Finn
Hans and I had flown for hours to get to the border in time for the closing ceremony. I was nervous because I didn’t know if Laura would show or not.
To my surprise, our farewell ceremony was given with a lot more pomp than our greeting had been. Hundreds of people had gathered by the border, and it was an odd mix of media people, spectators, and officials from both the Motherlands and the Northlands.
Bruce Lee and his pretty mediator, Antoinette, looked intimate as they stood to the side whispering together. His forehead was leaning against her hair, and her hands were snaked around his waist.
Images of Athena showed up in my mind, and my feet grew heavy as I walked closer to the border wall that would effectively separate me from her.
Hans walked next to me and when he greeted Bruce Lee and Antoinette, she lowered her face with embarrassment and pulled back.
“Hey, why didn’t you leave them alone?” I grumped. “Couldn’t you see they were busy?”
Hans turned his head and apologized to the couple. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he called out, but then he spotted Isobel and waved at her with eagerness before he jogged off to say hi.
Khan and Magni waited for me next to their large drones, which stood parked right in front of the crossing to the Northlands.
“Good to see you again. We’ve got a large cold beer with your name on it back at the Gray Mansion.” They chuckled and both gave me bear hugs, as if I’d been gone for a month.
“Where is Laura?” Magni asked eagerly. “Did she come with you?”
“No, I haven’t seen her yet.” The three of us scouted around the area.
“I don’t see her,” Magni said with disappointment, and rose up on his toes, which seemed excessive for a man who was already close to seven feet. “Do you?”
“No, but she’ll be here,” Khan said and smacked Magni’s shoulder. “Stay positive, man!”
“Why don’t I go and see if I can charm something out of Isobel?” I suggested and went in the direction where I’d last seen the chairwoman of the Council.
As expected, she was in a conversation with Hans, and the first sentences that I picked up on made me curious enough to eavesdrop without them seeing me.
Isobel had her hair in a tight bun and stood wearing a long shawl in warm red colors. Her voice was soft and kind, like always. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you kept Finn under control, Hans. Pearl kept telling me he would do fine, but to be honest he was the one I was most worried about.” Isobel lowered her voice. “Honestly, Finn’s first visit was a bit of a disaster and I was worried he would only return to chase women.”
Hans squared his shoulders. “Your intuition was right, because chasing women was Finn’s intention when he arrived. He admitted it to me without shame.”
Isobel nodded. “Yes, but I have to say that he has been exemplary. How in the world did you talk sense into him? Or was it Athena?”
Hans was only a bit taller than Isobel, and with a look of self-importance he brushed invisible crumbs off his yellow jacket before he said, “Now, Athena may have helped a little, but I would say that mostly it was me. You see, I really managed to get through to Finn and offer him that spiritual connection he’s been missing in his life. It was like all he really needed was a solid male friend to talk to about his problems.”
“Aww.” Isobel’s face softened and she reached out and placed her hand on Hans’ elbow. “That’s so beautiful. What a generous gift to give Finn. Well done,” Isabel praised Hans, who had been laying it on thick.
“I know. Finn even told me that he was grateful, because he can’t share his feelings with his friends in the Northlands. They simply don’t have that level of maturity or empathy.” Hans shook his head with a sad expression. “It’s no wonder he was seeking validation through sexual encounters the first time he was here.”
“Hans, you are a precious man.” Isobel sighed and rubbed his arm. “I always liked Finn. He’s like a sweet child with his infantile humor and infectious charm. I’m only sorry that he’ll be missing your friendship when he goes back. It will be a great loss to him, I’m sure.”
“I’ll miss him too,” Hans said with drooping lips. “We’ve grown so close, you see.”
“Yes.” Isobel pulled back her hand from his arm, and placed both her hands on her heart. “I understand your pain. I miss my daughter every day too. But, now that Finn knows how wonderful it is here in the Motherlands, it’s my hope that he’ll serve as a great advocate for us in the Northlands.”
“Your words are wise, dear Isobel.” Hans bowed his head to her. “I’m at your service should you need a skilled mediator for other important tasks.”
“I appreciate it.” Isobel gave him a warm smile. “You have my word that I will make sure you get all the recognition you deserve.”
“You do me a great honor,” Hans called after her when she walked away.
“Hey, Hansi,” I said and stepped forward as soon as Isobel was out of earshot.
Hans jerked back when he saw me. A forlorn expression crossed his face when he realized that I must have overheard his conversation with Isobel.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” he held up both palms as a peace sign.
