Chapter 17 – The IL
Well-known seizure triggers included (but were not limited to) high stress and lack of sleep, and Stevie was supposed to avoid both. Up until the dead started walking, she'd been diligent about letting shit roll off her back and putting herself to bed on time for an uninterrupted eight hours.
However, the last five or so days had been a marathon of little sleep, bad sleep, and no sleep, and she was sure her stress level, not to mention her blood pressure, was appropriate for constant threat of harm and death—i.e., sky fucking high. And that didn't even take into account the uncertain, chaotic, and terrifying weeks before.
It was little wonder that the added exertion of a night spent twitching awake every twenty minutes and forcing herself not to cry—because there was not a goddamn thing to cry about, Sophia was totally fine, Merle wouldn't let anything happen to her, crying accomplished nothing anyway and was a waste of energy and hydration—had the teen waking with a throbbing, pounding, squeezing headache that threatened to become a migraine the second the sun added its influence, which would probably be soon.
Between seizures and migraines, seizures were more dangerous, but Stevie vastly preferred them. At least she got to be unconscious or disoriented for the majority of such episodes. Migraines… They were much rarer for her, praise all the deities who cared to listen, but relentless agony that could not be isolated to words.
She curled into a ball and pressed her palms into her closed eyelids and whimpered, the sound making her white out for a few minutes. Not black out. No, that would've been nicer. White out. As in regrettably and violently cognizant while her brain went haywire, while every nerve and neuron shrieked in tandem.
"Stevie?"
It took her a moment to remember that Carl was there and why, that she hadn't wanted to sleep anywhere near the adults, that she'd found a secure and surprisingly clean panel van and made a nest in the back of it, that Carl as well as Gavin and Hazel had joined her and snoozed soundly while she'd fretted herself literally sick, while Bruno had tried to smother her anxiety with his fluffy bulk, while Daryl had sneakily climbed up top to keep watch.
The important facts: Unlike her seizures, her migraines were not regular or inevitable. Her migraines struck only as a clear sign that she'd pushed herself too hard, and they could be medicated into submission if she headed them off fast enough.
"Stevie? Are you ok?"
Instead of answering the boy, she stifled a groan and held a finger to her lips, and he thankfully understood. When he said nothing more, she breathed a sigh of relief and kicked at her bag. He won the high-stakes charades yet again and carefully climbed over her to unzip the pocket that held her meds.
The noise that the zipper made might as well have carved a furrow straight through her skull. God, it hurts, make it stop, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Carl was a clever kid, and when he did not receive further instruction, he dragged the bag up between them and grabbed her gently by the wrist to guide her hand into the sensibly organized array of pill bottles and boxes. Since her migraines weren't at all common, the meds for them were in the depths of the stash, and although she knew that they were in a cylindrical pill bottle with a child-proof top, that barely narrowed down the available options.
As her other hand maintained pressure on her eyes and blocked out the surely brightening light coming in through the few windows up front, Stevie brandished a bottle and ran her index finger back and forth along the label, hoping to tell Carl to read it to her.
He seemed to get the idea and, blessedly, took the bottle and took a minute to presumably silently search the available info (her name, her DOB, the pharmacy's name, the prescribing doctor's name, the dosing instructions, etc.) before whispering a very butchered but serviceable name of a medicine that wasn't the one she was looking for.
Fuck.
Stevie shook her head slightly, trying not to jar it, and dug for another bottle.
The pair repeated the procedure several more times before coming up with the target substance, and if there hadn't been an intangible but very real sword skewering her from temple to temple, Stevie would've crowed in triumph.
With Carl's help, she swallowed the correct number of correct pills (and her usual cocktail as well because she didn't want to miss a dose later) with a little sip of water. Not too much. Ugh. Just thinking about putting anything substantial into her belly made her want to invert all her organs.
Next came a rousing game of trust the process, wherein she had to just lie very still and know that the chemicals she'd introduced to her system were dissolving and being absorbed and getting to work, calming down her overstimulated brain. Carl contributed by soaking a folded cloth (a T-shirt or tank top that still smelled like lake water and line-drying) and coaxing it between her eyes and her palms. The cool temperature felt amazing, and more of a barrier between her retinas and any hint of sunshine certainly helped. She managed a thumbs-up and then flailed an arm at him until he submitted to a hug and a fond hair ruffle, both of which made him huff out a quiet laugh as he snuggled against her side.
They stayed like that for quite a while, but at some point, the relief of ebbing pain was enough to send her into exhausted unconsciousness.
xxXxx
She woke in the RV bedroom, dazed and sore but nowhere close to the cerebral firestorm of that morning. And even before she took the still damp cloth off her eyes, she knew it wasn't morning anymore, though she didn't know how many hours had passed or how she'd gotten from the panel van to her current location. Bruno was stretched out on one side of her, Gavin, Hazel, and Andre on the other, heads of dark hair (two straight and one curly) bent together over a tray of crayons and construction paper. All of her minders looked up at Stevie's movement, the dog wiggling against her as the little kids beamed.
"Hi," Gavin greeted, pale face solemn but open. "Do you feel better?"
Stevie managed a smile and, despite not being completely recovered, truthfully answered, "Yeah, buddy. Much better. Thanks for taking such great care of me."
