“You will have me with you. Remember, I have the brains. Use the beauty the Lord has given you. Together, if it is meant to be, we will both be closer to our Lord. A very worthy cause, as you said.”
Chapter 33
Sarah
New Eden
Sarah waited outside the doors to the prophet’s apartments as Chastity went in. Things were progressing so fast that she forgot herself and smiled at the two women guarding the doors.
“Don’t you have something better to be doing?” one of them asked. Her right hand was in a fold of her robe and Sarah guessed she was armed. The Sisters were all somewhat small—probably chosen in order to make Abraham look taller—and they were uniformly severe in their appearance. They wore their hair stretched upward into torturous-appearing buns, which did nothing to relax the lines of bitter authority that creased their brows.
“I’m supposed to be waiting here for Sister Chasti…”
“We know, we were right here when she went in. But what could you be doing instead of just standing there gawking?”
“Oh, sorry.” Sarah was about to kneel in prayer, but then she remembered the handbook. Hoping that it might have some information she would find useful, she cracked it open. Within a minute she wished she hadn’t. The handbook was simply a more detailed explanation of the thirty two rules that she had already read. There was also a long-winded and completely self-serving, “Bio” of Abraham.
It was enough to make her sick. It wasn’t the right time to read the thing anyway. She had too much to ponder. She had to find out where Eve’s room was. She had to figure a way to get her out of there without alerting any nannies and causing a huge ruckus. She had to find a way to get passed these two armed guards, then she had to figure out a way to get passed the other guards at the silos.
It seemed impossible and, out of foolish desperation, she looked around for a fire alarm, hoping she could use the trick that seemed to work in every movie: pulling the alarm so that everyone fled. Like all the hallways the walls were plain white paint over white drywall. No alarms. Above them, evenly spaced were neon light fixtures and every twenty feet or so there were small vents that moved air around the hallways. She peeked up at one of the registers hoping to see huge ducts that she could crawl around in, again like in the movies, however it seemed too small to fit even her slim body through.
“894, what are you doing?” Chastity had come back and was frowning at her. Judging by all the wrinkles around her eyes and around her lips, she frowned a lot.
“Me? I was, uh, praying and studying the handbook, sort of at the same time.”
“Whatever works for you. Come and sign in.” One of the guards held out a clipboard, while the other stood ready with her hand beneath her robe. Sarah put her number in the first column and then signed Janice Sills in the next. Chastity handed her a slip of paper. “Keep this on you at all times. It’s a validation slip. Only a person summoned from within, is allowed into the inner sanctum. Not even a Brother is allowed in without the proper slip.”
Together, they strode through what seemed to be a simple door like all the rest, however this one ushered them into a whole new world. Gone were the sterile white hallways that seemed to have been lifted straight from the innards of a mental institution. In their place were polished marble floors and hand-worked masonry. On the walls were works by Rembrandt, Monet, and Renoir, pieces that Abraham had “picked up” while in New York. Everything was gilded or beveled or flourished in such a way as to over-awe.
Sarah walked with her mouth open and again forgot herself by staring all around instead of concentrating on where she was. She had to be pulled to her knees by Chastity when they came to Abraham’s reception room.
“So, my dear Chastity, I hear you wish to make an addition to our hospital staff.” He sauntered over and came to stand right over Sarah. She could feel his eyes boring into the top of her head and she dared not look up.
“I do, my Lord. I was only just made aware that out newest Believer was a pharmacist before she was given to us as a gift from the Lord.”
“Oh,” he said with clear disappointment. “I was hoping for a surgeon.” He walked full around Sarah, sighing as he did. “You know how I feel about pharmacy in general. The Lord has blessed us with the ability to fight germs and viruses, to heal our own wounds, to fight heart disease by regulating what we eat and by exercising, and to cure cancer with our positivity and prayer, not by poisoning ourselves with radiation. We are magnificent creatures as we are. Just look at Janice. Stand up Janice and turn around for us.”
