by Melissa Faye
Omer got to me first. “All to plan,” he said. “So many more came than I expected. The people are behind us, Yami!”
“Let’s go to the truck,” I said. “The others are right behind you.”
“Yami, I’m not going,” Omer said. “I don’t know what will happen here once you leave, but I need to be a part of it. I don’t know if we’ll be able to message. But I know you all will be ok. I have to continue my work here.”
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I had imagined Omer with us at the camp. I suspected he would have gotten along very well with Sven, and after he realized how tough she was, he would have deferred his leadership to Matana. But before I knew it, Omer had disappeared in the crowd. I found Charlie, Breck, Etta, and Gianna, and we walked quickly towards the Young Woods gate.
It was like last time, but we knew so much more. We wouldn’t be followed, at least for now, though the Chancellor’s final words still echoed in my head.
We got in the truck. Gianna and Breck helped pull Etta up into the back seat. We had bags of supplies in the back full of everything we would need during the drive. None of us had driven before, but Charlie had driven storage carts more than any of us and promised he could do it. We thanked Gianna and said our goodbyes. Then we drove off, bumping and swerving along until Charlie began to figure out how the truck worked. I turned back to watch as the community disappeared behind us.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I texted Matana again while we drove. The truck was much slower than the monorail, so it took us six hours to get to the camp. I had the group wait in the truck while I walked ahead. Without any definitive invitation from Matana, I had a real fear that we’d be sent away.
It was early morning but I could see campers getting ready for the day, getting out of tents and saying hello to friends. Someone saw me and waved. Like last time, Sven met me halfway.
“Where is Etta?” he said.
“We took a truck,” I said. “They’re back over that hill. I had to make sure you’re ok with us being here before we all approach.”
Sven looked back and forth between me and the camp, as unreadable as ever. “Matana showed me the messages you sent. She’s angry and not happy that you’re back.”
I felt like collapsing on the ground. To fail, after all this time? Where would we go now?
“But she agreed you can come,” Sven continued. “She wants to help deliver the baby. She wants your help with that. She will forgive you in time.”
“Why did she agree?” I asked. Sven walked with me back to the truck.
“She put it to a vote the other day,” said Sven. “The community wants to support you. They’re angry about what happened with the fire and Ben, but I don’t think many people actually blamed you. Most people voted to let you come back.”
We reached the truck and after Sven greeted everyone and introduced himself to Charlie, we hopped in the back. Charlie drove us down to the camp. Etta lay in the backseat with her feet up on the car door.
A dozen people greeted us. They helped us unpack the back of the truck, then climbed into it. I had told Matana that they would be able to keep it, and everyone must have known. It would be helpful in traveling between communities as long as they could find a fuel source. People ran around it, climbing in and out of it like kids. I had to laugh. I would have wanted to join them if I wasn’t preparing myself for my face-to-face with Matana. If only I had never yelled at her like that, I thought.
Matana finally came out to greet us. I helped Etta walk towards the space where our tents had been and sat her down on a picnic bench nearby. She was tired and a little out of it from her time back at the Med, but gave me a weak smile. She had spent the car ride describing her symptoms to me in detail while I compared them to the pregnancy book. Her feet were swollen and her belly button had popped outwards. She was getting cramps sometimes, which I told her were not a sign of labor until they came regularly. She wanted to set up a place for the baby at the camp, and worried Matana wouldn’t let us stay.
Matana approached me and we stared at each other, waiting for someone to talk first. I knew it was my job to reach out to her.
“I’m so sorry, Matana,” I said. “You took us in, and tried to protect us, and I attacked you.”
“That’s true,” said Matana. She waited for me to continue.
“I haven’t been able to let people in for a long time now. I should have trusted you. I should have trusted people at the camp. I was too worried about Etta’s safety to see all the people who were willing to help us.”
“That’s also true.”
“Matana, can you forgive me? Can we do this together? Etta is going to have the baby very soon, and I need you.”
Matana looked at me and then at Etta, who shifted uneasily on the bench.
“Of course,” Matana said. “I forgive you. Stay here. We’ll help Etta deliver her baby and make a new plan after that.”
I felt my heart swell, and reached out to hug Matana tightly. I felt a gate opening inside me that had held me back for so long. I felt something strange, like I was with people I knew and loved and could let myself breathe normally. I realized: this is what safety feels like.
We dropped the hug when we heard Etta yelp. “Guys?” she said quietly. “What just happened?”
There was a puddle below where Etta was sitting.
“Etta!” I cried. “Your water broke! You’re having the baby!”
