AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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There had been days spent nauseous with her own pain, wondering if she'd die, swimming in darkness and the sounds of others' suffering, alone—and none of it had really prepared Andrea for the solitude that she'd felt since she'd arrived. She wondered if it might even be a new tactic for trying to break her—something they hadn't tried yet. She was accompanied but utterly alone.
They had been told that there would be ample opportunity for "community" building within their new home. The only proof that Andrea had seen of that was the fact that the rolling scroll on the one television channel advertised that they could leave their suggestion for a "Community Name" outside their door with their order forms, dropped through their mail slot with everything else, and they'd be entered into the drawing for the name that would be used for the cluster of homes.
There were supposed to be community meals. They were supposed to be let out of their houses three times a day to commune with people and eat food. At the moment, the thought of it sounded like a vacation. Milton was not very social—he even ate in silence with Andrea and seemed to prefer that she refrain from speaking at all—and so he had their meals delivered to them. Milton, it seemed, was a very important man, and so what he wanted was exactly what happened. Three meals a day came to their door. Andrea only ever saw the person who delivered them. They would knock and, if Milton was home, they'd wait for him to unlock the door with his key and accept the delivery. If he wasn't home, and thus had locked the door from the outside, they would knock and then unlock it themselves to put the delivery inside.
The scrolling news page—Andrea's only connection to the fact that there was an outside world that existed beyond the walls of her new home—told her that there were some "delays" within the community. They would be coming around as soon as they were able and they would discuss, with everyone, their jobs within the community. They would assign people to appointment times to talk with "companions," and they would address other concerns. The scrolling words requested that everyone simply remain patient and know that, eventually, it would be their turn.
Andrea was learning the true meaning of patience. And she was starting to doubt that she would be assigned a job. She was wondering if, having been handed over to Milton as his "wife" or whatever they were being called, she'd simply been forgotten.
She wasn't even sure why Milton wanted her.
Milton worked daily. He was a scientist. He was apparently quite intelligent. He worked for the government—apparently for someone very high up—and he had an important role in the community project. He also had, if Andrea guessed correctly, an important role in other projects that were taking place elsewhere in the great wide world beyond their community. He ate two meals a day with her—breakfast and dinner—and he preferred them to be relatively silent meals. Then he typically spent his extra time in his room, listening to music that she heard drifting out of the door, or in his "office" where she heard nothing beyond the occasional sound of him talking to himself. It was her voice, apparently, that Milton didn't care for.
He liked his privacy, too. The fact that Andrea, on her first night, had hidden in his bathroom had shaken the man up. He'd required them to come and install a heavy lock on his office door. The lock was of the kind of construction that, in order to break it, Andrea would've simply had to resign herself to breaking the door down entirely. He'd had them also install two small locks on his bedroom door and bathroom door that he could lock from the outside with a key. That way, both doors could be locked, just like their front door, both from the inside and the outside. It was a clear message to Andrea that her house practically had the tape line of warring siblings that declared the space "mine" and "yours" but never "ours."
Andrea's room and bathroom had no lock, but no one was exactly trying to enter them either.
Milton wasn't a cruel man. He didn't mistreat her and he didn't make her uncomfortable. Rather, it felt like Andrea was the one that made him uncomfortable. Even a friendly greeting, offered with the hope of stirring up conversation, was met with Milton barely being able to swallow without choking on his tongue. Instead of bringing about the interaction that Andrea hoped for, her attempts to speak to Milton only sent him fleeing quicker to his "space" than usual.
And when Milton was at work? Andrea simply sat, alone, and watched the news scroll by on her television while she wondered what had become of the people she'd known and what life was like for the others within the community. She didn't know if Michonne was even there still. She didn't know who she might have ended up with. She didn't know if she even remembered her or thought of her. But she had plenty of time to think about it all while suffering from the worst boredom she'd ever known in her entire life. To ease that boredom, though it hadn't helped much, she'd submitted twenty five different names for the community and she watched the scroll constantly, waiting for the name announcement, in the same way that gambling addicts probably had once waited to find out if their ship had come in and they'd won the lottery. It would be some sign that she was still alive and that, no matter how distantly removed, other people knew that too.
When there was a knock on the door, Andrea checked the clock above their fireplace—an addition to their home that had never been used. It wasn't time for lunch. Her heart skipped a beat as she dared to let herself get excited. They were coming to talk to her. They were going to give her a job. They were going to give her someone to talk to. At this point, she didn't care if it was a psychiatrist coming to judge her possible insanity—she'd take anyone who wanted to engage in conversation.
