Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
On and on the beeping continued, although what it represented Tamara was unsure. There were other noises, too. A man and a woman exchanging a few words she could not understand. Fading footsteps, then a heavy door closing. The clinking of glass, the thud of objects clattering together in a drawer. A loud ripping sound close to her ear.
Without warning Tamara felt a pressure on both her eyelids, and they were raised up. She saw the brief change from dark to light, but could make out no other shapes before the lids were smoothed back down.
Her mind tried to process where she was, what she had been doing, without success. She could tell that she was on her back and that all her limbs felt heavy as if covered in too many blankets.
Eventually she was able to open her eyes on her own and the surgical suite came into view. The large overhead lights were partially dimmed now, but seeing them brought on a vague sense of horror and uncertainty. She began to panic, twisting uncomfortably beneath the sheets.
"Wha-what?"
The beeping noise grew somewhat faster, creating a negative feedback loop to her rising panic.
"No no, calm down." The doctor was at her side in an instant. "Everything is fine."
When she continued to squirm, he held one arm down at her side, while the other he placed on her chest over the sheet.
"You just woke up from the anesthesia," he continued. "It can be disorienting."
He began to massage her sternum with her own palm. Feeling the firm pressure and warming sensation she slowly began to relax, her breathing settling back into a normal rhythm. With each moment more of the situation was becoming clear, and she managed to calm before a full blown panic attack could take hold.
"You had a procedure – remember? – and it went very well."
"Oh," she said, her eyes blinking up at his tinted lenses briefly before they darted back to stare at the ceiling and surgical lights.
Now she could remember everything that had happened up until the moment she had gone unconscious and, thinking back, it hadn't been the worst experience in the world. Probably the scariest moment had been when her patient gown had been opened in the front and sensors stickered onto her chest, but they were painless and only used to monitor vitals. Dok usually mentioned what he was going to do just before doing it, but that was one of the times he had not.
As promised, the doctor had only restrained her wrist with a simple buckle and strap closure before he put the IV into her arm. The woman with the literary name had been very reassuring throughout, going so far as to squeeze Tamara's hand to distract her while the doctor inserted a urinary catheter. Sometimes she would talk distractedly about other topics like music, but she never seemed to require a response, which Tamara would have been too nervous to offer, anyway. Listening to the strange woman's sing-song voice had been somewhat soothing, in a way.
Seeing that she had calmed completely, the doctor released both of her arms. He took a step back, regarding her quietly until he saw that he had her attention again.
"Now then, how are you feeling?"
The heart rate monitor was silent and dark now.
After the surgery, Tamara had abdominal soreness and a large bandage covering a tender spot on one of her breasts, but otherwise there seemed to be no ill effects. The doctor even went out of his way to ask about her pain over the next few days and to keep her feeling fully functional.
After a few more nights in the patient room, along with another full physical exam, she was finally dismissed from the lab until such time as Dok would need her again.
Her reward for participation was actually quite surprising: she was given a job. Heinrich began taking her to the base's kitchen, where she spent six to eight hours each day. The only exception was Sunday, when she studied the German-English dictionary and other language books in her room at Dok's request.
At first she had been worried that she was trading one torturous routine for another, but she found that staying busy in this way did wonders for her mood and outlook. The repetitive tasks of plating food, cleaning tables, and washing dishes allowed her to work out any frustrations in a manner that would not land her in trouble. Tackling dirt and putting things in order became a small pleasure, something to focus on that wasn't so dark and depressing as her thoughts had been for months. She may have been feeding and cleaning up for Nazis, but if she could just imagine they were regular people who needed to eat, then it made for a mostly wholesome occupation.
The best part was that she now had unlimited access to the freshest coffee that Brazil could produce. Dok had warned her on their last day together not to overindulge or he would find out. So she sipped it by the tablespoon infrequently throughout the day to keep her energy and her spirits up.
She wasn't spending much of her time alone anymore, but the company left a lot to be desired. Though the soldiers who ate in the mess hall had strict routines and mostly kept to themselves, there were almost always one or two brief interactions each week that she wished were avoidable. No one ever touched her, but she had learned enough German by now that she was picking up on a few inappropriate remarks that were directed towards her. Pretending she didn't understand seemed to result in the best outcome of eventually being left alone. If they ever spoke English at her, she just continued working and did not engage unless absolutely necessary.
"Hallo, Schnucki. How are you today?"
The soldier and his companions laughed. By his tone it sounded like he was trying to talk to a cute dog.
Tamara didn't react, but kept her eyes down and continued carrying the stack of dirtied trays. Her dictionary didn't have a definition for Schnucki, though she had heard the word used several times now. All she could hope was that it represented a term of endearment rather than a foul name for a woman, although neither was ideal, in her opinion.
She really wanted to ask Heinrich about it, but felt much too embarrassed to bring up the situation. He did continue to help her with her German as they walked together, usually a word or short phrase at a time. He didn't seem to mind, plus it made those repetitive trips so much less awkward.
Despite a raging curiosity, the question of how his stutter could be the doctor's fault was another topic that she couldn't bring herself to ask about. He wasn't her friend, after all, but as long as their relationship was amicable she saw no reason to risk throwing a wrench into it.
A friend would have been nice, though. Tamara often wondered what he really thought about her, having been forced into this role of caretaker that was probably beneath him.
Since her visits to Roger were fewer now, Tamara didn't waste their precious time together practicing her German and instead tried to talk with him about happier times and help him invent new games to play during her long absences. She never refused him a shoulder or neck rub if he asked for it, either. His leg continued to heal and with it, her self-hatred about what had happened. Even though they never discussed the phone calls, she felt there was a mutual understanding that he would have done the same thing in her place, and that he held no grudge against her in trying to have them rescued.
