The Body #3: Rogue and Euphemia

Chapter 1 (Euphemia): Exit Strategy

"I'm glad to see those eyes," a stranger said above me.

Who are you?

I was becoming aware a little at a time.

Someone talking to me with a stethoscope around his neck. Nurse? Doctor?

Beeping. Machines.

A strange bed. Not mine.

Tubes taped my hands. Why?

And then little flickers of memories.

Bullets.

Get down!

"Calm down," that nice voice said above me, his eyes glancing at the machine. "You're OK, Euphemia."

That almost brought a smile to my face as I worked to calm myself. Only two people ever called me Euphemia and one was my grandmother.

There'd been a battle over my name at my birth, and strangely it wasn't between my parents but between my father and his mother. She insisted my parents name me after her grandmother who'd raised her, and my mother had thought it was an incredibly sweet gesture. Dad lost out and in retaliation, he'd never called me Euphemia, only Fee. My mother, probably feeling a little guilty she'd sided with her mother-in-law against her own husband, had also used the shortened version of my name.

Rogue was the other person, and he called me Euphemia or Effie, and sometimes, lady.

Rogue.

Something played at the edge of my memories. Something about Rogue.

The shooting.

Something about the shooting...Rogue throwing his body over Angelica. Angelica.

Her smiling at me as he carried her out.

The doctor was talking to me.

"...calling you my miracle patient. You flatlined in the ambulance on the way here. They revived you, and we rushed you into surgery, and your heart stopped again. You've been in a coma the last two days from the blood loss. I'm surprised you woke up this fast, to be honest."

My mouth felt dry as I tried to form words. "I was shot?"

"Yes," he said, his eyes compassionate. "The bullet nicked an artery. You're lucky to have survived -- a trauma nurse was on the scene, and she did everything right to keep you alive until the ambulance arrived. You wouldn't have made it without her."

I searched my memory but couldn't remember that. It was a blank.

That smile was the last thing I remembered.

Oh, I remembered it quite clearly. Angelica's triumphant smile as Rogue carried her away. She'd never liked me from the beginning, since Rogue started bringing me around the MC clubhouse. And over the last year and a half that I'd been with Rogue, I suspected Angelica had slowly been poisoning the other women in the MC against me. They weren't friendly any longer, even the ladies who'd been kind to me at first, and I noticed Angelica whispering, subtly nodding at me when I was around.

So I tended to stick near Rogue, unless he was talking to his brothers. Then, I would drift to the kitchen and help there. Something always needed cleaning in that disaster zone, and nobody ever seemed to want to do it, so I made that my place.

Rogue reassured me that it just took the old ladies time to warm up to newcomers (after eighteen months, I was still a newcomer?) and not to push it, that they'd come around. When I'd tried to tell him that I suspected Angelica was saying things about me, he'd assured me she wouldn't.