Catharsis

by Adrienne Lecter

  I thought I heard a sympathetic chuff from Burns’s direction.

  “Too late for that,” Nate bit out between clenched teeth. When I made no move to do anything—expiring included, sadly—I heard him sigh. “Come on. I know it sucks, but sooner or later you’ll have to get out of most of your clothes. And I have to check on your wounds.”

  That got me to crane my neck until I could give him a baleful stare. He held my gaze evenly, not backing down. Oh, well. I hadn’t expected that to work, but it had been worth a try.

  He was utterly careful as he unlaced my boots and slowly pulled them off, but even so I couldn’t keep from wincing my way through every inch of it. Just before the left one came off, I turned my head away, staring at the horribly beige wall instead. The chorus of held breaths and sympathetic wincing was bad enough as it was, no need to join in myself. My throat closed down, but I was too exhausted to cry. Just as well.

  Next were the thick tactical pants and warm leggings underneath, leaving me in the shorts that covered my underwear but left my thigh bare. I was pretty sure that the retching sound came from Gita’s corner of the room but did my best to ignore it.

  “What the fuck did they do to you?” Tanner asked, leaning forward so he could look around Burns. I used Nate pulling the clothes off my other leg to roll onto my side, again shifting the pressure off my back.

  “What does it look like?” I tried to ask scathingly, but it sounded more like a weak moan. “They cut, and sliced, and scraped away everything that was dead to try to keep everything that might still return to proper function.” I shut up when my gloves were next. I didn’t look, but Gita did, immediately turning away once more. I wondered if she was already ruing her perch up there where she could get a good look at what was going on at the other side of the room. The thermal was next, until only the T-shirt and shorts were left. What little room there had still been on the floor by the door was now filled with my clothes.

  “Where do you want to start?” Nate asked as he turned away to get some latex gloves, face mask, a scalpel, iodine solution, and the sterile suture needles from his pack.

  “Bucky Hamilton’s balls, cutting him right up to his teeth,” I supplied. Maybe not the best topic to broach, but any filters that had survived the past year and a half were still offline.

  Nate snorted as he kept rummaging. “You and me both,” he muttered almost too low for me to catch, then louder as he turned back to me, “Thigh, abdomen, or back? That looks to be the worst. I don’t think I have much to do elsewhere.”

  Wasn’t that good news? I couldn’t quite muster the strength to cheer.

  “Leg,” I offered. “Then I only have to turn over once.”

  I tried to steel myself as he swabbed the area with brownish iodine solution, the smears reaching pretty much from the old scars at my hip down to my knee, but to no avail. I tensed as the scalpel nicked a barely closed scar, white pus draining from the wound immediately. I wasn’t sure what hurt worse, the cut or pressure he applied—not that it mattered.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you give her anything for the pain?” Gita squeaked from her perch, sounding the most like a squeamish girl as I’d ever seen her.

  Nate didn’t halt as he methodically wiped and cut, narrowly avoiding a small fountain as he opened the next swollen abscess. “Because virtually nothing works on her anymore, and the few things that do I don’t have access to and wouldn’t necessarily give her even if I did.” He briefly glanced up at my face, whether to check my reaction or for reassurance, I couldn’t tell. “Strong opioids still work, but not because they dull the pain. They just distract you by sending your mind on a bender. Can’t really recommend it.”

  Right then, any little bit of distraction would have been welcome, particularly as the sudden, sharp pain did a great job bringing my mind to a clear state of high alert.

  “Exactly how did you survive those first few days after you got speared by that rebar?” I pressed out between clenched teeth—that also hurt, thank you very much. “I thought you were high as a kite, but that’s not quite true, is it?”

  He snorted as he went back to draining the last filled lump on my thigh, then reached for the suture kit. “The immense, deep-seated pain of your fingers digging out the glue from the wound was decidedly a personal highlight. Making sense of the wave of zombies that came rolling toward us on that bridge and not keeling over, laughing hysterically, was another. I don’t remember much else besides that you were less annoying than I’d feared.”

  “You say the sweetest things,” I offered once I could breathe again, the first crooked suture done. I looked away when he started on the next, the tugging on my flesh decidedly worse than the pain. Turning my head to glance at Burns, I mouthed a silent, “Distract me!” at him. Rather than recounting any of the multitudes of anecdotes that I expected, he frowned.

  “Are those strangulation marks on your neck?”

  I couldn’t help but hunch my shoulders ever so slightly, as if that would do anything to hide the dark bruises around my throat. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” I croaked, wincing slightly when the next time the needle went through my skin, Nate pulled a little too hard on the thread. Burns was obviously waiting for more, but I held my breath instead, staring at the steel frame of the bunk above me. There were a lot of things I could hardly deny, but if I could take that part to the grave with me, I would. Nate didn’t volunteer an explanation, either. Let them guess. In the end, it was the truth that it was Hamilton’s doing, one hundred percent.

  “Roll over,” Nate prompted when he was done, wiping the last drops of blood away from my leg.