Andrea got up and ran to do the door like she might open it, but she couldn't open it. It was locked from the outside. Milton had locked her in when he'd left for work.
"Come in?" Andrea called at the door, hoping the person outside realized that she, as still technically a prisoner though now a prisoner in her home, could do nothing more to grant them access.
"I'm coming in," a woman's voice responded. Andrea might have rolled her eyes at the announcement, but she was too excited about the possibility of actually having some kind of company. She stepped back from the door, as she was required to do, and waited a short distance away. The woman opened the door and stuck her head in instead of sliding in a box or offering an arm through first with bags that held their "carry out" plates. "Hello?" She asked. "Hi!" She said when she noticed Andrea. She was, perhaps, the most enthusiastic person that Andrea had seen there—and something about her was at least vaguely familiar. "You're Andrea?"
Andrea only then realized that, probably from having spent so much time in Milton's company, she'd forgotten to speak at all. She was also, still, a little unaccustomed to hearing her actual name muttered by anyone she wasn't intimately acquainted with.
"Andrea," Andrea said. "I'm Andrea. You're—here to give me a job?"
The woman frowned. She shook her head gently.
"Can I come in?" She asked. "I don't want to invade your space. It'll only be for a few minutes..."
"Please!" Andrea said, almost jumping at the opportunity to invite the woman in. The offer was on the table, even though the woman didn't actually need it at all, and she stepped inside. She was wearing what Andrea was starting to assume was the customary "uniform" of anyone who worked in the community but wasn't an officer. It identified her, really, as simply a superior. She was an authority figure, regardless of her role. "You could sit. The table. The couch. That—chair is pretty comfortable."
"I won't be here that long," the woman said. "I'm from the Med Service with the Clinic here?" Andrea nodded her understanding and tried to hide her disappointment that she wasn't going to be keeping this person for a while. "I'm just coming around to ask a few questions and drop off a few helpful items?" Andrea nodded again. "Is there something wrong, Andrea?" Andrea quickly shook her head.
"If you're not going to sit," Andrea said, gesturing toward her own table, "do you mind if I do?"
"Not at all," the woman responded. "You're with Mr. Mamet," the woman continued. She produced, from the bag she was carrying, a yellow legal pad. She began to read from it, then, and Andrea realized where she knew her from. The woman had been part of their introductory training or whatever they'd called the meetings. She was the woman who seemed to prefer to stick to her "script". "Is everything going well? With your relationship with Mr. Mamet?" She looked at Andrea. It was Andrea's turn to speak.
Andrea nodded. There was no need in saying that things weren't going well. There was no telling where she went from here. If she said that they weren't going well, especially with a man like Milton who couldn't be difficult to get along with if she never even saw him, then she might be considered defective. Failure at this could very well be her ticket out of here—and she had no idea where the bus stopped when it left Pleasantville.
"Fine," she said. She forced some fake enthusiasm. "Great. It's—really going great."
The woman smiled and dug around in her bag for a pencil. She jotted something down on the yellow legal pad. Apparently her questions and information were all laid out there for her.
"Are you sure you won't sit?" Andrea asked. "Even—for a minute?"
The woman considered it, but then she accepted the offered seat and settled across the table from Andrea. Immediately Andrea felt like there was less tension in the room. There was something about sitting at a table together that simply felt more intimate than standing and keeping their distance from one another.
"It's really wonderful that your relationship is going so well," the woman said, looking over her pad. "It stirred up a little concern when Mr. Mamet chose your file...but...things worked out and that's what we're wanting to see."
"Chose my file?" Andrea asked. The woman looked at her with the immediate expression of someone caught with their hand in a mouse trap. Maybe she preferred going from a script because deviating from one left too much of a margin for error. "Milton chose me out of a line-up." The woman didn't respond. She was thinking, but she didn't think too quickly. "He knew before I even got there that he'd choose me?"
The woman sighed. She glanced around and then her eyes settled on Andrea again.
"Look," she said, "you're an intelligent woman. I'm sure of that. You have to know that you haven't always had the best reputation. I've done medical work for you before—injuries you could've avoided. But you chose not to." Andrea's stomach turned a little. The woman was being frank with her. She was being honest with her. It was unnerving because it was something they certainly weren't used to any longer. "I can't say more—and please don't ask me to. Mr. Mamet chose you because he thought you'd be the best fit for the role."
