Outer Banks

by Anson Barber

  “I’m in.” His voice was low, he didn’t look up.

  “Corey.” I wanted to make sure he had really thought it over.

  “It’s okay, Dillon. I mean, at least she didn’t blow up, right?” He shrugged. “Besides, if it doesn’t end well, it’s no big loss.”

  “It would be a loss to me,” I said.

  He smiled and gave me a hug. “Thanks for everything. Thanks for treating me like a person.”

  “You are a person.” Why was this so difficult for them to believe?

  Corey turned to Trevor. “You ready?”

  “Give me half an hour and we’ll get started.” Trevor turned for the door and then stopped. He saw the mark on Corey’s arm. “Wait! Is that an early trial vaccination scar?”

  “It’s okay, it’s not real,” I said. “I didn’t want him to be pressured to volunteer for OBX’s studies.”

  Trevor nodded. “I see. All right. Half an hour. There is blood in the refrigerator if you’re hungry,” Trevor offered.

  “Oh, yeah!” Corey headed out to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure where he was putting it. It’s not like he was growing.

  “Nothing had better happen to either of them, got it?” Trevor looked at me curiously and then looked down at my other hand stroking Emery’s fingers.

  Adam put a hand on my shoulder. “Uh, Dillon, why don’t we go out to the other room to discuss what is going to happen next.”

  I followed after him. It wouldn’t be a good idea to beat up the only person qualified to help the girl I loved, but right now I hated him.

  I knew I was being irrational. Trevor hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d done the same thing many healthy people did when their loved ones had been infected. He let her turn herself in because he thought it was the right thing.

  To be fair, I was jealous, and not handling it well.

  Adam sat while I paced.

  “Dillon, I know she didn’t handle this correctly. I’m mad as hell at them both for keeping me out of the loop, even if Emmie told him to. But her vitals are strong and it seems to be working. We may have done the transfusion too soon. I’m sure she will wake up after the next one.”

  “Why did she call him? Why would he agree to help her do this to herself? I was bringing someone!” I also couldn’t get over the glaring fact that she’d called her fiancé to come help her after telling me she loved me.

  Except I hadn’t said it back. She didn’t know I felt the same way. Instead, she called Trevor. He came here to help her do what I was unwilling to do.

  “Trevor and Emery have always been a little aggressive with their research, but I don’t think Trevor would have done anything hasty. He’s too frightened of me to hurt her.” He chuckled, liking that fact.

  I nodded and we went back to an unused room where Corey was now being prepped, sitting on a gurney answering a series of questions with Trevor.

  Trevor handed me a clipboard with a release and a pen. “Sign and initial.”

  I looked at Corey steadily. “You’re sure about this?” I asked one more time.

  He nodded, his black eyes communicated his wishes intently.

  I signed the release and shoved it at Trevor.

  “Okay, Corey. You can change over there. Strip down to your underwear and come back,” Trevor said.

  “Uh…” he stalled.

  Oh, jeez. I remembered he went commando.

  “You see?” I started. “You see why it’s important to wear underwear?”

  We found some shorts and Corey went into the bathroom to change. Trevor, Adam and I didn’t say anything, but we exchanged readable glances with one another. Everyone in the room was some shade of worried, concerned or panicked. Myself being the latter.

  Corey came out and I hid my reaction to his condition. Without his shirt on he looked so thin. There were a few scars I couldn’t tell the age of. Had they happened before the attack or after? This kid had been through too much already for his young age.

  He climbed up on the gurney and Trevor attached some leads to his chest and back. He hooked them up to the monitor and we watched as the green line started to move with the rhythm of Corey’s heart. It was so slow and muffled it didn’t even sound like a heartbeat.

  Trevor put a cuff on Corey’s small arm and hooked it up to another apparatus. Then he clipped a device on Corey’s index finger and told him to lie down.

  I walked over to his side and he held up his fist. I bumped mine against his.

  “Last chance. You’re sure about this?”

  “One hundred percent,” he assured me and looked up at the white ceiling. “Ninety-nine point nine. Close enough.”

  “Are we ready?” Trevor asked, holding up a syringe full of something black. It seemed odd they would inject more black stuff into him, but I wasn’t the one wearing the lab coat. “This is the first stage. It will also act as a sedative and put you under. You won’t feel a thing after this.”

  “Let’r rip, Doc,” Corey confirmed and Trevor pushed the needle into his arm, emptying the vial into his frail body. Corey chuckled. “He did a better job than you did,” Corey said to me with a wink. “Guy treated me like a pin cushion.”

  “Well, he’s been to medical school. How do you feel?”

  “Kind of warm.” His eyelids immediately started to sag and his heart rate picked up.

  I looked to Trevor. “Is that good?”

  He nodded. “Same as with Em.”

  “Dill?” Corey asked.

  I turned back to him. “Yeah?”

  “If I don’t wake up. I just want to say thanks again for being my friend. And the DS. Maybe if you find Krista, you can tell her I liked her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  His voice was fading. “Hey, I haven’t blown up.” He smiled weakly and then he was out.

