I had no way of knowing whether Marleen had been lying when she’d held her endless monologue while waiting for me to bleed out. She had no reason not to tell the truth to her would-be victim, but that didn’t mean anything. I had to admit, I’d almost preferred the lies.
Knowing that she’d spent almost a decade working under cover—and leaving him absolutely none the wiser—hit Nate hard. He didn’t admit it, but I could tell from his latent anger, barely contained by the constant need to move. The fact that Hamilton didn’t even once taunt him with his oversight somehow made it worse. It was the confirmation that nobody had seen it coming. That it likely meant that we were on the right path only helped so much. Me, at least, it left feeling frustrated and paranoid as fuck. If we couldn’t trust people who we’d been working with for years, who was left?
But it wasn’t those thoughts that left me anxious and wound up—nor was it the fact that I’d almost died, and was likely another step closer to my early grave thanks to the recovery my body was going through. It was connected to that, sure—and I knew that, soon enough, both would haunt me, but not right now. We were, once again and now more than ever, standing with our backs against the wall, and the only thing that kept clamoring through my mind was the thought that if I’d died, I’d never have had a chance to find out if I could have gotten pregnant again and could have added a life to this world before ours would inevitably leave it.
It made me feel incredibly selfish and like I had no business leading anything or anyone if I couldn’t even have my own priorities straight. I also had no fucking idea where that obsession came from, particularly as, all the things I’d lost considered, my ability to procreate had been the least of my issues. Maybe it was a byproduct of my mind finally catching up to the fact that the serum was killing us, slowly but surely. Or maybe it was Hamilton’s remark about the falsified report, which pretty much proved that Raynor had temporarily rendered me sterile. Maybe it was the aftershocks of seeing Baby Chris, Sadie’s little girl, and inevitably remembering that, a million years ago, I had the chance to end up with one just like her. Maybe it was the not-so-latent fear that our people—including Sadie and Christine—weren’t safe, and now, more than ever, possible targets. It was easy to say that Marleen must have been the mole, or her and Richards, and chalk all of our near-misses and losses up to that. But what if there was someone else secretly reporting and not-so-secretly acting against those who depended on us?
What if, what if, what if…
“What exactly is your qualification?” I heard myself ask Sonia more than decide to question her, particularly when I realized how easy it was to misunderstand the question. Nate’s behavior hadn’t endeared me any more to her than I’d managed all on my own.
Sonia laughed, and it wasn’t a happy sound. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” I was sure it was just my perception, but the next time the needle went into me, it hurt a little more.
I closed my eyes and waited for the pain to lessen, counting down from ten. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I offered through gritted teeth. “You’re doing an amazing job. I was just wondering what else you can do besides battlefield surgery?”
The next suture was just as bad, but Sonia’s tone was gentler, almost mollified. “Most routine things,” she offered. “We do learn that shit in nursing school.” Yup, turned out she had been an EMT in a former life, working on becoming a nurse. Also, a bartender, a call center operator, insurance inspector, and a million other shit things she didn’t feel like sharing with me now. Burns had told me some of it last night, after she’d gone to sleep and I’d needed ten minutes to get to the toilet and back again—housed in the adjacent room.
“Like checkups?” I wasn’t even sure why I was beating around the bush. Whatever else she was—to Burns or anyone else—she was a professional.
She chuckled, as if she had a good idea what I was working my way up to—which was, of course, wrong. “I didn’t find any antibiotics specifically for the many things that might make your lady bits itch, but if you’re worried about genital warts, they have the equipment here to freeze them off.”
Laughing out loud while you are getting stitched up is never a good idea, but I couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Did you just seriously refer to my vagina as ‘lady bits’? Fuck off.”
“If you want to split hairs, vulva is more like it,” she tartly informed me. “I take it this is not about your coochie-coo being all itchy-itch?”
