The System Can’t See Me

The pale line the hook left in the grit ended beneath the red pipe.

Kai watched it until his eyes hurt.

Nia lay angled across his lower back. Her free hand was still ahead of them, pushed close to the pipe by the black surface. The palm lay flat on the concrete. The fingers were spread and red at the knuckles. Her other hand remained beneath her chest, numb and caught between her body and the floor.

Neither hand could take her weight.

"Can you move the one in front?" Kai asked.

Nia looked toward it without lifting her head. He felt the turn of her cheek against his back.

"A little," she said too quickly, and Kai did not believe her.

Her fingers twitched.

The index finger bent first. The others followed late, each one moving on its own. She drew the hand back less than an inch before the cut in her palm met the grit and stopped it.

Her breath caught.

"Leave it," Kai said.

"It's too close."

He knew she meant the pipe. He did not have an answer.

The red paint above her hand had been chipped for as long as he had been staring at it. Rust showed through in thin dark lines. A bead of water hung from the underside and fell beside her wrist.

A corroded wall bracket held the pipe above the floor, bent open at one end. It was too far forward to reach and partly hidden by the red pipe itself.

The pipe rang.

Kai's cheek was still against the floor. The sound came through the concrete before it reached his ear.

Nia's fingers stopped moving.

The bracket gave with a metallic scrape. The pipe dropped the width of a finger and struck the concrete with a dull knock. Nia's hand was already beneath it.

Her breath left her all at once.

The pipe caught across the back of her hand.

For half a second, nothing moved.

Then Nia tried to pull free.

The hand did not come out.

Her fingers scraped forward against the concrete. The pipe held them down. Her cut palm twisted under the edge. Kai felt the motion through the back of his body where she lay over him.

"Nia."

She did not answer.

Kai tried to lift himself.

His good knee slid. His waist wounds dragged against the floor. The trapped wrist folded harder beneath his ribs. The lunch box stopped his left shoulder before he had gained enough height to move anything.

He dropped back down with his breath gone.

Nia made a small, broken sound behind him.

"Don't pull," he said.

"It's on my hand."

"I know."

The words were useless the moment he said them.

Nia's numb hand remained under her chest. She could not bring it forward. Her forearm lay across Kai's side at the wrong angle, pressing just above his hip wounds. Her right knee and damaged calf were behind her. Her bare left foot stayed in the runoff, too far back to give her anything but another place to hurt.

The pipe settled lower.

Not far. Just enough that Nia's fingers flattened against the concrete.

She stopped trying to pull them out.

The sound came through her teeth. Kai wanted to turn toward her.

He could not turn.

The red pipe now lay across the back of her hand. The thin space beneath it had closed around her fingers. Her palm was still partly visible, cut and dark with grit. The wrist was bent too far toward the floor.

Kai saw the shape of her knuckles change under the paint-worn metal. He could not tell whether it was the pressure or the angle of the wrist. He did not ask her to look. She could not lift her head far enough to see past the line of her own shoulder anyway.

Nia held herself very still. The muscles along her back had tightened so hard that each breath made a small shiver pass from her shoulder to her hip. The numb hand beneath her chest gave her nothing. The pinned hand gave her nowhere to put the pain.

Kai tried to take some of her weight without shifting the rest of himself. His stomach tightened. The wounds at his waist pulled against the concrete. His good knee dragged a fraction, then stopped. The effort changed nothing except the pain in his side.

Nia felt it and whispered, "Don't."

He let the muscles go. "I stopped."

For a moment, neither of them spoke. A thin wetness spread from the cut in Nia's palm toward the pipe, disappearing under the red metal where Kai could not see it anymore.

"Can you feel your fingers?" he asked.

Nia did not answer for several breaths.

"Not like before."

Kai shut his eyes.

Behind the pipe, the black plates shifted.

The pipe trembled once against Nia's hand.

She went rigid across his lower back.

Kai held still. There was no motion he could make that did not drive the pipe farther into her hand or pull her trapped hand beneath her chest. The floor kept his right wrist under him. The lunch box kept his left shoulder fixed. The three wounds on his right side burned every time his ribs moved.

