by Palladian
“You know, we have some excellent psychiatrists here on staff. I could arrange visits for you, if you like.”
Lex shook her head again, eyes still on the floor. “No, don’t worry about it, I’m fine. I think I’m just tired; so much has happened today.”
She could hear him sigh, but sort of kindly, not impatiently. This confused her and she looked up, but she only saw him writing in his notebook again.
“OK,” he finally responded, “but if you change your mind, please just call me here and let me know. I’ll be glad to arrange it for you.”
He handed her a business card with his name, practice information, and office and cell numbers.
“Thanks,” said Lex, slipping it into the pocket of her sweatpants. Then after a pause she asked, “Is there more we’re going to do today?”
Dr. Rogers shook his head. “No, that’s all, Lex. Thanks. Don’t forget to stretch before you have your shower; you were running at good speed for a while.”
“Thanks, I’ll do that.” Lex left then, not running but not quite walking, either. She hurried back to the level below, thinking that she’d remembered seeing an area with mats in the weight gym. When she entered, she hesitated for a moment, looking around, but continued in once she saw no one else there. Lex looked forward to seeing Casey at dinner, but her thoughts were still racing along with her heart, and she wanted a little time to calm herself down before seeing the other woman.
She went through her stretching routine mechanically, not feeling any relief or pleasure like she usually did. Lex’s mouth felt dry and a big bubble of something still seemed to be lodged in her chest, pushing up against her throat, leaving it feeling parched and making it almost impossible to swallow. Sometimes she wished she could cry, but she couldn’t ever remember being able to, from the time she was a little girl. No matter how sad she had become about things that had happened, tears had refused to come to her. She cleared her throat and swallowed painfully again as she finished her stretching routine and headed upstairs.
Lex carefully avoided the kitchen as she went, quietly crossing over to the stairs to her room. She thought she could hear Casey preparing dinner as she did, but she still didn’t feel quite ready to talk yet.
As she neared her room Lex spotted her laundry bag, but it had been moved from the spot where she’d put it down. When she looked inside, she saw her freshly cleaned linens neatly folded. Something about that made her smile despite the ache in her chest and Lex brought them into her room.
Deciding to put green towels out, she took a second to bury her face in the soft green fabric before she started her shower. After a while in the warm spray while scrubbing vigorously to get rid of the adhesive spots that remained on her skin, Lex started to feel more like her usual self. She finished up then, towel dried her hair, and looked at herself in the mirror, swiftly examining her face and then locking eyes with herself, uncertain of what she read in those depths. After a few seconds she dropped her gaze and turned away with a sigh to look through the clothes she'd brought. Finally deciding on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved, light blue shirt, Lex dressed quickly and made her way downstairs.
As she got to the large kitchen, she entered with a smile. She smelled something spicy and fragrant, and it made her stomach realize how long ago lunch had been. Seeing Casey by the stove, Lex stopped. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Casey smiled in return. “No, we're just about ready to eat.”
“How about if I set the table?”
Casey's smile got a little broader. “That's pretty fancy for us around here, but it’d be great. The bowls are in that cabinet, the glasses are over there, and you can find the silverware here.”
“What are we having?” Lex asked as she began collecting what she needed. “It smells really good.”
“Veggie chili. I've got some corn chips here too, if you want something to go along with it.”
After several minutes of setting up to eat at the kitchen island, dishing up, and getting situated, Lex and Casey sat down to dinner. Lex sampled the chili after blowing on it carefully to cool it down, and found it warm and comforting, the beans and corn expertly spiced and all the flavors melding perfectly.
“This is great! Thanks again for feeding me,” Lex said before taking her next bite.
Casey smiled. “No problem. This recipe is one of my favorites, so I'm glad to share it.”
“I've been meaning to ask, are you a vegetarian?”
“Yes, well, a vegan, actually.”
“So you don't eat meat, as well as not eating stuff like eggs and milk?” Lex asked.
Casey nodded in response as she took another bite of chili.
