Their sedan careened over the paved city roads with a speed that bordered on illegal. The buffering of the wind against the car windows suspended Mia's shocked and angry silence in white noise. She only broke it in sporadic phrases, like an internal alarm reminding her that "this is insane." Her eyes focused on the road, wide and cloudy. Her hands gripped the wheel and wrung the interior like a soggy washcloth. "This is insane."
"I had to be sure," he insisted through gritted teeth.
"This is insane," Mia said to herself, eyes fixated on something too distant to see. It was all she'd said for the past fifteen minutes. She gave a nervous chuckle and her eyes remained glassy. "This is insane."
"Mia, stop."
She shrugged. "This is insane."
Ethan gripped the dish towel tighter to his right arm. He bit his tongue to keep back the frustration and pain that welled inside him. He hardly had the energy to reason with her. The adrenaline was wearing off now. The dish towel grew heavier by the minute, until the blood that soaked it dripped thickly on his untucked shirttails.
"This is insane," she muttered again, buzzing past her lips and hiding under the white noise. "This is-"
"I know!" he snapped. "Jesus, I know, all right? You don't have to keep saying it."
"What happened, Ethan?" The question fell out like a demand. "For weeks everything is okay. Normal, even. Then I find you with a knife in your arm-" her voice broke into a higher register and she let the tension go in a micromanaged sigh.
Ethan waited for her nerves to settle before slowly stating "it was an accident."
"It wasn't," she retorted abruptly, pumping the brake a little too hard as the light in at the intersection turned red. She adjusted her hands on the wheel and pushed her eyebrows up, speaking with a profound resignation: "I just want the truth. I can't apologize forever."
His voice was low like tires rolling slowly over gravel. "You don't have to."
A pause as long as a heartbeat. "Then why don't you talk to me?"
"I do."
"Then explain!" She erupted. "I'm not stupid, Ethan! You've been hiding something since we restarted together and I'm tired of waiting around until you say it!"
Cars buzzed past the window as the light turned green and Mia lurched the car forward with the same fervor with which she had stopped it. The windshield-shaped square of sunlight turned lazily across their laps, warming their jeans despite the raging AC.
"It was an accident," Ethan resumed, a twinge of embarrassment coloring the iteration.
A protest rose in Mia's conduct.
"I didn't mean for it to go so deep," he resumed, carefully reading her body language. "I was just trying to test something."
The white noise swelled like a zit that needed popping. The longer he left it, the more unbearable it became. The question "test what" hung in the air like a suspended guillotine blade. "I just needed to know- there were some cases that reported powers without influence. Lucas, for example. I just had to be sure."
"And?"
Ethan watched the dish towel as it screamed the answer. He didn't have to lift it in order to visualise the gash that extended along his radius: a clean, slow line, not suffering the rips and tears of eagerness or a dull blade. He made a fist just to feel it smile. "We'll need to reupholster this seat."
Mia turned into the emergency drop off and violently threw the car into park. "You've changed," she stated plainly. "I don't think you need me to tell you so."
"We both have," he replied evenly, delivering the fact as clear and evident. He popped open the car door and set one foot on the asphalt. "You coming in?"
She shook her head. "I need to find a better place to park."
"Alright," he concurred. "See you in a few."
Mia opened her hand with her palm still on the steering wheel before the car door shut with a resounding boom. She watched as he stopped over a storm drain and wrung the dish towel's dripping hem before glancing for witnesses and letting the hospital's automatic doors swallow him whole.
Mia dragged a hand down her face, then dropped it onto the gearshift. She circled the visitor's parking like a thought that circled around her head, looking for a place to stop and finding none. Aimlessly passing endless aisles until she landed in a shady space under a slab of concrete roofing. She checked her mirrors. She could have pulled in straighter. The car idled steadily and she tested the resistance of the brake with absent attention. She checked her mirrors again. It was good enough.
She reached for the ignition and unwound one more thought before twisting the key in her hand sideways. The car shuddered and died, leaving only silence and stillness behind. She looked to the empty seat beside her and the rorschach test that remained there, soaked into the cloth interior, browning at the edges..
