Outbreak: Brave New World (36 page)

Amy stood at attention. “No, ma’am.” Frays said quickly. She paused, unsure of how to
explain the situation especially in front of the boy. “His dad’s in my squad…flight…thing…and I’m just looking after him till we link back up with him.”

The doctor glanced at Amy, an amused light in her dark brown eyes.
Frays noticed that the lieutenant looked as if she had been awake for days. “At ease, Airman.” she said, seemingly barely containing a chuckle. “Sorry, it’s just that I think you’re the first person to do that in months.” Haskins nodded and looked at the boy on the exam table. “Looks like you’re alright, Paul. Some malnutrition maybe, but then we’re seeing a lot of that with the few people they bring back.”

Lieutenant Haskins examined Frannie and Amy next, making cursory checks of their
vitals and making notes on their charts. She went to Frays and examined her neck, nodding to herself. “Okay, Airman.” Haskins said calmly as she carefully positioned her hands on the back of the woman’s neck. “It’s alright. Just relax. Looks like you’ve got a bulging disk in your neck.” The lieutenant made little comforting shushing noises, waiting for her patient to calm down a little and feeling like kind of horrible.

Amy almost blacked out when
the doctor twisted her head, sending flaming lightning bolts covered in salt encrusted angry bees shooting all the way to her toes. She let out a strangled cry and, most embarrassing of all, Frays loosed a long loud and rather noxious smelling MRE fart. It made Paulie laugh however and her neck already felt a little better. The lieutenant got a stiff brace out of the cabinet and put it around Amy’s neck to keep her from moving her head. Frays could not help but feel like it was one of those plastic cone things that veterinarians put around a dog or cat’s neck to keep it from ripping out its stitches.

Lieutenant Haskins helped Amy back into her wheelchair then had Rodriguez get up on the exam table. Frays covered Paulie’s eyes when the doctor had Frannie remove her trousers so she could check the wound on the woman’s upper thigh. She frowned at the gouge torn out of Frannie’s leg but was surprised to see no signs of infection and that it actually seemed to be healing pretty well, considering it should have been stitched closed.
When Haskins finished she chucked her rubber gloves into a waste bin in the corner of the examination room. Paulie smiled when Lieutenant Haskins furrowed her brow and stuck the tip of her tongue out of her mouth as she made notes on her patients’ charts.

Lieutenant Haskins and another orderly
, a stocky older black man in blue green scrubs and white sneakers, rolled their patients down the hall. “So you guys are going to at least spend the night here.” Haskins told them. Frannie found herself marveling at how clean and normal everything looked. The walls were clean, the tile floor of the hallway obviously swept and mopped regularly, the air reeked of antiseptic products…it was kind of shocking actually. “I’m going to stop by the dispensary and pick up some stuff then be back to see you guys again before lights out.”

They got rolled into a small room with hospital beds where Lieutenant Haskins and the orderly helped them get situated. “Mister Jones, have the desk call over to Inprocessing and see if they can send those other new people over in the morning.” Haskins said as the two of them moved towards the door. She gave Paulie a wink over her shoulder. “I’ll start their medical exams first thing.”

Mr. Jones came back a few minutes later with some blankets and some loose fitting hospital pajamas. “I’m Daryl, the night nurse around here.” he explained as he handed out the blankets and clean clothing. “I’ll be right down the hall all night long.” The nurse picked up a little white plastic tab that was connected to the wall by a wire off of the small table next to Frannie’s bed. “You push the button on this if you guys need anything.” He demonstrated and they could hear a faint buzzing down the hall. “It sets off a buzzer on my desk.” He opened a door a few feet from the hall. “You’ve got a latrine right here, so you can change in there. I’ve got bags here for your gear. I’ll seal them and lock them up so nobody steals your stuff. Your uniforms and such will have to be burned. We’ve had a lot of people coming in covered with lice and other critters so Doc Haskins isn’t taking any chances. There’s some stuff in Supply, so don’t worry we’ll have some fresh stuff for you. It’ll be here by the time that you’re ready to be discharged.”

