How Heather Never Saw Roger
"Is there anything you want before we get started," the woman asked her with the tired smile of someone who was still trying to be helpful even though they had had variations on the same conversation over and over again all day long.
"I'd really like to go home," Heather told her giving a small smile in answer to the woman's own expression.
"Isn't your home some sort of a war zone right now?" The woman lifted an eyebrow (Heather noticed that her nametag read Anne).
"I don't know," Heather admitted. "Nobody will tell me anything."
"Well, you can hardly consider yourself high up on the need to know chain when it comes to military operations, can you?" Anne told her sounding as if she might be getting a little testy. Heather could not really blame her for that. Complaints about a lack of information were probably what Anne spent most of her day listening to from the people who came through her station to be registered. It was not Anne's fault that she did not have more to tell them. The momentarily cross expression lifted from Anne's face as the tired smile returned. "How about we start with some water? Then, we'll get you all logged into the system."
Heather nodded her head, and Anne bustled out of her cubicle only to return a few seconds later with a bottle of water which she placed on the desk that rested between them. She, obviously, had not needed to travel very far to retrieve it. Heather spent the time while Anne was getting situated to do the math in her head. There were easily twelve cubicles (possibly fifteen as she could not tell for sure whether there was another row behind the last partition) like Anne's in the space. There were a steady stream of people being directed to one or another of them (and had been for the whole time that Heather had been waiting in the line outside which she was guessing had been about two hours). That was a lot of people going through (especially as she had heard one of the people with a walkie talkie keeping an eye on the line report in from "center seven."
The room in which she found herself sitting was one that she strongly suspected had once been the exercise room of the once upon a time hotel that she had been sent to for what the man who had escorted her referred to as "processing." The word left an uneasy feeling in the pit of Heather's stomach, but she supposed that that might have been because she was still feeling so out of sorts about everything that had happened in New Bern. She shuddered involuntarily. The people at the base where she woke had not been able to tell her anything about Nicole or Erin. They could only tell her that she had been found injured by a patrol group and brought in alone. She did not want to know what that meant, but she did.
"Spelling," Anne was saying across from her (and Heather got the distinct impression that she was giving her that prompt for the second time).
She dutifully rattled off the appropriate spelling for her last name as well as the answers to all the other questions that Anne had for her (age, place of residence, location of last driver's license renewal, etc.). There was not anything out of the ordinary about any of it, but there was still something about the click of the keys as Anne entered all of the answers into Heather's electronic file that failed to assist the uneasiness that she just could not seem to shake.
She would not have been able to voice a reason for it, and she most definitely would not be trying to voice her apprehension to anyone here in any case. They had really been nothing but nice to her from the moment she had woken. From the medics in the infirmary to the officers at the base, there was not a single person who had not tried to reassure her that she was safe now. Even Anne was trying her best to be pleasant and understanding when she had every reason to be tired and crabby.
Heather had just been unable to shake the sense of something being deeply wrong from the moment that she had seen the flag flying over the base as the soldiers began to move out to intercede in the coming bloodshed between New Bern and Jericho.
"You did say Jericho, Kansas, didn't you?" Anne was asking as she looked at her screen.
"Yes," Heather answered breaking away from her internal pondering of whether or not the fighting would have already started by the time they had gotten there.
"Well, you may not be able to go home yet," Anne told her with a smile that seemed to have been kicked up a notch in its intensity (genuine, Heather realized, rather than the kindly meant polite one that she had been giving her since she had sat down). "But, I may be able to give you a little piece of home."
Heather blinked at her in confusion.
"Tell me, dear; did you happen to know a Roger Hammond back in that little town of yours?"
(!) (!) (!)
It was not until the next morning that Heather found herself standing in front of what had once been (in the time before the city of Cheyenne had become the seat of the government with its turned to the side flag) the door to a college dorm room (the dorm was now housing for the refugees who were flooding the city).
