Fiction: Ray's Honey Pots, Part Twenty-Eight

I wake up in a hospital room. It takes me a moment to realize I can hear again: little shushing sounds and beeps and a bird sings outside my window. I grimace at the memory of trying to talk to Lucy about the ringing in my ears, loopy from whatever drugs they gave me. But she was holding my hand, so that's good. She's still holding my hand, I realize, when I turn my head toward the light of the window and find her beside my bed, curled uncomfortably in a chair. I study her face for a long time, until I fall asleep again.

The nurse wakes me up with a short knock on the door before entering. Lucy is gone. I suppress a feeling of panic but I'm sure the stare I give the nurse is wild-eyed and distressed, anyway.

"Good afternoon!" she says in a cheery voice. I want to strangle her.

"Mm," I manage.

The nurse is looking from machinery to tablet, taking notes with a stylus.

"Looking good, Ms Lee."

That's not my surname. I'm okay with that.

"Surgery wasn't necessary," she says, "we pretty much just tidied up the good work Mrs Smith did in binding that wound, and replaced all the blood you lost, and kept you quiet so you could sleep off the temporary hearing loss. Sounds like you had quite the adventure."

I eye her silently.

"Do you want to speak with the doctor about anything?"

"No, thank you," I say, "But I would like to see Mrs Smith or the girl who was here earlier."

"Neither are here at the moment, I'm afraid."

"Where is 'here?'" I ask.

The nurse quirks her lips and I understand I'm not at a hospital. Not a public one, at least.

"Mrs Smith asked you to wait for her, please."

I nod, my gaze sliding away from her, losing interest. I hear her squeaky nurse shoes heading for the door. Just before the door closes behind her, I call out, "Can you bring me some books?"

The nurse pops her head back in, says, "Any particular kind?"

"Smut," I say, daring her to judge, "or decent fiction."

Another quirk of the lips, then she's gone. I look out the window at the far end of the room. Nothing to see but clear blue sky. The room is white-on-white, no TV, just two chairs and a side-table with a box of tissues.

I take a moment to use the little rocker-switch thing to get my torso and head at a comfortable incline so I'm not flat on my back. Then I run my hands over myself: the nicks and scratches on my neck and shoulders from the exploding kitchen cabinetry and window has been cleaned and treated. No stitches that I can feel. I push back the blanket and sheet to look at my calf. It looks like a normal, bandaged leg. No swelling, just a little purple bruising extends beyond the wrap. I push on the wrap. No pain. I wonder what meds they've got me on.

I fight the urge to unwrap it and assess the damage. Instead, I pull the blanket and sheet back up, take a moment to snort at the puppy and kitten print of the modesty gown they put on me. I look out the window again, try to let the blue sky fill my mind so I don't have to think about anything.

"No smut," the nurse says as she comes in, looking cheerful and professional and I want to hit her. "I did find some books, though." She places them on the side-table. I look at the worn, cracked spines of the five or six paperbacks. I'm suddenly too tired to even comprehend what I'm looking at. It takes all my strength just to turn my head back to the nurse, who's fiddling with something on the IV.

"We're doing a saline drip and feeding your meds into that," she explains, even though I didn't ask. "It's not set up for you to be able to medicate yourself for pain, though. We've got a schedule for the dosages but let me know if you get really uncomfortable, okay? We can adjust things."

"How long do I have to be here?" I ask. The words are coming out slowly. I'm unsure I'll be awake for the answer.

"Mrs Smith's in charge of that," the nurse says.

"Rowan," I whisper. There's a funny look on the nurse's face. I don't have time to parse it before I'm asleep.

---

I start awake, coming out of a dream, a re-enactment of trapping Ray in the Loop. Only, in the dream, Ray doesn't succumb to the Loop and the number I dialed is Reynolds', and Reynolds tells him to kill me. The resulting gunfight is spectacular and unrealistic, my mind replaying parts of it over and over until I figure out how to make it all work in my favor. Then the dream takes me flying out the window and I wake up before I hit the ground.

Lucy is back in her chair, holding my hand. She's awake, reading one of the crappy paperbacks the nurse brought. I look at her bright eyes and her clean, brown hair and her body, wrapped in normal clothes.

