Girl On the Edge

by CD Reiss

  “—or it’s not a placebo.”

  His eyes were so intense I nearly melted under their heat. Blue was a cold color associated with ice and distance, but when he directed it my way, it warmed me.

  “I’m whole,” he said. “Shaken, yes. But whole. Was she?”

  I put my hands on his chest, wishing he hadn’t put the shirt on before I had a chance to kiss his skin. “No, but—”

  “Okay, take it easy.” He took my wrists and kissed my palms. “I’m going to finish this treatment with them and be done with it.”

  He kissed me before I could protest, and there was so much love and trust in that kiss that I let it melt my objections away. I pulled him into me, and he wrapped his arms around my body as if he was afraid I’d run away.

  When I felt his erection against me, I groaned into his mouth, lifting my leg over his waist. He pressed his hardness against my damp softness.

  “My room,” he said, cupping my breast.

  “We’re not finished talking about this,” I said, grinding into him.

  “We’re going to talk about our life together. I’m going to give you the entire world. We’re going to talk about which part you get first.”

  “You. You’re the part I want first.”

  “Good, because—”

  The doors at the end of the hall swung open. Dana appeared with a metal tray, stopping short when she saw us tangled together. “Oh! There you are. I, uh…”

  I got both feet on the floor.

  “It’s fine,” Caden said.

  “I have to give you this,” Dana replied, setting down the tray with a syringe that told stories.

  “No—” I started.

  “All right.” Caden passed her on the way out, stopping long enough to say, “But give her a sedative.”

  The doors closed behind him.

  “I’m not sure he needs it,” I said.

  “When he came in he looked a little—”

  “He doesn’t need it!” I shouted.

  Ashamed of my tantrum, I went past her to follow my husband.

  He was already sitting in the exam room, rolling up his sleeve.

  “Caden, listen to me…”

  “I’m fine.”

  Dana came in with her tray and, not wanting to yell again, I clammed up, crossing my arms and wondering how the hell I was going to get him out of this.

  She sat next to him and pulled on latex gloves, smiling from ear to ear. “Thank you so much for taking care of Bobby.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  They chatted while she swabbed his skin.

  I stood over them, remembering slipping on the squiggle of Yarrow’s blood on the linoleum, her red face, the heat and depth of her confusion and pain. She screamed with the voice of an abused child. Would he sound like a little boy locked in a cellar when he got the shot?

  “Baby?” Caden asked, his voice far away, drowned out by darkness and horror.

  I couldn’t risk stuffing him back in the bag. Not for his promises or mine.

  Dana raised the needle.

  “I’ll do it.” I held out my hand. Momentarily bewildered, Dana froze with the needle between herself and Caden’s arm. “It’s my responsibility.”

  “All right,” she chirped.

  She placed the syringe back on the tray and stood. I sat across from my husband and got gloves on, ready to deliver a death blow to his sanity or a round of nothing at all. Caden leaned forward with a smirk. He liked this. I knew he thought I was sexy with a needle in my hand. After this, he’d fuck me as if it would be the last time he used his dick.

  Dana waited impatiently.

  Ronin had told me she didn’t need a babysitter. Well, neither did I.

  “Can you get his paperwork for me?” I asked. “I want to make some notes after I’m done.”

  She nodded and left.

  “You’re really sexy when you boss people around,” Caden said.

  I pressed his arm down to hold it steady, feeling the way the skin gave but the muscle didn’t. How complex the structure of his cells and nerves was. How touching him made me realize how fragile he was. How quickly I could lose him.

  With my right hand, I held the needle to his arm, holding his elbow with the left hand. I felt him watching me. His impatience to do this thing so he could get me into bed.

  The shot was nothing. Had to be. Ronin would lie, but about this? No. Not about the research.

  But he had bosses.

  Maybe they lied.

  Maybe they’d made a mistake.

  Maybe Leslie Yarrow and Caden St. John had become test cases.

  “Come on, baby,” Caden said. “I want to get moving here.”

  If I didn’t give him the shot, Dana would. Ronin had authorized her to do her job with or without me. And since I’d asked them to send a second syringe? Squirting this one on the floor, if I even could, would just delay the inevitable. When the syringe didn’t change color, they’d know I hadn’t given it to him. They’d fire me. Send me home. When the new syringe came, Dana would give him the shot he was convinced he could handle.

  I was trapped.

  Caden was trapped.

  The BiCam had to go into someone before Dana returned, and it wasn’t going to be Caden.

  Quickly, I turned the needle downward.

  And away.

  The diagonally cut tip turned toward me, the white rubbery hub hungry to turn blue when it touched my skin.

  So fast, but carefully, with all my attention on what I was doing, I pushed it into my left bicep, lowering the plunger until the syringe was empty.

  Caden leaned back.

  “We’re done here,” I said. By the time I dropped the syringe on the metal tray, the hub was already blue.

  * * *

  Hubris is excessive, defiant pride or self-confidence.

  That wasn’t what this was. I’d given myself the shot out of certainty. Trust. I was sane and whole, so much so that even my fears and quirks confirmed my core mental soundness.

