Missed Your Lips

Chapter 8 – Distraction


“You sure it’s all right for me to be here? Last time I tried to treat her, she punched me.”

Blitz laughed as he stepped onto the porch. He turned to the young man behind him who had a look of apprehension across his face. “Trust me, Steven, she won’t remember you.”

Steven tightened his grip on his medical bag, and let out a sigh of surrender. “If she does it again, I’m putting her under,” he said.

He moved to join Blitz on the porch, but before he could speak again, Blitz had dropped the bag he was carrying and was running into the cabin. Steven worked to step around the cans of food that spilled from the bag. Peering inside, he could see Blitz hunched over a body, and pieces of glass were strewn across the floor. He remembered how deep Blitz’s depression had been when she was taken from him, and he couldn’t fathom what would occur if something happened to her again. With this thought he approached his comrade carefully, not wanting to make the situation worse.

“We need to get her to the bed. I have to treat her immediately before her condition worsens,” he said, placing a comforting hand on Blitz’s shoulder.

Nodding his compliance, Blitz gently rolled her over, and slid his arms under her body. She was so light in his arms, and he made sure to place her head against his chest, cradling her closer to him. The cabin was warmer now in the daylight hours, so he didn’t mind to take her to the bedroom. Crouching next to the bed, he gently laid her body down and rolled her over onto her stomach. Steven entered and stood on the opposite side of the bed. He placed his bag down, and started to fish out his supplies while Blitz moved her hair away from her neck area.

Steven produced a syringe containing a blue liquid from his bag. Removing the protective cap from the needle, he said, “Nothing has changed, we’ll do this just like we did before. Restrain her.”

Blitz grabbed at his own hair, tying back from his face. After wiping his hands on his pants, he climbed onto the bed and straddled Synna’s hips, careful to not put all of his weight onto her body. Once his weight was balanced on his legs, he bent forward to hold down her shoulders as Steven approached him from the left side. He was flicking the needle as a couple drops of liquid sprayed from the end. He waited patiently as Blitz got situated, remaining at his side until the large man gave him the signal.

Blitz let out one last sigh, then looked to Steven. The young man bent over the bed, and swabbed an area at the base of her skull with cotton ball full of alcohol. While brushing away pieces of stray hair, he readied the needle at the entry point and punctured deep enough to reach her fragile brain stem. Blitz could feel her body tensing in reaction to the violation, and soon it was shaking as Steven emptied the syringe into the infected area. In a matter of moments he was finished. He withdrew the needle, and covered the area with the alcoholic cotton ball again, sanitizing the skin and stopping any excess blood from escaping.

Both men held their collective breaths, waiting for the serum to work its magic. Blitz could feel her body tensing, absorbing the healing potion. However she was not having her normal reaction. There was no violent response, only her body relaxing into the bed under his weight.

“Do you think it worked?” he asked Steven, who had moved back to the other side.

Steven gathered the used items, and closed his bag. “We won’t know until she wakes up.” He stood still as Blitz removed himself from the bed. “It could take a few hours, do you have anything you need to do?”

Blitz was busying himself with rolling her over and yanking the blanket over her body. She might sleep until dark, so he didn’t want her to wake up cold. “Yeah, I have a few more things to get. Can you stay with her?” Steven nodded as he put his bag on the floor and made a seat for himself on the bed. “Make sure the room is lit. I don’t want her to wake up in the dark and freak out to find you here.”

Steven laughed at the comment, remembering the last time he’d had to administer the mind-altering drug. His joke had earned him a punch in the face from the very woman he had treated. “No, I won’t make that mistake again,” he said. “But you know, if you’d just reactivate her, we wouldn’t have to do this.”

Steven looked to where Blitz was standing, only to find the man gone from the room. He started to repeat his statement when he heard the front door slam.

~*~*~

The smell of fire was burning my nose. I wanted to sit up to see if I was in danger, but I couldn’t move. Oh yeah, I was still in the body that wouldn’t obey me. But now I could feel the sun, and smell the outdoors. I wasn’t in the tent. I was on something soft now instead of the lab table. Grass maybe, but I wasn’t sure.

“She’s not breathing!” someone yelled.

I started to open my eyes to let them know I was alive, but a pair of lips connected with my own and forced a large amount of air into my lungs. That’s when things got strange.

Like locks releasing my joints and muscles, I was now able to move. My eyes flew open at the invasion just as my body started to cough from the forceful intake of air. I quickly rolled onto my stomach and coughed more. Once the fit was finished, I fell on to my back again and stared up at the sky. My lips still felt funny, and I touched them with my fingers like both were foreign objects. They tingled more under the pressure of my fingers, and my body started to burn all over. It was telling me it was deprived, but I didn’t understand enough to do anything about it.

A shadow crossed my eyes as a man’s head leaned over to block out the sun; his curtain of long hair was falling around my face. “Are you all right?” he asked.

~*~*~

The lines between dream and reality were starting to blur. Behind my eyes I was staring at someone, yet when I opened my eyes, I thought the afterimage was still there. I was still on something soft, like the dream, and the face above me was one I didn’t recognize.

“Welcome back,” the young man said.

It took me a moment to get my bearings. I was on a bed. The walls were wood, so I figured I was still in the cabin, but I didn’t remember bringing an extra man along. And then my instincts kicked in. I tried to move my arms to shove him away, but my body wouldn’t move. I looked at him in wide-eyed panic, and he laughed when he saw that I was no threat to him.

“Um, she’s awake!” the young man yelled, but I couldn’t see his audience.

I closed my eyes, and tried to hold back the tears that were forming. The only thing running through my head was ‘I’ve been caught, they’re going to kill me!’ It wasn’t the most rational thought, but given the situation, it was all I had.

