by A. M. Geever
She turned to look at River. Finally, the doctor looked at her, and Miranda wished that she hadn’t.
“I’m not sure,” River said, her voice troubled.
A sharp pain, like a knife driving deep, shoved through Miranda’s heart. She wanted to push River’s hand away, curl herself around her baby. She looked back at the monitor, at Tadpole’s little nose, his perfectly formed head and sturdy, barrel-shaped torso.
“His limbs look…” River said softly as if she was speaking to herself.
Miranda’s chest began to hitch, her breaths short and sharp. She could feel the sob building behind her sternum. The black-and-white arc of the ultrasound image still cradled her baby in fuzzy shades of black and white. She couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t stop the lead that filled her own limbs. She realized she was shaking her head, rejecting the evidence of her eyes. Tears ran into her ear canal, cold and itchy.
She had let herself believe and love. Nurtured the small, soft dream of hers and Mario’s child and exposed it to her dangerous but still beautiful world. She had chosen the friendly Universe.
It had not returned the favor.
31
“Everything looks great, Miranda. You’re healing up nicely.”
She knew what River meant, but at the same time, it confused her. Healing up nicely. Was that what people did? How did they do it? How had she? Miranda nodded, even though River couldn’t see it. She lay on the exam table, her feet in stirrups. She felt the speculum withdraw from her body, and River told her she could sit up.
A few minutes later, she and Mario sat with River in River’s office.
“I’m really glad to hear that,” Mario said after hearing that River was pleased with Miranda’s recovery. He sounded so relieved, like he had expected to hear she had cancer.
He squeezed Miranda’s hand. She gave him a small smile. Not because there was anything to smile about, but because he needed it. She hated seeing him so worried about her, but she couldn’t seem to snap out of the fog she had been in after the news had finally sunk in. She rode that fog through the abortion, through being told in sympathetic tones that the fetal deformities had included Tadpole’s heart, which was common with teratogen exposure, apparently. Even if Tadpole’s limbs had not been stunted and mangled, he would not have survived. Tadpole had been a he, it turned out, just as she had felt from the very beginning.
She also wanted to hide from Mario. She wanted to strike out and scream and escape his needing. It was sucking her dry, his need. He needed to know she was still the same Miranda. A wounded version, but still that same woman underneath, but she wasn’t sure she was. She wasn’t sure she could be after being stupid enough to open herself wide for the cosmic sucker punch that the Universe had ordered up. She had never thought of herself as a fool, but this time? Mario needed to be reassured that she was all right, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t. His need was like a hungry ghost hovering between them, patiently circling for an opportunity to devour her.
“I understand that no teratogens are present in Miranda’s bloodwork since she got better, just while she was fighting the infection,” River said.
Mario nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Alicia took blood samples the whole time. She didn’t know it was ter—”
He stopped and took a breath.
“The levels were declining by the tenth day and totally clear by the thirteenth. And nothing in the draw she did two days ago.” He looked at Miranda. “Two days ago, right?”
Miranda nodded. She had no idea.
“That’s great news,” River said. “Really great. It’s not a permanent condition then.”
Mario sounded tentative when he said, “So if we wanted to try again—”
“We’re not trying again,” Miranda said, cutting him off.
Silence descended.
“Miranda,” River said.
Miranda looked at her. River’s almost black eyes were direct—professional—but devoid of sympathy. It was a fucking relief to have someone not look at her like she was an object of pity. Like she was broken.
“I don’t know to what degree your tubal ligation has failed. This might have been a fluke, or you might be able to get pregnant again no problem, or something in between. I just don’t have the capacity to find out.”
Miranda nodded. “Good to know.”
“I want to see you again in a week,” River said. “We’ll talk birth control then. Keep taking good care of her, Mario.”
“Of course,” he said, squeezing her hand again.
Miranda squeezed Mario’s hand back, wondering if he would stop doing it if she did.
“I’m worried about Miranda,” Mario said.
Doug took a swig from the dark-brown bottle in his hand before setting it down between them.
“She’s taking it hard,” Doug said. “I know you are, too.”
Mario polished off his cider, the bitter aftertaste lingering on his tongue. He and Doug sat on one of the watch platforms along the palisade around LO. If they had been on watch, they wouldn’t be drinking, but they weren’t. Rocco had been experimenting with making cider since apples were plentiful, and this batch wasn’t half bad.
The platform they sat on had been built too close to the one next to it, so it wasn’t used for keeping watch. A rookie mistake from the beginning of the apocalypse, its only consequence being that it gave people a place to hang out, to see LO from a different angle. As far as post-apocalyptic mistakes went, they didn’t get much more consequence free.
“I couldn’t believe it when she told me she was pregnant. Right in the middle of almost dying. Her timing… Jesus.”
Doug laughed as he handed Mario another cider. If anyone was familiar with Miranda’s knack for dropping bombshells at the worst possible moment, it was Doug.
“And I really couldn’t believe it when she said she wanted to keep it. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”
Mario knew the figure of speech was trite, but it was true. A puff of wind could have done the job.