There was one day, though, when Roger was not waiting anxiously to greet her. Instead he was leaning against the corner of the cell with one of the hardcover books in hand, looking kind of lost.
Tamara noticed his unusual body language right away, along with the smell of bleach.
"Have you been doing some fall cleaning in here?"
He didn't respond, did not even tilt his head in her direction.
"Hey Spaceman," she said more cheerfully than she felt. "Are you gonna teach me more about those X-wings?"
"Not today, Tamara."
Calling her Tamara to her face instead of Tammy was definitely a sign that something was seriously wrong.
"Do you just want me to leave then?" She regretted the words the instant they left her mouth.
"I don't know what I want," he growled. "Wait a minute, yes I do. I want to get out of this hellhole any way that I can!" He wound up his arm, then threw the book as hard as he could. It hit the opposite concrete wall with a violent smack then fell open-faced onto the floor.
"Roger…" she pleaded, glancing around to see if anyone had heard his raised voice.
"You don't know, Tamara. You don't know what they're doing."
"Calm down, please! Just tell me what's wrong."
His shoulders slumped immediately and he shook his head. "I can't put you through that."
"You said we were going to get through this together, remember? You have to tell me, no matter how hard it is."
Roger just kept shaking his head.
"I can't. Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. Just forget I said anything at all." He picked up the book and, sitting down on the edge of his cot, began smoothing out the folds and bent pages. She was relieved to see that it wasn't the New Testament he had been mistreating in his anger.
Maybe I should have just told her. She's going to find out eventually, Roger thought unhappily, later that day.
But it was still so fresh, the memories gnawing at his mind. Even the overwhelming scent of cleaning agents couldn't keep him from remembering how it had smelled.
The doctor be damned!
Normally Roger looked forward to the weekend, because aside from Tamara's visits, it was the time he was most likely to have other company. A check-up from a grumpy Dok was better than staring at the wall, after all.
Also, sometimes there were fights and a few soldiers who needed a cool-down period or time to dry out from too much revelry. Drunk soldiers made for good, sometimes hilarious conversation and he was almost always able to glean little tidbits of information about the running of Millennium. It was usually an amusing time.
Except for yesterday when they had dragged in a damaged man.
His first clue that something was off had been the sheer number of soldiers accompanying the man, which was odd as he was unconscious anyway. The front of his uniform was covered in blood, which Roger took as a very bad sign. They carried him to the cell kitty-corner from Roger, the one with chains on the walls, then left two men to watch him. Roger was sickened by the conversation the guards had, who ignored him and seemed unaware that he could understand their German.
"Does this happen often?"
"Not very, maybe twice before."
"Damn! I guess all you can do is hope it doesn't happen to you, right?"
"Dok says there's a chance he'll snap out of it by morning, but if not, that son-of-a-bitch is a goner. He nearly killed his commanding officer."
"Attacked another vampire? Damn... Shit, I need a cigarette. Why are they having us day shift watch him anyway?"
"Oh, I'm sure that's on purpose. There's always a reason for everything that madman does."
Roger did not sleep that night. At some point the chained man had woken up, and whatever was wrong with him, he was not snapping out of it. Instead he threw himself against the shackles which held him to the wall, howling like a deranged person. His words were mostly unintelligible except for the word "blut," which he repeated regularly, by turns sounding like he was begging or making a demand. The guards seemed just as perturbed as Roger was.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"Agreed. But hey, it's the risk you take in exchange for immortality."
"Well, I'm not too high on the list. Maybe Dok can work out all the kinks before it's my turn."
The man responsible arrived at the prison very early in the morning to assess the situation. He was holding a clipboard as he stopped to talk to Roger first briefly.
"How's your leg today?"
"It feels fine." Another gruesome-sounding scream for blood startled him, and his eyes darted in the direction of the other occupied cell.
"What's going on, Herr Doktor?" He made no attempt to hide the derision in his voice as he emphasized the doctor's full title.
"Nothing that concerns you. And I would appreciate it if you didn't mention any of this to her. I can make your life miserable without using violence."
Roger narrowed his eyes. "You're actually threatening me?"
"Just leave her out of it!" Dok snapped. "She doesn't need any additional stress right now."
With that he walked over to see what was going on with his disturbed patient.
It didn't take any time at all for the doctor to diagnose the situation. Roger thought he was being awfully calm and casual about the whole affair. Was it actually possible that he was quite used to this sort of horrible scene?
Dok provided the two soldiers with ammunition from a small box he withdrew from a pocket of his stained lab coat. He then positioned himself slightly to the side, with the two soldiers standing squarely in front of the cell.
"One at a time, on my signal you will aim for the head. Do not anticipate me! I want to take this opportunity to observe."
In retrospect, this was the moment that Roger wished he had turned away and covered his head with his blanket. Instead he had forced himself to observe every moment of the horror as the two soldiers, by turns, shot the screaming man.
"Again."
Another gunshot.
"Aim better or we're going to be here all morning."
Another gunshot.
"Again."
The screams became more garbled.
"Interesting." Dok made a note on his clipboard. "And again."
The miserable creature began to quiet.
"Once more should be sufficient."
At last the poor wretch was rendered silent, put out of its misery for good.
"Thank you for your help today, gentlemen. I'll collect your remaining ammunition. Please report to your immediate superior and have someone from the day shift sent to clean up. Day shift only, are we clear on that?"
"Jawohl, Herr Doktor," one of them said quietly.
The two soldiers departed, their weapons now holstered. The doctor remained silently in front of the cell that was now spattered full of blood, brains, and the stench of death. His teeth were clamped down onto his knuckle as he considered the carnage thoughtfully.
Roger began to retch onto the floor, and by the time he was able to stop the doctor was nowhere to be seen.