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I awoke to the smell of a clean room. Not just clean, but sterile. I inhaled deeply, letting the sting of the nothingness fill my lungs before I ventured a peek at where I was. I looked around at the small TV mounted on the wall across from my bed. I had an IV stuck in my hand, and my arms were bandaged to hide my cuts from view.
I tried to sit up quietly, but Ollie roused from where he’d fallen asleep in the stiff chair next to my hospital bed. “October? Are you alright?” He pressed the intercom for the nurse to come in and leaned forward. “How do you feel?”
I shrugged. “How am I supposed to feel?”
Ollie didn’t have an answer, and when the nurse bustled into my room, I didn’t have an answer for her, either. I’d been out for an entire day, but it felt like a week. I was sore, but if the dry as the Sahara feeling in my mouth was any indicator, I was on something that was managing the brunt of the pain.
Good. Keep it coming.
The nurse was kind, but I wasn’t paying much attention to the specifics. I needed to take it easy, move slow. Take as much time as I needed after the emotional and physical trauma. Blah, blah, blah. “How’s Von? Where’s Von?” I asked the second the nurse left the room.
Ollie was guarding his words. “He’s dealing with it all still. Dealing with it all finally, I guess. He spent the night in Ezra’s cell because we were afraid of what he might do to himself or Kabayo when he woke up. But Danny said he seems to be coming to terms with the fact that there was nothing you two could’ve done to save September.” Her name twisted in his mouth, and I could tell it hurt him to say her name out loud. “They let him out of the cage this morning, and he seems to be mildly human again, for better or worse. Boston and Danny are with him, pulling when he gets too worked up. He’s half delirious, honestly. He’ll be up later today when he gets himself together. Ezra’s making him stay in the mansion until he’s sure Von’s head’s screwed on mostly straight.”
“I should get going, then. He needs me.”
Ollie stood and gently pushed me back onto the bed when I tried to get up. “Nope. Man, I knew you’d say that, too. This is the pneumonia incident all over again. You were a pill then, too. You’re staying here for the next few days until the doctor sends you home. Like it or not, you just gave birth. That requires a little downtime.”
My voice was quiet as I thought through the trauma that hit me in waves. “I had a baby, Ollie. I had a daughter.”
Ollie nodded once, pursing his lips as he searched for the right words. “Yes, you did. You gave birth to a full-term baby with no anesthesia and no doctor! Danny told us all how incredible you were.”
I stared ahead at the wall, picturing September’s thin, delicate face. “She was beautiful.”
“She was. Looked just like you. I don’t remember a ton from when you were first born, but I remember that. You were so tiny. I was afraid I might break you if I held you wrong.” He paused, examining the hard look on my face that couldn’t afford to break down anymore. “And look at you. You turned out real good, kid.”
I waited a few beats to make sure there was no accusation in my tone. “What took you so long to come back from Sakuna?”
Ollie wiped his hand down his face in a show of exhaustion. “It started out as me learning about Lang’s country, helping rebuild where I could. Then it turned into him helping me, trying to see if I could be taught to shapeshift.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting my brother to say, but it sure as Sunday wasn’t that. “Um, what?”
“You’re an Omen because Bev was human and whoever our dad was is Matruculan. Half of me is Matruculan, kiddo. Lang was trying to bring out the Terraway part of me, but it’s just not there. I wanted to be able to protect you and September with some kind of superhuman ability, but it looks like you’re stuck with just me.”
I gaped at him, floored. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
Ollie shot me half a smile, his eyes tired. “Say you love me just the way I am, and that you wouldn’t want me to change into a python, or something that could be useful in an attack.”
I reached out and squeezed his fingers. “I think pythons are stupid, and I love you just the way you are. No place safer than with you.”
“Pythons are stupid.” Ollie nodded once, and then let the silence settle between us while I tried to puzzle through it all. Ollie patted my hand to center me. “Kabayo told me you delivered September like a champ.”
I didn’t know if I believed him, but I was too weak to argue much. “The nurse didn’t say, but can I have children again? That patayin didn’t permanently mess me up, did it?”
Ollie was serious, leaving no room for questions. “You can absolutely have children someday when the time is right. Nothing about you is messed up.”
I bit my lip and nodded, looking down at the hospital gown I was dressed in. “I think I’d like a shower. Do I have clothes?”
“You do, but you’re not leaving today. Go take a shower and then come on back here so I can school you at cards. It’s about time I taught you how to really play.”
I tried to smile at his joke that he could best me at poker, but I couldn’t find my sense of humor. Ollie seemed to understand, and didn’t take offense. He was good like that.
My shower was careful and slow until something hit me midway through, speeding me up and making me impatient with my body. I fumbled with the soap sliver and did my best to figure out the best way to wash my feet without bending too much.
“Where’s Allie?” was the first thing out of my mouth the second I was dried and dressed. “Is she here? I haven’t been able to get out of the house to see her, but now I can.”
“She’s here, but she can wait. You need to take it easy before shouldering another hurdle. Seriously, kid. Deal with what happened before jumping headfirst into another mess.”
My chin rattled from side to side rapidly, my eyes too wide for a normal conversation. “I can’t, Ollie. I mean, how do you deal with losing a baby? What’s the recipe?”
