Lucas's Little sister, A Terra Nova Story. Eloa Taylor

Part 4

      I was left in the dark gasping and crying for two more days before I was scooped into too tan arms and carried to the infirmary.
    I didn't have the energy to even scream or cry anymore. I simply looked up into the unsmiling face of my brother. Once we reached the Infirmary, I looked around for Mrs. Shannon, or really any friendly face to help me. I was met with the cold, unfeeling faces of the phoenix group, and people wrapped in bloody bandages. The nurses were all a blur of running and yelling, trying to keep everyone alive. Soon, I was placed uncharacteristically gently onto a lab table next to a shelf of vaccines. 

       It was then that my brother finally decided to say something to me. "Ellie, I've shown you how cruel I can be if you don't behave. Are you ready to be an obedient little sister and stand next to your brother?" He held up a needle. "I've got something to help keep your lungs going if you do..."

      "That's not my medicine!" I said in a voice that I didn't recognize, hoarse creaky and whiny from days without water. 

       "It's not. Your medicine makes you feel strong enough to be a soldier. I only need you to be able to walk and stay awake."

        "So I am to be your doll again?"

         "If you insist on saying it like that, then, yes, I would like my doll back." Satisfied. I guess with our conversation, he simply lifts my nightgown higher on my thigh and begins wiping a spot with an alcohol wipe. Then he plunged the needle in as I gasped. He reached a hand for me as if I would want comfort from him. I suppose it was a habit at this point to hold my hand when I was being jabbed with sharp things. He had done it my entire life, IVs and needles and bone marrow harvesting. Through it all, my big brother never let go.

          I am a logical woman, and I am aware of the placebo effect. But it seemed easier to breathe once he pulled out the needle, I felt stronger, less foggy. I sat up, resting my hands against my eyes. Lucas started rubbing circles in my back, and I let him. Because I was tired of fighting.

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         "Are you hungry, Ellie Lamb? I could have someone bring you that nut butter you like, maybe some fruit?" I shook my head, but he asked a guard anyway. We'd been sitting in his office for probably an hour, an hour of him scribbling on pages in between giving orders to the soldiers. An hour of me sitting quietly on my fathers couch, trying to make sense of any of it. It seemed, from what little I could hear, that my father and some others from terra nova had switched places and were now camped in the jungle. This annoyed my brother enough that I could clearly hear every word he had said. I was supposed to be reading. The book he'd taken off my bed in my quarters sat in my lap. I stared at the girl on the cover, smiling with a crown of flowers on her head. It seems strange now to read when my friends and family were starving and afraid, and my own big brother was behind it all.

      I looked up to see my brother standing over me, patiently waiting with a frut (fruit nut) and a container of water. I took it from him, gulping down the water first, feeling some dribble on the t-shirt he gave me to replace my ratty nightgown. I was also wearing my most comfortable sweatpants that had our college logo on it, from simpler times. When it was the two of us in a dorm room reading textbooks and me trying desperately to comprehend what my brother was trying to teach me, trying desperately not to be hospitalized before finals. 

       "Can I have something to open it?" I asked quietly, not meeting his icey eyes.

        "I don't think so kiddo, nice try, though." He ruffled my hair, returning back to his work, yelling orders at his soldiers. I slammed the frut against the arm of the couch, and it split right down the middle, Lucas met my eyes with a smile.

       Within the next few hours, I was asleep on the couch curled up like a cat against it. Someone must have grabbed a blanket because when I woke hours later, I was warm and wrapped in a tan blanket, assumably from my fathers bed. I looked up to see my brother still furiously scribbling on paper. He noticed me and his face softened.

       "Sleep good, Eloa?" I nodded half heartedly. He stood up and walked over to me. "Let's get you to bed." I stood and made to lead the way before he grabbed my hand, holding it now as if to cross the street. Then, instead of walking out the door, down the stairs, and to my hut, I called home. He walked me past the office and further down the hallway to my bedroom from when we first came here. The bedroom I haven't slept in since he left. He thankfully walked me in, wished me sweet dreams, and left again. I heard the click of a lock before I had even made it a step further. My room was the same as it was that night. Pajama bottoms on the floor, books still on the shelf that I hadn't swiped and carried to my new bookshelf. My bed pressed against a corner with a stuffed dinosaur.

         I looked for a chair or shoes or anything to warn me if my brother decided to come in while I was asleep and vulnerable. I was terrified that he would join me in bed later. I didn't know how far his insanity and need for revenge went. What he was able to do with me now that he held all the power.