LovewithaChanceofZombies (8 page)
Read LovewithaChanceofZombies Online
Authors: Delphine Dryden
Chapter Ten
This time it was beeping, not pounding, that woke Lena up.
The change in the steady, reassuring rhythm of the vitals
monitors sounded in her ears, harsh as a death knell, and she leapt from the
bed, nearly crashing the partition over in her haste to get to Lucas’ bedside.
“Clear!”
Lucas’ limp body twitched under the paddles Linda held to
his chest. One of the other medics spotted Lena and held her back. She couldn’t
remember his name.
“What’s happening?” The monitor continued its unsteady,
fluttering beep, nothing like the regular pulse she’d grown accustomed to
hearing. The fourth medic, Shanda, was squeezing the bag on the ventilator, her
eyes trained to the monitor’s screen.
“Stay back, please,” said the nameless medic.
Lena clutched at the man’s arm, trying to force it down and
out of her way. “What the fuck is happening?”
“V-fib,” Roger said.
Linda nodded to him. “Six hundred.”
After Roger fiddled with a knob on the crash cart, she
pressed down on the paddles again. “Clear.”
There was a pause…and then the beep, steady and true, the
sweet sound of Lucas’ life continuing, and the world slowly returning to order.
Lena’s own heart felt as if it were about to crash through
her chest, and she had to swallow twice to moisten her mouth enough to speak.
“What happened?”
None of them seemed particularly concerned, which baffled
her.
“He had a bit of a hiccup in his heart function,” Roger
explained, “but he looks good now.”
“Oh…”
“It can happen,” Linda said as she replaced the paddles on
the cart. “It’s always a danger with this process. He even left you
instructions for just such an occasion.”
Now that the red terror was receding, Lena vaguely recalled
the set of directions in Lucas’ notes. She was struck with the knowledge, sure
and horrible, that she couldn’t have done what the team just did. Not by
herself. Lucas had to have known that.
“Thank you. All of you,” she said humbly.
“We would have come down here with you when you locked
yourselves in to begin with. If we’d known. Lucas was being selfless, as usual,
I suspect,” said Linda.
Lena shook her head. “No. There was no time to let anyone
know. He was already symptomatic when Watson gave us the news.”
That broke all of their calm for a second or two, until
Roger shrugged and grinned, his smile gleaming white against his dark skin.
“Heroes. Always gotta have the dramatic timing.”
Lena smiled back. “And the candlelight vigil.”
Shanda snorted. “We’re never gonna let him live that one
down.”
She had allowed the ventilator to resume its steady,
whirring, automatic cycle—another familiar sound to soothe Lena’s nerves. In
the middle of it all, Lucas slept on, oblivious.
* * * * *
Despite Lucas’ obsessively detailed notes and patient
description, Lena had not been quite sure what the awakening process would look
like. It turned out to be slower and less dramatic than she’d imagined. He
slept for hours after the ketamine and pentobarbital were withdrawn, until she
had gone through anxiety to boredom to impatience and back again, sitting there
waiting for him to open his eyes.
Then, when he finally opened them, it was only to blink a
few times, slide a glance her way, and slip back into unconsciousness for
another few hours.
“This is normal,” Roger explained. “It’ll be a while before
he’s lucid if you want to go stretch your legs.”
“I’m staying,” she said firmly.
She stayed, but she shared dinner with the medics and slept
through most of another night before her waiting was rewarded.
Somebody nudged her awake, and Lena panicked for a moment
when she couldn’t place herself and couldn’t feel the stock of her gun when she
slapped her hand out to the side. Only air met her hand, and after flailing a
few times, she woke fully to realize she was on the couch and Linda was
patiently and gently shaking her shoulder.
“Someone wants to see you.”
Lena bolted up and turned to see Lucas watching her weakly.
His eyes were barely open, and he looked ready to fall asleep again at any
second, but a faint smile curved his lips when she came over to the side of the
hospital bed. They had taken the ventilator out, though he still had two
slender oxygen tubes trailing over his cheeks.
Lena ran her fingers over his forearm and down over the
restraint to clasp his hand. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear what he
whispered. When she bent closer, he grinned and sniffed at her before he
murmured, “Braaaains…”
Lena’s mouth fell open. Lucas shrugged as much as the
restraints would allow. She started to laugh, and he smiled again as his eyes
drifted shut once more.
“We’ve been dosing him with the hemp oil,” Linda whispered.
She and Luis, the medic whose name Lena had had trouble remembering at first,
were taking the night shift. “It seems to be working. He’s been telling that
same joke to everyone, but he also knows his name and where he is. He’s asked
for you a few times. We tried to wake you a few hours ago, but you were out
like a light.”
“It’s okay. I’m… I’m just so…”
She burst into tears yet again. A few minutes later, it
occurred to her that this had been happening a lot lately, and it was certainly
out of character. But then she looked at Lucas and cried again, happy tears,
and forgot all about how odd it was that she was crying all the time.
She cried again when he woke up the next time, although the
tears finally tapered off after a few days. His lucid periods grew longer, his
color improved and he showed no inclination to devour Lena or any of his
assistants.
They all agreed it was almost as though he wasn’t a zombie
at all.
