Plus One by Elizabeth Fama EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Elizabeth Fama
- Language: English
- Genre: Teen & Young Adult Romantic Mystery eBooks
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Wednesday
4:30 a.m.
It takes guts to deliberately mutilate your hand while operating a blisterpack sealing machine, but all I had going for me was guts. It seemed like a
fair trade: lose maybe a week’s wages and possibly the tip of my right
middle finger, and in exchange Poppu would get to hold his greatgranddaughter before he died.
I wasn’t into babies, but Poppu’s unseeing eyes filled to spilling when he
spoke of Ciel’s daughter, and that was more than I could bear. It was absurd
to me that the dying should grieve the living when the living in this case
was only ten kilometers away. Poppu needed to hold that baby, and I was
going to bring her to him, even if Ciel wouldn’t.
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The machine was programmed to drop daily doses of CircaDiem and
vitamin D into the thirty slots of a blister tray. My job was mind-numbingly
boring, and I’d done it maybe a hundred thousand times before without
messing up: align a perforated prescription card on the conveyor, slip the
PVC blister tray into the card, slide the conveyor to the right under the pill
dispenser, inspect the pills after the tray has been filled, fold the foil half of
the card over, and slide the conveyor to the left under the heat-sealing plate.
Over and over I’d gone through these motions for hours after school, with
the rhythmic swooshing, whirring, and stamping of the factory’s powder
compresses, laser inscribers, and motors penetrating my wax earplugs no
matter how well I molded them to my ear canal.
I should have had a concrete plan for stealing my brother’s baby, with
backups and contingencies, but that’s not how my brain works. I only knew
for sure how I was going to get into the hospital. There were possible
complications that I pushed to the periphery of my mind because they were
too overwhelming to think about: I didn’t know how I’d return my niece
when I was done with her; I’d be navigating the city during the day with
only a Smudge ID; if I was detained by an Hour Guard, there was a chance
I’d never see Poppu again.
I thought Poppu was asleep as I kissed him goodbye that night. His skin
was cool crepe paper draped over sharp cheekbones. I whispered, “Je
t’aime,” and he surprised me by croaking, “Je t’adore, Soleil,” as if he
sensed the weight of this departure over all the others.
I slogged through school; I dragged myself to work. An hour before my
shift ended, I allowed a prescription card to go askew in the tray, and I
poked my right middle finger in to straighten it before the hot plate lowered
to seal the foil backing to the card. I closed my eyes as the press came
down.
Even though I had only mangled one centimeter of a single finger, my
whole body felt like it had been turned inside out and I’d been punched in
the heart for good measure. My fingernail had split in two, blood was
pooling through the crack, and I smelled burned flesh. It turns out the
nerves in your fingertip are ridiculously sensitive, and all at once I realized
mine might be screaming for days. Had I thought through this step at all?
Would I even be able to hold a baby?
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