“I couldn’t believe it, either, and I had a front row seat to all the mixed signals body language,” Doug said. “She was always abortion this, abortion that, abort, abort!”
Their laughter pealed down on the passersby walking the path below. Mario remembered how forcefully Miranda had stated her position on the insanity of having children on more than one occasion. When their laughter subsided, he sighed.
“She hasn’t cried once, not around me. She won’t talk to me. It’s like she’s totally checked out.” Mario shook his head, then took another swig of cider. “I removed every sharp object in the townhouse that I could find.”
Doug turned to him, his eyebrows raised. “You think she’s that bad?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Mario answered, all of his frustration rushing to the surface. “She won’t talk to me. She might as well be a sphinx. And I have to go back to work eventually. Soon. She’s been tactful, but Alicia needs help. The stem—”
Goddammit, he thought, the word bringing him up short. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. But he forced himself to keep going. It was the only good thing to come out of this.
“The stem cells have helped. A lot. But I really don’t want to leave Miri right now.”
“We’ll all keep an eye on her,” Doug said.
“I don’t want to leave because I don’t want to leave. Not just because she’s…whatever the hell she is. I want to be close to her.”
Silence settled between them. The soft cacophony of the settlement—voices, dog barks, the soft susurrus of the wind in the trees of the Big Woods—surrounded them, a perfect counterpoint to a soft spring evening.
“I can’t even imagine how hard this is for you two,” Doug said. “All of your focus is on Miranda, and I get that, but she’s not the only one who lost something.”
Mario didn’t want to think about how he was, but Doug’s question mired him in grief and longing and shame.
“I neve
r thought I’d get another chance,” he said softly.
“To be a dad?”
Mario nodded but didn’t say more. If he did, he’d probably cry.
“You miss your kids,” Doug said.
“Yeah,” he whispered, his throat so tight he could barely speak. “I left them. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t be like my father, but I did the same thing.”
“You didn’t abandon them, Mario.”
“I did.”
“You had to go, Mario. You—”
“No,” he said, his voice brooking no argument. “I left them behind.” Unbidden, the memory flooded Mario's brain. Anthony in her arms, Michael’s hair riffling in the breeze. “What if it’s too much for Emily?”
“Hey,” Doug said, shaking his shoulder.
Mario looked up. Doug’s face was serious.
“She’s in a better place than she was, even with how everything went down when we left. When it comes to the kids, she’s solid. She always has been.”
Mario could hear the desperation in his voice when he said, “Do you really believe that?”
“I do,” Doug said. “What Emily did wasn’t your fault, Mario. You can’t see it because you still think of her as the basket case she was when you met her. There were a lot of ways she could have reacted. She manipulated you—”
“No—” Mario interrupted, but Doug talked over him.
“If she had been serious, she would have gone about it differently, Mario. It would have been so easy to do it right. She wanted you to see, and she wanted you scared, and it worked. We talk, you know, me and Em. She’s never come out and said it but… she’s my friend, too. Friends can see things spouses can’t.”
Mario pulled Doug’s conviction that Emily would be able to manage close, turning it over in his heart to see if he could hold on, but it felt as slippery as ever. The rest he ignored—Doug didn’t know what he was talking about.
“I better get back,” Mario said, rousing himself. He didn’t want to think about his kids anymore. He had abandoned Michael and Anthony and Maureen, and he hadn’t been able to protect Tadpole. The whys and wherefores didn’t matter.
Doug said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Mario, or on Miri. You’re both hurting, even if she isn’t showing it the same way.”
Mario climbed down the ladder, the coordination required to do so making him realize that he’d had more to drink than he thought.
He wanted to go to the townhouse and be with Miranda.
And he didn’t.
He felt useless when she shut him out. And it hurt. It hurt that she wouldn’t let him be there for her, and that she refused to be there for him. He knew she couldn’t help it. He told himself she couldn’t. But a selfish part of him wanted her to try.
When he reached the townhouse, he almost left to wander LO for a while. Instead, he opened the door. Miranda sat on the end of the couch, one leg curled under her body, reading a book. Delilah was snuggled beside her.
Miranda looked up. “Someone looks a little toasty.”
He held his hand up, his thumb and forefinger almost touching. “Maybe a little.”
Miranda arched her eyebrow. “Maybe a little more than a little.”
He joined her on the couch, reaching over Delilah to hold her hand. It felt warm in his, the comfort of her touch radiating through him.
“Did you and Doug have fun?”
He nodded, resting his head on the back of the couch. “You know us… It was all sports and titty bars.”
He turned his head to look at her. She didn’t laugh, but she smiled. She looked almost like herself, except for the tension in her jaw, the stiffness of her posture, the guardedness behind her blue eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She smiled, a little too brightly. “Yeah, of course.”
Wow, he thought. Less than three seconds before she shut him down. He bit the inside of his cheek, using the discomfort to keep focus. He should go to bed. He was more than finger-thumb-maybe-a-little buzzed. Going to bed would be the wisest course of action.
