But the small dark voice of my mind whispered, If he doesn’t, what then?
I didn’t really know.
I stared at the N95.
If I had a temperature of 106 for very long it would boil my baby alive.
But if Asher didn’t come back, then that would mean something bad had happened to him. Asher didn’t say things he didn’t mean—and he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. If twenty-four hours passed without him—thinking about it made me feel nauseous all over again. I dry-swallowed and tried to calm down.
There was no point in making any hard choices—yet.
I sat on the bed, pulled my knees up to my chin, and turned on the TV.
* * *
An hour of television I couldn’t remember later, there was a knock at the door.
“Asher?” I stood, brimming with hope. And then I remembered that he would have a room key. I walked over to the door and peeked through the peephole. “Who’s there?”
“I need a favor,” a man’s voice with a light Indian accent said through the door. It was the father of the family next door. I locked up the chain and opened up the door the six inches it allowed—revealing him standing there, with his daughter at his side, her Coke-bottle glasses peering out fearfully. “My wife’s still down there with our boy. I need to check in on them. Can you watch her?”
“Um. Hang on.” I closed the door again and undid the latch so we could have a normal conversation. “How are you getting down there? We’re all supposed to be in our rooms.”
“With these.” He held out his hand. His wife’s diamond earrings sat in his palm.
“Those are expensive—”
“Precisely.” He closed his fingers around the stones. “And I’m not an idiot—there’s more than one set of stairs on this floor.”
I looked from him to his daughter—I wasn’t in the mood to babysit. “I’m sorry, but no—”
“I’ll be right back. I just have to check up on them. And I can’t take Emily with me.” His daughter was clinging to his leg like a barnacle. Ignoring me, he started to pry her loose.
“Look, you really should wait. I’m sure it won’t be long,” I lied, trying to shut the door, wishing I’d never undone the chain lock.
He craned forward to look quickly around my room, and then nodded, as if making up his own mind. “You’re not a parent, you wouldn’t understand.”
At that, my jaw snapped shut. He grabbed Emily bodily and pulled her off him. “Emily, I need you to stay here with this nice woman, sweetie. I’ll be right back, with Zach and Mommy, okay?”
Emily didn’t say anything, but she did nod, once. With him so bound and determined, what else could she do? He shoved her at me and handed me a room card. When I didn’t take it, he let it drop on the floor.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said and rushed out of the room, slamming my door. I opened it, with a Hey! on the tip of my tongue, but he was running the other direction from the elevator and stairwell down the hall—and I found I didn’t want to get him busted. I swallowed my shout. Maybe his crazy plan would work. It didn’t occur to me until then that I should have asked him to check in on Asher, too.
I looked down at Emily and she started to cry.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Usually when I had to deal with crying children, I was getting paid to do it, which made it easier. Not only was Emily crying, but she’d face-planted on my bed, with her likely contaminated clothing. Her long thick braid spooled beside her tearful face like rope. I picked up the key to her room and wiped it on my jeans.
“Hey, Emily. My name’s Edie.” And I am so not in the mood. I patted her back awkwardly, fighting down the urge to spray her with housekeeping cleaner fluid like a bad house cat. “I’m sorry, just, stop that. Don’t.” I pulled the comforter out of her hands and sat beside her. “Emily, is it?”
“I’m Whisper,” she corrected me, after heaving a particularly pathetic sob. “Whisper the pony.”
“Well, okay then. I’m Edie, the nurse. Nice to meet you.” I offered her the remote control in lieu of a hand shake. She took it.
“I want my daddy.” Her glasses made her eyes larger than they really were, magnifying long eyelashes sprinkled with tears. Her lower lip quivered as she asked, “Can you make my daddy come back?”
“Oh, honey.” What kind of person would ditch their kid with a stranger? “Not yet. Soon though.”
“Where is he?” she asked, sitting up to look around the room like he might be hiding somewhere.
“He’s very worried about your brother.”
She finished her circuit of the room, found me again, and sighed. “They’re always worried about him.”
“Well, yeah. Some brothers are like that. Believe me, I know.” I latched on to an idea. “Hey, so, Whisper—I have a confession to make.”
Her teary eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I am terribly allergic to ponies. Can you go wash your hands real good, with soap?”
She made a face that said she knew I was lying to her. “Fine.” She hopped off the bed and went into the bathroom.
We were going to be breathing the same air in here. Although chances were, if she’d been hanging around her brother during his contagious phase, she’d have it already, whatever it was.
“I’m hungry,” she complained when she emerged from the bathroom. From the looks of it, she’d dried her hands on the front of her shirt.
I reached over to one of the room service trays on the couch and opened it to reveal a grilled cheese sandwich. “Bon appétit.”
* * *
Having a physical child present in the room anchored me. I let her control the remote. She watched children’s programming while I watched the clock as it neared midnight.
I found it hard to believe that everyone else was just calmly waiting in their rooms. I peeked outside now and then, and once I saw a room service waiter furtively carrying an overloaded tray into someone else’s room. He then emerged empty-handed and walked down the hall the opposite way from the guarded stairwells and turned-off elevators. Emily’s dad was right: There must be a service elevator or stairs hidden elsewhere on each floor.
