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My arms are locked around Peeta’s neck; his are around my torso. I feel his heart racing against my chest, and I know that he can feel mine, too. For this moment, we are one being, and no one would dare pull us apart for anything.
His lips are against mine for a moment before he whispers in my ear, “I missed you so much.”
Just the sound of him--alive and here, away from Snow, with me-–brings me to tears. I struggle to get the words out against the sob building in my throat. “I missed you, too.”
I push myself against him on the hospital bed. He welcomes it, burying his face into my shoulder.
He pulls away by just a few inches to look at my face. His eyes are glossy, but they’re still as bright as they were when we last saw each other. His smile is still bright, too. He’s here in full, not just physically.
His eyes suddenly slide past me to someone standing behind us. Haymitch. I had forgotten he was there, but I don’t miss the grimace that comes over Peeta’s face when he looks at our old mentor.
“Haymitch.”
Haymitch shifts uncomfortably against the door frame. “Hey, Peeta.”
Peeta’s grip on my waist tightens. “We’ll talk later.”
Haymitch solemnly nods without speaking. A shadow of guilt that I’ve become too familiar with falls over his face.
Boggs appears in the hallway. There’s sweat running down his forehead and he’s panting.
“We found someone else in the mansion,” Boggs starts, “A Capitol woman. None of us recognized her, but she said that she knew you three.”
The air suddenly leaves all of our lungs at once. I wonder if Boggs notices the way that our hearts have stopped, as well. There is exactly one Capitol woman who would ever admit that she knows any of us wholeheartedly.
Effie.
Haymitch turns around to Boggs immediately. “Where is she?”
Boggs steps back to allow us into the hallway again and points. “Back in the main suite of the hospital wing. She was one of the last we brought in.”
Haymitch is hyperventilating and begins staggering back into the hallway, almost in a daze. I share a look with Peeta, and he’s already pushing himself off of the bed to follow us. He needs help walking, so I wrap my arm around his waist and lead him out of the room.
I see that Haymitch is fighting against himself to keep from sprinting down the hall and leaving us behind. He barely glances back to see if we’re still with him, completely consumed by thoughts of the state that we’ll see Effie in. I don’t blame him for a second.
“What are you doing? Where am I?” A high-pitched voice comes from down the hall. The haughty cadence of someone who was used to speaking in front of a crowd seems drained, but I still remember it from just a month ago.
I glance up at Haymitch and I can tell that he recognizes it too. An emotion that I can’t place takes over his face.
The three of us rush through the hospital wing, pushing past people with reckless abandon. Haymitch is far ahead of Peeta and I, but we’re a relentless force of panic and desperation for one person altogether.
We bulldoze into the main suite and scan the area for our old Capitol escort. I try to remember what she looked like the night before the Quarter Quell in order to find her in the sea of gray.
“There.” Peeta is the one to spot her to our left, shoved in a corner walled off by a thin curtain and surrounded by doctors poking and prodding her with their instruments.
We bob through the shifting crowd of doctors and patients to reach her. Haymitch drops a hand on the lead doctor’s shoulder. He’s about to tell us to back away, but there is an intensity in Haymitch’s eyes that makes him think better of it. The group of doctors stop what they’re doing and withdraw from Effie in an instant.
Effie Trinket is curled up on the hospital bed, as if trying to make herself seem smaller. Her hands are drawn up over her face, but she slowly brings them down once she realizes that the movement around her has ceased. The dramatic garb that defined so much of her for me has been stripped away and replaced with a plain sheet of fabric. There are odd stains on the sheet that I can’t place the origin of. I don’t think I want to.
Her golden wig has been torn away as well. What remains is thin strands of strawberry blonde hair that look unnatural on her.
Peeta detaches himself from me to inch to Effie’s right side, and I move to parallel him on her left. Haymitch remains stock-still in front of her, just staring.
Effie’s eyes dart around nervously. Once she realizes who we are, most of her anxiety rushes out of her.
“Oh… hello.” Effie’s voice is strained, but she still tries to maintain its old fervour when she looks up at us.
I tentatively reach for Effie’s hand, run my thumb over her knuckles. She flinches at the contact, but eventually just smiles at me, as if nothing has changed between now and the Quarter Quell.
“Effie, I-”
“How are you, Katniss?”
I blink. Her tranquility, juxtaposed with her physical condition, unnerves me. When I found my prep team in District 13’s prison, they did nothing to hide their fear from me. So why is Effie so different?
I look at Peeta across from me. His eyes are focused on Effie’s hair, its matted strands sticking out at some parts.
His hand rises to reach for it, but he stops midway there. “Effie, your hair…”
All of our eyes settle on the top of her head now. It’s silly, now that I think about it, how much we all notice the difference. But Effie had always left such an impression on us. Seeing her without all of her glamour had ripped the rug out from under us.
Effie reaches a hand up to her scalp, as if she’d just realized what had happened.
“Oh,” Effie starts, tears finally brimming in her eyes, “it seems I have lost my token.”
The memory of that old gimmick feels so distant now. Effie was the one who thought of it, as a symbol of our bond before the Quell. I had my mockingjay pin, Peeta his medallion with the photos of my family, Haymitch his woven bangle, and Effie her golden wig.
At the moment that Effie’s voice breaks, I lean forward and wrap my arms around her shoulders. She folds in on herself like a wilting flower, waves of tears rolling down her cheeks. Peeta joins us soon enough, closing his arms around both of us from Effie’s other side.
Haymitch’s face turns grim. He gets closer to her on my side of the bed and closes his arms around Effie’s waist. Effie’s hands slide up to Haymitch’s back, clinging onto his shirt like he’s the only thing she can feel anymore.
The world slows down for us. The clamour of the hospital wing becomes background noise as the four of us just exist in this moment. We’re together again. A team, as Effie called us so long ago.
I feel the eyes of the doctors on us as we hold each other, hold Effie. I don’t care. Effie was more of a friend to us in the Capitol than any of them have been down here, and we all know it.
After a few minutes, Effie quiets down and suddenly slumps against Haymitch’s chest. Peeta and I pull away and let Haymitch hold her. Her breathing slows, and her eyes begin to flutter shut with exhaustion.
The lead doctor creeps up behind us. “It would be best to let her rest now. We’ll set her up with a room in the hospital wing and keep you updated on her conditon.” He speaks gently, as if trying to not provoke a pack of wild animals.
Haymitch, Peeta and I share a look, but we all agree and Haymitch lays Effie back down on the bed.
The doctors take the railings of the bed and begin wheeling Effie out of the main suite. We follow them out of the wing down a hallway. We take note of where they put her, and I tell them to let my mother see her. The doctors exchange nervous glances with each other, but ultimately oblige.
Once they leave, Peeta and I follow Haymitch into Effie’s room. Haymitch takes up the seat closest to her bed, while Peeta and I sit together across the room. We stay there in silence, just listening to the monitors around Effie beep, until the adrenaline of the day has rushed out of us, and we all fall asleep.