He put his forehead against mine. “How far along do you think you are? If you can feel her moving, then you must be at least—”
“Fifteen weeks, almost. I think.” I let out a long, weary sigh. “I should’ve told you sooner. I totally understand if you’re pissed at me.”
He shook his head. “I’m not pissed at you. Well, maybe a little, but I’ll get over it. Once the shock wears off.”
Then he kissed me with one of his urgent, dizzying kisses.
“I take it that you’re okay with this?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he responded, with a grin. “Although there is one thing that kinda worries me.”
“Only one thing? Lucky you.” About a billion worries were circulating in my mind right now. “What is it?”
“What will Rebecca say?”
I laughed. “Oh, she’s going to kick your arse, for sure. But she’ll get over it.” I parroted his previous words back to him. “Once the shock wears off.”
****
Isabelle was up and walking around when we returned to the treatment room. She stood by the window, closely holding onto Eve as they both peered up at a bright, orange-tinted moon.
“We were just coming to find you,” Eve said, smiling as she turned. She gestured to Sebastian, who was sat up in bed, eyes open with a wide, toothy grin as Laura spooned jelly into his mouth. He still looked a little pale and washed out. It’d be a while until he was back to a normal, precocious seven-year-old.
I walked over to him and looked into his eyes. His sky-blue irises were now ringed with red, and I never thought I’d be so happy to see the mark of the virus on someone. Nate did a quick check on Sebastian’s vitals and then gave the boy a broad smile as he ruffled his blonde curls playfully. “He’s a fighter. We’ll see how he responds to the iodine before making a decision about further options.”
Laura’s mouth twitched into a labored smile. “Hasn’t Halley told you, Nate? Evolution just evolved.”
“We’ll discuss that later,” Eve said to Laura, throwing a disapproving glance her way. Laura must’ve reported back to her already on the incident with Luc in the courtyard earlier. With everything else going on, I’d forgotten to tell Nate about it. Frankly, he’d already had his fair share of surprises today and didn’t need another one.
He looked at me. “You have something else you need to tell me?”
“Not right now,” I sighed. “Later, okay?”
He nodded and smiled, turning his attention to Isabelle. Now she’d evolved, there was probably no need to fuss over her, but he still made a point of looking into her ears with an otoscope and getting her to stick her tongue out and say ‘ah.’
“Perfect! All better.”
She giggled shyly, seeming to understand him, a reassured grin on her face.
Our brief moment of harmony was abruptly broken by the sound of a gunshot resounding in the corridor outside. We all recoiled instinctively, although Nate rushed swiftly to the doorway, glancing tentatively from left to right. When his face blanched and his hands went up beside his head, panic gripped my diaphragm, forcing the air from my lungs.
Without a second thought, I ran to Nate, positioning myself in front of him like a shield.
“Get back!” he muttered, using his body to try and maneuver me out the way.
I turned to see Luc at the far end of the corridor, Nate’s rifle rested on his shoulder as he moved slowly toward us.
How the hell had he gotten hold of the gun?
“Where are my children?” Luc demanded.
At that moment, Ben and Daniel came thundering up the stairwell, crashing through the double doors and into the corridor, shock registering on their faces as Luc swung around and pointed the gun in their direction instead.
“Put it down, Luc,” Daniel said to him in a stern and composed voice. “Put it down, and you can see your children.”
Luc screwed up his nose as tears streaked his reddened cheeks. “My children are dead!”
“That’s not true. They’re alive and well.”
He tensed. “Liar!”
Behind us, Eve slowly edged out of the treatment room, holding onto Isabelle’s hand, keeping her firmly pressed to her hip, away from Luc’s line of sight.
“Papa!” Isabelle called out to him.
Luc wheeled around, the rifle leveled at us again, although it sank a little upon hearing his daughter’s voice. “Isabelle?”
She emerged from behind Eve and smiled sadly at him.
