Gray (Book 3) Page 10

  The hatchet and the rifle were the most important supplies.

  And they’d be the hardest to get back.

  Chapter 14

  The next morning at breakfast, Coral hunted through the dining rooms until she found Parnell. “I’d like to see Levi this morning, first thing.” She didn’t let any hint of supplication or weakness into her voice. She was the doctor, and she was making a statement, not asking a question.

  “Why?”

  “Staff. Supplies. Scheduling.” When he hesitated she said, “I have a half hour before I need to be at the clinic, so this is the best time for me.”

  He still looked doubtful, but he said, “Come along, then. I’ll see if he can squeeze you in. Mornings are always busy for him, so no promises.”

  She nodded her acknowledgment. She was trying to act like the professional they were treating her like, and busy doctors don’t beg for ten minutes of the mayor’s time or fall all over themselves being grateful for it. She had talked about it again this morning with Benjamin, and he gave her a phrase from his time in AA: “Fake it until you can make it.” She was hanging on to that thought, faking a position of adult, professional power the best she could.

  Parnell sent Benjamin off to join Kathy on the perimeter, which is not what she wanted at all. She almost protested, but she realized she could retrieve him in moments, once she made his job at the clinic official.

  Benjamin glanced back at her as he left the dining area. They understood each other so well, a glance was as clear to her as five minutes of talk from someone else.

  Her back was straight as she marched alongside Parnell to the library. Inside the front door, she pushed back her jacket’s hood and stuck her mask in her pocket. As she trooped up the stairs behind him, she finger-combed her new haircut.

  Outside of Levi’s office, she refused a chair and stood, like a woman with more important places to go. If she had a watch, she’d ostentatiously check it.

  Underneath the act, she was extremely nervous. When Parnell came out and said, “You have ten minutes,” she had to resist a dozen urges toward nervous gestures and forced herself to walk, calm and straight, into Levi’s office.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” she said. Behind her, the door shut.

  “You’re settling in?”

  “We are,” she said. “I’m here to talk about the clinic. I’d like Benjamin to come and work with me there.”

  Levi drew back, clearly surprised at the request. “Why?”

  She gave him the reasons she’d invented last night and added, “And then there’s Edith. She has worked without a break, and if I can get him trained, we can start giving her a day or two off every week. I’m sure you’ll agree that she deserves them.”

  “No doubt,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He steepled his fingers together and studied her.

  Again, she felt the urge to smooth her hair, lick her lips, or look away. She managed to stand still and keep eye contact.

  Something flashed over his face, a reflection of a thought, but she couldn’t read him. He leaned forward. “That isn’t necessary.”

  “Perhaps not. But it will be useful. It will help me to give the best care I can to the most people in Boise.” She had learned to pronounce it correctly by now: Boy-see, like the natives said.

  His glance fell on his desk. “I don’t think that’s the best use of his skill set.” His eyes returned to meet hers.

  She could see his interest had drifted away. “Perhaps not. But think of it this way. I’d be happier.”

  “Why? From what I understand, you’ve have plenty of alone time together since the disaster. So it can’t be that. You’re not still on your honeymoon, I take it?”

  She ignored the question. She wasn’t going to get what she wanted, so she served up a dollop of honesty. “We’ve had some rough times out there. We’ve learned it’s dangerous to let anyone separate us. I can use him at the clinic, and it’d make me happier.”

  “Of course your happiness is important to me,” he said. “But I have other issues to think about as well. One is getting your husband trained to do several jobs, so he can contribute here. Another is to get as many teams out on recon as possible, finding more food. I understand he’s an experienced hunter. If there is any game out there to be had, we need him there.”

  “He won’t be able to hunt without a rifle.”

  “He’ll get one, once he’s out beyond the city limits. Until we know you both better, I’m sure you can understand our hesitancy to have strangers running around the city with firearms.”

  It made sense, but wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I understand your point about that. I would still prefer him to work with me.”

  He pulled a clipboard with some handwritten papers on it toward him. It was a dismissal. “Thanks for stopping by. I’ll give it some thought.”

  She was certain he would not. His decision was made. “Hey,” she said, irritated by his attitude. “You’re not hearing me.”

  He responded without looking up from the clipboard. “You have an assignment.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Put me out on guard, too. I don’t mind doing a job for you, as long as it’s with him.”

  “I’ve seen this sort of thing before,” he said, putting down his clipboard. “You’re traumatized. Perfectly normal, I’m sure. So instead of what you think you need, we’ll give you what you actually need. Get you past those bad experiences. Get you integrated into the community here.”

  “What?” Where was he going with this?

  “We have a counselor—she’s a social worker—who knows quite a bit about PTSD. I think it’s important to have you talk with her. See if we can get you past this irrational fear of yours. We’re not going to hurt you, and we’re not going to hurt your husband. It’s your overwrought imagination making you think we will.”

  A half-dozen responses flitted through her mind. She rejected all of them, along with the image of leaping across the desk and shaking him. That wouldn’t disprove his point about PTSD at all. She stood her ground.

