17. 17 #2
He stood there in his boxer briefs, weight on one leg, unsure what to say for the first time.
My eyes raked over his body. He was covered in blood.
Cuts, scrapes, gashes, and old scars: he had it all.
A moment passed before he held out his hand.
“No one is after us. We held up our end of the bargain. I really want to be here for you emotionally right now, but you said it yourself. I desperately need medical attention. We can talk about whatever you need while I’m stitching myself up.
Keep your clothes on, it’s okay. Just help me, please. ”
I nodded, took off my shoes, and grabbed his hand. I draped it over my shoulder, not allowing him to walk on his own any longer. I shouldn’t have let him clear the house in the first place.
I closed and locked the door to his bedroom.
I repeated the gesture in his bathroom.
It didn’t make sense. If someone was coming in, they’d come in regardless of the lock on the door, but the action made me feel marginally better. So well, that when Elias started the water to the shower, I was able to take off my soiled clothes and join him.
The shower was large enough for us to stand side by side, and I supported his weight while he washed his body. I felt him tense when he washed the wound on his chest and shoulder. He let the water run through it, cleaning out the foreign blood and debris, his hands balled into tight fists.
His ankle was swollen and bruised, and I wasn’t convinced that he hadn’t broken it, though he probably could tell the difference. He’d broken a few bones in his lifetime.
“Wow, that sucked,” he said, pulling away from the water.
“Do you need help getting out?” I asked, not letting go of his waist just yet.
“No, I’m just going to the sink. I can hop,” he said. My hand fell from his skin, warm from the water. “Clean yourself up.”
“Elias?” I asked.
“Cassie?” He returned.
“Do you have a disposable razor or something I could use?”
“Yeah.” He opened a drawer under the sink and grabbed one, passing it over the shower door.
“Thank you.” My voice was so small, it was like a whisper. I set it on the shelf, and focused on washing myself first. I wasn’t as dirty as Elias, but I had bits of gore in my hair and blood that didn’t belong to me on my arms and legs.
“Fuck,” Elias yelled, slamming his fist on the counter. I jumped, a little yelp coming out.
The steam from the shower had fogged up the glass door, so I wiped it with my hand so I could see him.
“I’m good,” he said, holding up a bottle of isopropyl alcohol.
He was cleaning his wound, preparing to sew it up.
I didn’t want to watch this, but I felt like I was abandoning him if I wasn’t there for him.
I finished up as quickly as I could, watching Elias out of the corner of my eye periodically to make sure he hadn’t fainted.
I didn’t feel as good as I did a few days ago, but taking a shower always helped. A bad day at work? A nice hot shower would do the trick. Today was almost like a bad day at work. Technically, I was at my place of work, and I’d just had a few setbacks, as Elias might call them.
Clean hair and shaved body, scrubbed raw, I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a nearby towel around myself. I didn’t notice it before, but Elias had huge towels. It was a nice touch.
I walked past Elias, but not before glancing at his handiwork. He’d placed stitches at different points through the wound, and was going back in between the initial sutures to add more. At some point, he’d put on a pair of pants, too.
Rather than leave the safety of Elias, of his locked room, I took another pair of sweats and a plain black t-shirt from his dresser. I put them on, and returned to the bathroom, sitting in the corner I’d chosen the first time I was in the bathroom with him.
“If you didn’t buy clothes at the store, what did I spend $500 on?” He asked, not looking up. He stood facing the mirror, methodically sewing his own shoulder back together.
“I didn’t want to go out there by myself,” I said, feeling a little guilty.
“That’s okay.” His voice was gentle. He took a deep breath, held it as the needle pierced his skin, and exhaled. “I don’t mind. Do you want to talk?”
He was true to his word. He’d promised that we could talk while he performed surgery on himself, but I didn’t really want to talk.
Not about the day, at least. Nothing felt right.
Suddenly we were safe, and that didn’t make sense.
Only a few hours ago I’d been forced back into the building that started it all, vague threats hanging over my head if I didn’t return.
After I’d done what I needed to do, I was off the hook because there were more pressing matters.
How the cure to the virus wasn’t the top priority, I didn’t understand.
“This is all very confusing,” I blurted out.
He snorted. “I don’t disagree with you, but what exactly has you perplexed?”
“Shouldn’t the top priority in the country be this vaccine?” I asked. “We almost died making it and now no one cares? It’s sitting next to your washing machine for fuck's sake. Shouldn’t a scientist be mass producing it?”
“Not only is the government extremely inefficient, it’s also extremely stupid,” he began to explain, pausing to add another stitch.
“A lot of people probably died in the last two days. They’re scrambling to contain what they can.
They just can’t spare anyone right now, and they would prefer if they didn’t take the only chance they have right into the fire of it all.
We aren’t great at dealing with crises on American soil, if you’ve noticed. ”
I thought for a moment, but ultimately accepted his answer. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“So, we really are safe. I promise.” He looked at me then, for the first time, and I realized that he had finished. He took some Tylenol, and washed them down with water from the sink. “Would you rather eat or have a celebratory cigarette first?”
“Cigarette,” I answered. “I don’t have an appetite.”
“Sounds good. I just need to tape my ankle.”
He was methodical, an expert at his craft. Just another thing he’d had to do for himself before. Watching him work like this, it was hard not to imagine how he’d learned to do it all, what horrific things he’d seen and done over the years.
When he first joined the Army, he was just as new to all of this as I was.
He was lost, deployed to God knows where to kill people.
Not monsters, people. People who were just as lost as he was.
To make it as far as he did in his career, he had proved himself to be good at it, and I knew it had to weigh heavily on him.
Elias had such a softness to him, and I didn’t know how he kept that part of himself so separate from his work.
Perhaps he lost it, and it came back to him later.
These days, the majority of his work was more investigative, and his deployments dealt mostly with different instances and variants of the virus, so I imagined it was easier to come to terms with having to kill someone who was too far gone anyway.
This was just another day for him, but it was one of the worst days of my life. He’d been through hundreds of the worst days of my life, and it was nothing. I was sad for him, but I admired him, too.
“Alright, let’s go,” he said, pulling himself up to stand on one leg. I stood to meet him, and acted as his crutch. We began the journey to the patio.
“Do you not have some crutches around here?” I asked. “I’m surprised.”
“No, normally I just grin and bear it. I’m just trying to be good because you’re here. Why? Are you trying to abandon your post?”
“I guess not, I’m just a little sour about today,” I said, moving to unlock the bedroom door.
Elias turned, putting his back against the door, stopping us in our tracks. “Enlighten me, please.”
“I’m really wanting that cigarette, Elias,” I whined. “Let’s walk and talk.”
“Besides all the fun we had today, and the apparent nicotine withdrawals, what’s got you feeling sour?”
It did me no good to discuss my fears. It wasn’t helpful to talk about how scared I felt, how bewildered I was by everything that had happened in the last few days.
Instead of dragging him down with me, I rolled my eyes.
“I thought I’d get a kiss today after I saved the world, yet here we are.
I’m like a little pack mule, toting you around. So ungrateful,” I admonished.
That got me a real smile. Elias grabbed my waist, pulling me into him, kissing me deeply, fully. It was short lived, but very welcome, and I couldn’t stop the grin on my face, either.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’ll make it up to you.”