Mistaken, p.2
Mistaken, page 2
Tattoos said something. Christopher disagreed. Tattoos flexed and physically seemed to get bigger. He cracked his knuckles. Christopher didn’t move his arms but he clenched his fists. From the other side of the door Max started to cry. Both males immediately turned and went to see him. Dr. Brown closed the door and locked it.
Chapter 3
“OK. That’s a little better. I promise your son is safe.” She held out a box of tissues. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “Before I do anything, I’m going to talk you through the whole thing. Understand?”
I nodded.
“First thing is that I am going to feel your face and neck looking for enlarged lymph nodes. Then I will have you take off your shirt and I will check your breasts and armpits for the same. I need to listen to your heart and lungs. Then you can have your shirt back. I will need to press on your tummy to feel your liver and your bowels. After that, I will need you to take off your pants. I will feel your groin for lumps, and examine your labia for sores. After that, there will be the pap smear and I will also need to take three swabs of your vagina to test for different STIs. After the speculum is out, I will need to feel the inside of your vagina looking for internal irregularities.”
She paused and considered my face for a moment. “At that point I will change my gloves before I do the rectal exam. I need swabs from around your anus and inside your rectum as well. I also need to look for hemorrhoids and signs of scarring or prolapse. After all of that, you will get blood drawn and I’ll send you to collect first and midstream urine samples.”
I felt completely numb, but I nodded anyway.
“I’m going to be totally honest here. Depending on how badly you were damaged in the birth, I may also need to do an ultrasound.”
“You won’t need that,” my voice was surprisingly flat and dispassionate.
“I hope not, Kari, but I want you to be prepared for the possibility,” she replied.
I shook my head, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Dr. Brown.” She looked at me again, then sighed, “Under the circumstances you can call me Cynthia.”
I nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”
I could tell that Cynthia was trying to be kind. She was very careful. She even warmed the speculum before inserting it. It didn’t help. I still cried the whole time. It was one thing to go to a doctor you know for a pap after you’ve had time to mentally prepare. This was something completely different.
After it was done and I was wrapped in a blanket, shaking with KY leaking from my body, she looked at me and started to say something. She stopped and thought for a moment, then said, “Tell me about Max’s birth.”
I shrugged. “He was born in the spring. We don’t get doctors in the camps, so there wasn’t anyone to help. Plenty of gawkers though.”
“And his… that is.. The woman who gave birth to him?”
If she had asked about his mother, I may very well have kicked her. “She took one look at his skin, and left him on the ground.”
Cynthia nodded slowly. “And, you picked him up?”
“He was just a baby. IS just a baby. How he came into the world isn’t his fault.”
She nodded. “No, you are right. It isn’t.”
We sat in silence for a while.
“There is a portable shower through there,” she pointed to one of the doors in the room. “If you want to use it. The water is warm, but it only runs for two minutes.”
I went and had my two minute shower, scrubbing between my legs as I did so. When it was over, I got dressed but before I got to the door, Cynthia stopped me.
“They are looking for women who can successfully give birth to their children. I don’t think any of them will try anything while you are breastfeeding. But you need to be aware that is what they want.”
I nodded, not sure how to process that.
“Do you think you will be able to walk a few miles?”
Now I blinked, “What? Why?”
“Your…. Whatever you want to call him, will be taking you to look for a house next. If you can’t walk, I can try to get them to put it off until tomorrow.”
‘My…’ Yeah, I was going to need to address that at some point. I just could not bring myself to think about it now. Not while my body still felt scraped raw. “What do you mean, ‘look for a house’?”
Cynthia shrugged. “Pick any unoccupied house in the city and move in. But they won’t take us in their convoys so you have to walk there. There are a few of us in the old mansions by the river. The ones between Broadway and Main. Pick one, they will arrange for heat and water to be turned on.”
I considered this, “When do I start learning their language?”
Cynthia blinked, “Oh! They all speak English, they just can’t enunciate very well because of the tusks. It gets easier to understand with practice.”
Now I was angry. “So Asshole there could understand what I was saying and just chose to ignore it?”
“Kari? You need to reel it in. I know it is unfair and quite upsetting, but you are small and squishy and you need to be careful with them. Sure, they want you to take care of Max, but that doesn’t offer you protection.” She stopped and held eye contact with me, “You survived this long. You need to be careful.”
I nodded.
Dr. Brown opened the door. Tattoos was standing there cradling a slack and apparently lifeless Max. My eyes went wide and I started to shake. Cynthia put her hand on my arm. “He’s breathing. It looks like it is just nap time.” Then she looked at Tattoos. “You need to support his head better than that.”
He carefully adjusted his grip on my son. I wanted to take Max from him. I wanted my son back. I also had to admit that he was long past the point where I could hold him like that. Being cradled, he looked like a normal baby boy. Not the oversized toddler I knew and loved. I knew that I was staring, but I couldn’t look away.
