Hurters and Healers

10

I woke up to soft knocking on my door, something that had only happened a few times since the new rules had been enforced a month ago. The new rules had changed a lot of things, some of which actually benefited nurses. The main benefit was that there were no more night shifts or 24-hour shifts. Someone only woke me up at night if there was a fight and one of our fighters was injured, but I don't remember a fight being scheduled for tonight.

"What are you doing here? You're going to get in trouble," I said when I saw Alex standing at my door. I quickly pulled him inside before he got us both in trouble.

"How could I get in trouble, I'm in charge of everyone."

"Are you sure about that?"

"I've been given the title of leader and I'm sure as hell going to use it," he said bitterly.

"Why are you here?"

"I had to talk to you," he said calmly.

"What's so important that you couldn't wait until breakfast?"

"The fighters decided that they wanted to fight back but we needed more support so my mom talked to the other leaders, at least the ones that support us. Most of the other compounds have agreed to fight back even though a few of them only have the new rules like us," Alex explained.

When Alex's mom found out about the new rules, she immediately used some secret channel to talk to the other leaders and gain their support. Of course, not all the compounds supported us and some thought we should abide by the rules, but most of the compounds thought we should fight back. What we would do was mostly figured out, but when was still a mystery.

"Didn't all that happen a few weeks ago?" I asked.

"Yeah, but the leaders finally decided on when we should go through with it."

We heard footsteps in the hallway and decided to move further into the apartment so that we wouldn't be heard.

"Cecelia, they aren't in control of us, we are. They've never cared about what we do but now that we want to be treated like people instead of slaves they suddenly care. They don't get to choose when they do and don't care about us because we've cared about each other through everything. We take care of each other here and they're taking that away from us. They're taking away the only freedom we had and truly turning us into their slaves."

"We were never their slaves," I said.

"Aren't we? Think about how they treat us and the freedom they give us, we're essentially the government's slaves."

"But slaves were bought or traded and we were stolen," I said which made Alex smile.

"Correction, you were stolen, I was born here."

"Hey Alex, your privilege is showing. You might want to shut up while you can."

"And how exactly are you going to stop me?" He asked coming closer to me.

The only logical thing to do after that was to kiss him, so I did.

We had shared a few more kisses in the last month but not many since we were never able to spend time together anymore. I worked all day every day in the infirmary so the only time we saw each other was when he came to see me with an "injury" and at meals. We didn't have any more movie nights or talks on the roof like we did before.

"You never told me when it's happening," I said after we had separated.

"In a week. The other compounds need more training with weapons and we're trying to get more people trained, but no one knows what to do with the kids. We can't take them with us but we also don't want to risk them staying here."