“You’re alive?” Luc stuttered, an expression of astonishment on his face. He let the rifle slip from his shoulder as he charged readily toward us.
Ben, in his wisdom, used the distraction to lunge forward, hooking an arm around Luc’s waist with the intent to tackle him down. Instead, Luc stumbled forward and fell to his knees, the rifle butt slamming hard onto the floor, triggering it to fire. The bang resounded throughout the corridor.
Daniel and Ben immediately piled onto Luc, pinning him flat to the floor with his arms forced behind his back. Isabelle screamed and ran toward her papa, Eve sprinting after her.
“Halley, are you—” Nate didn’t finish his sentence.
When I looked up at him, his fraught expression became one of despair.
An intense, searing agony hit me then, radiating from the left, upper side of my chest. My vision blurred as I raised my right hand to my wound, feeling warm liquid flow like running water through the gaps in my fingers.
Nate caught me as I fell backward, lowering me down onto the cold floor while yelling for help.
“No. No. No.” He pushed down tightly on my wound to stop the bleeding as Laura fell to her knees and covered his hand with hers to add more pressure.
The pain grew more and more intense until it became a white-hot burning heat, sending me into a state of half-consciousness. Before the darkness covered me like a blanket, I felt Nate’s breath against my cheek.
“Stay with me, Halley,” was the last thing I heard him say.
****
Before…
The days became warmer and the nights became shorter, so I knew it was time to go.
Rebecca insisted on cooking a three-course meal for dinner the night before I left, promising an all-the-trimmings breakfast the next morning too. She was a little sad but supportive nonetheless, smiling whenever tears welled in her eyes and reminding me of anything I might have forgotten to pack. Her mood had lifted significantly since she’d gone back on her anti-depressants.
“You can still come with me,” I said as she served up a spicy carrot and coriander soup—she’d managed to follow one of my recipes but had added a little too much chili powder. It was tasty, despite the fire burning in my mouth.
She poured herself a glass of red wine and then filled my glass to the brim. “No. I’ll wait here and keep everything going, like you always did for me when I went away.”
I wouldn’t ask again. She’d made her decision and, like it or not, this was to be a solitary quest.
By the time we finished eating, my stomach was full to bursting, and my head swam a little from the wine. Still, I offered to help clean up, but she said she’d do it in the morning.
“Get an early night,” she said, not realizing it was gone ten o’clock already.
I nodded and stood up. “Thank you, Rebecca.”
She got up and rounded the table to wrap me in a tight hug. “I love you, Halley. I wish you didn’t have to go.”
Was she about to beg me not to go?
She quickly kissed my cheek. “I’ll wake you at nine for breakfast.”
Smiling, I went to my bedroom and sat down on my bed, setting my battery-powered alarm clock for seven-thirty A.M. I had no intention of staying for breakfast and planned to sneak out early, leaving a note for her saying goodbye. I’d already written the letter and tucked it away in the drawer in my bedside cabinet. I’d written it so many times now, I could recite it from memory.
Rebecca,
I’m sorry t
hat I left without saying goodbye. I’ll miss you every day, but I promise not to be gone long. I’ll find someone out there, I know it.
Love always,
Halley.
A cowardly way to leave, but if I’d said goodbye to her in person, there was a good chance my guilt would’ve forced me to stay.
Hoping the night would pass swiftly, I pulled the quilt up over me and laid back on my pillow.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After…
Drowsy and confused, I pried my eyelids apart with all the effort I could muster and groaned when the bright lights of the treatment room burned into my pupils.
“Halley,” someone whispered. A women’s voice—Eve, I think.
I turned my head slowly to see her sat next to me, holding onto my hand, which was attached to an intravenous drip of clear liquid. When I tried to sit up, a sharp pain stabbed at an area of muscle next to my collar bone, and I instantly grew weary, flopping back on the bed with a hiss.
“Take it easy!” Eve commanded in a tone that was somehow both soothing and imposing. Her shirt was splattered in blood, and smudges of red dotted her neck and jawline.
