“Me too,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not her fault,” my mother growled as she descended down the ladder.
My father ignored her comment. Everyone knew my mother would hold Mr. Baker responsible for this. I thought she had a valid point. I still couldn’t understand why the men in the council weren’t doing the gathering. They were strongest people here. They could fight off the cannibals and other wild things. Aside from Colin and maybe Dylan Edwards, the rest of the teens here wouldn’t make it out there.
When we finally reached the bottom of the ladder, my mother handed me off to my father. “Can you please take her to the infirmary? I’m pretty sure May’s working.”
May Vickers was Grace’s and Monica’s mother. Before the Great Famine, she was the head of surgery at a hospital in Omaha. Shortly after the colony was built, the council decided that we had to have our own hospital, and May offered to run it. After all, she was really the only one who knew what she was doing.
My father raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you take her?”
“Because I’m going to climb back up the ladder and close off the entrance. Unless you’d rather do that.”
“No,” my father groaned. “I’ll take her to the infirmary.” He turned his back to my mother and we started walking down the hall.
“We’ll talk later!” my mother shouted.
“Yeah,” my father said. “Later.”
For some reason, my father didn’t like anything that had to do with hospitals, doctors, or sick and wounded people. His father died when my Dad was young, andsomething that happened with that changed the way he felt about the medical world. The reason was never explained to me and I never tried to pry it out of him. I just figured someday, he’d eventually tell me.
May Vickers greeted me with a smile as my father strolled through the door with me. “What happened here?” May asked. Her voice was always so soft and sweet. Her smile was pleasant, and she always looked pretty. She had a round face and ivory skin. Despite everything She had went through with her daughter Monica disappearing, she always tried to be kind to everyone most of the time. Grace was like her in that way.
My father laid me down on the cot and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think I’ll let her tell you about it. I have to go talk with Marcy.”
May smiled. “Okay.”
My father gripped my hand, squeezed it, then went off to find my mother.
May walked over to her counter, a small kitchen countertop that someone had salvaged from a building, and studied her row of supplies. There were all kinds of instruments, ointments, and band aids. She picked up a jar of salve, and removed a cotton swab from her pocket. She dipped the swab into the jar and set the jar back down. “So, Georgie. What happened?”
At my side, she plastered the ointment across my cut. First, the ointment on my cut felt like little bubbles were popping across the wound and it kind of tickled. Then that tickling feeling turned into a full on burning feeling. It felt like my entire head was on fire. “Ouch! Ouch!” I cried. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s only numbing ointment,” May said calmly. “Give it a second and it won’t burn so much.”
Soon, the burning sensation died down. In fact I couldn’t feel anything at all. “That’s better,” I sighed. With the pain gone from my head, I felt like a whole new person.
“You might want to close your eyes for the next part,” she stated as she removed a long sewing needle and surgical thread from the table next to me. That sounded like a great suggestion to me. May sterilized the needle, and looped the thread through it. “Lower your head, please,” she instructed.” I put my head down and closed my eyes tightly. I felt the needle pierce my skin, but other than that, I felt nothing else. “You know,” May began, “you’re a pretty brave kid.”
“You think so?” So far, I thought I was acting pretty wimpy.
“I do.” There was a warmness to May’s tone. “You have a minor concussion and you need eighteen stitches. You’re taking it like a champ. When Colin Martin came back he was in…”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Colin is here?”
“He’s been here for hours.” She sounded confused. “He came back around five minutes to four. Didn’t you know that?”
“No.”
“Weren’t you guys together out there?”
“We were, then something happened. And I can’t remember anything about it.” Colin would help me, he would help me remember. “Did he ask about me?” He had to be worried.
“No.”
“What?”
“He never mentioned you.”
An uneasy feeling circled my gut. There were so many things that seemed wrong. Why wouldn’t he ask about me? Why wouldn’t he be at the door the minute he heard I was back? The news of my return had to have spread around the colony by now.
“May, is there is any way I could speak to him?”
“Nope, not tonight, young lady. All I want you to do tonight is get some rest.
The sound of scissors snapping caused me to open my eyes. May set the needle down and rolled some gauze across my forehead. After she taped it, she walked over to the sanitizing bin where she put all the dirty needles.Then I thought about Grace. I needed to talk to her. She’d definitely tell me what was going on or if Colin gave any indication about what happened to me. “Can I at least see Grace?”
“No, ma’am. You can see them both tomorrow.”
“May?”
“Yes, Georgina.”
“I know I’ve never said anything until now, but I’m really sorry about what happened to Monica.” That was the first time in months that anyone had spoken to May about Monica’s disappearance. But I decided that when it happened, she had enough people that were constantly approaching her about it. I knew it would probably hurt just the same now as it did then, but I didn’t want her to think that I just shrugged it off as nothing.
She was quiet for a moment. “Tha-thank you, Georgina” she stuttered. I heard the sadness in her voice and felt sorry for mentioning it. Even though I was sincere about it, I could understand how it would be like pouring salt into an open wound.
May faced me, swallowing hard. She did her best to smile, but she only made it halfway. Her eyes were red and I could tell that at any moment every tear in her entire body were going to flow out of her eyes. “You just get some rest, dear.” Her voice was trembling. “I’ll be back to check on you in the morning.”
After she left the room, I felt like a total jerk. “You need to learn to bite your tongue,” I said to myself. With that, I buried my head into my pillow and closed my eyes, hoping that something, anything, from my memory would come to visit me in my dreams.
Chapter 12: They Always Come Back
The memory of the just is blessed.
Violet eyes! I remembered something! Violet eyes! My eyelids fluttered open and I gazed around the room. As I processed the memory about the violet eyes, two more memories flooded through my cranium. And both of them involved Colin.
He was running toward me—like a charging bull—his face twisted and contorted, stricken with panic. Then he was running away from me. So far away that he looked like a tiny insect flitting across the air. But what happened in between? That part still hadn’t come back to me. And who did the violet eyes belong to?