“Fucking stop it!” I half pleaded, half snickered, not helping my general predicament. Grabbing the padded bench I was bent over harder and waiting until the worst of the pain had subsided made it bearable again.
“Almost done,” Sonia said, her tone neutral for a moment and not without compassion. “I should probably not tell you this as it might dangerously inflate your ego, but you’re quite the trooper when it comes to this. Half of the guys I had to sew up before you made three times the fuss, and usually on lighter injuries.”
“You say that like I have a choice,” I offered, letting out a sigh of relief when she started to apply the bandage. “But, yeah. I’ve had worse.”
After she finished, I pushed myself into an upward position and gingerly rotated my torso, trying not to howl with pain. Sonia went to the freezer on the other side of the infirmary to hand me an ice pack. As it turned out, it really took the practicality of a nurse to find a way to soothe pain for those who were immune to painkillers. I was sure that Martinez would have thought of that, too, but since he wasn’t here but Sonia was…
“So what is it that you need checked?” she wanted to know after she’d helped me fix the ice pack in place.
I considered how to broach the subject but then just went with it. “I presume that, by now, someone has told you all the things they removed when I almost bit it?”
She nodded. “And from what I can tell seeing your insides firsthand, everything looks like it healed up well.”
The joke was almost bad enough to have come from Burns. Maybe there was a reason they got along so well, after all.
Exhaling my exasperation, I went on. “They also removed my right ovary. With the miscarriage, the infection, and what everyone kept saying about the serum, I figured that was the official end to my reproductive capabilities. Never had my period since then, or any PMS-related shit.”
Sonia’s expression turned pensive. “They don’t have an ultrasound here so I can’t really check up on what happened to what’s still there.”
I shook my head. “Of course not. But you can check for strings.” She looked confused, making me explain quickly. “After we liberated the camp, Richards pulled me aside.”
She interrupted me before I could get to the important part. “You mean, your buddy, the traitor.”
“I’m not convinced he is, but that’s besides the point. He beat around the bush, but I think what he was trying to tell me was that there’s a chance I can still get pregnant. The likeliest explanation is that they inserted an IUD while they were busy removing half the organs from my torso. It would explain the lack of periods but mean it’s reversible.”
Her forehead creased as she considered the possibility. “You were conscious the entire time during the operation, right? Remember them putting you into stirrups and asking you to shimmy your ass farther forward?” she joked. When she saw that her humor was lost on me, she turned to look at the shelves. “I know I saw a box of disposable speculums somewhere here, so there’s that. But if they didn’t insert an IUD the conventional way, there might not be strings going outside of your cervix. Or they could have used any other kind of hormonal contraceptive.”
“Richards hinted it was something that someone with medical knowledge could find. And if you’re just trying to be nice about it, yeah, I’m aware that if you have to pry my cervix open, I’m likely going to scream my head off. I’m almost at the point where I can say with full conviction that I’ve been there, done it, and didn’t even get a T-shirt.”
She
still seemed reluctant but then went to search for what she’d probably need. In hindsight, we should have done this before she cut my back open and sewed it shut again, but I hadn’t considered the ramifications. Even before she slapped on a new pair of gloves, Sonia hesitated. “Are you sure that you really want to do this?” she asked, quickly raising her hands when I looked at her. “Just saying, your body is in a shitload of stress right now. If it’s just an IUD, it’s a quick five-minute procedure that can be done pretty much anywhere, anytime. You may want to have life-affirming, scream-in-the-face-of-possible-death sex soon enough. I’ve known you for only a little over a month, and I can blindly tell you that your chosen lifestyle isn’t exactly conducive to getting knocked up and waddling around for the last few months of it.”