"Hey," I say. I whisper it. She looks like herself, only not. I realize it's because she's not oozing sensuality. She's not a honey pot anymore.

She looks at me.

"Hey," she says. She smiling but her eyes are filling with tears.

"Are you going to leave me?" I ask. I immediately want to take those words back. I feel small and helpless and it's not a good feeling.

Her grip on my hand tightens. She puts the book down and slides off the chair to kneel beside the bed. She kisses my hand.

"No, I'm not leaving you," she says. She says it slowly and deliberately.

"But you're--" I take a deep breath to try again.

"I'm more free than I was," Lucy says, "But the life I had before I was abducted isn't something I can just recreate, instantly, from scratch. I--" she pauses, looks up into my face. "Is this something you want to talk about now? Would you rather just snuggle?"

I'm indecisive. The bed is small and my leg is starting to ache. I want to keep her right there, on her knees, because that's where I like her. But I imagine kneeling can be tiresome when you have a long story to tell.

"No," I finally say, "You sit. Get comfortable. Tell me everything. Start at the beginning. What happened when Ben took you to the dairy?"

"When we got there, everything seemed fine. I mean, as fine as things can be when you're at a brainwashing center. It was worse than Ray's, because the subjects there weren't having any fun. I caught glimpses of people, men and women, strapped down and screaming and I was really scared. Ben was holding onto my arm like he thought I might run away, and that made me even more scared."

Lucy pauses, takes a deep breath. Her gaze is shifting around as she speaks, as though she's still seeing the medical rooms at the dairy.

"Reynolds met us at the second guard booth. That building was quieter. The doors to the rooms were all open, things seemed bright and clean, but then a woman came out of the room closest to us. It was Shelley," she looks at me. I shake my head, I don't remember Shelley.

"Shelley used to be in the room next to mine at the dorm," Lucy explains. "She disappeared months ago. Ben recognized her, too, and he said, 'The report said she'd been rehabilitated,' and Reynolds said, 'Must have been a mix-up,' but he said it with a sneer and I saw Ben's face and I'm really surprised he didn't lose it. But he didn't say anything. Reynolds walked us to the next room over. I kept looking at Shelley. She looked younger, had huge breasts out to here," Lucy holds her hands out to demonstrate and looks like she's holding a ballet pose.

"She had this smile on her face. She reminded me of the blank ones the honey pots Ray had made to be like dolls." Her eyes meet mine for a moment and I nod. Her gaze slides away again as she continues, "Shelley had been one of the least-modified of all of us. Her husband was ready for a trophy wife but Shelley was in the way. She told us she used to be smart and oversexed, not just the latter. The guy sold her to Ray and all Ray did was dumb her down enough that her sex drive made all her decisions for her. She was too busy fucking the guys to contest the annulment. She wasn't happy about her situation with Ray, I don't think. Ben probably thought he was making a good bet when he helped her escape."

Lucy was quiet. I watched her face, all the emotions that were displayed there, changing from moment to moment. Finally, she continued, "Shelley wasn't even oversexed, much less intelligent, when I saw her at Reynolds'. She was just blank, like a doll, waiting." Her face and voice grow fierce as she speaks and she finally spits out, "You were right to kill that motherfucker. Even if it had meant that he shot me, you were right to shoot him dead!"

Her hand holds mine in a vise grip and I return the pressure. I feel energized by her hatred for Reynolds and her vehement approval of his death. I feel like a hero for a moment.

"What happened next?" I finally ask.

"Reynolds was sneaky; he locked us in the room before Ben realized what was happening. The sliding door to the garden was locked, too. Ben was about to throw a chair through it when a pair of guards came and beat him and dragged him out. I was alone in the room, listening to the sounds in the hallway. They were moving the girls out, I think. Then it was quiet. Then it was dark out. Then Reynolds came in, dragged me out, made me kneel. We waited for you. I heard the gunfire. It was so loud. Then I heard the Loop and I felt you next to me and I put my head in your lap," she pauses, her gaze comes back to mine and bores straight into my soul, "and I have never, ever, felt as safe as I did in that moment."