Sarah did, feeling the color rise in her cheeks.
“You see? Perfect. No makeup, no fake breasts, no face lift. God has created this beautiful creature. His great love shines outward from her soul and man has done nothing but harm this poor woman.” He lifted Sarah’s chin and stared right into her eyes and for just a second she was sure that he was on the verge of recognizing her, but then Chastity spoke.
“Yes my Lord. Perhaps that’s what led me to suggest this new position. I don’t have anything but plow work left for her.”
“Plows must be pulled for food to be grown.”
“Yes my Lord,” Chastity said bowing her head.
That was it? That was all Chastity was going to say on the matter? What happened to her supposed brains? Sarah felt her chance at getting a permanent position so close to Abraham’s inner sanctum, slipping away. She would be relegated to pulling a plow with a team of other women. She would be ground down by the work and baked by the sun. She would grow old before she had another chance to be this close.
Sarah canted her chin down just the slightest and stole a look at Chastity. The woman was on her knees with her hands clasped in front of her. Was she carrying a pistol beneath her robes? And could Sarah get to it fast enough if she lunged quickly, without hesitation? It didn’t seem likely, however she felt she was in a now-or-never situation.
If only Abraham would turn away for just a second.
He didn’t. Instead he went around Sarah and asked, breathing down her neck, “What do you think, Janice? Is man, with his pills and his syringes greater than God’s healing hand?”
A shudder that was impossible to miss went down her back. “Never,” she replied.
“What a great answer,” Abraham said. “So simple, so direct, so absolutely perfect. Yet your job was trying to compete against the Lord, to show the world that man could heal without his power.”
Sarah had no answer for that.
Chastity seemed to join Abraham’s side. “Is that what you thought, Janice?”
“No.”
“Did you think your hands in the lab were greater than God’s in heaven?”
Did pharmacists even work in a lab? Sarah thought they just moved pills around, filling bottles like a warehouse worker filled orders. She shook her head.
The Sister went on, “Or did you think God worked through you? That you weren’t competing with God but that he was guiding your hands?”
Would it be blasphemy in their eyes to answer yes? Would she kill her chances to get closer to Eve by answering no? Abraham took the decision out of her hands. He boomed out his laugh and raked back his silver hair.
“Chastity! Are you suggesting that God works through us, as if this is news to me? Of course the Lord uses his followers for the betterment of the world. That is not the issue here. The issue I have is when man tries to supersede the Lord. Do you know the purpose to a fever when one gets sick?”
He glanced at Sarah, but she didn’t know, though she knew that a pharmacist should. She dropped her gaze, hoping that he would answer his own question, something that he frequently did. He didn’t disappoint her. “It’s to raise the body’s temperature so as to kill the virus affecting it. But what does a pharmacist suggest doing? Take Tylenol to reduce the fever! And what is the purpose to something as simple as a cough? To bring up irritants that might cause infection. But what does the pharmacist suggest? Taking a cough suppr
essant! And we wonder why out society was so out of whack!”
“Yes, my Lord,” Sarah said.
“Yes indeed!” Abraham cried, getting worked up. “The rationale behind pharmacological studies and advances clearly show the beauty of God’s wisdom in our lives. It’s in their day-to-day application where we fail as humans. We treat the wrong things at the wrong times. We create super viruses and then congratulate ourselves when we find the cure months too late. We make lotions to turn us tan and then need to find cures for skin cancer. We take drugs so we can enjoy life and then those same drugs ruin our lives. You see? A pharmacist can be of great value but can also be a great danger.”
Chastity cleared her throat. “Surely the danger to your people would be less if the pharmacist could rely on your heavenly wisdom guiding her.”
“I’m sure it would,” Abraham said and then clapped his large hands together excitedly. “It’s settled! Janice will be our new pharmacist. And you are right dear, Chastity, I will need to meet with her regularly. We’ll start with tomorrow for dinner.”
