When Darkness Falls (Ch. 4- Ch. 7)

Chapter 4
The next morning, Thomis awoke to sunlight bathing his face in warmth. He shot out of bed and, without glancing at his clock, yanked his shirt off over his head. As he flung the shirt onto the bed, he realized Sharyn had come in to the room. She looked a little flustered but quickly regained her composure and began to speak.
“Don’t bother dressing for work. The power outage spread across the city last night. They expect it to be out for a while.”
“A while? How long is that? Hours? Days? Weeks?”
“At least three days was what my boss was told. He said something about a power plant being shut down or something.”
“So we have plenty of time to eat breakfast, then.”
“No. I have to go to work.”
“But without power how can the clinic be open.”
“The clinic has power; it has solar- and wind-powered generators as backup. We will probably be quite busy since neither of the local hospitals is open to non-emergent cases right now. Can we please go eat now? Cold eggs are nasty.”
“Sure. Just let me put on a shirt.”
“You don’t have to. It’s just the two of us, Aleeya is sleeping still and I didn’t want to wake her. She was so tired last night I though she could use some sleep and…”
He’d come across the room to stand very close to her, “And?”
She drew in a deep, shaky breath and looked him in the eye, a hint of fire in her gaze, “I wanted you to myself this morning. It might be some time before we have much time to ourselves again.”
“We could spend our time in here.”
He stepped closer, his own eyes smoldering as his mind raced ahead, but just as he touched her, he saw a cold shadow of fear flick across her gaze and he reined in his overactive imagination.
She felt him fight down his desires and wished she hadn’t flinched. She knew that someday soon the fear would pass but she was growing ever more sure that she would have to confront the reason behind it head on first.
As they walked into the kitchen, she glanced at her watch and realized how little time she had to enjoy breakfast for two. The eggs were beginning to get slimy but she didn’t have enough skill with the camp stove to reheat them without burning so they ate them cold. She gave Thomis a few quick tips about using the stove and then it was time for her to leave. He walked her to the door, his arm around her waist, held her workbag for her so she could slide her arms into the straps. Then he gave her a hug and she gave him a kiss that left him breathless and wishing that time would either speed up or stop so that he could have her to himself for a while. She darted out the door, dangerously close to being late for work and he flopped down on the sofa dazed by all that had happened that morning. Just then, the door flew open and she was standing there looking flushed and chattering about the solar powered walkie-talkie that she’d left him on the windowsill. The clinic was using channel two he could reach her through the receptionist please use it only for emergencies. He started to rise to go to her when she darted back out the door at a dead run so she wouldn’t be too late for work.
An hour later, he realized just how dependent on technology he was. He sat on his sofa, staring at a blank screen because he had nothing to do. All of his work, all of his hobbies, required electricity. He might not last three days without power; he might die of boredom. Aleeya woke up about then and he amused himself, and her, by doing his best to cook her some eggs. He managed to make something edible that resembled scrambled eggs and she devoured it. It made him wonder what her food situation must have been like in her apartment. Jazen looked good, but he guessed she must have been using most of the money she had left after she paid rent to buy food for him. Even after a good night’s sleep, she looked haggard and he was concerned about her health but he figured that she was just worn out and hungry. She pleaded a need for a few more hours sleep and asked him to feed and change Jazen and could he please watch him until lunch, he might take a midmorning nap. Thomis welcomed the chance to have a distraction for the morning. She gave him Jazen’s bag of clothes and toys and things and then went back to sleep. After giving him his breakfast, Thomis decided that Jazen could probably use a bath; he’d decided that rice cereal was a good substitute for hair gel and somehow Thomis didn’t think Aleeya would be in any mood to appreciate his fashion statement later in the day. He figured that he could probably handle it; he’d helped at bath time at his sisters’ houses plenty of times.
Twenty minutes later, Jazen was clean and dry but Thomis’s bathroom was most definitely not. He put the baby own on the carpet in the living room and watched him roll around for a few minutes; sure that he was safe, Thomis quickly mopped up the huge puddles in the bathroom. When he came back into the living room, Jazen was happily sitting in the middle of the room chewing on Thomis’ mobile. Stifling the urge to curse, he quickly traded a nice teething ring for the mobile and nearly dropped it when he realized it was covered in baby drool. Jazen was already sliding across the carpet to the coffee table to get something better than the teething ring to play with. It was going to be a long morning.
A little after noon, Aleeya came out of the guest room to find Thomis and Jazen sitting on the couch reading a book. When she asked how the morning went, he lied and told her it went great. She thanked him for letting her sleep some more, she felt much better. Thomis had to agree that she looked better, but he was still concerned about her health. Her face fell when she found out that the trains wouldn’t be running for several more days. Thomis assured her that if she desperately needed to get to her mother’s he had a car, but he and Sharyn didn’t mind her staying with them. He started to get up off the couch to make lunch but Aleeya stopped him and offered to make lunch for them. She felt it was the least she could do to thank him for everything. When she went into the fridge to get fixings for sandwiches he realized that they would need to go grocery shopping before Sharyn got home for dinner because the trip the day before had only been for groceries for two people and now they were feeding three adults plus a baby. He hoped the store was open.
After lunch, Thomis mentioned that he was going to the store for groceries and Aleeya decided that she and Jazen would go with him. So they headed for the store a few blocks away. They found a large, angry group of people in the parking lot and the store manager up a ladder with a bullhorn. The manager was making announcements of some kind so Aleeya and Thomis moved closer to hear better.
“Once again, I’m going to ask you all to step back. You need to understand that the power outages have put a strain on all of us. We here at Green Grocerman are committed to making sure that everyone gets the food that they need. To that end, we will be distributing vouchers for our various departments as you enter the store. Vouchers will be given out based on family size. You may only ask for vouchers for one more person than is present without verifiable proof of the existence of the extra people. Each voucher book will contain three meat vouchers, good for one three ounce serving, three vouchers for eggs, good for two eggs, six vouchers for non-milk dairy products, good for one serving, eight vouchers for vegetables, good for one serving of either fresh or canned, ten bread vouchers, good for one slice or roll, and a dozen miscellaneous vouchers for baking supplies and the like. Vouchers may not be traded and the ability to fill every voucher is not guaranteed— Hey, stop!”
The crowd surged forward, knocking the man off the ladder and charging the door. In the blink of an eye, the crowd became an angry mob and Aleeya and Thomis were caught right in the middle of it.
A man burst through the doors of the clinic, breathless and shouting about a riot breaking out down the street. Sharyn tried to get specifics from him but he kept telling her he didn’t have time to talk he needed to tell the police. As fast as he’d entered the clinic, he left heading down the street towards the police station. Sharyn stepped into her roll as disaster coordinator and began barking out orders to prepare the clinic for the worst-case scenario, a mass-casualty incident they weren’t equipped to handle.