The Asshole was looking at me with a calculating expression. Then he turned and walked away with Max in his arms. As promised, I followed.
Chapter 4
We left the school on foot. It looked like the streets around the school, all the houses that backed onto the yard and all the ones facing them, had been taken over as barracks. The street past that however, looked like a war zone. Some of the houses had all been sealed up with something that looked like the wrapping from a vacuum pack. Or maybe the shrinky-dink plastic that clamshell packaging used to be made of. Many of them had smashed windows that were now covered with whatever was encasing the house.
Others had just fallen down. A few had burnt to the ground, their foundations and charred skeletons of their framing all that remained.
We had to pass through a checkpoint to get out of the school zone. The tattooed Asshole holding my son spoke quietly with the guards, who looked at me and laughed. I tried to concentrate, but it didn’t sound anything like English to me. I shivered and hugged myself rubbing my arms. It didn’t help that a whole squadron of them came over and pulled out their guns.
I don’t know guns, especially not the big ones carried by them, but it looked like they were checking the ammo clips and taking off the safeties. After a moment Asshole nodded and they moved out. I hurried to keep up. They were moving in formation. Max being carried in the centre, the others over protective and ready to defend him. Pushed into the centre of the group, I wasn’t given any attention. It was clear to me that I was likely only being allowed to follow because I was a portable food source.
I tried to remember how far it was to the neighbourhood Cynthia had referenced. It had to be at least an hour walk. I had been pulled out of the food line at lunch and I could already feel hunger gnawing at my stomach. I didn’t know if Max had been fed lunch, but it had to be getting close to the point where he was going to need to eat again.
Sure enough, a few blocks later, Max woke up and started fussing.
Asshole holding my son gave him a jiggle for a moment and seemed to be making soothing noises. Max fully opened his eyes, failed to recognize the person holding him and went off like an air raid siren. I was briefly gratified by the look of panic on the soldiers’ faces before I got worried about what they were going to do about it.
“He’s confused and hungry. He needs to eat.”
As soon as Max heard my voice he started squirming and trying to get to me. The tattooed Asshole kept a firm grip on him. After a moment, Max gave up on struggling and put all his energy into screaming. I took an involuntary step forward and one of the armed men stepped in front of me, blocking my view. I looked up at him with tears of frustration and rage in my eyes. “That is my son! You are making him cry. Do you really expect me to stand by and let that happen?”
I didn’t see when Max was set down but he toddled over and grabbed me around the knees nearly knocking me over. I reached down and untangled his chubby little arms and knelt on the ground. He hugged me tight, wiping his eyes and nose on my shirt. Sometimes being a mom is also being a snot rag. He was also pulling at my shirt. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about pulling out a boob with all of the soldiers staring at me.
On the other hand, Max needed to eat and this was why I was here.
I looked around. There was a bus stop up the street a little. “Ok. Look! Chairs!” Someone grabbed my shoulder preventing me from getting up to head over there. I looked up and one with a carved up face shook his head, no.
“No, I can’t feed him, or no, I can’t go over there to sit down?”
He grunted something that could have been ‘stay’ if I was really stretching to hear the word, but more definitively, he pointed at the ground. I looked around, “I need something to sit on. Even if it's just a big rock or brick or-”
Asshole knelt next to me. He plopped down his tightly folded jacket and then pulled me over so I was sitting on it. He stepped back before I could register much more than surprise. Max was still pulling at my shirt, but when I looked up all I could see was a sea of tusked faces looking down at me. Way down. I shivered.
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching for attackers?”
All of them, except for Asshole, turned around and formed a defensive ring around me. I looked at the last one, but all Asshole was doing was maintaining heavy eye contact. I wanted to stare him down but Max’s noises were getting increasingly frantic.
I looked down at my son, took a deep shuddering breath and pulled up my shirt. Max crawled into my lap and latched on with a blissful sigh. His chubby little dimpled hand patted my chest so gently as his eyes closed and he started to suck. My boobs aren’t big, so with Max in place I wasn’t really exposed. I reached down and stroked his hair. He patted me again.
That was the point where I started to cry. It suddenly felt real that I was going to be allowed to keep him. The relief that flooded through me was like a tsunami as it washed over me. I was glad I was sitting, because I think I would have fallen over from the sudden release of that tension. Max was my son. And, for now at least, he was still mine.
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I stood up too fast when he was finished. I will admit I staggered a couple of steps. I was feeling a little lightheaded. I tried to cover by stooping down to pick up Asshole’s flack jacket. When I passed it to him, he was giving me a shrewd, calculating look. He finally pulled a bundle out of his cargo pocket and unwrapped what turned out to be a stack of brown disks. He offered me one. I frowned at it. It wasn’t something I had seen before. It sort of had the visual texture of uncooked ramen. He pushed it at me again, so this time I took it.
