district 13 - part 1
katniss’s pov
Gale is the first person I see when I enter the hospital. I throw my arms around him and bury my face in his shoulder, feeling half the weight lifted off of me as I realize that he’s back safe.
“It was the weirdest thing,” he mutters as I let go of him. “There were probably hundreds of guns aimed at our hovercraft, and they let us go. Just like that.”
Before I can ask what he means, a woman yells, “FINNICK!”
I turn to my right and watch Annie run toward Finnick, embracing him as he laughs with relief. She doesn’t look nearly as bad as Cole did in the interviews. Maybe they went easier on the torture for her, since there was no chance that she knew any information.
And then I see her over Finnick’s shoulder: Johanna, sitting in a hospital bed. I push past the reunited couple, ignoring everything around me as I walk closer to her, but I stop when I get to the curtain around her bed.
I imagined this moment a hundred times. I pictured myself falling into her arms, picking up right where we left off and finally being happy. I thought about whether it would be ok if I kissed her, since I still don’t know what the kiss in the arena really meant to her and I have no idea what we are to each other. I even tried to prepare myself for the fact that she might look like Cole, worn down and bruised.
But this is nothing I could’ve imagined. Johanna looks like a shell of herself. I don’t know what to make of it or what to do with myself. My body won’t do anything and my mind feels numb.
“No, I don’t want that. Don’t put that on me,” Johanna snaps at one of the hospital workers, pushing away an IV. She sees me and her face softens, her hand hanging in the air awkwardly as she stares at me.
“I…” I know she’s waiting for me to say something, but I’m at a total loss for words. Part of me wants to hug her, but she looks so weak that I’m afraid to accidentally hurt her. “Hi,” I finally manage, my voice sounding like a child’s.
“Hi,” says Johanna. We stay there, just looking at each other in silence, until Johanna finally murmurs awkwardly, “You should go see Cole. He…went through a lot.”
“So did you,” I counter, even though I really do want to get out of here. I can’t stand this. I can’t see her like this.
“Yeah, but it’s not like I’m going anywhere, right?” She scowls at the nurse next to her, who’s still holding the IV. “So…go check on him, if you want.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and nod, turning away from Johanna and quickly walking back the way I came. A doctor points me in the direction of a room down the hall. My mind is still racing with thoughts of Johanna, but I tell myself to hold it together at least for now. I can freak out later, when I’m alone.
I’m almost to the room when I hear a loud slam. Thinking that Cole might be hurt, I run to the door and yank it open, but I don’t see him in his bed.
Instead, I see him on the floor, strangling my baby sister.
“NO!” I scream, throwing myself at him, but he’s too strong. I claw at his arms and he whacks me across the face, knocking me on my back. I get up to try to attack him again, but a swarm of doctors are already crowding around him and Prim. “PRIM! PRIM!”
A doctor stands up between me and Prim, holding his hands up, “Miss Everdeen—”
“Move!” I try to push past him, but he grabs me by my shoulders and holds me back. “Just let me see if she’s ok!”
“We need space to work on her.”
“Come here,” says a gruff voice. Haymitch has arrived by my side. He grabs my wrists and pulls me into a bear hug. “Let the doctors do their job.”
But I keep trying to wrestle out of his grip, screaming as the doctors roll Prim onto some kind of board, lift her up, and carry her out of the room. As the doctors clear out, I can see Cole lying on the ground, sedated. A pair of doctors lift him back into his bed and tie his arms and legs down.
Haymitch finally lets go, so I sprint out of the room and try to find where they’ve taken Prim. Through the window of a nearby room, I can see them working on her, but they’ve locked the door. I stand there, watching, waiting for someone to tell me what’s going on, not taking my eyes off her even for a second.
Haymitch catches up to me, clearing his throat. “They called your mom. She’ll be here in a few minutes. They said they don’t know exactly what kind of damage he did, but that you got to her in time. She’s gonna be ok.”
My eyes are so full of tears that I can barely see, and when I try to say something to him, it all just becomes too much. He holds me as I sob, stays there with me while I lose it, until my mother arrives and they finally let us into Prim’s room.
I decide to spend the night in Prim’s room, since I won’t be able to sleep anyways. I pull up a chair and sit next to her bed, watching over her. The doctors said that they put her in a coma, so that she can heal easier. She looks like she could be sleeping.
I hear some scuffling by the door. Assuming that it’s another doctor here to check on Prim, I don’t pay much attention until I feel a hand on my shoulder and see Johanna, dragging an IV pole behind her, barely able to stand.
“What are you doing?” I say, jumping to my feet. “Should you even be in here?”
“I heard about Prim,” Johanna replies, her voice trembling. She looks like she’s about to pass out, so I help her into my chair and crouch down in front of her in case she falls. “How is she?”
“Sedated. But alive.”
“What about you? Are you ok?”
“I should be the one asking you that question.”
Johanna chuckles. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
Quietly, I take one of the chairs from across the room and pull it up next to Johanna’s. I can feel her watching me the whole time, her breathing slowing back to normal as she rests.
