by Max Lockwood
Clara thought a second about taking one of her parents' bikes before deciding she wasn’t going far enough to need them. Once everything was set at home, she went to sign up for the volunteering.
She stepped out of the house, and at the same time, Dante was leaving his house. She silently cursed the bad timing, she'd been hoping to avoid him indefinitely now that his wife was around more. They couldn’t keep sneaking around, and she could only hope he would get it and leave her alone as well. Even worse, he saw her before she could go back inside and wait for him to go ahead.
"Clara, hey. Where are you headed?"
She felt a ray of hope. She might not have to spend more time around him than necessary.
"I'm going to the police station to sign up for the volunteer work."
When he suddenly broke out in a grin, the hope died, shock replacing it before she scolded herself. She might think the worst of Dante because of their affair, but it didn’t mean he was actually a bad person. They'd never really talked, besides an introduction to the neighborhood and small chatting about the weather when he first moved in as Michelle's husband, who'd had the house beside theirs long before he came into the picture. Even when they started sleeping together, the only small talk between them hadn't meant much.
"Can you wait up so we can go to the station together? I'm signing up as well."
She'd already guessed from the pleased look on his face, but she didn’t say that. He ducked back inside, and was out before she could use the time to make a quick getaway. For a moment, she wished she'd gone with her original idea to take the bike, but what if he'd followed her into the garage? Or saw she had two and borrowed the other one? She wasn’t comfortable enough to use them herself, she sure as hell didn’t want anyone else using them.
She sighed as he came up to walk beside her.
"Who's looking after your kids?"
He glanced at her, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. "Michelle is taking the opportunity away from work to spend more time with them. She's usually too busy to stick around at home, and the kids do need to know their mom."
Clara never did get that about Michelle. She was extremely nice and ready to socialize, but she couldn’t remember the last time Michelle had taken time off work to spend a day with her children. Her own daughter was wary of her because she didn’t know her mother all that well, spending a lot more time with her father who was home all day. The few times Michelle had time at home, Abigail was unloaded on Clara to look after as she went off to have fun with her husband.
She didn’t think the older woman couldn’t notice how her own daughter regarded her like a stranger, and yet, if the lights did come on, Clara knew she'd push them both, the five year old and the baby, off on the closest person and go into work, since it seemed to be her favorite activity.
She glanced at Dante beside her as they walked for a bit. He wasn’t acting like he usually did, full of confidence. Actually, if she had to name it, he was acting a little awkward. It was the last thing she would have expected from someone like Dante. Then she realized she was stereotyping him and made herself stop. He wasn’t the best husband, but she knew he was a good father and both his daughters adored him.
"So," he started, the awkwardness clear in his voice, and Clara could guess what he wanted to say, since there wasn’t really anything more between them. "Since Michelle is going to be home a lot more, it will make it harder for us to meet."
Unbothered by his declaration, Clara said plainly, "It doesn’t matter."
He frowned down at her. "What?"
She sent him an exasperated look, wanting to hit her head on something. She hadn't been subtle about avoiding him, and what did he think they were going to do now that they both had to be home and around their families? Why was he thinking they could still go on?
"Dante, it doesn’t matter that we can't meet anymore, because we were only having fun."
Dante actually looked shocked, stopping and putting a hand on her shoulder so she would stop with him. They were far enough away that if someone came out of either of their homes, they wouldn’t be seen, but they were still out in the open. It was the worst place for this kind of conversation, but they needed to have it sometime, and it was better than if it happened closer to home. Besides, there wasn’t anyone around.
Clara stopped, but pulled away from Dante's hand, and he dropped it, the hurt only growing on his face. It made her heart ache slightly to see it, but she wasn’t going to give him any kind of hope.
"It wasn’t just messing around for me, Clara. I have feelings for you."
She arched a disbelieving eyebrow. "Really Dante? Meeting up for sex every Tuesday night, sneaking around and hoping your wife wouldn’t notice anything. We hardly talk, and you call that having feelings for me?"
His jaw firmed. "I'm not lying, or joking. I didn’t just look around the neighborhood and decide on you randomly, or pick you because you were close by and convenient. Yeah, Clara, I have feelings for you."
Dammit.
She wanted to say the curse out loud but held herself back. They hadn't gone far and she was already feeling tired. She started walking, and it took him a moment, but he followed her until he was again walking beside her.
Had she known about this little detail, she would never have started anything with Dante. There was never any indication of it, and she wondered if he was just lying to himself. Or if she'd been that caught up in herself, in her own head and her problems, that she just hadn't realized. She had been so sure that they were using each other before, but if he wasn’t lying… then it was more like she was using him, and she didn’t like that thought any better.
What kind of guy did that, though? Well, plenty of men, if the gossip she'd heard at the school staffroom was anything to go by, but still. Whether or not he was genuine, she knew they couldn’t go anywhere.
"It still doesn’t matter, Dante," she told him, resolute.
