The Eve (The Eden Trilogy) (16 page)

West glanced over at me, knowing in his eyes.  What I meant was the conversation we’d had about why it would have never worked between us.

“Yeah,” he finally said.  “He’s been trying to keep me involved in the scientific side of things.  I think he resents me acting like a soldier.”

“Soldiers are important too these days,” I said. 

“Yeah,” he said through a yawn that suddenly overtook him.

I climbed to my feet and extended a hand to him.  He took it and I pulled him to standing position.  I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and held him tight.  He took a deep, shaking breath before letting me go.  Eve One was still heavy on his mind.

“Goodnight,” I said.

He gave me a small, appreciative smile, and turned down the hall.

I stepped back inside Morgan’s room, collapsed into another chair, and fixed my eyes on Morgan.

A steady but slow beeping rhythm filled the room.  Beep beep.  Pause.  Beep Beep.  Pause.  And then the quicker one.  Beep Beep.  Tiny pause.  Beep beep.

Two faint hearts.  Only one that had a chance of continuing.

Avian’s hand suddenly twitched and his head slipped off the side of the chair.  He jerked up just before he fell.  He bolted upright in it, looking around the room with bloodshot eyes. 

“It’s okay,” I reassured him.  I crossed the room and sank onto my knees next to him.  “I’ve been keeping an eye on her.  Everything has seemed normal.”

He rubbed his eyes.  “Thanks,” he said, stifling a yawn. 

“Why don’t you take my sleeping bag and get some more rest,” I said, nodding my head to where it sat rolled up in the hall.  “I can stay up with her tonight.”

“No, I’m—”

“No, you’re not okay to stay up,” I said, cutting him off.  I stood and grabbed the rolled up bag.  I opened it up along the farther wall where Dr. Evans had been watching from earlier.  “Get some sleep,” I insisted.  “You’re going to have an intense day tomorrow.”

He glanced over at Morgan and looked at her for a long moment before his eyelids slowly dropped closed and open again.  He was barely even awake.

“Okay,” he said in a slurred voice.  “But you wake me up the second anything changes.”

“I will,” I said with a nod.

Avian shuffled across the room and collapsed into the sleeping bag.  He was asleep before I even zipped the side up around him.

Like time always does, it rolled by slow and quiet.  I thought about seeking out Dr. Evans to see how the TorBane doses were coming along, but I didn’t particularly enjoy his company or his comments about my sister or the baby.

So I watched Morgan, watched Avian, and watched the clock.

At exactly 3:49 AM, there was a faraway sound.  Far enough away sounding that I knew it was loud in its location. 

The location was the door leading to the underground levels.

Checking Morgan’s monitors, I ducked out of the room, shotgun in hand.  The light in the hallway was dim and the ventilation system had just kicked on, dulling my sense of hearing.  I paused at the bottom of the stairway, looking up to the landing that led to the scientist’s offices.

No traces of an intruder.

Silently, I made my way up the stairs, to the door that opened up into the main lobby.

It was closed, just as it should be.

I tried to reason with myself as I made my way back down to the second underground level, that it was nothing but an old building settling down for the day after being disturbed.  But I couldn’t deny that my ears had heard something.

When I got back to the second floor, I scouted the halls, checking Bill and West’s rooms, but there was no sign of disturbance.  Finally, I got back to Morgan’s room and stood vigil in the doorway.

SEVENTEEN

There were no more misplaced sounds until 5:08, and then there was the high-pitched flat-line buzz.

“Avian!” I yelled as I darted to her side, but it wasn’t needed.  Avian was on his feet already.

“Her heart’s stopped,” he said, placing his hands on her chest and starting chest compressions.  “See those paddles over there?”  He nodded toward them.  “Flip that switch and charge it up to two hundred.”

I did as he said and handed the paddles over to Avian.  He placed them on her chest and turned them on.  Morgan’s chest surged up off the bed before falling flat against it once again.  The heart rate monitor blipped once and flat-lined again.

“Charge it again!” Avian yelled.  Just as I did, Bill and West appeared in the doorway.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” West asked, his eyes wide as he watched Morgan’s chest surge up off the bed again.