Ollie stared hard at me for a few beats. “I guess that’s fair. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up about Allie right after being crushed like this. This thing with Allie? It’s a marathon that might not end well, and you just got beaten down all the way through one of those and barely survived.”
“I lost a baby, Ollie.”
My brother’s expression softened. I knew that look. He wanted to fix all the problems in the world for me, but he couldn’t. Ain’t no fixing this. “I know, hun.”
I blinked twice. “I lost my baby.”
Ollie nodded slowly. “You did everything you could to keep her healthy.”
“I lost my baby.”
His jaw stiffened. “This isn’t on you. I hope you understand that. This is all on the Manas. This one’s on Terraway.”
My voice died down to a whisper. “I lost my baby.”
Ollie gave up on responding, instead nodding to let me puzzle through how the words sounded on my tongue.
“I lost my baby.” The words tasted bitter and felt hollow, like an echo of madness I could now add to my growing list of dysfunctions I specialized in. Madness was my specialty, and I was steeped in it. “I lost my baby.”
Ollie’s arms raised and lowered a few times, debating whether or not he should hug me. He landed on extending one arm to me, corralling me to the hospital bed and lowering me down gently.
“I lost my baby.”
“I know, sweetie. Let it all out. How about I deal us a few hands, and you tell me anything you feel like.”
“I lost my baby,” I reminded myself as I sifted through the hand he dealt. We played round after round, taking no joy in the game, but hypnotizing ourselves in the mindlessness of the ritual. “I lost my baby,” I repeated whenever it came into my brain.
I’d lost September, and I’d never get her back.
Finally, the tears started falling, breaking through the logic that had been the only thing that anchored me. They weren’t sobs of sadness, uncontrollable with loss; the few tears that birthed out of me paid tribute to the pain I hoped she hadn’t felt, and the agony I knew I might always carry. “I lost September.”
It was the first thing I’d said with any variation in a while, so Ollie ventured a response. “She was beautiful. Absolutely perfect.”
“Do you think she was in pain when the poison root hit her?”
Ollie mulled this over, so he didn’t answer with an obligatory “of course not.” He shuffled the deck thoughtfully. “Did you feel anything other than the contractions to make you think she might’ve suffered?”
“No. The contractions were pretty blinding.”
“Then my vote is no. It sounds like she passed the second the poison went into your system. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for feeling pain.”
I looked over the nightstand at my brother. The sterile smell of the hospital and the shuffle of feet in the hallway of people carrying on with normal life all faded away. I saw my brother clearly in his response that was both logical and kind. “Thank you.”
Ollie nodded in response, thinking I meant thank you for not blowing me off with something cheery. It was far more than that, though. I hadn’t been able to feel much, but with his careful and honest response, I began to feel a small glimmer of something tender. Life had been so very rough with me, but Ollie’s gentleness softened each blow into something bearable.
“You gave up your life for me,” I said. My eyes narrowed in confusion and something akin to wonder. “I was as tiny as September. I was that helpless. You and Allie... I don’t know how you did it. You were both so young.” I swallowed as my eyes welled with appreciation for the grand gift that was my brother. “I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you two.” And there were days that I treated the life that had been granted to me as if it was a labor, a chore, a punishment. “You didn’t just help me stay alive when Bev forgot about me, you went out of your way to give me a good life.”
Ollie was quiet, unsure what to say to any of it.
“I ate because of you two. I went to school and graduated early because of you two. I got a degree because of you two. I have a home because of you two.” I shook my head at myself. “I complain about this Terraway thing messing up my life, but I wouldn’t have a life at all if it weren’t for you.” I vowed to stop feeling so put out that the responsibility of feeding nations had been dumped on me. Ollie never complained that I’d been dumped on him. “You were just a kid yourself. I’m so sorry I made you sacrifice your childhood to raise me.”
Ollie leveled his finger in my face. “That’s where I pause you. I wouldn’t have had a childhood even if you hadn’t been born. Bev didn’t take care of us, so that wasn’t in the cards either way. I know what you’re doing. You’re going to heap guilt on yourself, and I won’t have it. I’ll take the gratitude. I’ll take the you appreciating what a miracle your life is. But me not having a childhood isn’t on you. You gave me purpose and direction. You kept me from running off with Judge and getting into some real trouble.” He looked hard into my eyes across the nightstand, and I could see emotion sparking on his lashes. “Don’t you know, kid? You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. That’s what I want you to carry around with you in your back pocket when you start feeling like you can’t get things perfect, how you like them. You’re the best thing that ever happened to Allie and me, and we wouldn’t have done anything different.”
I smiled, and though my facial muscles protested, lightness slowly began to trickle through my features. “I was just going to say the same thing to you. You and Allie are the best things that ever happened to me. I love you.”
Ollie moved to sit next to me on the side of the bed, the muffled shifting of the tall frame accommodating both of us. The thin mattress shielded us from the storm that always seemed to overturn our safest of places. “Oh, kid. You have no idea. I love you, and I’m so proud of you.”
In the seclusion of the hospital room, I let my brother hold me like I was his daughter. I allowed myself to be small, instead of always fighting and striving to be big enough, strong enough, smart enough and together enough. I let the mess be exactly what it was, and Ollie didn’t try to paint a pretty picture on any of it. The whole thing had been a horror that ended in tragedy, and we both respected the somberness of life’s many twists and turns that teased us all too often with a promise of peace.