“Katniss, I didn’t know,” she finally says. “I had no idea what they were doing to him. I swear, if I knew, I never would’ve told you to go see him. I never would’ve let Prim—”
“I believe you,” I say as reassuringly as I can muster.
“I mean, I knew they were doing something to him,” Johanna continues. A dark look passes over her face. “But this…this is…evil.”
A silence falls again, broken only by the steady beeping of the machine they have hooked up to Prim.
“We should’ve gotten you out sooner,” I mutter.
“Well, I’m not going to argue with that. But I’m sure you had your reasons.”
“Coin had her reasons,” I say bitterly.
“Right, tell me about her,” Johanna says with a curious smile. She almost looks like her old self, just for a moment. “I heard the nurses talking about how Coin needed to know about this.”
“She’s the president of 13.” I think about being honest with Johanna, telling her how I don’t really get along with Coin, but I’m afraid of the wrong person overhearing. “Not much else to tell.”
“Hmm.” I think she can tell that I’m keeping something from her, but she doesn’t question it. “So…what were her reasons?” Before I can say anything, Johanna blurts out, “Actually, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
I watch Johanna sink into the chair sadly. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. It’s not your fault.”
“But I could’ve done something. I could have made them go get you.”
Johanna shakes her head. “Snow wouldn’t have let it happen any other way. The only reason I’m sitting here right now is because…well, you know why.”
Maybe she has a point. From what it seems, Snow only allowed them to escape the Capitol with their lives because he knew Cole would try to kill Prim, or me. If I had pushed Coin to rescue Johanna, Cole, and Annie early, it might have resulted in all three of their deaths. But even though I can rationalize it, I can’t stop feeling guilty over not doing enough.
“Did you know?” I ask her. “In the arena, did you…”
“Did I know it was gonna go down like that?” Johanna finishes for me. “Of course not. I would’ve tried harder to save myself. I knew that Haymitch was trying to get us all out and bring us here, but I didn’t know about blowing up the forcefield.”
I can’t help feeling irritated. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Haymitch told us not to.”
“Since when have you cared what Haymitch says?”
Johanna glares at me. “He said it was for your own good.”
“But I could’ve helped,” I argue, “if you had just trusted me, I could’ve—”
“I did trust you,” Johanna snaps. “I just didn’t tell you because I didn’t want…if Snow captured you, I didn’t want him to have a reason to torture you. Information is power in the Capitol. Trust me, I know.”
Once again, I feel like the worst person in the world. I look away from Johanna and stare at the ground, fighting the urge to run and hide in one of the supply closets like I usually do. I don’t know what to say.
Just then, a doctor enters the room to check on Prim and unfortunately spots Johanna. “Miss Mason,” he sighs, “patients are not permitted to leave their rooms without authorization from their primary doctor, especially not to visit another patient outside of visiting hours.”
“Oh, sure. Didn’t realize I left one prison just to end up in another,” Johanna grumbles. She starts to stand and I quickly offer my arm to help her, which she accepts. She looks me in the eyes and adds, “Come visit me. Once Prim is doing better, obviously.”
I nod. “Sure.”
And then she’s gone, leaving me alone to watch over Prim.
A few days later, I decide to use my rare moment of free time to go down to the hospital and visit Prim and Johanna. Prim is doing better, but the doctors want to keep her in the coma for a few more days just to be sure. According to Haymitch, they have Cole in a solitary unit, but I haven’t been to see him.
Plutarch called it “hijacking.” He said that it was being talked about when he was a Gamemaker, but hadn’t been done yet. They wanted to save it for a Games, but it was never done because they weren’t sure if it would even work. According to Haymitch, Plutarch said that hijacking is “completely uncharted territory,” but they would still try everything to undo it.
So far, they think that his memories with Prim and his memories of me were the only ones affected by the hijacking. That’s why he tried to kill Prim, and partially why I haven’t gone to see him since then. Even if I wanted to see him, it wouldn’t be safe for me.
When Haymitch told me that, I realized that this is what Gale meant. This is how Snow is using Cole to break me, by programming him to kill me and my sister. The same boy who I mentored, whose ability to kill is directly a result of my own actions, almost managed to kill the person that I love most.
And then there’s everything about Johanna, which is threatening to break me in a different way. For months, all I wanted was for her to be here with me, but now that she’s here, I can’t stand to be around her. I can’t even look at her without being reminded of everything that she went through because of me. She won’t talk to anyone, even her therapist, about what they did to her in the Capitol, but it’s written all over her.
I finally reach the hospital. A bunch of doctors are crowded around a machine near Johanna’s room, complaining loudly to each other and arguing about something.
“I took her vitals twice today. It’s your turn.”
“Don’t you remember the last time I went in there?”
“Please, she’s like that to everyone. You just have to deal with it and get it over with as quickly as you can.”
“Well, I don’t care who does it, but she needs her vitals taken,” declares a female doctor who I recognize as one of the higher ups. She waves a chart in front of the others, but no one takes it.
“I’ll do it,” I say.