Nia's breathing grew shallow.

"Talk to me," he said.

"I'm here."

Her voice was thin but clear.

"Your hand?"

"Still under it."

He bit the inside of his cheek. The taste of blood was cleaner than the smell of wet concrete and rust.

Nia tried to move her free shoulder instead of the trapped hand. The shift traveled down her back, into her forearm, and stopped at the pipe. Her body shivered. The numb hand beneath her chest made no attempt to help. Her damaged right knee dragged across the floor and the calf behind it tightened hard enough that she lost another breath.

She settled back against him.

The pipe did not lift.

Kai watched the red paint above her fingers. A new line had opened through the rust where the pipe had shifted. He watched it because he could not do anything else.

The hook scraped somewhere beyond it.

Nia's fingers twitched under the pipe.

Kai felt the movement through his lower back. It was small. He knew it hurt because her breath stopped again.

"Don't do that," he said.

"I didn't mean to."

The answer came out through clenched teeth.

The hook did not appear.

The black plates moved behind the pipe, filling the gap in uneven dark sections. Kai could not tell whether the hook was among them. He could not tell whether the pipe would settle farther. He could not tell whether the broad surface was still close.

Nia's hand remained where it was, crushed beneath the red pipe.

Her other hand remained numb beneath her chest.

Kai's own hands could reach neither of them.

The pipe settled another fraction.

This time it dragged across Nia's knuckles before it stopped.

Nia's shoulder jerked into Kai's lower back. Her forearm scraped across his exposed waist. Pain tore through the lower cut and the fresh waist tear. Kai's good knee struck the concrete. His bad ankle caught under the runoff and twisted against the floor.

Nia kept the pinned hand still after that. Kai could see the ends of two fingers beneath the pipe, pale against the paint. The other fingers had disappeared under the red metal and the shadow below it.

They stayed still beneath the faded red paint.

Her shoulder rose and fell once. The motion tugged through the numb hand beneath her chest, then into the arm caught under the pipe. She held the next breath for too long.

"Breathe," Kai said.

Nia let the air out through her nose. "I am."

She was, but only in small pieces.

The arm under the pipe had become a line between her shoulder and the pipe. It could not bend without dragging the hand. It could not stay straight without keeping her shoulder pulled toward the floor. Her other arm was folded under her body, numb enough that it no longer gave her a clean warning when she put weight on it.

Kai saw the shape of the problem and could do nothing with it. His right hand remained under his ribs, palm torn against the concrete. His left arm was pinned under the lunch box. His good knee was flat on the floor, and the bad ankle throbbed in the runoff behind him. There was no part of him he could put under the pipe, no way to reach across Nia without moving through the wounds along his side.

Nia's right knee shifted behind them. The damaged calf pulled tight, then relaxed in a short tremor. Her bare left foot moved through the runoff until the toes found the back of Kai's ankle again.

She did not use the contact. She only stopped when there was nowhere else for the foot to go.

Kai kept watching the two pale fingertips. He wanted them to move. He wanted them to stay still. Either thought made his stomach turn.

The bracket above the pipe gave a dry, tiny rattle. It did not drop again. The sound was enough to make Nia's shoulders lock across his lower back.

Kai felt her holding herself rigid and knew she could not keep it up. Not with one hand numb under her chest and the other caught in metal. Still, neither of them moved.

The crawlspace held them in the same narrow shape: red pipe ahead, concrete beneath them, wet plates beyond. The hook had gone back under the pipe. The black surface was nowhere he could see. None of that made the space less crowded.

Nia's breath came in short pieces.

"Kai," she said.

"I'm here."

"Don't move."

He almost laughed. The sound did not make it out.

The pipe had stopped across her fingers again. The hand lay flatter than before. Kai could see only the tips now, pale beneath the red paint.

He kept his eyes on them.

Beyond the pipe, something wet scraped once against the floor.

Nia did not try to pull free again.

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