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“You do realize, that for a blood bag to be worth anythin, it needs to be breathin?”
The Organic Mechanic looked down at the body, frowning at the sorry state.
It hadn’t made it easy, put up more fight than any loner they’d gone after so far. Most would eventually either break down to their knees sobbing or go catatonic. A few committed suicide, but this one had led them on the chase of a lifetime that had the boys so riled up that they came storming back to the citadel with it wriggling like a lizard in a snare while they crowed about the mythical fox hunts of the lost world.
Their fox had put up an enormous fight even after being tied and having its hair clipped away to reveal completely wild eyes and snarling teeth. No wonder it had given them such a good chase: it was straight feral.
The grinding, snapping teeth and wrenching muscles had proven so powerful it had chewed through the first gag they’d shoved into its mouth and managed to bite the first two fingers off the war boy who’d tried to shove it back in. Those fingers were still laying on the floor in the processing room and the war boy was sitting with his hand cauterized and bandaged in the blood bag cave still in a kind of euphoric shock.
“It, it’s still breathin ain’t it?” the boy asked hesitantly, staring down at the feral laying face first in the dirt. He was clearly wary to actually get close enough to tell.
The Organic Mechanic had demanded it be brought to his lab and locked in and then locked down, because anything strong enough to bite a man’s fingers off after already struggling like a demon through an hour long chase and the aftermath of being dragged in needed to be re-assessed. You don’t waste anything in the wasteland, especially not good flesh.
The Mechanic hadn’t seen one fight that hard in his living memory. All that energy…. He looked down at the body, making a kind of grimace before shoving his foot against its ribs and flipping it onto its back.
It took strength, and he noted that the feral must be adept at scrounging food to be that heavy. All promising signs. More promising than the mat of blood in the back of its head where they’d cracked it with a wrench, anyway.
“Let’s see,” he hummed to himself, crouching over the body and turning the jaw back and forth. “Still has both eyes….” he felt down the body’s throat, under the jaw, pressed into the collarbones and then down the ribs. “No lumps or bumps, no swollen throat, and far as I can tell the ribs haven’t been more than cracked and if they were it was a while ago. And look--” he tilted his hand, keeping it pressed against the body’s chest. It rose with a breath. “Still breathing after all, so we can hope maybe you’ve just culled its bite a bit.”
The war boy gave a nervous kind of grin in response, but still glanced at the wrench with something like guilt.
“Help me get it on the table, it ain’t waking up any time soon,” the Mechanic pronounced, letting the body’s eyelid fall back shut from where he’d pried it open with little care. The two war boys trained to help him stepped forward and picked the body up, dropping it with a cushioned thud on the bloody table. It was dingey and caked with gore from hundreds of other captives, and the Mechanic paid that no mind as he wiped his hands on a grease cloth and surveyed the body with curiosity.
“Hi octane, I bet,” he commented, getting closer and prodding along the stomach, into the hips and down both legs. “Organs all solid, stomach soft. No internal bleeding and aside from this bad leg not a lump on it. It’s clean, looks like.”
He pulled the shirt up and shoved it out of the way before growing impatient and making one of the boys help him wriggle the unconscious body out of it.
“Good muscle definition, strong bones, flexible joints,” he assessed, manipulating the arm, feeling along the shoulders and up into the neck. He shifted from the tendons into the artery, eyebrows quirking up. “This is the first full life I’ve seen in four hundred days,” he said, less to the boys and more to himself. “Stronger pulse than a war boy’s drum…” he fiddled with a battered ear horn hanging from his belt and placed it against the body’s chest, leaning over to listen.
“Oh yes, battered on the outside but good, clean engine thrumming away on the inside.” He glanced up at his assistants, a crooked, cruel smile splitting across his face like an infected wound popping its stitches. “By the mothers it runs quiet.”
He straightened up, replacing the horn with his fingers as he felt around the body’s chest. “Not a tremor or a shake in there, just a good steady pump,” he muttered, finding that in itself astonishing. “Full life for sure, if we’re lucky it’ll be a universal donor.”
He circled the table, moving to hook the horn back on his belt. Taking an old needle, he dipped it to sterilize and then drew blood so it could be tested. The prick must have roused his prospect because there was a soft grunt and the body tossed its head. The Mechanic watched as muscles twitched and then surged as it came awake and immediately tried once again to get away. The war boys held fast, only keeping hold because the restraints were too much even for a feral as wild as this one. All the same, it thrashed in its bonds, snarling and foaming through the teeth, the eyes almost lit from within with its wildness.