A smile grew on my face. “Hansi, my closest friend in the world. I’m so happy to hear how much you’ll miss me.”
Hans looked down, while I continued.
“It’s sweet of you to worry about me going back to all my immature friends,” I said and stepped closer. “I suppose I’ll just have to numb my grief with beer, while wishing we Nmen had your level of empathy. I mean, if we did, maybe we would understand why a man would let himself be oppressed by women the way you do.”
Hans’ eyes were darting around. “In case you haven’t noticed, women have all the power in our country. It’s not like I have many options.” He sounded defensive, and it made me smack him on the shoulder, with a small chuckle.
“Relax – I already told you that I don’t blame you for being opportunistic. Women have been running the Motherlands for way too long.”
Hans looked over his shoulder, before he leaned in and whispered, “Some of us Motlander men agree with you on that part.”
“I knew it!” I smacked his shoulder again. “The world needs men with ambition.”
Hans lit up. “It does?”
“You know what, as long as you don’t ask me to trust you, I’m on your side.”
“Sometimes you have to lie a little, otherwise we wouldn’t have found Laura,” he pointed out.
“That’s right.” I looked up, searching for her one more time. “Now we just need Laura to show up.”
A loud whistle made me look back to see Khan waving his hand for me to come. He was pointing to the podium where the other representatives and officials were beginning to gather.
“Looks like it’s show time,” I said to Hans, and kept scouting for Laura as we walked back to the others.
It would’ve been easier to spot her if the large group of spectators and media people hadn’t been there. Now I was forced to take my place on the stage, and stand still while Isobel and Khan made their official speeches.
“Do you see her?” I whispered to Magni.
He shook his head in answer. His whole body tensed up and his brows lowered in a deep scowl.
First there was Isobel’s speech followed by a sequence of highlights from our visit. I rather enjoyed seeing what some of my countrymen had been up to. It looked as if my program had been the most boring of them all, but at least no one had made me sing with a choir, dance ballet at a public performance, or made me ride one of those bicycles. Richard cringed when the large screen showed a bit of his humiliating ballet performance.
After that, Khan took the stage and spoke of great things to come, promising that if it were up to him every woman who wanted to come to the Northlands would be welcomed with open arms.
A horde of women standing in front of the stage gave loud cheers. Many of them were holding signs with small catchphrases such as “You can fight over me”, “I’ll be your prize”, “Break down the wall”, and “I’ll marry an Nman.”
Isobel’s smile stiffened but she didn’t shut Khan or the women down.
“We have a long way to go before our nations can be fully integrated,” Khan continued in his speech. “But for those of you who are still in doubt that we are men of integrity and honor, I want to remind you that the few Motlander women who have chosen to cross the border have also chosen to stay. That should tell you something.”
“Psst,” Magni called out to me. “Laura is here.”
“Where?” I whispered back and scanned the audience again.
“Over by my drone.” Even though he was whispering, I could still hear the excitement in his voice. He was right, Laura stood leaning against Magni’s sleek red drone, parked on this side of the border just next to Khan’s. The two machines were huge compared to the community drone I’d been flying around in with Hans these last days.
Khan was coming to the end of his speech when we all felt the earth shake. Everyone was exchanging glances, and Hans muttered to me, “Did you feel that?”
“I think we just had a small earthquake,” Khan said with a comforting smile to the audience. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
Another quake, this time bigger, had the crowd moving around in anxiety.
Khan immediately turned to Pearl. “Are you okay, honey?”
“Yes, I’m fine, but maybe…” Her last words were overshadowed by loud screams when the earth shook with such force that equipment and people fell over.
Roaring cracking sounds made me spin around to see the earth opening in long narrow slits, and pieces of the border wall crumbling down in places. Warning sirens were going off and the sky filled with small border drones that blinked red and kept repeating warnings not to move.
Everybody was running in different directions in a chaotic panic. I had experienced minor earthquakes before, but none had ever lasted this long or been this violent. This had to be at least an eight on the Richter scale.
Being a doctor, I immediately searched for people who might be hurt. With everyone screaming, running, and tumbling to the ground, it was impossible to get an overview.
“Get the women to the drones,” Khan shouted, and Magni was already sprinting toward where we had last seen Laura.
“My mom,” I heard Pearl shouting to me as she was being pulled to safety by Khan.
Isobel was trying to calm people down, but it was the wrong time and place, and she was in danger of being trampled by the crowd. When she wouldn’t listen to me, I picked her up and carried her to Khan’s drone, which was filling up with other women as well.
