Читать книгу Being Amber - Sylvia Ryan - Страница 7

3

She wasn’t dead.

Disappointment settled, cold and painful, in the pit of Jaci’s stomach.

When she learned there was no hospital in the Amber Zone and that she’d be transported back to the apartment after her sterilization, she’d been shocked. But she eventually realized that they gave her the easy out she’d been searching for. The clinic staff provided a bottle of painkillers to take home.

But it hadn’t worked.

She cracked open her eyes. A quick sweep of the room told her it was dark outside. It was hard to see anything other than all the women who surrounded her. There were several in bed with her, touching her, comforting her. Jaci’s head was on a pillow in a woman’s lap.

“It’s okay, Jaci. We’re all here for you,” someone whispered in her ear. It was the person caressing her hair.

“Are you my roommate?” Jaci’s throat was dry, her voice gravelly.

“No, I’m Caroline.”

“Why are all these people here?”

“Jenna from the sterilization clinic sent a u-com about you.”

“They sent a universal com about me?”

“Only to building seventeen. It’s standard procedure.”

“So, everybody in the building…knows?” Jaci paused. “How humiliating,” she whispered more to herself than anybody else in the room.

“Shhh, don’t worry about that.” Caroline raised her up so she could take a sip of water from a straw somebody else held to her mouth. “Oh, before I forget, your assigned com is on the night table when you’re ready for it. A lot of our numbers have already been downloaded in.

“I would tell you everybody else’s name, but you wouldn’t remember them right now anyway.” Caroline was still gently raking Jaci’s hair with her fingertips. “Tomorrow, you’ll feel much better and we’ll all have plenty of time to talk. For now, relax. We’re not going anywhere tonight.”

For the rest of the evening Jaci succumbed to a hazy flurry of women everywhere.

She fell into a bizarre funhouse sleep with oddly realistic and suffocating dreams. Pain woke her occasionally, and each time she opened her eyes, she was still surrounded by women. Later, they slept with her. A tangle of females covered the big bed, their bodies pressing close to her and each other. It seemed like a dozen hands reached out, touching her. Their vigilance kept her prisoner in a cocoon of female flesh. The oddity of their behavior drove away her immediate despair and provided brief moments of respite from the amalgam of physical and emotional pain.

When Jaci woke up the next morning with a clearer head, Caroline and another woman, Emily, whose name she remembered only because of her purple-tipped hair, were still there. She recognized the two other women present, but she couldn’t remember their names.

“How are you feeling?” Caroline asked when she realized Jaci was awake.

She pegged the woman with a foggy gaze, “Okay, considering.”

“Didn’t they send home any pain meds with you? I couldn’t find any.”

“I don’t know,” Jaci lied, closing her eyes.

“I brought some that were left over from other sit-ins when I couldn’t find yours. Do you want one?”

“Yes,” she croaked through parched lips. “Numb would be nice right now.”

Caroline walked to the counter separating the living area from the kitchen and shook a couple of tablets from a bottle. She returned with a glass of water and two tablets in her hand. Jaci accepted them wincing slightly as she sat up enough to take the pills.

“Thanks for staying with me, but you guys don’t have to stay anymore. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“Nope. You’re it. We’re the Sit-In Team and you’re stuck with us until our job is done.”

“Job?” Jaci shook her head. “I’m lost.”

“The Team helps new fallows from other zones adjust,” Caroline said. “I’m the Sit-In Team Leader.”

“We’ve got a lot of things to talk about today,” the woman in the corner said. “My name’s Hannah, by the way, in case you don’t remember from last night. You were pretty out of it.” She patted Jaci’s blanket covered leg.

“And I’m Jordan. We’re gong to be working together once you’re up and around.”

All of the women sort of looked alike. All had brown hair and brown eyes like she did. She would have to pay attention to faces more closely since virtually everybody designated as an Amber had brown hair and brown eyes.

Caroline had shoulder length straight brown hair with bangs. Her face was scrubbed clean which gave her appearance of being a bit plain.

After Jaci swallowed her pills, Caroline took a deep breath and spoke first. “Well, welcome to the Amber Zone.”

Jaci looked at her lap and then looked at the other women. “Thank you.”

They all smiled back at her with kindness. Or was it pity she saw in their eyes?

“Living in Amber is going to be different from what you’re used to. Are you up to talking now? Or do you want to hold off for a while?” Caroline asked.

“Now’s okay.”