“Back off,” I heard another man say. “You’re only scaring her.”

I looked to the door again, and in the renewed firelight, I found Blitz leaning against the frame. His large body was relaxed as he drank from a bottle of water, and his long hair was loose and draped over one shoulder. He smiled at me, but I saw the worry in his eyes. Yet I could feel my body relaxing just because his presence was near, regardless of the fact that I still couldn’t move.

Suddenly a yawn escaped my mouth, so I assumed that it was working now. “Um,” I started, just to see if I could speak. “What happened?”

The young man backed away as Blitz approached the bed. He sat down and took my arm. Gently, he rubbed his hands over my arm in a circular motion, as if making the blood flow easier all the way to my fingers. “What do you remember?”

I thought for a moment, but the images were fuzzy. My mind was hazy, but the ache was gone. “I was in the kitchen, making tea. I think you had left things out for me,” I explained, looking to Blitz who nodded in agreement. “Then, I started to move about the kitchen like I had been here before, like I actually lived here.”

Blitz shot a glance to the other man, and I didn’t understand the exchange between them, so I continued. “My head had been hurting since the day we left, but I didn’t think anything about it. This morning, it seemed like all my thoughts were trying to converge at once, and the pressure was so bad I thought something was going to come spilling out of my ears.” I laughed with the last statement, but that was the only way I could really describe the pain. “Then I woke up here, with the two of you. By the way, who are you?”

The second man smiled at me. “I’m an old friend of his.”

That was the same statement Vince had used. “So, you’re a merc too?”

The two men exchanged glances again, and the second seemed unsure if he should reveal his truths to me. Blitz spoke up first, “He was one of us, so you can trust him as well.”

“Right,” he said, coming back towards the bed. “I handled certain medical necessities for our little group. You can call me Scout.”

“Do I have to?” I laughed, making him smile. He wasn’t hard on the eyes. His hair seemed dark in the evening light, maybe brown or black. He wore it close to his scalp in a militaristic style, but his young face gave away any secrets regarding his true nature. He wanted to be seen as a threat, but his eyes were too light, and his smile was very pleasant. “And what is your given name?”

“Steven, but only he calls me that,” he said, motioning to Blitz. “Our names signified what we were in charge of. I was always the first one to the scene, and the last to leave. He and Viper got to have all the fun.”

“What?” Blitz said, glaring at Steven. Blitz had moved further down the bed, rubbing my legs now. I could feel them tingling under his warm hands. “That wasn’t the only thing you could do. You rained down hellfire with your sniper rifle when it was necessary.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “All right, enough. No more shop talk, please, I can’t take anymore.”

The two men laughed at me, making me more frustrated with my situation. Blitz moved around the bed, and picked me up. After taking a second glance around the room, I could see the newfound light was coming from a kerosene heater. I guessed that was why we couldn’t sleep in the bedroom the night before. As we entered the front rooms, I saw stacks of canned goods and bottled drinks on the kitchen counters, and the wood-burning stove was back in service. Someone had been very busy in my convalescence.

Blitz sat me down on the couch, and propped me against a pillow so I could see what was going on. “I’m guessing you haven’t eaten today?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “And now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve been to the bathroom either.”

Steven dropped the can opener he had been holding, and started to laugh. “Well, man of the house,” he said. “You better get on that. I’d hate to see you cleaning the couch because you couldn’t help the lady out.”

Blitz only sighed as he picked me up again. I wrapped my arms around his neck, but he averted his eyes from me. Surely this was not embarrassing for him! “I can take myself, you know,” I said.

“If something happened to you between here or there, you’d better hope that I’m the one to help you out, not that little shithead,” he murmured.

I couldn’t argue with that.

~*~*~

The night carried on with old stories and laughter. From tales of kidnapped presidents and damsels in distress, I could easily see the strong bond between the two men. It seemed Blitz had been his mentor in their little business ventures, so I felt better about having him here. During the entertainment, I had managed to eat a can of soup and drink some water, though I was completely ravished and in need of meat. But something had nagged me ever since Steven was introduced. “You said you handled medical necessities, so how did you know to be here today?”

I was sitting in-between them, so I could easily see all of their non-verbal cues to one another. “Well, actually Vince called me a few days ago, said he would need my services soon,” Steven said. “Then Blitz called me this morning, and told me to grab my bag. I didn’t know what was going on until I got here.”

I glanced back to Blitz, who was no longer looking at the two of us. “Really?” I asked, leaning over so I could observe him up close. “You knew something was wrong with me? What aren’t you telling me, Blitz?”

He refused to look at me. Instead he leaned forward to get away from my glare, finding the flames of the stove a more comforting sight. “The heat will be upon you again in a day or so,” he said. “I wanted to take every precaution for the both of us.”

What he said made sense, yet something in that last statement still didn’t feel right to me. He was only feeding me half-truths, and looking to Steven, I knew I would get the same treatment from him too. It bothered me that the man Vince expected me to trust with my life could not answer one simple question. Actually, it was insulting. I stood up from the couch, my legs still shaky underneath me. I pitched forward, grabbing the top of the couch for balance. Both men jumped to my aid, but I threw one hand in the air, signaling them to stop.

Gathering my pride, I moved slowly towards the bedroom, holding onto the inner wall for balance. “Then I will not burden you anymore today. Blitz, I want to return to the city tomorrow. I want to go back to my life, and I don’t want you as a part of it anymore.”

I took one last look at them once I was inside the bedroom. Neither man contested my wishes, and to me, that hurt worse than their misplaced concerns.

Yeah, two chaps in one week. There must be something wrong with me. Anyways, enjoy!