A feeling of dread sent me into a cold sweat. “Whose blood is that? Where’s Nate?”
She tutted but then flashed me a smile. “I made him go shower and get something to eat. He’s fine. It’s you that had us all worried.”
My mind slowly sharpened.
The gunshot. Luc. Pain. Panic.
“Eve! The baby? Is she—”
“You need to stay calm,” she replied, cutting me off.
I shook my head. “I can’t calm down. I need to know if she’s okay!”
“You need to rest. You lost a lot of blood, and Nate had to give you some of his. The bullet went right through your shoulder, but it nicked an artery.”
Nate entered the room then, looking thoroughly exhausted and distraught. “Oh, thank Christ, you’re awake!”
Eve stood and moved out of the way so he could sit next to me. As he rushed to my side and leaned over me to plant a kiss on my forehead, I noticed how raw and bloodshot his eyes were.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again. Ever,” he muttered, his lips touching mine briefly.
“I need to know if our baby’s okay, Nate.”
There were no little flutters in my stomach right now, which left me feeling more agitated with each passing minute, but it was the grim look on his face that sent me into a complete spiral.
“You lost a lot of blood, Halley.”
I couldn’t breathe. “What does that mean?”
“I tried to find the baby’s heartbeat earlier with a Doppler,” he began, but then paused.
“And?”
He bit his lip. “It might just mean it’s too early to pick it up.”
No heartbeat. This couldn't be happening.
No. She had to be okay. They were protecting her, right? That’s why they didn’t want me drowned in the fountain—it would harm her.
My mind raced. “I need to know.”
He nodded. “We’ll do an ultrasound. Now. But Halley—”
“It’s fine, Nate,” I said, interrupting him, “I understand.”
I knew what he was about to say—that whatever the outcome, he loved me and everything would be okay.
Not what I wanted to hear right now. It wouldn’t be okay.
Eve came and sat back down beside me and tried to make small talk while Nate got the ultrasound machine ready and handed me a bottle of water to drink. He said having a full bladder would make the image clearer.
“Daniel and I moved Isabelle and Sebastian to our room for the time being,” Eve said. “Until Luc is…better. Gabriel has been talking to him, trying to explain all this.”
I nodded mechanically, not wanting to think about Luc. Even though he hadn’t intended to shoot me, this was his fault.
He wheeled the ultrasound machine up to the left side of the bed and pushed my legs aside a little so that he could sit down. He gave me a blanket to cover up my naked, upper body as he pulled down the sheet covering me, gently tucking it into the hem of my pants.
I looked down at my wound. The bandage wrapped tightly across my left breast and shoulder had a two-inch round pool of blood staining it, just below my clavicle. He gave it a quick visual appraisal but seemed unconcerned. From that, I gathered the bleeding had stopped.
“This will be a little cold,” he said, smearing something onto my stomach from a plastic bottle. He then turned the ultrasound machine screen away from me so I couldn’t see it. When he put the sensor wand against my skin, his hand shook. I watched him closely as he ran the probe over the lower part of my belly, tapping on the ultrasound keyboard once he had located what he was looking for.
I held my breath until he smiled.
Eve immediately leaned over the bed so she could see the screen, practically crushing my shin with her elbow. She smiled too.
“For Christ’s sake!” I snapped, exasperated, after a few long seconds of silence.
Nate broke out of his temporary trance to turn the screen around to face me.
It was just a jumble of black and gray shapes. “Where am I supposed to be looking?”
He grinned and ran his index finger around a shape on the screen. “Our baby.”
Before pointing out a little flickering smudge in the middle of the screen, he quickly tapped a button on the keyboard in front of him. The speakers on the side of the screen crackled and began making a rhythmical drumming noise.
“Is that the sound of her heartbeat?”
He nodded to me without taking his eyes off the monitor.
“It sounds too fast,” I said, feeling anxious again.