I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was about ten, maybe twelve centimetres across and maybe one centimetre thick. It was the colour of peanut butter, but had a weird texture. I looked up at Asshole in confusion. He took one himself and bit it in half. He chewed and swallowed the half that was in his mouth, but wrapped up the rest and stuffed the package back into his pocket. It said something about exactly how big he was that this was a two bite snack for him.
I gave it an experimental nibble. It crumbled in my mouth and the individual bits were somehow crunchy and chewy at the same time. It was like a slightly nutty, rather bland and not at all sweet rice krispie bar. I ate it. I was thirsty by the end, but too afraid to ask for water. I couldn’t see water bottles on any of them anyway.
I could see why they picked Riverside. It had been the most prestigious neighbourhood in town. It backed onto the river on three sides, was walled in by an old stone wall on the fourth and had huge Victorian houses on lots that were four or five times the size of yards anywhere else in the city. Also, it only had one street in or out, which made it easy to defend.
My feet hurt enough that I knew I had blisters from my new shoes. Max had tried to walk after his snack but had wanted me to carry him after less than a block. I managed to do that for a little while, but I was slowing the party down. He was plucked from my arms after maybe fifteen minutes. I was still conflicted by that. Carrying him hurt my arms and back. Nonetheless, I didn’t like that Asshole had just taken him from me without so much as asking.
At least this time, he held Max in such a way that he could see me. I babbled nonsense about him being a good boy to keep him from crying. I told him it was going to be ok. I wanted it to be true but I hated that I was lying. I didn’t know everything was going to be fine. I had no idea what was happening.
I had no idea why we were taking the long way.
By the time we got there, it was getting dark. My feet had gone from sore to aching to burning, and possibly bleeding, to numb. I just kept walking. I wasn’t going to let them leave me behind. The guards at the checkpoint were delighted to see Max and made a point of ignoring me. Dr. Brown had led me to believe I was going to get to choose a house. That wasn’t what happened. We were assigned to one.
Number 307 was a massive brick house. It was only two stories high, but they were at least 11 foot ceilings. The doors were oversized. The front portico was held up by six massive ionic columns each of which was bigger around than I am. To each side of the entrance was a huge turret with big windows all the way around. The roof was copper that had started to turn green. We were led in through the front door and up the massive staircase. As we went up we passed one of the soldiers carrying a huge door down.
Asshole led me through the building to the master bedroom at the back. It had a gorgeous view of the river, its own gas fireplace, and an ensuite the size of my bedroom before they came. There was a clawfoot tub in an alcove behind two pretty shower curtains set up like old fashioned theatre drapes. When you pulled them closed it also blocked the light from the frosted circle window centered to the tub. A walk in shower and double vanities completed the room.
There were still someone else’s products on the vanities.
What there wasn’t, was doors. The door to the bedroom was already gone and as I watched, they popped the hinge pins and removed the double doors to the bathroom. As the doors left, someone came back with a box and swept all the products off the vanity and into the box. The smell of perfume filled the room as the bottles smashed.
I gagged, they started coughing. “Just leave it, I can clean up the room later.”
They stared at me for a moment, then nodded and left. Asshole sat on the bed with Max. He produced a diaper from somewhere and set about changing him. I pulled off my shoes, hissing as the skin that had crusted over and scabbed against the sides was ripped away and the blisters opened.
I minced my way over to the bathtub and turned on the taps. There was still running water, so I set it to cold and stuck my feet under the flow. I pushed down on the plug with my toes as I rolled up my pant legs and sat on the edge of the tub. Asshole came in and looked at me. He looked at my feet, then he left.
With Max.
“Wait!” I called struggling to get out of the tub and follow him.
He turned and snarled at me and pointed at the tub.
“No! If you are taking him, I am going with you.”
He glared at me then stormed out faster than I could follow. By the time I made it out of the room he was down the stairs and marching off into the house. One of the soldiers who had walked us in caught my arm. I whimpered as he managed to find the bruises already there. He pulled his hand away.
Speaking slowly and carefully, he said, “They come back with food.” It sounded wrong because there were sounds he couldn’t make around his tusks. Then his nose twitched and he looked down at my feet. I was dripping water and tissue fluid onto the very expensive wool carpet. He looked back up at me with a puzzled look on his face.
I shrugged. “My new shoes didn’t really fit.” Then I turned and hobbled back into the bathroom. It was clear I wouldn’t be chasing down Asshole anytime soon.
I soaked my feet in cold water until the swelling came down enough that I had toes and not sausages, then carefully patted them dry with the Egyptian cotton waffle towels. Then I came out to find Max playing with blocks on the carpet.
