“Sorry?”
“For putting you in a bad spot.”
“Don’t apologize,” he says. “Just be more careful at who you throw fists at around here. It doesn’t go unnoticed.”
“I know, I will.”
“I can’t lose someone else I care about,” he says. He smiles, but something is off. His eyes contradict the flashing white on his face. There’s a small amount of sadness but a bigger amount of grief that bleeds through.
He turns and walks away before I can ask anymore questions which just leaves me with a lead weight in my gut.
1145 Hours
I meet Aisley for lunch after the horrible yoga session. Apparently word spreads faster here than a high-school cafeteria.
“Everyone’s afraid of you,” Aisley says with bright eyes. “Tristan said you’re the coolest person he’s ever heard of!”
I laugh and take a bite of my egg salad sandwich. The bruise on Aisley’s cheek got bigger and darker which still makes me heated enough to hit another soldier, but clearly my point was made. “Did any of the other soldiers bother you?” She shakes her head in response. “Good. Hopefully no more shiners anytime soon then.”
“Yeah,” she says with a smirk. “Or else I’ll send my ass-kicking mom at them!”
“Language.” I hide the smile in the last bite of my sandwich. “So, how many times did you actually sneak out past curfew?”
Aisley chokes on a piece of her sandwich and shakes her head. “I never—”
“Save it,” I say raising my hand. “If you’re going to sneak out, I’m not gonna stop you. I don’t do curfews. I just need to know how many fist fights I’m going to be getting into in the future.”
Aisley bites her bottom lip and plays with her food. I smile trying to take some of the edge off the question, but I’m sure it comes off as fake. “I’ve been sneaking out every Saturday and Sunday night,” she responds. “But it’s only to hang out with Tristan.”
“Oh, I see,” I say nudging her shoulder. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“No!” Aisley blurts out. “I mean, I just like talking to him. He’s like us.”
“Like us?”
The bell tower rings out putting an end to visiting time. Aisley scarfs down the rest of her sandwich and throws the garbage inside her metal lunchbox. She takes my trash and latches the lock.
“Aisley, come on!” a blond-haired boy shouts from across the schoolyard.
“Be right there, Tristan!” Aisley shouts. She hops over to my side of the table and kisses my cheek.
“Hi Tristan,” I say waving. He waves with a huge smile across his face.
“Mom,” Aisley moans, her cheeks turning an unusual shade of red.
“Go on,” I say hugging Aisley before she takes off in the opposite direction. I watch her and Tristan run into the school building, both of them laughing and smiling like it’s some ordinary day in the old world.
When I get to meditation, I search for Keturah, but don’t see her. Must be recovering still—damn. I’m tempted to leave, but that would only make Isha’s life harder.
“Ms. Henderson,” a voice calls from behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Do you have a moment?”
I turn without answering. Gunnar marches from the entrance of the wellness center. His uniform is so filled with starch that it barely moves when he walks. He smiles a crooked smirk and squeezes my shoulder until my heartbeat throbs under his grip.
If Gunnar could be a cartoon character, he would be the angry one who’s face turns an ungodly color of red, then purple, then red again before steam spews from his ears through the medium of a train whistle.
“You ever touch one of my soldiers again, you’ll never see the light of day,” he growls.
“Hit my daughter again, I’ll be the one to tear off their hand with my teeth.”
Gunnar takes a step back still with a crooked smile on and lets out a smoker’s laugh. “It’s cute how you think you have a choice here,” he says.
Shit—I bite my lip and feel the beginnings of fear seep from my pores.
“You know, this Fort used to be a great stronghold in the American Revolution and countless other wars,” he starts pacing a circle around me like a turkey vulture. “And then, it fell. It rotted into the earth like all things eventually do.
But now, in thistragic present we find ourselves in, this Fort has been restored to its former glory. A stronghold against the animals that inhabit The Wild just outside the stone walls.”
He steps within inches from my face and breathes the last words into my ear. “Just know, if you continue down the path you’re digging for yourself, I’ll make sure you’re on the other side of the wall.” He laughs and stalks away from me.
I cradle my stomach and feel a wave of nausea sweep over me. Gunnar doesn’t seem like the type to bluff, but I’m hoping he’s got one hell of a poker face.
* * *
“Your friend is not with you today,” the hypnotist says. His voice doesn’t give off that it was a question, but I answer him anyway.
“No, just me.” I lay down on the crates and rest my head on the wadded-up blankets. “How can I focus in on one memory when we’re doing this?”
“Imagine a small fragment of that place, that time—or that person,” he responds lingering on the last word. “Imagine yourself coexisting with that one thing and allow your mind to do the rest.”
“Do you think that’ll work?” I ask.
“Trust that it will,” he responds. “Trust.”
“Bring her to rehabilitation,” Gunnar says walking alongside my hospital bed.
“What about the baby? We can’t drug her like the others,” a female’s voice says behind my head.
“We’ve got her pretty much clean, Doctor Bradley,” Gunnar responds. “All we need now is for her wounds to heal and time to forget.”
