Голодные игры: И вспыхнет пламя / The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Сьюзен Коллинз

unconscious. Of course, that’s too much to ask for. As the final bandages are being placed, a moan escapes his lips. Hazelle strokes his hair and whispers something while my mother and Prim go through their meager store of painkillers, the kind usually accessible only to doctors. They are hard to come by, expensive, and always in demand. My mother has to save the strongest for the worst pain, but what is the worst pain? To me, it’s always the pain that is present. If I were in charge, those painkillers would be gone in a day because I have so little ability to watch suffering. My mother tries to save them for those who are actually in the process of dying, to ease them out of the world.

      Since Gale is regaining consciousness, they decide on an herbal concoction he can take by mouth. “That won’t be enough,” I say. They stare at me. “That won’t be enough, I know how it feels. That will barely knock out a headache.”

      “We’ll combine it with sleep syrup, Katniss, and he’ll manage it. The herbs are more for the inflammation—” my mother begins calmly.

      “Just give him the medicine!” I scream at her. “Give it to him! Who are you, anyway, to decide how much pain he can stand!”

      Gale begins stirring at my voice, trying to reach me. The movement causes fresh blood to stain his bandages and an agonized sound to come from his mouth.

      “Take her out,” says my mother. Haymitch and Peeta literally carry me from the room while I shout obscenities at her. They pin me down on a bed in one of the extra bedrooms until I stop fighting.

      While I lie there, sobbing, tears trying to squeeze out of the slit of my eye, I hear Peeta whisper to Haymitch about President Snow, about the uprising in District 8. “She wants us all to run,” he says, but if Haymitch has an opinion on this, he doesn’t offer it.

      After a while, my mother comes in and treats my face. Then she holds my hand, stroking my arm, while Haymitch fills her in on what happened with Gale.

      “So it’s starting again?” she says. “Like before?”

      “By the looks of it,” he answers. “Who’d have thought we’d ever be sorry to see old Cray go?”

      Cray would have been disliked, anyway, because of the uniform he wore, but it was his habit of luring starving young women into his bed for money that made him an object of loathing in the district. In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them. Instead I learned to hunt.

      I don’t know exactly what my mother means by things starting again, but I’m too angry and hurting to ask. It’s registered, though, the idea of worse times returning, because when the doorbell rings, I shoot straight out of bed. Who could it be at this hour of the night? There’s only one answer. Peacekeepers.

      “They can’t have him,” I say.

      “Might be you they’re after,” Haymitch reminds me. “Or you,” I say.

      “Not my house,” Haymitch points out. “But I’ll get the door.”

      “No, I’ll get it,” says my mother quietly.

      We all go, though, following her down the hallway to the insistent ring of the bell. When she opens it, there’s not a squad of Peacekeepers but a single, snow-caked figure. Madge. She holds out a small, damp cardboard box to me.

      “Use these for your friend,” she says. I take off the lid of the box, revealing half a dozen vials of clear liquid. “They’re my mother’s. She said I could take them. Use them, please.” She runs back into the storm before we can stop her.

      “Crazy girl,” Haymitch mutters as we follow, my mother into the kitchen.

      Whatever my mother had given Gale, I was right, it isn’t enough. His teeth are gritted and his flesh shines with sweat. My mother fills a syringe with the clear liquid from one of the vials and shoots it into his arm. Almost immediately, his face begins to relax.

      “What is that stuff?” asks Peeta.

      “It’s from the Capitol. It’s called morphling,” my mother answers.

      “I didn’t even know Madge knew Gale,” says Peeta.

      “We used to sell her strawberries,” I say almost angrily. What am I angry about, though? Not that she has brought the medicine, surely.

      “She must have quite a taste for them,” says Haymitch.

      That’s what nettles me. It’s the implication that there’s something going on between Gale and Madge. And I don’t like it.

      “She’s my friend,” is all I say.

      Now that Gale has drifted away on the painkiller, everyone seems to deflate. Prim makes us each eat some stew and bread. A room is offered to Hazelle, but she has to go home to the other kids. Haymitch and Peeta are both willing to stay, but my mother sends them home to bed as well. She knows it’s pointless to try this with me and leaves me to tend Gale while she and Prim rest.