She places the folders back where she found them, keeping one as proof. The gig is up. There’s enough evidence in this one folder. She doesn’t bother to cover them with the jacket, nor does she attempt to hide the fact she’d gone through them.
She rushes straightaway across the courtyard to the building where the surgical suites are located. Her face is flushed from the heat of the sun. Liar, the accusation repeats over and over in her head, liar, liar, liar. Her rage intensifies, she feels as if steam is coming from her ears. She envisions different ways she could cause injury to Shaw with each stalwart step she takes, small puffs of dust rising in her wake.
The operating room door is closed. It’s not heavy enough or thick enough to protect him from her. She blows past the two soldiers keeping guard and pushes through it like it’s made of chiffon. Her father would have called her a raging wildcat. She’s pumped full of piss and vinegar. Her adrenal glands pump adrenaline throughout her system.
She throws the folder in his face as she enters. A few loose leaves of paper fly out, floating to the floor like feathers, but the rest land and slide across the prep stand, filling the room with the sound of a nervous clatter. She glares into his eyes.
“I’ve given you everything. All my notes. All my observations, while you’ve been conniving, and planning, and weeding your way to your own selfish agenda. Pretending you were helping me all along. You secret-keeping piece of…”
“Now, now, that’s not very ladylike.” He’s turned away from her.
“You are a dirty, no-good excuse for a man. Do you have no morals? No ethics? What’s your plan?” she says.
She doesn’t expect an answer, and if she gets one, she’ll have to weed through more lies to get the bit of truth sandwiched within. It could take her weeks to find it. He’ll dodge her and deceive her all he can. It won’t matter she’s got his number, and she’s calling him on it.
He reaches for a towel, covering up the ugliness of what he’s been working on, hoping she hasn’t seen anything. It’s a piece of the riddle he chooses to keep to himself for as long as he can, but unfortunately, the limit of secrecy might have just been reached.
“You don’t want to save anyone, much less the children. You want them eradicated. Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t You, damn it?” She’s asking him the questions at the end of a jabbing finger, but if he says anything she’ll be tempted to punch him square in the mouth, and if his teeth come out, the more that fly, the better.
She asks a question gnawing at the back of her mind. It’s been there for quite some time, but she’s never bothered to ask. “Why did you name them all after plants and trees?”
He’s obviously hiding things. She’s digging in, getting closer to the root of the deception. Her attention is drawn to the small body he was working on before she came into the room. He’s reluctant to show her, moving to hide something.
Without answering her allegations, he explains, “They are not names, they’re only labels. It’s the small traits and diminutive behaviors that I’ve witnessed over time. Things which reminded me of the behaviors of plant life. I’m no horticulturalist. And trust me when I say, I’m not up on parasitology. I was a small town general practitioner before everything went south. I think what I’ve just discovered will prove what these things are is both plant and parasite. You call them children. They are not children. You’re living your life; thick with guilt. You try to console yourself to sooth the sting of your tears. You’re trying to redeem yourself for what you did to daughter, and you’re angry. I understand completely. You feel you failed as a mother.”
She slaps Shaw so hard it turns his face away from her. He rubs the heat growing in the shape of her palm print away. She’s too hurt to say what she wants to say. It’s what I had to do for her. It was mercy. She hates the fact that she ever shared that part about her past with him, about Savannah, about that night.
Shaw lifts the towel, now saturated in blood and saline. Her hand flies to her face, to cover her mouth. It has fallen open with the shock of the dreadful sight before her.
“Your daughter would have recovered. You didn’t know it at the time, all the children were falling ill; just like your daughter. You feel guilt tearing at you. Believe me, I know. In time she would have recovered, but what you fail to accept is that what survived would have been something else entirely.”
Her approach to the table is deliberate, but gradual, walking as if her shoes are filled with lead. In awe, she witnesses what Shaw is revealing to her.
“I believe this is what they are. The thing inside, controlling them, and blessing them with random unearthly talents.”
Merna’s eyes are fixed on the squirming thing laying before them. It’s hard to convince herself that she’s looking at such an unbelievable and unimaginable sight as what she’s seeing.
It’s a small creature, squirming helplessly in a metal specimen pan. It bears a strong resemblance to plant-life with leaf-like skin and veins which cover its delicate form like vinery. It’s drowning in an odiferous broth of seedy-yellow fluid; an alien lifeform defying her understanding.
“Lily’s body eventually surrendered to the drugs I administered. It was a peaceful passing, within reason. But whatever this is… it’s resistant to every drug, every chemical, I’ve injected into it. I’ve even tried applying acid to its epidermis. So far, other than a little wilting of its… leaves, if you want to call them that, its biological makeup seems entirely unaffected by both toxic and caustic substances. Nothing I have available to me has any influence on it. I suspect the only way to euthanize it is to utterly destroy it. Fire should do the trick. I’m not sure though, and I’m not ready to try it yet. I want to run several more tests on it before it comes to that.”
Stunned and pale, Merna is still standing with her mouth gaping open. She’s shaking her head in denial. This creature could exist in a little child. She feels nauseous and chilled. Everything is moving in slow motion. She moves toward the vacant rolling stool, almost missing the seat and nearly falling to the floor before Shaw catches her.
“Where did you find it?” she says.
He reaches for a pair of bloody forceps to poke at the brain and maneuver it, so Dr. Valentine can observe, while he sets out to answer her question. “It hollowed out the interior of sweet little Lily’s brain. And here,” he directs her attention to a certain position on the brain, “the corpus callosum, for the most part, has been eaten away. The thing cleared out a nest and nuzzled down, here, just above the fornix, and sent these, uh, well, for lack of a better word… roots, I guess you might call them, into the cerebellum, midbrain, pituitary, medulla, and into the spinal cord respectively. There is something else which I think you might find very interesting. Let’s take a few of these ‘children,’ as you like to call them, out for some sun. Shall we? They haven’t had any for a very long time.” He replaces the blood-bogged towel over the parasite. They leave the operating room behind them, along with their understanding of the world as they once knew it.
Chapter Ten
“All cats are gray in the dark. And besides, her actions have less to do with her, and everything to do with you.”
Dr. Shaw arrives in East Wing with a Cheshire cat’s smile on his face, and Dr. Valentine in tow. She’s lost some of the golden-sand color from her skin, her affect is flat and her spirit, lethargic. Some unknown thing has dampened her front of strength. She has all the earmarks of a person who has just seen the vilest of phantoms.