“Sometimes. Usually it’s just names, but other times …” He trailed off.
“Other times what?” I pressed.
He let out a deep breath. “Sometimes you say, ‘No, stop. Please. Stop.’” He paused and licked his lips. “That didn’t start until after you’d been in the quarantine for a while.”
I understood his hesitation about telling me. I may have volunteered for their experiments at the quarantine, but once they’d started cutting me open while I was still conscious, I’d begged them to stop. I’d pleaded with them while sobbing.
Daniels usually left before that. He’d never actually been present for a surgery, although he was the one who did my aftercare – cleaning my wounds, making sure I ate and drank, giving me IVs when I refused.
Once, after they’d removed my appendix, the pain had been excruciating. I didn’t think I would survive it. I’d lain curled up on my side, holding my stomach. The pain was so intense, I’d begun vomiting, which only made matters worse.
“Oh, Jesus, Remy.” Daniels had rushed over to me. He knelt down on the cot as I dry-heaved over the edge. “You’re going to rip your stitches.”
“I don’t care,” I said with tears streaming down my cheeks. “I hope I do. I hope I die.”
“You don’t mean that.” He pressed a cold washcloth against my forehead, which was searing hot from a fever. “If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that you’re a survivor.”
“No.” I shook my head and swallowed hard to keep from throwing up. “I’m not. I can’t do this anymore.”
“It will be awhile before you have surgery again,” Daniels tried to reassure me.
He kept wiping at my face. I swatted his hand, trying to push it away, but I didn’t have the strength. Since I couldn’t push it away, I just grabbed his hand and held it, forcing him to look me in the eye.
“No, Daniels, I can’t do this. Please,” I begged him with tears in my eyes. “Please don’t make me go through that again. Kill me first. I can’t.”
He pursed his lips, then let go of my hand and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t know how long he was gone. I rolled onto my back and kicked at the wall. That only made my abdomen hurt worse, but by then, I was in so much pain, I could barely notice the fluctuations in it. It was intense, excruciating, and constant.
When Daniels came back, he was carrying a syringe. He sat down on the edge of my cot and reached for my arm, but I pulled it back from him.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’ll make you sleep,” he said and tried to take my arm again, but I jerked it back.
“What?” I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t, so I just glared up at him. “You have something that can make me sleep, and you’re giving it to me after the surgery?”
“I’m sorry, Remy. If they knew I was giving it to you now, they’d put me in the stockades.”
“Why?” I demanded. “If you have medicine that can help my pain, why wouldn’t you give it to me?”
His eyes were sad and dark when he shook his head. “We only have a finite amount of pharmaceuticals. We know how to make some of them, but we’re not equipped to mass produce them, so we need to be careful with what we have.”
“And they don’t want to waste them on me, because I’m going to die anyway,” I said, finishing his thought. “I don’t matter.”
“I’m sorry,” Daniels said, and it sounded like he genuinely meant it. “I don’t make these decisions. I just have to follow orders.”
“You and the Nazis,” I muttered and refused to look at him anymore.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make you as comfortable as I can,” Daniel said. “I can promise you that much. I know what a sacrifice you’re making for us all, and I know you deserve so much better than this.”
I didn’t say anything to that. He reached for my arm again, and I let him take it. He injected me with the syringe, and soon after, I fell asleep. I don’t know if I moaned in my sleep that time, but I woke up with tears on my cheeks again.
Even after the horrors I’d seen with the zombies, unspeakable vicious gore, the worst of my nightmares were of the quarantine’s operating room. Naked and tied down to a cold metal table, with the bright lamp shining down on me.
They were doctors, with scalpels and stiches and surgical precision. But they might as well have been serial killers, torturing me in their basement when I felt the knife slice into my skin, saw my own blood pooling in my naval.
Every time I went into that room, I was never sure if I would come out of it alive. Sometimes I’d pass out on the table, when the pain became unbearable, and I’d hope I was dead. But then I’d wake up to that horrible nightmare all over again.
I got up from where I sat next to Max and went down to the stream. I needed to clear my head. I crouched down on the bank and splashed cold water on my face.