"At least tell me why," he demanded.
She felt like rolling her eyes. "If I say I have feelings for you, too, then… what? You leave your wife and kids and move next door with me, my crazy sister and my old grandmother?" She looked up at his face, seeing he looked conflicted. She just nodded, having expected it. "We didn’t have a relationship, Dante, we had an affair. One that should never have started. I know it's kind of late for me to say, but it wasn’t fair to your wife for us to do what we did, and it stops now."
It should have stopped a long time ago.
"Can I change your mind?" he sounded hopeful.
She shook her head slowly. "You have a wife, a five year old daughter, and a baby barely a year old. You have a family, Dante. You should remember that before anyone gets hurt."
"You were as up for the affair as I was," he reminded her.
"That's true," she agreed. "At the time, I was. But recent events offered a perfect chance for us to do the sensible thing and end things. I'm not going to sleep with you again, Dante, not even if you choose to leave your family. And I'm pretty sure you wouldn’t."
She waited, not looking at him, for his reply. He didn’t say more, though, just muttered something that sounded like a curse and angrily walked on ahead, moving faster than her pace so he was in front of her.
There was nothing she could do about his mood, though, and neither did she want to put up with his attitude. She'd assumed they had an agreement, even though it was a silent one. He had to have a screwed up idea of relationships to think they had one, or had a future. The sex was great, she hadn't been a virgin when she met him but she'd never been with someone that attractive, either. But she was sure, even had he been single and showed interest in something serious, Dante just wasn’t the kind of man she could fall for.
What was the point of thinking about such things in the current situation, anyway? If, by some miracle, she started dating someone, it could only lead to disappointment once things were fixed, or even if the situation was more prolonged than they hoped for. She hadn't
had time for a relationship before, she sure as hell didn’t now. Need for survival and protecting her family came before anything else, and he had to be thinking the same.
The circumstance was regrettable, though. She was more disgusted with herself than she ever could be with him. But she would not have lied and gone along with him just for his sake. She didn’t care about him nearly enough for that, knowing she would be the one to end up miserable, not to mention if they slipped and his family caught wind of it.
Ending things was for the best.
Clara decided she had done the right thing, despite hurting Dante's feelings.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Clara arrived at the police station sometime midmorning and went in. There were quite a few people inside, some in uniform and some not, probably other people looking to sign up as volunteers. Most of the officers she came across were either conversing among themselves or with one of the civilians, but she kept looking. She didn’t see Dante around and was grateful. She didn't want to bump into him again.
She wasn’t sure of the procedure, but she looked around until she found a police officer at a table who wasn’t talking to anybody and approached him. He didn’t look up immediately, and she had to clear her throat to get his attention.
"Excuse me, sir?"
He looked up and glanced at her face before reaching for a book and a pen. "Please state your name and intent, ma'am."
She blinked, thrown for a moment, wondering if they were all answering queries like that now. Actually, thinking about it again, maybe not everyone out of uniform was there to offer assistance, some would have been there to ask for it. She would imagine, with crime shooting up, quite a few people would have been to the station with complaints. Or, maybe they were getting an influx in people coming in and offering help, and either way it could make efficient use of time.
They had to be desperate if they were going around asking for civilian volunteers, though it was understandable. It wasn’t so big a station, and they couldn’t monitor hundreds by themselves with their mobility so reduced.
Well, whatever. She wasn’t looking for common courtesy. So she straightened her back and answered.
"Uh, well. My name is Clara Thomas, and I came to volunteer to help around the town. I was told I could sign up here."
He opened the book and jotted something down. Then he pulled a paper and handed it to her. It was a list of jobs, all handwritten.
"This is a list of tasks we need aid in. Please look at it and tell me which ones best fit your skills and I can direct you to where you can offer assistance."
She read the items on the list—clearing up the wreckage, helping with the injured, night patrols to keep curfew or journeying to other towns to assess their situations. She tried to think of something specific, but then wondered if she had to. There wasn’t anything she couldn't do, so she handed the list back.
"All of this is fine to me, I can work wherever I'm placed."
He took the list back with a nod and tapped on the paper with a thoughtful look on his face. Then he looked up at her.
"If you're sure, they could use more helping hands at the makeshift hospital near the wreckage. There are other jobs I could give you, but if you feel your skills would be useful, I can send you there for now."
"I'm sure," she said, determined. She wasn’t sure just how useful, but she'd been one of the first people to offer help there. She wouldn’t mind going back.
"All right." He ripped off a paper from the book and wrote something down. "These are the directions. Someone there will put you to work, just say you're there to help."
He gave her the slip of paper and she nodded sharply back. "I'll head right over."
Clara glanced at the paper as she left the station and decided it was simple enough to understand. It was just off the highway, close enough to where the plane had landed. She started the long trek that way, feeling determination make her strides a little faster.
