there is no remedy for that [flynn] 92nd

FLYNN GARNER
YEAR OF THE 92nd

Medicine has had so many major breakthroughs in the past, even right now in the labs of Six and the Capitol. Remedies and cures have been concurred by hoards of the best brains in the fields. Millions of medicines, therapies and procedures but still there is still no cure for grief.

Supposedly time is meant to cure the pain that comes with grief, but it doesn’t heal anything, I have just learnt to live with it after all these years. I have just learnt to keep my mind busy while life volleys fucking boulders at me every other freaking day!

I am in the bathroom of sixth floor, it has been about two hours since the news broke out. My cheeks still have a rose-pink tint to them, a seemly nice long term effect of the plague. Just like the occasional dizzy spells from the radiation poisoning and the missing ear from Lorraine Gaultier. Long term, lifelong effects. Or scars. Some scars have remedies. Mine don’t. Or I just choose not to have them remedied.

I cup my hands under the cold running tap, the water builds up in my palms and begins to overflow into the plugged sink. All I do is watch as it fills and fills, until I can feel the cold drip on my toes on the fluffy bathroom mat. Then I just splash my face with the water, no care in feeling it hit my chest too, soaking my grey shirt.

What a cold mess I am. And for what?

I have been hearing the lists of victims for weeks and weeks. A quarter of my old sixth grade class has gone. Just like that. Gone. Wiped away by something that we have failed to contain and now it is spreading beyond the borders of my home. The medals from the science fair seem soiled now, achievements buried beneath the reality that the whole event caused this. And now Patricia Valfierno is dead.

I switch off the tap. There is a puddle at my feet from the sink. I best not flood the bathroom. I push the bathmat over the puddle, a half assed attempt at clearing up my own mess.

Another name. Dead.

Every year.

Another name. Dead.

I am the eighty-seventh victor, so many of them are already dead. That is eighty-seven years. There is no cure for growing old. There is some kind of cure for the rose plague though and I am proof of that, even Teddy managed to survive it, but Patricia did not. Survivor’s guilt? Really? With everything else that already swamps my mind?

Two years ago, I watched the bloodbath with Patricia. She offered to kick Teddy’s ass for me, but I saved my neighbour’s ass that day. There are so many victors. There have been so many victors. They all shared their wanted and unwanted advice. They have shown me how much of a human being they all really are. We are not invincible. It is why I am training to be a doctor. To save people’s asses. I will save some. I will lose some.

Today we lost Patricia. But tomorrow we will save someone else. There is still a pandemic sweeping across my home and flooding a bathroom in an official Capitol building is not going to save anyone. I throw a towel over my shoulder and push myself out of the door.

I am allowed to grieve. I just cannot allow myself to succumb to its symptoms or to allow its long-term side effects to take control. It is what I have the other victors before me to thank for. I can learn from their mistakes. From their own misadventures. I owe it to them to pay my respects whenever one falls.