Chapter Two

Chapter two of The Life of MC and Me

Chapter two

 

            “Can you sing it for me?” I smile at him.

            “Under my thumb!” MC sings, nearly on key.

            I laugh as I continue to play his song on my grand piano. MC is sitting next to me, listening to me play. I sang the first half and he begins to stumble his way through the rest, grunting through it when he can’t form the words.

            As the song ends we both laugh. We’ve been playing for nearly an hour, and he loves every minute of it. He has learned how to play hot cross buns, but he only plays it with one finger. I have begun to teach him other simple songs that don’t require the use of all five fingers. He’s getting better at it, and it helps stimulate his mind as well as his muscles.

            The grandfather clock chimes, telling us that it’s now one.

            “I think it’s time to see how those shots are doing. You go down to the workout room, I’ll be there in a minute,” I get up from the piano stool and go over to the metal spiral staircase that is in the corner.

            “Alright,” MC gives me a smile and goes down the hallway opposite the hallway that leads to the basement, the two bedrooms, and bathroom. Down this other hallway we have a workout room, the garage, and a rec room which has turned into more of a child-like play room.

            I go up the staircase to the second floor. Upstairs only has my personal office, and two other spare rooms. One is another bedroom, the other holds boxes and file cabinets full of paperwork, most of which are about MC. I don’t have to worry about him coming up here and finding all this for a few reasons. For starters, he wouldn’t be able to read everything. He only reads at a second grade level. Secondly, he doesn’t even dare take one step up this staircase anymore. He has only gone up it once, and he got five steps up before his muscles wouldn’t let him take another step up, and he fell back. He broke his leg in doing so, along with some cracked ribs. He had just begun to talk then, and he told me it only hurt a little. His brain wasn’t receiving messages from his nerves the way it should, but it was working slightly. I had been fixing him up since he arrived to the lab, and it was easy to put his bones in place and make sure they healed properly. I told him not to go up them without permission anymore, but I think he just doesn’t want to risk lugging around a heavy cast again.

            Pictures of MC and me hang around the room. I arranged them in order from when they were taken, just because I like to see how much progress he has had. I took pictures of him in the cast, pictures of him on his birthdays, pictures of him surprising me with homemade gifts on my birthdays, and every special day since then. His homemade gifts are scattered about my room, just like my gifts to him are all over his basement. He has a few pictures of us up on his ceiling, since he didn’t have enough room on his walls. They hang over his bed and he looks at them every night.

            I grab the small stack of paperwork that was all about the shots I had given MC this morning. I already had high hopes for them, because he already showed signs that it was working. His fingers weren’t tensed up, and he didn’t have to be reminded where the starting key of hot cross buns was.  I wouldn’t have dared brought this home if it hadn’t worked on LB or JW.

            I went down the stairs and suddenly I hear the phone ring in the kitchen.

            “Be there in a minute MC!”

            I hear him grunt as I go to answer the phone.

            “Kimberly Lance speaking,” I say in a chipper voice.

            “Well hello there, Miss Lance,” Paul’s low, Texan voice greets me.

            “Oh, hi there! How are you, Paul?”

            “Doing great, Miss Lance, I just wanted to let you know your shipment of steaks came in today. They are mighty fine.”

            “Good, good. Can I come in tomorrow and pick them up?”

            “Of course, my shop’s always open for you.”
            I couldn’t help but blush a little bit. “Thank you Paul. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

            “I’ll be looking toward it, Miss Lance. Will I be able to sweet talk you into buying some more so I can see you again?”

            I look down, still blushing slightly but I try to not sigh into the receiver. “I guess we’ll have to see.”

            He must’ve heard the change in my voice, because his voice changed as well. “Well, I better go before I talk your ear off.”

            “Thanks for calling me, Paul. Have a good day.”

            “Sure will. Goodbye, Miss Lance.”

            “Bye, Paul,” I hang up the phone and lean up against the wall.

            Yes, I’m sure of it. Paul George Hamper, my local butcher, likes me. I know I must have feelings for him too, or else I wouldn’t get excited when I hear his voice, or blush when he complements me. I look down at the paperwork, and I’m reminded why I can’t have other people over at my house. People wouldn’t understand MC, or why I take care of him. Even I had to get used to what we do at the lab. As much as I’d love to bring Paul into my life as more than just my butcher, MC is all that my life is.

            I go to the workout room, and MC is sitting on a workout ball waiting patiently. He smiles at me when I come in, but he notices my face is pained and his happy face turns into one of concern.