“Cool,” Lex replied with a smile as she continued eating. After a few more mouthfuls, Lex looked curiously at Casey again as she began wondering about something else. “I've been meaning to ask you…can you tell me more about yourself? I feel like everyone here knows almost all there is to know about me, but I don't know much about anyone else here except you.”
Grinning, Casey asked, “So to make it even, you want to find out more about me?”
Lex shrugged. “Not exactly. I am curious to find out how you came from a farm and ended up here, though, and I'd like to hear more about your family, since you've heard some stuff about mine. Of course, you don't have to tell me anything—”
Casey's laughter cut off her words. “Hell, I don't mind, I was just joking. I'd be glad to ramble on about myself. Anything else you'd like to know?”
“Yes, how did you find out you're different from most people?”
Casey chuckled at the question. “Well, I think everyone is to some extent, but my differences didn't show much at a young age. To backtrack a little, so that I can put it all in order, I'm the second kid in my family. I had an older sister, Mary, and a younger brother, Billy. It sounds like I was a lot luckier than you in the parents department, since mine were great, and we all loved them.
“Now, my parents and brother and sister were all tall, but none of them grew as big as I did. By the time I hit high school, I’d started on the height I have now. I grew a lot taller than most of the guys in school, which didn't get me a lot of dates,” Casey continued, rolling her eyes. “From what my parents told me, the only other person in the family that had been anything like me was my mom's great-grandfather, Peter Olafsson. He measured nearly seven feet tall, and my mother told me a number of stories that sounded like legends about his strength. The only thing I ever remember my mom advising me about was that I should find someone big and strong like myself to date. I guess there had been family rumors about Peter.”
She raised an eyebrow and grinned a little at the memory, but then began to look a little sad.
“Anyway, I didn’t think much about it since all I figured I’d do when I graduated high school was to keep working on the farm. My brother Billy followed right after me in that respect, but he got way more gung ho about it. He always read and studied farming methods and brought home ideas about how to improve our farm. Sometimes my mom and dad would take his suggestions, sometimes not, but that didn't stop his research. It made them both really proud.”
Casey paused then, her face softening, and as Lex watched she could almost see Casey remembering those days on the farm. After a moment, Casey shook her head quickly and then continued. “My older sister was pretty different from the two of us, though. She’d never really liked farm life, so she went to college and ended up marrying a banker who lived in the capital. Anyway, none of that really mattered much until the day we lost my parents. They’d been coming home from a late movie on a Friday night and were sideswiped by one of our neighbors, an old man who’d fallen asleep in his pickup truck. From what the medics said, they died instantly.”
Lex had involuntarily covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh, Casey, I'm so sorry.”
Casey tried to smile back at Lex but appeared much more sorrowful now. “At least it's been long enough so that I can talk about
it without crying. Anyway, the accident happened when I was nineteen. My brother had turned seventeen and was set to graduate from high school later that year. I’d been working on the farm since I graduated the year before. So my brother and I talked about it, and he said that he’d wanted to work on the farm once he finished with high school anyway, so we figured we'd keep the farm going between the two of us.
“But we ran into trouble with my sister since our parents had left the farm to all three of us equally. She wanted to sell it and divide the proceeds.”
Casey sighed and rubbed a hand across her forehead. “So my brother and I figured out a way to keep the farm and buy my sister out gradually. She didn't like it as much as getting a huge lump of cash, but she did like the idea of getting paid, so she didn't complain too much. Unfortunately, we had a couple of bad years then, one right after another. Mary insisted on being paid though, and that landed us in the hole. So, we hit upon the idea of me working the following year to get extra cash, and that I’d help on the farm when I wasn't working. Of course, then this job came up.”
Casey stopped speaking as Joan walked into the kitchen. The other woman had dressed casually in jeans, an olive colored t-shirt and combat boots, and looked at the pair at the table, then nodded.
