A hospital is always awake, even at night. The mechanical, reassuring noise of the ventilation in this quarantine unit, footsteps over her head: her chief, Valmont? The friendly nurse with whom she did most of her nightshifts, Maerika? Another medic making his round? The muted sputter of a light panel that’s ready to die somewhere in the corridor. Nearby, a patient moaning. The floor’s staff phone ringing – the news of Eddings’s death had surely already spread all around the hospital. The distant pulse of the city was barely audible in her room.
Elianor, lying straight as a statue on her bed, closed her eyes. It was two in the morning, but there was no sleep for her. There only remained the hushed noises and the smells of the hospital, oh so familiar for the doctor she was. Not enough sensations to quell the storm inside her, now that her adrenaline rush was over.
Until that moment, she had managed to keep her emotions in check. In front of Valmont, she didn’t give in, tried to explain coherently that night’s events, not allowing herself to be overwhelmed by her fear, her rage, and this nausea rising from deep inside. It was her job, her very being: neither a surgeon nor a soldier could let himself lose control in a crisis, he ought to react as quickly as possible, with other lives at stake. And not only was Elianor a medical doctor, but also a former member of the Vanguard. Which probably had saved her life, tonight, and that of the other medics in the elevator as well. But which had cost Dr Eddings’ life.
Then she had been taken into quarantine. The burning-hot shower, the acrid smell of the hospital soap on every inch of her body, to be as sure as possible she wouldn’t be contaminated by Eddings’s legion virus. The prick of the needle, when the nurse drew some blood for drug testing. This had also retarded the process of realizing her act, the inevitable insight from the shock of having killed Eddings in self-defense. Meanwhile her adrenaline faded away, Elianor was sinking deep into her psyche.
Despite her military years, Elianor had never killed before. And what if… what if she should be crazy? What if Eddings morphing into that monster, and the psionic menace, should only have been hallucinations? She shut her eyes even tighter, her fists balled on the sheets, trying to silence the insect humming inside her: what if… what if… Though, she could still hear Eddings: ~You will die… All corporeals will die… ~
The menace, those marble-like blue eyes –sign of a Hiver possession– made her switch into Vanguard’s mode. A tide of anger and determination had swept her fear; she would not die. She wouldn’t let down her husband and their daughter. She would fight for them, for the medics stuck with her inside that elevator, for herself. For her own pride. So, she took a scalpel, and stabbed the Thing. In cold blood. To kill.
Killing… and what if… Elianor coiled herself a bit more in the bed, eyes growing wet. A police car’s siren could be heard distinctly down on the street. Probably more cops to give a hand to the hospital’s security guard that was keeping watch at her door. Tomorrow, she will have to face them, justify herself. Again, put on a mask, a shield, contain herself to explain she only did her duty. Of which, she wasn’t sure, not sure at all. But before she’d admit that in front of anyone…
And again, that malicious, tiny insect inside her brain: what if… what if… His humming more bitter than Provence crickets’s buzz, more persistent, more painful than the stab in her leg the day it got burned: what if… what if…
Now, Elianor was crying her heart out, shrunk into fetal position in the bed, all her facades forged for more than ten years crumbled, vanquished. She’d have to get used to it. She may have killed Eddings but, in return, he had killed something in her. And, in its place, there was now that insect with which she’d have to live forever, with no one to share her pain. What if…
An insect called remorse. What if… what if…
What if…
What if…