  Gritting my teeth—gently—I did, shimmying around so he could pull the shirt up to my shoulders. It stuck to my skin where wounds had started oozing in transit, making me wince as he pulled the fabric free. I did my best to ignore the muttering coming from the other side of the room—among other sounds. Nate quickly set to work, only that now it felt like he would have had an easier time just skinning me from tailbone to shoulder. It pretty much felt like he was already doing that.

  “You seem a lot more lucid now than you were on the plane,” Burns offered conversationally as he leaned closer, doing a good job keeping a straight face.

  I glared at what I could see of him from where my face wasn’t mashed into the pillow once more. “You think? I’m so absolutely thrilled about that. How does that even make sense? That my body shuts down when it only has to cope with existing, but gets me to hyper focus when additional pain is inflicted? Wouldn’t it make more sense the other way round?”

  Burns gave me a toothy smile but it was Nate who replied. “Think it through again. Right now you’re barely existing so it might seem like that to you. But once you’re back to full health, the ability to think clearly even through the haze of pain and be able to mobilize your reserves when you need them most is preferential to succumbing to numbness.” He paused briefly as he had to cut deeper so he could press on what felt like my remaining kidney. “Welcome to our world.”

  “Can’t wait to get some actual use out of that. Besides still being alive,” I grumbled.

  If my leg had been bad, my back was worse, the cleanup alone taking forever. And then there was another round of sutures. Nate only got to the second before he halted as Gita came vaulting down from her perch, still a little white in the face but looking rather determined. “Do you know a thing about sewing? Because unless you want to deliberately leave worse scars than she already has, you’re doing a shit job,” she observed as she inched closer. If it hadn’t been my hide they were talking about, I would have started to laugh—it wasn’t any day that someone could accuse Nate of anything short of perfection.

  “And you could do a better job?” he griped, getting a curt jerk of the head from Gita.

  “Sure can. I’ve been sewing and mending my own clothes way before that damn virus sent us back into the stone age,” she replied, not without pride—but then hesitated. “Exactly how infectious
is that pus?”

  I thought about that for a moment, seeing as they seemed to be waiting for my expertise. “Have you cleaned the wounds with chlorhexidine yet?” Nate gave an affirmative grunt. “Should be okay. From what Raynor mentioned, by now the serum should have killed all bacteria in my body that don’t belong, so it’s mostly dead lymphocytes. Use two layers of gloves and make sure you don’t puncture them, and you should be good.” I waited until I felt her get to work—much gentler, and judging from the more even motions, more competent than Nate—before I added, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” came Gita’s reply, muffled through her face mask. “I hope I’m not hurting you too much?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I mumbled, doing my best to relax. I really could have used a drink—not that I thought my body could handle it yet with my liver likely still in recovery mode, but the idea of it sounded good. Hell, a baseball bat to the face sounded great, if it’d just put me under.

  The obvious air of awkward discomfort continued to hang between us, until I finally couldn’t stand it anymore, using Gita’s pause to get a new needle to turn around and look at the others. “Guys, this is hard enough on me as it is. Please don’t make it worse. What is done, is done. I have a feeling that the next week is going to get worse. Right now my grip is shit and the best I can manage is an uneven hobble. I fucking have to relearn how to walk and run, and I don’t exactly have a lot of time for either. I’m not trusting Hamilton or Richards as far as I can throw them, but I trust you. Fact is, I’m not doing particularly well right now, and I need to know that I can let my guard down in front of you. You all know that turning the other cheek isn’t exactly my strong suit, and I might have slight problems concerning my ego sometimes…” I paused just long enough so Burns could get in a snicker. “For obvious reasons, I can’t be weak out there. The moment I hop out that door, my head has to be held high, my back straight, and even if it kills me just to breathe, I need to be strong. But I can’t keep that up around you. I feel like my sanity’s hanging by a thread, and I don’t get how my body is still going on because it should have given out hours ago, infusions or no infusions. Just—“

  Tanner cleared his throat, effectively silencing me. I was grateful for that. “No need to explain. And no need for you to put on a brave face. You’ve proven—to all of us, time and time again—that you’re one impossible nut to crack. You can let your guard down around us. We have your back.”

  He might have winced slightly at that last comment, I couldn’t be sure, moving back over so Gita could continue. The tension in the room didn’t quite dissipate, but Burns struck up a conversation with Tanner about destroyers—ships like the one we were on now, apparently—while Gita continued, Nate hovering beside her, ready to hand her whatever she’d need. I caught Tanner yawning hard enough to make his jaws crack, making me guess that the lot of them were damn tired and fighting to stay awake. It had been an impossibly long day for all of us.

  When Gita was done with my back, I rolled over so they could work on my abdomen—Nate to clean, Gita to sew. Thankfully, there were only two scars that needed work there, most of the residual infection raging across my back. When Gita was finally through with me, she tried to hover, but Nate shooed her back to her cot with gentle insistence. I remained lying there as I was, trying to take a page out of Tanner’s book, but I knew it was in vain when I felt Nate’s hand on my shoulder. “We’re not done yet,” he reminded me. Weren’t we ever.

  Exhaling slowly, I let him help me into a sitting position at the edge of my bunk, my feet barely touching the ground. He sat down opposite of me and reached for my left leg, the suture marks standing angrily red and blue against my pale skin. My first impulse as he started to unwrap the bandages around my feet was to look away, but this time, I forced myself not to.

