Shoshanna Evers - The Pulse

There was something comforting, she supposed, about falling back into old rhythms. Coming back to her old job, with a patient in a hospital bed and not on the floor of a dirty subway car. Being a nurse to this wounded man reminded her that she used to be a strong, capable woman. She could be that way again, no matter what those monsters at Grand Central did to her.

“What’s your name?” she asked softly.

The man looked at her with startlingly blue eyes. He had a handsome face, somewhere underneath the thick stubble that covered his sharp jawline and chin. “Christopher Mason. Call me Mason. Oh shit, I shouldn’t have told you that.”

The man held his head, then looked at his hands, closing his eyes when he saw the blood that came back on his fingers.

“It’s okay, Mason.” Instinct took over and she went into nurse mode. He knew who he was, so that was good. “Do you know where you are?”

“I can’t be here.” The man sat up again, obviously panicked. “They took my rats.”

Rats?

“Look at me,” she said soothingly. “I need to see your pupils.”

She peered into his eyes. In a perfect world, she’d shine a flashlight in them, but there were no flashlights. The only light she had now streamed in through the dirty glass panes of the windows. Man, he was good-looking. Too good-looking. And large.

Mason leaned forward on the cot and grabbed her wrists. “It’s you,” he said groggily.

“I’m Emily, I’m taking care of you,” she said gently. “I’m going to clean your wound. It may hurt.”

“I remember you. I saw you that day, when they picked you up. When you got brought in.”

Emily looked at him in horror. He was from the camp, he had to be. She shrank away from him, feeling her heart race. The washrag hung limply from her hand. Focus, don’t be blinded by fear.

“I remember you. When they took you away, it was me, hiding behind the cab,” Mason said, staring intently into her eyes. “Are you okay?”

She remembered him now, the man who held his finger to his lips. At the time she had assumed he was hiding from the soldiers, just like she had been.

Like she was now.

“You—you’re not one of them?” she asked, hating how weak and scared she sounded.

“No. I’ve got my reasons to hide from the law. Like you, I imagine.”

She laughed, a dry barking sound. “Not like my reason.” Quickly, she quieted herself. The less he knew about her hidden radio, the safer for both of them.

“Are you… Why are you hiding, Mason?” She had to know, as much as she didn’t want to. He was the only man around she could possibly trust—if he truly had nothing to do with the soldiers. As much as she wanted to make it on her own, it didn’t hurt to know who her friends were—and her enemies.

Suddenly, he looked at her suspiciously. “I should never have told you my name.”

“I’m sorry,” Emily whispered. “I saw the tattoo, on your arm. I thought maybe you had been in prison.”

“Do you know what they do to prisoners now, Emily?”

Emily looked at him and cocked her head. “My understanding is they let all the petty criminals go. The ones who were murderers, rapists, pedophiles and psychos they… they shot them. Killed them all so they wouldn’t take up valuable resources.”

“They kill prisoners, huh?” Mason said, staring at her intently, holding her wrists. “So what makes you think I want you spreading rumors about me being in prison?”

“I won’t tell anyone. Not a soul.”

He dropped his hands then, as if suddenly realizing what he was doing. “There’re no computers to track me. No fingerprint files. I’m a blank slate now, and I intend to start over.”

“What did you do?” she whispered.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “And that’s all you need to know. Understand?”

“Okay,” she said softly, and picked up the rag to finish cleaning his wound, grateful to have a task to keep her focused. He wouldn’t need stitches, but she’d have to check him every fifteen minutes or so for a while to make sure he wasn’t suffering from a brain injury.

Not that she could do anything for him if he was. If his head injury was truly serious, then he would just go to sleep and die. She wasn’t about to do brain surgery. She couldn’t even if she knew how.

His T-shirt was saturated with blood—scalps tend to bleed a lot. “Can you… take off your shirt?” she asked tentatively.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said. His face looked flushed, a deep pink coloring his previously pale cheeks. “I’m not—I don’t expect you to—”

She took a step back. “No! That’s not what I meant. I just—your shirt is ruined. Bloody. I can wash it.”

He turned his face from her for a moment as if trying to compose himself.

“Where you gonna wash it?” he asked as he pulled the filthy shirt over his shoulders.

She glimpsed tight abdominal muscles and an incredibly large, smooth chest before the shirt came completely off. He had a sprinkling of crinkly dark hair leading down around his navel, trailing into the waistband of his cargo pants.

Emily sighed. “I don’t know. But I bet one of the shirts I took with me from Grand Central will fit. Might be a bit tight,” she acknowledged as she ruffled through a worn backpack. “Here.”

It was definitely too small, outlining all of his muscles in stark relief. He panted as if the effort of pulling it on had overexerted him.

“I’m sleepy,” he said, lying back down on the hospital bed. “Thank you for taking care of me, Emily. I’m glad I found you.”

And then he passed out.

Emily fell asleepnext to Mason, on the floor by his hospital bed, so exhausted that even thinking about the radio hidden in her backpack wasn’t enough to keep her awake.

The following morning he was still out cold, his breath coming in shallow pants.

No, oh no. She couldn’t believe she’d let him fall asleep with that head injury… What if Mason never woke up? It shouldn’t matter to her, she knew. Thousands had died in the past year. What was one more? But there was something about him.

He terrified and excited her at the same time. That was just stupid—if she learned anything in the military camp it was that she had to see to her own needs first. And what she needed was to get the hell out of New York City.

If she didn’t, her body would be piled high amongst the corpses and burned like the others.

She tried, without luck, to revive Mason all morning. She even risked starting an IV and giving him one of the few remaining bags of IV fluid.

Nothing worked. If it was his time, she supposed, it was his time and she couldn’t do anything about it.

Please, Mason , she thought. Wake up.

Masonopened his eyes, his throat feeling raw and dry.

“Oh thank God,” Emily said, throwing her arms around him.

“Wh-what happened?”

“How do you feel?” She hovered above him, her fingers on his neck to check his pulse. She put her hand on his forehead. “How’s your head?”

Sitting up carefully, he took stock of how he felt. “I’m okay. I feel better. Fine, actually.”

She looked at him skeptically. “On a scale of one to ten, how’s your pain level?”

“Three. All that sleep did me good, I think.” He grinned at her. Now that he felt better, he could see her in a new light.

She still looked scared, tired… but beautiful. Man, she was beautiful.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, her voice wary.

Oh hell. He didn’t want to make her uneasy. God knows what she’d been through at the hands of men. He wasn’t going to be one of those.