“It would have been one wound if you didn’t beat on her so frequently,” the nurse mumbles.
His boots click away, and the nurse comes to my side of the bed. She lifts my hospital gown and winces. My hand floats up towards her face. The nurse shakes her head and says something I can’t comprehend. She grabs my wrist and lays my hand back down on the mattress.
“Doctor Bradley!” a familiar voice yells. “Where are you taking this one?”
“Rehabilitation,” she responds.
“Rehabil—” he starts snatching my charts off of my legs. “This woman has sutures and multiple other wounds from interrogation and Wiping.” He has ocean eyes and chocolate skin. What’s his name? Don’t I know his name?
He lifts my gown, and his eyes go wide. “You’re bringingthis into Rehabilitation? Her stitches are practically out. She needs to go into surgery!”
“Well, you’re not the supervising Doctor, are you Nurse Isha?”
Isha—the man with the ocean eyes and chocolate skin. Yes, I know him now. My vision blurs as my physical self clashes with my past. I feel his hand grip mine and then, hear his voice in my ear.
“I’m not going to let them hurt you anymore,” he whispers. “You’re safe.”
For Miles
Book Two
October 31, 2013
Keturah doesn’t come back. I waited for days, weeks, months—and nothing changed. I was worried at a week; now I’m downright petrified.
“You’re being induced tonight,” Isha says at my kitchen table.
“Am I gonna disappear like Keturah?”
Isha lets out a long sigh. After she disappeared, I refused to let it go. At first, I was quiet about it, making sure to stay away from my house and the red eyes that watch us like prized cattle. But he was always dodging the question, giving me half truths. He’s heard me ask it a hundred different times in a hundred different ways.
Now, I’ve given up pretending. I’m not losing another friend to this stupid apocalypse.
“Hayley—”
“No,” I say slamming my fist down on the table. “She was indu
ced and then she just poofs away? I’m tired of being given bullshit for answers. Am I next to disappear from the Fort?”
“Hayley, there were complications when Keturah gave birth,” he explains. His voice sounds mechanical, like each word has been carefully practiced and rehearsed.
“So, she’s dead,” I say.
Isha pauses for a moment like I’ve said something off-the-walls crazy, but then says, “Yes.” He doesn’t look up from his doctor’s bag which only confirms to me that there’s more to it than that.
“Whatever,” I mutter. I’ve pushed the listening devices a little too far today. I know Gunnar is watching me like the big brother I never wanted.
Isha reaches over the gap between us and grips my hand tight. “I’ll never let anything happen to you,” he says. “Not under my watch.”
It’s not the first time he’s said it. It’s the one thing, the one promise that has been kept for the 9 months we’ve been at the Fort.
I never confronted Isha after my last visit to the hypnotist. I stopped going to him actually. Sometimes I catch myself staring at Isha like I used to stare at Xavier. I don’t love him, but for some reason, I think part of him loves me.
I’m starting to forget what it was like loving Xavier. It started with the slightest, smallest details disappearing. Then, whole chunks of our past seemed to evaporate from my head. And I hate myself for it.
At times, I hear that desperation in Isha’s voice. The pained plea to be careful of what I do or how I act. But lately he’s been robotic—a lead brick has more emotion than him on his bad days. I let the heat from his hand linger a little longer than usual before shrugging it off.
“You should go,” I say standing and turning my back to him. “Aisley is coming home soon and this’ll be our last meal together.”
“Right,” Isha mumbles. He latches his doctor’s bag and heads for the door.
Dammit—I can’t be cold. “You can come to dinner tonight if you want,” I say. “I’m sure Marieska would like to see all of us again before I go into the hospital.”
He nods his head, and a small fragment of a smile crawls across his face. The door shuts silently behind him, and finally, I’m alone.
* * *
Dinner is quiet. Aisley’s eyes are puffy from tears, Tristan sits next to her with the corners of his mouth downturned. Marieska holds Aisley’s hand above the table. Isha pushes his food around his plate. I can’t bring myself to eat anything.
“So how was school today?” Isha asks. The silence after his question sinks in the air like the Titanic.
“We learned how to disassemble rifles,” Tristan responds after no one else does.
Tristan and Aisley were separated at school. Aisley was moved to “special” classes while Tristan continued the same schooling.
Marieska was in-training for nursing because of her brother. She finally conformed to the Fort’s ways after
rebelling for almost her entire existence here according to Isha anyway.
“Rifles?” Marieska says. “How old are you again?”
“I’m gonna be 13 soon,” Tristan says.
“Ha! Isn’t that marvelous?” she says glaring at Isha.
“Are you gonna come back?” Aisley’s voice says so low I barely hear it.
I look at Isha who responds with turning his head back to his food. “Of course I will,” I say. “I’ll always fight to get back to you. I swe—”
“Don’t swear it,” she says. “Just do it.”
I nod my head and brush the hair out of her face. “I’ll be back before you know it,” I whisper in her ear. She throws her arms around my neck and squeezes until it’s hard to breath.
“Come on, Hayley,” Isha says. “We should go.”