Not wanting to encounter the crash site, she went around through a different street. There had been people there the day before, and she berated herself for not stopping to ask if she could help. Although, if that officer had brought the offer to her doorstep yesterday morning, Clara was fairly certain she wouldn’t have been so quick to offer assistance. Coming under threat from a group of boys had changed her thinking, only slightly.
The streets had suffered at night, more than she would have thought. A few windows were broken, glass littering the ground, and the one store she came across had its door broken in and a glance through let her know the place was ransacked, things strewn all over the floor.
It reminded her too much of last night, what could have happened if she hadn't stopped those boys. It would have been the same damage she was seeing now. Not that she regretted her actions, or would seek to change it, though she was sorry she'd scared a bunch of kids.
But no matter what, she would have intervened, even if Cooper hadn't been there with her. It wasn’t just about the stealing, she did have some self-preservation instincts. The day light hadn't gone completely out, so the chances there was still someone inside had been too great. If it had been full dark, when they could hardly see anything, she would have let Cooper convince her to walk away.
She hurried faster as she saw the place up ahead. She assumed, anyway, because it was the only place where she could see any activity in the vicinity.
As she approached the makeshift hospital, she was hit by the horrible smell from within and the cries of pain. It made her freeze for a second before she was moving forward again, but at a slower speed.
You've done this before.
It wasn’t quite the same as before, she'd been running on adrenaline then, and she was volunteering now. And the people here had spent the past couple of days in the condition they were, while she'd had a reprieve from watching it all after that first day. She had guessed it would be bad, worse than what she'd already witnessed, but she wasn’t going to back down from this. It may not have been her responsibility, but someone had to do it and there was no reason it couldn’t be her.
At the door, a woman in an apron greeted her, her voice short and brisk but not unkind, and handed her some rubber gloves. She didn’t even ask for a name.
"Can you tell me about your experience?"
Her back straightened. "It isn’t much, but I know basic first aid and how to stitch up small wounds."
It had come in handy both at home and at her job. Both her sister and grandmother tended to be careless sometimes, not that she held it against them. Knowing how to do it herself, as long as it wasn’t anything too serious, saved them on some medical bills.
"Don’t worry about it. Whatever you can do, it's needed." She directed Clara to a section of the 'hospital.' "There's someone already there who'll tell you what to do. Get to work."
Clara went in the direction she was told to and instantly felt horror claw up her throat. It had been bad on the day of the accident, and she'd braced herself to see worse. But she'd never seen a sight like this before, the conditions and the chaos.
Many of the patients were lying on tables or random mattresses, but some were on the floor. Everyone who was awake was in tears, face twisted in pain, or crying out. The few that were asleep either looked dead or close enough to it. Clara imagined herself, or Cooper, being one of the people in this place and felt a scream claw up her throat that she swallowed back.
There were only a few people she could see around that didn’t look to be injured, and she assumed they were the ones helping. For all the people she could see, all she could hear, there wasn’t nearly enough. She got what the police officer had meant, they needed a lot of new hands. She hadn't even realized so many people had survived, after the ones she'd helped rescue.
"Hey, newbie," another 'nurse' in the same section snapped. "You didn’t come here to stand around daydreaming."
Clara looked up to find the other 'nurse' glaring at her and nearly flinched back.
&nb
sp; "What's your name?"
She inhaled a sharp breath and regretted it immediately when her stomach lurched at the smell. But she just wrinkled her nose and met the other woman's gaze. She was a little shorter than Clara, with dark skin and short black hair.
"Clara."
"Well Clara, my name is Felicia Hammond. I need you to fetch the patients cloths for their heads and to tend them as best you can."
She nodded, feeling a little lost as she looked around for what she needed, only to stop when the other woman talked again.
"Most of the people here won't survive," she warned. "It’s a sad state of affairs, but keep it in mind if you intend to last here. You mustn't feel guilty if someone in your care slips away."
Then she turned and went on with her own work.
Clara was left struck with the morbidness of it all. It was hard to believe it had been two days, they were on the third, when everything just went to hell. She hadn't spent a lot of time at a real hospital, not conscious anyway, and she knew the only difference between that and this was the lack of sanitation and room for privacy, not to mention the large number of emergency patients.
Don’t you dare back down!
She thinned her lips. She wouldn’t just turn away because she'd miscalculated the extent of the damage. She tied her hair back from her face, tugging it into a knot, before putting on the gloves and getting to work.
She didn’t let herself think in the hours she spent working. She did as she'd been told, helped clean and close up a few wounds. There were a few children, and she spent most of her time around them, she liked children when they were this young because they were so much easier to deal with in their own way. The situation was hell but she wouldn’t let her hand falter.
For a long time after her parents died and her world was turned upside down for the first time, she'd been moving around listlessly, living life without any real interest. She liked to think she was just looking for a purpose, something to act as a wakeup call. Well, she got it, even if it wasn’t anything she could have foreseen. She worked with single-minded focus, making it her temporary purpose, for as long as she was needed.