“Go get your grandfather,” Avian said as he nodded for me to charge it again.  “I have a feeling this is it.  I give her two more minutes before we have to get the baby out of her.”

West darted out of the room and down the hall.

“If she goes, I’m going to need both of you to help get the baby out,” Avian said, tossing aside the paddles and starting chest compressions again.  “Bill, you’ll help me roll her into the surgery room.  Then you’ll both help me cut her open.  I hope blood doesn’t make you squeamish.”

The both of us just nodded.  In a world like ours, it was difficult to be turned off by the sight of blood.

Avian glanced up at the monitor that tracked the baby’s heart.  It had slowed significantly.  He swore, while continuing to press on her chest. 

“It’s been two minutes, Avian,” I said, looking up at the clock above the door.

“Okay,” Avian said, backing away from Morgan and pulling the lines from her body.  “Time of death is 5:14.”  He unhooked the large tube that spouted from her throat.  “Let’s get her to the operating room.”

Tunnel vision threatened to overtake me as Bill and Avian pushed Morgan’s bed down the hall to the surgical room, but I focused on the roundness of her belly and told myself I had no place blacking out at a time like this.  I held the door open for them and stood to the side as they wheeled the bed in.

I had a feeling that in another time, this surgery would not go as it did.  It would be far more sterile, more organized, less chaotic.  And the mother wouldn’t be dead.

But we had precious seconds and a doctor who had never performed this type of surgery before.

“Bill, you take this here,” Avian said, handing him a small, ghostly white tube.  He flipped a switch and it started sucking air.  “Keep the blood and fluids out of the way so I can see what I’m doing.  I’m going to make the incisions and Eve, when I tell you to, you’re going to help push the baby out from the top of her stomach.”

I felt the blood draining from my face as I nodded.

Avian lifted the hospital gown Morgan wore.  He opened a package and pulled out a pair of gloves that rose up to his elbows.  Bill and I followed suit.

Picking up a scalpel from the shiny silver tray next to him, Avian placed it on her skin.  A heavy line of blood beaded up as he made a twelve inch incision along her lower abdomen.  Adequate at his job, Bill suctioned the blood away.

It took longer than I expected, for Avian to cut through the layers of muscle and what little fat was on her body.  My stomach started turning, seeing the inside of a human body like I never had before.  This was much different than seeing a bleeding bullet wound.

Avian had me use clamps that looked a lot like scissors to hold the layers back as he continued to cut.  My hands shook and started to sweat beneath my gloves, but I did as he asked.

And finally, he got to what looked like a latex glove inside of her body.  As soon as he very carefully sliced it open, fluid started gushing out.

“That’s the amniotic sack,” Avian said, making the incision larger as Bill sucked the fluid away.  The fluid covered Morgan and splashed down onto the floor.

My stomach gave another sea-wave twist.

“Okay,” Avian said, using his fingers to stretch the entire hole bigger.  “This is it.  Eve, I need you to use your hands to gently push the baby down and out.”

Avian reached a hand inside the hole he’d cut just as West and Dr. Evans burst into the room.

“West, I need you to get that oxygen going,” Avian said, nodding toward a tiny bed that sat in one corner of the room.  There was a dome over it that covered the whole thing.  Attached to the side of it was an oxygen tube.  “Now, Eve.”

I placed my hands on the top of Morgan’s stomach, at the bottom of her ribs and gently started pushing.  The child inside squirmed against me.

That was the first moment I pictured the future of this tiny human being.  How we had a chance of giving it a tomorrow, a tomorrow free of Bane, a future that was actually a future and not just a daily fight for survival.

As what felt like a tiny fist punched against my hand, I knew I would do anything—anything—to give this child a chance at that future.

Avian’s left hand came free of the opening with a teeny tiny foot.  He swore under his breath.  “The baby’s breech,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve.  “Coming feet first.  Back off on the pushing until I can get the other leg free.”

I relaxed my hand on Morgan’s stomach.  The trapped child within punched against my hand once again.

“How’s the TorBane looking?” I asked, darting a look over at Dr. Evans.  He stood two feet back from Avian, observing.

“No change on the test cells.  They look like they’re behaving correctly,” he said, his eyes fixed on Avian’s hand inside of Morgan’s stomach.

