now.’
Kaitlin cruised carefully along the main road, trying to clear the neon lights from her vision. Her limbs weren’t working properly. Her muscles had turned to jelly and she was fighting for control of the handlebars. She was drained and shaky as if with hypoglycemia, and her arms just didn’t want to hold her. This wasn’t good.
She saw Ash’s place some five hundred yards away. She began slowing down and almost crashed. She realized she was craving the taste of salt. Saline solution, dry salt grains, anything. Oh shit. These were red alert warning signs if ever she’d seen them. She needed her hydrocortisone right now. She slowed the motorbike to a stop, pushed past some drunken goth girls and went upstairs.
‘RU486 is an anticorticosteroid,’ Denise explained. ‘It’s going to knock her hydrocortisone off the receptor and drive her levels dangerously low. If you can’t find her, you need to call her and tell her to get her ass to the hospital asap.’
‘You sure about this?’
‘I’ve almost finished my fucking degree in biochemistry. I know what I’m talking about.’
Loud sirens told them the ambulance had arrived. A pair of paramedics scooped the still unconscious Johnny on to a stretcher and took him inside.
‘I’ll go with him,’ Denise offered.
‘I’ll gonna go find Kaitlin. I’ll see you later.’
2.20am.
‘Kaitlin, this is Jake, pick up, it’s urgent’
2.23am.
‘Kaitlin, I just found out something. RU486 is deadly dangerous for people with your disorder. It’s going to drive your levels dangerously low. You need to go to the ER right now and explain that you’ve taken mifepristone, ok?’
2.25am.
‘Kaitlin, come on, please pick this up. You need to go get seen to right now, ok?’
Kaitlin took one look at the bathroom full of three vomiting drunks, two girls laughing and one girl filming the whole mess on her mobile, and decided against asking to use it. She sat in the upstairs hallway and carefully filled a syringe with an emergency dose of hydrocortisone, struggling to avoid being sat on by a group of drunk girls who didn’t seem to get that she was dangerously sick. ‘Yeah, me too,’ one of them giggled.
‘Oh my god, you’re taking heroin?’ a girl with straight-edge Xs exclaimed. ‘Shit, girl, that’s so dangerous!’ Before Kaitlin could even react, the chick had grabbed the syringe and lobbed it down the stairs, where it shattered on the floor.
‘You stupid idiot!’ Kaitlin burst out, eyes erupting with tears. ‘I needed that!’
‘You don’t need it, girl. It’s poison – ‘
Kaitlin grabbed her mobile phone, ignoring the long string of new messages. She needed a shot of that synth hormone now or she was going to die. She quickly dialled 999 and hit loudspeaker so she could hear above the noise.
‘Which emergency service do you require?’ A cool female voice asked.
‘I need an ambulance,’ Kaitlin yelled. ‘I’m in hypo-adrenal shock – ‘
‘What is this? I can’t hear,’ the operator called.
‘I said – ‘
A drunk girl chose that exact moment to start singing along to ‘Die Motherfucker Die’ by Dope at the top of her lungs, adding to the melee of noise.
‘Is this a prank?’ Kaitlin struggled to hear.
‘No! –‘
The line disconnected. Panicking, Kaitlin dialled again and heard an angry voice say ‘I’m warning you that nuisance calls to this line are a criminal offence.’
Kaitlin swore and threw the phone down the stairs.
She forced herself to stand, fighting off a blackout. She had to get to her motorbike and ride to the ER herself. It was her only chance.
Jake scoped all along the street, panic rising in his chest. He couldn’t see her.
‘Did you see my girlfriend? Kaitlin?’ he demanded of the nearest group of drunk girls. He got an incoherent slur from one of them for his efforts. ‘She’s about my height, red hair, heavy – did you see her?’
No response except for giggling from one and abrupt projectile vomiting from the other. Jake almost cried.
‘I saw a red-haired girl on her motorbike,’ someone called out. ‘She went that way – ‘
There was hope. If she’d gone down the main street that probably meant she’d gotten his message and headed for the hospital. Jake accelerated to a run.
Kaitlin pulled into the car park outside the hospital. She tried to pull around smoothly and stop, but she was too weak to steer. She wrenched desperately at the handlebars, overcompensated, and flew ten feet through the air. All seventy-eight kilograms of her rebounded off the door of a parked ambulance and spilled to the ground.
