The Vines

by Shelley Nolden

  “That was not your fault,” Rollie said. “We did a thorough medical risk assessment.”

  “I should have been stronger. Should have insisted you tell Kristian the truth.” She motored into the room. “Out of everything that’s been done to her, I hurt her the most. Because she believed in me.”

  Rollie grunted in frustration. “I failed Cora; not you.”

  “Mom,” Finn interjected, “you did come through for her, with what you left for me in the shed.”

  She waved her hand, clearly dismissing his point. “Hannah will be here soon.” She tapped her good hand on the arm of her wheelchair. “What do you plan to tell her?”

  Rollie pressed the knuckles of his right hand to his lips and began to pace.

  Finn settled into the recliner. He knew Rollie had already confessed to Hannah that they’d secretly resumed their research following Sylvia’s diagnosis, which hadn’t surprised her. Then Rollie had informed her that Kristian had been exposed to Cora’s pathogens.

  Finn guessed that his dad had been hoping to delay the tougher conversations until he had proof that Kristian could fend off the three viruses he’d contracted. But Hannah had insisted on coming over tonight to speak with Sylvia.

  “What do you think we should tell her?” Rollie asked, revealing just how severely his confidence had been shaken.

  Irritated that Rollie was expecting Sylvia and Finn to sort out this mess, Finn averted his gaze from his father, and noticed an old family photo on the end table. The photographer had captured Finn looking up at his brother.

  Throughout Finn’s entire life, he’d been trying to prove that he should be involved in his family’s secret initiative. So now that he was so desperately needed, why would he even consider backing away? Finn asked himself.

  “What do you think?” Sylvia replied, and Finn smiled. His mother was not about to let Rollie off the hook.

  “I suppose we should tell Hannah about Kristian’s parentage, so she knows he’s got a shot at pulling through this.”

  Sylvia raised her arm in support.

  “Doesn’t she have the right to know what Kristian did to Cora?” Finn asked.

  No one spoke. Hannah should be told. But what would that do to Milo?

  “The lying and secrets have to stop,” Finn stated.

  Rollie shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “This truth will destroy their family.”

  Kristian had been raised with a false sense of identity, and both brothers had been lied to. Repeatedly. With the sting of Rollie’s revelation still fresh, Finn abhorred the thought of that same deception being repeated with the next generation.

  Rollie looked to Sylvia, so Finn did the same.

  The functional side of her face had tightened in anger. “Men in this family use family to get their way. I’m sick of it. Milo’s well-being is the priority here, and the truth will crush Hannah. Milo needs her, and his dad.” She turned her scooter toward her bedroom. “But I won’t be part of another lie.”

  A knock on the door effectively ended the debate.

  Finn looked for confirmation from Rollie, who, white-faced, agreed. Then he went to answer it.

  Moments Later

  he door opened, and Lily’s stomach dropped at the sight of Finn’s ashen face. Her right shoulder began to twitch, and she willed it to stop.

  He beckoned her inside, and she complied while forcing herself to remain calm.

  Whatever had just happened between the two could not—should not—deter her from what she had to do later this night, before she lost the courage.

  While counting out the exact change at the deli, she’d decided that she had to break up with him. Her doctors, her mother, Finn, and his family: they’d all been telling her that too much anxiety could lead to more health problems. She needed to reduce the stress in her life.

  Finn hung up her jacket. By his troubled expression, she surmised the conversation with Rollie hadn’t gone well.

  “Hannah will be here any minute.” Finn set the soda in the kitchen.

  Lily moved into the living room.

  His back to her, Rollie was staring out the window. Never before had he not greeted her. He’s ashamed. Rightly so. Yet a pang of sympathy shot through her. She now understood that his actions—however misguided—had been well intended. And she had to give him credit for his foresight and humility in fostering in Finn the strength to dissent.

  Reciprocating his lack of greeting, she asked, “What’s the plan?”

  “It’s premature to tell her certain details.” Rollie turned to face her. “Kristian might be dead within two weeks,” he said, his voice cracking.