            “You alright?” he gets up.

            “Yes I’m fine, MC. Let’s see how well your heart is working, shall we?” I put on a smile.

            He looks me up and down and then comes to sit on the wooden stool I have next to all my doctors’ equipment that hangs on the wall. I first check his heart rate, and it seems as if it has increased more than it had with the two at the lab. I jot that down on the clipboard that is hanging near the equipment. I then check his blood pressure. Again, I have the same result. Both surprise me.

            “You’re doing great, better than Lily and Jeremy.”

            He forgets about his concerns over me and his face lights up. “Really?”

            “Would I lie to you?”

            He laughs and shakes his head.

            “Do you want to do the stretch test now?”

            “Sure.”

            I take him over to my sit and reach test box. He has done this test numerous times, and he knows what to do. He places his feet up against the back, and sits up straight with his arms in front of him. I count to three and with each number he does a practice reach. When I get to three, he reaches as far as he can and I mark off his place with a piece of chalk. His score was one inch, which is average. Now, that may not sound like much but the last time he did this test three days ago, he got a negative two.

            He looks up at me hopefully. I smile at him for reassurance. I tell him to go stand by the tape measure I have on the wall. He does as he’s told and I measure him, just in case he’s grown at all, which is unlikely. I measure him off at five feet ten inches, three inches taller than me, as always. We then weight him. Today he is at 153, which is a normal weight for a thirty-year-old male of his height.

            “Doing well?” he asks.

            “You are doing very well, MC.”

            I have him use my personal BMI machine to measure his body composition. I enter in his age, weight, and height. He is at his average, which is good. He hasn’t been underweight in a long, long time. LB is a bit underweight herself, but she is getting better.

            “All we have to do now is do your muscular fitness test and then your aerobic fitness test. Sound good, MC?”

            He gives me a thumbs up and goes over to his purple yoga mat. He prefers to do his muscular fitness test first, I’m not sure why but I guess it’s just his personal preference. In the lab they don’t get to decide what they want to do first. It’s another reason why I don’t think the specimens we look at will do well. They don’t have free will, they aren’t treated as humans. They are treated as experiments because Jack sees them as experiments.

            MC does as many sit ups as he can, then when he’s recovered his breath he does as many push-ups as he can. I have him lift a few weights, then he does the step test. MC begins to get tired, I can see that. For him, this is quite a workout. He doesn’t love doing this every other day, but he knows it’s helping him get better.

            Once he finishes, he stands up straight and stretches. I hear his back pop and he yawns. He is sweating, but not as much as anyone else would have if they did all this. His skin is warm and is in its natural color, instead of his usual pale.

            I look at the clock on the wall. “Do you think we should have an early dinner?”

            He smiles. “Read my mind.”

            We go into the kitchen and he sits down on one of the stools that are around the island counter. I take a frozen dinner out of the freezer and pop it into the microwave, my normal dinner on my night off. I sit down on the stool next to him and wait for it to heat up.

            “Who called?”

            “Earlier you mean? That was Paul.”

            “Butcher?”

            “Yes the butcher.”

            “Steaks in?”

            “Yep, I’m going to get them tomorrow. I’ll be home a bit later than normal.”

            He grunts, going deep into thought over something. The microwave beeps so I get up and get my chicken parmesan. I know it would taste better if I made it myself, but it is frozen dinner night. Maybe sometime next week I’ll make it.

            I get a steak out from the fridge and put it on a plate for MC. I hand it to him and he goes to sit in his spot. I get us both our silverware. I don’t even let the two touch; they are held in different drawers. I don’t want to risk sharing my germs with him; his immune system is like that or a child’s so he could pick something up from me before I even got sick myself. But yet, he’s able to process raw foods. It’s proven to be easier on his stomach. Before I sit down and eat, I mark off his meal on the clipboard.

            “Work tomorrow?” he asks as I sit down next to him.

            “We aren’t doing anything extensive, just another day of observing to see how they are taking to the shots.”

            “Working for me.”

            “Yes they are, I was quite surprised.” I had no idea why they worked so well for him. Later I’ll go through all the notes I wrote today and compare them.

            “Will Jack. Scrap them?”

            The question surprised me. He hardly ever talks about Jack. “I don’t know.”

            “I hope not.”

            We share a look and I notice how generally concerned MC looks. I knew he cared about LB and JW, but I didn’t know that it was to this extent.

            MC looks away and out the back doors. It was getting dark, but you could still see how damp everything is from all the rain last night.