“Lex, welcome to the team,” she said in a jovial tone that didn’t sound quite real, moving forward to shake hands. Lex nodded in return, wondering what might be next, since she remembered Joan being sort of hostile during her interview. “I see Casey’s been doing a good job of making you feel at home.”
“Yes, she's been really great. She's helped me with everything so far,” Lex replied with a grin in Casey’s direction. The blonde ducked her head a bit, looking embarrassed.
Joan moved to the freezer and picked out a frozen dinner, then popped it into the microwave. “Unfortunately,” she continued, turning back towards Lex, “I'm not much of a cook like Casey here is, but that's probably OK since I don't have much time for anything like that, anyway.” She shrugged then and gave Lex sort of a furtive once-over as she asked, “Have you heard anything about your training regimen yet?”
Lex looked at Joan and then Casey with a question in her eyes.
Casey shook her head. “No, not yet. I figured it’d be on tomorrow's schedule.” Pausing to look at Lex, Casey then explained, “You'll get a daily schedule posted in the holder next to your door, probably for at least the next few weeks until there's a set schedule for you. After that, they'll put notifications in the holder if they arrange any special tests or events for you going forward.”
Lex nodded and ate another bite of chili, trying not to show how much she wanted Joan to leave so that she could hear the rest of Casey’s story. The microwave finally beeped and Joan grabbed her food, heading for the door.
“Glad to hear you're settling in, Lex,” she called as she left the kitchen.
Lex looked at the empty door momentarily, not seeing much point in answering. She heard Casey murmur, “That’s strange; she’s hardly ever here,” as Lex turned back to face the blonde.
“Anyway, what happened next? How did you decide to take this job? What did your sister do?” Lex couldn’t help wriggling in her chair in her excitement.
“Well, when Mary found out I’d taken this job, she insisted that we sell the place. My brother wanted to run it on his own, hiring help when necessary, but she knew he wouldn't be able to pay her—not that we afforded it so well even with the two of us. She said she’d sue us if she didn’t get her money right away, so we ended up selling the farm. She seemed thrilled to finally get her share, but I felt terrible. I wished I hadn't taken the job, because I know that my brother only ever wanted to farm that land, but it was too late. So, he ended up hiring on to farm for the outfit that bought our place. He never really seemed to get over losing our farm, though. A year later, he got cancer, a kind that's common to corn farmers using certain types of pesticides. He was dead six months later.”
“That's terrible! I'm so sorry. What a horrible thing to have happen to your family!”
Casey responded with a grim smile and another sigh. “As you can imagine, my sister and I aren't close. I saw her for the last time at the funeral three years ago. She sat up front, all dressed in fancy black clothes like she had a right to be there. She tried to talk to me as I left, but I wouldn't speak to her. As far as I’m concerned, I lost the rest of my family that day.”
Lex sighed sadly. “I'm sorry to hear it. It's a terrible thing to have someone in your own family that you can't trust.”
Casey laughed softly but without humor, looking at her with the ghost of a smile. “It seems you know all about that.”
“That's the truth,” Lex replied with a grim smile of her own.
They ate in silence for a while longer, each caught up in their own thoughts. Once they’d finished, Lex moved to collect up the dirty dishes in order to put them in the dishwasher and Casey stored the leftovers.
“Do you still want to help me put my bed frame together?” Lex asked Casey, looking over at her friend to gauge her mood.
“Sure, if you're still up to giving me a demo afterwards,” Casey responded, nodding decisively.
Lex smiled in reply. “I was planning on it. Come on upstairs and we'll get started.”
The two of them froze for a moment after entering Lex’s room, looking around in surprise since it appeared the number of boxes and packages had doubled since lunchtime. The scent of the room had gone from slightly stale air to a fainter version of the new car smell, probably due to the number of new things. Finally, Casey turned to Lex with a grin. “Feels like Christmas, doesn’t it?”
Lex found herself giving an answering grin as the two of them moved the new boxes to the corners of the room to make space to work. After following Casey’s directions to find a well-stocked toolbox in the storage room down the hall, Lex smiled to find Casey laying out the pieces of the futon frame on her return.
