Chapter 5

The door opened quietly behind her but Rachel didn't look up. She was counting and concentrating on the feel of the weak pulse under her finger tips. She'd already twice made the mistake of counting her own heart beat instead of that of the patient's. She did the resulting math quietly in her head, marked down the numbers at the bottom of a long list of similar numbers then analyzed the data.

There used to be machines that did this in a fraction of the time and with less reference to a worn medical book. Tucking his hand back under the blankets Rachel sighed, "Those times are long gone." She muttered to herself, then turned to see Micah poised halfway through the door. She smiled at him, encouraging him over the threshold that he had been told several days ago not to cross.

Micah walked cautiously toward the bed and the chair his mother sat in, staring at the pale bearded face against the pillow.

"He smells better." Micah whispered and Rachel grinned, poking two fingers into Micah's side until he giggled. 

"Cookie said he was finally well enough for a bath and we gave him one." She told him, a small measure of pride in her voice.

It had been a hassle and time consuming, and there had been some things deeply hidden under all the dirt that neither woman expected. But keeping his wound clean had been hell up to that point. Rachel only wished they had done it sooner.

"Did he wake up?" Bright blue eyes turned towards her and Rachel drew in a sudden breath at a memory that flashed through her mind. Micah as a toddler, asking question after question in pidgin English until he finally understood, and those same beautiful eyes would snap to attention and focus right on her. It was the first time she began to comprehend just how smart her boy was going to be.

"No, honey. He didn't...but he's doing a little better. Look at this." Rachel leaned easily toward the bedside table, pulling Micah onto her knee on the way back and settling against the chair. "These are his vitals. They're numbers that represent what his body is doing. If it's healing right, or if he's in distress."

"What's diss-ress?"

"Distress? Sometimes it is when you have a bad feeling about something. In this case..it means that he might be having trouble breathing, or his heart might be beating too fast."

"Like he's scared?"

Rachel felt heat rise to her cheeks. "Yes...I guess he might be scared. Maybe he's had a few nightmares."

"Oh." Micah said. "What's his name?"

Rachel shook her head, her cheek resting close to the top of Micah's head. His hair was still damp from washing. "We don't know. He doesn't have any tags or ID. He didn't tell me his name when I first met him."

"Is he still a secret?"

"Yes, for now."

"Is he a bad man?"

Rachel leaned away and creased her brow, "What makes you think he's bad?"

Micah shrugged his shoulders, his brow furrowing in concentration. In most children it was a mockery of an adult's facial expression. In Micah's case it meant that he was about to say something that no one would expect from a child his age. 

"He looks...like a wolf."

Both of them watched the stranger while he slept, and Rachel could see what Micah meant. Yes the whiskers and the lines on his face made him look like a wild animal, or a mountain man. But there was also an edge. The same inexplicable thing that she had seen in that quiet room on the second floor.

"He does...a little bit."

Rachel smirked and leaned her lips toward Micah's ear, whispering. "Do you think we should give him a shave? See what he looks like under all that hair?"

Micah giggled again and scooted off her knee, stepping close to the bed and leaning over it. His arms carefully held behind his back so that he wouldn't touch the wounded man.

Rachel stood once her legs were free and placed the list of vitals on the bedside table along with the medical book. She stretched the cramping muscles in her back and moved to where she could see out the window. See where the sun was in comparison to the horizon.

There was always a dirty brown smear out beyond the town. Smog, radiation, poison. No one ever really knew what it was except that it appeared around the time the end began and hovered there in the distance, like a wall. Cutting off what used to be miles of visibility. As if separating the very soul from the rest of the world. To Rachel it was like the threshold she had warned Micah not to cross.

And yet the man in the bed seemed to have come from beyond that wall. She wanted to know what he had seen. She wanted to know what he had left behind in favor of pressing onward. How much was left out there? How much was gone?

Micah had taken to smoothing the blankets on either side of the stranger. He had started on the left and had nearly worked his way around to the right side of the bed. The careful precision that he exhibited, the concentration, kept her in quiet contemplation. Once he was done with his task Micah stood for a moment to review his work, then crossed to Rachel and leaned in against her legs. In that short walk he had gone from grown up nurse maid to tired and needy child.

Rachel cupped the side of his head against her hip and fought the tears that had been all too prevalent in the past few weeks. Micah could still do that. He could still return to being her little boy, but there would come a time, and soon, that he would be taken from her, and every bit of that small boy would be beaten, electrocuted and trained out of him; until nothing remained but what the government saw a use for. Humanity was never one of those things.

She had to break herself from that train of thought. She kissed the top of Micah's head.

"Have you finished your chores?"

She felt his head nod against her.

"Why don't you go ask Cookie for lunch, for you and me. We'll have a picnic up here, then. Maybe we can convince that one to wake up and take some broth."

Micah squeezed her around the leg then took off for the door, careful to shut it quietly before scampering down the stairs.

There was a groan from the bed. Clot moved against cloth and his knee came up.  Rachel moved casually around the bed, watching him.