  A knock on the door sounded, and a sour taste filled Lily’s mouth. She pitied Hannah for what she was about to learn, and not learn.

  Lily didn’t want to become her; she had to leave Finn. Tonight.

  Finn helped Hannah with her coat, her long blond hair catching in the zipper. When Lily had first met her, she’d envied Hannah’s big blue eyes, ample curves, and runway-model height. Now, wearing no makeup and likely having slept little in days, Hannah looked strung out.

  Rollie gestured for the two women to sit on the couch.

  Lily cleared her throat; she didn’t want to be associated with this conversation. “I’ll order the pizza,” she said, stepping into the kitchen, from where she could still hear Hannah quietly inquire about Kristian.

  “His wound is healing well,” Rollie said. “So far there’ve been no symptoms, but we’re not in the clear yet. Hannah,” he said more loudly, and Lily stopped her search for the delivery menu and shuffled to where she could see into the living room, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Lily braced herself.

  Rollie dropped to an ottoman across from Hannah. “Kristian’s not my son, or Petra’s.”

  “What?” Hannah asked fiercely as Lily’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “His biological parents are Cora and Ulrich.”

  Gripping the counter to steady herself, Lily shifted to see Finn. From the chagrined yet composed look on his face, she could tell that Rollie had dropped this bombshell on him while she’d been at the corner store.

  Her hands out, as if to ward off any further disturbing revelations, Hannah had sunk into the couch seat, the implications of this development working through her features. “He’ll be okay? If he’s like her?”

  “If he’s like her, then yes.” Rollie smiled thinly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked, her chin trembling. “He’s been keeping this from me?”

  “Kristian doesn’t know yet. I’ve sedated him until he’s strong enough to process it,” Rollie said, scratched his balding scalp. “Then Cora will tell him herself.”

  “I’m . . . at a loss.”

  “He was only seventeen months old when Ulrich brought him to us. He couldn’t understand then. And, as the years passed, it grew harder. Ulrich insisted we keep up the pretense, so that Kristian wouldn’t be tempted to experiment on himself.” Rollie rubbed the dark circles under his eyes. “And we were a family. He was—is—my son. I didn’t want to lose that.”

  “Well, now we might have all lost him,” she snapped. “I’m disgusted that you allowed Ulrich to kidnap—steal—him from his mother. You’re complicit in that crime.”

  Rollie stared at his hands, gripping the knees of his pants so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. “It was wrong,” he mumbled.

  Hannah’s eyes widened. “Shit. If Cora is Kristian’s mother, then Milo has a quarter of her genes.”

  Rollie nodded.

  Lily’s empty stomach twisted.

  Visibly stunned, Hannah tipped her head back and pressed her hand to her abdomen.

  “If Kristian is like her, will he have to stay on the island?” she asked, wiping a tear from her cheek.
“I won’t be able to see him.”

  Rollie’s shoulders curled inward. “In a biosafety suit, you could.”

  “What?” She jumped to her feet. “The only way to be with my husband again is in a suit?”

  Lily bit down on her thumb. That desperate scenario had wrenched her heart, despite her anger toward Kristian. Hannah didn’t deserve that.

  “We don’t know yet how his body will react,” Rollie said flatly.

  “Milo,” she said, swaying, “he’s so close to his father. They’ve been spending so much time together in Kristian’s lab. If he’s like them, he could see his dad, right? But then he’d become an asymptomatic carrier? I won’t be able to touch him, either?”

  “All of this will take time to sort out.” Rollie stepped toward her, offering his arm to steady herself.

  She waved him off. “How exactly did this happen?” she asked, looking at Finn expectantly, as if he were more likely to tell the truth.

  Finn clasped and unclasped his hands, and Lily could almost see the weight of his guilt in his slouched posture. The temptation for him to lie must be strong, she knew, and that neither she nor Rollie would counter his story if he decided to bend the truth.