There was a pause as if she was supposed to thank Abraham, but Sarah couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. Dinner with this vile, murderous, asshole? She wanted to be close, but that would be way too close.
Thankfully, Chastity spoke for her. “Your will, as always.”
Minutes later, when the two women were back in the hallway Sarah made a show of grinning. Though it made her sick, she had what she wanted: frequent access to the prophet’s apartments. Now she needed more. “Thank you so much,” she said and then hugged Chastity awkwardly, making sure her body pressed against the Sister’s body, especially on the right side.
Sarah was pushed angrily away, but not before she felt the gun at the Sister’s hip.
“That is not allowed!” Chastity cried. “Our love is exclusively for the Lord and his prophet on earth. We do not waste it on our fellow Believers. Page four of the handbook.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said, though she wasn’t. She had to hide the surge of excitement that blared in her soul. Chastity was the key to getting out of New Eden alive with Eve! She had a gun and when Sarah took it from her she would never see it coming. “I didn’t know. But thanks again. You did it.”
“We did it,” Chastity corrected. “Now, I have other duties. You report to the hospital—down this corridor, take your first left, you’ll see it on your right. Find out every medicine we have and everything we need. Don’t let Doctor Gowdy bully you with talk of it being his hospital. He fills in as a surgeon, but he was only a periodontist before.”
Just like that, Sarah was on her own. She went to the hospital and met with the four-person staff. Along with Gowdy, there were two nurses and a second doctor who wasn’t a real doctor either, he was a chiropractor and he immediately tried to set Sarah up for a spinal adjustment.
“My schedule is wide open.” He tapped one of two clipboards hanging on the wall. On it was a daily calendar, broken down by the hour. There were only two appointments for that day and a single one for the next. He seemed so exceptionally sleazy with his greasy smile and his roving eyes that it was no wonder he wasn’t busy.
Doctor Gowdy’s schedule was practically full. Sarah only glanced at it as a way to break eye-contact with the chiropractor, but immediately her attention was riveted on a single word: Eve. Her name was highlighted and starred. She was supposed to have a checkup on the following day. Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off the name.
“So, where did you go to school?” the chiropractor was asking, putting his hand on her shoulder.
Sarah jumped, feeling her stomach knot instantly and adrenaline surge into her bloodstream. “Don’t touch me! That’s not allowed. Page, uh, four of the handbook. You can’t touch me.”
None of the hospital staff were of the ultra-religious robot type and Sarah’s outburst caused them to step back—no one was safe from the rules. “I’m sorry,” the chiropractor said, with his hands up. “I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s ok. It’s…I was just…” Sarah had to take a deep breath. The rape had cast a long shadow; the touch of any man no matter how innocent almost felt like an assault itself. “It’s ok. I just freaked a little. Could one of you show me where you store the pharmaceuticals?” This she asked of the two nurses.
For the remainder of the day, when she wasn’t faking her way through religious mania, Sarah thought about Eve and, to a greater extent, Abraham. She was certain that at dinner he would touch her and, since he made the rules, it would be allowed, and definitely encouraged by Chastity. The thought of this evil horrible beast of a man touching her, pawing at her, kissing her…
Sarah found valium among the cabinets and, with shaking hands, popped open the bottle and swallowed one dry. The drug helped, as did focusing on her daughter. She would get to see Eve! Picturing her baby was the only thing that got her through the six o’clock worship service, the rushed dinner, and the bizarre prayers in the dark after lights out that were an exact match to the night before.
When the lights came back on the next morning and the two robot roommates took turns beseeching God to bless Abraham, Sarah was still thinking of Eve. With a sigh, she forced the little girl’s image away and started preparing for her confrontation with the prophet. After her shower and a filling breakfast, Sarah went right away to the hospital and started pouring through the latest PDR available.
The Physicians’ Desk Reference contained information on every currently used medication. Sarah was hoping to find something in the barbiturate family that she could put into a hypodermic needle to “knock out” Chastity and or Abraham.
