They dumped the buckets near the grill. Pouring the water into the big pot for boiling was Blake’s least favorite part. Beaumont was poking at the embers, his narrow eyebrows drawn as he focused. His fluffy blonde hair was sticking out from under the oversized beanie barely perched on his head. Blake got the distinct impression that before shit hit the fan, Beaumont was the kind of guy who dressed Oxford chic. Skinny pants, big, unlaced boots, an oversized chunky cardigan with a swooping neckline, and sleeves flopped over his fingers. Probably drinking tea or something.
Now he was wearing the same surplus clothes as the rest of them. Mismatched colors, the wrong kind of aesthetic, and the wrong size. It gave them some kind of solidarity. A uniform.
“I thought you were heading out soon?” Tommy asked, sidling closer so he could hold his hands closer to the grill.
“We are,” Beaumont said, his voice low and clear. He spoke with an accent Blake couldn’t identify. “Just wanted to get the grill going before I left.”
“You like cooking?” Blake asked, trying to remember if he knew that about Beaumont. He didn’t think so. But he’d been a little self-involved lately.
Beaumont shrugged. “I like to eat.” He laughed, blue eyes crinkling. “But I think it’s more the satisfaction. Starting the fire, boiling the water, cooking the meat. I can see things getting done. Feels more tangible. Rewarding, I guess.”
Tommy nodded like he understood, and maybe Blake did too. In an abstract kind of way. He could see the satisfaction in getting results. It was partly why he enjoyed working traumas more than anything else. Setting a bone, stopping the bleeding, easing the pain, those were all things he could see. So much of medicine was a marathon, results too far in the future for a first responder. Once they were off his stretcher, that was it. Unless he caught a nurse who knew the patient he was talking about, their fate was unknown.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Where are you going?”
Beaumont’s attention flicked to Blake, and he seemed to hesitate. Indecision flickered in those baby blues.
“Southeast,” he finally said, smiling to hide the awkward hesitation. “Probably try to hit some of the outer suburbs.”
Blake calculated. That was a wealthy area, close to the city but far enough away from where they’d noted most of the fighting. It might be possible to find something decent. With any luck, most of the people fled to the nearby refugee centers.
Tommy was still warming his hands over the grill when he spoke, “Alvarez told you not to tell us, right?”
Beaumont winced. “I’m sorry. It’s not personal, it’s just?—”
“A dick measuring contest,” Blake finished for him. Alvarez might be a team lead, but Irving considered Gabriel his secondin command. Which put Gabriel above Alvarez in whatever kind of flimsy hierarchy they had going on. Alvarez probably wanted to keep his team’s missions on some kind of need-to-know basis.
Blake couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Beaumont laughed. “He’s a good leader, but yeah, he’s a little…concerned.”
Paranoidandinsecurewere the words Blake would have used, but he left it. If Beaumont liked him, more power to him.
“Well, good luck,” Blake said instead. “Be careful. Keep your head down and all that.”
Beaumont smiled. “Thanks. You too. I mean, well, with the…uh…” he trailed off, looking like he’d just told the cashier at a restaurant ‘you too’ after they’d told him to enjoy his meal.
But Blake knew what he meant.Good luck with the sitting around and doing nothing thing.Or worse.Good luck with the limb hacking and killing people through medical malpractice, thing.
He just nodded, turning on his heel to walk back toward the infirmary, desperate not to fall down that rabbit hole. Not again.
After leaving Gabriel, he’d thrown himself into work. Organizing the conference room, checking on the refugees from yesterday, getting water, and even helping Tommy clean the chicken coop and collect eggs. Desperate to keep moving so he could avoid thinking about the conversation with Gabriel that morning.
It didn’t seem to matter what Blake did, or the moments of happiness he found with Gabriel; those intrusive thoughts and feelings crept back in. Like he was bailing out a boat with a small hole. No matter how much water he tossed out, it slowly seeped in, dragging him lower and lower, until water was filling his mouth and nose and he couldn’t breathe.
Ignoring it wasn’t working. The bitterness, the resentment, the pain, it just kept clawing at the hole. Widening it with bluntclaws, until he wouldn’t be able to bail himself out, and he really would drown right there on dry land.
He should talk to Gabriel. Blake thought the apology would be enough, that it wasa himproblem, but as much as he joked about Alvarez having a chip on his shoulder, Gabrielwasin charge. At least for missions. And if he said Blake couldn’t go, he couldn’t. No one would risk pissing Gabriel off. And by extension, Irving, who, if nothing else, appreciated a good chain of command rather than one member of their team’s safety.
The mere idea that Blake, a grown man, was being told he couldn’t do something because of some arbitrary system had him rankled. Logically, he knew this was the kind of thing that saved them from the horrors of the refugee camps. These intangible rules and leaders gave them some form of law and order. Isn’t that how anthropologists categorized early civilizations? Rules. Order. Government. Toss some religion in, and the Potomac View Motel could be the very next entry into Anthropological textbooks.
Blake rounded the corner, and a black cat looked up at him. He blinked his green eyes slowly before settling back in on the lounge chair he was curled up on. His black fur was so puffed up from the cold, Blake could barely distinguish which part of the cat was which.
Before he knew what he was doing, Blake was gently shifting the chair over so that a splash of sunlight pooled over the cat’s back. The cat began purring, paws kneading the air.
He smiled. They might not have a religion, but they certainly had deities that were willing to be worshipped.
Blake skirted around the basking cat and made his way to the conference room. He’d had a hard time going in before. It felt too quiet. The kind of hush that haunts. Not ghosts, they’d be easier to deal with. Instead, it was the lingering specter of hope that looked an awful lot like the white coat in the corner he refusedto look at. A movement in his peripheral heknewwould still be there if he turned to look, so he didn’t.
But now it was bustling with people. Patients. But unlike Graves, these patients he could help. They looked at him with relief and gratitude, and it melted something inside him he didn’t know still had life. Like the primordial frogs scientists thought had been dead for a millennium, only to thaw them out and see them wriggling.
