Chapter 4: Recovery
She and Sam used each other for support as they ascended the stairs back into the kitchen. Ginger turned on the lights, which illuminated the blood all over the floor. Mary looked quickly around at her and she shut them off immediately.
"We can't take it immediately, we have to wait until these all heal – What's wrong with your arm?" She was looking at Sam, who was holding his right arm carefully.
"Hm? Oh, it's just, it hurts," he lied. Together they walked over to the table. Knowing that 'it hurts' would not be a valid excuse to get Mary off his case, Sam took off his blood-soaked hoodie and let it drop to the floor. Mary looked it over, then very gently let her fingertips touch the injury.
"Once these are healed and we've had the cure, we need to change and get the hell out of here. Hey Bridget, you're totally a hero and all because without you she'd have never gotten that shit and we'd still be down there, but can you go get something to clean us all up. A washcloth or something?" Mary said. Bridget nodded and left the room.
"The monkshood," Sam said. Mary stood up and walked across the room, noticing as she did so that the adrenaline seemed to be wearing off and the pain was returning to her injuries, though they were healing. She knelt down, collected the plants, the alcohol, the bowl and spoon.
Mary returned to the kitchen as Bridget came back in. "Can you mix this while we get cleaned up?" Mary asked. Bridget nodded, set the towels on the table and took the monkshood supplies. Mary picked up the towels and returned to the table, next to Sam.
"Unless we all want to share that needle, we need more syringes." He stood up and moved toward the sink.
"I can go back," Ginger said quietly. Mary looked around at her. She wasn't entirely drenched in blood as the rest of them were. Her face and hands needed to be cleaned but that was easy, and she was cured. Still, Mary didn't think it would be a good idea for her to go alone. She and Sam couldn't possibly go anywhere, even on Halloween; they smelled like blood, and that would terrify people and possibly get Sam and herself into trouble. Bridget still carried the infection, but it wouldn't take full effect until next month, and she like her sister, could clean herself up in a matter of minutes.
"Take Bridget with you," Mary said, stepping to the sink as Sam moved away. She wiped her hands clean. "We can finish mixing that and have it ready by the time you two get back." Ginger looked at Mary, whose face was buried in her warm towel, but Bridget picked up a towel and threw it to her.
"Clean up," she told her, sounding imperative. "We'll go get the other syringes, come back here, clean then off and cure the rest of us." Still glaring, Ginger approached the sink to run water over her towel.
"We won't do anything Ginger," Mary assured her, "We're going to get cleaned up and make that monkshood shit. That's all."
"Then why are you kicking her out?" Ginger said, turning quickly to face Mary.
"Jesus, you're just determined not to like me. I'm not kicking her out, it's just better if none of us goes anywhere alone. Who knows what could happen?"
"Why not you or Sam then?" Ginger argued, wiping blood off her hands.
"Are you fucking kidding me? Open your eyes Fitzgerald! We are covered in blood! Halloween or not, being covered in blood is not okay. You two can clean up, go and come back before Sam and I have time to get all this off. We should get that stuff in us the minute these heal." Mary indicated the wounds she and Sam had obtained in the past 20 minutes. Ginger still glared at her, though she held the towel up to her face, wiping away Mary's and Sam's blood. "Go," Mary said, the second the Fitzgerald sisters were clean enough to pass as wearing Halloween costumes. Bridget was first to move, but Ginger followed closely, leaving Sam and Mary alone.
"Make sure your hands are clean," Sam said, reminding Mary of all the times they had made these elixirs out of…out of whatever. Mary ran them under cold water, washed them clean, cleaner than they had been in a long time, Sam was beside her.
They turned together, silently almost, back to the island, where Bridget had been grinding up the buds of the monkshood. "You remember – ," Sam asked.
Mary laughed, a genuine, human laugh, the first since the last – no, second to last – time she had seen Sam. "Of course I remember." It was an odd thing to remember, and probably would have been a bad thing outside of the bond those two shared. "I haven't forgotten anything Sam."
"I'm sorry," he said and Mary knew immediately that he was referring to the last time they had seen each other.
"Oh shit," she breathed, "that isn't what I meant. I just…I…I don't know, I just remember us, even since junior high – ,"
"You didn't have to come back," he said quietly, pouring the alcohol into the white bowl.
"What?" she asked, disbelieving. Had he thought she wouldn't come back? "Of course I had to come back – ,"
"Why?" he asked, very quickly. Mary looked at him intently. "I didn't help you."
"I was not going to let her kill you," her voice low, but strong. Both of them had stopped work with the monkshood. "You're my Sam," she stopped a second, trying to think of how to explain. "I didn't stay away because I didn't want to see you. I stayed away because I didn't want to hurt anyone."
"I believed Bridget, when she told me what she thought I had hit. I believed her because, I remembered what you had showed to me, of course I hoped to God it wasn't you I had hit. And then, Bridget told me that she was the one who was infected, but she looked normal, eyes, teeth, nails…and then I met Ginger, and she reminded me of you, all that stuff you showed me, I saw it in her."
"See?" Mary said, "It all worked out."
"Touching," said Ginger's constantly sarcastic voice.
"Hey! It's our flesh-eating former-werewolf pal Ginger!" Mary teased her, walking around the counter, closer to the sisters Fitzgerald. "And her half-crazy baby sister Bridget! I only tease you 'cause I like you," she added, "unless you're Ginger."
"Here's your shit." Ginger tossed two syringes to Mary, who caught them both, feeling the needle of one stick into her palm.
"Ow! What the hell, no caps?"
"I don't like you that much." Mary snorted with laughter as she returned to the other side of the counter. She saw that Sam had already added the butt of his cigarette to the mix as she set the syringes down on the counter. Bridget approached the counter, holding a syringe for herself. Sam filled the first syringe, tapped it with his finger and handed it to Mary. Then he took Bridget's, filled it, tapped it and returned it to her. There wasn't a lot left in the container, but he put the rest in his syringe, tapped it and then looked around and Bridget and Mary.
"Me first," Mary said, "Nobody else take this until I wake up okay?" Sam and Bridget nodded and Mary sat down on the floor behind the counter. She put the needle to the crook of her elbow, feeling a vein pulse there.
"Wait," Sam stopped her and knelt on the floor beside her. He pulled the neck of her shirt aside and examined the bite marks there. She had cleaned the off as best as she could with her towel, and they were no longer bleeding. When Sam he touched the formerly deep marks, she did not flinch. "You're not bleeding anymore."
"I figure this stuff ought to take enough time for these to heal fully." She put a hand on the back of her head, trying to make the movement casual, giving no reason for her movement, but Sam remembered.
"From the counter over there?" Mary nodded, "is it close to healed?" she nodded again.
She exhaled and poked the needle under her skin. She had never liked injections, prescription or not, legal or not, they had always bothered her. Not now though, which was something; next to the pain Ginger's fangs and claws had caused her, the thin metal tube that was the needle felt like…well…nothing. She pushed the syringe down, forcing the solution under her skin.
AN: so there's one more chapter after this, but if you guys want to know what happens to them all after that, let me know and I can do it. I'm abroad right now, trying to learn a second language so I should really be on the computer too much, but I can try to do something
I always forget these, Disclaimer: I own nothing, except my brain and I guess Mary is my character but w/e.