Hello lovelies :) Thank you all so much for the follows/favorites/and reviews! I pretty much fangirl over every response I get, haha. Reviews are always helpful, or if you have an idea for the story, just PM me! I always love getting inspiration. Hope you like Chapter 3!
Georgia
-
The shadows crawled around the aging walls. A cold wind brushed through my hair, and I shivered at its bitter touch.
"I'm coming, sweetheart."
The voice echoed ominously in the darkness of the barn and I pulled uselessly against the binds that held me to one of the posts. It couldn't happen. Not again.
"Here I come," it taunted. I pulled harder as tears stung my eyes and the rope cut into my wrists.
It couldn't happen again.
Oh, god.
More struggling.
Lips on my ear whispered "Ready, little girl?"
I woke up to the sound of screaming ringing in my ears, and a hand on my arm.
"Let go!" I yelled, pulling against the darkness that held me under. "No!"
"Eden, you've got to calm down, goddamn it!"
"Let me go!"
"It's Mccoy, you're on the Enterprise!"
I stopped. My heart still raced. My hair stuck to my neck.
I was in bed, in sickbay, with the doctor.
My hands shook as I looked at him.
Echo's not here, I said to myself. He's not here.
"I—I'm—I'm sorry," I whispered.
He let out a long breath and closed his eyes. "Whatever was going on in your head, it must've been terrifying, because you sure as hell scared me."
I pulled my arm out of his grip and placed my hands in my lap. "Sorry I woke you, Sir."
He got up from his sitting position and stared at me, unsure. "Do you need to talk about it?"
I shook my head.
"You want some water?"
I shook my head.
"You want me to get someone? Uhura? Spock?"
I paused. "Don't disturb them."
Neither of us spoke, but he didn't leave like I assumed he would. I guessed that it was in the early hours of the morning; the heavy bags under his eyes told that much. I didn't know why he stayed.
"What happened to you," he asked, finally looking me in the eyes. My focus flickered toward him for a half second. "You weren't always like this. I know you weren't. You're too smart."
Trying not to cry, I bit my tongue down. "I—I—I can't." I shook my head. "I can't talk about it. I can't bring it back."
"Bringing it back will make you heal faster, Eden. Pushing it down doesn't help you in the long run."
"It's helping now," I snapped. I looked back down at my hands. "Sir."
"Stop that. It's Mccoy, alright?"
I nodded obediently. "I'm sorry I woke you. Don't let me keep you up."
"You're not keeping me up, you're my job. Come on now, we'll start with simple questions, okay? Yes or no?"
I nodded. Helpless to the situation.
"You were a slave?"
"Yes."
"You were born on earth, not a slave?"
I nodded. "In America. Alabama."
He smiled to himself, "I'm from Georgia. Look how much we've got in common already."
In all honesty, I very barely remembered where Georgia even was. And he had seemed to hold onto his accent; mine had disappeared very early on.
He started again. "You were taken when you were…nine?"
"Eleven."
"How old are you now?"
"Nineteen."
He played with the hem of the sheets on my bed as he talked. "You were taken by someone named Echo?"
The name struck chills in me, and I felt my head get lighter. "How did you know that."
"You were screaming it in your sleep."
I paused. "He wasn't my first owner, but he was my worst."
The doctor seemed pleasantly surprised that I decided to talk on my own.
"His family didn't know I existed," I continued, stuttering occasionally over the harder parts, "he kept me in their barn. He was a farmer. And he said that if I ever told anyone I was up there he'd kill me, and then he'd go back and kill my family because he knew where they were."
"Surely he couldn't keep you up there all the time,"
"No. Which is why he'd rent me out to people in his village during the day."
His face was grim as he said quietly, "You were the biggest secret in town, weren't you."
I nodded. "It was a game to them, I guess. I wasn't a normal prostitute. They loved the fact that I didn't want them but they wanted me." I added quietly, "That's what I thought you were doing last night."
Somber, he looked up at me. "You know that no one on this ship would ever treat you like that, don't you?