Andrea swallowed and nodded both her understanding and the agreement that she wouldn't ask for more—no matter how desperately she wanted to. She hadn't been on her best behavior before, perhaps, but she had a feeling that she was going to be required to watch herself a little more now.
"What else do you need to know?" Andrea asked when she found her voice.
The woman's eyes dropped back to her legal pad.
"It's early, and it's a long shot, but do you have any reason to believe that you might be pregnant?" The woman asked. She looked at Andrea again. "You've had a child so you know a little about how your body responds. Any symptoms? Anything at all?"
Andrea could've told her that it was even more of long shot than she imagined, but she didn't. She simply shook her head. The woman nodded in response and went through her bag on the floor before she produced a plastic bag that she passed to Andrea across the top of the table.
"In case you need any help," the woman said. "There are ovulation tests. Pregnancy tests. And—I'm not asking all the questions, but if he should need some help? The blue pills will—kick things up a notch." Andrea looked into the bag. She knew she wasn't pregnant. There was no way that she possibly could be. Though she might've convinced herself, at that moment, that she was. Her stomach was twisting in knots and she feared she might get sick before the woman left her alone with her solitude. "We're just trying to move things alone and Mr. Mamet is particularly anxious to—you know—get things started."
Andrea wondered if Mr. Mamet had any idea where babies came from. Simply coexisting in a house wasn't going to have them crawling in offspring any time soon. She swallowed back her thoughts, though, for the time being.
"Thank you for these," Andrea said, not knowing what else to say to the woman. She got a nod in response.
"Mr. Mamet has an open line," the woman said. "The minute that you have even one positive test? I want you to call the clinic. We want to know immediately. Even if—you have any questions or concerns? Or you just need—more of anything? Don't hesitate to contact us. We're here to help you out in any way that we can. Mr. Mamet has requested the best attention that we've got to give to the matter."
Andrea nodded her understanding to the woman. She would save her questions—because she simply didn't know who to trust here—but Milton was going to talk to her if she had to tie him to the chair and force him to stay in one place.
"Is there anything that you need?" The woman asked. "Anything that I can do to—maybe help the process along?"
Andrea swallowed and shook her head. There was nothing the woman could do at all.
"I do have some—questions," Andrea said. "If I'm allowed..."
"Of course," the woman said, interrupting her. "I'll answer anything I can."
"If I have a baby?" Andrea asked. "Can you promise me that—it's mine? I get to—keep it? No one's coming to take it away in the middle of the night or anything?"
The woman's face fell slightly. Her brow furrowed.
"As long as parents are deemed suitable? Children aren't being harmed? You'll keep your children," the woman said. Andrea nodded her acceptance.
"You're sure of that?" Andrea asked.
"It's one of the main principles on which Wave Thirty Three is built," the woman responded.
Andrea sucked in a breath.
"Do you know when—I can get a job?" Andrea asked.
"That's not my area," the woman said, shaking her head. "I know that they're working on it, but I really couldn't tell you more than that. Why? Is there—something you need?"
Andrea nodded.
"Yeah," she responded. "I think—it would just help if I could get out of this house a little bit. I'm—we're always locked up. Closed in. It leaves a lot of time to just think. And that means overthinking and..."
"And you think that it might be affecting things?" The woman asked.
Sure, I'll take that.
Andrea knew better than to say what she was thinking.
"I don't know if it's an old wives' tale or if...but I certainly think that a little distraction would help everyone—would help me—relax. And Milton—and I—we just really, really want things to go as...as smoothly as possible. As quickly as possible. And I think just distracting myself and relaxing? It could help," Andrea said.
The woman smiled at her and reached a hand across the table. She touched Andrea's hand—brushed her thumb against it. It was the first affectionate touch that Andrea had felt in a while. She turned her hand and took the woman's hand in her fingers. She was grateful that she didn't pull away—she accepted the gesture as nothing more than friendly affection—affection shared by humans.
"Some of that is just old wives' tales and mumbo jumbo," the woman said. "But there's some truth to it too. Relaxing? It certainly can't hurt. See if what I gave you helps too. Don't worry about the time—it'll happen when it's supposed to happen. Let me know the moment that you—even suspect anything. And in the meantime? I'll see if I can't talk to someone. The key to this project is building families, and we want to be sure that the families we're building? We want them to be happy families."