The Mechanic whistled, pressing his hands down against the body’s chest so forcefully it thudded back to the table with a clang. Leaning all his weight down, the mechanic compressed the feral’s lungs, causing it to widen its eyes and renew its efforts for a moment before the lack of oxygen slowed its struggle and forced it to focus only on trying to keep up breathing. Beneath his palm, the heart beat wildly and hard, and the mechanic grabbed for his horn again while the feral was temporarily subdued. He pressed the horn back to the chest and closed his eyes, making a sound of astonishment.
“This one’s got nitro in its blood,” he said, picking his head up and gesturing for one of his assistants to listen. “Hear that? Not a stutter, not a shaking. Quietest idle I’ve ever heard and it turns into a war rig when you add adrenaline.”
The body bucked suddenly, jamming the horn painfully into the war boy’s head and he recoiled quickly, rubbing at his ear. The Mechanic laughed, patting the body’s chest like he would the top of a good car. “No wonder it’s given you so much trouble. Bind this one good, don’t let it get out. Anybody who gets blood from this one will be destined for greatness.”
“Max…?”
Capable’s voice was soft, her brow furrowed with concern as she watched the man’s head drop suddenly. The Vuvalini who had been watching over them both hurriedly reached up, keeping one hand at the crook of his elbow to make sure the needle wasn’t disturbed and putting the other hand up to his throat.
“He’s still alright, probably exhausted,” she assured, motioning for the Dag, who was still pressed in at Max’s side to help. “Lay him back, rest him with his head tilted so he can breathe. Do you know how to find a heartbeat?”
The Dag nodded, her pale eyes wide as she moved just as quickly to obey as she had when Max had shoved half the transfusion supplies into her hands. She took hold of Max’s arm and pushed at him, needing more strength than she’d anticipated, his muscles hardening in resistance under her hands for a moment before he finally slumped back. His eyelids fluttered, but he sighed, and there was no awareness anymore.
The Dag looked at the Vuvalini, suddenly afraid Max had just died, but the older woman shook her head kindly. “You know where his heart is, place your ear against it, listen. You ever hear an engine when it begins to sputter and die? If he sputters, you tell me and we end this.”
She felt across Max’s chest with a fleeting hand, unsure about touching him, being that close to him while he was unaware. Carefully, she moved his jacket over only as much as she had to and lay her head against his chest, glancing at the Vuvalini for any indication she was doing things wrong. The woman gave her an encouraging smile and only shifted her grip on Max’s arm, using her free hand to then press gently against his wrist.
“Feels steady down here, how’s he sound?” she asked gently.
“He’s, fast,” The Dag said at last, her fingers closing against his shirt in anxiety.
“Is he sputtering?”
She waited, listening intently before shaking her head. “No. Just….just fast. And I can feel it….” she said more softly, whispering it like it was sacred information, something too intimate and strange for anyone outside the car to hear. “I can feel all that stuff moving inside him, like pistons and gears.”
“That’s the valves in his heart, the air in his lungs,” the Vuvalini said, pronouncing like it was gospel. “That’s the sound of life.”
“It’s beautiful,” Capable whispered. She’d reached over the seat and taken hold of Max’s other wrist, copying the Vuvalini’s placement until she found his pulse. It was running fast, but beneath the Dag’s head Max’s chest kept drawing in breath and his heart kept on in its strained idle, and so they let him continue giving his life to Furiosa.
The Dag didn’t dare relax, listening carefully so she didn’t miss any changes even over the sound of the car’s engines.
“He’s breathing more quickly,” Capable said quietly, worry writing itself into her expression even more deeply. “Dag?”
“No sputtering but he doesn’t sound quite right, either.”
“Furiosa’s color is better. We can stop,” The Vuvalini said at last, pressing harder into Max’s elbow and pulling the needle from beneath it. A streak of anxiety followed the stream of blood that ran down the side of Max’s arm, but the Vuvalini quickly bound his wound and shifted his arm, holding it up above his shoulder. Capable frowned at the strange action.
“Keep it above his heart, makes it harder for him to bleed,” she explained simply.
In a few minutes, the bleeding stopped, and beneath The Dag’s careful ear, Max’s heart steadied and fell into a softer rhythm.
At his side, Furiosa began to stir.
Furiosa was still convalescing and everyone else was busy, so she volunteered to keep an eye on the fool.
“He gave you a lot of his own blood,” one of the Vuvalini said softly when she woke, turning her head to peer blearily at the man lying unconscious on the bed next to her. They were in a quiet part of the citadel, a place where sunlight came in and there was green growing on the window ledges.
It must have been one of the rooms Joe had kept to himself, and Furiosa tried not to think about it. It was theirs now. Joe would be scrubbed from the cracks until his memory was sand.