Unfortunately, she ran up against a hard reality that crushed her hopes: New Eden’s stock of medicine was shockingly small, limited in both scope and quantity. The best she could find was Lortab—a pain reliever that, in high enough doses would cause someone to lose consciousness. It was not fast-acting, nor did they have it supplied in liquid form and she had no idea if crushing up a bunch of pills and stirring it into water would work in the way she wanted it to.
With tranquilizing not a choice, Sarah began considering lethal options and now she ran up against moral objections. She could kill Abraham; that was not a problem. However, could she kill Chastity? In cold blood? She wrestled with this through a quick lunch and then a long noon service of chanting: My life. My death. For you.
The vile chanting helped her come to the conclusion that if things were different and Chastity found out about Sarah, the Sister would kill her and gladly so. Any of the Believers would, from the bitterest Sister down to the newest convert, Dinah. It was a heavy realization and it helped with Sarah’s decision: she would kill whoever got in her way. It turned her cold and made her feel tight through the chest up until Eve giggled and babbled her way into the hospital.
At the sound, Sarah’s heart blasted her pulse throughout her body so that she could feel it in the soles of her feet. At the same time she became aware of the motherly part of her soul. It demanded action. It demanded that Sarah take her stand right then and there. It didn’t care that two Sisters and a nanny accompanied the baby.
The nanny was none other than Sarah’s old friend Shondra. The big woman fussed over the baby and Sarah approved. Unlike everyone else in New Eden Shondra smiled constantly and her warmth was like a fire on a cold night. She caught Sarah staring from around the corner and didn’t even blink.
“You’re the new person.”
“Yes.” Sarah used the excuse of looking at Eve in order to break eye contact with Shondra. It was strange that she wasn’t recognized by a person she had spent time with every day for a month. It was one thing when Mark at the silo had seen a dirt covered vagabond, it was quite another when Shondra couldn’t pick her out with the only real difference in her appearance being a different color and style of hair.
It was probably a combination of location and expectations. No one in the world expected Sarah to show up in New Eden. Still, Sarah kept her chin down and her voic
e low.
“She’s looks like a good baby,” she said, fighting the urge to touch the child. The Sisters flanking Shondra were not caught up in the aura of the baby. In fact they seemed extra vigilant as if they had seen something in Sarah’s face.
“Bah-de, bah-da, bo-dah,” Eve said, around her fist which she had wedged in her mouth.
“She’s the best,” Shondra said, bouncing her.
Doctor Gowdy stepped forward and cleared his throat. “We have our check up to begin, so if you’ll excuse us, Janice.”
Sarah hovered beyond the curtain of the first exam area, and fretted in an anxious sweat. Was this just an annual or was there something wrong? Was she going to get a shot? Would she cry or would she be a tough little soldier. Sarah didn’t know which she wanted. What about her weight? What percentile was she in? Why did Gowdy say: Hmmm?
“Ok, everything looks good,” Gowdy said after what seemed like an hour but what was in fact only fifteen minutes. “She’s got a clean bill of health, so we’ll see you again next month.”
“A month?” Sarah blurted out. “Is there something wrong? I mean most babies don’t see their doctor every month.”
“This isn’t most babies,” Gowdy replied, giving Sarah a hard look and then tilting his head toward the door, suggesting that Sarah leave. She couldn’t bring herself to do so. The best she could do was step back out of the way so that the three adults and Eve could walk by.
When they did, Sarah waved at the chubby-cheeked little girl.
“Ba-dah. Ma-ma,” Eve said and raised a dimpled hand off of Shondra’s back and held it out to Sarah.
Sarah couldn’t breathe.
“Ma-ma,” Eve said, louder, as the distance between them grew.
“She said, ma-ma!” Shondra remarked with a laugh. The black lady held Eve up over her head and smiled with great enthusiasm, but Eve was still looking at Sarah and Sarah was staring right back.
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