The Garden of Eden (Silent Moments Series: Book 5)

Chapter 28

As the adrenaline took effect, my mother's body jolted to life, her chest heaving as she drew in a deep, ragged breath. For a moment, she seemed disoriented, her eyes darting around the room before she gently succumbed to sleep. Relief washed over me, but it was tinged with an aching sadness. The events of the day had taken a toll on all of us.

As night fell, Madi and I found ourselves seated on a small sofa in the makeshift clinic. In my pocket, I rolled around a single pill – the last one remaining from the bottle. It was a tangible reminder of my mother's struggle, a struggle I was still grappling to understand. The bunker had changed her; it had broken something in her that used to be unbreakable.

"You saved her life," Madi broke the silence, her voice soft but carrying weight. "Are you really gonna save theirs?"

I sighed, feeling the fatigue of the day weigh heavily on me. "I'm tired, Madi. Let's talk about this later."

Madi's next words were filled with a mixture of love and concern. "I love you, Kegan, but we're on the wrong side of this war."

Her words hung in the air, heavy with truth. "Maybe, but you get to live," I responded, my voice cracking with emotion.

"Living with ourselves is another story," she mumbled, a note of sadness in her voice. Then she snuggled up to me, seeking comfort in our closeness.

I wrapped my arm around her, feeling the enormity of our situation. We were caught in a conflict that tested our morals and our will to survive. The choices we had made, and those that lay ahead, were fraught with complexity and moral ambiguity. As I held Madi, I knew that no matter what the future held, I would do everything in my power to protect her, to ensure her safety in a world that was relentlessly unforgiving. In that quiet moment, with my daughter close and my mother resting, I reflected on the path we had taken. The road ahead was uncertain, but one thing was clear: we would face it together, as a family. The burden of our choices would stay with us, but so would the strength we found in each other.

***

In those quiet hours of the night, a certain level of exhaustion crept over me, the kind that felt almost like a plea for a temporary escape. It was a tiredness so profound, it bordered on a desire for spiritual dislocation, a wish to momentarily detach my soul and let it find solace somewhere peaceful. Despite my usual bravery, the relentless cycle of recovery and weariness was a burden that weighed heavily on me. I knew the morning would bring some respite, but it was the process of getting there that felt so daunting. Sleep evaded me, but in its absence, I found a small comfort in watching Madi sleep, her peacefulness providing a rare sense of tranquility in the turmoil of our lives.

"I always loved watching your sister sleep when she was young. I'm sorry I missed out on that with you," my mother's hoarse voice broke the silence, laden with regret.

"I know the feeling," I rasped, walking over to her bedside. "I thought I'd lost you."

A heavy silence filled the room before she began to speak again, her voice fragile yet determined. "I started taking the pills after ALIE. Raven's ice bath worked on my brain—"

"Mom," I interrupted gently, not wanting her to relive the painful memories. "You don't need to explain."

"Yes. I do," she insisted, her voice gaining strength. "We did things to survive. Things no human beings should ever have to do. The crops were dying, and we had no other source of protein. I made her enforce it, or everyone would have starved. It was me. It was me."

Her confession hung heavily in the air, a stark reminder of the brutal choices and sacrifices that had marked our past. Her words revealed the depth of her pain and guilt, the unbearable weight of decisions made in desperate times. As I listened, a profound empathy and understanding washed over me. The journey we had all been on was marked by survival, often at a great personal cost. In that moment, I realized the extent of her suffering and the courage it took for her to admit her struggles. It was a painful truth, but one that needed to be acknowledged and faced. We had all been shaped by our experiences, forced to make impossible choices in a world that offered no easy answers. As we sat there, united by our shared history and the scars it had left, I knew that the path to healing would be long and difficult. But it was a journey we would take together, finding strength and solace in each other's presence.