Bleeding Hearts #8: Rescue?

Bleeding Hearts #8 opens with Rabbit experiencing a fever dream, while her mother and Poke do everything they can to save her life after she was brutally beaten at the end of the previous issue. As their journey begins, her two rescuers discover that Rabbit desperately needs antibiotics and has started bleeding into her brain. Their search eventually leads them to a city where they locate a hospital, though Rabbit’s mother and Poke view the facility in drastically different ways.

While much of the issue follows a fairly straightforward rescue story, the fever dream sequences and shifting perspectives between the three protagonists add a layer of complexity that makes the story far more interesting. Rabbit’s distorted view of the world is something only she can experience. Born after the apocalypse, she has never known the world that existed before it, other than through the stories she has been told. As a result, experiencing the world through her fever-induced, near-death state becomes a genuinely bizarre experience. There is also an underlying sadness to it all. Rabbit is still so young, yet she is on the brink of death while experiencing a distorted reality that no child should ever have to endure.

The issue really picks up when the trio arrives at the hospital. Rabbit’s mother desperately searches through the medicines in an attempt to find antibiotics, only to be confronted by a massive horde of zombies living inside the building. This is where Poke reveals that zombies view hospitals as places where humans go to give up and die. They do not understand the concept of medicine or hospitals as places of healing. Instead, they believe humans go there to end their suffering, which explains why so many zombies have taken up residence inside the hospital. Once again, the series creates an interesting dichotomy between the land of the living and the land of the dead, showcasing how these two worlds can exist side by side while interpreting the same things in completely different ways.

Toward the end of the issue, Poke brings Rabbit to another section of the hospital, where a horribly malformed zombie resides. The creature is revealed to be some sort of scientist who grafts different beings together in an attempt to create something new. This leads to a massive cliffhanger, with Rabbit’s fate now in the hands of this monstrosity while Poke’s own secret begins to come to light. It is an unsettling place to leave the story, and it makes the next issue feel like a must-read.