Savage Drift

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT} JOSIE

It’s dark in my room and then I’m being shaken awake.

It’s Dr. Cutlass.

My heart starts to hammer. With each pound I am coming up, fighting through the layers of sludge in my head, shattering through the headache and I’m there.

And I’m ready to fight. If I wasn’t CUFFED to the godforsaken BED.

I see he’s got an orderly with him. Not the one from before.

Oh God, the orderly is taping up black plastic over the CAMERA!

They’ve come to take me and do the testing against my will.

If, if, if. If they take the restraints off, for a second, I’ll take the doctor’s head off.

I’ll scratch up his handsome, lying face.

“Don’t touch me!” I shout.

“Shhh!” Cutlass says.

“I do not give you permission. I do NOT!”

“Shut up!” he says. “That’s not why I’m here. Be quiet! Listen to me!”

I’m shaking—muscles vibrating with rage and terror.

“I’m not doing the testing without your consent. Calm down.” All this he says in a hushed voice.

I make myself slow my breath.

BANG. BANG. Bang. Bang. Beat by beat my heart slows.

“What kind of person do you think I am?” he asks me.

A monster, I want to tell him. A bully.

I won’t apologize.

“I’m here because I have good news.”

“What?”

“At ten twenty-nine this evening a young man presented himself at the gates and requested a visit.”

“Oh my God, Niko?”

He nods. A big smile on his face.

“Really?”

I can’t believe it. And then I realize—I shouldn’t believe it. This is a trick.

“You sign the consent form and I’ll have him brought up right now.”

Could it be? Could Niko have followed me here?

He could have. He could have found out they’d taken me here and Niko could get here. Hitchhiking or even stealing a car.

“That’s why I asked Jimmy to cover the camera,” Dr. Cutlass says. “If I let him come up, during the middle of the night, it’s completely against the rules. I’m taking a big risk.”

“How do I know he’s really there?”

“Hmmm.” Cutlass smiles. Turns to Jimmy, the orderly, who’s leaning against the wall. “She’s a smart one. I told you, Jimmy. Can’t fool her.”

He takes out a minitab and dials a number.

“This is Dr. Cutlass. Do you still have Niko Mills in the office there? Put him on.”

And he puts the phone up to my ear.

“Hello?” I say.

I hear his voice.

It is Niko. It is.

“Josie?”

“Niko? Are you here?”

“I’m in security, Josie. They say they’re going to let me see you, maybe. I don’t know. But I’m here. I’m here.”

I’m crying now and we’re talking at the same time. Me saying: “Niko, I can’t believe you came for me.” And him saying: “I can’t believe I found you, Josie.”

Tears are sliding down my face and I can’t wipe them away because of the restraints.

Dr. Cutlass shuts off the phone. He takes out the sheaf of papers.

“So here’s what happens next,” he instructs me. “Jimmy will remove the restraints. You will sign this consent form, and Niko will be brought to your room and he can even spend the night here.”

I am already nodding.

I don’t ask what will happen in the morning.

“And of course, there will be a guard stationed outside the door.”

I nod.

I just want to see him.

In the bathroom, I splash cold water on my face. I brush my teeth with the little toothbrush set they’ve given me.

There’s a bottle of lotion, too, and I rub it on my face and arms and bare legs, which stick out from my voluminous blue medical gown like lollipop sticks.

The lotion smells like vanilla. That’s good.

I wish I had a belt. I wish I had a tube of lip gloss.

I look at myself in the mirror.

A smile, a real smile, flashes on the glass.

It’s happiness. A sweet burst of joy.

It feels like the first time my heart has filled with something light and pretty in a lifetime—I’m going to see my boyfriend.

I pat my hair, like there’s anything to be done with it.

And then there’s a knock on the door.

I open the door and there stands Niko Mills.

Somehow, I’m nervous for him to look at me closely so I just rush into his arms.

He holds me tight to his thin body.

He smells sour and sweaty and dirty and wonderful. I see his hair is caked to his head with sweat.

I see Dr. Cutlass and Jimmy in the hall. Cutlass is grinning like he bagged big game and there’s a guard there, with a big gun.

Niko releases me and I step back.

There’s a moment where no one knows what to do.

“We’ll see you in the morning, Josie. Niko can stay here until then and I’ve given the order for you two to be left alone,” Cutlass tells me.

“Come in,” I say. It seems like a weird thing to say but the whole thing is weird.

He comes in and shuts the door behind him.

Niko is carrying a gray backpack. He looks… he looks the same. Same serious expression. He seems maybe a bit younger than I remember him.

Now that he’s here I have no idea what to do.