“Good. Well, let’s see. Starting’s always the hard part.” Caroline looked up at the ceiling for a moment as if she was figuring out exactly what words to use.

“I’ve been doing this long enough to know you feel like you’ve lost everything, that you’ve been dumped here. I also know what the other designations think of us, that we’re stupid and diseased. Part of our job as the Sit-In Team is to help you understand that, for the most part, we’re just like you.” She took Jaci’s hand. “You’re already accepted as one of us and you never have to feel abandoned or alone.

Jaci looked down at their joined hands, feeling slightly weird about it. She hadn’t held another woman’s hand since she was a young girl reaching out for the comfort of her mother.

“The major difference about our way of life compared to the other classes has nothing to do with our eye color or IQ. Our zone is completely different though, better, in my opinion. But I need to fill you in on some of our social norms that are different from what you’re used to.”

Jaci’s mind latched on to the word better and didn’t track much after that. That woman actually thought life was better here? “Okay,” she said, as if she was asking what the punch line was.

Caroline went on. “Let me go back and tell you the history. It’ll help explain why things are the way they are. If that makes any sense.” She laughed.

“About twenty-five years ago, as a part of an agreement made with the Amber leaders at the time, the Gov researched and developed a program to help the Amber couples who were free of Automatic Disqualifiers raise their one and only child in a way that would reduce the suffering brought on by the Repopulation Laws. Doctors and other professionals determined that social support was the best way to cope with the sterilizations and other crippling conditions, as well as the restrictions Ambers have to deal with regularly.

“Back then, our parents were miserable, and they wanted their children to be happier than they were. Mandatory parenting classes were developed that taught new parents how to raise our generation so that coping mechanisms are developed and in place from birth. They went to the classes gladly. Every parent was desperate to have their one and only child live a happier life than they had. They were hopeful that this program was the solution, so they rigorously followed the recommendations and totally immersed us in an environment of unconditional acceptance and almost constant touch.

“Now, people who have been born and raised as Ambers, our generation, have a stronger connection with each other. We have built in coping skills to help us deal with the Repopulation Laws as well as all of the inevitable catastrophic illnesses that many of us were diagnosed with at our genetic testing.”

“Here in Amber, we don’t have the invisible don’t-touch zone around us like you had in Sapphire. Touching is no different for us than breathing,” Jordan cut in. “We just do it. We don’t think about it. It’s such an intrinsic part of our lives that many Ambers have difficulty going periods of time without the support of someone else’s touch.”

Jaci studied Jordan as she spoke. She was short-haired, petite and fit. Definitely a no-nonsense type of woman. Somebody who would fit in with a crowd of men as well, or maybe even better than with a crowd of women.

“You may not realize it now, but we’re helping you heal, emotionally and physically, with our presence, our touch and our support,” Emily said.

There was a lull in the conversation. The women let what they’d said sink in. For long moments, a relaxed silence filled the room. Jaci looked at the four of them surrounding her, touching her.

Jaci closed her eyes to escape the scrutiny of the women. Just yesterday, she would have preferred death to life in Amber. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad here as she thought. A surge of hope took up residence within her. She did feel emotionally better today, surrounded by these women, than she did yesterday. Could it be true? Could she feel included, happy even, being Amber?

Jaci opened her eyes and looked at each one of them individually. She had the feeling they would sit there and wait for her, holding her, hugging her, raking their fingers through her hair as long as she needed it. Overcome by the depth of sincerity and acceptance she felt from these women, she nodded her head slowly in understanding.

“Let’s take a break. I have to pee, and I need some tea and food,” Hannah said, slicing through the silence. They all answered in murmurs of soft agreement, getting up from their places on the bed. Jordan and Emily went to the kitchen together.

When Hannah returned from the bathroom, she and Caroline helped Jaci from the bed to the toilet and closed the door behind them as they left.

After she went to the bathroom, Jaci took stock of herself. She noticed the removal of the mandatory birth control device that had been implanted in her arm since she was sixteen. She wouldn’t need it now. She poked at the two small stitches in her skin from the removal procedure. They didn’t hurt.

She lifted up the front of her hospital gown and took off the dressing covering her incisions. The two horizontal cuts in her skin were an angry red with vertical strips of tape keeping them closed.

That’s it. It was done.

Jaci’s emotions plummeted. Like falling through thin ice, cold anguish enveloped her. The quickness and magnitude of the plunge caught her off guard. She groaned aloud and fell to her knees, bracing herself on the edge of the tub. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,” she sobbed almost imperceptibly.