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m not okay.”
Miranda set down her book. “I know. But… I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“That’s the most you’ve said to me since the ultrasound. Over a week ago.”
She looked down at her knees.
“Talk to me,” he said gently.
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
The generalized dread that followed him like a dark cloud flooded his system. Frustration rushed to the surface, freed by the alcohol.
“What if I need to?” he said, the pain of her shutting him out too sharp, too deep, for him to brush off. For him to be understanding. Between them, Delilah started to whimper.
“We were going to have a baby, Miri. It was never even on the table and suddenly it was. Now it’s gone, and you just close in on yourself more every day, fading away. You act like it never even happened.”
“I can’t do anything about what happened,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“You never started talking, especially to me.”
She didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on her knees like her life depended on it.
“And you have nothing to say,” he said, the bitterness sharp in his mouth. “Of course you don’t. Of course you don’t.” He sighed. “I need you right now, and you don’t seem to give a shit. And you… It’s hard to be there for someone who won’t let you be.”
Delilah’s whines grew louder. She looked from Miranda to Mario and back again.
Miranda looked up at him, a glimpse of hurt in her eyes.
“Maybe I don’t need you to be here for me,” she said, her voice clipped tight. “Did you ever think of that?”
He felt the blow, like a punch to the gut. He knew she didn’t mean it. He thought she didn’t mean it. Hoped she didn’t.
Delilah slunk from the couch and hid behind a chair.
“You should go back to the Institute.”
Mario gaped at her, unable to believe what she was saying.
“This hurts, Miranda. And I’m saying it all wrong. I know you’re hurting, but you’re acting like everything is fine, and it’s not.”
“You should go back to the Institute,” she said again. She looked at him this time. Her eyes were flat, like a shark’s. Emotionless. “I know Alicia’s been working hard. I don’t really need you here, but she probably needs your help.”
He stared at her for a moment, surprised to see that she was not clutching his bloody heart in her hands. It felt like she had ripped it from his chest.
“At least she wants my help.”
Miranda’s eyes widened as emotion rushed back into them—surprise, pain, shock, heartache. His jibe had landed, right on the bull’s eye.
“Miri, I’m s—”
“Get out,” Miranda said. “Get out and don’t come back.”
She jumped up, her posture rigid. She ran up the stairs, and Delilah followed, still whimpering.
Shutting him out. Again.
Mario watched her go. Hurt and anger, self-recrimination for saying something so cruel, fury that any of this had happened to them, swirling inside him. He shouldn’t have pushed, but he did. Shouldn’t have insisted, but he had. Shouldn’t have thought that needing to be comforted mattered to her. That was not something she was willing to do, not a place she was willing to go.
He stood up, debating what to do. Trying to decide if he was enough of a glutton for punishment, enough of an asshole, to try again. He climbed the stairs, stopping outside the bedroom door. Her stifled, hitching breaths as she cried were muffled by the closed door. His hand was on the doorknob when he stopped.
She was crying, but not out here with him. She didn’t want him for this. She didn’t want him to comfort her, had none to offer him. Which left them…here.
He tried to turn it off, this ache turning his heart inside out. He had seen others compartmental
ize their pain, but he had never figured out how to get good at it. He had not protected Miranda, or the baby, or even himself, and everything was falling to pieces around him.
Maybe Rocco has more cider, he thought. Maybe if he got really fucked up, he wouldn’t care for a while.
“Like that’s possible,” he muttered.
But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try.
32
Doug pulled up short at the end of the hallway, his heart pounding, and knocked on the door to Smith’s office.
The door cracked open enough for him to see Skye’s face before she ushered him in. Mario looked up from where he and Alicia both leaned over Commander Smith’s desk. An ecstatic grin stretched across his face from ear to ear. The grin faltered when Mario looked past Doug to the closing door to see that Miranda was not with him. He nodded to Doug, then went back to explaining the papers on the desk.
Rich leaned against one of the overflowing bookcases on the far side of the room. He lifted his chin in greeting, his face bright with excitement. Doug slipped into place between Skye and Rocco. The small office was filled with a palpable fizz of energy.
“Looks like they did it,” Rocco said to Doug.
“We’re probably a little unpopular with the macaques,” Alicia said, laughing.
Everyone winced. It had been a few months now, and Alicia’s laugh was still like fingernails on a chalkboard. Judging from everyone else’s reactions, it would not get better with time. Alicia was to o excited to notice.
Smith said, “You’re both sure about this?”
Both Mario and Alicia nodded their dark heads in unison. “Yeah,” Mario said. “In the lab, in mice, and in the macaques, too.”
“The macaques being the human testing equivalent?” Smith asked. “And with this final serum, they’ve all survived?”
Alicia nodded. “Yes. We infected the first monkey with the final serum…fifteen days ago?” she said, looking to Mario for confirmation.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Mario answered. “Every single one since, and that first one, too, are immune to ZBZ-1 and -2.”