  “Well, I never liked flip-flops, anyway,” I tried to joke, the words getting stuck in my throat. I wouldn’t have minded if he hadn’t checked each individual stub, if there was even that much left. Yet rather than let go when he was done, Nate got a good hold on my heel with one hand, and dug the fingers of his other into the sole and middle part of my foot, making me gasp with pain—until some of it suddenly lessened.

  “Your tendons are all cramped up,” he offered as he continued to squeeze, but mostly rub, as if my foot was a piece of dough in dire need of a good kneading. “I’ll ask around if anyone has a tennis ball on board that you can use to loosen them up more. Might not be the most comfortable thing to do, but it will help.”

  I did my best not to hiss when he moved further back. “I think Raynor packed up some things for me in that bag. At least I think I saw one of those stress ball thingies.”

  He didn’t stop—it was definitely too early for me to do anything—but inclined his head. “We’ll go through that tomorrow.”

  A few minutes later, he switched to my right foot. A little less pain there, but also fewer remaining toes. I idly wondered if that was connected, or mere coincidence. I couldn’t have said with my hands. They both felt like useless claws, cramped and swollen, and hurting so much that I was tempted to slam them into the frame of my bunk over and over to make them go numb…

  “It will take some time to get used to the changes in your body,” Nate murmured, keeping his voice low now that Tanner and Gita were getting ready to tuck in, and only giving token responses to Burns.

  “No shit,” I huffed.

  “I don’t mean this,” he stressed as he continued to work on my feet. “This you will get used to quicker than you think. Once the pain lessens and you regain function, with a little training your instincts will quickly override old reflexes and learn new ones. What I’m talking about are the metabolic changes. That you need to eat more; that you need to make sure not to run yourself ragged, because you can die if you do. That half of your body’s natural defenses are either dulled or no longer work, like that you shy away from pain or get emotionally tired when you’re near exhaustion.”

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “You know, we’ve already had this conversation once. After I survived getting savaged, and we joined the gang once more.” He shot me a long look, and it was exactly that what made me pause. “Wait. You knew already that I wasn’t just like you, right?” I accused. “You realized that while my metabolism had shifted in that direction, it wasn’t fully there.”

  I got an ambivalent shrug in return. “Doesn’t change anything now, does it?”

  “But you let me believe that I was one of you!” I keened, trying to pull back but he wouldn’t let go. “Why did you do that?”

  “Because in all aspects that counted, you were. Are,” he corrected himself. “And considering how down you were, any pick-me-up I could think of was a good thing.”

  I wasn’t ready to concede that point to him. “But I wasn’t, and it almost killed me! I counted on being able to mobilize all the reserves left in my body when I fled from Taggard’s compound and ran through day and night, trying to get away from those stashed undead fuckers!”

  Nate’s utter lack of an apology in his eyes made me want to throw something at him, but he moved on from my feet to my hands, so I very well couldn’t. At least now I was mad enough that I didn’t shy away quite as much from the scars where my fingers had been as I had with my toes.

  “You survived, and that’s what counts,” he offered in a calm, measured tone that just added fuel to my flames. “Stop being such a drama queen. If you lose it like that in front of Bucky, he’ll wipe the floor with you without even needing to get anywhere close to you. You’re better than this.”

  The reprimand stung—but I knew that he was speaking the truth.

  “I know.”

  Neither of us said anything else as he continued working on my hands, then got more fresh bandages out and wrapped my cramping feet and hands up once more. I tried to stretch out and get comfortable in my bunk, but that was still far from possible. Nate turned off the overhead lights, casting us in relative darkness. So
ft snores coming from all around us made me guess that we were about the only ones not drifting off.

  I closed my eyes, trying to sleep, even though I knew it was in vain. After a while, I felt my body sink into that sedentary state again I’d spent most of the flight in—not quite asleep, but far from awake.

  When my eyes drifted open once more, I moved my head to the side until I could glance over to Nate, expecting him to be soundly asleep by now, but found him staring, wide-eyed, at the bunk above his. He didn’t move—I couldn’t even see the rise and fall of his chest—except for his hand, closing to a fist, then opening again, over and over. I was tempted to ask what was going through his head right then, but refrained—if he’d wanted to let me know, he would have. Considering what we’d been though, I doubted there was anything he felt he couldn’t tell me. And still—that physical distance between our bunks felt small compared to all the emotional space that was suddenly there when, until very recently, I’d been so sure that we’d made it past all that bullshit that drove other people apart. Realizing that, I knew I should have said something, but my mind was once more utterly blank, my body too exhausted to make up for that in a physical sense. So we stayed like that through the night, him staring straight up, oblivious of me, and me staring at him.

  Chapter 3

  Loud pounding on the door to our quarters drew my attention—calling it “rousing” me would have been an overstatement, as I barely managed to flip my head into an upright position, the rest of my body remaining unresponsive. My mind was sluggish enough that it took me a full ten seconds to recognize Red as he ducked into the room, almost having to squeeze through two of the lockers now overloaded with our winter gear.