Eve laughed. “It’s how they always sound.”
He began to move the wand around again, and the noise stopped. “I just need to take a few measurements,” he mumbled, flitting from worried father back to doctor mode.
“Does she look healthy, though?” I asked.
He smiled. “It all seems to be in the right place from what I remember, but I’m going to have to refresh my memory on obstetrics for the next scan.”
He clicked around on the keyboard a few more times. “Baby is fifteen weeks from conception.”
We stared at the screen a little longer until he turned the machine off and pushed it aside. Eve congratulated us and announced she was going to shower and go to bed. She left after giving us both a quick hug.
Nate shook his head. “It’s all a bit surreal, isn’t it?”
“You think?”
He let out a sigh and rubbed his eyes. “You nearly died, Halley. You lost so much blood. I know from the I.D.R.I.S autopsy reports that the virus can’t fix everything. If I couldn’t save you, I’d lose you.” He put his head in his hands and shuddered. “And the baby.”
“She’s strong. Stronger than us.”
My gut feeling told me our baby was a little different than we were—still ours, but with a little piece of them. This knowledge probably should’ve scared me, but it didn’t. In fact, I felt relieved. That little piece of them made her safer.
In this new world, she would thrive.
****
As October came to a close, it was time to leave. I had to get home to Rebecca.
“You think they’ll let us go?” Nate asked me.
We were in bed, lingering under the covers to stay warm as the heating in the school had broken down, leaving the entire building distinctly chilly.
I shrugged, wincing as a sharp pain shot through my shoulder. Weeks on from the shooting incident, I was mainly just sore, but occasionally an awkward movement of my muscles made it sting and remind me of the entire ordeal.
“I’ll talk to Eve later,” I said.
“Good luck,” Nate replied.
He leaned over to kiss my neck, placing his palm on my belly, which was now—at eighteen weeks—too prominent to hide.
Last week, at the monthly community meeting, Eve had made a
lengthy speech, much to my dismay, informing everybody of the good news. Each day now, somebody would seek me out wherever I was, ask me how I was doing and if I needed anything, and bring me a gift. Our bedroom quickly grew cluttered, and whenever there was a knock on our door, I half expected the three wise men to turn up.
This time, however, the knock came from Claire.
“Hey, it’s me,” she shouted. “Let me in.”
Nate sighed, realizing our lie-in was over and got up to unlock the door.
Claire bounded in excitedly and launched herself onto Nate’s side of the bed.
“Morning!” she grinned and patted my tummy gently. “Eve sent me to get you. She promised Isabelle and Sebastian we’d all carve pumpkins for the Halloween party tomorrow night.”
Eve spent most of her time with the children, doting on them as if she were their mother. Priya had begun to teach them English and the basics of a few other subjects. I rarely saw Luc, except on occasions when he joined in with their lessons in the library.
He stayed in his room most of the time. Eve said he was struggling with everything he’d been told about the virus. Who could blame him? As a former man of the church, he’d begun to question his faith.
I also suspected that he was trying to avoid everyone, especially me.
It’d taken me a while to let go of the niggling anger I felt toward Luc for shooting me and putting the baby at risk, but I knew I would need to speak to him about it soon.
“Is Luc carving pumpkins too?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I’ll go talk to him.”
I got dressed out of my pajamas and told Nate I’d meet him in the courtyard before heading to Luc’s room. He’d been given an old classroom to utilize as a bedroom, not far from the science lab. It was big enough to comfortably accommodate him and the children, although Sebastian and Isabelle took turns to stay with Eve and Daniel.
I knocked on his door and entered when he invited me in.
“Halley.” He was clearly surprised to see me.
The room was still fairly bare on his side of the room, but on the children’s side, there were already dozens of stuffed toys, various board games, and a wardrobe full of newly looted, designer kidswear.
I walked a little way into the room and flashed him an awkward smile. “Can we talk a minute?”
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