From the hospital, we could see the city
burning. Several fires had been lit up by the crowd. It was an expression of
happiness and revolt, of fury and a desire for the future. The people out in
the streets were happy that such a long war had finally ended, after so many
had been assassinated and others just disappeared as if they had walked into
another dimension. Everyone knew they had probably been killed by the
government and then buried somewhere far, but people didn’t want to think that.
They would have years for that.
We saw it all from afar, behind a glass that
protected us from the outside, in a building that had been designed by and for
our enemies. However, we needed care and when our group was finally able to
enter the city, we were able to secure that hospital and its resources for own.
Of course, the patients that had been left there were tended too by the doctors
and the nurses of our team, but some of them were placed under “house arrest”,
as many were involved with the military and the horrors of war.
I decided to leave Mark, who was very tired,
and just wander around the hospital. I thought I could hear someone talking
about what had happened in the city or maybe some other information. There were
many screens all around the hospital but none of them worked. Television had
being suspended almost a year ago, as the prior government thought it was a
misuse of money and electricity. They removed all permissions to broadcast and
forbid anyone from broadcasting anything in any way.
Even with the success of the rebels,
television would take its time to return after such a long period of silence.
It would take a long time to get the country running smoothly, if that was at
all possible. Everyone had things to do and they all seemed to be much more
important than television or things that people in general missed from the
older times, before everything had gone to hell. I missed candy for example,
but sugar had not been used to make candy in at least five years, by government
decree.
I walked all over the hospital, checking out
every abandoned ward and every silent corridor. The place was sunk in a blue
haze and the fact that the day was getting brighter did not improve the general
mood. When I finally got to the reception, the lady tending to the only active
phone line seemed to be on the verge of collapsing. I was afraid to ask her
anything but when she saw me she just signaled me to go closer and she then
handed me a paper. I read the only few lines that were written on it: “Call
General Ford. Urgent.” And then a number underneath it.
She had no chance to explain the message and I
didn’t have the need to have it explained. After all, we knew exactly that our
time in the hospital was going to be short. I was kind of sad for Mark, even
thinking about how to tell him the news. When I got to the room, he was up. He
smiled at me like he always did and I just got closer and kissed him softly. He
smelled a bit bad because of the long way we had to go through to get to the
hospital. I was sure I smelt exactly the same or even worse. But who cares?
I then told him about General Ford and he
understood it all in a second. We look towards the window, were smoke from one
of the fires had grown pretty big and was almost covering half the city. It was
obvious they were still burning things. That place was our destination. So I
helped Mark with his clothes and into the shower. He insisted I should join
him, so I did. We had a nice little time together, as we had never been able to
have. It was so nice and incredible; I wanted to stay there forever.
That wasn’t an option. We dressed up in new
clothes that we had found in a closet, in the room across the hall. They were a
little bit big on me and short on him, so we laughed for a while. It felt so
good to be able to laugh, to have your ribs hurt because of happiness and not
because of violence. We finished preparing and I helped him walk down to the
reception. Once there, the woman in the reception was still busy but used her
hands again to point at a couple of crutches I hadn’t seen there before. She
was good.
Mark went out first, followed by me. The
surroundings looked safe, so we entered the car we had used to get there, a
stolen piece of property. I turned it on and in a short moment we were already
on the main road towards the city center. Through the windows, we could see
some of the fires that were burning. There were no stores in flames, no
residential buildings. Only government offices where people had entered to burn
every single record in existence. It was a way to say we had to start over.
No one out there seemed dangerous, but they
did stop doing their things as we passed by because there were not too many
cars being driven around the city at that time. Only the rebels, the winning
faction, were operating any kind of vehicle. That kind of scared me. Mark must
have thought the same thing because he just put a hand on my thigh and pressed
gently. I was so lucky to have him there. For a while, I had no idea if I would
ever go back to that city, the place where I had been born. After so much, it
was pretty much a surprise to be there, as if nothing had happened.
We finally got to the main fire, the one from
where a huge plume of smoke was rising to the sky and across the city. It was
the presidential palace that used to be white and was now some shade of grey. A
large amount of people were gathered there, some staring and others carrying
stuff to throw to the main pyre. We stopped the car and got out, in order for
them to know it was us and no one else. Yet, no one really noticed us. It was
only when we got real close, that a few guards stopped us.
Mark started explaining who we were but he was
interrupted by a scream of joy. Sophia was there and she ran straight for Mark.
She was obviously happy to see him alive and I have to confess I couldn’t blame
her for being so excited. After all, she had been promised to him in marriage
for a couple of years before the war. However, the wedding was never performed
because of all the fighting and the fact that her family wanted her to be safe,
somewhere very remote. So she had no idea who he really was.
I smiled at her and she smiled back. She had
no idea I knew her from a photograph he had in his wallet, she had no idea who
I was. But that wasn’t important. The guards left and, before I could ask for
anything, General Ford walked straight to us and pointed to a building on the
other side of the square where the presidential palace was located. People
applauded when they saw the general, a woman that looked so strong was the
cause the government had finally fallen and they were free again.
We entered the other building and then a room
that was very nicely arranged. There was no food or anything, only other people
that had fought the war with us. We all knew each other, because we had met in
the battlefield, in the camps where they had interred us and in the mountains
we had to hide for so long. Mark hugged half the people there and I waved and
smiled a lot, more than in any other occasion in my life. It was nice, after
all, to see them there. It was like having a family again.
General Ford informed us about our
particulars, our real families. Some of them had died, others like mine had
fled the country and a few had somehow survived the ordeal. It was a sad,
solemn moment but we were thankful to her. It was then she invited us to take
part in the first televised event of the new era. We were a bit surprised by
the proposal but she gave us no time to say anything. Apparently, she was going
to be the first one to use the airwaves again to properly announce the end of
hostilities. A television camera was brought and several microphones. I just
took Mark’s hand and thought it could never get worse than the war.