            “May I go to. Bed early?” he asks.

            “Sure, whatever you like.”

            He takes his plate to his sink, and I notice he’s only eaten about three fourths of his steak. Yet another surprise. I get up and go to him, stopping him before he entered the living room. I look him up and down, and he avoids my eyes.

            “Are you alright, Michael?”

            He glanced up at his name, but then only shrugged.

            “Do you want to talk?”

            Finally he looks into my eyes and just pulls me into a hug. MC has always been a hugger, and always will be. I hug him back and let him relax.

            “I miss you,” he whispers, almost too quietly for me to hear.

            I hug him tighter and wonder what brought on his depressed mood. Perhaps it was the shots. Or maybe was it something I said?

            “I’ll always come back home, MC. Don’t you worry about that.”

            “I don’t like. Being alone.”

            “I know you don’t.”

            “You’re the only. Thing I have.”

            We’ve talked about this before many times. MC can remember his old life, but he knows it’s not his life now because things have changed. I don’t think he would want to go back to how things were for him anyway. His family had adored his sister, and they didn’t even mind when he moved away at seventeen. He worked where he could up until his death at the age of twenty-two. He was working at a car repair shop and electrocuted himself by accident. But, he was still alone. I’m the only one he’s been able to know and get close to for the past eight years. Maybe even his whole life.

            I hold him out in front of me, having my hands on his shoulders and looking him in the eyes. His eyes are watery, and his face pleading.

            “You know you’re the only thing I have too. I’ll never leave you.”

            He gives me a small smile. “I won’t. Leave you.”

            I smile too. “Let’s go get some rest, yeah?”

            He nods, smiles softly again, then heads to his domain. I lean up against the island counter as I think. MC has never told me he loves me, and I’ve never told him that either. I know we both do, but the part of me that wants to stay professional about all of this keeps me from telling him that. Plus, all his paperwork tells me he’s never really had a steady girlfriend and I don’t want him to get the wrong idea on it. I’m fairly certain he sees me as sort of a mother figure, but MC is a hard one to read sometimes when it comes to his feelings.

            I sigh and pick up the kitchen before going around the house picking up the notes I’ve made today about MC. I also grab the ones from yesterday that I never got. As I am about to go up the spiral staircase, I see MC down the hall, coming out of the bathroom.

            “Goodnight,” I call to him, smiling.

            “Night, Kim-ber-lee.”

            Upstairs, I sit down at my desk and file away the papers from yesterday. My body is on autopilot as my mind continues to think about MC. In my mind, he’s my son. Sure, the son that is two years older than me but he’s my son. He’s the only son that I’ll ever have, unless I decide to adopt. I’ve known since I was a teenager that I was infertile. I got stuck with bad genes. At least I can’t pass it on to my kids.

            I try to laugh at my own joke, but I don’t even crack a smile.

            Pushing the depressing thoughts away, I dig into my work, just as I always have before. I compare notes from the specimens at the lab to MC. Their reactions were the same as his, but in lesser quantities. Increased heart rate, increased blood flow, increased physical ability. I just don’t understand how MC had reacted so much better to the shots than they had.

            Perhaps it was his happiness, how he got to bond with me. How we played the piano and laughed. LB and JW certainly didn’t get time to be happy. I don’t think either of them has ever laughed since they died.

            It took me a moment to realize how morbid that sounded. I lean back in my chair and sigh, rubbing my temples. This job has turned me into a freak with no respect for death. Lucky for me, I only have to pretend I enjoy all of it for the next fifty years of my life. Even then, there’s no guarantee that they won’t let me rest peacefully and instead make me their newest specimen. Of course, if I die of old age then they won’t bring me back to life. Maybe use me for parts but otherwise…

            A yawn sneaks up on me and I realize I’ve stayed up here for hours. My eyes are tired and begging me to go to sleep. I clean up my desk, putting the files in order. I stretch as I get up, popping a few joints here and there.

            I silently go down the stairs, into the kitchen and get myself some ice water. I sip on it as I shuffle my way to my room. Before I do go to bed, I decide to check on MC.

            His door opens with a slight creak, and I tip-toe my way down the stairs. His nightlight is on, and I see that he is curled up in bed. His soft snores sooth me, making me happy that he’s getting some sleep.

            After getting ready for bed, I too curl up in my blankets and let my head fall into my pillows. I hope that tonight I’m too tired for nightmares; I don’t want to wake up MC two nights in a row.