  I looked at the monitor. His heart calmed down and had returned to its original slow pace.

  “How long?” I asked the men.

  “It should be faster than with Emery,” said Trevor. “We learned a lot watching how the first batch worked on her. But I couldn’t even hazard a guess how long it will be.”

  “Wonderful.” I blew out a puff of air and left the room.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I went to Emery’s thinking room. The board was cleared of most of the fish, replaced by crazy scribbling that took up every square inch. There were numbers and letters intermingled in a chaotic way. They looped their way around the picture I’d drawn of the chassis and then carried over to some fresh pages taped on at the bottom. Had the project gone on much longer I suspect the whole room and, eventually, the whole house would be covered in paper.

  I wished I could have been there before she went under. I wished I could have known what she was thinking. I wished I had told her I loved her, black eyed or green. It didn’t matter to me.

  But it had mattered to her.

  With the two doctors watching over Corey, I went into Em’s room and sat beside her. I picked up her hand and touched her hair.

  “When you wake up, I’m going to yell at you and tell you what a stupid idea this was. I can’t believe you did this, Em. You lied to me. You left me. Please come back.” I kissed her hand and stroked her cheek. “Please? I love you. I should have told you before I left. If you wake up right now, I’ll tell you.” She just lay there breathing in and out peacefully.

  I heard a noise behind me and turned to see Mr. Mitchell come into the room. I released Emery’s hand and stood up.

  “How’s Corey?”

  “Everything looks good. It’s through his system now. It will probably be a few more hours before the body stabilizes.”

  I nodded and looked back down at Em. “Good,” I whispered.

  “Why don’t we go get a drink?” he suggested. I nodded, very much needing one. My nerves
were shot. The only two people I cared about were both unconscious with some unproven drug flowing through them.

  We stopped in the study which was mostly wood, stone and dark leather. I didn’t normally hang out here except to pick up a magazine or a book Em had asked for. He poured me a glass of scotch and sat it in front of me on the coffee table.

  I picked it up and took a sip. “Thanks.”

  “I imagine you and Emmie have become close friends after spending all this time together.”

  “Yes,” was all I could say. We were more than that, but by his tone I thought he knew that.

  “Trevor might seem a bit cold, but I assure you he knows what he is doing. He wouldn’t work for me if he didn’t,” His voice took on a much colder edge. “And he’d be dead on the floor right now if I thought he hadn’t acted with Emmie’s best interests at heart.”

  “Right. I’m sorry about the way I reacted, it was just a shock. She promised me she would wait.”

  He chuckled and took a sip of his drink “Yes, well, she once promised me she wouldn’t ever grow up and like boys and she lied to me about that. She’s going to be okay, Dillon.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we take the treatment to OBX, along with our research.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, life will go on.”

  At that moment I heard footsteps and looked over to see Trevor at the door.

  “I’m ready to start Corey’s transfusion,” he informed us. “I thought you might want to be there.” He was being considerate when all I wanted was for him to leave and never come back.

  “Already?” I asked. “But, Em—”

  “She’s still not ready,” Trevor explained. “I told you, this new formula works faster.”

  I finished off my scotch and followed him out. Adam stayed behind and poured another glass.

  “Mr. Mitchell likes you,” Trevor said as we walked down the hall.

  “He loves his daughter. He would like anyone who helped her get out of OBX.” Part of me hoped he felt guilty.

  “I know you think I’m an awful person because I allowed her to go there. I’m sure Adam is still pissed about it too. But what was I supposed to do? We both knew what was coming and she believed she could do more on the inside. If she had stayed, I could have been arrested, and they would have taken my license away.”

  I stopped walking in order to stare at him in utter shock and irritation.

  My fingers clenched into fists. “You’re serious? That’s your reason? You were out here and you weren’t even working on a cure! You were working on some kind of anti-fungal!”

  “She told you that?” he gasped. “Look. I was afraid—”

  “So was she!” I ranted, taking a step closer. He instinctively stepped back.

  “I wanted to help her. I tried. She worked with the team at the Outer Banks and then caught me up online before morning. I followed up her ideas during the day and gave her fresh ideas the moment she woke up. It was working. But after they revoked her clearance and kicked her out of the OBX lab I was out of the loop. Emery and I have always worked off one another. She comes up with the initial idea and then I find ways to make it better. I couldn’t do this without her, she no longer had the resources and—and honestly I didn’t know what to do. So I took the cowardly way out, and stopped taking her calls.” He held out his hands and went on.

  “When she called me the other day and asked for my help, I saw a chance to make up for all that. I couldn’t let her down again. I wouldn’t. And I won’t let you, or her father or anyone else tell me I did the wrong thing.” He stood a little straighter. He was telling the truth. I relaxed slightly and gestured that we should go. He nervously turned his back to me and continued down the hall.

  He didn’t say anything else as we entered the room. Corey was lying there looking much better already, except for the fact he was unconscious.

  I took his hand while Trevor hooked up a few tubes. “We still need a transfusion to help the body flush the inert alien matter for good. With luck, Corey will only need the one. With a bit more luck, we won’t need it at all later on. Emery had some ideas involving a modified dialysis machine.”