“He hasn’t woken yet, but I think it’s exhaustion, more than anything poor scrap,” she’d gone on, looking at Max with an expression of fondness and exasperation all in one. “We stopped him giving everything in his veins to you, so I think he’s enough left for his own function, but you may want to keep an ear on him just in case. Till he wakes up, at least.”
And so Furiosa was laying next to Max. The Vuvalini had helped her by moving the bed over so they had more space and Furiosa could lay on her good side with her head resting on Max’s chest--all without touching him otherwise. He was laying normally on his bed, she was laying sideways on hers so they didn’t have to cuddle up to one another. Space, now that it was available, felt like it must be used unless permission was given. Max was unconscious, and Furiosa was willing to touch him only to the extent he needed to be watched over.
“Engine still humming,” she said softly, speaking in ways to herself, and in more ways to Max. “There’s life in you yet, Max, so I expect you to use it to wake up so I can thank you myself.”
Max. She hadn’t heard his confession, but the girls had told her. They’d put him on an IV drip, feeding sugar and water into his veins to make up for the sacrifice he’d given so willingly to her. The treatment seemed to have done him good. She’s listened to his heartbeat slow from its flutter of blood loss into something steadier and more content.
His breathing was easy and calm, and he was still in his sleep. That wasn't something she’d expected, not after he’d shuddered through his fleeting naps in the war rig. His stillness was the biggest thing that had convinced her to breach space and lay with her ear over his heart while he slept. She was simply afraid he was too still to be anything but dying.
But his heart sounded too sure to be anything but alive. The humming of it, the warmth of his body and the hardness of his bones under the softness of relaxed muscle reminded her of the soothing freedom she’d felt inside the war rig. All the working parts that she could pass her palm just across the surface of that promised potential.
She was drowsy with the toll of her own wounds and the warmth of his body when he made a low noise and began to stir. She blinked, picking her head up and pushing herself up to look at him. He blinked his eyes open and looked up at her, silently processing for a long moment.
“Hey,” he said at last, his voice sand and rusty metal. She found she liked the sound. It was honest.
“Hey.” She smiled weakly at him, feeling a sudden lump in her throat. The gravity of what he’d helped them do suddenly was weighing on her and she shook her head, blinking away tears. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“Hey, wasn’t nothing, hey…” he muttered, pushing himself stiffly up to sit, a spark of alarm in his eyes like her tears of relief were something he needed to fix. He held out a hand like he was going to touch her cheek and then froze, his breathing shallow as he stared at her. She didn’t know if it was his own fears that stopped the instinct, or if it was the realization that she might draw away, but she slowly, slowly tilted her head into his hand and let his rough fingers brush across her jaw.
“It wasn’t nothing, you’re right,” she said softly, moving her head back and clasping his hand with her own instead. “It was everything to us.”
He was silent, his fingers curling around hers. Not really holding her hand, but letting his relax in her grip. He cast around, surveying their room, then glanced at the IV and their bed arrangement. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Had to make sure you didn’t stop breathing,” she explained, letting his hand go suddenly and sitting up a little straighter. As straight as her bandages allowed, anyway. “They told me you gave me your blood. We didn’t want your heart to stop after all of that so I was listening….” she didn’t say she was sorry but her tone told him she was if he needed her to be.
He shook his head once and blinked. “Is it?” he asked, and she had to take a moment to realize that there was a hint of a joke in that question, the shadow of a smile in his eyes.
“Beating?” she asked, cracking a relieved smile of her own. She laughed at the absurdity of the question, nodding and dashing away a few more tears. “Yes. Yes your heart is beating, Max.”
He grunted and settled back in the bed, making a clicking kind of noise as he touched the needle in the back of his hand and then looked up the line to the bag almost empty above. “Sometimes I do wonder,” he said.
Her expression softened back and she nodded. “I know what you mean.”
His warm, rough finger touched the edge of her hand, and she looked up at him, that worry back in his slightly manic eyes. He withdrew his hand. He looked down at his chest, then turned his head away from her and pat his sternum twice before dropping his hand back to the mattress and waiting. She studied him for a moment, trying to decide if she’d read him right. He continued to studiously look away, his breathing consciously controlled.
Slowly, she moved a little closer, touching the bottom of his ribs ever so gently. He stopped breathing for a moment, and when he started again she dared to lower herself and rest against him, her shoulder fitting in against his side, her head resting now with his invitation on his breast.
He sighed and the tension went out of him.
They fell asleep with her leaning on him and he resting under her.
His heart was calm at long last, if only for a moment, in the safety they’d created together.