  My body had been broken at the wrist, pierced at the sternum, snapped at the collarbone, but nothing could change what I was. Who I was. If you’d asked me if I believed humans had souls, I would have given you arguments about genetics and upbringing that added up to a denial. But I must have believed. When I gave myself that shot, it was because I trusted that I had a sane, unbreakable core. I was confirming the unconfirmable.

  I believed in my soul. I believed it would never change. I believed that to protect Caden, I’d be able to shrug off whatever confusion this stuff created.

  My attention was locked on Caden as he leaned back with his sleeve rolled up and the alcohol drying on his arm. His focus further established what I already knew. I was safe.

  “Why?” was all he said.

  “It’s for the best.” I stood, suddenly uncomfortable with inaction.

  I had to move forward. Whatever that was, it was a direction. My heart pounded with anxiety. I felt trapped in an inert state that would corrode me. It wasn’t an overwhelming feeling. It was more like an irritation. An itch on the sole of your foot in otherwise comfortable shoes. Definitely within the normal range.

  I walked out. Forward into the lobby and outside, where dawn broke the blackness of the sky into blues. He was right behind me. I knew it without hearing him.

  But I had to keep moving. I didn’t even know where I was going except forward to an undefinable destination.

  He grabbed my arm. “Slow down.”

  I stopped long enough for him to wrap his arms around me. I was locked in a stillness that was comfortable because it was him. “I’m sorry. I just got claustrophobic all of a sudden.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t want you to have the serum or a placebo or anything. I don’t care about the research, and I don’t care what they say about what’s in it. I don’t want to risk it. Period. That’s my professional assessment.”

  He ran his thumb over my cheek with that
perfect casual pressure. His touch grounded me to the moment, soothing the itch to move.

  “Okay,” he said. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yes.” I ran my finger along the edge of his placket. “Now I am.” The world was inside the spaces where we touched. Nothing could break us. Nothing.

  “If the shot wasn’t a placebo?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?” He lifted my chin so I could look at him. Behind him, the sky was lightening to the exact color of the eyes that saw right through me.

  “Yes.” I was five miles off the ground in his gaze.

  “Greysen?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “If you’re not, I’ll kill him.” He meant Ronin, but I was fine. “I’ll burn Blackthorne down. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.” My voice was barely a whisper. I understood. He was forward motion and stillness. His eyes were the lock of gravity under a sky that melted, moved, shifted, cracked.

  Behind his still points of blue, the sky was rent into two distinct halves, and the trust that my soul could bear anything shattered with it.

  It was not a placebo.

  Part Nine

  Chapter Seventy-One

  GREYSEN

  Never take anything for granted.

  Anything.

  When a piece of metal had missed my heart by a fraction of the length of my fingernail, I’d stopped taking my safety for granted, adding that to my overall health and the health of my family. I never took Caden’s love for granted, nor his well-being. Never money. Never my friends.

  But I’d taken my sanity for granted. I’d leaned on it as the one thing I could always count on, no matter what. My mental stability was the rock I’d lashed the rest of myself onto as the earth shook and the winds tried to rip me away.

  I was sane. My perceptions were keen and clear. My personality was steady, clearly defined as me, and with that collateral in my pocket, I could risk everything else. It couldn’t be bartered, spent, or worn away. I could not be disengaged from it. My very existence had been poured into the vessel of my sanity.

  Even after seeing Caden fall apart, I’d depended on that container to hold me together, assuming it was indestructible.

  When I took the shot meant for my husband, the assumption remained. It was a placebo…or not. If it was, I’d be fine. If it wasn’t, then I’d still be me, no matter what I’d injected into myself. No vial of experimental serum could take away the essentialness of me because that was where the unmovable object and the unstoppable force met. It was the only real thing in the world.

  “Why did you do that?” Caden asked outside the hospital.

  My arm throbbed at the injection site. I hadn’t been careful with the needle, nor had I stuck it into thick-enough muscle.

  “I don’t trust him.” I said, knowing Caden would understand I was talking about Ronin. “What happened to Yarrow, I don’t want it to happen to you. And if I wouldn’t give you the shot, Dana would.”

  He took me in his arms, and there the splitting sky was sewn shut. I thought I was just tired. A little stressed out. All I needed was a good night’s sleep and Caden St. John.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why not just dump it if you didn’t want me to have it?”

  “The syringe had a tell. If it didn’t go into someone, they would have known.”

  “So what?”

  “They’d just send more, and if I wouldn’t give it to you, someone else would.” There was more to it than that, of course. If I’d dumped it, another solution would have presented itself in time. But I took my sanity for granted, so I’d gone with the solution I had on hand because it would satisfy my need to save Caden.

  “I had to know if it was a placebo or not,” I said. “If I tossed it, we’d never know.”

  “Well?” He laid a kiss on my cheek. “Is it?”

  His question wasn’t urgent. He wasn’t worried or uneasy, because he took my sanity for granted as well.

