“Exactly. Your arm needs to be immobilized, probably all the way through the elbow.”
“Pass.”
She raises her eyebrows. “It’s not really a question.”
“You’re right, it’s not because it’s not happening,” I tell her evenly. “I can’t survive out there with a cast on my arm.”
“You can’t just leave it like this.”
“Ryan splinted it, we can splint it again.”
“I splinted it because it’s all I could do,” he calls from the bathroom, shouting through the shut door. “If I could have casted it, I would have.”
I glare at the closed door. “Just do your business and don’t worry about us out here, alright?”
“Do what you want, but you should let her cast it.”
I turn to the nurse. “That’s kind of creepy right? I don’t know much, but I feel like talking to someone on the toilet is creepy.”
She nods seriously. “It is, it’s weird. But he’s right. We need to do more than splint your arm.”
I shake my head. “Not happening.”
“Fine,” she says with a sigh. “I’ll splint it, then. But don’t come crying to me when it heals wrong and hurts when it rains.”
“Deal. Once I’m gone, I’ll never come back.”
“You just got here. You’re that eager to leave us?” she asks, going back to her business of looking for a vein. She’s taken hold of my other arm, leaving my injured one alone.
“Taylor is pretty clear that we’re not wanted here.”
The nurse smiles. “Yeah, he’s not subtle. But it’s not up to him. It’s up to the council. If you can be of use to us here, they’ll let you stay.”
“We don’t want to stay.”
“What do you want, then?”
“Help.”
She pauses, looking up at me. “Help with what?”
I swallow, not sure what to say exactly. Help fulfilling my promise? Help getting The Hive to agree to fight with us? Help freeing people from the Colony up north? Help taking down all of the Colonies? Help bringing down the Westbrook guy who’s running the circus? I don’t even know for sure. I’m not clear on how big of a part I’m meant to play in any of this. I haven’t really stopped to think about it, not until right now. What is it that I want? Not what does everyone else want me to do or what do I need to get done to free myself from this burden, but what do I want out of all of this for my life?
“Help taking down the Colonies,” I tell her adamantly, “ending the roundups and the kidnappings. Help making the resources the Colonies hoard and hide from us available to everyone willing to work and trade for them so the world isn’t so damn cutthroat and horrifying.”
She stares at me for a long time saying nothing. Not even moving. I can feel Trent staring at me too and I wonder if Ryan heard my rant. I try not to picture him right now, though.
“Those are some lofty goals,” she tells me quietly. “You’ll need a lot of help for that. Help we won’t give you.”
My heart plummets. “Why not?”
“Because as much as we hate the Colonies, we have something of a truce with them. They leave us alone, we leave them alone. Trust me, I’d like nothing more than to tear their buildings down on their heads with my bare hands, but I have a bigger picture to think about. Something bigger than my need for revenge.”
“What did they do to you?”
Her eyes and mouth tighten at the corners. She’s angry. “They tried to kill my husband. They said he was tainted. Dirty. Half dead like the monsters outside. Then they started saying the same thing about my daughter. They said I had laid with the damned and only evil could come from that. I put an arrow in a man’s eye when he broke into my home to murder my family. To cleanse us. That was the last straw. We got out after that. We ran. We couldn’t fight them, which is why I know you’ll need a lot of help to do what you’re planning. More help than The Hive can give you.”
My blood runs cold. “Who said anything about The Hive?”
She looks at me hard. “They sent you here, didn’t they?”
“How do you know that?” I whisper.
“Your boat has the name U.S.S. Sweet Honey written on the side of it with a small hornet painted on the rudder.”
I close my eyes against what idiots we’ve been. How ill thought out and impulsive this entire thing has turned out to be. “I hate Marlow so much.”
“Most people do,” she agrees. “He’s an idiot, though. Hornets don’t even make honey. They eat insects, including each other.”
“Like the cannibals.”
“And the zombies, yeah. So you’re part of The Hive?”
“No,” I say firmly. “Absolutely not. We just went to them for help and they sent us here. They told us if we could get your people to join up, then they’d join us too. I know it’s a lie, but we don’t have a lot of options. We had to try.”
“What’s your plan?” the nurse asks, sitting down and leaning back, crossing her arms over her chest as she watches me.
I blink, surprised. “What?”
“Your plan. What was the pitch you gave to The Hive? Give it to me now. Sell it to me.”
I glance at Trent who simply watches me as well, no indication of what he thinks I should say or do. So I figure what can it hurt?
I tell her everything. I start at the beginning with the day I was taken by the Colonists. I tell her about Vin, Nats and Breanne. About the Colony in the north in the MOHAI. About the crazy happy people running the show and the guard duty walking the wall, watching the interior to keep people in instead of keeping zombies out. I tell her about the kitchen crew, about the sewing room, about the maintenance room where Nats works. I tell her about the night I got jumped and she smiles when I tell her about the child’s t-shirt and my failures as a seamstress. I tell her about the rebellion, the people desperately wanting out. Then I tell her about Caroline and her face changes. She’s sad but she also looks understanding, the way Ryan looked at me when I told him. Like someone who knows. When I tell her about my jump and my fall, she nods in understanding as my broken bone suddenly makes sense. Then, when I’m done talking and Ryan is in the room with us again and no one is making a sound, she simply stares at me. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I definitely don’t know if she believes me but as I look back at her, I really want her to.
“That’s quite a story,” she tells me.
But she doesn’t.
She stands slowly, gathers her things and leaves the room without another word. I shake my head as I run my hands over my hair, pulling at it in frustration.
“No one is ever going to help us, are they? The Colonies will never stop. The roundups won’t stop. The fear— dammit!”
“We could leave,” Trent suggests. “Leave Seattle entirely. Live somewhere else where there are no Colonies.”
“How do we know they aren’t everywhere?” I ask him harshly.
“We don’t know. Not until we look.”
“No,” I tell him, shaking my head again. “I can’t just walk away. I can’t leave them in there.”
“We’ll keep trying, Joss,” Ryan tells me, but he sounds tired. Beat down like I feel. “We’ll find a way to go back for them. I promise.”
“Thanks,” I mumble, but I don’t believe him.
I don’t think he does either.
“Still here, huh?” Taylor asks, flipping on the light.
I open my eyes slowly, making sure to take my time waking up. I’ve been working on that. On not freaking out and bashing Ryan in the face if I’m startled awake, something that happens more often than I’d like to admit. I’m like a skittish little deer and it sounds sweet, but not when you’re the deer. Then it’s just scary, humiliating and annoying. Ryan doesn’t say anything about my new restrained demeanor, but I think every morning he wakes up without a fat lip or bloodied nose he counts it as a win. He could sleep somewhere else, somewhere away from me and my violent tendencies, but he never does. Some things, I think, are worth a little pain. I guess for him, sleeping beside me is one of them.