His mouth moved under the bed of hair. Mumbles came out, the same sounds and half-spoken words that she'd heard a dozen times. Another night mare. Another fevered dream. How many days had it been? How many long hours when his mind was captive, his lips silent.

Rachel had begun to wonder how long a body could stay asleep, how long could a mind stay dormant before it was lost all together. She had known that he would need sleep for the first 72 hours, if he survived at all. When the fourth and fifth days came and the fever set in, the time passed so quickly. She and Cookie were passing one another in the halls constantly, relaying last minute information.

"His pressure is up and the fever has been high but steady. The second poultice needs an hour." Even while Rachel's words echoed down the hall, her hands full of bedding she had to wash, Cookie was making her own report.

"Rex has asked about you again. I've told him that Micah isn't well. It may only work a few days."

"Well have to keep him out of sight when we're open. I can occupy him." Rachel knew that Micah understood about the stranger. He would make the sacrifice without too much resistance.

It had been an on going cycle that left little room for the daily lives, let alone luxuries like sleep. After Micah returned with their 'picnic' Rachel would only have an hour before she needed to give Cookie a break from the chaos of the restaurant below. 

Voices, faces. Trades had passed through her hands and straight to the back without her really seeing them. The soup changed every day, the bread came from the oven hot enough to scald, but the smells and the burns never reached her. Whether she was bent over an unbathed worker or a fragrant sugar pie, all she knew was the dark upper room, the smell of blood faint under the heated wave of warm glass and lamp oil

It was like she and Cookie were trapped between two versions of hell. One was loud and raucous and hectic. The other....the other was hell only because of how well it disguised itself as heaven.

By the end of that day exhaustion could not sufficiently describe the weariness in her body. Halfway through clearing the tables in the dim light of the low lanterns, Rachel sank into a chair and let her arms hang at her side. She closed her eyes to let the stillness sink into her bones. One by one she quieted the echoing voices in her mind.

Rex's was first. He'd been especially drunk. His hands were everywhere. On her arms, where he had left bruises, or clutching at the back pockets of her pants to pull her back into range.

In the past she might have played along. Made nice so as not to upset the powers that be. She didn't this time. With Cookie upstairs and no slack in the customers, Rex had been almost more than she could handle.

She raised the sleeve of her shirt to look at the small discolorations on her upper arm. They would flesh out in the next few days. If Micah saw them he would quietly show his disapproval. Cookie no longer reacted. They both knew that bruises in this time were merely signs of life.

Even Rex had paled in comparison to that night's visitor, one of Margaret's newest henchmen. He'd come in early into Rachel's shift. It didn't matter to him that she had a hot platter of soup and bread in her hands or a room full of hungry, rowdy workers. He grabbed at her sleeve and pulled her away from the tumult long enough to grope her unnecessarily and ask her if she had heard anything of the stranger with the bike.

"She knows you've been very distracted. Not around as much."

"Micah has been sick. He's my son. There's something going around."

"It takes two women to care for one boy? How old is he again?"

Rachel swallowed around the fear and anger and clenched her lips tightly shut for a moment. "When he's unwell...when he needs someone to help him eat and clean him up...yes."

"He is very sick?"

"He is not well.." Rachel insisted, breaking eye contact.

"You must be so frightened..." He cooed, stepping in closer, crowding Rachel back against the wall. He smelled of sweat, stale alcohol and gasoline fumes.

"I have customers-"

He drew even closer, so that Rachel could count the lice eggs in his hair. She could almost taste the Scotch he had either stolen or earned from the Boss. Rachel knew what he wanted but she couldn't fathom why. Why so openly, why at the busiest time of the night? Why in sight of everyone in the restaurant? Who was he, afterall, and what was he trying to prove?

She hadn't seen Rex stand up but she felt the tension in the air change.

The noise around her died and Margaret's new man turned his head. There was a silent threat in Rex's stance. A claim of ownerhip that Rachel dared not acknowledge. Margaret's man responded to it, stepping back at first, then loosing his grip so that Rachel could hold her tray with two hands again.

"She'll see you at the end of the week. You'd do well to have something for her. Something good." He said, then left, intentionally avoiding making eye contact with Rex, taunting him with his back and his relaxed gait as he exited.

That had been why Rex grabbed at her the rest of the night. Rachel knew exactly what was happening in his mind. He'd done her a favor, protected her from a new enemy, worse than he. Rachel now owed him.

Looking up she realized that she had chosen to sink down into the chair he had occupied most of the night. The solid stillness of the wood beneath her helped her quell the echoes.

There had to be an end. For years she had been resisting. For years she had been refusing to accept a fate linked with Rex, devoid of hope. Somewhere in her she had expected a different future. She had been following the old rules, the rules of before. Unconciously she had determined that the anarchy would end, the chaos was a temporary dream that would fade.

Micah had been the first part of that decision. Keeping him had been hard, but she didn't regret it now.

His life had given her reason to live.

Now she wondered if she could live when Micah was taken from her. Would she kill herself? Or would she give in to Rex. Kill her soul, her pride, her fighting spirit. Would Cookie survive? Rachel thought she would. Cookie's value to the Boss and the town was vastly different than Rachel's.

