Demitria Lunetta - In the End

“Okay.” That could work. If Jacks doesn’t mention me, Doc won’t know I’m still alive. “Just don’t tell Doc that I’m here. Tell him something happened to Brenna, something that Ken will want to know about.”

“And Doc? Shouldn’t he look at her wound?”

I hesitate.

“What happened, anyway? It looks more savage than a normal bite.”

“I cut away the infected area.”

Jacks grimaces. “You cut off her fingers ? Damn. I’m surprised she didn’t kill you. Just by reflex.” He shakes his head. “Doc’s got to see her.”

“But—”

“She could die, Amy.”

I look at Brenna. She’s trembling again, her clothes soaked through with sweat. When I place my hand on her face, her skin burns against mine. I wish I could help her myself, but I don’t know what to do.

“All right,” I say, reluctantly.

Jacks hurries from the room. Within minutes, he rushes back in the door, Doc trailing behind.

When Doc sees me, he blanches. Even with all that’s at stake with Brenna, I have to say, I take some satisfaction in his reaction. Clearly, he thought I’d be dead by now.

Doc composes himself and goes to Brenna’s side, unraveling the blood-soaked bandage from her hand. Jacks sucks in air at the sight of her missing fingers.

“It’s a clean cut,” Doc notes. “How did she lose them?”

“A knife,” I tell him. “I think it’s infected, though.”

“Yes . . .” He’s still staring at the wound and shaking his head as though something doesn’t make sense. Then his eyes snap to me. “Those fingers have been removed. This wasn’t from any knife fight or accident. The cuts are too precise.” When I don’t say anything, he presses. “I can’t help her if I don’t know what happened.”

“I had to take them off,” I explain, “but I did everything I could to sterili—”

“ You took them off? Why on Earth—”

“I had to remove the site of the infection.”

“She’s infected because you—” He stops short, his eyes widening. “She’s been bitten, hasn’t she? How dare you bring her here! She must be removed at once. These rooms aren’t strong enough to hold a Florae.” His hand goes to his ear to make a call, but I slap it away.

“No! You don’t understand. You have to help her get better, then Ken needs to see her right away.” I don’t want to tell Doc anything, but how else am I going to get him to help Brenna, to call Ken? “She was bitten more than twenty-four hours ago.”

Doc looks at me dumbly, then studies Brenna.

“Are you certain?” he asks.

“I’ve been with her the whole time.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?” he asks.

I narrow my eyes at him. “I’m not exactly dying for her to turn into a Florae, am I?”

Doc glares at me distrustfully, then goes to the cabinet and takes out a tray with medical supplies. He takes a sample of Brenna’s blood, then hooks her up to an IV.

“These antibiotics should help. Jacks, go see when Brenna last received a booster shot.” Jacks nods and leaves the room.

I stare at Doc, who is doing a remarkable job of ignoring me. He takes more of Brenna’s blood, and I realize that I’m not scared. Even though he tried to kill me, even though I’m in an examination room, surrounded by medical supplies. Maybe my anger is overpowering my fear of the clinical setting. I’m not shaking. I don’t feel overwhelmed or unsettled. It’s about time I feel like my old self again.

“Why did you want me dead?” I ask pointedly. “Did you tell Dr. Reynolds I was here? Did he tell you to kill me?”

He doesn’t look at me, just nods. “The Warden and I talked it over. We thought telling New Hope the truth was the only way to salvage the situation. Dr. Reynolds now knows of your presence here. I was only trying to help,” he tells me, not bothering to look up at me, as if this is any kind of explanation.

“And having me killed . . . Who was that helping, exactly?”

His head snaps up, and he looks at me sharply. For a moment I see Jacks in him, his expression. The resemblance fades when he begins to speak. “I wanted to report you from the beginning, but my brother thought we could use you. He also thought you’d be good for Jacks, but I knew you’d be trouble. The Warden is always pulling stunts like that. Good old Johnny. Skirts the law and never gets punished for it.

“Not me. I always get caught. I always get punished. I made one little mistake when I was a doctor. I wasn’t even supposed to be on call, but . . . What was I going to do? The man was dying anyway. He was a goner; it wouldn’t have mattered if I was stone-cold sober. I did my best. One of the nurses reported me, said I was acting strangely, and a drug test later I was done. They searched my office, found some wayward pills. Lawsuits and divorce, and the only place I could get a job was as an orderly at the prison my brother ran. And he only hired me because he knew I would help with the late-night experiments. He knew I wouldn’t tell anyone. . . . Who would believe a washed-up drug addict? He also knew I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“Well, they sure needed me, in the end. When the infection broke out and there weren’t any ‘real’ doctors around, you bet your ass they wanted me to practice medicine then. And so what if we still help New Hope out with their experiments? So what if a few people die? People die every day for no reason. At least here, I can collect data and make their deaths worth something.”

I’ve heard it all before, this rationalization. “You don’t have to be their puppet,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Do you think I can just ignore orders from New Hope? Not with my track record, not after the debacle of the fertility study last year. I’m already in enough trouble as it is. And now you’re here. You’re supposed to be dead. If Dr. Reynolds knew you were still alive—”

“What? What would he do?”

He looks at me, his mouth open to answer, but then Jacks returns to the room with a clipboard. “Brenna just received a shot,” he says, breathless from running, “last week.”

Doc grins maniacally. “That’s the latest formula. I knew it. It worked!”

“That’s just one possible explanation,” I say. “Maybe the most recent vaccine worked, maybe Brenna is immune, maybe cutting off her fingers stopped the spread and kept her alive, but . . .” He doesn’t let me finish with my second theory. The one that involves Brenna being part of the original test group . . . the one that sounds crazy, even to me.

“After all this time, we’ve gotten it right!” He puts the blood samples on the metal tray. He reaches over and hugs Jacks. “This is my chance, my boy.”

Jacks gives Doc an uncomfortable half hug. “Chance for what?”

“Vindication! I’m going to run some tests. There must be more tests, life tests, but I know what they’ll show. I knew it!” he says again, heading for the door.

What is a life test? How can Doc be so convinced the vaccine was effective? It’s just what he wants to hear. “What about Ken?” Ken will listen to me.

“What about him?” He’s looking at me, but it’s as if he can barely see me.

“He needs to examine Brenna.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll tell him to come see her,” Doc says, brushing me off as he disappears through the door.

“I don’t trust him,” I tell Jacks as I return to sit at Brenna’s side. Already the color is returning to her face. I wonder briefly what, exactly, is in that IV.

“He’s just excited there’s a vaccine that works.”

“But there isn’t,” I say. “Or, at least, he can’t know that it works. I don’t think that’s what’s going on with Brenna at all.” I fill him in on all the medical testing Hutsen-Prime had been performing on children before the outbreak. I explain my theory that Brenna was part of the original test group. That she, because she was bitten more recently, could be the key to finding a cure. “I don’t know the science, but I think there was something special about that first batch of vaccine. Something that Baby and Brenna got, that they haven’t been able to reproduce since. If they have Brenna, they won’t need Baby anymore!”