Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

I wrap my arms and hug him, trying to think of how to say good-bye. How to get him to let me go.

Dr. Cutlass bustles in then, looking at a chart in his hands.

“What’s the holdup? Come on, guys!” he snaps. He takes a breath and you can see him trying to rein in his impatience. “Good morning, Josie, and good morning, Niko. The OR is prepped and ready. I’d like to move forward.”

“I want to come with her!” Niko says.

Dr. Cutlass looks at Niko, measuring his level of agitation.

“Fine,” he says. “You can accompany us to the OR. Will that make you happy?”

“No,” Niko spits. “Let her go. That will make me happy.”

“This is a routine medical procedure,” Dr. Cutlass responds coldly. “You two are overreacting in epic proportion.”

We march out into the hall, our whole party.

And people, to my eye, seem to move out of our way as Dr. Cutlass, Niko, Sandy, and the two orderlies all escort me to the OR.

The calm in my mind is starting to be overturned by the alarm signals from my body.

I look down. Niko is holding my one hand and Sandy is holding my other.

And I see that Sandy has a tissue in her other hand.

She is using the tissue to blot at the corners of her eyes.

Sandy believes she is walking me to my death.

And then panic hits me.

Binwa is trying to coach Astrid through the contractions and I am losing my mind. Astrid screams with each contraction and it is not supposed to be this way. This is not going how it should and I can see that from Binwa’s face, which is twisted with worry and anguish.

“You do what’s right for her!” I shout. “Give her what she needs, for God’s sake!”

Binwa tells me to shut up, she is doing the best she can and I am not making it better.

Sometimes we hit potholes as we wail through the streets and I think I am going to throw up or faint, the pain is so bad. But Astrid’s screams bring me back to the horrible, terrifying moment. Yes, they do that.

It is dawn outside and we are speeding through some small town in Maryland.

“You’re doing great, Astrid,” Binwa says. “This is labor. This is natural.”

But I know she is lying. This is what it looked like when someone dies. Binwa is not doing everything she can for Astrid.

“Your body knows how to do this. You just need to relax.”

Binwa presses her fists into the small of Astrid’s back when a contraction comes.

The van is going down, into a tunnel.

We lurch to a stop and suddenly people are opening the doors.

Four medics bustle in and start sliding the gurney out.

Binwa is going with them and one of the doors swings shut. I push it open and follow them. No one is stopping me. No one is even noticing me, somehow.

I trail them into the bright lights of a hospital. We’d entered through an underground entrance.

They are pushing the gurney and I run to keep up.

“Please!” I plead. “I don’t want to. Please. I don’t want to.”

“You can’t force her to do it!” Niko shouts. “Please, somebody help us!”

“James!” comes a booming voice. “What the hell is going on here?”

It’s the other doctor, Cutlass’s boss, Savic. He has a soldier with him. A soldier carrying a machine gun.

“Please, Doctor. I’ve… I’ve changed my mind,” I tell him.

“She signed the consent form, Dr. Savic,” Cutlass spits at the other doctor. “She signed your precious form and now it’s all legit.”

“No,” he says to me. “You didn’t sign a consent, did you? Sandy didn’t tell you?”

My answer’s in my eyes.

Cutlass grabs Dr. Savic by the arm.

“You told Sandy to tell Josie not to sign? How dare you interfere with one of my test subjects—”

Everything is still for a split second and then double doors at the other end of the hall burst open and in comes a swarm of people surrounding a gurney.

“You’ve got to do a caesarian NOW!” Binwa shouts.

“Adamson wants to examine,” one of them says.

“Well, where the hell is he?”

I have to hold on to the gurney. I have to hold on because my head is splitting open and I might fall down.

“Who’s the zombie?” one of the ER guys asks. “Orderly! Take this kid away!”

“Get her to the OR!” Binwa shouts and I stumble, falling. I am on my knees. I reach out my hand. The gurney is sliding away from me.

Someone grabs my arm. I try to stand. I have to stand.

“Astrid!” I shout. “I’m here!”

All heads are turned toward the other end of the hall.

The gurney’s zooming at us and then I hear: “Astrid? Astrid Heyman?”

Dr. Cutlass is looking at the gurney with utter shock on his face.

It is Astrid.

It’s our Astrid.

“This is the Type O teen multiple-exposure pregnancy,” one of the doctors with the gurney says. “The one who got away from us up in Quilchena.”

They start to move past us but I scream and lean over the gurney, hugging her legs.

“Astrid!” I say. “It’s me, Josie. It’s me!”

But she’s moaning and crying. She doesn’t recognize me.

I scramble to my feet and push away from the orderly.

One step, two steps and I stumble to Binwa. They’ve all stopped.

I look up.

It is Niko and Josie.

“Josie,” I say. “You cut off your hair.”

They are here. Somehow in the hospital. What?

“Dean!” Niko shouts. “How the hell did you get here?”

I want to ask the same thing but suddenly I am sobbing. It all just bursts out of me.

“Jake left us and Astrid got sick and I couldn’t find help anywhere—”

Josie hugs me and the doctor with them is staring at us openmouthed.

“I’m scared,” I say. “I think she’s going to die.”

There’s blood on my hands. It’s Dean’s. The bandage on his head is leaking blood down the back of his shirt.

Dr. Cutlass is looking at me.

“Can we go with them?” I ask him. “Our friend needs us.”

“You know Astrid ?”

There’s something going on in the doctor’s eyes. They’re clear. Present. I feel like, maybe for the first time, the man is actually with us.

“Move out of the way!” a gray-haired lady shouts. “We’ve got to get this girl into the OR!”

Dean is leaning on Niko now.

“It’s okay, Dean. She’s gonna be okay,” Niko is telling him. Dean is barely standing on his feet.

“Dr. Cutlass,” I nearly shout. “We were all trapped together in a store in Monument, Colorado, for two weeks. We’re like family.”

They’re leaving now, going down the hall and Dean stumbles after them. He calls to Niko, “Please come with me. I’m scared. I’m scared and my head’s not working right!”