She was badly concussed, but her skeleton felt intact. She forced herself to uncurl her limbs. She had to. She’d die if she stayed here on the ground.
Get up, Kaitlin, get up. They have hydrocortisone in there. You can make it –
She levered herself slowly off the ground, careful of standing too fast and draining all the blood from her head. Yes! She was so weak, it took all her strength to stand, but she could do it. She half walked, half fell towards the door to the emergency room. That room meant life.
Jake tore through the entrance to the hospital grounds. No Kaitlin. Maybe she was already inside getting treatment.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Kaitlin’s motorbike lay flat on the ground, motor still running. Someone had crashed into a parked ambulance. The rear doors showed a massive dent and had been ripped off the hinges at the bottom. Had she made it here and then crashed?
‘You...have...to...get..me..some..hydrocortisone,’ Kaitlin managed to force out. She was talking to someone in white. She couldn’t make out their face. She lay against the wall, too weak to move.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Are you a minor? Do you have a guardian with you?’
‘I’m...in...hypo-adrenal shock. You...have...to...get...me...some...hydrocortisone ..’ Kaitlin managed. She held out her left hand with the medic alert bracelet. ‘Here...’
Her vision thickened with those neon lights. She was so weak. All she wanted from the world was to lay on the ground and sleep under those soft yellow-white lights. The world was whirling around her in a slow lullaby dance. The room went from neon starbursts, to grey, then cool black.
It was okay to die. She had done everything she could. The world was a vicious place, and it was peaceful here. She laid her head against the tiles and melted away.
Jake burst into the ER to hear ‘Clear!’ and the sound of electricity being discharged. His own heart almost stopped. Kaitlin lay unconscious on a gurney, while two doctors struggled to get her heart to resume beating. He heard ‘Clear!’ and the sound of another electrical discharge. Kaitlin didn’t revive. The machine at her side showed a continuous flat line.
‘I’m sorry,’ one of the doctors said gently. ‘We’ve done everything we could do. I’m afraid Kaitlin O’Dúlaing has passed away.’
The world was over. She was gone, and the heart pounding in his chest was a fake one. His real heart lay dead of hypo-adrenal shock three metres away, her red-gold hair spilling on the gurney like precious metal.
He was distracted from the terrible pain in his head and heart for all of two seconds when that hateful face appeared around the door. Micheál O’Dúlaing.
‘You killed her!’ Jake screamed, erupting out of his seat. ‘You took her away from me!’ He exploded across the room and shoved Micheál O’Dúlaing in the chest. ‘You, motherfucker, took the girl I loved away!’ The grown man was too shocked to even react. His wife screamed something about ‘calm down’ and ‘take it easy’. Something ruptured completely in Jake and he drew back his fist and punched Micheál O’Dúlaing in the mouth. The force of the blow knocked him to the floor. ‘She’s dead and it’s your fault! You cared more about a fucking cluster of cells than you did about Kaitlin O’Dúlaing!’
He expected Micheál to get up and hit back. Maybe even welcomed it. It was the least he could do to take a blow to honor Kaitlin’s life. Instead the older man laid his head in his hands and sobbed, ‘I know.’ Tears erupted down his face. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’
Micheál O’Dúlaing held his carefully made placard high and joined in the march. A chant went up ‘Not the church, not the state. Women should decide their fate.’ He found his own voice shouting along to it.
It was the least he could do.
A vivid memory of Kaitlin hit him in the heart and he almost cried there and then. The cruellest thing was that it would have taken so little effort on his part for her to remain alive. If he’d only said ‘It’s ok, love, we’ll talk through the options and we’ll support you whatever you decide to do’ instead of screaming and calling her a whore, she’d be here right now, talking and laughing and studying for her summer tests. Instead she was lying six feet beneath the ground.
He’d see her in heaven eventually. Or so he hoped. But right now the only thing he could do was to make sure that something good came of the loss. That his daughter hadn’t died in vain.
He wiped the saltwater from his eyes and marched on.
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It pops up several times in the first couple of paragraphs; consider swapping a couple of them with 'drink' or something?
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