Page 70 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
“Hey,” she says as she passes by. The heap of fabric is dumped in front of the door to the hive. A fly buzzes too close to Crane’s ear and he shakes his head to shoo it away. “Don’t worry about messing these up. They were all gonna go in the trash anyway.” She sniffs. “Smells like attic, though.”
As she shuffles around the blankets, trying to get them somewhat comfortable-looking, another twinge grabs ahold of Crane’s belly. He thumps against the threshold. Closes his eyes like Tammy taught him. Deep breath in. Hiss it out between the teeth.
Breathe,the hive croons.
The contractions aren’tsobad. They’re not a broken arm. Or a hammer to the head. He can handle it.
But Jess is still helping him straighten up, his face in her hands, her brows furrowed. “Your lungs working?” she asks. “There we go. I—hey, Tammy. I got him.”
The pain, Crane thinks, is getting repetitive. The impotent frustration reminds him of being a child and being told to use his words when he couldn’t. He can be mad all he wants, but it won’t make it stop.
“Levi’s out front,” Jess tells him. “He’s turning off all the lights, and locking the doors, and putting down the blinds so nobody can see in.” She uses the sleeve of her shirt to wipe down his face; the parts of hisface that still have operating sweat glands, having survived the boiling water in patches here and there. Mainly across his soggy throat. “He hasn’t been alone with me if you’re worried. I won’t let him be alone with you, either.”
Her voice is so soft, so close to his temple. There’s so much buzzing. The hive sounds like wet meat, the same thing he heard while rooting around in Stagger’s insides, the constant squelching like slogging through the floor of a slaughterhouse.
She says, “Are you scared?”
It’s such a simple question, but he can’t believe he’s never been asked it before.
He can’t imagine anyone who goes through this being anything other than scared.
It’s not the pain he’s afraid of, though. He can handle pain. He’s good at pain. Helikesit sometimes. And if childbirth kills him, if the placenta doesn’t come out right, if the uterus doesn’t close off its blood flow or an infection takes him out in a few days, then the baby’s done the hard work for him. Maybe the uterus will full-on rupture. Straight-up tear and spill little infant feet into the abdominal cavity and kill him. Wouldn’t that be convenient.
He is, however, afraid of dying a woman.
He is afraid that he won’t be allowed to die at all.
The pain lets go. His eyes flutter open. Jess is so close to him, smiling gently.
“There we are,” Jess says when Crane looks at her. “Hi.”
She’s so kind to him. She doesn’t deserve to be here. He should have turned her away from the gas station, he never should’ve let her step inside. The night Sean died, he should’ve kept driving her away until they hit Virginia, and then the East Coast, and let her free on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. He’s so sorry he didn’t.
“Tammy’s here,” she says, “and your friend’s here, and I’m here. We’ll take care of you.”
Even half-naked, it’s too warm in here. He wants a cigarette and some snowy air to calm his nerves. He can’t figure out how to say that, so he shakily mimes a smoke with two fingers to his lips. Jess raises her eyebrows.
“It’s freezing,” she protests.
“What does he want?” Tammy calls from another room.
“A smoke break?”
Tammy pokes her head into the manager’s office. “Girl, you better give him whatever he damn well wants right now. Just make sure he puts on some warm clothes. And good shoes.”
Crane doesn’t want warmer clothes. He’s burning up. He steals Levi’s coat anyway.
“Marlboros?” Jess asks. “The red ones?”
The shock of cold is a blessing. It freezes the sweat across Crane’s throat, chills the burning of his thighs and cheeks. The blue sky has gone gray and big fat flakes float down between tree branches. There’s no one at the pumps; they’ve been turned off,OUT OF ORDERsigns plastered across the screens. Levi must have done that too. Corridor H is silent.
Jess, who is actually halfway dressed for the cold, pulls her hat tighter around her ears as she makes sure the back door is shut tight. Stagger, most definitelynotdressed for said cold but not seeming to care, doesn’t do much of anything.
Crane leans back, lets Stagger hold him steady. Jess watches the road.
It feels strange, now that it’s actually happening. He didn’t think he was going to get this far.
West Virginia is beautiful in the winter. Just like the weatherman predicted, the flurries turned into massive snowdrifts in a blink. The mountains are smothered and the air itself feels muted. In a storm like this, Wash County is so isolated and lonely that Crane and Jess and Stagger might as well be the only people in the world.
