Aim to Please

11 | Side Effects

Her throat was on fire; swallowing made it even worse. It also felt tight, like the skin had been stitched together. The back of her head throbbed relentlessly, her entire body felt like someone had stepped on her, and her thick mind wouldn't let her catch a memory before it disappeared into the fog. She could catch snippets of some memory, but she couldn't tell if they were real or not. It took a lot of energy to lift a hand and reach for her throat.

Something warm suddenly grabbed her hand, stopping it—it felt like another hand and belonging to a man because of the largeness and callouses. "Don't mess up your stitches, now."

She had been right about the stitches. The deep voice definitely belonged to a man, and she recognized it. An image formed in her head of a man in a green postman hat, blue eyes, stubble framing his mouth, and thin—usually stern—lips that could easily stretch into a smile. MacCready.

Aurora struggled to open her eyelids; she had to blink rapidly to clear her vision. Once she could see, her surroundings weren't familiar. She lay on a bed in a small room made predominately of metal sheets; there was a door, a staircase leading down, a couch with a blanket thrown back like someone had been sleeping under it, a chair, a dresser, and a table with books on top of it.

MacCready stood at her bedside, holding her hand. With his drawn face and strained eyes, it looked like he hadn't slept in days. He wasn't wearing his usual attire: his torn and patched duster and green long-sleeved shirt were gone. Instead, he was shirtless with his right shoulder heavily bandaged. MacCready wasn't wearing his hat either, revealing a head full of thick light-brown hair that wasn't neat and styled but messy and oily. His right thigh had been bandaged too. His disheveled appearance made him look worried, but relief slowly eased his taut features.

"Good to see those green eyes again," he said.

She started to ask him what had happened for him to be hurt again, but he quickly stopped her. "No, don't try to speak; it'll only cause you more pain. Doctor Amari said you wouldn't be able to talk for two weeks, maybe three."

Aurora stared at him—What the hell had happened? He read the question in her eyes; MacCready sighed heavily as he sat by her on the bed—he hadn't let go of her hand yet.

"It's a slight comfort that you don't remember." He told her what had happened with Henley and his gang of Gunners kidnapping her to get payback for them destroying Winlock and Barnes' waystation at Mass Pike Interchange; he elaborated by saying they had left a survivor who told Henley about them. She pointedly looked at his wounded shoulder to express her question. He told her about that too and about her rescuers.

Her eyebrows rose when he mentioned K-L-E-O had been a part of the rescue mission. The Assaultron wasn't overly fond of anyone in Goodneighbor; there had been talk of her coming up with strategies on how to off everyone.

MacCready chuckled. "Yeah, it surprised me that she wanted to come too; though I'm pretty sure she did, not out of concern for you, but because some Gunners had shot at her and she wanted to kill them." He shrugged. "Maybe she doesn't want someone else to take her joy in killing us."

When he grew silent and gave her time to reflect on what he had said, brief flashes of memory began to line up for her. She could now recall waking up in Chatham's pre-war church, a scarred Henley gloating, him beating and kicking her, then being forced to inhale some kind of chem. There wasn't a picture paired with the searing pain cutting at her throat—that must've been the barbed wire.

MacCready noticed the memories were returning. "You remember now?" His voice shook like he hated that she did.

She nodded.

"What all... what all did they do?"

Aurora made a fist and pretended to hit herself, then pointed at her foot as she slightly kicked. She brought a hand to her face and pressed down on an imaginary button like she held an inhaler and lifted a hand like a soaring airplane to display being high.