The fantasy that she had been living in her head wavered, revealing glimpses of reality from behind the taffeta curtain she'd hung for herself. For as often as she'd just wanted to go home, to a nice house and a loving husband, the struggles of readjusting ached. It had all been so perfect, the way she had planned it in her head. The way she had tried to make those dreams happen, they had all fallen so flat. Three years had passed since the sabotage of the Annabelle. Time didn't stop after her infection prevented her from perceiving it.
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and pursed her lips to a tight seal, keeping her thoughts in the unspoken and unbreathed abstract. She was being foolish, she decided. Three years had long since passed. Neither of them were the same people they had been before. She had been attempted to resurrect something that had died a long time ago. She watched herself in the rear view with eyes that didn't smile when she let out a chuckle. You've fallen into an old habit, she told herself internally, I guess you've gotten good at dealing with zombies. The last word punctured her like a bullet; a sensation she could still easily conjure up. The sick, the unhealthy, the living dead, the haunted, now came so naturally to her. Restart. She hadn't considered the disparity of the word's meanings, nor that she and Ethan would choose definitions that were so different from one another.
Her phone buzzed so violently that it spun around in the cupholder. She jumped in her seat, first hearing the scream of a chainsaw before she saw the light of the screen. The incoming call was a number she didn't recognize. She let it go for a moment, each vibration booming through the plastic vessel, until the unbearable sound overrode her initial startle.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is this Mrs. Mia Winters?"
She cleared her throat and reentered the world outside her head. "Yes, speaking."
"Mia, this is Chris Redfield. Do you have a moment?"
"Yeah, yes." She winced at the accidental colloquialism. "I'm available now."
"Great," he spoke with a professional air that alluded to neither good nor bad news. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm going to try and keep this short. Your papers came across my desk this morning."
The upwards inflection of his last sentence implied he wasn't checking for her understanding. She must have a hundred papers in her file now, and she quickly tried to recount the most important ones. She felt her voice begin to engage for a passive "uh-huh" but breathed it out silently as he continued.
"Needless to say we were surprised to see them, considering everything you had been through already."
Considering everything, the phrase hardly held meaning for her anymore. Her "everything" was an outlier that was relative to nothing. She couldn't be infected again, in fact, his language hardly sounded like it regarded her health. The anticipation made her heart feel like a washing machine.
"But, to beat the enemy, you have to understand the enemy. Your intel and experience make you a very valuable resource."
She held her breath.
"So, congratulations on your conversion," he said warmly. "Welcome to Blue Umbrella. You got the job."
Dying for an exhale, but gasping anyway, she sat up a little straighter. "I got the job?"
Chris chuckled and the sound of a turning page crackled through the phone. "You're damn near overqualified. You know The Connections and how they operate. You have all the intel on the E-series. Not to mention the fact that you applied here shows the type initiative and work ethic you have. Yeah," even he sounded relieved to be delivering good news, "you got the job."
"Wow, thank you," Mia sputtered, she put a hand to her forehead as if it would help her find the words. "Thanks so much for reaching out, I appreciate it. And the opportunity, of course, too. I really look forward to working with you."
"Same to you." He replied, then his tone shifted to one of conclusion. "That's about all I got for you today, but don't hesitate to contact us if you have questions about anything."
After a brief exchange of goodbyes, Mia plopped her phone back into the cupholder and looked at her eyes in the rear view. They were pinched into little arching sunrises, with little rays radiating out by her temples. She basked in the feeling of productivity, in turning her past into something beneficial, for herself and for the good of the many. She felt almost normal, looking her trauma in the face and converting its ugly looks into means for growth.
Then her phone buzzed again. Her feeling of triumph lingered, and she tried not to show it as she pulled around to the hospital entrance. She dragged her hand down her face again, physically pulling the soft smile from her lips as she faced the automatic double doors, where Ethan stood waiting, twenty-two neat black stitches in his arm.