Thomis and Aleeya had managed to fight their way through the ever-expanding crowd to an area they felt was safe, the edge of the sidewalk, huddled against the building. Out of nowhere, a heavy object felled Aleeya; the momentum of the impact throwing her unconscious form out into the seething crowd where Thomis quickly lost sight of her. Thomis looked down and realized that a bookend thrown from the apartment above them had hit Aleeya. Apparently, the occupants of the surrounding buildings had decided to join the riot without risking their own necks. Thomis had a moment to be grateful for the fact that Aleeya had given him Jazen to hold when the bookend’s mate made contact with his left arm with an audible, and excruciatingly painful, snap. He had to get away from this building and he had to find Aleeya. Using the space between the chest carrier and his body as a makeshift sling for his injured arm, he ducked into the crowd his eyes to the ground.
The first casualties began to stumble into the clinic. Most of them were people injured trying to get away from the riot. These first patients had mostly minor injuries, abrasions and lacerations requiring minimal time to treat. Sharyn was hopeful that this would be the extent of the injuries, and then the first serious casualty came through the doors.
He found her lying face down in the middle of the street, muddy footprints visible across the back of her clothes, bloody ones spreading out from the puddle around her head. At first glance, he was sure she was dead, but a break in the crowd allowed him to crouch next to her and ascertain that she was still breathing, shallowly. Fearing for her life, he grabbed the next guy who ran past.
“Hey!”
“I need you to help me!”
“Why should I?”
“If this was your mother, you’d want someone to help her wouldn’t you?’
“She can’t be your mother! Oh…” his voice trailed off as he caught sight of Jazen sobbing against Thomis’s chest.
“That’s right she’s his mom and he needs her.”
“Is she even alive?”
“Just barely. I’d carry her myself, but I’ve got him plus the bastard that knocked her out broke my arm.”
“Where are we taking her?”
“Umm…” he stood up and glanced about, “how about down that alley? It looks like it’s out of the battle-zone for right now.”
The guy, a football player for the local university, gently rolled Aleeya over and then effortlessly picked her up. The four of them broke through the crowd heading for the relative safety of that small alley.
Sharyn was taking a short breather in the supply closet, when the walkie on her waistband crackled to life.
“This is Thomis Fisher. I need to speak to Sharyn Lyons, it’s an emergency.”
“Thomis, what’s wrong?”
“Ryn? We went out for groceries and got caught in a riot…”
“Who’s hurt?”
“Aleeya.”
“How bad?”
“Bad. Some nut dropped a bookend out his window and she caught it in the head.”
“Conscious? Breathing? Bleeding?”
“No, just barely and pretty bad. Ryn, the hit knocked her out into the crowd. It looks like she got stepped on quite a bit.”
“Front or back?”
“Back. Her face is kind of mashed up from hitting the pavement though.”
“Can you get her here?”
“We’ll have to cut through the alleys but I think so.”
“How long?”
“Ten maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Watch her carefully. If she starts vomiting or convulsing, stop, lay her down and let me know. Also watch to make sure she keeps breathing.”
“Got it. Be there as soon as we can.”
The football player, Greg, had wrapped his t-shirt around Aleeya’s head to slow the bleeding and a sweatshirt from his backpack around her neck to keep her head as still as possible. He seemed to know what he was doing so Thomis just watched as he placed Aleeya’s left arm around his neck and effortlessly picked her up from the ground. They set off at a brisk pace, Thomis leading the way through a network of back alleys. Ten minutes later, they were walking through the doors of the clinic. Sharyn was waiting in the lobby with a gurney. As Greg laid her gently on the gurney, her limp form stiffened and as they wheeled her into a treatment room, Thomis could see them battling her now jerking form.
It seemed like an eternity that Thomis sat in the lobby waiting for word. He was surprised that Greg, a total stranger, stayed to see how bad Aleeya was hurt. The two men got to talking and Thomis found out that Greg was a pre-med student and a trained paramedic, not at all was he was expecting from a football player. Later in the conversation, Greg confessed that all though he hadn’t realized it at first; he’d known Aleeya in high school. He was staying because he knew she didn’t have any family to look out for her.
“No family? Are you sure?”
“Yep. Her mom died of cancer our senior year of high school and her dad died before she was born. I assumed you knew. She’s your wife isn’t she?”
“No. Sharyn and I gave her and Jazen a place to stay after she and I were stuck on the same subway train last night. She told us she was on her way to her mother’s because she couldn’t afford her apartment anymore. I wonder where she was going.”
“Not sure. She stayed with my family to finish her senior year but when we left for separate colleges, she dumped me and told me she never wanted to see me again. She said something about starting over and leaving painful memories behind.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. I didn’t even know she was back in the city until today. I wonder where Jazen’s father is.”
“Is there a chance…”
“That he’s mine? No, it’s been almost two years since I last saw Aleeya and Jazen isn’t even a year old yet. I’m guessing it’s someone she met when she was at college in Colorado. I wonder why she came back to the city.”
Sharyn emerged from the treatment room, a troubled look on her face. Greg jumped to his feet.
“How is she?”
“She’s reasonably stable, right now. The good news is that falling face forward protected most of her internal organs from serious damage. She has several broken ribs, but no apparent lung punctures. We have her on a respirator right now because the swelling in her brain is affecting her ability to breath. A neurosurgeon whose wife works here is on his way down to assess her skull fracture. She will need to be moved to a bigger facility for surgery.”
“Will she live?”
“Assuming the power comes back on soon, the odds are pretty good she’ll survive. There will be some brain damage and it may be years before she’s fully recovered but it could have been much worse.”
Jazen awoke from his nap then and spotting Sharyn, who he had become quite attached to in the short time he’d known her, he began to bounce around in his carrier, jostling Thomis’s arm. Sharyn looked at Thomis with alarm, realizing he must be hurt, as his face blanched from the pain. She tried to slide his arm out from behind the carrier to look at it, but it was massively swollen and the pain almost brought Thomis to his knees. After conferring with Greg for a minute, she tried again. This time, she held the front of the carrier as Greg released the straps from the back. Greg was there to support Thomis as the carrier was lifted away and his injured arm swung free. Thomis blacked out when his arm smacked against the wall.
Chapter 5
When he came around, he was lying in a hospital bed. His head felt like someone had replaced his brain with a pillow that was too large for the inside of his head. As he lay in bed trying to think, he realized his head wasn’t the only thing that felt off. He looked over at his right arm, encased in fiberglass, and remembered the events of (he glanced out the window to see the sun rising) the day before and wondered how Aleeya was. He looked over to see Sharyn sleeping in a chair beside his bed. Holding his right arm tightly against his body, he slid out of bed and woke her with a gentle kiss. She smiled up at him, and then her expression turned serious as she slid into her role as a nurse and ordered him back into bed.