Rachel pulled herself to her feet. There was cleaning to be done and she took her time with it. Methodically clearing every dish, every crack, every spec. She put the dough up to rise overnight and was done an hour and a half later than usual.

She had missed hearing Cookie descend the stairs but there she stood when Rachel put a foot on the first step. She met Cookie's gaze and smiled. The weight of the day moistened her eyes but the work and the quiet had done her some good. She leaned forward and squeezed Cookie's arm. She had only once received a hug from the older woman and she didn't want one in that moment. In her own way Cookie fully understood.

"He's awake." She said.

Rachel blinked, tilting her head to the side. "Right now?"

Cookie nodded. "Asked to speak with you."

Rachel felt her heart start to pound. An electric pulse shot through her, almost painful in its intensity. She started to sweat from the heat rising to her face.

"Will he eat?" She asked, Cookie already nodding.

"I'll bring it up."

Rachel acknowledged her words thankfully and stepped to the side so that Cookie could pass. She barely remembered going up the stairs. When she reached the doorway to his room she hesitated. Up until that moment there had only been a body in that room, in that bed. There wasn't a stranger who could cause potential harm, nor a man requiring respect or privacy.

She had become so familiar with his sleeping pattern, the sinewy curve of his wrist and the thready pulse beneath. His face had always been flaccid and still, his eyes always closed. She realized as she paused there that she would see his eyes for the first time since she had found him in the attic. Rachel took a deep breath, held it, and pushed the door open staring studiously at the wood paneling until the door had closed again. She stayed close to the door, crossing her arms in front of her as she turned.

He was awake. Silver blue eyes focused intently on her. His left arm lay at his side on top of the covers. It took her a moment to recognize the wooden cup held in his hand.

She crossed the floor in a hurry, as if afraid that going slower would give her the time to change her mind. The cup was empty. She pulled it easily from his grasp and filled it from the pitcher on the bedside table.

His eyes were still open, still focused on her when she turned back towards him. For some reason that surprised her. She bent over him, lifting his head slightly with one hand while she tipped the cup to his lips with the other. His left hand came up, his fingertips brushing against the back of her hand. Not stopping her, nor helping. She felt that same electricity.

The cup was small but still held more water than he had consumed at any one time in the past week. He drank it all and for Rachel it was a monumental victory.

She sat down in the chair by the bed with the empty cup in her hands. Stupid, irrational tears welled in her eyes. She quickly brushed them away, raised her head and opened her mouth to speak. When she closed it again she still hadn't spoken a word. What could she say to a man she barely knew and yet knew intimately.

"My name's Jack." His voice cracked when he spoke and Rachel caught the brief wince in the thin lines at the edge of his eyes.

"Rachel," she said, lifting a hand as if to point to herself, then letting it flop back into her lap. She was nervous, indecisive, practically on the verge of hysteria. And over it all a very thin, slowly crumbling lay of peace. "The woman from before was Cookie."

Jack nodded and through the beard Rachel caught a flash of teeth. "She told me."

There was a moment of silence, his eyes started to drift. Rachel looked to the blanket, one arm self-consciously rising.

"How long have I-"

"Six days," she said, "And nights."

His eyes widened. "That must have been hard."

Rachel smiled softly. The comment had been quick. His voice was weak but clearly his mind wasn't. In a single breath he had acknowledged the sacrifice Rachel, Cookie and Micah had made so that he might survive. It was not what she would have expected from a man on his death bed.

She broke the silence to ask him if he thought he could keep down a little broth and bread. She could tell he was tiring quickly, but he nodded his head then closed his eyes.

Rachel stood and set the cup on the bedside table. She started to lean forward to tuck his arm under the cover. The moment her hand touched his he jumped. He sucked in a sharp breath and his eyes snapped open, fastening on her in alarm for a second then roving around the room as his breathing calmed. Rachel tried to pull away from him but found that he had grabbed hold of her hand, holding it tightly, insistent.

When Jack's head settled back against the pillow, his brow tight and his face growing ashen, Rachel reached awkwardly for the wet compress on the bedside table. With one hand she could ring out most of the water before she wiped his face down. The man on the bed fought the pain quietly, his face and the pressure of his fingers around her hand the only indication of his suffering.

He had finally relaxed by the time Cookie knocked against the door. She'd put the broth in a cup, then wrapped a cloth around it to protect against the translated heat. A slice of bread, lathered in butter was steaming on top. It was a trick of Cookie's. Warm the bread on top of the sou and the customer couldn't tell that it was stale and several days old.

Rachel heard Cookie put the tray down on the table behind her then move around to the other side of the bed. She silently stooped down to roll back the covers and pushed clothing out of the way to reveal the blood soaked bandages tightly bound to Jack's torso.

He opened his eyes. Rachel watched him read the expression on her face. He grunted, a wry curve of the lips parting his unruly beard and mustache. "Not there yet, huh?"

Rachel used her compress to brush hair from around his eyes. Her lips pursed but she could feel the muscles betraying her, stretching to smile.

"Not yet." She said softly, then freed her hands so that she could help Cookie change the dressing.