  I remembered. I messed up Corey’s hair. “You hang in there, kid. I’ll see you in a little bit.” I turned back to Trevor. “How long?”

  “About half an hour.”

  “Thanks.”

  A gurgling sound started as I left the room. Ugh. I really didn’t need to hear that. I went next door to sit with Em.

  I picked up her hand and kissed it, holding it against my cheek.

  “I’m still here. I love you. Please wake up. I need to tell you that in person. Please?” If she went to sleep thinking I didn’t love her, and never woke up, I didn’t think I could live with myself. “Please come back,” I whispered and brushed my fingers through her hair.

  I heard someone approaching and looked up to see Trevor come into the room. He checked over Em’s vitals and seemed satisfied by them.

  “She’s going to be all right,” he said.

  “I know. She wouldn’t have tested it on herself if she wasn’t certain about it.”

  “Not that. I mean after.”

  “After what?”

  “After everything’s back to normal.” He smiled down at her and for the first time I saw him rub his hand across her hair, taking a moment to stop being the professional.

  “Do you want to see something?” Trevor asked as he pulled a small box out of his pocket.

  I said nothing as he snapped it open. A ring. Of course it was. “It’s a one carat pink diamond. The first time I proposed I gave her a half-carat version of this same ring. But I thought this time it should be bigger since we’ve been through so much together,” he told me surely. Some of my bitterness came back. They hadn’t been through much together. He’d left her to handle everything alone.

  I could only stare at the giant rock nestled in the white satin. I couldn’t deny that Emery deserved to have a ring like that.

  “I love her,” he said. “I know you might not believe me, but she knows it’s true.”

  I looked at Trevor, not wanting to talk about that.

  “She’s getting better every hour. She’s going to wake up, and then we’ll get the formula ready for the next round of trials at the Outer Banks facility. That will take a few weeks at least, but once the serum starts being manufactured we’ll have time to get married and go on a long honeymoon to relax. Lord knows she deserves it.”

  I wanted to strangle this man. The chest thumping part of my brain had laid claim to Emery and wanted to fight off this interloper. But of course I was the true interloper. I’d known her for over a month, he’d been engaged to her for over a year. He loved Emery, he’d made a mistake, and she’d forgiven him.

  “You’ve discussed this since you got here?”

  “I didn’t want to put the cart before the horse. But we talked about getting married at my parent’s summer home in Maine. I mentioned it to Adam and he seemed okay with the idea as well.”

  I nodded. Of course Adam would want Emery with someone like Trevor.

  “When her eyes open, I’m going to tell her she’s human again and propose on the spot. It’s going to be amazing!” He smiled.

  I looked down at her face. She’d always been human.

  I sighed and faced up to reality. She wasn’t mine. I’d just been keeping her warm for someone else. I was just going to embarrass myself trying to talk her out of it.

  “I’m going to go check on the kid,” I said and left the room.

  Corey was lying on a table like Emery’s, but his color was even better. Mr. Mitchell was already there, checking his vitals. They were almost normal. I touched his forehead and gasped when I felt how warm it was.

  “He’s progressing much faster tha
n Emery,” Mr. Mitchell explained, “but she’s on her way. The boy’s transfusion is complete and the battle is almost won. I’ll bet he’ll wake up by morning.”

  I looked over at the monitors. They were beeping at a more recognizable pace. Steady and strong.

  “Good. That’s good. I knew she would figure it out. I mean not like you did, but once I got to know her and I worked with her, I knew she wouldn’t stop.”

  “She doesn’t take no for an answer,” Adam and I said at the same time and then laughed.

  We sat in silence for a few moments before I spoke again.

  “This Trevor, he’s a good guy?” I asked.

  “He and Emery have been together since she was a sophomore. They’re a good team. They seem to know what the other one is thinking without speaking.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you have feelings for her?” he asked me, one man to another. “You seemed very worried about her when you first got here.”

  “Of course I was worried. She’s unconscious. I didn’t know if something went wrong or if she was… But she’s going to be fine now. Nothing to worry about, right?” I forced a smile while I ignored his question.

  Adam smiled slightly and checked Corey’s vitals again.

  “I don’t often get to work with the patients anymore. I’m just a business man now. Selling health. It’s humbling to be here watching something new work again.”

  “Like magic.”

  “Yes. But a little more scientific.” He chuckled. “I’m going to go check on Emmie, and then go to bed. You should get some rest too. It’s late.” I’d lost track of how long I’d been up. He left me in the room with Corey.

  “Good night, kiddo. I’ll see you when you wake up in the morning. Hopefully, the first of many.” I squeezed his hand and went up to my room.

  I took a shower, trying to wash away all of my anxieties. Corey seemed to be almost healed, and Emery wouldn’t be far behind. My only worry then was where I fit in.

  After drying off and lying in bed for two hours, I still hadn’t figured it out.

  I didn’t see how I would be able to be the supportive friend or the hired help again. I certainly couldn’t watch her marry Trevor.