The Immune

3: Quarantine

Heat wakes me up.

By now, I'm used to the chill of an empty room and icy sheets.

But before I even open my eyes, the sun washes over my face, hot and sweet. So, keeping my eyes closed helps me wake up slowly instead of my usual way. No jerking awake. No gasping for breath. No screaming. I just listen to the clock tick nearby.

The night before comes back in the image of a mud-covered dress, paisley print barely showing through layers of grime. It comes back in the form of her cries, the ones that sounded like an injured animal. It pulses in my arm, through my shoulders and throbbing in my head. It's a bearable pain, annoying if nothing else.

"I can see your eye moving behind your eyelids, Jaelyn."

My father's voice is tense and firm. When he talks, there's a slight wheeze from all the cigarettes he smoked before the black market was outlawed.

"I was doing a limb check," I mumble, slowly opening my eyes and pushing myself into a sitting position. Or trying to, rather. The weight I'm forced to put on my left arm sends stabbing pains up to my shoulder, like someone's jabbing me with a fork and twisting it. I scoot up like a worm, wincing. Dad circles me and jots down my vitals.

"All of your limbs are present." He doesn't look at my face as he talks. "But as you've discovered, that arm of yours isn't in good shape. You're under quarantine for the rest of the day."

I look down at my arm. Although covered in gauze, blood still seeps through, leaving a faint pink polka-dot in the middle of my forearm. The skin on each side of the wrapping is yellow. Purple spiderweb veins scatter themselves out around the wound. They swell above the skin, hot and heavy.

She was infected.

Now, my arm is, too.

It's hard to feel surprised. Every symptom was there. Yet, just like before, I was stupid and desperate.

"You're very lucky to be immune," Dad says, finally looking up at me. "Otherwise, the officers would have shot you without hesitation, too. The arm will heal on its own as your body starts to fight off the effects of the virus, which will take some time and antibiotics. I've had you on a drip for the past six hours." He flicks a long, clear tube that runs from a hanging medication bag to my arm. "Still, you can't leave until we know your body has cleared it all out, otherwise you could spread it around if you sneezed or something. You've put a lot at risk, acting like a hero."

I should be hurt, but the only thing going through my head is: So, they shot her. All that, and they just shot her. Now, I'll never know what she meant by 'us.' No one will, because she's dead.

Dad watches me think, the corners of his mouth twitching as he taps his pen on the clipboard. His eyebrows crease in the middle, forming a faux unibrow. Gray streaks across the sides of his thick, dark beard, and there's a dab of toothpaste stuck on the corner of his mouth.

"What were you thinking?" he finally asks in a tense whisper. "Seriously, Jaelyn. What went through your head?"

I hold my breath. What was I thinking? At the moment, it wasn't too clear to even me.

"I thought she might have known something about more immunes." I sink back into my pillow to wait for him to tear me a new one.

"So you would put everything we have here at risk just to satiate your curiosity?" He talks through gritted teeth, and a vein on his forehead throbs. "I've told you time and time again, there's no one outside The Wall that's immune. You're the only one! The other compounds would let us know if they found another one, and no one— let me repeat that— no one survives outside The Wall."

"Dad, I'm—"

"Stop." He stands up as he cuts off my apology. "If you were truly sorry, this wouldn't have happened again, Jay. You wouldn't have done this twice."

"This time was different." My voice pleads as I clench handfuls of my covers.

"No, it was the same. I can't take any more bullets for you. Hartley's riding my case constantly because you can't behave yourself. First, he was nice enough to give you the job you have, and then, he let you off the hook last time. But now this?"

"What's he going to do to me?"

Dad rubs his temple before dropping a folder onto the bed.

"He's forcing me to write you off as mentally unstable." I open up the folder and gape at the stack of paperwork with my name and a blinding red stamp across the top. "Do you have any idea how degrading it is? You're the daughter of the Head of Medicine in the compound that specializes in medicine. You shouldn't be unstable!"

When I look up at him, his face is red. Veins form rivers on his forehead, tapping out his racing heartbeat in his twitching right eye. There's nothing I can say at this point. After a minute of two-ton silence, he lets out a long sigh and turns away from me.

"I'll get you out in the morning," he says over his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Dad," I whisper, swallowing back a knot in my throat.

"Don't." He unzips the tent flap and lets it hang for a minute. "Just don't. Get some rest."

With that, he's gone. The sanitation machine whirs to life as he zips the flap up behind him.

But I am sorry, though. Sorry I let him down for the second time. Sorry that I can't stay away from the Infected. Sorry that I have too many questions and blurry memories and missing pieces.

Someone out there has to know something.

My mind drifts back to the girl. How did she know my name? It was too dark for her to read my uniform, and those eyes couldn't have focused if she wanted them to. The other compounds are too far away for someone to just wander here.

How did she know my name?

That question bouncing around in my head combines with the ticking clock and the air pumping through the tent, and together, they lull me into a fitful sleep.