When she had finally wrapped her head around the name that Anne had told her, she had somehow managed to sputter out (instead of merely saying that she did know Roger) that she was supposed to be the maid of honor at his wedding. Anne had not seemed to think that it was over sharing. She had clicked away happily at her keys and commented that she really enjoyed being able to help things work out so well. She had proceeded to inform Heather that there was a space available in the same housing unit to which Roger was assigned where she could be placed and had been handing Heather her post processing information by the time Heather tried to say anything else.
Her post processing information consisted of an ID, a housing assignment card, what Heather could only term a ration book, and a list of three addresses. Anne explained that her ID should be carried on her person at all times (and strongly suggested that she do the same with her ration book) and that the addresses were places that she should check in with the next day to see about the possibility of work. The term processed still evoked unpleasant connotations in Heather's head, but she could not argue the suitability of the word for what the workers at the center were doing.
Roger, Anne had told her, would be found one floor up from where she would be staying. She was, Anne had mentioned with a pretense of whispering, not strictly supposed to give out such information, but everyone knew how anxious people were to be connected with people that they were missing. Thus, those in her department tried to place people close to each other whenever some sort of a connection could be found.
"We've all been a little out of sorts," the woman had told her making Heather nearly choke on the water she had just taken a sip of before Anne had spoken. "Out of sorts" seemed a "little" inadequate in Heather's opinion. "These little touches help everyone understand that it's all getting better now," she finished.
Heather had been required to wait in another section of the hotel until someone was available to escort her and others who had been assigned to the same general vicinity to the places that all the workers in the building kept referring to as their new homes. Heather found the use of the term a little grating. She wanted to be going home, but she was, instead, being sent off to a repurposed dorm room that she would be sharing with a middle aged woman who had greeted her with nothing more than a "didn't figure that they would let me keep the place to myself for very long" before rolling over and going back to sleep (it had been a long day of waiting at processing, and Heather had been the last of her escort's charges to be dropped off only to spend another half hour listening to the housing manager go over the rules and regulations of the housing complex).
It had been pitch black outside by the time she had finally been offered a key and shown to the room that was hers. She could not really blame her roommate for a grumpy response to being woken, and she had done her best to spread out the sheet and blanket that had been a part of the bundle the housing manager had handed her over the bed she had been pointed to in the dark so as not to disturb her further. In truth, she had been too tired to do much of anything else, and the rest of the bundle found a place pushed underneath the bed to be examined later while she kicked off her shoes and curled up on the mattress to try to get some sleep.
Her last thought before she drifted off was that this was not home. This was just a place to sleep until they decided it was safe enough to lift the travel restrictions that had been placed on her part of Kansas.
Roger, however, was a piece of home. She could not, for the life of her, think of any reason for Roger to be here in Cheyenne. He should have been safe (or as safe as anyone in Jericho could be with New Bern looking to slice up the community like a Thanksgiving turkey) at home with Emily. She had been telling herself that from the moment she had been woken by her roommate stirring around and then getting ready at the first sight of dawn. The woman left without saying anything to her, and Heather waited impatiently for the sun to be truly up before she went marching up to knock on what was supposedly Roger's door.
She had been standing there for nearly five minutes (still in the t-shirt and scrub bottoms that the medics had dressed her in back at the base) trying to decide what she would say after Roger answered whenever she finally got around to knocking.
"Whoa," a voice greeted her as the decision was taken out of her hands when the door swung open to reveal a boy who looked to be in his late teens about to run her over where she stood. "Lost?" He asked her. "Dylan's actually down the other end of the hall. I've got to say though that you really shouldn't bother," his voice was one part teasing layered over top one part sincerely meant advice. "He's a lot more trouble than he's worth, and he's not so great about keeping those promises that he's always making."
"Umm . . .," Heather found herself saying. That was a complete departure from any conversation she had been plotting out in her head. "I was actually looking for Roger Hammond?" She tried realizing that she sounded a lot more like she was asking him a question than as if she was explaining her reason for hovering outside of his door.