“How’s Aleeya?”
“She came out of surgery about two hours ago. The neurosurgeon thinks that her level of permanent brain damage should be minimal but every person is different and only time will tell.”
“Is she in better shape than she was yesterday?”
“She’s still on a respirator and the doctors really don’t expect that situation to change much in the next couple of days. They expect it to be longer than that before she regains consciousness.”
“I think she may be with us for a while.”
“Greg filled me in on the truth last night. He seems as though he would gladly care for her and Jazen, but I can’t say as I feel that a college student has the time to care for a seriously injured women and a young child.”
“I wonder if we could find space for the both of them.”
“Let’s wait and see what the future brings.”
“Have you heard anything about the riot?”
“With the power still out, there isn’t any news, but the nurses here come in from several different places in the borough so hospital scuttlebutt is almost as good as the NY Times. The gist of it is that several riots broke out yesterday, mostly centered around grocery stores. They spread pretty rapidly and the mayhem continued all night. The situation on the streets is horrendous and it doesn’t look like the cops are going to be able to get it under control any time soon. The other thing I heard was that food rationing is now mandatory.”
“You know that things will never be the same and that they are only going to get worse from now on.”
“Yeah, I was thinking that maybe we should go back to my apartment building and see if we can find that guy I told you about after the first blackout. He seemed to have an idea of what was happening.”
“Sounds like a good idea. Do you know when they plan on letting me out of here?”
“The doctor will probably be around sometime after breakfast to clear you for release. They only kept you overnight because they had to set your arm surgically.”
Sure enough at about ten that morning the doctor came around. He checked to make sure that Thomis wasn’t developing an infection and set a follow up appointment for later in the week. Then he signed the release papers. Sharyn helped Thomis into his clothes, including a new shirt she’d picked up for him at the gift shop because they had had to cut the one he’d been wearing off the night before. A nurse came and tried to escort them down to the front entrance. Sharyn had to explain that they needed to stop on the Neurological floor to check on someone. She also wanted to pick up Jazen because she was sure that Greg would rather spend the day without him.
Greg was just waking when Sharyn tapped on the doorframe of Aleeya’s room. The hospital had run out of cots the night before so he’d had to cram his linebacker-sized frame into a set of chairs that were more like quarterback sized. The effect was both comical and touching, especially with Jazen nestled in the crook of his arm sleeping peacefully. The lack of lighting made it difficult to see who was at the door and Sharyn startled him when she spoke, he reflexively squeezed Jazen closer to him and woke him up. The baby’s wail startled Greg further and he was most grateful when Sharyn reached for Jazen to comfort him. She had him settled again in a few minutes. Thomis was struck by how natural Sharyn looked holding a baby. She tussled his soft brown curls and tucked him into his carrier. She explained to Greg where she and Thomis would be for the day and that they would keep Jazen with them to give him a break. She handed him a walkie-talkie like the one she’d given Thomis the day before, she’d found a large supply of extras in a closet at the clinic the night before. She explained that it was set to a different frequency than the one the clinic was using and she was the only other person with one set to that frequency in the area. He was to let her know immediately if there was any change in Aleeya’s condition, better or worse. Greg still looked exhausted so Sharyn and Thomis ducked out and let him get back to sleep.
Sharyn’s old building was much closer to the hospital than Thomis would have thought. It meant that his apartment was going to be quite a hike when they had to walk back there to sleep that night. There was no doorman or security system at the door so they just walked into the lobby and headed for the stairs. Sharyn had lived on the tenth floor and she was pretty sure that the stranger she’d talked to that night had been about two floors below her, but to be on the safe side she thought they should start looking for him on the seventh floor. Thomis wasn’t sure what they were looking for. He doubted that this mystery man would have a sign on his door that said,
“Ask me about the blackouts.”
What ever Sharyn was looking for it wasn’t on the seventh floor, so they headed back to the stairs to search the eighth. As they opened the door on the eighth, Sharyn saw him. It was quite obvious that he was on his way out; not just of the building, but of the city as well. He had a large backpack strapped to his back with what looked like the majority of his belongings stuffed in it.
“Sir? I don’t know if you remember me, but we spoke the night of the first blackout. I used to live on the tenth floor. You said to come and see you when I wanted to know more about what the blackouts meant.”
His steely blue eyes met hers and, for an eternally long moment, Sharyn had the feeling that he was turning her inside out and examining what he found in the dark, dusty corners of her soul. It was almost as though he was gauging her worthiness, then he turned the same measuring gaze on Thomis. Seeming satisfied with what he found in them, he answered Sharyn.
“I do remember you. I heard that you disappeared a few weeks later. Shortly after your disappearance, a vile young man came around banging on doors looking for you. About the blackouts, I assume that you’ve done research of your own?”
“Yes, Thomis and I dug up what we could in recent weeks. We were hoping that you had some concrete information, because without clearance from OPEC the statistics we need to prove our theories are inaccessible.”
“I believe that you are on the right track with your current theories. The numbers I have are very old. They’re based on conjectures and theories a group of us developed before your parents were born. Current events seem to be proving them to be fairly accurate. You’re welcome to a copy, but I caution you against publicizing their existence. The current administration is using the time-honored theory that ignorance is bliss and they won’t appreciate anyone trying to inform the public.”
“Thank you, Mr.…”
“My name is unimportant. I have just one more piece of advice for you. As soon as you can, get out of this city.”
With that, he brushed passed them in the hallway and disappeared down the stairs. Sharyn had a feeling that they had not seen the last of him.
Chapter 6
Sharyn and Thomis left the building as quickly as possible. The knowledge that Ron had been lurking around made both of them very uncomfortable. They headed back towards Thomis’s apartment, thirty city blocks was going to take some time to cover. Sharyn clutched the file the old man had given her close afraid that she would lose it and with it any chance of figuring out what was going on. They’d only gone a few blocks when Sharyn heard Greg calling her. It took a second to realize who it was and where the voice was coming from. She and Thomis found a seat in a bus shelter while Greg updated her on Aleeya’s condition. He was optimistic because the doctors were talking about trying to wean her off the respirator, saying that the swelling in her brain was beginning to diminish. He was worried that they didn’t have any idea if she would wake up though. Sharyn assured him that Aleeya was making very good progress. She let him know that she and Thomis were headed back to his apartment to get stuff. Did he need anything? She promised him a book or two to read and a place to sleep if he decided not to stay at the hospital that night.
Blocks later, Jazen began to cry from hunger and Sharyn noticed that Thomis was looking a bit worn. She pointed out a bus shelter and they stopped for a break. Sharyn took Jazen out of his carrier and pulled out a container of baby food that she’d gotten from the hospital and sat him next to her on the bench. She offered Thomis an energy bar, which he took eagerly. Jazen devoured the turkey and rice meal with little fuss or mess; he must have been very hungry. Sharyn wiped his face with a wet wipe and tucked him back in his carrier. She pulled a second energy bar from her pocket; feeding Jazen had made her realize how hungry she was. Thomis seemed refreshed when they stepped back out of the shelter a half an hour later and Sharyn had to admit that she felt energized. They were half way to the building and it was still early in the day.