THE CAMP RALLIED AROUND Etta in a matter of minutes. We set up a delivery area in the medical tent with clean sheets and all of the supplies I had stolen a few months ago. Matana and I switched back and forth between holding Etta’s hand and explaining what was happening and leaning over three different texts to make sure we were doing the right things.
Breck held Etta’s hand and watched us work. He leaned over and nuzzled Etta’s neck. When contractions came, Etta yelled loudly and Breck yelled with her. Camp members would lean into the tent occasionally to see if we needed help. They ran to get ice or extra blankets.
The head doctor, Torrice, stayed with us too. She didn’t know anything about labor, but she could wipe Etta’s brow or follow Matana’s directions. We spent hours in the tent while Etta’s contractions came more often. Matana had her stand up and walk back and forth sometimes, which earned her a glare I had never seen before on Etta’s kind face. Breck vacillated between being Etta’s coach, yelling encouragements and rubbing her back, and attacking Matana and myself, yelling at us about how long it was taking and begging us to administer more pain medications.
Part of the problem was that we weren’t sure what pain medications we could use and in what quantities. We didn’t have epidurals like people in the twenty-first century, so we were using pain patches. We wanted to be careful to not use too many; we didn’t know how it impacted the baby.
Eight hours passed, then sixteen. Matana made me take a short nap, then I made her do the same. Charlie came back and forth. He was working with Sven around the camp to make sure everything got done while everyone was distracted by Etta.
Twenty hours passed before Etta was dilated enough to start pushing. She had been begging to push for hours, but now that she was doing it, she yelled at us even more. She cursed and screamed, and Breck kept yelling at us to make it better. We couldn’t do anything but tell her to push, make sure the baby was facing the right direction, and command Breck to rub her back or hold her arms or knees.
Watching a live birth was the strangest but most miraculous thing I had ever experienced. I was in awe of what Etta’s body was doing, and lost focus on what I was doing. Matana had to smack my shoulder to get my attention back. I had someone grab Charlie so he could be a part of this. As soon as he saw what was happening, he half-fainted, and Torrice pulled him aside. He sat behind Etta instead of in front of her. I smiled and shook my head. I expected more from a fellow medical intern.
After an hour of pushing, the baby finally arrived. One minute a head and some s
houlders were out, and then the baby was there. I caught it in both hands. “It’s a girl!” I said breathlessly. I handed the baby to Matana, who lay her on a fresh blanket and looked her over. The baby didn’t breathe right away, which made Etta and Breck fly into a panic. But after a moment, she let out a large wail and scrunched up her face in misery. She was alive and healthy, even if she didn’t like the fresh air.
Matana listened to her heart and lungs and looked in her eyes before she gave in to Etta’s begging. Matana placed the baby girl on Etta’s chest, where the baby snuggled right in with a half whimper. I set up the clamp, and had Breck cut the umbilical cord. The afterbirth caused Etta to fly into a panic; we hadn’t mentioned that part beforehand. But Etta did great and we were able to get her cleaned up. After all the blankets had been changed and everything was cleaned, we left Breck and Etta alone in the tent to snuggle together with their child.
I WAS EXHAUSTED AND wanted nothing more than to grab some food and collapse in the tent someone had set up for me. Charlie walked with me, holding my hand. We took a few protein packs back to my tent and lay down.
“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” I said.
“What for?”
“I spent so much time snapping at you. And trying to keep you out of this. But we never would have made it here if it weren’t for you.”
Charlie laughed loudly. “You have been pretty mean. But I never minded. I kind of liked it.”
“You liked when I was mean to you?”
“Not exactly. I like that you’re passionate and that you want to protect people. But when you finally let me help you, that’s when I was happiest. You finally trusted me. And I could help make this happen.” Charlie sat up on his elbows.
“You’re so important to me, Charlie,” I said. “I still need your help. We have to figure out what to do next. And I have to find Vonna. I need you to help me with all of that.”
“We’ll find her,” Charlie said. I realized he was leaning in closer to me as he spoke. “The Chancellor said she was banished. Lots of people are banished. I think people figure it out.” He leaned in closer until I could see all the pores on his nose. He had flecks of green in his eyes that I never knew existed. How could bright blue eyes hide green flecks?
I tilted my head upwards and kissed Charlie gently and slowly. I felt warm and tingly when he put his arm around me. I sat up so I was face to face with him, and entangled my fingers in his hair. We kissed for a long time. Charlie stroked my back and I tugged at his waistband. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to do this.