“Get it in the air,” I shouted to Khan, “and stay there until we’re sure it’s over.”
He nodded and pointed to Magni’s drone. “Fill it up.”
With a nod, I closed his door up front and helped one more woman on board before the drone lifted from the ground.
“Where’s Laura?” I screamed at Magni, who stood on top of his drone with his eyes squinting and his head turning from side to side in his search.
“I can’t find her,” he shouted back at me.
Another deep rumble from the earth was accompanied by a large quake that had me falling to my knees.
“Lauraaaaa,” Magni was calling out from the bottom of his lungs, his hands to his mouth and a frantic expression on his face. “Lauraaaa.”
Trees were uprooted and fell like toothpicks while every available drone lifted to the sky with people trying to save themselves.
“Lauraaaa,” I shouted with Magni, but she was nowhere to be seen. When the rumbling and the screaming finally stopped, the whole area looked like a Giant had thrown a tantrum. Large parts of the wall between the Motherlands and the Northlands had collapsed and I could see through to my home country.
I pointed to a group of trees that leaned toward the ground at different angles, with roots coming out of the ground. “I see movements over there.”
“Over here.” The sound of Laura’s scream had Magni jumping down from the roof of his drone, and sprinting to the trees with me on his heels.
Laura had blood on her hands and face, and sat next to a woman who was covering her face with bloody hands.
We could see them, but between the women and us were fallen trees. Like a mad man, Magni moved large branches and climbed logs to get to them. He didn’t care that he was getting cuts and scratches himself. When Laura was within his reach he squatted down in front of her. “Are you okay, what happened to you?” Using his hands, he looked her over for injuries. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said and looked up at me. “I saw some women run for the trees and tried to warn them to stay clear. This woman was hit.” Turning her body, Laura pointed behind her. “One of the women over there twisted her ankle and can’t walk.”
“I’m on it.” Using my most calming voice to comfort her, I examined the Motlander woman’s injuries.
Magni, on the other hand, pulled Laura in for a tight hug. “I’ve been so fucking worried about you.”
“I’m okay,” she said in a voice strained from being squeezed by him.
“Good.” With his hands on her shoulders he brought his head down to her height. “Now promise me that you’ll never do something like that again.”
Laura’s jaw hardened.
“Laura.” Magni gave her shoulders a shake. “Promise me.”
Laura didn’t give him any promises and my friend’s face was growing redder by the second.
“Laura, can you help me please?” I said to defuse the situation.
She got into action without hesitation, following my every instruction. The five injured we could find had only minor injuries that were easy to diagnose and treat. Other Motlanders returned to help their friends and Laura asked Magni to carry some of the injured women to their drones.
“It’s a miracle that no one was killed,” I said when we were done.
“It’ll be worse in the cities where there are more buildings,” Laura pointed out.
Athena! My heart cramped with fear that something could have happened to her. Because of the intensity of the earthquake, I had assumed we were at the epicenter, but what if we’d been on the outskirts?
Acute fear made me grab Laura’s hand. “Does your wristband connect to other Motlanders?”
She nodded. “Yes, why?”
“I need to call Athena, and make sure she’s all right.”
Laura nodded and when I didn’t have Athena’s contact information she looked it up for me. We called Athena seven times, but she didn’t answer, and my head was exploding with worst-case scenarios.
“I need to borrow your drone,” I told Magni
“What? No.” He shook his head.
“Athena might be hurt, and I can’t go home until I know she’s safe. I need to see her,” I exclaimed while bouncing from one foot to the other.
“Can’t it wait until I get Laura back home?” Magni argued.
“No, it can’t fucking wait,” I shouted. “Athena lives alone and chances are that there’s no one with her.”
“But I thought you didn’t like her…”
I cut him off, shouting, “I need your fucking drone, Magni.”
Both Laura and Magni knew me as a jovial, easy-going person, but I had no time for long explanations, when the woman I loved might be in danger.
“All right, then take it,” he shouted, frustrated. “But you’d better not wreck it.”
I was already running full speed to the drone, and thirty seconds later, I was in the air, pushing the machine to the max.
Ten days ago, I had taken this journey in ninety minutes with Hans; today I would be there in less than thirty minutes. Still, every minute I grew more worried that something bad had happened to Athena. Flying over the Motherlands, I saw the massive structural damages that the earthquake had caused. Buildings had collapsed in large numbers, and when I arrived to see the windmill that Athena called home. Bile rose in my mouth.