“This is about the extent of the help I can offer you, though,” Casey warned. “I’m not real handy with tools.”
Letting out a brief laugh, Lex replied, “Don’t worry about it. For most of my childhood we had only girls in the family, so my father seemed to designate me the honorary boy and I learned all kinds of handy things as a result. I’ll probably just need you to hold things in place now and again.”
Casey grinned broadly then. “That I can do.”
The two of them worked carefully through the instructions, and a little over an hour later Lex proudly inspected the completed frame with the futon mattress on top.
“Piece of cake, right?” Lex asked Casey as she put the tools back in their box.
“Whatever you say,” Casey replied, looking a bit dubious. “So, are you ready to give me that demo?”
“Sure, just give me a minute to put some workout gear on,” said Lex, disappearing into the bathroom with a handful of clothes after quickly fishing them out of her bags.
When she emerged ready to go, they went downstairs. At ground level they both paused, hearing the small noises of someone moving around in the kitchen.
“Do you know who it is?” Lex asked Casey quietly, curious since they hadn’t run into anyone else all day.
Casey shrugged. “Let's find out.”
Both of them poked their heads around the corner and saw Serena sitting at the kitchen island, looking downcast and eating out of the ice cream carton Casey had showed Lex earlier.
Lex looked up at Casey questioningly. Casey shrugged. “Hey, Serena,” she called, “Lex is going to show me one of her martial arts forms. Do you want to come along and watch?”
Serena looked up at them for a moment and sighed. She shook her head negatively before putting another spoonful in her mouth and looking back down at the table, seemingly lost in thought.
“OK, then, see you later,” Casey responded.
When they got to the staircase going down, Lex asked Casey, “Is Serena OK? She seemed upset.”
; “She gets into these bad moods sometimes,” Casey replied, shaking her head. “When she does, it's usually good to keep out of her way until she feels better.”
Lex let out a small sigh of worry for her teammate and continued to follow Casey. They climbed down a few levels, but when they started to go past the fourth level down, Lex had to speak up.
“How many floors does this place have?”
Casey briefly looked to be mentally counting. “Seven I guess?”
“Seven?!”
“Yeah, if you count from the top floor down.”
After a moment to think about that, Lex shook her head as if to clear it and asked, “What's on this level? I haven’t been down here yet.”
Casey laughed and pushed the door open. “Check it out for yourself.”
Lex saw a glassed-in area with a pool and attached hot tub to their right as they came through the door, and she gaped at it for a moment.
“To the left are the lockers and saunas,” Casey continued, “but we're going this way.”
She led the way down the hall and through a door straight ahead. Inside lay a nice sized gym, the type Lex had studied martial arts in as a child. She felt a jolt in her stomach as they went through the door and she recognized the setup. In reaction to the familiarity, she felt her shoulders tighten as if waiting for a blow and felt a mix of wariness and resignation seep into her mind. Lex shrugged, trying to loosen her shoulders and throw off the feelings.
“This is probably where you'll be studying, once they find you an instructor. Hopefully they can get you Mr. Chen.”
“Who's he?” Lex asked, although something in the back of her mind stirred in dim recognition at the name.
“He was my martial arts instructor when I first came here, and he’s great. Anyway, is this a good space for you to do your demonstration?”
Lex nodded, looking around a little more now that she’d calmed down from the initial surprise. Highly polished tongue and groove wood flooring covered half the room, and in the other half padded mats covered the floor. Mirrors ran the length of all four walls and a heavy bag hung in one corner. Additional padding sat in another corner, but other than that the room looked clean and empty. As Lex breathed a deep, calming breath, the familiar scent of old sweat and floor polish greeted her. Lex took off her shoes and socks and did some light stretching in the section with the wood flooring. Somehow the cool, solid feel of the wood under her feet grounded her enough to cause her to lose the rest of her shakiness. Casey went to the edge of the padded floor and sat, leaning against the wall and watching Lex.