by T. Cobbin
Free From Eden
by
T. Cobbin
Free From Eden
Copyright © 2016, T. Cobbin
ISBN: 9781944270124
Publisher: Beachwalk Press, Inc.
Electronic Publication: February 2016
Editor: Pamela Tyner
Cover: Fantasia Frog Designs
eBooks are not transferable. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Back Cover Copy
A man falls in love with a woman created by scientists, but after the hellish life she’s had, she’s lost the will to live. Can he help her find the love and happiness she deserves?
Lulu was created by scientists who combined human and alien DNA. She’s lived her entire life in a place called Eden where she was used as a human guinea pig. The last straw came when they had her impregnated. Desperate to prevent her child from living the same hellish life she’s experienced, Lulu tried to kill both herself and the fetus. But waking up in the hospital was not the plan!
Lulu is finally free from Eden but still feels trapped inside her mind. Then a stranger enters her hospital room and waits patiently for her to exit the shell she hides in. In mourning for her child, she doesn’t want to live, to be a part of anything.
Can Alex, the handsome stranger, knock down the walls that Lulu has built around herself? Is there life after Eden?
There are still scientists out there who would love to get their hands on Lulu. Can she ever be safe?
Content Warning: contains sexual content and some violence
Dedication
Chris and Carley. You went through months of people nosing into your business to take a child on that wasn’t yours. You went through a year of hell because of a lie. You kept fighting and sticking to your guns all the way through. You amaze me and make my heart glow. This one is for you.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Pamela Tyner and Beachwalk Press for giving me another chance to tantalize some readers with my imagination.
Author’s Foreword
To be free you have to first escape.
Prologue
Beep beep beep. The noise repeated over and over.
She wanted to open her heavy eyes to figure out how she could stop it.
Beep beep beep.
“The tube came out this morning, and the sedatives are gradually being lowered,” a deep voice came through the fog.
Beep beep beep.
She rolled her head away from the noise, but it continued, grating on her nerves. She felt so tired.
Beep beep beep.
“Hello there,” a friendly female voice came from beside her.
She could hear rustling and felt a little more aware than before. “Noise,” she tried to get out, but her mouth was bone-dry so it didn’t come out as she wanted it to.
“Hold on, honey. Stay calm. You’re in the hospital, and you’ve been through quite an ordeal. Can you open your eyes for me?”
Hospital? That would explain the beeping noise. That could also be why her limbs felt heavy when she tried to move them.
She couldn’t make her brain tick over. Opening her eyes, she immediately closed them again. The lights from the room felt like someone was stabbing her eyeballs. Trying again, she squinted this time, taking it more slowly. Finally managing it, she saw a plump, middle-aged woman with a smile on her face dressed in a blue uniform.
“There we go. I’m going to sit you up a bit. Don’t worry about the disorientation, that will subside sooner than you think.”
The bed underneath her head started to slowly rise. She began to take in the small hospital room. She was lying on a single bed with white sheets and a blanket. There was a moveable table with a bedside locker beside the bed. The room had a narrow single window. She could hear the hustle and bustle of people outside the room.
Everything seemed new and wrong. The walls of the room were light green, and the blanket over her bed was dark green. She wasn’t used to so much color. She felt she was used to huge amounts of white. She closed her eyes and her eyebrows pulled together in concentration as she tried to find the deeply buried memories hidden inside of her.
Nothing!
“Here you go, honey, take a sip of this. You’ve been out a while, so you’ll be thirsty.”
She looked down into the white plastic cup of clear liquid and drew a little up the straw. The water ran over her dry tongue and slipped down her throat as she swallowed. It felt good,
“Mmm,” she hummed.
“Yeah, I can imagine.” The nurse chuckled and pulled the straw from her mouth. “Just take small sips. As I said before, it’s been a while. I’m going to take all your vitals, and then the doctor will be in to see you. There are also some other people who want to talk to you, but that can wait for now. Do you remember anything?”
She shook her head in frustration. It was like a huge white cloud had drifted over her brain, leaving it blank. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t even remember my name.”
“Don’t worry, it will come back.”
While the nurse took her vitals she looked over herself. She was on the thin side, and her skin was milky white with small, white, raised freckles dotted over it. She had a port in her hand that was connected to a bag of clear liquid. She also had what looked like old, red welts around her wrists. The nurse caught her looking.
“The doctor will explain. However, I can tell you that your name is Lulu.”
It was like an electric shock to her system. The fog cleared from her brain and all her memories came flooding back at once. She had been created by some scientists after a UFO had crashed and one of them was able to splice DNA from the dead aliens with humans.
She’d been kept in a small cell in a place called Eden and tested on for her entire life...twenty-one years. Faces flickered through her mind of each of the scientists, of countless tests, and then finally...
“Nooooo,” she screamed.