Lieutenant Haskins returned pushing a small cart just as Amy came out of t
he latrine in her PJs. The clothing was kind of floating around her somewhere but comfortable, even though she had to hold up the trousers with one hand. “Just finishing up here, ma’am.” Daryl said as he bagged up Amy’s LCS, boots and other personal effects then sealed them with tape. He gave Amy a ballpoint pen and had her sign a piece of paper that he stuck onto the bag. He gave each of them an orange plastic bag with a black biohazard symbol on it to put their dirty clothes in after they had changed into their PJs.

“Thanks a lot, Mister Jones.” Lieutenant Haskins said as she wheeled the cart into the room. The woman arranged
some things on the cart as she pushed it over to Paulie’s bed. “Okay…got some fluids for everybody, some medicine for Paul…aaaand some extra vitamins for mommy. It’ll have to hold you until the galley opens in a few hours. Sorry.”

Lieutenant Haskins rolled up the sleeve of Paulie’s pajamas. “Where’s my daddy?” the little boy asked, his big blue eyes searching the woman’s face. “I wanna see my daddy.” The woman smiled a little and patted the boy’s shoulder.

“Is your daddy the Marine?” Haskins asked as she put a strip of rubber around the boy’s arm and put a racquetball in his hand. “Squeeze the ball for me a few times, please Paul.” The woman watched the veins rising up on his arm.

“Yeah.” Paulie said and smiled uneasily at her. He liked this woman but there was something about the way she said fluids that was making him suspicious.
Not that he had a clue what a ‘fluids’ was but still… He realized a little while ago that grownups only used weird words or spelled things out when they did not want kids to know something. Now this thing with this rubber band and the ball…

“I need you to be brave like your dad for me okay?” Haskins said as she
got picked up the clear plastic bag of liquid nutrition and got the IV ready. “I’ve gotta give you a little shot. There will just be a little pinch.” She took the ball out of his hand and carefully inserted the needle into a vein in the boy’s arm. His little chest rose and fell rapidly but he did not cry.

“Whoa, what a brave little boy!” Haskins said as she hung the IV bag on a rack attached to Paulie’s bed
and got it all set up. She smiled and leaned close to the boy’s ear. “Can you keep a secret?” the woman asked. The way she glanced suspiciously at Amy and Frannie brought a little smile to the boy’s face.

The boy looked up at her gravely. He did not know what a ‘lieutenant’ was but Paulie knew that she had to be important because of how Amy acted earlier. “Yes, ma’am.” Paulie said and nodded.

“You’re way braver than me.” Haskins whispered conspiratorially as she reached into her cargo pocket and slipped the boy a packet of Skittles she’d saved from an MRE earlier in the day. “I always cry like a little baby at needles. Don’t tell anybody, alright?” She patted the boy on the shoulder then gave him a child sized dosage of painkillers in his IV line.  

The lieutenant set them up with their IVs and gave Frays an extra injection of vitamins D and C as
well as a mild painkiller for her neck. Frays felt an oddly familiar fuzzy sort of warmth coming over her after a couple minutes and started to doze off as the drugs took hold. Amy grumbled to herself and struggled to keep her eyes open after the woman left them alone for the night. She did not drink or use drugs, heck she hardly ever even took aspirin… The lights went out a few moments after the lieutenant left, the shadowy crimson illumination of emergency lighting coming in through the hall.

Frannie frowned at her friend. She was snoring even louder than usual about ten seconds after lights out. She shook her head. The doc had to have given Frays something.
That little squid is probably going to get an ear full in the morning.
Rodriguez thought as she smiled in the dark, listening to Amy’s snoring and the quieter sound of Paulie’s breathing. She shrugged into the mattress under her, kind of wishing Lieutenant Haskins had given her a little something too. She had always hated hospitals and that was before she had spent almost a year and a half stuck in one recuperating after her tour in Afghanistan…

She probably hated hospitals so much, she reflected, because her grandmother had died of Alzheimer’s in a shitty nursing home. Her last memory of Gramma Rodriguez was a croaking pale skeleton covered in bed sores that smelled bad… What
the fuck was Mom thinking bringing a little kid there to see that? Frannie shuddered away the thoughts.