  “Not sure,” I said even though I was very sure something had shifted. I laid my lips on the bare bit of skin over his collar, breathing deeply of coffee grounds and lingering rubbing alcohol. The scent went from my nose, down my spine, between my legs, where it burst into a throb that beat with my heart. “Maybe it was an aphrodisiac.”

  “I’m off duty at oh four hundred,” he said.

  “Can you get to my apartment at that hour?”

  “Probably. The army never sleeps.”

  Dropping my arms away from him, I stepped back. I felt the sky rip into two halves—two eyes watching me from deep in the past—and still thought I had it under control. I could watch the effects of the drug like a clinician and let them wear off like a person with a deep well of sanity.

  “Be there,” I said.

  “Be naked,” he replied with a smirk.

  He took two steps backward to the hospital, turning when the doors whooshed open. I watched him walk away, yanking the tether between us tight, tighter, near breaking but not quite.

  Not yet.

  Maybe I took that for granted too.

  * * *

  I’d taken the shot instead of wasting it because I didn’t want Blackthorne to know it didn’t go into Caden. Once I realized Caden’s syringe hadn’t been filled with a placebo, I got pissed off. That was not okay. Not for Caden. Not for anyone.

  At 02:23:00, the Blackthorne offices were dark and empty. I sat at my desk and dashed off an email I was pretty sure I’d regret.

  FROM: GFrazier@blackthorne.com

  TO: RBlake@blackthorne.com

  CC: DGionetto@blackthorne.com

  * * *

  Ronin:

  Dana has logged subject Dr. Caden St. John’s vial as administered because the syringe corroborates and because I told her it was.

  This email is to correct the record. The dose was administered to me. The subject was the only witness. Dana is not at fault for the erroneous log. I will submit corrected paperwork first thing in the morning.

  As an aside, the syringe did not contain a placebo. I am experiencing noticeable symptoms of scopaesthesia. As these syringes do not contain what I—the accountable physician—was told is in them, I will no longer be administering BiCam, nor will I sign off on the administration of BiCam by any physician’s assistant under my purview.

  * * *

  Best regards,

  Dr. Greysen Frazier

  * * *

  PS: Fuck you.

  I deleted the postscript before I sent it. He needed to hear that to his face.

  When I shut the computer down, my eyes needed a moment to adjust.

  Medical books. Binders. A chair and a couch. An open door looking onto a large room with rows of desks facing north to minimize the sun’s glare. My office had a window that looked out onto that wider room. Blinds shut.

  The shut blinds bothered me. I kept them that way to protect the privacy of whomever was in the room with me. The door was open unless I was seeing someone or on a call. Normal.

  But something was behind those blinds.

  There was no noise. No visual. No sense other than a conviction I knew was wrong. I could see the large room through the door, and it was dead-of-night empty. If someone had come in, I would have heard the outer door.

  Foolish, of course. I was just jumpy from the dark and years of fighting an enemy who could be anywhere. This wasn’t the same thing Caden had experienced. It was manageable because I was in complete control of my mind.

  I reached for cold common sense and felt the rip in the sky again. The bowl over all of us cracking in two and becoming sentient. Potential energy turned kinetic. Death turning to life.

  I was tired, and it had been a stressful day. After gathering my things, I went to the doorway and paused before going through. Quietly, I leaned over and twisted the rod that opened the blinds and jumped at the sight of a shadow. I went back into the office and shut the door. Locked it. Jerking the cord at the side of the window, I raised
the blinds.

  The shadow was a coat hanging on a hook.

  “For fuck’s sake,” I said to myself. My voice was a balm against the shifting reality, filling the crack like epoxy. “Just go home already.”

  * * *

  Blackthorne had a shuttle bus that ran between the office and the apartments all day and night. One was waiting outside for me. I chatted with the driver. The wheels moving under my feet felt right and good. I was moving. Going someplace. Forward momentum was exactly what I needed, and by the time I walked into my apartment at almost three in the morning, I felt normal again.

  Caden might be hungry, and after he fucked me, I might feed him. I cut oranges and a stubby banana. Brewed mint tea and set out crackers. Then I stripped to bare skin and showered.

  The injection site looked normal. The tiny pinprick would fade to nothing in a day.

  For the first time, I considered that I might get fired for my impulse. I should get fired and sent home. Being separated from Caden would be the worst consequence, but maybe I’d done what I came here to do…save him from that shot. Maybe I could go home and just wait for his return, knowing I hadn’t come to Iraq for nothing.

  The idea of going home was like walking backward.

  I paced naked to the opposite side of the studio apartment.

  There couldn’t be a backward. Stillness was death. There was only forward.

  I couldn’t go home.

  A light rap at the door. I shut off the lights. I jumped onto the bed as he let himself in, a tall shadow against the outside lights. Like an animal, I could sense his scent and his energy. When he closed the door, I leapt off the bed, unable to sit still, and pushed him against the door.

  We were open mouths and searching tongues. I was made of hands that opened, peeled, shucked his clothes away.

  Forward. Forward. Forward.

  I wouldn’t be stopped or slowed. Moderation didn’t find the limit. Safety didn’t tease out the edges.