We walk without talking across the Fort’s courtyard towards the most lit-up building. I feel so nauseous that Isha has to hold me up much like he did the first day I was released from Rehabilitation.
“Everything will be in a controlled environment and we’ll make sure you and your baby are safe,” Isha reassures as we approach the tall doorway to the hospital.
“I’ll believe it when I’m back to my family again,” I respond. He nods his head and remains silent for the remainder of the walk.
Pain explodes inside of me, and I fall to my knees. I let out a scream that I didn’t think was possible from my throat. “Isha!” I say lying on my back on the dirty ground. Tears leak out of the corner of my eyes.
“Hayley,” Isha says. “Help is coming. You need to breathe—”
My vision tunnels and everything goes black.
All Saints Day
“It’s a boy,” the nurse says.
The drugs swim around in the slush of my head. I can only hear the nurse’s voice; my vision hasn’t returned to normal yet.
A baby’s cry rattles my eardrums. I have tunnel vision, and I make out bits and pieces of where I am. I don’t feel any physical pain which is nice. Another cry from a baby jolts my senses. My breath catches in my throat. A small shape kicks wildly under a blue blanket.
“Congratulations!” the nurse says. She scoops her hands under the blanket and brings it in my direction. She lays him into my arms. A small whimper escapes his lips,
then, nothing but silence. His eyes flick in my direction, and the beginnings of a smile melt onto his face.
Aisley comes barreling in through the doorway, Isha close on her tail. “Mom!”
“Miss Aisley, you cannot be in here!” the nurse says blocking her path with both arms outstretched.
“I want to see her,” she yells. “I want to make sure she’s ok!”
I can’t answer. I look down at those ice blue eyes of this little boy and feel my heart give out. It’s like Xavier is staring at me through our baby’s eyes. I cradle the side of his face, but I can feel the ache already spreading.
Xavier is alive out there, and he doesn’t even know you.
He doesn’t know that I carried him for 9 months. He doesn’t know that we’re a family. That we survived it all and are safe.
The ache turns into a weight in my blood. I lost Cassie, Xavier and now, I’m losing myself in this sinking feeling. How can someone give me a piece of Xavier and not even allow him to know? How do I live knowing that this little boy’s father won’t know him until we can leave? How am I supposed to live with that?
I can’t—I don’t want to hold him anymore. I can’t—
“Mom!” Aisley says as she’s dragged from the room by soldiers. “Mom look at me!”
I turn my gaze to her and tears spill over my eyes. I stifle the first few sobs, but the rest come out of me like a broken faucet.
This isn’t right. I shouldn’t feel like this. Why can’t I stand to look at my baby? Why can’t I hold the one thing Xavier left me with to remember him by?
“Ms. Henderson—”
“Hayley,” I say. “Just Hayley.”
“Is everything all right?” she asks placing a hand on my shoulder.
I look down at the baby—mybaby—and let another pinched sob escape my lips.
“Childbirth can be a very dramatic experience,” the nurse says smiling down at the—mybaby. “Can I get you anything?”
I thought that this moment would mean something; would be the silver lining in a world who’s light had simply vanished. It was supposed to be monumental; proof that Xavier was real, that we were safe from harm, that we could live as a family. But all I feel when I look at the life we created is the pain of being incomplete—not love.
“Just get him away from me,” I whisper.
I thought I would be happy.
Iron
The weight lingers in my blood. My heart struggles to beat in a normal pattern.
I haven’t moved from my bed without the help of several nurses and soldiers. I can hear them saying that I’m being pathetic and moping too much.
Isha fights for me—fights on my side. Aisley is another one. I’ve heard her playing with my baby, saying t
hings a mother should be saying. Tristan comes when he can.
But they don’t know what it took to get me to this point. They don’t how it feels to have a wall stopping you from being complete.
The weight in my blood doesn’t pull me to the ground and slap me in the face with reality. It just stays with me like a disease. My nightmares of losing Cassie, my nightmares of Gunnar torturing me, my nightmares of having to be the strong arms for Aisley, for our child—they have free reign now.
This weight suffocates me until I can’t feel. My blood clots in my veins until I’m nothing but a shell and cold skin.
I love our baby, but I can’t love him like I’m supposed to. I can’t love him when I’m suffocating.
I can’t.
Drug-Induced Nightmares
“I want to see my mother!” Aisley’s voice says.
My head feels like it’s swimming in drug-infested waters. I force my eyes to open just enough to see Aisley standing in the doorway. Her hair is in a tight bun, and she’s still wearing her school uniform.
“I’m sorry, Miss Aisley—”
“Don’t fucking call me that!” she says. Tristan lunges from the doorway and holds back Aisley in a bear hug. “Everyone keeps apologizing, but no one is giving me answers!”
“Aisley,” Tristan says into her ear. He whispers something else, and she looks over in my direction. “See? She’s alive—she’s breathing and alive.”
Aisley’s nostrils flare before she shrugs off Nolan’s arms and storms out of my room.
“You better have a talk with your friend, Mr. Quaran,” the nurse says. “Miss Aisley’s treading on thin ice as it is.”
If I Lose Page 9