As they approached the building, Thomis began to wonder what they were going to do for food until the power came back on.
“Sharyn, do we have any food at the apartment?”
“Sure, we went grocery shopping a few days ago.”
“I mean besides that because some of it is probably spoiled already and there wasn’t a lot left yesterday. That’s why Aleeya and I were out when the riot broke out.”
“I have some canned and dried supplies stored away, not only because I was worried about having some if we had an extended power outage, but also because it’s habit. Growing up where bad winter storms can leave you isolated for days, stockpiling food staples is something you learn at a young age. Getting water might be the only problem.”
“It just occurred to me that food might be a problem. I hope that other people have thought ahead as well, though after yesterday’s events I have my doubts.”
Thomis really admired Sharyn for planning ahead. There were times that he couldn’t imagine what he would do without her.
It was mid-afternoon when they made it to the apartment. Thomis looked beat and Sharyn suggested he take a short nap while she made them lunch. He refused saying that she had to be just as tired as he was, a nap could wait until after lunch. When they tried to nap though they encountered a small problem, Jazen had slept off and on the entire morning and was now eager to play. Someone was going to have to stay awake with him. Fortunately, Jazen managed to exhaust himself in about an hour and they all settled down for a nap. Both totally worn out, neither Sharyn nor Thomis noticed that they fell asleep in the same bed.
Thomis awoke an hour later and was quite confused. He opened his eyes and found himself staring at a head of jet-black hair and for a moment, he couldn’t figure out who was in bed with him. His mind jumped first to Althea, his late wife, but while her hair had been dark, it was more of a rich chestnut. Then, he snapped back to the present and remembered that he and Sharyn had fallen into bed together for a nap. Trying hard not disturb her, he stretched up to make sure that Jazen was still asleep on the floor. He wasn’t but he was still lying quietly, so Thomis saw no reason to move him just yet. He wanted to see how Sharyn would react to him while she was still asleep. He brushed aside her hair and gently kissed the scars on her neck. He was pleasantly surprised when instead of pulling away; she snuggled closer and turned her face towards him. He continued pepper her neck with soft kisses working his way to her mouth. By then she was awake and she looked him straight in the eye as her arms wrapped around him and her head tilted slightly to better meet his lips. Hands were working shirts off when Jazen decided that he’d watched the dust mites float through the sunbeams long enough. He rolled over, sat up and began creeping over to the bed where things looked a lot more fun. He pulled himself up on the edge of the mattress and Sharyn became aware of him when the spit-covered fingers he’d been sucking made contact with the bare skin of the small of her back. She pulled back enough from Thomis to glance over her shoulder to meet the curious gaze of a set of brilliant blue eyes just peeking over the edge of the bed. At about the same moment, Thomis realized that Sharyn was no longer actively engaged in canoodling and he looked up to see what had distracted her and mentally smacked himself upside the head for not remembering that Jazen would not lay on the floor forever. He looked at Sharyn ready to apologize for stepping over any boundaries she might feel that he’d crossed and was shocked when she gave him a sultry little smirk, suggestively raised her eyebrows, and said,
“Maybe we can pick up where we left off the next time it’s just the two of us.”
The expression on his face made her laugh as she slid off the bed, tugged her shirt back on, picked up Jazen and left the room. She really couldn’t blame him, her reaction was in sharp contrast to the first time he’d kissed her a few days ago and completely opposite of that awful night nearly two months before when he first made his move. How was he to know that she had made a conscious decision the night before as she sat in the surgical waiting room to open herself up to the opportunity he had presented her. She needed to prove to herself that every man was not like Ron and even if what she had with Thomis was a fleeting thing she was going to make the most of it. She only hoped that her fears would stay firmly locked away and not interfere with her plans.
As Sharyn changed Jazen and fussed in the kitchen preparing dinner, Thomis dug into the folder of information that they’d received from that strange man in Sharyn’s old building. He’d been right in saying that some of the information was out of date, the fuel consumption rates for cars were skewed by the increases in fuel efficiency that manufacturers had built into newer models in recent years. They were not as wrong as they could be because there were many more cars in use than there had been when the data was initially compiled. Thomis was astounded by how much information was in the folder and wondered again, who the man was and how he and his friends had managed to gain access to so much highly guarded information. He considered himself a competent hacker but prior to the outage he’d been smacking his head against the wall of OPEC security for a month and hadn’t even dinged it. These guys had been either very good or much more persistent than he was. They had every scrap of information on oil production and consumption that was available at the time. The extrapolations were amazing. They astounded him and at the same time, they infuriated him. The government must have similar information and they had probably had it for just as long as this information had existed and yet they’d done very little about the problem and they hadn’t let the American public know that there was even a problem. If anything, they encouraged the public to think that petroleum products would last forever. He was astounded that anyone who knew the problem existed would be silent. It didn’t just affect cars, as had been the common misconception for decades, it was about to take the world out at its knees. The global economy was being severely impacted by the widespread outages and it the near future it would cease to exist. Yet when he’d been able to watch world and local news, there was never a mention of the problem.
His anger boiling up inside him, he stalked across the apartment and tossed the folder of information on the counter in front of Sharyn.
“You have to read this.”
“As soon as I finish preparing dinner.”
“You really need to read it now.”
“Is it going to change if it sits in the folder for five more minutes?”
“…Well…no but I really think you should read it now.”
“It’s going to have to wait. While you were over there getting worked up over numbers that you can do nothing about, Greg called on the walkie and asked if he could stay here tonight. They need the extra space in Aleeya’s room for more casualties that are coming in from the continued rioting in parts of the city.”
“How’s he getting here? It’s too late to walk and you can’t drive the car to get him and obviously neither can I.”
“The hospital has a van that they are using as a shuttle for anyone that really needs it and apparently the city has pressed the cabs into a free shuttle service by providing free gas and food ration coupons. He should be here any minute. You need to put that information away now because I’m not sure if he can handle any more crises right now.”
When he returned from tucking the folder away in his dresser, Greg was sitting on the couch playing with Jazen. Seeing him with Jazen brought Sharyn’s earlier promise to Thomis’s mind. He sidled up behind her and whispered in her ear,
“Does this mean it will be ‘just the two of us’ tonight?”
She blushed and nodded, remembering what she’d said earlier. She was nervous but willing to ‘jump in with both feet’. She was going to try to put her experiences with Ron behind her and give Thomis a chance to prove that all of his promises to her were true.
“Greg, how is Aleeya doing?”
