Page 68 of Totally Shipped
“I love you, Key.”
She comes over and grabs my hand, squeezing it tightly. “Are you having the baby?” She tightens her grip.
“I…I might be.”
Key closes her eyes and lets go of my hand. “I’ll make the fire.”
LEANDER
The weather has gone crazy.
One minute, we were celebrating the discovery of a crop of self-seeded taro plants, then the next the fucking heavens open and all hell is being let loose.
“Shit, we gotta get back to the girls.” Rex was pulling up taro tubers and shoving them down the front of his shirt. “Let’s take as many of these as we can.”
I follow suit, and all the time I’m harvesting, the wind gets stronger and the sky blacker.
“Rex, we have to call it—it’s fucking mental. Look at the clouds.”
They are dark and boiling and have a purple tinge to them. The air inside smells of ozone. The heavy clouds are effectively turning the early afternoon sky into dusk.
“Right.”
We start walking at a good pace. It took us a while to get out here, but we were stopping and foraging the whole time. The return journey should be way quicker; my ankles are aching, but they often do.
At least I can walk.
My mind drifts back to a time when I couldn’t even stand. The weeks lying in a hospital bed were the worst of my life. It wasn’t the pain of having my skin debrided, or the fact I was always fucking freezing from various liquids pumping into me from IV’s.
It was the fact I survived when the others didn’t.
Alicia was worth so much more than me. Carlos, too. Fuck, all of them.
“Why me?”
The hospital shrink would come in and talk about survivor's guilt. Sure, I understand that, but so what if I know the term? Survivor’s guilt is there for a reason—it’s not wrong.
I should feel guilty. What kind of monster would I be if I wasn’t?
The door of my room opens, and the PT walks in. She’s young and pretty, and I know I’m fucked up because I have no desire to flirt with her.
“Today is the day, Leander! Time to stand on your own two feet.”
Fuck. That’s all I’ve been trying to do for these last few years, stand on my own two feet and not rely on family money.
But the family money has got me the best plastic surgeon on the eastern seaboard, and extra PT that the fire service insurance doesn’t cover.
So by not standing on my own two feet, I will learn to stand on my own two feet again—ironic.
I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep, but the PT doesn’t take the hint. “This is going to be great,” she says. “Don’t knock it until you try it. You're gonna be surprised how fast you can be up and about again.”
Thunder cracks, and a bough crashes down not three feet from where I am.
“Fuck, you OK, Lea?”
“Yeah. I hope the girls are at the cave by now.”
“They will be. Daisy would see the storm and know to move.”
