Chapter Thirteen
Dahlia blinked. The familiar beeping sound and smell of antiseptic made her head spin. She tried to open her eyes, but even just looking around was painful. Her body felt tired and sore. She took a breath and forced her eyes open. It was a hospital, but not her hospital. Her hand found the call button without needing to look for it.
A woman in light blue appeared within a minute or so. “You’re awake.”
“I seem to be,” Dahlia said. “Where am I?”
“Palmerston General,” the woman answered. “I’m going to get your attending.”
She watched the woman turn before forcing herself up. The room wavered a bit, but she stayed upright. She pulled the chart off the end of the bed:
Jane Doe
DOB: Between 18-25
Patient presents with a fever of forty-one degrees, fever related unconsciousness, and various bruising on the extremities. No other signs of illness.
Physical Examination
Height: 174cm
Weight: 59kg
Dahlia paused, she had lost weight, a lot of weight, just in the last couple days. She had no way of telling if that was a symptom or just all the walking.
Pulse: 87
Blood Pressure: 130/60
HEENT: Pupils are equal and reactive to light. Funduscopic exam shows the disc to be flat and without hemorrhages or exudates. Pharnscisclear Tympanic membranes are normal
Neck: Moderate Adenopathy. No thyromegaly or bruits
“Hello.”
Dahlia jumped and winced as her body reacted to the jarring.
The doctor looked at her. “I’m Stephanie, your doctor. Would you mind handing over your chart?”
“Sorry.” She held it out, her arm shaking some. “I wondered what got me here.”
“Well, it’s hard to understand these if you aren’t a doctor.” Stephanie smiled.
“What?” The blue shirt on the chair across from her bed caught Dahlia’s eye. “Oh, sorry. My head’s a little cloudy.”
Stephanie nodded. “You had a pretty bad infection. Lucky someone found you. If we hadn’t gotten you on broad-spectrum antibiotics—”
“No complications?” She interjected.
“You seem to be responding very well.” The doctor hesitated a moment. “Can we get your name? You were found without identification.”
‘My...” Dahlia led off. “I...I don’t remember. I was flying to New Zealand and left the airport...that’s all I remember.”
“No recollection of your name at all?”
Dahlia pretended to consider it. “B...B something, I think. I’m sorry.”
Stephanie wrote something into the chart. “Well, we’re going to keep you here for observation a couple days. Your fever was very high. Your amnesia symptoms might be a sign of other brain damage.”
“Brain damage,” Dahlia repeated.
“It’s highly unlikely, but every so often a high fever can cause lingering problems.”
“But...” She began to dispute that. While high, the fever hadn’t gone as high as that. Dahlia managed to stop herself.
“It’s unlikely.” Stephanie obviously took her cut off sentence as fear. “We just want to make sure.”
Dahlia nodded, taking a deep breath to relax.
Stephanie went to the equipment near the bed. “You pulled out your IV.”
“Did I?” Dahlia looked at her arm.
Stephanie nodded. “I’ll have a nurse come in to take care of that.”
Dahlia waited for the doctor to leave and then checked the almost empty IV bag. It was nothing important. They must have finished the antibiotics already. She lay back.
Someone had brought her to town. She was in New Zealand, so the entire week hadn’t been a fever induced hallucination. Unless she had sleepwalked to an airport while sick and somehow gotten a blue shirt. She paused. No, it was far too coherent a series of events to be all a hallucination.
Someone had taken her from the camp and brought her to the town. Heather probably. She and Des were the only ones who could have come near the place safely, and Dahlia sincerely doubted Des would have agreed to let anyone go to town, let alone agreed to carry someone there.
Dahlia slid to the end of the bed, looking at the clothes she had with her. She was too weak to leave, but after another night maybe she could. They’d find out who she was soon enough, and it would be about as smart to stay there as it would be to take her chances trying to find the others out in the woods.
Something silver slid out from the pockets of her jeans. Dahlia picked it up. Heather had left her key, the one to the tunnels, on a thin silver chain. Dahlia hooked the chain around her neck and lay down. Perhaps the key would work here too.
* * * *
Heather stirred, trying to place what had woken her. Her eyes fell on a shadow just outside the circle of the campfire. She sighed, slipping out of her sleeping bag and grabbing a bottle from the medical bag.
Ben turned the key card over in his hands, running his finger over the slightly raised lettering on the front which spelt out Dahlia in capital letters, not that he could see the word in the dark.
“You need to get some sleep.” Heather sat next to him. “We don’t know what she had. If you wear yourself down, you might get the same thing.”
“And?” He didn’t look up.
“We can’t take you to a hospital.”
“I’ve been sick before.”
“Ben,” Heather’s voice grew stern. “If you want to mope, fine. You have a right to your emotions. It isn’t your right to try to get yourself killed though. Not when you have so many people looking to you for help.”
“What are we doing, anyway?” Ben snapped. “There are a few dozen of us here. We don’t know where we could get any more men, or even if we could. It’s good she’s gone. She didn’t want to be here in the first place. Now she doesn’t have to be.”
“She didn’t get sick on purpose.”
Ben didn’t respond.
“She had plenty of chances to leave,” Heather continued. “She chose to stay here. Chose to be here with you.”
Ben scoffed. “It wasn’t about me.”
“Are you really that thick?”
Ben finally looked at her. “Excuse me?”
“Why else would she have come, Ben?” Heather shook his head. “It wasn’t because she wants to help men in general. She loves you. You love her too, but both of you are too goddamn stubborn to admit it.”
Ben paused. “Even if that were true, what does it matter now?”
“You’ve got to have some goal for after this is over.”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “A quick death and being buried in something other than an unmarked mass grave.