“She’s breathing on her own and her latest EEG showed a considerable increase in brain activity. Her prognosis is good and they think that she will wake up and it will probably be soon.”
“Her recovery thus far has been truly amazing but, you do realize that surviving this injury is only the first step in a long battle and that when she wakes up she probably won’t be the girl you remember.”
“I know that she will be different, but I’m grateful that fate gave me a second chance with her.”
They finished their dinner in silence and after dinner, Greg excused himself and Jazen, with the excuse that the shuttle would be back for him early in the morning. He asked if it would be all right if he took Jazen with him in the morning because the doctors thought that Aleeya might respond to him. Sharyn agreed that it was possible and pointed out that he had as much right to take Jazen with him, maybe more.
After Greg and Jazen retired to the guest room, Thomis seemed eager to pick up where he and Sharyn had left off that afternoon. She put the brakes on, asking to see the information he’d begged her to look at before dinner. Grumbling, he went to the bedroom and brought the folder back out. Sharyn read it over and he watched her get just as incensed as he had earlier. After reading the information, she seemed ready to storm Washington and demand an answer. After reminding her that Greg and Jazen were sleeping in the next room, he encouraged her to help him think of ways to better their situation now. What had happened in the past was over and done with and there was nothing they could do to change what the government had done and was doing, they could only prepare to pick up the pieces when the world fell apart as it was clearly doing. She acknowledged the fact that first and foremost, they needed to get out of the city just as the strange man they’d talked to earlier had suggested. Without power, the city would become total anarchy and most of the buildings would become death traps in the growing summer heat. He reminded her that they would have to wait for Aleeya to get out of the hospital. She informed him that the hospital would probably release her as soon as she was able to take nourishment by mouth because the on going riots were filling most of the hospitals beyond their capacity under the best of circumstances and to well beyond the capacity that their emergency generators could handle. She would then become their responsibility. They formulated a plan and picked a location to ‘evacuate’ to when things got too bad in the city. Thomis wasn’t ready to abandon the city yet, hopeful that the power would come back on soon and they would have more time to prepare. In the event that they had to leave before they had the time to prepare better, Sharyn suggested they head towards an alternative community that her boss had mentioned in passing. She hoped that they would have the ability to help care for Aleeya. Together they compiled a list of basic supplies. It wasn’t until Thomis, yawned that either of them realized how long they had been working. He grumbled that they’d wasted most of the time they had together that day on future plans. Sharyn reminded him that planning for the future was never wasted time and then she grinned and told him she had a surprise.
“What?”
“The clinic has given me a few days off to take care of you, so with Greg and Jazen gone at least part of tomorrow, we will have plenty of time together.”
“I need to be taken care of?”
“Definitely, and I would be shirking my duty as a nurse if I didn’t ‘take care’ of you to the fullest extent of my abilities.”
“Really…”
“Yes, and as your nurse, I think that it definitely time for me to put you to bed. Off we go.”
Thomis was amazed by how she had taken charge of the situation, he found it infinitely more arousing than the submissive person she’d been earlier that day. A part of him thought that it was making her more comfortable to be the one in charge, but most of his thoughts were centered on how far she was going to take this naughty nurse scenario.
After they entered the bedroom, she closed and locked the door behind them. Then she pushed him down onto the bed.
“As a responsible nurse, I should take your temperature to ensure that you aren’t feverish. A fever could be a sign of a dangerous infection.”
She kissed him hard on the mouth but pulled away just as he was beginning to enjoy it.
“Definitely feverish. We need to remove some of these clothes of yours to cool you down.”
She straddled him and worked his shirt off over his head. She allowed her hands to roam all across his firmly muscled chest and back in a truly thorough exam. She kissed him again, this time it was long and fiercely passionate. His good hand had just begun to work at untucking her t-shirt from the waistband of her pants, when she pulled away again. He was afraid that she’d begun to have second thoughts about the whole thing.
“I do believe that your fever is highly contagious because I am most definitely burning up.”
As she finished saying this, she pulled her shirt off over her head, in the process freeing her hair from its ponytail and sending it cascading across her shoulders. He twined his fingers through her hair and let them slide down to the base of her neck. He pulled her down until their lips met. She met his fiery kiss with one of her own and the time for games was over. The flame of desire they’d kindled earlier in the day burst into a full fledged conflagration that threatened to consume them both. There were no clever lines exchanged as the rest of their clothes were quickly shed.
Chapter 7
Sharyn woke the next morning to the sound of the door shutting as Greg and Jazen left to take the shuttle to the hospital. Thomis was still asleep so she allowed herself a few moments of quiet reflection, as she lay nestled against his chest. She found that she had no regrets from her actions of the previous night. She colored a bit at the thought of what she and Thomis had done, not from regret or embarrassment but from sheer amazement at the reaction he had elicited from her. She was satisfied that he was nothing like Ron. Ron could not even hold a candle to the man she was currently lying beside. She was afraid that she had fallen in love with this man she hardly knew. She was sure that there could not be a worse time in the history of man to be starting a new relationship, but that couldn’t be helped things happen when they happen.
Thomis awoke a few moments later amazed that Sharyn hadn’t bolted at some point in the night. He was sure she would want to talk, but he had no idea what it was she wanted to talk about.
“Do you realize that I know almost nothing about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you about Ron but I know nothing about your past. So tell me have you ever been married?”
She was stunned when Thomis quietly said,
“Yes, her name was Althea.”
“Was?”
“She died almost five years ago.”
“I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, you’re right. You told me the entire painful story of you and Ron. You deserve to hear about Althea. First, it is my fault that she’s dead…”
“How?”
“I used to be a reporter. I was good at digging up the dirty facts about governments and things. You remember that civil war down in Columbia four years ago. I was down in Bogotá about a year before it escalated into full-scale war. The paper I was working for assured me that it would be safe in the capitol, so, because it was a long-term assignment, I brought Althea with me. We’d only been married a year or so and hated the thought of being separated for the six months I was scheduled to be down there. We rented a small house in a decent neighborhood and I started nosing around government affairs, especially those dealing with the drug cartels. Someone had led the paper to believe that the government was working hand in hand with the cartels to ship drugs into the US. I was just digging for paperwork, incriminating memos and such. I didn’t try to arrange any face to face meetings with either group or try to do anything dangerous. Things started to get rough about a month after we got down there. People following Althea in the marketplace, calling the house and hanging up repeatedly when she was home alone, strangers whispering threatening things as they brushed past her in the crowd; it was nothing was what she kept telling me. I shouldn’t concern myself with her wellbeing, she knew how to take care of herself, I was there to do a job. She kept one important fact from me though. She knew that if she told me we would have been out of Bogotá on the very next flight and she didn’t want me to risk my career for my family. Right after we arrived in Colombia, Althea found out that she was pregnant. She decided to keep it from me until there was no way to hide it any longer.”