  “Enjoy your day at the clinic. I hear good things about you.” He gave her a smile that oozed oil.

  She hated him already. And she had no good response to him. He had power. She did not. That disparity was the cost of civilization.

  Turning her back without another word, she marched out the door and past Parnell. She hurried down the steps and outside, where a gust of bitter wind slapped her. She stood there and panted, trying to get her anger under control. Or fear. She couldn’t tell which emotion it was.

  Great. You screwed that up. Not only did she not get what she wanted, now to appease him, she’d have to see some stupid social worker. It would be laughable, really, the whole situation…except that this morning’s meeting with Levi had made her distrust him, and this situation, all the more.

  She and Benjamin would both have to watch their backs.

  Chapter 15

  She knew she had spent a half hour dealing with Levi. Either she had to blow off her assignment at the clinic to go talk with Benjamin, or she needed to do what she was told, and mentally regroup.

  It was the thought of Edith that decided her. The woman had spent seven months dealing with every medical emergency and whining person here. She was a good-hearted soul, and Coral would feel like the lowest creature on earth if she failed in her promise to her.

  Tonight, she and Benjamin would talk again. He’d have seen more, might have filched some other supplies, and if they decided to leave, they could do it tonight. Goodbye to baths, goodbye to warm meals seated at a table, goodbye to a couple of nice people. But goodbye, too, to this loss of control over her own life, and to the oily Levi.

  She pushed through the unlocked clinic doors and mustered a quick smile for a family of three in the waiting room. She went into the treatment room, and said, “Sorry I’m late” to Edith.

  “No problem. It was only a few minutes. Here, give me your jacket.”

  Cor
al snatched off her mask and shoved it and her gloves into the jacket pockets. Edith took them away, and Coral took the minute alone to take deep breaths and try to calm herself. She’d focus on the town’s patients for now. None of them had done anything to irritate her, so she should not be taking out her frustration on them.

  By the time the little family was coming in, she had herself under control.

  There was nothing wrong with the two children or foster mother who brought them in. She wanted a “real doctor check-up” for the kids. Coral didn’t say, “I’m not a real doctor.” She didn’t say, “That world is dead. Get used to it. Bring them in for broken bones and bloody gashes, nothing else.” Instead, she looked the children over.

  Except for being underweight, they seemed healthy. One of them was mildly hyper, and he had bruises that suggested not abuse—there were no finger-shaped bruises—but that his hyperactivity sent him bumping into things at a fairly regular rate. She asked about vaccines, which had been up to date for both children as of last year. Edith tried to keep the active child distracted while Coral looked at the calmer one, and in a half-hour, the family was sent on their way.

  Coral jotted down a note on the small card that was the patient file for each child, keeping to Edith’s system. “Has there been any sign of childhood illnesses, chicken pox, measles here?”

  “Thank God, no,” said Edith.

  “Have you taken in any new people other than Benjamin and me?” she said.

  “Not since near the beginning.”

  “At least you’re not getting introductions of new diseases, then.” She bit her lip. “Maybe there should be a quarantine procedure.”

  “Then we would have quarantined you, too.”

  “I think maybe you should have,” said Coral. “Neither of us is sick, as it turns out. But you have no reason to believe me when I say that.”

  “Why would you lie to me?”

  Coral couldn’t believe the gullibility underlying that question. “People do.”

  “I doubt you would.”

  Coral would lie. Had lied. Would be lying again many times, as long as she was in this city. “That’s nice of you to think so,” was all she said. Another lie, as it happened—it was foolish to think so.

  The day wasn’t as busy as her first day, and she had time to explore the building. The shut-off rooms were nearly empty. She and Benjamin could store supplies here for their emergency departure, rather than keeping them in the apartment, where they would be easily discovered or confiscated. One room had a window. Coral unlocked it, to allow her access any time.

  Upstairs, she found damaged furniture in empty offices. She didn’t spend long up there, not wanting to leave Edith alone in case a patient arrived with a real problem.

  Edith had fallen into an assistant role easily. That surprised Coral. She thought after this many months of being in charge, the other woman might want to stay in charge. But that wasn’t her personality. She was a natural follower, not a leader.

  Coral thought she’d have not survived long out in the real world, not without someone to guide her. The real world was the destroyed world, out there, with violent people and crazy cults, separated by miles of emptiness. This here? This was some weird bubble, like something out of a science fiction movie, where time moved differently in this one spot.

  Here, it moved more slowly, but even here, time was moving forward. Soon enough, Boise would catch up to the real world. As the day wore on and she saw a dozen more underfed people, clavicles and ribs protruding, she knew she saw the first signs of that happening.

  Mid-afternoon, a man with a limp entered the exam room without being called in. “Hey, Edith,” he said.

  “Billy,” Edith said.

  He turned to Coral. “You must be the doc. Levi says to show you where Victoria is. She’s waiting for you.”

  “Is she hurt?”

  “No. She’s our counselor, and Levi says you needed to see her.”

  “Ah. Right.” She wanted to do that about as much as she wanted a poke in the eye, but for now she’d pretend to be cooperative. Coral turned to Edith. “Are you going to be okay alone here?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  Coral donned her jacket and gloves and followed Billy outside.