Heather sighed, holding out the bottle. “Here.”
Ben looked at it. “Poison?”
“Sleeping pills.”
He didn’t move to take the bottle.
“Take two.”
He finally took it, popping two in his mouth and swallowing them without water.
“Get back to bed.” She nodded to the camp.
“I will soon.”
Heather stood. “Oh, and Ben, when you see her again, don’t let your pride get in the way, all right? You both made mistakes.”
“I didn’t sleep with her best friend.”
“When did you ever have that chance? Or better, how would you know?” The question hung in the air without an answer. “You got along at one point. That wasn’t all because you were trying to use her, was it?”
Ben stood. “I’m going to bed. Doctor’s orders.”
* * * *
In the hospital, Dahlia waited for the orderly to turn off the light and shut the door before reopening her eyes. She checked the chart at the end of the bed and then moved to put on her clothes. Finished, she took a deep breath and slipped through the door into the hall. The only light came from the nurses’ station down the hall. Dahlia considered for a moment and then headed towards it slowly. The nurses were elsewhere, letting her grab an unattended lab coat and medical bag. She apologized briefly to the owner of the supplies, then shrugged on the coat, and started off.
Using the ID attached to the lapel, she moved into the elevator at the end of the hall, the elevator starting without her needing to push a button. The doors opened in the morgue. She shivered, went to press the button again, and then paused. A stack of keycards sat on the desk closest to the elevator. Dahlia moved towards them. On one side there was a stack of blank cards, the other a stack had yet to be deactivated.
Dahlia frowned, but grabbed a good portion of the stack, stuffing them in the pocket of the coat and heading for the nearest exit. She slipped out the side door of the hospital and stopped near a streetlight to examine the cards. She found ones she could use and remain relatively innocuous, tossing the rest in the trashcan with the lab coat. She was dressed as a legislator, not a doctor. She found the train station, bought a ticket with one of the stolen cards and got on the next train north, dropping card in the gap between the train and the platform.
* * * *
The days walking had worn on them. Even Ben had stopped scouting so far ahead, just couldn’t bring himself to care. He scanned the forest down the slope and turned towards the group. A glint of something caught his eye. Something pale, metallic, like silver or a mirror.
He glanced over his shoulder to the group behind. They were still a ways back. Slowly he moved closer, doing his best to maintain control on the sharp decline. A campsite. A woman eating something from a can. A silver can. Recognition hit him hard and almost knocked the wind out of him.
“Dahlia?”
“Mother of...” She spun, released a breath, and stared at him for a long moment before speaking. “Ben?”
He nodded, looking at the campsite. “What are you...? How are you...?” He didn’t finish either thought.
Dahlia rose to her feet. “I’ve been waiting for you guys to show up. If none of you did soon, I would have had to move. I was hoping...it’s a big forest up here. I’ve been working on trying to listen better.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” she repeated. “I couldn’t very well stay in town. I suppose I should thank one of you for ending up at a hospital.”
Ben paused and shrugged. “You were our doctor. You couldn’t treat yourself.”
Dahlia looked behind him. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Back up the hill.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Everyone’s tired.”
“Walking days and days does that to you,” she said. “Any reason you’re looking at me like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I...wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“No?”
“I left you dying in town.”
“You thought I was dead?”
“Maybe,” Ben said. “Or that you chose to stay.”
“Stay where?” She stared at him.
“In town.”
“You that eager to get rid of me?” She set the can down.
“Just, they’re your people.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right. You aren’t glad to see me?”
He hesitated. “It’s safer in town.”
“Not when they find out who I am.” Dahlia shook her head.
“Safer than with us.”
“I doubt it,” she said.
He didn’t respond. He had no idea what to say.
She sighed. “You told me you liked me once, you realize. I’d think you’d be happy to see me. Was that all a lie?”
He stayed in place, unable to speak.
Something seemed to shift, seemed somehow wrong. Dahlia just smiled. “Just admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“What you’ve been keeping yourself from saying.”
Something hit him hard in the back. He jerked.
“Get up already.” Des’ voice broke through his thoughts; she kicked him between the shoulder blades again. “If you don’t get your ass moving soon, I swear to God I’m leaving without you.”
“Jesus fucking...” Ben rubbed his hand over his face.
“Up.” She kicked him in the side.
“I’m up, I’m up.” Ben pushed himself to sitting, holding his hands in front of him.
Heather looked at Des. “Get the others up.”
Des returned Heather’s look, holding her gaze before conceding something and moving off.
“Guess we know who wears the pants in your relationship.” Ben rolled his shoulders.
“Do you need more sleeping pills?” Heather looked him over. “I thought since you’d stopped wandering around at night...”
“I had a dream about your sister.” He pushed himself to his feet.
Heather frowned. “Will asking what kind of dream it was mentally scar me in any way?”
“No, sadly,” Ben said.
“What was it about, then?”
“Does it matter?”
“Dreams tend to matter,” Heather said. “At least a little bit. Some have even been prophetic.”
“I’ve always found that hard to believe.”
“Well, you never know—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he interjected.
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
“It’s nothing important,” he said. “She’s probably getting settled in the town where I dropped her off and is much happier there than she ever was out here with us, anyway.”
“You don‘t always need to play the martyr, you know.” Heather shook her head. “Look at the men here. They’ll keep doing what they’re doing, whether or not you sacrifice your happiness for them.”
“I’m getting something to eat.” Ben brushed himself off and started away without waiting for a reply.
Des reappeared, watching Ben storm through camp. “Please tell me he’s not going to be pissy again today. We just finally got semi-good mood Ben.”
“He’s as lovesick as ever,” Heather sighed.