Her words made my heart sink, but not because I hadn’t considered all that and she’d just given me a much-needed reality check. Sitting up again, I fixed her with a serious stare, dropping all the joking and posturing and shit. “Sonia, if you were me, what would you do? I know that I’m dying. Maybe not today, and hopefully not tomorrow, but Hamilton was right with a lot of the shit he flung in my face. The same, if not more so, is true for Nate. Sure, if we had the time I’d say we forget about all this for now and bring bloody, violent vengeance down on those that have wronged us, and after a nice holiday afterward we’d maybe talk about it and plan our future together. But I don’t have that luxury. I may not even have enough time to bring a possible pregnancy to term, even if I get knocked up this week—and, yeah, I don’t quite see that happening with all the shit we keep stirring up. But if I want that chance, I have to jump on it now. Does it make me want to shit my pants? Hell, yeah, but all that pales in comparison to the likely chance that neither us will be around to raise the kid. It breaks my heart, and it makes me feel like crap that I’m going to have to foist it at someone who’ll likely resent me for it—”
I had to close my eyes for the last part and didn’t manage to finish the sentence as my throat closed up with all the grief and frustration the very idea brought up inside of me. I’d been through so much, had suffered through more than I’d thought I could possibly survive, and now this? Now the only thing that had kept me alive would keep me from what should have been my right by nature? Angry tears sprang to my eyes, but somehow I managed to blink them away. When I could focus again, I found Sonia staring at me with a weird look on her face, something I hadn’t seen there before and didn’t know what to make of—
The next moment, she was hugging me, hard enough that a pained wheeze left my body. She quickly shifted her grip upward to my shoulders but kept on squeezing. When she let go, she only did so to have me at arm’s length, still holding on to my upper arms. “Bree, you can be one stupid twat for a woman with that level of intelligence, and I say that with all the love I can muster for one of my husband’s best friends.” She followed that up with a real, surprisingly warm grin. “You won’t be alone, whatever happens. And you will have lots and lots of people who will help you. Even if the worst happens, your child will be loved and grow up with legions of aunts and uncles ready to teach him or her whatever you would have, and a million things you’d rather they keep to themselves. That should be the least of your worries.” She smiled. “Now lay back and spread ‘em like you mean it.”
“What’s that even supposed to mean?” I harped, but didn’t get an answer.
For the first time in forever, something went better than expected. A cough and a quick if uncomfortable moment later, Sonia informed me that in this one aspect, Red hadn’t been a deceiving liar. I stared at the IUD for a second before I told her to get rid of it, quickly getting dressed once more when an old, deeply buried horror came knocking at the backdoor to my soul again. I was more than ready to leave, and Sonia didn’t look ready to protest but halted at the door when I called after her.
“Wait. One more question.” She eyed me askance, so I went for it. “Why do you hate me so much?” Considering what we’d just gotten up to, I felt like I could stick to the real deal without the cushioning.
She frowned, and for a moment I was afraid she’d give me the most useless answer in the world—either that I should know, or that she didn’t, which was technically two answers but really, the two sides of the same coin—but then her expression evened out. She didn’t try to smile, and the way she gave me a brief up-and-down left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable—and judged.
“Do you want the truth?” she asked, her voice carefully neutral. “You have earned some of my respect, so I offer it to you, if you think you can take it.”
Spreading my arms—carefully—I muttered, “Let me have it.”
“As you wish.” She thought about what to say for a moment. “Do you have any idea how weird it was getting accepted into the community that your people built at the coast?”
