“It’s not perfectly good,” Rita said, her cheeks flushed. “Look at the thing. It will be months before I can do anything with it. Months!”
“Isn’t that worth it?” Amanda asked.
“Worth spending months in my room, alone and bored? Worth the pain and suffering?” Rita asked. “Especially now that…”
Rita trailed off, her eyes dropping to the table.
“Now that what happened?” Amanda said. When Rita didn’t answer, she reached out with one hand. “You can tell us, Rita. We’re your friends.”
“Dr. Hayes changed my pain medication. He put me on something much lighter, like aspirin light,” Rita said after a long moment of silence.
“Why?” Amanda asked, perplexed. “He must know how bad the pain is.”
“I asked him to do it,” Rita said, chewing on her bottom lip. “You see, the truth is, I’m an ex-addict. I used to be hooked on painkillers a few years ago.”
Amanda’s lips formed a perfect oh as realization set in. “Did you have an accident or something?”
Rita nodded. “A training exercise went wrong, and I hurt my back. It took three ops and months of therapy before I was even close to my old self again. Only by then, I’d developed a taste for the pain meds. It took forever to wean myself off the stuff, and I never want to go back there again.”
“Damn, girl. That’s some serious shit right there,” Dylan said, downing her wine in one big gulp.
Amanda nodded, taking a fortifying sip herself. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
Rita shook her head, a sad smile wreathing her lips. “Do you want to know the worst part of it all?”
“There’s more?” Dylan exclaimed. “We’re going to need stronger alcohol for this. Where’s the tequila?”
“All my life, I dreamed of going to the army, just like my dad, and my brother and sister before me. But, I lost my spot because of that accident. I spent the next few years, not knowing who I was or where I fit in. Then the apocalypse happened, and not only did I survive, but Saul recruited me to his team. For the first time, I belonged.”
“And now you’re scared of losing all of that again,” Amanda mused.
“Exactly,” Rita exclaimed. “By the time these stupid metal pins come out, he’ll have found someone else to take my place.”
“Saul would never do that to you,” Dylan said. “Never.”
“I’m not willing to take that risk,” Rita said, leaning back in her chair with a disgruntled huff.
“Let me speak to Saul,” Dylan offered. “Your place in the team is safe, I promise.”
“Whatever,” Rita grumbled. “Can we talk about something else, please? Anything else.”
“Well, Dylan was about to tell me earlier what went down between her and Dr. Hayes,” Amanda said with a mischievous grin. “Right, Dylan?”
“Oh, clever move, Missy,” Dylan said, wagging her finger. “I’ll tell you the story, but only if you finish your drink.”
Amanda cast a quick look around. Luckily, the cafeteria was nearly empty. “Fine, but no more.” She raised her wine and threw it back with a grimace. Rita and Dylan followed her example, slamming their empty cups on the table.
“See? That wasn’t so hard,” Dylan said, promptly topping everyone up from the mysterious plastic jug next to her.
“Whoa, I said no more,” Amanda protested.
“Oh, come on. Live a little,” Dylan said. “Tomorrow, it could be all over. We could be zombie chow.”
Amanda rolled her eyes, but already she could feel a warm glow building in the pit of her stomach. “You promised us a story. Cough it up.”
“You asked for it,” Dylan said. She pulled up her sleeve and showed them the ugly scar left by the zombie bite that had infected her. “This is where it all began.”
Amanda listened in awed silence as Dylan relayed her adventures from the moment she was bitten until she arrived at the gates of Fort Knox in Alex’s car.
“That is some story,” Rita said, finishing her wine and taking hold of the jug. “Ray and his buddies got what they deserved, in my opinion, and Dr. Hayes is an idiot for not seeing that.”
“Agreed,” Amanda said, taking a deep swig from her cup. “I can’t believe he’d blame you for something you couldn’t control. Maybe you lost it a little and went overboard, but it was self-defense. They got what they deserved.”
Dylan shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to eat Alex too.”
“He forgave you, didn’t he? Why can’t the good doc?” Amanda said, waving her hand dismissively. “No, it’s something else.”
“I do have a theory,” Dylan replied.
“Which is?” Amanda asked.
“There’s a thin line between love and hate, and I only now realize how much he loved me. When I showed him I was only human, and worse, a very flawed one, I fell off my pedestal with a bang.”
“I don’t think it’s that at all,” Amanda said. “The truth is, you chose Nick over him, and your revelation gave him the excuse he needed to get back at you.”
“Revenge, huh?” Dylan asked with a short laugh. “Well, I guess I can’t blame him.”
Rita snorted. “Don’t be such a pushover. You had the right to choose someone else, and it’s not like you hurt him on purpose. He’s got no call to treat you like trash because of that.”
“Hear, hear,” Amanda said, raising her cup. The warmth in the pit of her stomach had spread to her extremities, and she basked in the golden glow. “I’ll toast to that. Here’s to making our own damn choices.”
Dylan raised her cup in salute. “And being treated with respect.”
Amanda swallowed the last of her wine but almost choked when a stern voice asked, “Amanda, what are you doing? Are you drinking on duty?”
Amanda whirled around and looked up into Ethan’s furious gaze. “Uh…yes. But it was just one drink.”
“Just one?” Ethan asked, his eyes traveling across the table to the nearly empty jug of wine.
Amanda swallowed hard on the knot in her throat. “Okay, maybe it was more than one.”
Dylan sank down in her chair
