by Palladian
He seemed to fall into every trap she set, and Lex either danced gracefully away from his blows or controlled them so that the force went past her. She became worried, though, as each movement seemed to drain a little of her strength, but at length the final sequence neared. By that time, Lex observed her father breathing hard and that the movement in his right arm and left leg seemed impaired. Lex herself breathed calmly and had suffered little damage, but her weariness continued to increase and she hoped she could keep herself moving as quickly as necessary. She waited as her father seemed to collect himself to come at her again. Controlling his movements with sticking hands and feet, Lex barely managed to work his arms into the correct position, and after she stomped on the side of his knee, she joint locked one of his elbows, forcing him to retain his kneeling position.
“Don’t make me kick you over and step on your neck,” Lex said with quiet authority.
Her father didn’t reply for a few moments as he knelt, almost panting, but finally spat out, “You always were a little monster, you bitch.”
Something in Lex seemed to snap then, and she felt her stomach drop as a tidal wave of rage and adrenaline started to pump through her. She leaned forward a little, causing her father to wince as she pushed a little harder on his arm, and got her mouth close to his ear before shouting back at him.
“I was a little girl, you asshole! I had to depend on you to take care of me. Instead, all you did was beat up on me and tell me how worthless I was! I loved you and looked up to you, but you tried to thrash the life out of me and make me feel like I was worse than nothing! YOU’RE the monster, you goddamned piece of trash!”
As Lex bent over her father, nearly screaming, an amazing thing happened. Instead of yelling back at her, he bowed his head and cringed, almost looking as if he were trying to get away from her words. Lex paused and then blinked rapidly as the dim light in the room quickly went to almost blinding. Suddenly, her hands were empty and she stumbled, then came to rest in a sitting position on the floor.
She put a hand over her eyes as the light continued getting brighter. After a few moments, it felt as if she was lying down, so Lex struggled to a sit up again. The exhaustion that had fled as she yelled at her father had returned in force, which made it a difficult task, but eventually she made it.
Lex tried blinking her eyes to clear her vision, but the light seemed intensely bright, so she squinted against it instead to see her surroundings. She sat in a small bed, and to her delight she realized she could see everything: the covers, her own hands, and even the lumps that were her feet. As her eyes traveled up her arms, Lex frowned to see a needle taped into one of them, and she visually followed the attached tube up to an IV bag. As her eyes adjusted further, Lex spotted Casey sitting in a chair along the wall a few feet away, engrossed in a paperback. Lex tried to call out to her friend, but when she opened her mouth, she found her throat so dry that she couldn’t make a sound. Swallowing a few times with difficulty, she felt relieved to find it seemed to help.
“Casey,” Lex finally managed in a wispy, dry-sounding voice. “Why is it so bright in here?”
At the sound of her name, Casey’s head whipped around to stare, the book falling forgotten to the floor. She arrived by Lex’s bed in a second, closing the blinds at the window over her head. When Casey turned back towards the bed, Lex could see her friend crying.
“Are you OK?” Lex asked with concern. “What’s wrong?”
Casey ran a hand under her eyelids and smiled. “Count on you to be worrying about everyone else. I’m fine, just surprised is all. How are you feeling?”
Thinking about it for a moment before answering, Lex responded, “Tired and thirsty, but OK otherwise.”
Casey nodded, smiling now. “OK, I’ll get you some water.” Then, she stopped in her tracks as she had another thought. “Now that I think about it, I’ve got to talk to Lily first. Let me get Riss so she can get you some water. She’ll want to see you anyway, once I tell her.”
Casey’s smile threatened to take her face over as she almost ran out the doorway.
Chapter 22: Aftermath
Lex looked around a little after Casey left, and saw a small room and the tiny bed she lay in. The windows overhead spoke of being in a basement, but Lex couldn’t place the room as anywhere she knew or had seen before. The walls had been painted off-white a long time ago, but now looked more yellow than white, marked with the occasional furniture scrape. Other than Casey’s chair and the bed, Lex saw no other furniture in the room.
Gingerly, Lex tried to remember what had happened, and finally the incident at the train station came back to her. She remembered being sick, Casey picking her up and carrying her, and then nothing, just some weird dreams. Shaking it off, Lex moved to get out of bed, thinking that she should probably get ready. Although she couldn’t place their location, Lex figured they hadn’t gotten far since she fell ill and since they were in touch with Lily. All three of us should get moving as soon as possible, she thought, so we don’t put anyone in more danger.
When she tried to rise from the bed, however, Lex found that she couldn’t even sit up very far until her muscles started to shake and another wave of exhaustion hit her. Casey and Riss came into the room at that moment, and the blonde rushed to Lex’s side.
“Whoa, tiger, why don’t you wait until Lily gets here? She wants to have a good look at you to make sure you’re OK. She said it was fine to give you some water, but drink it really slowly, all right? You’ve been having a lot of trouble with your stomach.”
At that moment, Lex found she could only focus on the small glass of water in Casey’s hand. With trembling hands, she guided it to her mouth and tried not to gulp it down despite her raging thirst. After a moment, she began to think about the rest of what Casey had said.