Everyone turns toward me. A couple doctors glance at each other hesitantly. One smirks at me, like he thinks I’m being ridiculous. The head doctor eyes me for a moment, then turns back to her coworkers.
“I’m serious. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
Slowly, the head doctor walks over to me and hands me the chart. She looks at me intensely and mutters, “I shouldn’t break protocol like this, but she hasn’t been cooperating with any of us. So, while you’re in there, if you wouldn’t mind putting in a good word…”
She shows me how to use the different devices, where to mark the results on the chart, and then sends me into Johanna’s room.
Johanna stirs as soon as the door closes, smirking at the sight of me with all the medical supplies. “They’re making the Mockingjay do grunt work now?”
“Apparently you’re being uncooperative, so they had to call me in.” I set down the chart on Johanna’s bedside table and pick up the thermometer. “Stick this in your mouth.”
“You’re not gonna take me out to dinner first?” Johanna smirks and lets me put the device under her tongue. Either she doesn’t notice that I’m blushing or she’s choosing to ignore it. “But seriously, I didn’t know you wanted to be a doctor. Are you bored of your job already? Or are you still moonlighting as the face of a revolution?”
“Stop talking so it can get an accurate reading,” I say with a smile.
Johanna rolls her eyes playfully, but listens and doesn’t speak again until the thermometer beeps. “Let’s find out if I have a fever,” she declares, throwing her arms in the air and proudly showing me the 98.2. “Hell yeah!”
I laugh. “Calm down so I can take your pulse.”
“Oh, we’re all business today, are we?” Johanna reaches out her hand for me to put the device on her finger. “Maybe you should be a doctor.”
“Yeah, right. You saw me in the arena, I could barely bandage your arm.” I blush again at the memory of hovering over Johanna, the way she looked at me as I touched her. “Besides, Prim got all the healer genes.”
Johanna pauses. “Ok, don’t tell the doctors, but…I’ve been sneaking out to see her. I figured…you know. Someone should sit with her.” She reaches out a hand apologetically. “Not that you’re not already sitting with her a lot! I mean…at night, you can’t be with her, so I—”
“Thank you,” I cut her off quietly.
Johanna shrugs, and I think she might be blushing too. “It’s nothing. I just…I know I’d want someone to sit with her, if she were my sister.”
The device on Johanna’s finger beeps, so I write down her pulse rate and pulse ox and remove it, putting it back on the table and picking up the blood pressure cuff. “The doctor said this might be a little uncomfortable,” I warn Johanna. Then I start to wrap the cuff around her arm.
I’m about to secure it when I notice the scars. It’s like a lightning strike, stretching from under Johanna’s hospital gown down to her wrist. The scar is so thin and lightly colored that I haven’t even seen it until now that I’m this close to Johanna’s arm. And the bruises that surround it are horrible to look at. There’s a massive purple mark around Johanna’s bicep, and a dark bruise that wraps around her arm just below her elbow. Someone grabbed her so tightly that they bruised her.
I freeze, losing my grip on the cuff as it unravels. Johanna notices and pulls her arm away, taking the cuff from my hands. “I can do it,” she mutters.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Johanna attaches the cuff to her arm, then uses her other hand to pump air into it. “Here, read the numbers.”
I take down the numbers, and Johanna rips the cuff off her arm quickly. She pulls up her blanket uncomfortably and looks away from me, probably waiting for me to get out.
“I’m…Johanna, I’m sorry—”
“Stop,” she says firmly, meeting my eyes. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“I’m just sorry.”
“I know. But it wasn’t your fault, so…don’t apologize again.” She looks down at the sheets on her bed, picking at a loose thread. After a moment, she sighs in frustration. “I don’t want…I just…god, I don’t know how to say it.”
“It’s ok,” I say softly. “Just try.”
She stares at me, then sighs again. “I don’t want what the Capitol did to me to come between us. It’s like…I see the way you look at me, and I don’t blame you for that. Because I know I must look like shit, and I know you feel guilty for not rescuing us sooner. But I don’t want you to feel bad for me. It actually pisses me off, if I’m being honest. So stop apologizing.”
“Sorry.”
“Katniss!” Johanna complains, but thankfully she laughs at it. It’s the first time I’ve seen her really laugh since she arrived in District 13. “I guess what I’m trying to say is…can we start over? Or at least pick up where we left off?”
I don’t know how that would be possible, with everything that’s happened since we said goodbye in the Games. But I guess I can try. “Sure,” I whisper, taking Johanna’s hand in mine. Holding her hand feels even better than I remember. “Um…how do we do that?”
Johanna laughs again. “I don’t know. I guess…we just act like friends again.”
Right. Friends. Who kissed in the arena. So maybe it was just a way to say goodbye for Johanna. I take my hand back quickly and reach for Johanna’s chart. “Ok, deal. On one condition.”
“What?”
“You have to listen to the doctors,” I declare. “You have to be nice to them and do what they tell you to do. Because I can’t be your friend if I have to keep coming in here to do their job for them, and because I want you to get better. And get out of this hospital.”
Johanna hesitates for a moment, then rolls her eyes and nods. “Fine. Deal.”