I noticed all too well that she didn’t refer to it as my community. It hurt, even though I knew it was the truth and I had no right to freely include myself, even though all of my friends had welcomed me back with open arms. “They can be a rough bunch sometimes, but—”
“No, no,” she was quick to correct me. “All it took for them to welcome me was Tom telling them that I was here to stay. They are good folks, and they went out of their way to make me feel at home. It wasn’t anything they did. It was what was missing.” I had a certain feeling where this was going but kept my trap shut to get this over with quickly. Sonia was only too happy to oblige, crossing her arms over her chest as she went on. “Every once in a while, someone would tell a story, funny or sad, and suddenly shut up, with all the others acting strange but alike. I’ve seen people avoid opening up old wounds often enough to guess that it was grief over lost loved ones. But it didn’t add up, you see. Like how Zilinsky kept refusing to officially assume leadership. Or that half the comments that made everyone shut up were about possible future events, not something already long over. It wasn’t exactly hard to get the stories they didn’t tell from elsewhere, and then I started to realize what was actually going on. It wasn’t that their friends and leaders had died, no. They were hiding somewhere for whatever fucked-up reason, leaving an entire community bleeding and hoping for an event that wasn’t likely to ever come, while at the same time dreading that, one day, they’d get the news that it had all been for naught and you’re fucking dead. You didn’t just forsake them—you left them hanging, incapable of finding resolution. And then, one day out of the blue, you come waltzing in, expecting to find everything just as you’ve left it. You prattle off your half-hearted excuses and expect everyone to just buy them and forgive you. And they do, because that’s who they are. But do you thank them for it? No. You keep doing your thing and you keep all of them at a distance whenever possible. You didn’t even stick with our team on the way in but jumped at the chance to get chummy with your army buddies. And the marines. And the drugged-up assholes. You even became best friends with a random stranger who—surprise!—ends up almost killing you. And the worst thing about it is the way you’re staring at me now, as if this is the first time you’ve heard this or even considered it. So, hell, yeah I think you’re a cunt, and you don’t deserve the loyalty my people are showing you. You may have earned it once, but you have done nothing since to keep it. Maybe think about that sometime. But, sure, they’ll keep helping you, and if you have a kid, they will lovingly raise it with stories of your heroic deeds. Maybe consider how much of that you can take into the great beyond with you. But no, I don’t hate you. I just don’t see what all the buzz is about you.”
I was still standing there, dumbfounded and with my mouth hanging half open with the response that my brain refused to formulate, when the door swung shut behind her.
Fuck, but sometimes I really could be an idiotic piece of shit.
Chapter 19
“I’m taking the wheel.” Nate looked at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. I glared right back at him, not budging an inch.
“You just bled through your band
age,” he told me, his voice tight, nerves obviously at the end of the rope.
I offered him a humorless grin. “Yes, and it hurts twice as much as you’d think. Which means I can’t concentrate, and I can’t aim or hit for shit. But I can mindlessly accelerate and brake in sync with the vehicle right in front of me. If our intel is bad and we need to exit the car, I’m dead, anyway. If we get overrun, we’ll do a quick switcheroo and you’ll drive us out into sweet, sweet freedom. Until that happens, I need something to do to keep my mind off the pain. I’m taking the wheel.”
Surprisingly, Nate gave up after that. I doubted that he’d let me drive past the first leg of the journey—or whenever we’d take a break—but right now I was happy to run with any victory I could get. Our car was the smallest one, which afforded us the luxury of being just the two of us, the spare room stuffed to the roof with things from the lab. Our gear was already stashed away, and there was nothing left to do but get in and wait for the others to signal that they were ready.
I felt a certain kind of satisfaction as I climbed into my seat, and a hell of a lot of discomfort. Sonia had packed me a small cooler filled with the ice packs she’d found that would likely last me through the tunnels at the very least, and maybe even until tonight. I very much looked forward to the mix of heat and agony that waited for me after that.
Nate was silent and somber as he strapped himself in, doing a quick weapons check as if he expected we’d need them any time soon. I sure as hell hoped not, but better safe than sorry. Even with all the ammo we’d needed to clear the complex, we were taking enough with us that I was glad we likely wouldn’t have to walk. Provided we found our cars still where we’d left them, we’d be able to keep this vehicle to ourselves, and there wasn’t much need to double up for the others. We might even need to take a few breaks so those driving alone in a car could catch their breath. The plan was to get on the radio as soon as we got a secure line and see if we could rendezvous early with the rest of our people, or maybe ask for some of them to hang back so we could catch up. Vehicles would come in handy whatever we’d do next, and we’d paid for them with a lot of blood.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 73