A Secret In Your Throat

Chapter 6

I awoke in the morning, unaware that I had even fallen asleep. The little battery powered alarm clock was beeping.
Time to go to work.
I used my rationed shower, washing the sweat and the scent of Gerard off of me. He didn't smell like cigarettes and bonfires anymore. Just... like Gerard, fresh from his own shower. Clean hair. Like a shirt he'd worn briefly, and discarded carelessly beside the bed when he decided he wanted to make love again instead.
My heart ached for that time. The happiest of my life, really. I'd loved men and women before, but never with this intensity.
Trauma bonding, he'd called it. Maybe. Or maybe we had just fit together.
The shower clicked off. My time was up. I brushed my teeth, put on deodorant. Some cherry chapstick, a treat in a trove of luxuries unearthed long ago at an empty CVS pharmacy in Denver. I'd kept a whole box of them. They still had not run out. I dressed in worn, secondhand jeans and a black shirt that read MEDIC with a red cross on the chest. I laced up my black boots and grabbed my messenger bag, stuffed my wallet in my pocket and bounded out the door.
No elevators, here. They got stuck too often when the power went out.
I passed the boarded up elevator doors with the yellow caution tape across it, and made my way quickly down the stairs.
It was daylight. I was safe. I could walk the sidewalk to the bus stop and wait with the crowd of humans, without fear of being accosted by Gerard.
His hair swinging in his face, looking so devastated by the soft yellow light of my lantern.
I stopped that thought as the bus pulled up and I climbed in. There would be another time, a time where I could be Rae and lose myself in the heartache. I pushed it aside, to think of later, like I was so adept at doing now. People in the medical center that had been set up at Lumen Field needed my undivided attention. In this crisis, though I wasn't a nurse, I was allowed more leeway to do things usually reserved for them. They weren't being picky. I had set bones, learned to make casts and fit slings and walking boots. I had stitched up several more people. I had delivered a baby. I had held hands, listened to traumas. I had made, if not friends, at least acquaintances with the other medical staff at the field. Dr. Laghari, in particular, had taken an interest in me and made me sort of an apprentice of hers.
But there was no going out after work for a drink, to unwind. Once the overnight shift arrived, they were locked in to Lumen Field, guards with weapons carrying UV bullets stationed outside. Curfew was 8pm. There was no going out until sunrise, unless it was in an ambulance.
The national guard was stationed at my apartment tower starting at sundown. They, too held UV-powered weapons.
I wondered if Gerard would come back. I wondered if he would get caught and killed. Just another smoking pile of ashes. The meaningless death of another vamp.
But I wouldn't have to kill another person I loved.
I stared at my hands as the bus slowed at my stop, almost as though Lisbeth's blood was still staining them.
I needed therapy. No joke.
I climbed down the steps, flashed my ID badge to the guard at the staff entrance, and went inside to start my 12 hour shift.
***
We buried Lisbeth's ashes when dawn broke. After that, I couldn't return to the lodge. I stayed in our cabin.
Mikey seemed to have a mild fracture in a left rib. He was lucky. The whole left side of his body could have been crushed.
I tended to him diligently, controlling his pain with the medications I'd stolen. I watched for any signs of infection, but nothing seemed wrong other than his pain. I brought him food. I taped his glasses back together. I helped him get into the bathroom. I nursed him so vigilantly it bordered on annoying, but I couldn't let Mikey die.
I still slept in the same bed as Gerard, but something had broken in me that couldn't be fixed with anything but time. Killing my best friend, though she had told me to... I was bleeding from it. I barely spoke with him. I couldn't make love with him. I loved him. I forgave him. But I couldn't forget the things that passed between us that night. The expectations of miracles I hadn't known he had of me, even when I was suffering my own tragedies.
But every night, I made the choice to share his room because I wanted him to understand I still loved him. I still loved his presence. The swift kisses to my forehead, as though he thought I might object if he lingered. The way his fingers brushed my hair as we lay face to face, unspeaking, before we fell asleep.
The silence was so painful, I thought I'd wither away from it. But I couldn't break it. I couldn't heal without it. I watched him sleeping every morning when the sun came up, light shining through his messy black hair, waiting for the day when he would pressure me into speech. Waiting for the day I knew must be coming, when he would show me he had never understood me at all.
That day... it never came.
He let me lead. He let me have my silence. He knew me. He always knew me.
One morning, when April was rolling into May, I reached over as he slept and took his hand. His head lifted immediately, and his bleary eyes found me.
"Hey," he said in a sleepy, gravelly voice. "Everything okay?"
I nodded, my heart suddenly so full I thought it might burst. He smiled at me, warmth radiating from him. I moved his arm over me and burrowed against him, my face pressed against his chest.
Cigarettes. Bonfire. Gerard.
And then our lips collided, and I was tearing desperately at his shirt, and he was almost ripping my off my shorts. Moments later he was inside me, his lovemaking so reckless and feverish, it felt like combustion.
Cigarettes. Bonfire. Gerard.
***
Then we finally heard it on the radio, when we tried the stations nightly as usual. Seattle had been held safely for months. The army had developed and deployed UV weapons, which were able to take out multiple vamps at a time.
This changed everything. With enough time... maybe they could be eradicated.
We became excited. We suddenly had a purpose - get to Seattle.
Mikey spread a map of the US out on our small dining room table, wincing and moving gingerly. He was still healing.
"Denver, north through Fort Collins and then west into Wyoming and then Utah seems to be the fastest way," he said, tracing the route with his finger, "If we drive straight through it would probably take a full twenty four hours, but we can't do that. We have to prepare. We need to have enough food, and to stock fire wood for camping." He grinned at me, "Ready to live rough again, doc?"
I rolled my eyes. He refused to call me anything else, but from Mikey, it was a term of endearment.
"I really don't think we should move you yet, Mikey. We should all be whole and well for this. What if we have to fight? Run?"
Gerard frowned a little, "They've got a point, Mikes. We can't carry you very far if we have to make a quick getaway."
Mikey pouted, "Yeah but, we could get caught here. What if that coven leader had a mate?"
We had talked about this. A lot. It was definitely still a possibility, that if she had a mate, they hadn't known where she'd ended up. She had said that their stumbling on us was a lucky mistake.
I put my hand on his arm, "I can't in good conscience move you, Mikey. Not knowing how many times we've had to run for our lives. We've been safe so far. Let's push our luck just a little further. For your sake. I can't leave you behind to be vampire chow on the road. Let's use this time to plan our route. We should have enough non-perishables to make it there."
And so we hunched over the map, and began our planning.