The door was unhinged, all the windows were broken, and the roof had collapsed, with the two eaves partly on the ground.
“Please, let her be all right.” I kept muttering to myself when I set the drone down in front of the house.
Every drone had an emergency kit, and to be prepared, I grabbed it before I ran to Athena’s house.
Banging on the door, I called her name. “Athena, it’s me, Finn.” I didn’t wait for her to answer, but pushed through the broken door and entered.
There, pale as a corpse, Athena lay on the floor, pinned underneath a large beam, with her leg in a pool of blood.
“Fucking hell, Athena,” I cursed as I ran to her, sliding to my knees.
“Finn.” Her lips were blue and shivering, and with no windows and a hole in the roof, it was as cold inside as it was outside.
“You’re going to be okay,” I muttered, and took in her injury.”
“It hurts,” she cried.
“I’ll get this thing off you,” I promised and looked up to see the collapsed roof above us. I was afraid that moving the beam would cause the whole construction to fall apart, but looking at the amount of blood on the floor, her pale complexion, and her chattering teeth, I knew I had to act fast or I would lose her.
“I’m so cold,” Athena whispered.
An iron band around my throat was holding down all the fear in my chest and keep it from spilling out. “I know, my love. But you gotta hang in there for me.”
With the superhuman strength of a desperate man, I moved the beam enough that I could drag her free.
“I know it hurts,” I told her when she whimpered. “I promise that I will give you something for the pain but right now I have to stop the bleeding. The beam cut you, and it looks deep.”
Rummaging through the emergency kit from Magni’s drone, I pulled out the syringe I was looking for. It was a bad sign that Athena didn’t scream in pain when I applied a thick layer of the Blood Blocker Gel in her wound. I knew from my patients at the hospital that it stung, but only for the fifteen or so seconds that it took for the gel to turn into mesh that would stop the bleeding and serve not only as an adhesive to hold the wound together, but also as a scaffold to help the body produce fibrin at the wound’s surface.
“Athena,” I called and slapped her cheek when she didn’t respond. “Athena, wake up, come on, you gotta stay with me, baby.”
Panic made me pick her up and run with her to the drone. I needed to warm her up; I placed her on the floor while I started the engines and jacked the heat on max.
“I’m going to save you,” I muttered with determination and reached for the emergency kit again. Fumbling, I managed to get hold of the donor unit. “You lost too much blood, baby, but I’m going to help you. Just don’t give up, do you hear me?”
With fingers cold from the icy wind that had been howling through the house, and with my vision blurred by tears, I scrambled to unwrap the donor unit and get my jacket off so I could get to the veins on my left arm. The clear tube filled up with my blood and one drip at a time the converter in the middle filled up too.
“Come on, come on,” I hurried the small device designed to make it possible for all blood types to donate blood in case of an emergency.
“Don’t you die on me,” I ordered Athena, and pulled her limp body onto my lap. “Let’s fill you up with some strong Nman blood, baby,” I whispered and inserted the needle into her right arm.
Finally, the converter was sending the blood through to her, and I sighed in relief as I saw her blood type show on the converter. I knew the small device could only convert one unit of blood when it wasn’t a match, but she was AB positive and could receive blood from anyone.
“Athena,” I called and held her close to me. “You’re going to get better, I’m going to save you. Do you feel it?” Keeping my fingers on her wrist, I felt her weak pulse. She was still breathing, although barely.
With my limited resources, there wasn’t much I could do for her except wait for her body to fill up on my blood, and whisper words of encouragement to her. “If you wake up, Athena, I promise you that I will do as much meditation as you want me to. I’ll even eat kale for breakfast and stop swearing in your house.”
Her head dangled, so I placed her chin against my shoulder. “Breathe, my love, just keep breathing for me.” My voice broke and with the back of my hand I dried away the tears that wouldn’t stop running. “Who’s going to make the world a better place if you die? Who’s going to teach people about patience and tolerance, and forgiving your enemy?” I sniffled. “It can’t be me because I could never do what you do. No one can!”
With my face all distorted from crying, I kissed her forehead, nose, and lips. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Athena. You are the most beautiful human to ever walk this earth, and I know I’m not worthy of you, but you still need to wake up. Please wake up,” I begged.
There was no reaction, only a slight change of color in her skin. “That’s right, baby, take all the blood you need. I would give you all of mine if it will make you wake up.”