SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

83

MAUREEN

"Okay. Everything checks out." Maureen flashed her patient a smile while removing the stethoscope ear tips. "Your baby's heartbeat is strong, and the size and position is perfectly normal for seven months."

Lily released the relieved breath held trapped in her lungs. "Thank God."

Maureen couldn't hide her surprised expression. "I didn't know you were religious."

"I wasn't, before this." She smiled down at her tummy, rubbing it lovingly with both hands. "It's hard not to believe in a higher power, what with everything that's been going on."

"Maybe. I've been too caught up in trying to keep the rest of my family alive to think about it that way."

Lily pulled down her shirt over her bare belly and hopped off the padded workbench that Mystic had fashioned into an examination table in Castle's makeshift infirmary. "I understand they have a Catholic priest here. It's been a while since I last attended a service."

Maureen's expression soured. Besides the fact that she was raised Protestant, she had lost most of her faith on the same day a dead man ate her husband. What remained was for the friends and family helping one another to survive in this brutal, hellish reality.

"As long as he's not preaching peace and forgiveness," Maureen uttered. "That ship sunk weeks ago."

"Of course you would feel that way," a woman's voice grumbled.

Judith marched into the room with a crooked sneer on her face and a worn, bloodied figure around her arm. Maureen ignored her completely in favor of the sight of her wounded companion.

"Charlie." She rushed across the room to help Judith guide him to the examination table. Along the way, she studied the fresh blood staining the front of his shirt. "What happened?"

"He came in with the colonel and his men," Judith answered in his place. After helping him to his seat, she confided in a lower voice, "I think something happened to his dog."

Maureen turned to him again. She lifted his shirt to find his stomach bleeding. "Charlie, what happened? You tore your stitches."

He peered down at his open wound as if awakening from a deep sleep. "Sorry."

Maureen dug through the drawers in search of gauze and sutures. She was still getting used to where everything was around here. Whoever stocked the infirmary wasn't familiar with hospital procedure, so the equipment and medication they gathered was all jumbled together. She and Lily would need a week to sort through everything and organize it properly.

Assuming, that is, the current residents permitted them to stay. Given that Castle's only medical practitioner was a former lifeguard who once performed an emergency tracheostomy, she figured her and Lily's chances were good.

She handed Lily the gauzes. "Lily?"

"On it." The former veterinarian understood her meaning perfectly. Lily started cleaning the blood from Charlie's injured stomach while Maureen threaded the needle.

"Hmm..." Maureen studied the cleansed wound more closely. "Looks like you pulled two stitches. You'll need to be careful for a while until these new ones heal. You ready?"

Charlie nodded.

Maureen went to work on stitching him up again. Charlie hissed over her head, but said nothing. With the wound bleeding freely, reclosing it took priority over pain relief. Her patient took the lack of anesthetic in stride.

"What happened to Rusty?" Lily inquired. "I saw him run off."

Charlie gently shook his head.

"He saved my life," a new voice admitted from the door.