 

            “Hello there, Miss Lance. You look stunning today,” Paul’s light brown eyes light up as soon as I step into the shop.

            I can feel my cheeks warm up. “Hi, Paul.”

            He goes into the freezer and brings out a large paper sack with my name written over the top in pen. “Here are your steaks.”

            “Thank you,” my hand brushes his as I take the bag from him.

            “It’s no problem. Now then, I did mention I was going to sweet talk you into buying more so I could see you again, didn’t I?”

            I giggle, “Yes, yes you did.”

            “How about I give you half price on a normal order?”

            “Paul, that’s not necessary. I’d feel like I was stealing them from you. Plus, wouldn’t your brother mind?”

            “I doubt it, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll make you a deal.”

            “What sort of deal?”

            “I’ll give you a few orders of ground beef and four of my finest steaks. Only if you come over to my place and let me cook up two of them for us.”

            “You’re asking me out on a date?”

            He puts up his hands in surrender. “You got me. Is that a no then?”

            Before thinking, I smile and say, “No, it’s not a no.”

            “Then it’s a yes?” he raises an eyebrow, smiling at me.

            “I guess it is.”

            “Fantastic. I know this may be a bit forward, Miss Lance, but will you seal the deal with a kiss?”

            My whole face must be bright red by now, but I do find myself leaning forward over the counter. His lips meet mine and I feel lighter than air. His hand is placed on the crook of my neck and he pulls me in closer.

            A loud beeping noise forces me out of the wonderful dream and I sit up reluctantly. My hand finds its way to my alarm clock and turns it off. Looking around my room, it doesn’t look any different; but for some reason it all feels different.

I lean against my headboard as I think through the dream. I’ve had dreams about Paul before, but never quite like this. I’m forced to admit to myself now that I do have feelings for him, or else I wouldn’t have dreamt about kissing him.

            My mind tries to convince me otherwise, but the feeling I have in my gut is telling me the truth. I can make up as many excuses as I want, but I already know how I feel about him. But the question now is what I’m going to do about it.

            “Kim-ber-lee, you. Look flushed,” MC says, coming into my room with a mug of coffee for me.

            I take the mug from him and smile. “I guess I wasn’t ready to get up yet.”

            He smiles. “I got up early. To make breakfast.”

            “What a nice surprise! What did you make?” I go to my closet and grab my fluffy purple robe, slipping it on before I follow him to the kitchen.

            “Parfaits and bacon. There’s toast too.”

            “Odd combination, I love it.”

            He had set up the table neatly. In each of our spots was a small plate with crispy bacon, and sitting next to them were tall, skinny glasses that were filled with yogurt, a few different kinds of berries, and granola. He had also poured each of us a glass of orange juice.

            “Thank you, MC. I love when you make breakfast.”

            He hands me the clipboard off the fridge. “I couldn’t write. It down. My fingers are. Starting to. Lock up.”

I write down everything for him, and then join him at the table. I’m glad he has taken my lessons to heart, knowing that just because he craves mostly protein, he still needs to eat other things. There is more bacon than anything else, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he’ll be getting some vitamins out of this meal.

            “Is the bacon alright?” he asks.

            “It’s perfect. You’re getting pretty good at cooking again,” I smile.

            “Being a fry cook. For a few years. Improved my cooking. Just have to. Let my body. Remember everything.”

            I can see he wants to talk more, but it’s hard for him to do so. I’m surprised he talked that much, but then again maybe the shots yesterday are helping him in more ways than I thought.

            “I’m glad to see you seem to remember more clearly about things from your past.”

            He nodded, smiling widely. “I feel good today.”

            I take a drink from my orange juice and glance at the clock. Time has flown by, and I may just be late for work. I stand up, wiping my mouth on a napkin.

            “Oh, I need to go get ready. Thank you for breakfast, MC,” I hug him as best I can over his shoulders.

            “I’ll clean up,” he smiles as I begin to walk out. I see him glance down, then look up shyly at me again. “Are you going to. Eat your bacon?”

            “You can have it,” I laugh.

            He gives me another heartwarming smile before I go to my room. That boy always finds a way to make me happy. I’m not sure if it’s because he knows me so well, or if it’s just because I love him. Probably both.

            I run through my morning routine much faster than usual, since it seems like time got away from me today. It’s just like any other Monday though.

            As soon as I’m presentable, I go back to the kitchen. MC is doing the dishes carefully, making sure to not drop a dish. The warm water helps calm his muscles in his hands, but he is still extra careful.