It didn’t matter. None of the things the women told her today mattered. It was a distraction, giving her false hope that her future here in Amber was going to be tolerable. Her life was not a fairy tale, and she wasn’t going to find happily ever after here.

Jaci laid her cheek on the cool surface of the rim of the tub as she cycled through the physical and mental assault of her new life.

There was a tap on the bathroom door before it opened. Caroline entered and closed the door gently behind her. “I shouldn’t have left you alone. I’m so sorry. I should have known better.” She rubbed Jaci’s back and combed her fingers through her hair, hushing her and whispering encouragements.

It took several minutes before Jaci pulled herself together and straightened her spine. “I’m okay.”

“Let’s get this redressed.” Caroline helped Jaci up and grabbed the box of surg patches sitting on the counter next to the sink. She placed a fresh one on each of Jaci’s wounds. “They’ve definitely perfected this procedure over the years. You’ll be feeling pretty good by tomorrow,” she said unfazed as if she always found women in crumpled heaps on their bathroom floor.

When they finally exited the bathroom, she found that the other women had laid tea, bagels, and muffins on a tray in the middle of the bed. They helped Jaci in, propping her on pillows until she was comfortable and sitting up enough to eat.

They ate in relative silence with only snippets about the food and tea breaking the quiet. It gave Jaci time to process the information from the morning and stabilize her mood.

“So, do the men take advantage of this touching thing? You know, sexually? I mean how do you know if a man is touching you because he likes you or just because it’s what everybody does?”

“Now that’s the question isn’t it,” Emily said, laughing. “I like the way you think. The mind seems to travel right to the guys, doesn’t it? Doesn’t matter if you’re an Amber or a Diamond.”

“You especially are going to have countless people, both men and women, touching you a lot,” Caroline said.

“Why me especially?”

“Because you’re a fallow. Women who’ve been sterilized before having their baby, the ones that had the choice to have a child totally taken away from them, are honored members of our community. Ambers have been raised to give special attention, support and acceptance to fallows. You’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. Your loss does not go unnoticed here. It’s a part of our culture, and I think defines who we are as a community. We’re always trying to make life easier to live.”

“That’s part of the reason why there was a u-com sent about you to the building yesterday,” Hannah said softly, looking with kindness into Jaci’s eyes. “Every woman here will be sterilized eventually, but after we’ve given birth to a child. There are fewer women identified with Automatic Disqualifier genes, resulting in less fallows than there used to be and even fewer from different zones like you, so you’re a big deal.”

“And the info gets around. The coms about your arrival yesterday were flying. Plus, people talk. Pretty much every woman in the building tried to stop by last night. I had to have Xander drive them away at the door,” Caroline said.

“Xander?”

“Xander’s your roommate.” Emily piped in.

“I have a male roommate?”

“Yeah, we all do,” Emily said. “Except for Caroline. She hasn’t had a roommate for how long now Caroline?

“Over a year.”

“How do they keep managing to skip over you?” Jordan asked.

Caroline shrugged.

“Anyways,” Emily went on with a wave of her hand. “All single Ambers are paired up boy-girl.”

“It’s like having a built in big brother,” Jordan said. “Well, at least that’s what I think having a big brother would be like. It’s reassuring to have some built-in family. None of us has siblings, and a lot of our parents are sick or have died already. Our roommates take care of us. It’s expected.”

“I’m pretty sure the boy-girl pairing started as a result from the Gov studies,” Caroline said. “They showed that supportive touch from the opposite sex affects a person more positively and with increased strength.”

“I agree,” Emily said, smiling with an added eyebrow wag.

“Leave it to Emily to jump into a conversation as soon as it gets anywhere near the subject of sex,” Caroline said drily.

“There are some roommates that end up hooking up and sometimes even get married. But more often than not, they’re our protectors and best friends. Nothing else,” Jordan said.

Jaci glanced between Emily and Jordan and immediately decided that she liked them both, especially Emily. If somebody could be that happy as an Amber, she wanted to get to know them better. Maybe some of that effervescence would rub off on her.

“Anyways, we’ll be staying with you for a while, until you…well, won’t freak when Xander wants to be touching you. You know, when you’re both home, sleeping and stuff.” Hannah said.

Jaci felt disconcerted by the thought of some guy she didn’t know sleeping next to her, touching her.

“That look, right there,” Caroline said, motioning to Jaci. “We’ll stay with you until you don’t have that look on your face when you’re thinking about other people touching you all the time.”