Her room filled with people and she suddenly found herself being held down by several men and women in various colored scrubs. She fought against each one as much as she could. Her mind went haywire, her heart pounded out of her chest, she couldn’t breathe. She felt a sting and then cool liquid under the skin on her arm. Everything became hazy and slowly darkened as sleep overcame her.
Chapter 1
Two Months Later
Lulu gradually woke up, and the sleep fogging her brain began to clear. Without opening her eyes, she reached out with her senses and began to make a mental picture in her head of everything and everyone around her. The window to her right that she had stared out of for the last few months was beginning to let in the morning rays of light, and she could hear the cheerful singing from the birds through the small opened slit.
Taking a breath, she let herself smile. She was alone in the room for now, but she knew that would change within the next hour. She could hear the drip from the cold tap in the en suite bathroom and the steady blow of the extractor fan. Cocking her head slowly, she watched the mental image of her surroundings become clearer with each inhale and each sound around her. The alcohol hand cleanser, the very slight scent of the talc from the latex gloves in a box on the wall, the colorful bunch of flowers a nurse had brought in to brighten up the room.
She heard the sounds of the clock ticking its life away on the wall, the bubbles flowing up from the fish tank in the waiting area to the left of her room, then the steps of various people in the hallwa
y. Her hearing was so finally tuned she could see an outline of each person in her mind with each footfall or voice.
It was something she remembered she could do when her mind had cleared the second time she had awoken. She’d also remembered the fact that she’d killed her baby.
Finally opening her eyes, she turned her head to the right and looked through the small window. It looked out onto a triangular piece of green space with a solitary tree in it. The leaves on the tree were just beginning to turn brown and fall from its branches; she could make out the nest now lying barren that had been full of baby birds only a month ago.
Once her memories started to return all she had wanted to do was die. Why had these people saved her? Why were they looking after her? Didn’t they understand she was supposed to have died with her baby? She’d screamed at them so many times “let me die!” before finally giving up and succumbing to a silent and dark world of grief.
She had been so angry but unable to do much but rant. The firm, cloth restraints around her wrists and ankles held her still, making her feel once again like she was in Eden, the only difference being they had used harsher materials to hold her down.
The hours began to run into each other as the days went past. She either slept, screamed, or stared out the window, wishing she was free enough to join her child. She wasn’t sure how long it was before the doctors finally told her she was calm enough for the restraints to come off. Each morning she was led to a chair by the window where she sat watching the colors outside change until she was led again to her bed where she was given medication to help her sleep.
That changed when he came into her room. The first day he walked in he sat in the chair on the other side of the bed behind her. He didn’t say or do anything; he just sat there. She could hear his steady and relaxed breathing, and the scent of his cologne was light enough not to drown her. She could also make out that he wasn’t writing on a pad or her chart as her other visitors often did. He literally just sat there.
By the time day three had rolled past she was getting a little annoyed. Why didn’t he speak? Why didn’t he ask questions like everyone else? Why did he just sit there?
So when he walked in her room on day four she turned toward him. He was tall—she guessed about six feet—and his thick, black hair was cut close to his head apart from the sideswept quiff at the top. He had a strong, square jaw and a nose that had a slight bump in it, which made her think it’d been broken at some point. He also had a two-inch, thick scar that ran along his neck near his jugular, and she wondered how he had received that. The musings of wanting her own death then plundered her mind and she turned back toward the window, lost in her thoughts.
On day five he moved his chair closer to hers and sat with her, looking out the window. Again, he didn’t say or do anything.
A week or more had gone past when one day the man still hadn’t shown up by lunchtime, and she felt the loss. Somehow he had begun to integrate himself into her lonely routine.
“Where is he today?” she quietly asked the nurse who had come in to check her vitals. It felt weird to speak, she hadn’t done it in so long.
“You mean Alex?” the nurse questioned.
“The man who has been coming in every day for the last week or so.”
“Honey, it has been a fortnight, and he will be in later. He rang to say he would be a little late today. Would you like anything?”
She shook her head and went back to looking out of her window. Why had it bothered her that he hadn’t come in? And had she really lost that much time?
Another nurse entered the room, disturbing her from her thoughts. The woman placed a tray with a covered meal and a pot of jelly down on the table and pushed the table toward Lulu so it was within reach. “Try to eat something, okay?” she said and walked back out of the room.
Lulu looked at the plate, and for the first time in a long time she felt hungry. She had been eating but hadn’t really tasted the food let alone wanted it. For some reason she felt a little different today. Lifting the lid off the plate, the aroma made her stomach growl, and she tucked in, relishing each and every flavor that slipped over her taste buds.
Once the meal was finished she placed the tin cover back on and laid down, her thoughts automatically on the patient stranger who had somehow broken through her depressive thoughts, when all he did was come in daily and sit with her. She didn’t even know what his voice sounded like.
