Sophie Littlefield - Rebirth

The last office was larger than the rest. A middle-aged woman sat behind a desk reviewing a stack of hand-drawn graphs and charts, reading glasses low on her nose. When she saw Evangeline she removed the glasses and let them hang from a silver chain and smiled tightly.

“So this is our newest outlier. How delightful. I understand that Mary’s cleared her schedule.”

“No doubt slaughtering the fatted calf,” Evangeline said with barely concealed contempt. “This is Dr. Pilar Grelo.”

“Well, let’s do you first then,” Pilar said, reaching in her drawer for a pair of latex gloves. Evangeline raised her eyebrows. “Yes, yes, I’m still using them. I didn’t get this far just to contract hepatitis or HIV. I consider gloves a perk of seniority.”

Cass got into the chair as directed and laid her arm out on the platform. “Finger, please.”

She swabbed Cass’s finger, and the strong scent of alcohol filled the room. Ruthie, still in Dor’s arms, wrinkled her nose and frowned.

The sharp lancet poke was quick and sure. Pilar squeezed Cass’s finger and a bright, large drop of red blood appeared. She held a glass pipette to it and it was sucked away into the tube; then she tapped it onto a slide.

“Old-school,” she said apologetically, as she centered a tiny square of glass on top. “It’s the ultimate recycle and reuse around here-you’re getting the finest in 1960s technology.”

The blood bloomed under the glass into a red splotch, and in Dor’s arms, Ruthie began to tremble. She turned her face against Dor’s chest and held on to his shirt with her little fists. It was the blood, Cass realized.

“How fast can-” Dor started to ask.

“Results tomorrow.” Pilar gave her a brief, chilly smile. “Pulling out all the stops for you.”

Cass pinched her finger under the wisp of gauze Pilar had given her, the cotton pristine, unmarred by even a tiny amount of blood. She wished Ruthie would look at her now, that she could see the healing, that it would comfort her to see that the bleeding had stopped. The skin smarted, but she could sense her body responding already, healing the tiny cut. In seconds the wound would be invisible.

The Beater attack should have killed her, but instead it had strengthened her. The strips of flesh torn and gnawed from her back, the blood she’d lost, the exposure-she should have died an agonizingly slow death. Instead, her body had recovered and morphed into something stronger. Cass didn’t know if it was an urban legend or not, but she’d definitely heard that the human body regenerates itself every seven years; in her case she felt as though she had been reborn in the time she was out of her mind, the days she could not remember before she woke, lying in the field. The ragged tears on her back had skimmed over, her body generating new flesh to cover the wounds. Her hair, pulled from its roots and shorn, had come back glossier and stronger. Her fingernails grew so fast Cass had to trim them every couple of days. The enamel on her teeth seemed stronger, her eyelashes thicker, her muscles more supple and flexible.

Pilar watched her squeeze the gauze to her fingertip, peering over her glasses. “So what have you been doing for birth control?” She spoke loudly, snapping Cass’s attention from her daughter.

Cass reddened. Back in the Box, she and Smoke had used condoms whenever they were available. Raiders had brought back birth control pills from time to time, and Cass had considered the idea of stockpiling them, but she didn’t want to mix brands or risk running out and in the end, she abandoned the idea. They’d taken chances sometimes when their stock was running low or her cycle lined up, or they were trying to be quiet and not wake Ruthie.

Near the end, when the tent in the Box was starting to feel more like a home than anywhere Cass had lived before, the chances Smoke and she took together hadn’t felt so much like chances…and the idea of a baby with him hadn’t seemed like the worst idea she’d ever had, back then.

“Different things,” she said stiffly. She was aware of Dor watching her. Certainly there had been no discussion of precautions last night. She’d forced herself on him without considering the fact that she might conceive. But it felt impossible that the cursed and rageful thing they had done could result in anything more than release and regret.

“Conception does seem to be the one thing outliers are not very good at,” Pilar murmured, tapping a finger thoughtfully against the bridge of her nose. “We’re studying that, of course. There is some discussion of the elevated temperature of the body…but you aren’t here to talk about that. We will supply you with prophylactics until we find out the results of your test. Now, if you would…”

This last she directed at Dor, who pulled Ruthie off his chest with reluctance and handed her to Cass. He reached across the desk, offering his finger to be stuck as Pilar selected a new lancet from a plastic box. Cass snuggled Ruthie into her lap and murmured softly against her hair, feeling her daughter’s heartbeat through her warm scalp.

Dor barely seemed to notice the lancet piercing his finger, and swiped at the beaded blood as though it were an annoying gnat. Cass thought of his scars, the one on his forehead and the deep and fissured ones on his chest, which she’d seen in the light of last night’s flickering candle. Dor had been wounded grievously, and Cass wondered at the tolerance to pain he must have built up-and what it would take to hurt him.

“The child,” Pilar said, preparing a third slide.

“Do you have to test her?” Cass asked, as Ruthie wound her arms tightly around her neck and began to tremble again. Ruthie was stoic in the face of pain; a scraped knee or bumped shin never made her cry. But the sight of the blood had definitely spooked her.

“It’s a simple test,” Pilar said calmly. “You yourself know it barely hurts at all. Hold her tightly please. It’s better if she doesn’t watch.”

Better if she doesn’t watch . The words echoed bitterly in Cass’s mind. What would truly have been better would have been for Ruthie never to have been indoctrinated at the Convent, for her head never to have been shaved, her voice silenced with those of all the other little girls. For her never to have been forced to drink the blood of the Beaters in that sadistic ritual. Cass held Ruthie with her face against her neck and murmured softly to her, nonsense words, trying not to react when Ruthie’s small body jerked and fought. Dor wrapped his hands around Ruthie’s legs and held them still. When Pilar jabbed the lancet, Ruthie flailed with surprising strength, and she missed.

“Damn it,” Pilar muttered.

Evangeline stepped away from the wall, where she had been watching the proceedings. “ Hold her,” she growled, “or I will.”

Ruthie began to make a sound that chilled Cass. It was a scream, compressed and flattened into a thin, chilling wail, worse than if her daughter had yelled at the top of her lungs. Her face reddened and her eyes squeezed shut, her lashes dotted with unspilled tears, and she fought as though her life depended on it. Cass held on, her heart breaking, but as Pilar took aim again she knew that it would go worse for Ruthie if she continued to resist, and she held her as tight as she could.

Pilar jabbed the sharp point into Ruthie’s skin with force, and blood beaded and spilled. Ruthie’s eyes flew open and when she saw the blood her wail bloomed into a terrified, other worldly shriek. She stopped only to get her breath and then she screamed again and again, an eerie banshee rupture, as Pilar fumbled with the glass slide and the tube of blood, muttering all the while. When it was done, Cass wiped Ruthie’s finger on her own shirt, then wrapped her fingers around it tightly.