I let the door fall closed. Emily was watching the TV in that fixated way that kids did, as if the programming were an alien transmission meant especially for her, another sandwich half eaten in her hand. That was good at least. I had no idea how I’d manage to listen to the inane chatter in the background all night, but it was better than making conversation with a strange child.
I licked some salt off a fry and drank some water. And then I tried to actually eat a bite. The second it hit my stomach, I could feel the churning begin. Hurlsville.
“I’ll be right back,” I warned Emily and dashed into the bathroom, barely managing to close the door behind me before I threw up. Was it going to be like this the whole time I was pregnant? Nine months of this was going to be a very, very long time.
I heard the children’s programming stop, and there was a tentative tap at the door. “Are you okay?” Emily asked me.
“Yeah. Just hang on.” I clung to the sides of the toilet. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wished I had the Internet, and then I remembered that there probably wasn’t a What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Half-Shapeshifter Baby book out there. After this I could write one, though. Chapter One: Prepare to Stay in the Bathroom at All Times.
There was another knocking—only not at the bathroom door. “Emily—don’t get that—” I stood and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.
But it was too late. “Daddy?” Emily guessed with hope, and I heard the cabin door click.
“Oh, look at all this food!” said an unfamiliar voice. I opened the bathroom door just as a stranger walked by.
From the back she looked normal, but when she turned I could see her stomach was distended abnormally. Like pictures of starving children from Africa, or people with end-stage liver failure, only she wasn’t orange
. Emily got out of her way, and she snatched up the sandwich Emily had left behind on the bed to take a bite of it as if it were her own.
“Who are you?” I asked. I waved Emily over, and she came back, walking as far around the weird woman as she could. When the girl reached me, I shoved her into the bathroom behind me and said, “Whisper, lock the door.”
The strange woman polished off Emily’s sandwich and moved on to the chips that’d come with it, stuffing a handful into her mouth. “I’m so hungry!” she complained around them.
“You need to go,” I said, my voice low, trying to sound threatening.
“But you have so much food!” she protested, eyeing my room service buffet.
Food deprivation issues made people do strange things—I’d fished hidden sandwiches out from underneath people’s pillows at the hospital before. But that was no excuse for this woman to be here in my room now. I walked around her so I wouldn’t be between her and the door—and so I’d be right by the phone.
“Get out—or I’m calling security,” I bluffed.
“I will when I’m full!” She began eyeing the collection of room service trays behind me, and took a threatening step forward.
I could go for the phone—or the desk chair. For some reason, the chair felt safer. I hoisted it up and waved it at her like I was a lion tamer. “Get the fuck back. I mean it. Do it now.”
She knelt down with a grunt. The collection of fries that I’d licked all the salt off were sitting on the top of the trash. She picked them up and shoved them toward her maw. Just seeing her do that made me want to throw up all over again.
“Get out, get out, get out!” I screamed with increasing volume.
She looked up at me and screamed back, just as loud as I had, a guttural animal sound. Something frothed inside her mouth. Loud knocking started on the other side of our cabin door and a male voice asked. “Is everything okay?”
Emily unlocked the bathroom door and raced out, shrieking, “Daddy!” The strange woman tracked her motion, turning with frightening speed to lope after her, like she was a cheeseburger on legs. Emily opened the door and made it into the hallway, the woman hot on her heels. I threw the desk chair onto the bed and ran full speed after them—and reached the hallway just in time to see Hal step forward and clock the woman upside the head with a cane.
She went down with a crack, and Hal stood over her, ready to wallop her again. When she didn’t move, he looked at me as I panted in the doorway. “Are you okay?” he asked with a shout.
I nodded and took in the situation. The downed woman was breathing, but not much else. “Shit.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Major concussion? Subdural hematoma? Shit shit shit.
I knelt down. I didn’t want to touch her, she was probably covered in germs, but—I folded her eyelids up and checked for blown pupils, then I felt over her head for dents. She wasn’t bleeding, but he’d hit her hard, and she’d gone down solidly. She was hot, like the children had been before.
“I said—are you okay?” Hal asked again, interrupting me. He pointed to the side of his head. “My hearing aids are out.”
“Yeah, I’m good, thanks.” I glanced over to Emily, who was staring up at Hal with a mixture of awe and disgust. “Are you okay, Emily?”
“You’re not my daddy,” she told Hal with disappointment.
“Nope,” Hal agreed. Then he knelt beside me. “Is she still breathing? I hit her pretty hard.” He was still overly loud—loud enough for himself to hear.
“She’s still breathing.” Though not much else. I knew I ought to try to wake her up, to check for brain function—but I couldn’t get the image of her rooting in my trash for licked fries out of my brain.
“Claire said she was threatening you, that I needed to get over here.” He looked from her to his cane.
I nodded emphatically so he’d know what I meant even if he couldn’t hear me. “I’m glad she heard us. Thank you.” I wasn’t sure I’d be able to explain it in court if this woman was dying now, but Emily and I had definitely been in danger.