I fiddle with my bed, tucking the sheets in at the foot and making it smooth.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” Niko says.

I can’t quite look at him. I don’t know. I’m antsy. I’m nervous.

“When I saw those men beating you up… No one was helping you! And then the drift. It was… was gruesome, Josie. I’ve never seen anything like it. The ground was running blood.”

He says all this and the energy in me won’t settle down. I sort of don’t want him to get a good look at me. I know I’ve aged. I probably look like a dried-up hag to him. Or some stranger.

“Josie,” he says. “Josie?”

I glance up.

“Are you okay?”

I put my hands up to my face. Get yourself together, a part of me shouts to myself. This is ridiculous. You haven’t seen him in weeks and now you’re blubbering like a baby. He’ll want nothing to do with you.

But another part of me is somehow softening. Letting down my guard.

Niko is here. And he comes over to my side of the bed.

He takes me in his arms and holds me.

For a long time, I just cry.

Being in his arms is my heaven.

Being in his arms can be my last meal and I’ll be happy for it.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” he says when I stop crying.

We’re lying on the bed. He has his muddy boots up on it. Who cares? This will probably be the last night I spend in this room, one way or the other.

“I’m sorry I got your shirt all wet,” I say.

“That? You did me a favor. I haven’t had a shower in almost a week.”

“There’s a shower here. In the bathroom. Do you want to take one?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Maybe later.”

I can tell he wants me to talk, to tell him about what happened to me since we lost each other, but I don’t want to talk.

When I tell him my story, he’s going to find out that I’ve agreed to the testing, and he’ll get upset.

“Tell me about the kids. How are they? What’s Canada like?” I say.

He tells me everything. About how they got to DIA. Saw Mrs. Wooly! How he sent Sahalia ahead on the plane to Canada while he and Alex found someone who would take them back to the Greenway for Dean, Astrid, Chloe, and the twins. And then about Quilchena, which sounds like a beautiful place.

Chloe sent me a message: “Quack, quack.”

It’s an old, dumb private joke. It make’s me laugh. She’s such a rascal.

Niko tells me about Captain McKinley flying him, Jake, Dean, and Astrid to Fort Lewis-McChord. Imagine it—Caroline and Henry’s dad in the Air Force—pretty lucky. He tells me about the second flight to Texas and the trucker and the first drift they saw, in Vinita, and about the toddler in the trunk of the car.

I wish I had a clock or a phone—I don’t know what time it is.

He tells me he hitched a ride with a bunch of Lutherans from Oklahoma City heading to the East Coast to volunteer rebuilding homes. Then he stole a minivan to get the rest of the way to Mizzou.

And that after he saw me there, he drove his stolen minivan until the gas ran out near Indianapolis.

Then he got a ride from another trucker. He had to give the man his protective suit in barter.

But Niko says, who cares—he’s never going to the Midwest again. He won’t need it.

We lie there on the bed and he strokes my fuzzy head.

He tells me he loves my hair like this. He says I have a beautiful skull. It’s a one-hundred-percent Niko compliment and I love it.

“When we leave here,” he says to me, “we’re going to go straight to the farm. Look.” He gets up and takes a paper map out of his backpack. It’s the kind you can buy at gas stations.

“It’s less than three hours from here! We’ll be there tomorrow, no question.”

He sits next to me and traces the little red lines running over the paper with his pointer finger. I-83 to 222 to 322.

I watch his finger. The nail is short, bitten down. I never knew he bites his nails. Maybe he didn’t before.

I close my eyes and lie back on the bed.

“What?” he asks. “Don’t you want to go there? We don’t have to. We can go wherever you want. I just thought—”

“It’s not that,” I say.

I sit up, taking the map away from him and holding his hands in mine.

“I need to tell you something. No, two things, okay?”

“I told you, Josie. You can tell me anything.”

I swallow.

“I want to say that it means everything to me that you came here to find me.”

He nods. The dim light twinkles in his eyes and I love him so much.

“It is the most beautiful thing that anyone has ever done for me. And you should know that I felt broken before, before you walked in that door. I had pretty much given up hope that I’d ever feel good again, but when you came in I felt so happy. You have to remember how much that means to me—”

“Josie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“To see you,” I say. “To get to see you and have this time together, I had to sign a form.”

He looks puzzled. I hate what I’m about to tell him.

“Tomorrow, they’re going to do a test on me. They’re going to take a sample of spinal fluid. And it’s possible—I was told the chances of me surviving—”

Niko is as white as a sheet.

“No,” he says. “That’s not going to happen.”

His jaw is tight, his teeth clamped together.

“I’m not going to let that happen.”