“She probably figured that you would find the information quickly and get out of there in less than six months and never be the wiser.”
“A fine theory except that by the time she found out she was almost three months pregnant. She’d blown off her short bout of morning sickness as a stomach bug, I’m still not sure why she waited so long to see the doctor though. Anyway, I was too busy nosing around where I shouldn’t have been to notice. I took her word that she was safe and I will regret the decision to do so for the rest of my life. To this day, I am unsure who decided that I need to be dealt with, but the decision was made. The thing is that I had enough information already; I was just on such a roll that I kept digging determined to find out as much as I could, convinced that I would be the hero who ended the war on drugs. About halfway through our six-month stay, Althea decided that we needed a vacation and booked a trip to the States for a week. We didn’t go home to see our families though, we went to South Padre Island instead. I knew that something was up with her because she would never pass up the opportunity to visit her mother. I started to pay closer attention to her, to the way she moved and how her wardrobe had changed since our move to Colombia, to her eating habits and how she now preferred that I hold her from behind. I was getting wise to her secret and figured that she had her reason. I wasn’t convinced though, that my loving wife would keep something so important from me. She had though, because she told me, moments after we settled into our cabin, that she was just about six months pregnant. I was furious and I actually asked her if it was mine. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was apologizing for them, swearing that I would never think that she could be unfaithful I just didn’t understand how she could hide something like that from me for so long. Her first words were that she hadn’t found out until we got to Colombia and she didn’t want me to make her go home. She couldn’t bear being separated from me. I asked if she was seeing a doctor and she assured me that she was and that he was teleconferencing with her doctor at home. Everything was fine. I really wanted to put her on a plane and ship her home to her parents where she would be safe, but she convinced me that she was safe in Bogotá. A week later events would prove her wrong. The dumb thing was that I could have come back to the city directly from South Padre, but I believed that I had some loose ends to clean up in Colombia. Two days before we were scheduled to leave, I came home early and found the door ajar. I knew something was wrong. I raced in and found Althea laying on the kitchen floor, shards of the dishes she’d been packing littering the floor around her, a tourniquet still tied around her arm, the nearly empty syringe still stuck in her vein.”
“She was dead?”
“No, they’d only injected her with most of the cocaine solution they’d intended to kill her with. It was enough, combined with her pregnancy, for her to suffer a massive stroke. The doctors in Colombia stabilized her enough for me to bring her home to the States. At first, I was convinced that she would recover, that the doctors in New York would work some kind of miracle and I would have my wife back. She did seem to get better for a while. She regained consciousness though not in a meaningful way. Her eyes would follow me around the room but there was no spark of recognition in them. Our child killed her in the end though. In addition to the stroke, the massive dose of cocaine had severely weakened her heart. The doctors advocated terminating her pregnancy to give her the best chance of survival, but I couldn’t do it. Our child had meant so much to her and in turn to me that I wanted it to survive. A few weeks after the incident, Althea went into preterm labor. This posed a real problem for the doctors. She was too weak to deliver naturally and too weak for the anesthesia necessary for a Caesarean. They informed me that either way the birth would probably kill her so I consented to the C-section. She passed away mere moments after they delivered our daughter, Anjeleen.”
“You have a daughter?”
“I had a daughter for about three hours. Besides being three months premature, Anjeleen’s heart had been destroyed by the same cocaine that killed her mother. There was nothing the doctors could do for her.”
“I’m sorry that I even asked. There was no reason for you to have to dredge up such painful memories. Forgive me for hurting you.”
“Strangely enough, as painful as it was, I’m glad I told you. It’s relieving for it to all be out in the open.”
“Have you ever talked about it with someone before?”
“You mean like a grief counselor? No. I tried going to one of those support groups for grieving spouses a few months after she died, but most of the people there had lost a spouse to illness that they just couldn’t understand what I was going through. My boss at the paper published the story I wrote with a note about how finding the information had cost me my family. I wanted to go back down and find out who ordered her death, but the State Department refused to allow it saying that vigilantism would only make the US’s diplomatic relations with Columbia more strained. They ran an investigation but turned up no conclusive evidence. The civil war wiped out all of the records buildings in Bogotá and most of the members of the government at that time were killed. Without knowing who ordered her death, I’ve always felt unable to move past it, I’ve spent the better part of the last five years mourning my family, meeting you has helped me to move past that.”
“Why did you give up being a journalist? It sounds like you were very good.”
“I tried to go back a few weeks after Althea died but I felt like I couldn’t trust my bosses at the paper. It felt as though they had lied to me about the safety of my trip to Colombia and that they were responsible in part for Althea’s death. I tried switching papers, but I couldn’t get over the feeling that my choice of jobs had destroyed my life. I gave up the career of my dreams and bounced around from lame office job to lame office job until I found a place I could be comfortable and worked on a new career. I’ve been with this current company two and a half years and I’ve found that I enjoy what I do there.”
“I’m glad you settled there or I would never have met you. I just wish that the circumstances that brought you there had been better. I can’t imagine what you thought that day you found my apartment door ajar.”
“I was sure something awful had happened to you and I was so relieved when I found you crying in your kitchen. I hate to change the subject, but can we get breakfast now? I’m starving.”
“Breakfast might be nice, let me find some clothes and I’ll see what I can dig up.”
Sharyn looked about the bedroom and found her robe, which she slipped on before rifling through the clothes in the closet. After she dressed, she went to the kitchen and rummaged through what supplies they had left to come up with breakfast. She found some powdered egg and the last of the bread; there was some orange juice in the fridge that was still good. She combined the egg, orange juice and a cup of water; dipped the bread in the mixture and fried it for Orange French Toast. Thomis was suitably impressed that she’d made a decent meal out of the bits they still had in the cupboards. They would have to brave the crowds later to get ration coupons and food.
They were in the middle of eating breakfast when the walkie crackled to life. It was Greg; something was up with Aleeya. Sharyn didn’t ask for details, she told Greg that they would be down there as soon as possible. Thomis looked at her, befuddled when she grabbed his car keys and headed for the door.
“Who’s driving the car?”
“I am. Come on.”
“But you can’t drive.”
“I never said that. I said that I don’t drive and it’s true that I don’t have a New York license but I think that the cops are much too busy to stop me.”
It took Sharyn almost twice as long as Thomis felt that it should have taken to get to the hospital. She didn’t look at him as they entered the front doors, she knew he was annoyed with her, he had been for a while. She knew she’d been very timid driving but it had been a while since she’d driven last and she thought she’d done a decent job getting them there in one piece. She refused to justify her actions to him.
Sharyn’s jaw dropped as she entered Aleeya’s hospital room. Greg had a huge smile on his face and Aleeya looked at her.
