The blood bloomed under the glass into a red splotch, and in Dor’s arms, Ruthie began to tremble. She turned her face against Dor’s chest and held on to his shirt with her little fists. It was the blood, Cass realized.
“How fast can-” Dor started to ask.
“Results tomorrow.” Pilar gave her a brief, chilly smile. “Pulling out all the stops for you.”
Cass pinched her finger under the wisp of gauze Pilar had given her, the cotton pristine, unmarred by even a tiny amount of blood. She wished Ruthie would look at her now, that she could see the healing, that it would comfort her to see that the bleeding had stopped. The skin smarted, but she could sense her body responding already, healing the tiny cut. In seconds the wound would be invisible.
The Beater attack should have killed her, but instead it had strengthened her. The strips of flesh torn and gnawed from her back, the blood she’d lost, the exposure-she should have died an agonizingly slow death. Instead, her body had recovered and morphed into something stronger. Cass didn’t know if it was an urban legend or not, but she’d definitely heard that the human body regenerates itself every seven years; in her case she felt as though she had been reborn in the time she was out of her mind, the days she could not remember before she woke, lying in the field. The ragged tears on her back had skimmed over, her body generating new flesh to cover the wounds. Her hair, pulled from its roots and shorn, had come back glossier and stronger. Her fingernails grew so fast Cass had to trim them every couple of days. The enamel on her teeth seemed stronger, her eyelashes thicker, her muscles more supple and flexible.
Pilar watched her squeeze the gauze to her fingertip, peering over her glasses. “So what have you been doing for birth control?” She spoke loudly, snapping Cass’s attention from her daughter.
Cass reddened. Back in the Box, she and Smoke had used condoms whenever they were available. Raiders had brought back birth control pills from time to time, and Cass had considered the idea of stockpiling them, but she didn’t want to mix brands or risk running out and in the end, she abandoned the idea. They’d taken chances sometimes when their stock was running low or her cycle lined up, or they were trying to be quiet and not wake Ruthie.
Near the end, when the tent in the Box was starting to feel more like a home than anywhere Cass had lived before, the chances Smoke and she took together hadn’t felt so much like chances…and the idea of a baby with him hadn’t seemed like the worst idea she’d ever had, back then.
“Different things,” she said stiffly. She was aware of Dor watching her. Certainly there had been no discussion of precautions last night. She’d forced herself on him without considering the fact that she might conceive. But it felt impossible that the cursed and rageful thing they had done could result in anything more than release and regret.
“Conception does seem to be the one thing outliers are not very good at,” Pilar murmured, tapping a finger thoughtfully against the bridge of her nose. “We’re studying that, of course. There is some discussion of the elevated temperature of the body…but you aren’t here to talk about that. We will supply you with prophylactics until we find out the results of your test. Now, if you would…”
This last she directed at Dor, who pulled Ruthie off his chest with reluctance and handed her to Cass. He reached across the desk, offering his finger to be stuck as Pilar selected a new lancet from a plastic box. Cass snuggled Ruthie into her lap and murmured softly against her hair, feeling her daughter’s heartbeat through her warm scalp.
Dor barely seemed to notice the lancet piercing his finger, and swiped at the beaded blood as though it were an annoying gnat. Cass thought of his scars, the one on his forehead and the deep and fissured ones on his chest, which she’d seen in the light of last night’s flickering candle. Dor had been wounded grievously, and Cass wondered at the tolerance to pain he must have built up-and what it would take to hurt him.
“The child,” Pilar said, preparing a third slide.
“Do you have to test her?” Cass asked, as Ruthie wound her arms tightly around her neck and began to tremble again. Ruthie was stoic in the face of pain; a scraped knee or bumped shin never made her cry. But the sight of the blood had definitely spooked her.
“It’s a simple test,” Pilar said calmly. “You yourself know it barely hurts at all. Hold her tightly please. It’s better if she doesn’t watch.”
“Damn it,” Pilar muttered.
Evangeline stepped away from the wall, where she had been watching the proceedings. “
Ruthie began to make a sound that chilled Cass. It was a scream, compressed and flattened into a thin, chilling wail, worse than if her daughter had yelled at the top of her lungs. Her face reddened and her eyes squeezed shut, her lashes dotted with unspilled tears, and she fought as though her life depended on it. Cass held on, her heart breaking, but as Pilar took aim again she knew that it would go worse for Ruthie if she continued to resist, and she held her as tight as she could.
Pilar jabbed the sharp point into Ruthie’s skin with force, and blood beaded and spilled. Ruthie’s eyes flew open and when she saw the blood her wail bloomed into a terrified, other worldly shriek. She stopped only to get her breath and then she screamed again and again, an eerie banshee rupture, as Pilar fumbled with the glass slide and the tube of blood, muttering all the while. When it was done, Cass wiped Ruthie’s finger on her own shirt, then wrapped her fingers around it tightly.
“All done,” she crooned, whispering and rocking Ruthie. “All better. All better. All better.”
Pilar busied herself at her desk, turning her back on them, arranging the samples on a tray, making notes on a lined pad. Dor’s and Cass’s eyes met and he shook his head worriedly. All remained in this diorama of the aftermath of the screaming for a minute before Ruthie flailed one last time and went limp in Cass’s arms, her wails winding down into snuffles.
“That’s it, then, until we get the results,” Pilar said, turning back to them with a tight smile. “Let’s finish checking you out so we can get you over to Ellis. There’s not much more we can do until we get the results back.”
When Evangeline opened the office door, Cass heard crying coming from one of the other offices. Passing by the open door, joggling Ruthie to comfort her, she saw a haggard woman weeping while a man in scrubs stood over her and snipped away her hair, down to a quarter of an inch.
“Lice,” Evangeline explained, grimacing with disgust. “We check everyone for parasites but these people… they’re in rough shape. Hell, they’ve probably got worms and scabies and crabs, too. No sense tracking
After taking them to an adjoining office, Evangeline took her leave, promising to see them later. Her discomfort in the place was evident. The woman who checked them over was far more gentle than what they had witnessed with the other newcomers. She parted their hair with a fine metal comb, working under a window where the afternoon light was strongest, and looked in their mouths and under their arms. She kept up a steady stream of conversation, asking them questions about the trip, about Ruthie, chatting about the cafeteria and what was for dinner. “My girlfriend works over there and she told me they got some of that government cheese,” she shared as she finished checking Cass. “How that stuff can survive a summer in a warehouse, I have no idea, but they’re making some sort of kaysev mac and cheese. Do you like spaghetti, Ruthie, honey?”
Ruthie had calmed down and even seemed to have forgotten her anxiety about the blood. She almost seemed to be considering answering the woman, smiling shyly and peeking out from under her long, luxurious lashes. Cass gave the woman a grateful look. She had been ready to hate everyone, but aside from Evangeline with her frightening eyes and angry rhetoric, the people here seemed not much worse than people anywhere. Again the troubling thought floated through her mind that this might not be the worst place in the world to make a home.
“You