He squinted, reading my lips. He probably needed glasses, too. Then he smiled widely. “You’re welcome!”
Claire came out of their room, rolling her wheelchair over to us, fighting the rocking of the ship. “How did you know?” I asked her.
“My ears are as good as my legs aren’t.” She looked down at the woman. “Oh, my.”
“Oh, my, is right.” With extreme reluctance I patted the woman’s rotund stomach. It was taut, but I couldn’t feel a baby inside—and frankly, the woman looked too old to have kids. Although these days with IVF, who knew?
“You two get her into her room—I’ll go get help from up the hall. Can you help me, little girl?” Claire asked Emily. Emily nodded and started pushing Claire’s wheelchair, although I could tell that Claire was doing most of the work.
The woman’s room was two up and across from mine, and the door was still barely open; it hadn’t clicked fully shut. I ran over to prop it open with a room service tray, trying to ignore the thirty or so she had stacked inside.
Then it took a lot of heaving and hoing—bodies were awkward to move. Thank goodness Hal was strong.
“She’s got a fever,” Hal over-enunciated to me.
“I’d noticed,” I muttered. I was trying not to breathe the woman’s air, and ignore that I was covered in her sweat.
“She’s very hot!” Hal reexplained.
I nodded again. “I KNOW.” I hauled her torso forward until we reached the end of her bed. “Help me get her sitting up.” I didn’t want her drowning in puke before the cavalry came. If they came, more like.
There were food trays all over the room. I wondered if finding out we were all on room arrest had triggered some kind of hysteria in her. I knew my room looked like I shouldn’t be one to talk, but this was absurd—and all her trays were empty.
“I’ve heard of feeding a fever, but this is ridiculous,” I said after taking a look around.
Hal grunted, the kind of noncommittal noise that people who couldn’t hear well made to keep conversations afloat. He did seem remarkably composed for a man who’d just brained someone into unconsciousness. Did he have a touch of Alzheimer’s, or was he just old school? Despite his strength he looked ancient enough to have been in any of the last five major wars.
I stood and my back popped. This was not what Asher had in mind when he’d left me up here to stay safe, and so much for wearing the mask. Hal dusted his hands off and looked to me for direction.
“Shouldn’t someone stay?” he shouted.
Technically? Yes. She could have a bleed inside her brain, above and beyond whatever ailment she’d had that’d made her go crazy and attack us. But there was nothing I could do about it right now, and I didn’t think the doctor below could even monitor her, much less do any pressure-relieving trepanation that didn’t involve a corkscrew or a beer tap. It hadn’t exactly been an ICU facility when I’d been down there for my pregnancy test.
And if I were honest, I didn’t want to be here when she woke up. Being in her room, trays practically licked clean—right down to tiny ketchup and mustard bottles, emptied—stacked on every available surface, made my hackles rise.
“They’re going to send help—but they warned it might be quite some time,” Claire said from the hall. Emily was sitting on her lap now, and Claire was running fingers through the girl’s long hair, which had somehow come out of its braid. “They said we should wash our hands, and each get back to our own room for the duration of the quarantine.”
I snorted. “I bet they did. Did they say the word quarantine?”
“No. But what else could this be?” she said sensibly.
I stood over the insensate woman with her weird stomach and her weirder ways. It was stay here and watch her for signs of life like a hawk—and being afraid of her if she did wake up—or take the cruise employees at their word and walk away. I shook my head. I didn’t want it to be me who staye
d here, but Emily was too young, and Hal and Claire were too old.
There was a lick of froth at the corner of the woman’s mouth now. Left-sided heart failure? Or … rabies? I frowned.
“Come out of there, you two. You’re not responsible for her—and I, for one, don’t want to catch what she has,” Claire said, absolving us all in one cantankerous swoop.
I put a hand to my stomach, weighing alternatives. Being in here is not good for you, baby, and that’s all that matters. I quickly followed Hal out the door.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As the woman’s door locked shut behind us, trapping us all—or just me—with the consequences of our decision, chimes blared again overhead. I jumped like it’d caught us doing something shameful. Maybe because it had.
“Hello, guests, sorry to wake you. This is Captain Ames again. Just a reminder that we need you to continue to remain in your room, for the safety of yourself and other guests.” He coughed a bit and waited for attention. “However, we are in need of additional medical crew. If you have any expertise in a medical field and possess current qualifications, we would appreciate it if you would report to the Dolphin restaurant on the third deck. But be aware that if you do so, you might not be able to return to your cabin, possibly for the rest of the voyage, so please do not leave small children unattended. And remember, volunteering is voluntary!” he said, and chuckled, as though he’d made a hilarious joke. The chimes descended, and the intercom clicked off.
“You look pained, dear. She’s going to be fine. And if she’s not, well, it’s no business of ours.”
I wondered if being so personally near death had given Claire a ruthless clarity that I lacked. “It’s not that—well, it is, but—I’m a nurse. I should go help.”
Claire shook her head with finality. “You’re pregnant. You only have responsibility for one person right now.” She shot my belly a meaningful look. “You owe nobody nothing. You should go back to your room and rest.”
Edie Spence [04] Deadshifted Page 10