            “What do you plan to do today, MC?” I come up beside him and help put the dishes into the sink.

            “May I play the piano?” he asks, looking over at me hopefully.

            “Of course, you can do whatever you want.”

            I grab my purse and hug him before I go.

            “Have a good day,” he says, hugging me back warmly.

            “You too; I won’t be out too late tonight.”

            He nods, following me to the door. I grab my keys and exchange a smile with him before opening up the big door and walking down to the driveway. My shiny, blue mustang sits waiting for me.

            As I back out of the driveway, MC waves at me through the curtains before closing them. Our neighbors are too far away for us to worry about them accidently seeing him while getting their paper or something, but they are still close enough to keep us on our toes. My house is large, along with the rest of the houses on this side of town, and all of them have big lawns to make us spaced apart. Mine is fenced around, as are some of the others, but some just blend together and you can only tell where the property line is by the slight change in grass color.

            I feel tired and unready to put up with work today, so I put my body on autopilot and let myself find my way to work. In about half an hour, I make it to the large white building that says “Hospital” on the outside, but I knew that was just to keep up appearances and to track what bugs are going around. It has only three floors going up, but it has five or so going down. The above ground levels do function as a clinic, but it is more like a spider’s web. Anyone who comes hoping to get flu shots or get a check-up ends up on our list of possible specimens, and will forever be tracked by Jack and his company for the rest of their lives, even beyond then.

But, my work area will be on basement level three. The floor where the alive and actively participating specimens are held and watched daily.

            “Hello, Kim,” the lady at the front desk greats me. “Jack is down with your specimen; he’ll be checking up on things today.”

            I groan slightly. “Fabulous, thanks.”

            She smiles at me, and I try my best to smile back but it seems like I used up all my smiles on MC. I take the elevator down to my floor, and I slip into the small locker room area. I put on my lab coat, and tie my hair back in the red scrunchie I keep in my locker.

            As I turn to leave, Patti blocks the doorway. We stare at each other in surprise. I feel very uncomfortable which causes my cheeks to warm up, so I clear my throat.

            “Uh, hi Patti,” I try to look away but we both seem to have our eyes locked on each other’s.

            “Kimberly,” she nods. “I came in here looking for Sue.”

            “She might already be with JW.”

            Patti finally looks down, letting me free of the awkward stare. “Oh, alright, I’ll have someone go check if she’s in there.”

            I knew Patti wouldn’t go into that room herself; she may never do that again since she lost JL. Her and I may never be friends again either. Just people we are awkwardly running into at work. She will prepare the meals for the specimens, while I continue my job working with those specimens.

            We both keep our eyes down, and I leave the room quickly without saying anything else. Once I am further down the hall, I sigh deeply. Patti probably must think I’m a heartless person, since I didn’t cry hysterically like she did when our specimens where scrapped. Or how I continued my job like nothing happened. It’s not like I wanted to, but I had to. How else was I going to get the medicines MC needs? Make them myself? I didn’t have that sort of training.

            “Why, Kimberly, you look exhausted. And it’s not even lunchtime yet,” Jack opens the door to my viewing room, letting me inside.

            “I’ve had a rough morning,” I shove past him, not wasting a fake smile on him.

            “I can tell. Hope you’re ready to show me what specimen 250 has been improving on lately. I’ve been hearing good things,” he sits down at the table full of papers, facing the window looking into LB’s room.

            “Oh, uh, sure. Dan, do you have the charts from yesterday that you made up?” I ask.

            Dan looks up from his test tubes, looking at me through his goggles. “They’re on the desk already.”

            I take a seat down next to Jack, rubbing my temples. Jack looks over at me in concern, but it’s also a look of impatience.

            “For god’s sake, somebody bring Kim a coffee,” he demands. After a moment he adds, “And get me one too.”

One of the girls taking notes jumps up and rushes out. I glare at him while he looks away. It’s not like I haven’t asked someone to get me some coffee before, but I have never asked in such a rude way.

Once the coffee comes back, Jack takes a long drink and then looks up into the window.

“The shots we gave her last week did help her, but not as much as we had hoped. The crew is working on a new formula for it, and that should be ready in a few weeks.”

“A few weeks?” Jack asks, not making any facial expression.

“Yes, according to Dan. Everyone is working hard, sir. It’ll get done soon. LB isn’t going anywhere.”

He chuckles. “No, I guess she’s not.”