"Seriously?" The teen asked her. "That's a first," he commented when (unsure of what else she should do) she nodded her head in reply. "Roger," he called over his shoulder into the room in a sing-song voice. "There's a girl here to see you."
"It's too early for your jokes, Jon," a voice (one she definitely recognized as Roger's) answered back sounding half asleep. She heard the sound of some shuffling before another figure appeared in the doorway. "Get to work before you get a citation for being late."
"School's out and I still have to worry about tardies," the boy muttered before making a hand gesture toward where Heather was still standing. "But, really, you have a visitor." Roger, for the first time, actually looked out into the hall.
"Heather?" He stammered sounding as if he half thought that his eyes were playing tricks on him.
"Roger," the teen chided clicking his tongue. "You've been holding out on me. You didn't tell me that you actually knew people." A quick glare from Roger caused him to stop talking.
"It really is you," Heather commented still trying to work her thoughts around to the point that they would not interfere with carrying out a coherent conversation. "I thought they must have made some sort of a mistake when they told me, but you're actually here." She spoke so quickly that she found herself taking a huge breath at the end of her sentence. "But I don't understand," she continued when her lungs were full again. "What happened? How did you get here? Where's Emily?"
A cloud seemed to pass over the man's face.
"Yeah, I'm definitely getting the this is a private conversation vibe here, so I'm just going to take my leave. Heather, was it?" He requested clarification but kept talking before either of the other people standing in the hallway had a chance to reply. "I hope I'll see you around." He took off down the hall at a jog (whether prompted by the sudden awkward atmosphere in the hall or by the fact that he was running late as Roger had earlier implied was something Heather did not make the effort to guess).
"You should come in," Roger told her. "I would say that it's great to see you, but people ending up here usually means that something has gone very, very wrong."
(!) (!) (!)
"You could come with me," she tried again. She did not really believe that this time would prove any more successful that the last four occasions on which she had tried to have the same conversation.
"You know that I can't," he told her sternly. "I'm banished, remember?"
"Things are different now," she kept trying. There was something about the thought of giving in on this without a fight that just did not set right.
"No, Heather, they are not. Nothing has changed the fact that I shot Anderson. Nothing is ever going to change that fact. I got kicked out, and they weren't wrong to do it. How are they supposed to keep order if they let someone who tried to use a hostage situation to force his will on the town have no repercussions?" He gave her a smile that she did not like to see. It was almost pitying. "There's no going back, Heather - not for me. If you think there is for you, then I'm happy for you that you're getting the chance."
"What about Emily?" She insisted.
"What about Emily?" He repeated and that pitying smile was firmly back in place. "The databases will go into town with J&R. She'll be able to look for me if she wants to."
"What are you saying?" She questioned sounding wary of the answer she might be getting.
"That I would appreciate that you don't mention seeing me when you get back to Jericho. I know I don't have any basis of a right to ask that from you, but I'm still asking."
"I don't understand," she insisted.
"I'm gone," he told her with a hint of harshness seeping into his voice. "I'm gone from her world, and I can't come back. The last thing she needs is an upending of whatever she's put back together for herself or to feel like she's got some sort of an obligation to me when I'm never going to be back to where she is."
"But if she looks . . ."
"If she walks up to the J&R station and puts in a people search request on me, then you can tell her anything you like." He smiled at her (a genuine one rather than the pitying facsimile this time). "Don't look so down, Heather. You've been a broken record since day one about how you just want to go home. You're getting your chance. We don't all get that you know. Cheer up. There's a couple dozen people in this building who will never see home again because that home got wiped out of existence. They're building lives here - a new home. I'm doing the same, and I've made my peace with that. Don't go getting all emotional on my behalf." He reached out to draw her into a hug as she sniffled a bit before he held her at arm's length and looked at her with a serious expression. "You be careful," he admonished her. "You saw what the safety assessment for the region said. Things may be calmer, but they aren't anywhere near back to good yet. There are people around who think they have got a reason to be mad at you. Don't do anything else to draw their attention."