“You’re awake! Greg, why didn’t you say so when you contacted us?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise. She was actually awake when we got here this morning. The doctor’s have been doing tests for the last two hours to see how much damage has been done. There is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that they don’t think that most of the damage is permanent. The bad news is that right now she’s still in pretty bad shape. Her cognitive abilities seem to be mostly intact, but they were hampered in their ability to perform the tests because the largest part of the damage seems to be to the motor and speech centers in her brain. They said that it will be a very long time before she can live on her own again.”
“She will recover and I think that it was wrong of the doctors to try to estimate how long it will take, everyone is different. How much longer do they want to keep her here?”
“That’s the other bit of bad news and part of the reason I needed you to come down here. The doctors want to keep her until she’s progressed some in rehab, but they don’t have the facilities to keep anyone who doesn’t need serious medical attention. As awful as it sounds, they would really like to discharge Aleeya today. She still needs care and attention but they just don’t have any space for her.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“I take it you didn’t come up by way of the emergency room. They have at least twenty people down there waiting for beds and more just keep coming in.”
“I thought the riots had dissipated in this part of the city.”
“They have. Now the ER is dealing with injuries and illnesses caused by a lack of power. I went down to give them a hand while Aleeya was having her tests done because at least I can be an extra set of hands. The predominant cases coming are heart attacks, strokes and heat related illnesses. There has also been a rise in domestic violence related injuries.”
“We can take Aleeya home if we have to, between the three of us we should be able to care for her. Where is Jazen?”
“In the nursery. I was getting ready to go get him when you got here.”
“Do that and find Aleeya’s doctor so that we can take her now if that’s okay with him.”
Thomis wasn’t sure that taking Aleeya home with them was the best choice but he didn’t see how they had a choice. Greg headed to do what Sharyn told him to do. Sharyn had noticed a look of confusion on Aleeya’s face and sat down be side her to explain how it was that she knew her and Thomis and everything that had happened in the last few days. Thomis was amazed that Sharyn seemed to understand the odd facial expressions Aleeya kept making. He figured that she must have had some experience dealing with people with speech difficulties.
An hour later, they were headed back to the apartment. The car was quite cramped with five people and a wheelchair crammed into it. Sharyn had offered to let Greg drive, but he wanted to sit with Aleeya. Watching them together it occurred to Sharyn that the gaps in Aleeya’s memory seemed to extend back to before she had told Greg she never wanted to see him again. When he carried her up to the apartment, she looked at him as though he were carrying her across the threshold after their marriage. Sharyn wondered if she though that Greg was Jazen’s father and that they had been together all this time. Thomis had asked to speak to Greg after Jazen and Aleeya were settled so he and Sharyn waited on the couch for him. Twenty minutes after they arrived at the apartment, Greg came back into the living room, slowly backing out of the bedroom and quietly closing the door behind him.
“You love her very much don’t you?”
“Yes, I never stopped hoping she would come back to me, but this is not what I had in mind. That’s not what this conversation is about is it?”
“No. Yesterday, after we left you we came into possession of some information dealing with the current crisis.”
“And…”
“It seems that the government… Sharyn, you better tell him because I’m getting too worked up just thinking about it and I don’t want to wake Aleeya and Jazen.”
“Okay. Greg, we’ve been searching for a reason behind the rolling blackouts here and the persistent blackouts in more rural areas. My family lives in Idaho and South Dakota and the last time I managed to get in touch with them, more than a month ago, they were lucky if they had power two days out of the month. I imagine that it has gotten worse since then. Anyway, yesterday we received a folder of data and projections from an acquaintance that seem to back up what has been going on and after you went to bed we formed an action plan.”
“What does this have to do with me and why are you two so worked up about some blackouts?”
“Remember before the riots they were talking about how we were going to need to ration food and way before that they started selling milk like they do gas?”
“Yeah, but I’m still not following you.”
“All of these things are connected. The common factor between the food shortages and the blackouts is fuel. The cost of gas has reached astronomical heights making it very expensive to ship food, which is why milk has been in short supply and the price of milk is being dictated by the current price of gas. Fuel prices are on the rise because it is becoming more scarce. As you may remember from grade school science, oil is a fossil fuel and is therefore a non-renewable resource.”
“So you folks think that this whole mess is because we’re running out of fuel?!”
“Yes. So we—“
“You’re nuts! The government would never let that happen without telling us. There must be another explanation. Surely they aren’t going to just let the world slide back into the Dark Ages without trying to do something.”
“Calm down. You’re going to wake Aleeya. Are you ready to listen now?”
“Yeah, man.”
“Continue, Sharyn.”
“Greg, the information that we received yesterday indicated that the government did know about the problem. Twenty years ago, they started enacting programs to stretch out our oil supply in hopes that we might find an alternate fuel solution before we ran out. They managed to buy us some extra time but it doesn’t appear that it will be enough. The rolling blackouts have been a further attempt to make fuel last longer. This doesn’t change our situation though. As you have experienced, New York is no place to be in an extended blackout. Thomis and I have come up with a plan for leaving the city, should it become necessary—“
“If what you are saying is true, how is leaving the city going to make things better? Aren’t conditions worse outside of the metropolitan areas?”
“At first glance it would appear so, because these areas are now almost completely without power, but power outages are a much more common occurrence in rural areas so the inhabitants are more able to deal with them. You are aware that the clinic I work for uses alternative medicine? I figured that that would have been pretty hard to miss after the other day. It also uses alternative fuel technology and still has some connections with places outside of the city. I spoke with the director yesterday afternoon and he suggested a place I might want to consider moving to if I should choose to leave the city. He also informed me that the clinic would be closing at the end of the month because he was leaving the city. Sorry, Thomis, I meant to tell you last night. Anyway, colleagues of his who decided a decade ago that city life was not for them founded a village in the backwoods of the Pocono Mountains. They run completely on alternative fuel and are completely self-sufficient. Almost a hundred people are living there right now and they have room for more. They also have plenty of people skilled in giving the kind of care that Aleeya needs. I don’t think we should leave right away but I do think that we should start making plans to leave, say by the end of the month?”
“Do you think that we can make it that long?”
“If conditions get worse we can always leave early.”
“Are we limiting this to just us or…”
“I think that we should feel free to let any family we have in the area know about our plans and the location of the village should they feel that they want to get out of the city. I plan to tell my friend Hannah and her family as soon as I can get in touch with them. However, we don’t want to cause a mass exodus and overwhelm this small community. So encourage your family and friends to make plans if they desire but tell them to give the village at least a month’s notice that they intend to come. That will give them time to get a place ready for them before they show up. Expect most people you know to laugh at you and tell you that they’ll wait it out, but give them the option.”
“You really think that this is our best option?”