“Both LB and JW have been calming down more and more every day. JW still gets frustrated that he can’t communicate the way he wants, and doesn’t like being forced to do all the things we ask of him.”

“I already talked with Sue about specimen 249 yesterday. Skip over any information about that.”

“This is the PET scan we ran on her two days ago. Her activity levels in these parts of her brain have increased since the last time we had her scanned. Here is her MRI scan, the brain tissue that may have suffered from lack of oxygen seems to be doing fine now and hasn’t affected her.”

“Tell me again how long she went without oxygen?” he studies the pictures, flipping through them and their paperwork.

“It took us about two minutes to get her hooked up to the life support machine after she had died.”

“Not too shabby. Things seem to be going to plan, Kim,” he gives me a big smile.

“Yes, sir.”

“How are her muscles?”

“Still stiff, but we’re working on muscle relaxers to help with that.”

            “When will those be ready?”

            “In the matter of days.”

            He nods, reading through a stack of notes on LB’s results from her workout two days ago. It’s all the same notes I took about MC, all the tests and everything else I had him do for me yesterday.

            “So, muscle relaxers and improved shots. Anything else you’re working on?”

            “We are still doing speech therapy with her twice a week.”

            “Does she still break up her sentences?”

            Of course, you idiot, even MC still does that. “Yes, her muscles in her mouth have trouble forming words correctly. It’s easier for her to take a break for a moment instead of trying so hard she gets frustrated and has a tantrum.”

            He puts down the paperwork and stands up, going over to the window. I reluctantly follow him, knowing he’ll want to say something to me.

            As soon as I do take my spot next to him he nods at LB. “She is doing much better than specimen 249 is doing.”

            I get a grave feeling in my stomach. “Sir?”

            He shrugs, looking over at me. “As much as it bugs me to have to scrap only one of the specimens and spend the next few years playing catch-up, we might have to do that if 249 doesn’t improve.”

            Poor Sue. She is just as attached to JW as I am to MC. “But sir, you must admit he’s doing well.”

            “Not as well as I had hoped. Hell, specimen 247 was doing better than he was at this point.”

            I wanted to snap at him, slap him across the face and scream: “You didn’t have to kill them then, you heartless fool! You could’ve kept working with them and gotten the results you wanted!”

            “I’ll be thinking about it. I’ll give it until next month…maybe,” he turns away, back to the table.

            “Sir, I don’t think you should scrap him. Just because we’ve had trouble calming him down doesn’t mean he hasn’t been improving in other areas.”

            He gives me a glare and stands up straight. “Kimberly, I know this. That is why I’m going to think about it before I make any decisions. I have to go review with the people in B5, see if one of the specimens has any great potential. If a male specimen does, then most likely I will have specimen 249 scrapped so we can start working with the new one. He won’t live up to his potential while he’s unconscious in the holding chamber, now will he?”

            “No, sir,” I look down, too furious to look at him any longer.

            He takes his coffee and starts to leave to the room. “Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and we’ll have two specimens that I can have brought in. Then the streak of having even numbers for the females and odd for the males will live on,” he chuckled, talking mainly to himself.

            As the airlock door closes, I let out a snarl, running my fingers through my hair angrily. Once I calm down slightly from my little outburst, I fix my ponytail and sit down again.

            Dan comes up to me and sits where Jack had. “Don’t let him get to you, Kim.”

            “Dan, you’ve been here longer than I have. You’ve had my job before. Doesn’t it bother you to have him just get rid of these people like they are nothing? They are just specimens with numbers to him. I’ve never once heard him call them by their initials.”

            “Of course it bothers me. I worked with MR for nearly two years, but she got replaced by JL. It was heartbreaking. I didn’t want to get attached like that again, so I stepped down and had you take my place.”

            “Then why are you still working here in this room? You could very well work upstairs in the kitchen, or even up in the hospital unit.”

            “I have no cooking skills, and I wouldn’t be able to resist warning people of what their bodies may be used for. My only choice was here, helping make the medicines.”

            I nod, knowing how he feels. We both sit there silently as the rest of the people in the room continue on working.

            “You shouldn’t over do it today, Kim. You look like you need some rest,” Dan says finally.

            “You don’t look so hot yourself,” I smile at him. I’m surprised it was a real smile, and not just a fake one I put on while at work.

            He shrugged, laughing softly. “It’s a Monday, what do you expect?”

            We both laughed for a moment, but it was short lived. A sort of depressed feeling is shared between us. We watch LB pace her room like a caged animal, all three of us resenting having to be here against our will.

Author's Note

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