  As they walked, he asked about her, where she grew up, how many brothers and sisters she had, normal get-acquainted chit-chat. Problem was, for Coral, the normal behavior from these people seemed wrong. She gave brief answers and turned the questions around. His answers were expansive, and she tuned him out while she walked, wondering if she was going to have to lie to this social worker, and how she’d remember to keep her lies straight.

  First lie to remember was that she and Benjamin were married. They’d worked out a brief back-story to that last night, how they met, a lie about his age and a lie about hers that brought them closer in age and had the extra benefit of putting her further along in her medical studies. As Billie led her into the door of another residence hall and up a flight of steps, she rehearsed the story in her mind.

  He stopped at the top of the stairs and pointed down the hall. “Second on your left.”

  “Thank you for showing me,” she said.

  He gave her a shy grin. “No prob.” Then he turned and left her alone in the hall.

  She took a deep breath and walked down to the door. She tapped on it.

  A few seconds later, it swung open. A petite dark-haired woman in a bright pink ski jacket answered the door and smiled. “Coral? I’m Victoria. So nice to meet you.” She offered a gloved hand.

  Coral shook and went inside. It was the first room she’d seen that had anything that could be called décor. A piece of what she supposed to be macramé, of several colors and weights of twine, hung on one wall. On another was another bit of scrap art, material that must have been saved from cannibalized clothing, made into a picture. There was a word for this, too, and Coral’s mind searched for it, finally landing on it. “Appliqué,” she said.

  “I like doing something in the evenings. Especially with no TV or music. Please, sit down. Take the sofa.”

  There was a loveseat, a wood frame with two mismatched cushions on the seats. Coral sat, wondering why the wood hadn’t been confiscated for the stoves.

  “Let’s get acquainted for the first part of this session,” said Victoria, sitting.

  “Sounds good,” Coral lied.

  “So you like the applique? You do crafts?” She smiled.

  “These are nice,” Coral said. Not a total lie. They were pleasant enough to look at. It seemed frivolous to spend time at something that had no survival value. She thought of herself, sitting at a fire shaping arrows, and of Benjamin, his head bent so she could only see the top of his jacket hood, honing the hatchet and knives. She missed those moments. It would sound strange to this woman, but it was the truth. The time of surviving with him—at least the time when they had plenty of fish, were moving camp every couple days, had a few cans of vegetables to flavor a soup—those were the good old days to her.

  “And I worked for the schools,” Victoria was saying. “Family counseling, referrals, and so forth.”

  “Ah,” said Coral. She’d been given the woman’s professional background but had missed it in her moment of nostalgia. “That’s great.” It wouldn’t have mattered what her experience was. Coral still would have to sit here and talk to her for an hour, or whatever the woman demanded of her, or Levi would hear about her being uncooperative.

  No matter if they fled tonight or stayed a week or two for the free food, there was no reason to antagonize him more than she already had.

  “Tell me about yourself.” Victoria tucked a leg under herself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where you grew up. Family. Troubles you may have had.”

  Coral gave her a brief—and mostly truthful—personal history. She had gotten to her undergraduate school when the social worker stopped her.

  “You skipped right over you
r parents’ death, there.”

  “I did?” She thought she had been precise.

  “I mean, you said it without emotion.”

  Coral shrugged. “A lot has happened since then. My grandmother and brothers are probably dead too. There has been a lot to grieve.”

  Victoria looked serious as she nodded. “And how has that been for you?”

  Coral felt split into two people. One part of her recognized the technique the woman was using, trying to get her to break down, into tears ideally, and confess her pained feelings. The other split-off part of her felt impatient. When you’re out there surviving, you have feelings, of course. She remembered the trauma of killing the dog, how that affected her. But you didn’t dwell on them. You were surviving. It wouldn’t be merely self-indulgent to dwell on feelings. It would be suicidal.

  But she knew, as she thought that, she could not say that here. This woman would judge such an explanation under another standard—under the wrong standard. “Well, it was hard, of course. But other things have also been hard.”

  “Tell me about some of them.” Victoria leaned forward a few inches. Her hands were face up in her lap.

  Coral had the sense she was supposed to put something in those hands. They were beseeching her. Ignoring the hands, she hit the highlights of her time since the Event. “I was stuck in a cave for days and thought I would die. I was afraid I was the only person left alive on the planet. A guy attacked me. A group of guys attacked me and Benjamin. A bigger group of crazy people held us and threatened to force me into sex and motherhood.” Was that all? “Oh, and a bunch who had enslaved whores came close to finding me, but they didn’t, so that was okay, except for losing our food to them.” She thought about it. “And I’ve been hungry for the better part of seven months and thought I’d starve at times. Benjamin was shot.” That was enough.

  “Wow,” said Victoria. But she said it as if it were a line out of a script. She was not wowed by it. “Sounds like a lot.”

  “Does it?” asked Coral. “Probably no worse than most people who survived.” She was getting angry at the woman, and made herself push the emotion down.