“Lily’s coming here?” Lex asked, bringing the glass of water to rest in her lap. “We shouldn’t do that. It will put her in a lot of danger, and—”
“Lex,” Casey said, kneeling by her bedside to look her in the eye. “Don’t worry, it will be OK. I know you probably have some questions, but Lily wanted us to wait until she gets here to start talking about everything. Can you wait a little while longer? We’ll answer everything then.”
“OK,” Lex said with a confused frown, and settled back in bed to sip her water again. She leaned forward as Casey arranged the pillows behind her to support her back, and looked over at Riss, who’d sat in the corner a few feet away, legs crossed tailor-style under her and a laptop in her lap. Lex had felt her friend looking intently at her face, but Riss glanced away when Lex looked over in her direction.
“How’s it going, Riss?” Lex asked, causing the other woman to look up to meet her eye.
Riss shrugged. “Lots better than it was. Lily should be here soon, maybe another fifteen minutes.”
Lex nodded and slowly finished the last of her water, pleased that her stomach seemed fine as she did. Closing her eyes, Lex massaged her eyelids gently, then her eyebrow ridge. The whole area felt tight and hot.
Opening her eyes sometime later as she heard a noise, Lex blinked as she saw Lily bustle in, dressed in business clothes and a lab coat. Lily stared straight into Lex’s eyes for a moment, as if confirming something, then turned to Casey and Riss.
“All right, ladies. Out. Once I’m done, we can all talk.”
The two women filed out quietly and closed the door behind them, and Lex thought she could hear someone settle in the hallway just beyond the door. Lily started taking a number of instruments out of a small satchel she’d carried in with her and laid them out on a cloth on top of the chair Casey had been sitting in. Finally, she scrubbed up with hand sanitizer and turned to Lex.
“I’m going to check you out to see how you’re doing,” Lily said, donning her stethoscope and lifting Lex to put it on her back. “Breathe normally for me.”
An hour later, Lex felt exhausted again, if only because of the amount of medical observation that had been don
e on her. Lily nodded and actually looked pleased as she pulled her stethoscope off and put it back in the bag.
“Everything looks pretty good, all things considered,” Lily told Lex. “I can go through what I think are going to be problems for you, then we can review any other questions you have. Do you mind if I call Casey and Riss back in? We’re going to have to rely on them to help take care of you for a while, so they’ll need to know this, too.”
Lex looked back with bemusement before nodding, not trusting her voice at the moment. What the hell happened while I was asleep?
She forced herself to smile as the other two women came back into the room and positioned themselves—Riss in the corner she’d taken before, and Casey leaning against the corner of the room nearest the bed.
“All right,” Lily said, “first things first. Lex, you didn’t really get sick, you had what we call a body event. I think Riss filled you in on what that means,” she continued, shooting Riss a glance that was hard to decipher.
Lex nodded without replying and waited, trying to keep her hands from shaking.
“The good news is that when I checked you out, from what I can see, your basic structure seems to be fine, along with your heart and breathing. From everything I can tell, without being able to scan you in any way, your body structures all seem normal.
“Unfortunately, the event seems to have had a bad effect on your digestive system. By the time I saw you, you were vomiting so hard every few minutes that I was sure you’d pulled some stomach muscles. How long had it been since you’d been able to eat normally?”
“Well,” Lex replied, looking curiously at Lily, “everything seemed to work fine unless I left the facility. A while after I left, I’d start to get headaches and feel queasy. They usually stopped once I got back.”
Lily sighed. “Along with the experimental medications used by MSI, they usually prescribed painkillers and some antivirals so that the process didn’t begin too quickly. In this case, the upshot seems to be that you didn’t start feeling bad until you left.
“Anyway, we’ll have to teach you to eat again. Start off with things that will be easy to digest, like rice with honey, oatmeal, mashed potatoes, or applesauce. Just remember to stick with things with as little processing as possible—avoid anything with any chemical tastes, smells, or colors—and avoid foods that have a lot of sugar, fat, or salt. What do you usually eat?”
Lex shrugged. “I was eating mostly vegetarian food before this.”
“Most of that should be fine on your stomach. In your case I’d avoid dairy, though, because it sets a lot of people’s stomachs off.”
Lily paused and looked at Lex for a moment before continuing. “There’s something else I have to tell you before I continue with the things you’ll have to look out for. When you got ill, you stayed that way for a while. You’ve been here for a little over a month.”
Lex paled as she stared up at Lily. “A month? I can’t believe they haven’t found us yet! We should get out of here now!”
“Stop right there,” said Lily with eyes full of steel as she pushed Lex further back into the bed. “I think you’re about as safe as you can be in DC; I’ll let Riss and Casey explain later, since I’ve got to get back to work soon. Also, I have no intention of letting you go before I have at least a little assurance you won’t die the minute you set foot out my door.” More quietly, Lily said, almost to herself, “My grandfather would never forgive me.”
“What do you mean?” Lex asked, still confused.