She fished around for the call button but it slipped out of her hand and clattered on the floor. Fr
annie groped around in the dark hoping to reach the wire that connected it to the wall. “Aw goddamnit fuckin’ shit.” she hissed, throwing an embarrassed glance over at the sleeping child on the other side of the room. Thankfully Paulie was sound asleep and would not be requesting another quarter or two being added to the amount she already owed him. The call button was somewhere out of reach. She grumbled, feeling small and completely fucking helpless… All of a sudden Frannie felt like she was going to start crying and got mad at herself for it.

Someone shined a flashlight in
to the room, flicking the beam around as they came in. “Are you okay?” Daryl asked as he moved closer. Frannie flinched away from it, the bright light making her eyes smart. “Anything wrong?”

“No.” Rodrigu
ez said sharply. She frowned and tried one last grab for the call button. Frannie smiled apologetically as she shielded her eyes and tried to see who was standing there in the dark. It sounded like the night nurse but she could not be sure. “I don’t like hospitals.” Daryl smiled revealing a set of white teeth that contrasted nicely with his dark skin. Frannie genuinely smiled too. “Um…listen…Daryl…I’m dying for a cigarette.”

An indecisive look flitted across Daryl’s face in the dark. “Well…” he glanced at the IV
tube sticking into the woman’s arm then at the level of the clear liquid in the plastic bag. “Tell you what. Give me a minute. I’ll see if I can scrounge up a portable IV stand.” The nurse smiled and disappeared out into the hall for a moment then returned pushing a tall metal rack. “Just don’t tell the doc. Your chart says bed rest and she’ll be pissed if she knows I let you walk around.”

“Your secret’s safe with me, man.” Frannie said with a grin as the nurse transferred her IV bag to the new rack. He helped her out of bed then held her arm as the two of them made their way to a back door. Daryl dug a pack of smokes and a lighter out of his pocket
. He gave one to Frannie and lit it then took one himself.

“Figured you’d had enough of hospitals and such.” Daryl said after they had taken a couple drags.
Frannie noticed that the man had a pleasant southern accent, maybe from Georgia or Tennessee. He frowned slightly at the woman a few feet away. She was leaning against the wall looking up at the stars. “I was a nurse at Walter Reed for a few years.”

Rodriguez sort of half laughed. “I was there about three years ago.” she said quietly and flicked ash off of her cigarette.
Frannie took another drag, held it a moment and let the smoke out of her lungs in a series of smoke rings. “My truck hit an IED in Afghanistan. Was stuck in that shithole for a little over a year.”

The nurse frowned sadly.
“You doin’ alright now?” he asked. Daryl had the scars on the woman’s face and neck pegged as shrapnel from the moment he saw her. To his surprise the woman burst into tears. “Hey, hey…shh…” The man put his arms around her and held her tight, smoothing her hair as she sobbed helplessly into his chest. “Shh…it’s alright. It’s alright…go on and let it out…shhh…” He wracked his brain to see if he could remember if this woman had been on his ward but came up blank. There were just so damn many of them…poor busted up kids missing arms, legs, disfigured like this poor girl…

He let her cry to the point of exhaustion. “Don’t gimme any more drugs.” she
moaned softly into his chest. “Please please don’t. I want some so bad but don’t please…” It had taken her so long to get clean, almost destroyed her trying the last time. After getting shot it had taken every ounce of willpower she could muster to not dip into their stash every time she was in the latrine. Amy and Adam did not
know
because she had not
told
them so she could not really get mad at them for dragging her off the wagon but shit… The pills were
right there
: codeine maybe even some oxy or something…

Th
en after that really shitty day where Frays’ mom and dad and Lacey’s wife died, pretty much leaving her more or less in charge while they were grieving… She wanted something anything to help her escape for a few hours at least so badly she could almost taste it. It would have been so sweet to just pop a couple pills and drift away for awhile… Daryl rubbed her back and smiled as he started walking her back to her room once she was cried out.

“Alright.” Daryl said with a small smile as they made their way down the hall. “I’ll let the doc know when she shows up tomorrow.” He helped her into bed then put her IV back. The nurse patted her shoulder after helping her arrange her blankets.
“You just get some sleep and everything will be better in the morning.”