The World Never Ended novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Waiting Room

In the ER, Dean calls her unwell; she tells the whole waiting room and a stranger films it, and Dean offers a deal: sit quiet Friday and see the baby.

I held Shane's phone in the truck until the screen went dark, and then I asked him to wake it again.

The boy with the frosting was still grinning.

"Is he Dean's?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Where does he live?"

"In your house," Shane said. "I've seen the nursery."

I told myself I would not cry until I knew my son was safe, and I did not.

The emergency room took me in ahead of everyone.

A nurse cut off my dress, and a doctor pressed on my stomach and swore.

"How long since the delivery?" she asked.

"Six hours," I said.

"Where was the delivery?"

"A locked room."

She stopped writing and looked at me, then at Shane, who stood by the curtain with blood to his elbow.

"Did he hurt you?"

"No," I said. "He carried me out."

They put two bags of blood into my arm and one into my other arm, and a nurse said the word surgery.

I said no.

I said I would stay awake until they stopped the bleeding another way, and I would not sleep in a building Dean could walk into.

So they did it with me awake, and it hurt more than anything since the first baby.

When it was over I lay under a heated blanket, empty and shaking.

"There was something else," I said to the doctor. "I swallowed poison this afternoon. I threw it up. I need to know if it's still in me."

I told her the name on the vial's label, which I had read every night for seven months.

She wrote it down and sent a nurse running.

"You're a very lucky woman," she said.

"No," I said. "I'm a very angry one."

They brought me soup and I drank all of it.

Shane sat in the plastic chair and did not say anything.

The curtain was open on one side, onto the main waiting area, with its rows of chairs and a television on the wall.

It was nine at night and full of people.

I was watching a toddler throw a shoe when I heard Dean's voice.

"That's her. Thank God."

He came through the doors with my father and a man in a pressed coat, all three in a line.

My husband had changed his shirt.

He had the face I used to love, tired and tender, and he looked at me with his head tilted, full of pity.

"Cora," he said. "Honey. You scared us."

The nurse stood up.

"Are you family?"

"I'm her husband. This is her father, and our family doctor." Dean put a hand to his chest. "She's been through a breakdown. She walked out of the house in the middle of a medical crisis. She's not well. She may say strange things."

Everyone in the waiting room looked up.

"She's been delusional for months," my father added gravely. "We've been trying to get her help."

"She needs to come home with us," said the man in the coat.

The nurse looked at me.

I was holding the bed rail with both hands.

Five years of rations had made my legs useless, but my voice was fine.

I pulled my feet over the side and stood up in a hospital gown with the drip stand rattling beside me.

"My name is Cora Sandstrom," I said.

I said it loud enough for the last row of chairs.

"Five years ago my husband and my parents told me the world had ended."

The waiting room went quiet.

"They built a fake quarantine in an empty warehouse, and they paid actors to wear hazmat suits, and they told me my family died there."

"Cora," Dean said gently.

"They told me my husband was killed outside the gate, and they locked me in a room and told me I had to have children if I wanted to eat."

A woman near the front stood up.

"They took each one the minute it was born," I said. "I have three children I have never held. The newest was born today at four o'clock."

My father laughed once, short.

"You see how it is," he said to the room.

"Look at my arm," I said, and held it up.

There was a wristband from the compound clinic on it, plastic, with a number.

RESIDENT 19.

I had worn it for five years.

"The world never ended," I said. "This man's family just wanted a baby for my sister."

The woman in the front row had her phone up.

She was filming.

So was the man behind her, and then two teenagers by the vending machine.

Dean's face did not change at all.

"She's confused," he said, quietly, to the nurse. "Please call security."

"It's all true," said Shane.

Everyone turned.

He had stepped out from behind the curtain, with his hands open.

"I'm the man who built it," he said. "Her family hired my company. I can show you the sets."

My father's smile went away.

"Shane," he said, very low. "That is a signed non-disclosure."

"I know what I signed."

The doctor in the coat started toward Shane and the security guard stepped between them.

The guard was looking at the phones.

"Sir," he said to Dean. "I think you need to step outside."

Dean did not argue.

He nodded.

But he came forward first, to the foot of my bed, and leaned close enough that nobody else could hear.

His breath was warm and smelled of mint.

"Nobody will believe a woman who was in the program," he said. "You signed every page, Cora. Your thumbprint is on every one."

I said nothing.

"Come Friday," he said. "Sit quiet at the party, and I'll put the baby in your arms for ten minutes."

I stared at him.

"Make another scene," he said, "and you never see her at all."

He straightened up, smoothed his collar, and walked out through the doors with my father behind him.

I was still standing when my legs gave out.

Shane caught me on the way down, and this time I let him.

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