Lily faced her again, fixing Lex’s eyes with her own. “You were very lucky, Lex. I’ve seen other people with harder body events than yours, but none who survived. You nearly died twice during the past few weeks. Casey never left your room during the day, which was good because she brought you back the first time your heart stopped. The second time she had to do CPR on you for over an hour before I could make it back here to help you.
“Your event also ended up well. You still look pretty much like anyone else. I’ve seen people come out of their body event so changed that they don’t look human anymore. Let me say it one more time so that you actually start to think about it: you are lucky to be in as good shape as you are. Don’t blow it by running off before I say you’re ready.”
“OK, all right,” Lex mumbled, looking down at her hands.
“All right then. Since you haven’t been able to eat and you’ve been bedridden for the past month with your body reforming itself, your muscles have atrophied. We’ll need to work to get you up and moving again, but we’ll also keep it slow so that we don’t overdo it. You’ll need a lot of help from Casey and Riss to be successful, and I expect you to accept it. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” Lex replied, glancing up at Lily from under her brows, frowning.
Lily smiled gently in reply. “OK then.”
“What did you mean, my body reforming itself?” Lex asked after a moment, having had an opportunity to consider Lily’s previous words.
Sighing, Lily replied, “Well, that’s what the body event is all about. Your system was bombarded with experimental drugs to cause your genes to change and your body to respond as a result. The event is sort of the tipping point; your body responds to the drugs by trying to reform itself. Of course, this is a difficult prospect for a living being, which is probably why most of the people who have a body event die of it. Due to all of the differing messages your body is getting—from its original set of genes and the new changes the drugs are trying to express—the results are hard to determine beforehand and are often unexpected. You may get new limbs, a new appearance, new organs, you may forget…everything. It seems to be unique for each person.”
Then Lily swore under her breath as she looked at her watch. “I have to get back to work before anyone gets suspicious. Casey, Riss, feel free to fill her in on anything now, and please get her something to eat.”
With that, Lily swooped out the door, but then poked her head back in a moment later.
“I almost forgot. Start keeping a log if you experience anything that’s out of the norm for you. Make a note of the time you experienced the symptom and a brief description of what happened. I’ll try to stop by later this evening to see how you’re doing and we can talk about anything you noticed. And, Riss, please let my grandfather know that Lex is back with us again when you have a moment.”
After Lily disappeared again, the three of them glanced at each other after a few seconds of listening to see if she’d come back a second time. In the meantime, Lex felt overwhelmed but noted Casey’s smile and Riss’ attitude of waiting. Finally, after clearing her voice, Lex spoke.
“So, what happened that day? I need to get up to speed with how we got here. And, where’s Lou?”
Riss and Casey looked at each other for a moment, and then Casey started speaking as she turned back to Lex.
“Well, like Lily said, you were really sick. I couldn’t wake you, but you kept heaving every couple of minutes as if your stomach was about to come out next. I got you out of the station and called Mr. Chen like you said. As soon as I described to him what was happening, he told me that he’d send a cab. He asked if anyone else was with us, and when I told him Riss, he gave me this address and told me to ask her to wait an hour or so, then come over.
“So we got you here. I called Lou, too, to let him know to wait. We managed to meet a few days later and thought it probably made the most sense if he just kept on with everything as usual until we were actually ready to leave town. So, he’s at home.
“Mr. Chen and his family set this place up for us. We never would have made it if it weren’t for them. And, since Lily works at the main facility where they hold people like us, she knew what to do to take care of you.”
Casey stopped for a moment, looking down at her hands. “She said when she first saw you that you had probably had symptoms for a while that no one had picked up on. She said that there were things they could have done to make your event easier, if they’d known, b
ut that it was likely you would die. And, you almost did.”
Lex cleared her throat. “But I didn’t, thanks to you.”
Casey looked up then, and Lex felt her stomach contract as she saw that her friend was crying.
Feeling her heart twist, Lex spoke up again. “I’m so sorry to have worried you, and I’m sorry to be so much trouble. I’m going to be fine now, and it’s thanks to the both of you,” Lex continued, incorporating Riss in her glance. “I’m going to need your help, but my goal is to be back up on my feet and out of here in a week, maybe two. Everything’s going to be fine, so please don’t cry, Casey. We’re all going to be OK.”
Sniffling a little, Casey wiped under her eyes with the back of her hand. “Sorry,” she said, gruffly.
“Thanks for worrying about me, and for taking such good care of me while I was sick,” said Lex gently.
Casey nodded and straightened, levering herself into a standing position from her previous lean. “So, are you hungry?”
“Starved,” Lex replied, “The water was fine, but I’m not sure what my stomach will put up with.”
“I think I have just the thing,” Casey said, moving towards the door. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since Lily said that it seemed your stomach was out of whack, so I had a few things brought in that we can try. I’ll be back in a bit. Riss, can you answer any more of Lex’s questions?”
Riss nodded as Casey rushed out the door. She looked at Lex then, eyebrow raised. “I think she’s just embarrassed,” Riss said in a quiet voice as she slid closer to Lex’s bed, still sitting on the carpet. “Lily doesn’t know the half of it. Casey barely left your bedside day and night. She would roll out some bedding and sleep on the floor so she could keep an eye on you.”