A moment later, another tiny foot broke free of the opening.  “Now, Eve,” Avian breathed.  “Gently.”

I applied pressure once again and five seconds later, the entire baby was free of Morgan.

Avian was a flurry of activity, moving so fast I could barely process what he was doing.  In one movement he set the baby on the bed between Morgan’s legs, in another he cut the strange looking cord that ran from its stomach back inside of Morgan.  In the next, he whisked the baby to the tiny bed with the strange dome.  A second later he had a tiny oxygen tube down its nose and was rubbing its entire body with a soft blanket.

“If you think that concoction is ready,” Avian said as he continued sucking gunk out of the baby’s mouth and nose with a strange blue bulb-shaped tool.  “Let’s get it started now.  This isn’t exactly a newborn intensive care unit.  Let’s get her all the help we can.”

Her.

Morgan had been right.  It was a girl.

I stood frozen next to Morgan, as did Bill.  Dr. Evans crossed the room, and very carefully handed two syringes to Avian.  “One needs to go directly into her lungs, the other to her heart,” he said, moving to one side of the bed.  He stood back a foot, his hands held firmly behind his back.  “It will be painful for her, but at this point, it might be good for her.  It might get her adrenaline system in gear and speed things up.”

Avian nodded.

I had to look away as he held up the first syringe.

Instead I looked down at Morgan.  All eyes had turned away from her.  She just lay there on the table, her stomach a deflated, open maw.  She looked wrecked.

Gathering the sheet that had been pushed to the bottom of the bed, I drew it up.  Pressing a brief kiss to her forehead, and whispering a goodbye, I covered her face.

“How long until we see if she starts improving?” Avian asked from across the room.  Certain he had put the needles away, I crossed back to the tiny bed.  Bill joined us as well.  Everyone was gathered around it, staring at the child Avian worked on. 

She didn’t open her eyes as Avian hooked all kinds of monitors to her.  One on her chest, one strapped around her foot.  She opened her mouth in a silent cry, but no sound came out.

“By tomorrow morning we may start seeing small improvements to her heart rate and breathing,” Dr. Evans said.  “It will probably be a few weeks before she is breathing on her own, but we may be able to manage travel in five days.”

“You think she might survive the trip?” I asked, my brow furrowing.  She was so tiny, so fragile.  I couldn’t even imagine her surviving being moved from the bed.

“It won’t be easy, but infants are resilient.  Especially when they’ve been given TorBane.  You survived.”

I gave an absentminded nod as I looked back at the child.  Her entire body was wrinkly, like she hadn’t quite grown into her skin.  She was a strange mix of purple and red.  Beneath her blanket, she gave a small kick.

Avian threaded another tiny tube down her nose.  “It’s a feeding tube,” he explained.  “We don’t have an ideal mixture, but we’ll do our best.”

“I have to say, I am very impressed with your coolness and work, Avian,” Dr. Evans complimented.  “You would have made an excellent physician if I hadn’t ended the world.”

“Thanks,” Avian chuckled.  “I guess it would have been nice to actually attend medical school.”

“How does it feel, looking at a mini you?” West asked.  He placed a hand on my shoulder.  “You’re not alone anymore.”

And suddenly my throat tightened and the back of my eyes stung.

I had never felt lonely or isolated or different in a way that made me sad.  But in truth, I had always been very different.  No one would ever fully understand what I had gone through in my life, and the one person who would understand was nowhere to be found.

As I looked down at this tiny infant who would have to fight for her life as I did, I vowed that I would never let her feel alone or different.

“Like nothing I ever expected to feel,” I breathed.

Avian looked over at me, his eyes catching mine.  Despite the craziness that had just happened, there was warmth and love in his eyes.

I didn’t have any more words, so I simply smiled and looked back down at the child.  By now, she had started to calm down and was still once more except for the tiny rise and fall of her chest.

With nothing more he could do at the moment, Avian returned to Morgan.  A tightness closed around my throat as I finally accepted the fact of what I was seeing: she was dead.  We’d just lost one more member of Eden.

West and Bill went back to the surface and set to digging a place to bury her.  They hadn’t said a word, but I knew they were dealing with their grief in their own ways.  Even if they hadn’t known her well, she was one of us.