Lulu fell asleep, then awoke from her nap with her head resting on her shoulder. As usual, she sent out her senses before opening her eyes, and she immediately knew he was sitting beside her in his chair. His usual relaxed breathing was raised, his heartbeat was a little bit faster than normal, and she could hear his hand rub along the slight whiskers on his face. She thought he was either stressed or had just arrived in the room after hurrying to get there. Sniffing the air, she inhaled his slight sweaty scent and the fresh smell of coffee on his breath so concluded he had just arrived.
She had been brought up on natural juices and the occasional hot chocolate if the scientists had approved of her behavior, so had never tasted tea or coffee until she was given some in the hospital. She grew to like the taste of herbal tea, especially the mint, but as for coffee, the smell interested her but the taste didn’t.
“You’re late,” she said, opening her eyes and turning her head toward him.
“You missed me.” He smiled, his dark blue eyes sparkling with amusement.
Snorting, she looked out the window. She had missed him, but there was no way she would admit it to him.
Over the next week he came in daily and sat next to her as usual, but instead of sitting silently he brought a newspaper with him and read it aloud.
“Look at that, a cat traveled across the country in the engine of a car. I wonder how many lives he has left? Bloody hell, the price of petrol is going up again, I’ll have to stop drinking it and go back to coffee.”
Some of the things he said made her smile. He had wit. She liked it. Gradually, he brought her out of the shell she’d been hiding in, and she enjoyed his company. He began telling her about his parents. Having earned a bit of money they had decided to retire and enjoy it. But they, like Alex, enjoy doing charity work. He explained to Lulu about his work at the children’s hospital and told her about several of the children there.
After a time he would lay his hand closest to her, palm up on the arm of his chair. It didn’t look like a very comfortable position. She tried it herself and discovered her thoughts on that were correct. So it left her intrigued as to why he did it. Was he trying to tempt her? It did leave her wanting to trace each and every line of his hand, to feel just how soft his skin was.
“Why do you come every day?” she asked him out of the blue one afternoon.
“Because I can.”
“Why me? You know I tried to kill myself and succeeded in killing my child, right?” She could hear the disdain she held for herself in her voice. She fully expected to see the same disgust she felt for herself fill his face and for him to get up from his chair and leave and never return. Instead, pity flittered over his face and showed from his eyes.
“I can’t understand what you went through in that place, but I can come to realize more if you tell me just how you were feeling. And anyway, who says it’s only you I visit? I gave a very nice lady a huge bunch of flowers just yesterday.”
“That wouldn’t happen to have been your mother, would it?” she asked knowing fully he had moved onto a lighter subject. She knew from the way he talked about his parents that he adored them. If they needed or wanted anything, he was there. He had even offered to take Lulu to tea with them one afternoon.
“Umm, maybe.” He chuckled and blushed at getting caught out.
Surprised to feel warmth against her palm, she looked down and discovered her hand was laying in his. Had she done that? She could feel the blush as her face heated. Slowly, making sure she lingered a tad, she dragged her hand from his. Her fingers
still tingled as she placed them in her lap. Out of her peripheral vision she saw him sitting there with an all-teeth-showing smile. He had surprised her again by not leaving. Could he really forgive her for killing her child when she couldn’t? Was it that easy? Looking back out of her window, she couldn’t help the turmoil of feelings running through her. In her mind for so long she had been standing on the precipice of a cliff. Maybe it was time to step back on the ground behind her instead of wanting to step forward in the abyss.
Chapter 2
One morning Alex arrived at this hospital with a beaming smile and an armful of books.
“I’m not sure what kind of books you enjoy. I suppose I should have asked before I brought these in, but there are a variety of subjects, and if you like a certain genre, I can bring you more.”
It had been a while since Lulu had even felt like reading. Standing up, she walked toward him and helped place the books on the bedside table. He was right, there was a bizarre collection, even to the point of an encyclopedia on animals, the letters t-u. She chuckled, holding it up. “Really?” she asked with a smile.
His smile grew wider, and he shrugged his shoulders. “You never know. I brought the books from home. The hospital only had some editions of Reader’s Digest from a few years ago.” He must have spotted her confused look and quickly added, “You don’t want to know!”
Settling on a romance novel with a couple of entwined lovers on the cover, she sat in her chair and opened the book.
“Oh, smut reader, huh?”
“Everyone deserves love and a happy ending, right?” she asked.
“Yes, of course. Is that what you wish for?”
“Maybe,” she mumbled. “At Eden we were only allowed to have books that we could learn from in our rooms, but once a week for two hours we were allowed in what they called the green room.” She lowered the book onto her lap. “The room was a huge dome filled with greenery and a waterfall with fish in the pond. It was a place where we were granted two hours of what they called freedom.” She sighed, lost in the memories. “I asked for a fiction novel to take in there with me and was given a tatty Mills and Boon book. It was the one thing I treasured. It gave me a little hope that one day I would be rescued and loved.” She looked up into his deep blue eyes; they held pity in them briefly before he grinned.