  “We got in a fight,” Finn said, shifting to the edge of the recliner. “It started with fists, but Kristian picked up a syringe, so I grabbed a scalpel to defend myself, and—”

  “You cut him?” Hannah asked, her mouth hanging open. “You did this to him?” She lurched toward him, her fists balled.

  “I’m sorry,” Finn said, his long, folded legs visibly shaking.

  “‘Sorry’ doesn’t cut it. What were you fighting over?”

  He glanced at a framed picture of Kristian and his family at the beach, then at Rollie, who subtly shook his head no. Earlier, Finn had stressed to Lily that Hannah should be told the full truth. Yet now Lily guessed that he was thinking of Milo, currently in a swimming pool and blissfully ignorant of the worst parts of this debacle.

  Lily thought of her own childhood, and all the nights she’d lain awake, crying into her pillow, wishing she had a father who loved her. They have no right to take that from Milo.

  Lily stepped into the room. “I was there.”

  “You?” Hannah stared at her incredulously.

  “He was upset with Finn for getting involved with Cora.” What does this lie matter, Lily thought, given that I’m breaking up with him tonight?

  “Kristian was worried about Finn being exposed to her germs,” she continued, “and him then passing them to me.”

  Finn looked like he’d just been sliced open, yet he said nothing to dispute her story.

  “He always has been so selfless, to a fault,” Hannah said in a sluggish tone, her burst of energy undoubtedly depleted. “What happens next?”

  “We wait and see how Kristian’s immune system responds,” Rollie said. “If he has her same traits, and now cannot leave North Brother, we work like hell to eradicate the germs so he can return to you and your son.”

  “And daughter.”

  “What?” Lily exclaimed at the same time as Finn and Rollie.

  Hannah placed her hand back on her stomach. “I’m pregnant. Twenty weeks.” Despite herself, she smiled.

  A twinge of envy shot through Lily. “Congratulations,” she managed to say.

  Then it hit her: This second child also wouldn’t be able to have direct contact with her father, if Kristian even survived. Unless the baby had inherited Cora’s unique immune system. In that scenario, if the girl contracted any of his viruses, then she would have to remain with him, away from her mother.

  “That’s wonderful news,” Rollie said, his voice hoarse.

  Hannah burst into fresh tears. “I need to get out of here.” She grabbed her jacket from the hall closet. “Please don’t tell Sylvia. That’s why I came tonight,” she said with a sob. “I still want to be the one, even though our baby won’t technically be her grandchild.”

  Before anyone could respond, she exited, shutting the door behind her so hard its frame rattled.

  Instead of Sylvia, Lily realized, Cora would be the grandmother. She pictured Cora, completely content, cradling the infant. For years Lily had been trying to stifle the longing for a baby. Cora must have experienced that same emotion—likely with a greater intensity given that Ulrich had ripped her existing child from her. That year and a half of raising Kristian must have been sheer bliss for Cora. Having access to her granddaughter—essentially a second chance to nurture and adore a child—would bring utter happiness to a woman who’d experienced an unconscionable share of suffering.

  But this would only happen if the baby were brought to the island, which depended on Kristian’s status. They wouldn’t risk exposing a newborn to such lethal pathogens. Do they make PPE that small? Lily wondered.

  She turned to Finn, seated in the armchair, and could almost see the remorse pressing down on him. Evidently consumed by the destruction his fight with Kristian had wrought on his brother’s family, he presumably hadn’t turned his thoughts to how Cora would receive Hannah’s announcement.

  Lily’s heart constricted and she recognized the sensation for what it was: love. For an innocent baby girl, who in less than five months would be born into whatever devastating circumstances had emerged by then. An urge to protect her coursed through Lily, and she knew that she couldn’t break up with Finn this night. Perhaps her longing to care for a child of her own needed this redirection. Whatever the cause, she felt compelled to be there for this child and do everything she could to give Cora this opportunity to love and be loved.