* * * * *
A week later, when Lucas was back on a regular diet—with
hemp oil supplements—and shuffling all the way down the hall and back on his
own, Lena noticed that one of his legs was still dragging a little.
“You’re
shambling
,” she wailed. Then she threw up.
* * * * *
“You’re definitely pregnant,” Shanda told her a little while
later. “Congratulations.”
“Yeah. Probably it was all that unprotected sex we were
having,” Lucas remarked. His speech was growing clearer by the day, and he hardly
slurred at all.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Lena said
sullenly. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the development, now that Lucas
was going to live. Based on the testing the team had been doing, he didn’t even
seem to be carrying the virus now. There was talk of using his blood to create
a vaccine, and Watson had given him the all-clear to have the run of the colony
again after one more week in confinement. Provided, of course, that he didn’t
eat anybody in the meantime. People had already started coming in to consult
with him in the few visiting hours his fiercely protective staff allowed. The
vigil outside had ended in a wild celebration that people were still recovering
from.
He was Lucas Nye, the hero doctor, again. And she was a girl
he’d grown close to over an intense few weeks, but in truth they hardly knew
each other. Her heart was in her throat when she saw the frown on Lucas’ face.
“Shanda, can you give us a few minutes?” Lucas asked the
medic. “Maybe you can go see if the midwives will let us borrow their
ultrasound stuff?”
She left with a nod, and Lucas turned to Lena. “It
was
a good idea at the time. It’s still a good idea. You’re not getting cold feet,
are you? Planning to use me for my body but running off just when you find out
I’m not a goner after all?”
It took her a moment to realize he was teasing her. Lena’s
eyes closed as a wave of palpable relief swept over her. “I’m more than happy
to continue using your body, if you insist. I may be less able to do that in a
few months though.”
“I’m not exactly at my best right now, either,” he
confessed, “but I think we’ll work it out.”
“Then why are you still frowning?” she asked, when she
opened her eyes again and saw that he was.
Lucas shrugged. “I don’t know. I still can’t really feel my
face all that well. Maybe my mother was right, maybe I frowned too much and it
froze that way.”
She chuckled and wove her fingers through his, drawing them
to rest on her still-flat stomach. “I promise I will never say that to this
child.”
“You know you’re going to break that promise, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And you know you’re my muse, right?”
“I’m your what?”
Lucas smiled, putting too much thought into it now that he
was so aware of the muscles in his face. Lena didn’t mind how goofy he looked.
“My muse,” he repeated. “You inspire me. Just having you around makes me feel
like…like I can do anything. And everything’s going to be all right.”
Lena expressed it more simply. “You’re home to me now. I
never really felt home before.”
“Then that settles it. You’re sticking around and having my
baby. Hero Baby Nye, we’ll call it. The Nyes. We’ll be the Nye family. I like
that.”
“I do too,” she said shyly, unable to recall the last time
she’d felt shy. “Is this a proposal?”
“If you’d like. I think the farm even has an actual preacher
from before.”
She considered it for a moment then shook her head. She’d
never been a girl to sit around dreaming of a wedding, and she didn’t want to
make things complicated. “No, I don’t need that. We can sign a form for a marriage
contract, with witnesses, same as everybody else. But I do have some special
vows I need you to make.”
“Anything,” he said without hesitation. Lena believed him.
“Do you promise to love me, honor me—”
“I already do.”
“Oh, you’re sweet. I love you too. But do you also swear to
obey me without question in an open-fire situation?”
“Absolutely. As long as you take my orders in the lab.”
“Gladly. You give some really great orders in the lab. And
finally, do you promise to never eat my face off while I’m sleeping?”
He leaned closer, curling his fingers around hers. “What
about when you’re awake? Your face is so soft and tender, and there’s all that
delicious-smelling brain right behind it. It’s a really short step from kissing
to biting, and after all, I’m not even quite human anymore. I think you need to
keep your expectations low.”
“I have a big gun and I’m pretty good at hand-to-hand
combat. If you come at me while I’m awake, the chips will fall where they may.
So you promise?”
He pressed his lips to hers, and they both smiled into the
kiss.
“I do.”
About the Author
After earning two graduate degrees, practicing law awhile
and then working for the public school system for over ten years, Delphine
finally got a clue. She tossed all that aside and started doing what she should
have been doing all along, writing novels! In hindsight she could see the
decision was a no-brainer. Because which sounds like more fun? Being a
lawyer/special educator/reading specialist/educational diagnostician…or writing
spicy romances?
When not writing or doing “mommy stuff”, Delphine reads
voraciously, watches home improvement shows, noodles around with html and css
coding, and plays computer games with her darling (and very romantic) husband.
She is fortunate enough to have two absurdly precocious children and two rotten
but endearing rescued mutts.
Delphine and her family are all Texas natives, and reside in
unapologetic suburban bliss near Houston.
Delphine welcomes comments from readers. You can find her
website and email address on her
author bio page
at
www.ellorascave.com
.
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Also by
Delphine Dryden
1-800-DOM-help:
Roses and Chains
Truth
& Lies 1: How to Tell a Lie
Print books by Delphine Dryden
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