Jaci tried to wipe whatever look Caroline was talking about off her face.

“It has been hard for some women from different zones to adjust to the different culture and to being a fallow,” Caroline said.

Jaci noticed the split second glances the women exchanged with each other, but before she opened her mouth to ask about it, Jordan quickly changed the subject.

“Believe it or not, the last twenty-four hours have been hard on Xander. Nobody knew you were here until the u-com was sent. You were already at the Sterilization Center by the time we found out about you.”

“He felt like shit that he wasn’t here for your first night. He was so upset today we couldn’t get him to leave. We tried to get him to go, but he was being stubborn.” Emily said. “I actually had to call his mother.” Her smirk was devilish. “She imposed her motherly authority and forced him to go. She’s one of the very few people that will take him head-on and not accept no for an answer. They’re close, the two of them.”

“I think he feels like he’s let you down, without you even meeting each other yet,” Jordan said. “If you’re up to it, you guys can meet later. I’m sure he’s going to try to get in here anyways.”

“He’s been sleeping around because he has trouble falling asleep by himself. His last roommate, Diana, recently got married and moved to the townhomes with her new hubby,” Caroline said. “That’s why he wasn’t here your first night.”

“Sleeping around?”

“Yeah, staying here and there instead of coming back to his own apartment.”

“How did Diana’s husband like the fact that she slept in the same bed as Xander?” Jaci asked.

Hannah shrugged. “It was fine. Half the time, he was here too.” She paused. “Listen, you have to change the mindset that sleeping with somebody or touching somebody is sexual. Sometimes it is, but most of the time it’s not.”

“And there’s going to be a lot of times that there are three, sometimes even four people in your bed, like right now. We’re all here and will be here for another night if you need us. All of our roommates, including Xander, are on their own. They’re sleeping with other people.”

Jaci nodded then yawned.

“Okay, I think that’s enough for one morning. Jaci needs some rest,” Jordan said.

“You don’t have to stay and watch me sleep.”

“You guys go,” Caroline said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night anyways, a nap sounds good.”

The women left and Jaci rolled to her side trying to get comfortable. She fell asleep easily to the soft caresses of Caroline’s fingers sifting gently through her hair.

* * * *

The apartment was totally silent when Xander opened the door.

A few moments before, Jordan had checked in to report that she’d left to get some sleep. He was supposed to take over surveillance. He could have done that from outside the apartment, sitting with Brady and monitoring the bug from the ninth floor. But, bottom line, he needed to see Jaci, to make sure she was okay. He wanted to…Xander shook the thought away. Wanting to shake her and yell at her for what she’d done wouldn’t be the ideal way to start off their new relationship. He slipped in and peered over toward the bed.

Caroline slept next to Jaci. Her hand was on Jaci’s waist.

They were both turned away from the door, facing his side of the room. He crept in, walking past the bed so he could look at his new roommate. He wanted to officially meet her since she hadn’t woken up at all before the Sit-In Team arrived and pestered him until he got out.

It was hard to step back and relinquish control of this situation. But, he understood why the women took over on these occasions. Caroline, the head of the Sit-In Team was a nurse and also a fallow herself. The other women who volunteered for the sit-in would become an instant circle of friends for Jaci. They would help her cope with the extreme culture shock coming from living her whole life in a different zone. And, even more importantly, help her through the heart-piercing struggle of coming to terms with her sterilization and the new life assigned to her.

His gaze fastened to the woman in the bed. A puddle of wavy, brown hair covered his pillow. Even while sleeping, a mask of misery veiled Jaci’s face. It would have been preferable to meet her before her reassignment to Amber, before the operation. He would have been able to know who she truly was, not just the person she’d been forced to become.

Xander knew other women and men that came from different zones after being designated Amber. They’d all adjusted well, many preferring the Amber lifestyle to their previous designation. He was confident Jaci would too.

He stood over her, working himself up yet again about finding her near death the day before, when Jaci opened her eyes. She looked dazed while she tried to figure out where she was, and Xander discerned the exact moment when she put the pieces together in her head because a profound sadness emanated from her. Her eyes deadened.

Kneeling next to the bed, he whispered, “Hi.”

He reached out slowly and ran his thumb across her cheek.

She looked into his eyes. “Hi.”

“I’m Xander.”

She smiled a sad smile. “Jaci.”

“You’re on my side of the bed,” he said teasing her. He gingerly climbed onto the sliver of mattress available next to her. Their faces were inches away from each other, their bodies pressed close with only the covers as a barrier between them.