"I don't know. I haven't known anything else in a long time."
My stomach seemed to lurch and I felt my throat get tight. The panic was vibrant in my eyes as I started heaving. "I need—"
The doctor ran to grab a container and brought it up to my lips just before I vomited. I closed my eyes in defeat.
"It's okay. It's alright, it's a lot to deal with." He didn't make a move to touch me in a comforting way, and for that I was grateful. It was enough that he cared to listen.
It was a miracle in itself that he had gotten me to talk.
He got up, replacing the container with a cloth, and handed it to me. "Press it down on your forehead. You'll feel better."
I laid back down and did as he said, feeling myself being pumped with more medication and falling deeper and deeper into sleep.
I thought to tell him goodnight, but was asleep before the words left my lips.
-
"Wake up," I heard a voice say from far off. "Come on, wake up."
My world came whirring back to life. I lifted up my head and opened my eyes, meeting the doctor's.
I shrank back into the coolness of the sheets and stared.
"I have to run an iron count test. Sorry I woke you. And good morning, too."
He moved around the clean, sterile room gracefully, knowing where each and every medical tool resided. As he grasped various things from drawers, I knotted the sheets in my fingers. The air from the vent hit exactly where I was lying, and I felt like I couldn't very well ask them to turn it off.
So I waited, shivering. Both from the cold and from his presence.
Once he finished gathering his things, he set a tray next to my bed. He held a hand out. "Can I have your arm?"
Gingerly, I reached out. He grasped my wrist with his fingers and turned my arm over, revealing the blue veins and some of the bruises. His grip was gentler than I expected, like it wasn't even there. My body, however, reacted like it did to the people who hurt me: my hands shook like leaves.
He looked away from my arm for a moment to look up at me. "Steady now, steady," he said quietly. "Not gonna hurt you."
I nodded. I didn't really trust him yet, but I knew. I couldn't, however, seem to turn off my body's defense systems.
He grasped a cool wipe and ran it along the fold of my elbow. As he worked, I asked in a small voice, "What does that do?"
"Cleans it off. Makes sure no dirt's on the skin before it's exposed."
He got rid of the wipe and reached for a rubbery looking band on his tray. "This keeps the blood flow in your arm…it's gonna be tight, but not awful."
Again he grasped my arm—this time the top of it—and tied the band around it. I grunted quietly but didn't complain. The rubber felt sticky on my skin.
"I have to take a blood sample, so I'm gonna have to prick you, but it won't hurt once it's in there."
I eyed the needle on the tray. I had figured as much. There were other needles in my skin—the IVs—but I hadn't been conscious for those.f
Great.
He loaded the needle in and moved to set it near my arm, but stopped.
"You don't have to look, you know. It helps some people if they don't."
Nodding, I looked over into the darkened hallway. My arm was tensed, worse than before, because now I didn't know when it was coming.
The needle punctured skin and I shut my eyes tightly and hid my face in my neck. I didn't shout, or cry, or do anything that he was expecting.
I just waited.
Careful not to look at the needle lodged in my skin, I looked up at him. He gave me a comforting ghost of a smile. "You're doing better than most people."
My lips were pursed. "Thank you, Sir."
He made a move to correct me on calling him 'sir', but decided against it. As I waited for the tube to fill, I felt his fingertips running gently along the edge of my wrist. It was almost…nice.
"Almost done."
And before he had hardly finished his sentence, he pulled the needle out, and checked the measurement on the tube he had taken.
"Not bad, Eden. You're a better patient than sixty percent of this ship." He moved to put his tools away. "Remind me to tell you about the time Kirk avoided me for three weeks and I had to go give him boosters in the lunch hall."
I laughed quietly.
He gave me a look and said, "There it is. First laugh on the Enterprise."
Blood rushed to my face as I smiled to myself.
"I loaded some more medical journals on the PADD over there. Thought you might wanna go through them, since you finished the others."
I wanted to pose the question of how he had known I finished them, but decided against it. "I will, thank you."
We were beginning to get along.