  Three days later

  March 30

  he smell of antiseptic wafted through the blackness. Kristian snapped open his eyes, expecting to see the hospital that had been his second home for the past fifteen years. Blinking rapidly, he tried to bring into focus the familiar ceiling tiles, but their perfect right angles wouldn’t emerge. Instead, an irregular swath of flaking ivory paint materialized. From the two-toned ceiling hung a series of rusted metal frames, their lightbulb sockets bare. Old surgical lamps. A chill raced down his spinal cord.

  Kristian knew this location: an operating theater within the tuberculosis pavilion. Cora’s territory.

  Jolted, he sat up, a spasm of pain igniting his abdomen, followed by a crushing wooziness. He gripped a pair of side rails and recognized the bed as the gurney where he’d bound her.

  Just as his dad had burst into the room . . . Finn thrashing with a surgical knife . . . the acute sting . . . Cora’s wailing and Lily’s shrieking. The last thing Kristian remembered seeing was Milo’s face—obviously a sign that he’d been in hemorrhagic shock.

  He raised his hospital gown, the same style they kept in the onsite lab, and inspected his professionally treated wound. It had to be his father’s work, as was the IV needle in his arm connected to a bag of saline and another of morphine, hanging from a pole. Rollie must have been here, but where was he now?

  “Hi. You’re awake.”

  Kristian whipped his head toward the sound of Cora’s scratchy voice and recoiled at the sight of her only three feet away.

  He hadn’t heard her arrive. Has she been here this whole time? he wondered, his skin tingling. “You’re too close; back off!”

  As if she hadn’t heard, she simply stood there, smugly beaming at him, her eyes practically sparkling. How could she be gazing at him like that after all he’d done to her?

  He hated that smile.

  She must be envisioning her revenge. Instinctively, he checked his wrists and ankles: they weren’t bound. Her scalpel pouch was missing from her hip, which only heightened his mistrust.

  Not constrained by her usual braid, her reddish-brown hair looked untamed—so emblematic of the wild beast she’d become—and her face and folded hands were free of the protective gear he’d rarely seen her without.
>
  After twenty years of adhering to proper contagion procedures, he felt a compulsion to rebuke her, but he held his tongue. The absence of her PPE must be intentional, part of her plan to be rid of him. “Where are the others?” Hopefully his dad and Finn had taken Lily home. He shouldn’t have brought her with him. Because of his obsession—and overconfidence—he’d endangered that sweet girl, he realized, now angry at himself.

  The room spun, but lying back down would reveal his weakness.

  Cora’s arm snaked across his back, supporting him. “You need to rest.”

  Her foul breath warmed his neck, and he pictured highly lethal virions landing on his skin. “Get away from me.”

  Wincing, she jumped back. “I’m sorry,” she stuttered, wringing her hands. Her cheeks flushed, she turned her head toward an open, dark supply closet. “Rollie said to take it slow,” she whispered. “I should have listened. I’m just so—”

  The hairs on Kristian’s arms rose. “Who the hell are you talking to? Why am I here?”

  Cora fixed her attention back on him, her soft countenance and relaxed posture highly disturbing. This could not be the same woman whose behavior and anatomy he’d obsessively studied for two decades, whose actions he could usually predict with nearly 100 percent accuracy.

  “Spit it out.”

  “Your idea worked,” she said gently, “for me to give you blood.”

  Appalled, Kristian looked down at his chalk-blue hospital gown and the IV in his arm. With an urge to scream welling in his throat, he longed to rip the needle from his flesh, but that would accomplish nothing. By now, Ebola, Rift Valley fever, and 1918 H1N1 microbes had to be teeming within his cells.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said through gritted teeth despite a murky memory of pointing out that Cora had his same blood type. “I was delirious. Rollie would never have allowed it.”

  “I’m so glad he did,” Cora said, her obnoxious grin returning.

  Kristian’s hand quivered with the urge to push her away. Three concurrent systemic infections. He wouldn’t survive the onslaught of symptoms. “Where’s Rollie?”