When we finally stopped, out of breath, we both giggled uncomfortably. We were in a tent, in the middle of nowhere, outside our community, and our friend had given birth to the first baby born in hundreds of years. I felt myself lose control, laughing so hard. Charlie did the same. We laughed until our stomachs hurt, then lay back down and kissed some more.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Matana and I made Etta stay in the medical tent for a full week. We traded turns between ourselves and Torrice to stay with her and check her and the baby’s vital signs. I worried about some of the post-labor complications that could arise, but nothing happened. Mother and baby were in perfect health.
Breck and Etta still hadn’t named the baby by the end of that first week, and we all teased them about it incessantly. Daphne came to visit them and offered some suggestions. “You need a new name. Something no one in the whole world has. Because she’s the only one of her kind. So she needs something unique!”
“What do you have in mind, Daphne?” Breck asked.
“Oh, anything,” she said. “Daphne is a good name, but I guess that’s already taken. What about...Ellajenya?”
I laughed and added my own ideas. “Chlorita. Ferstanlamin. Krugera.”
“We’ll take those into consideration,” Etta said. There had been a permanent smile on her face all week, and the baby never left her sight. She and Breck had nearly mastered the cloth diapers Matana had fashioned out of clean blankets for them, and even the baby’s screams and yells were met with loving coos and kisses.
Charlie was waiting for me outside of the tent and we walked hand-in-hand to the dining tent. We sat next to Harvey, who smirked when he saw us holding hands. Charlie was getting used to the camp, and he was getting along well with everyone. He and Harvey were getting close. Harvey was teaching him a game he had made up with his friends growing up that involved throwing rocks as close to a tree as possible, with extra points assigned for hitting a tree or hitting someone else’s rock.
“You know, we’re not done yet,” Charlie said while we ate salads fresh from the garden. “It’s not just Vonna. It’s everything.”
“What do you mean?” Harvey asked. He had been thrilled to hear about our adventures thus far, and seemed excited to hear that more may be coming.
“Etta has a baby now. We need to figure out how she and Breck were able to get pregnant. There must be some reason, right?” Charlie said. I nodded thoughtfully. Soo Yen had made it seem like they hadn’t discovered anything meaningful in their research at the Med. Something else was going on, and no one knew what.
“And it’s not only that, either,” Charlie continued. “Omer and the Underground are right. The way the government functions, under this...cloak of secrecy. It’s not right. The color assignments, the way Grays suffer. It’s led to all this unrest. The violence isn’t ok, but it comes from a place of frustration that has to be addressed. I don’t want to leave our friends at Young Woods, and people from all the other communities, to return to the status quo. I want to be a part of changing the way things work.”
“Me too,” I said. “The Chancellor threatened to come after us. We have to stop him. He can’t banish people who don’t agree with him. We need a democracy like what Matana has here.”
“Plus cloning!” Harvey said. “The system is flawed. We can’t keep cloning ourselves blindly, waiting for someone to solve a crisis that may not have a solution. Too much is happening without people having a say. There has to be a better way.”
I nodded in agreement. I was trying not to fall back on my old ways, hiding my feelings deep down and putting up walls between myself and my friends. It was exhausting.
“You’re right,” I said. “I have no idea how to make change though. How do you organize a whole region? Or a whole nation? I’ve never started a revolution, have either of you?”
Charlie smirked. “I have not.”
“Me neither,” said Harvey.
“Well, we’re going to have to figure out how, I suppose.” I took a bite of my salad, then stole a tomato off Charlie’s plate.
Sven appeared in the door of the dining tent and motioned to Charlie and me. “Come with me!” he called. Charlie and I raised our eyebrows but followed.
Two people were standing about a hundred feet away from the camp, waiting. One was a woman who seemed middle-aged, and one was a boy who might have been about ten years old. Sven led us toward them.
As we approached, I squinted at the woman. She looked familiar. The boy, not as much. We walked closer, and I studied the woman carefully. There was something about her face...I knew I must have met her before. But I knew she wasn’t from Young Woods.
“Who is that?” I asked, but Sven didn’t answer. We reached the two people. The woman was shorter than me, petite, and had shoulder-length dirty blonde hair and gray eyes. Her eyes looked exactly like my best friend’s. Her face looked almost exactly like Etta’s, but it was a little more drawn and gray. She looked to be about twenty or twenty-five years older than us. I looked at Charlie and saw my shock reflected in his face.
“Yami, this is Etta,” Sven said with eyebrows raised. “And this is her son.”
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About the Author
MELISSA FAYE IS A FORMER teacher who loves sci-fi so much, she decided to write some of her own! She lives in Colorado with her small dog and likes yoga, rock climbing, and thinking about weird dystopian futures and how feisty heroines can save the world.
