Chapter 12 Nine
Nine
Taryn
My hair felt sticky.
Weird what the mind grasped onto in times like these.
After seeing Lin and Caine, I was brought to a shower, where two women stripped me down and scrubbed me clean—scrubbed in the most literal sense.
Rough brushes scraped over my still-sensitive skin and through my scalp, ridding my body of dirt and slick and blood and sweat and cum.
I gritted my teeth through the whole thing, focusing on my relief I’d managed to slip the memory card to Lin before this.
They used the same clinical-smelling soap on my skin and my hair. Hence the sticky feeling as it dried.
I dressed in an over-the-head medical gown—thankfully no cliche butt views out the back—and was escorted to my new home for the duration of my captivity.
Captivity. Not my life. Because we were surviving this place.
The room was small, plain, clinical, but not overly awful. A medical bed sat in the middle, bolted to the floor. A prison-style toilet and sink combo sat in the corner in open view of the room—and the four dome ceiling cameras positioned in the corners of the room.
Well, if they want to watch me shit and piss, that’s probably worse for them than me.
The fluorescent overhead light was harsh, one of them positioned directly over the bed.
“Someone will be by with your midday meal shortly,” one of the orderlies said as they both turned toward the door. “Your physical evaluation begins tomorrow morning.”
“What does th—”
The door shut, a lock ominously clicking over the rest of my question.
Apparently physical evaluation meant undergoing every damn medical test known to man.
Day one started simply enough. Blood pressure, height, weight, heart rate.
Vision and hearing tests. Lung capacity.
A quick lunch break—identical to the previous day’s meals, plain chicken breast and broccoli—before a thorough visual inspection of my body, from crown to toes.
A female beta nurse in scrubs jotted down notes on every mole, scar, and abrasion she found.
I didn’t get dinner that night so that they could take fasting bloodwork come morning. My growling stomach, still angry from the days of little to no food in the woods, kept me awake despite my exhaustion.
Day two started with vials and vials and vials of fasting bloodwork.
By the sixth one, I was woozy enough I nearly fell off the bed, and they finally gifted me with a tall glass of apple juice and buttered toast. They allowed me to rest for most of the day, even dimming the lights so I could do more than doze.
How kind.
Day three, breast exam, then pelvic exam. External and internal sonograms to check out the goods, I guessed. I did my best to check out of my body until they’d finished.
Chicken and broccoli. Broken sleep. New day.
Two new nurses rotated my arms and legs in a million different weird patterns (“range of motion”) before putting me through the worst part of this ordeal to date.
The gym.
Pushups to failure. Jumping jacks to failure.
Squats to failure. Jumping rope to failure.
Situps to failure. A million different awful exercises to failure.
My gratitude at being allowed to wear a set of scrubs and sneakers waned by the second set to failure.
By the time they deemed the day over, I was a quivering, sore, sweaty mess. At least I slept well that night.
Rest day. Thank fuck.
Another sleep, another bland breakfast. A nurse coming in to read a monitor above the toilet (which apparently measured every deposit I made, which was somehow both fascinating and mortifying). The ceiling light furthest to the left flickered every minute.
All in all, my life as a lab rat could’ve been a hell of a lot worse. It was all becoming eerily normal, and that was the scariest part of the whole damn thing.
I didn’t even have to leave my room for the next several days’ worth of tests.
I sat on the bed while yet another nurse held up flashcards.
Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
Asked me to spell a bunch of words—some easy enough, like torch, all the way up to onomatopoeia, which basically ended up as verbal alphabet soup.
Listened to a list of animals, did some math, then had to repeat the list back… backwards.
Approximately two billion riddles and questions, spread over hours across several days. By the time the nurse left after each session, I was almost as exhausted as I’d been after the gym days.
Sandwiched between the brain teasers were more tests: X-ray, MRI, CAT scan, EEG, nerve conduction, stress test, reflex evals, and more than a couple that I had no clue what the hell they were for.
Days and days of it all. I’d lost track of how many. I should’ve tallied my meals on the wall like they did in prison movies.
If I weren’t so distracted and exhausted, I’d have fought against the longing ache for my pack that always lurked behind my ribcage. I did, when I could, because I couldn’t think of them here.
Not of Brea, who had to be alive somewhere. Maybe hurt or scared, but alive.
Not of Brooks, our only hope of escaping this nightmare.
Not of Lin and Caine, trapped somewhere in this building, but still whole, if Doc McFuckerson were to be trusted. With no other option, though, I chose trust. In that, at least.
Every time one of their faces tried to infiltrate my thoughts, I shoved them out. I couldn’t hold myself together and hold them in my mind at the same time. I simply wasn’t strong enough.