“I do. In all likelihood, the power here will come back on in the next day or so. I don’t expect that they will allow it to go on longer than that, but I don’t think that we will ever be able to rely on it again. There are other communities like the one we plan to head to, if your family feels that Pennsylvania is too far a journey there is one about two hours north of the city. It does not have as extensive a hospital facility though so I did not feel it would be the best option for Aleeya.”
“What do we need to bring with us?”
“Clothes are the most important thing. If a truck were available, I would say we could bring the beds, but as it is, we will be hard pressed just to fit the clothes for five people in the car with us. Right now, we need to get ration coupons and pick up food for dinner. Thomis, why don’t you and Greg go and get what we need. Take Aleeya’s discharge papers from the hospital, I found Jazen’s birth certificate in the diaper bag, you’ll need that; and here is my work ID, it has this address on it. That should be proof enough for five books of ration coupons. Get enough basic supplies to last us through the end of the week.”
“What will you do?”
“I’m going to tidy up here and stuff. Now go before the lines get too long.”
After they left, Sharyn began to rearrange the living room furniture and lay down an exercise mat or two. Then she went into the guest bedroom and found Aleeya already awake, staring at her sleeping son. She explained that Greg was out with Thomis and asked if Aleeya would like to come out to the living room and start working on some simple exercises. Aleeya nodded but looked concerned at Jazen, who was still sleeping on the floor next to the bed. Sharyn assured her that he would be safe, but that they would leave the door open in case he awoke. Aleeya was already in sweats so she was ready to go. Sharyn slid her into her wheelchair and rolled her out into the living room.
“Before we start exercising, I want to talk to you. I know that right now you are having difficulty speaking. The doctors believe that it is only temporary and that the more you try to speak the sooner your ability to do so will return. Don’t be afraid of looking foolish, we all want to hear from you again soon and we will encourage any effort you make. One more thing before we start, expect to have Greg baby you because he doesn’t want to see you hurt yourself. This will not help you recover, I know it sounds mean, but if today you master holding a hairbrush, insist that he let you brush your own hair. The more things you can do for yourself the better you will feel about yourself. You’re looking at me like I have three heads, but trust me. Eighteen months ago, I was in a very similar situation. My then husband beat me to within an inch of my life and then to finish off the job, threw me through the picture window in our living room. You are better off than I was when I woke up in the hospital three days later because you only have the results of your head injury to deal with. I had a less severe head injury but the rest of my injuries kept me confined to a bed for a month before I began rehab. Enough talking let’s get to work.”
Sharyn could not get Aleeya out of the chair and onto the floor by herself so they settled for working on her arms. Sharyn was happy to see that all of her gross motor skills were intact, though she had real trouble with fine motor skills. They spent an hour working on using a spoon and brushing her hair before Jazen woke up. When they heard him crying, Sharyn went to the bedroom to get him. She brought him out to the living room and placed that fussy little boy on his mother’s lap so that she could clean up the living room before the boys came home.
Greg and Thomis returned an hour later, laden with groceries and information. The mayor had locked down the city confining everyone to a five block radius of their current living quarters. This lockdown was to stay in effect until power and order were restored to the City. As far as power went, there were some promising signs that it would be back on soon. The traffic lights were working again, meaning that at least some electricity was entering the grid. None of the public notices that they had seen mentioned when the mayor’s office felt that the blackout would end. They had also met a few people at the market that seemed to have a similar view of what was going on and Thomis had invited some of them over to talk about it later in the evening. Sharyn decided to take a ‘wait and see’ attitude to these new people. She wasn’t sure it was the best idea to bring more people in right now.
Sharyn made lunch, hamburgers for Greg, Thomis and herself and a bowl of canned chili for Aleeya. She opened a jar of beef dinner for Jazen. They settled around the dining room table. She was holding Jazen on her lap feeding him and Greg had positioned Aleeya across the corner of the table from him so he could feed her the chili. He had just dipped the spoon into the bowl when Aleeya smacked the table so hard she almost flipped the whole bowl into his lap. He looked her in the eye and if he hadn’t been sitting down, he probably would have fallen over when she spoke.
“No!”
She looked to Sharyn to explain to Greg what she meant, but Sharyn just looked right right back at her. Greg picked up the spoon again sure it was just a random noise and not a word.
“No, Dred”, her tongue felt thick and her throat didn’t want to work right, she tried again, “Greg. I. Do.”
“You do what?” Sharyn prompted her.
“I. Spoon. Food.”
Greg silently handed her the spoon and pushed the chili close enough for her to reach it. Aleeya smiled at him. Every word had taken enormous effort, but she’d done it. She had made herself understood. She felt like a real person again. Greg was stunned. He had been sure that it would take a while for Aleeya to be able to speak again. The doctors had told him it would probably be weeks before she was capable of doing more than nodding her head. He had seen how much effort it took for her to speak the few words she had and he admired her for her determination.
Aleeya napped more after lunch exhausted by the effort to speak and feed herself. Greg and Sharyn mapped out a basic therapy plan for Aleeya. They knew that getting out of the city in a month’s time meant that they would have to push her hard for a few weeks so that she would make as much progress as possible before they had to leave. Thomis spent about an hour playing with Jazen until he’d tired himself out. When Thomis went to lay the baby down, he discovered that Aleeya was awake and curious about what was going on. He sent Greg in to explain everything and because he thought they could use to spend some time talking. He also wanted some time alone with Sharyn he thought that they needed to talk about the future of their relationship. He’d only known her a short while but he had fallen hard and he thought that the urgency of the crisis that they were facing was making him feel as though he needed to speed up the relationship, that he needed to know if when they left the city in a month’s time they would still be a couple. She wanted to talk about the people he had invited for dinner that night but he stopped her.
“While it’s just the two of us, I think that it’s important that we talk about the future, our future. Most importantly, do we have a future?”
“I hope so. What brought this discussion on?”
“We’ve spent the last couple of days planning to evacuate the city and I just wanted to be sure that I knew where we stood with our relationship.”
“Well, I can tell you how I feel. Right now, I can’t picture a future for me that doesn’t have you in it, but I’m afraid. Afraid that I might be getting in over my head, falling too fast for the first guy to really care for me. Afraid that in six months I’ll see a different side of you and it will be too late then to change anything. I believe you when you said that you would never hurt me but I don’t trust myself enough to be secure in that belief. I believed Ron and I believed in him for so long that I’m not sure that I will ever be able to trust in my ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Now that I’ve bared my soul to you, I believe that it’s your turn.”
“Like you, I can’t picture a future for me that doesn’t have you in it, but I’m afraid. Afraid that I’ll do something foolish and lose you forever. Afraid that I’m not ready for this. Afraid that you’ll find someone better and leave me shattered. I don’t think I can survive another crushing loss.”
“Where does all this leave us?”
“I don’t know. I think that we will have to take it one day at a time. Just promise me I won’t wake up one morning to find you gone.”
“I promise not to do anything drastic without talking to you first.”