He looked pleased with himself, puffing up proudly, but his baby cousin chirped, "Me an' Dre helped!"
Her high-pitched tone did Stevie's lingering headache absolutely no favors, but the teen still added, "Then thank you both, too. I'm pretty lucky to have so many excellent babysitters."
That got delighted giggles out of all three, and Hazel and Andre crawled over Gavin to shove clumsy, colorful art into Stevie's face, proclaiming them get-well-soon cards for her and other group members.
The kiddos' excited babbling eventually revealed that most of the group had left that morning to look for Sophia and Merle, sick or injured members staying behind with Dale and Jenner to supervise and provide aid as necessary. Glenn had been the only one on the IL who had insisted on participating in the search; even at seven years old, Gavin was insightful enough to guess that Glenn was still really sad about Jim's death and had not wanted to stay near the scene of the crime… incident… whatever…
In addition to Stevie with her ill-timed migraine, T-Dog and Jacqui had also stayed behind with blood loss and heatstroke, respectively, though both were expected to be fine with rest. Thanks to some IV saline and antibiotics as well as a tetanus shot (which had meant boosters for everyone else, since Jenner hadn't wanted to waste the vials that Stevie had burgled from the CDC and stored in the RV's fridge), T-Dog felt up to moving around and was outside siphoning gas and making use of Stevie's wagon and other gear to loot vehicles (after a repeat of her lecture of the previous day courtesy of Carl and Amy before they'd left). However, Jacqui remained up front, napping fitfully in the reclined passenger seat. Dale had even dug out window shades and a small battery-powered fan to keep her comfortable.
"An' we was bein quiet," Andre reported softly, glancing up at the darkened cockpit to ensure that his earlier exuberance hadn't disturbed the woman. "Mommy said, 'Shhh, hafta be quiet an' be good.'"
"Your mommy's a smart lady," complimented Stevie, "And all three of you are definitely very good." For the following few minutes, she just basked in the excited chatter of happy kids. Eventually, though, she had to ask, "Do you guys know how I got here? I don't remember."
Gavin nodded, fiddling with a broken blue crayon as he explained, "Before everybody left, they decided we should all be in the RV so that Dale could watch us. But you were sleeping, and Carl wouldn't let them wake you, cuz he said you were sick. Shane said he'd carry you, but Bruno growled at him and wouldn't even let him inside the van. Rick tried, too, but Bruno still growled. Daryl wanted everybody to hurry up and go find Merle and Sophia and called the two cops a bad word and just came and picked you up, and Bruno let him."
Yeah, that tracked. After having cause to growl at Shane back at the Vatos' base, Bruno would probably never fully trust the man, and Rick had a close enough relationship with him to be on thin ice in general and definitely never allowed near her unconscious body. Daryl, however, was high in Bruno's esteem, and not just because the hunter had spent the last month or so feeding her dog fresh woodland critter innards.
"Carl brought your bag," Gavin continued, pointing at her stuffed pack in the corner of the small room. "And he told us to keep the cloth over your eyes and to keep it wet. And to go get Dale if you needed help. And he found those glasses for you. He said you'd like 'em."
Sure enough, on top of her bulky backpack sat a pair of sunglasses with neon green frames and reflective green-gold lenses. They were similar to a pink pair she'd had at home, ones she'd forgotten on her dresser and hadn't bothered to replace.
Aw, Grimes, you sweet little muppet.
Stevie grinned and checked her watch. Upon seeing that it was almost 1 p.m., she wondered, "Did you guys have lunch?" Her own stomach remained iffy, but the kids needed nutrients.
"Mommy left snacks," Andre proclaimed, scuttling to the other side of the bed to retrieve a box of Cheerios, which he then offered to Stevie by almost whacking her in the nose with it.
She shook her head and slowly pushed herself up, swaying slightly as she nudged Bruno to the ground and swung her feet over to join him. Someone had taken off her boots (hell yeah she slept in 'em whenever she could), but they'd been placed within reach on her side of the bed. While she was slipping them back on and redoing the laces and grabbing her new shades (because headache), she announced, "I'm gonna go check in with Dale and see if I can find you guys something to eat." Cheerios were a good snack and well-fortified with a lot of vitamins, even without the addition of milk, but the innocuous little Os were also high in fiber; as a toddler, Sophia once ate half a jumbo box by herself and nearly blew a hole in her diaper.
Sophia.
Grief and terror hit Stevie like a punch to the gut, staggering the teen so hard that she had to momentarily grab onto the retro stove to stay standing. Of course, Bruno was glued to her side, doing his job in keeping her upright as well, and with a moment to breathe through the agony of not knowing if she'd ever see her baby sister again, Stevie rallied and continued on toward the front of the RV.
Jacqui was there, sweaty and panting and for some reason buckled in on the tilted passenger bench. Maybe to keep her from falling off it while she slept. It seemed odd, and Stevie wouldn't have minded sharing the bed with the woman. Stevie didn't know her well but thought she seemed nice enough (maybe kind of high-strung and Jesusy, and she had a point against her for the whole left-Merle-handcuffed-on-a-roof thing. But there was a lot of blame to go around for that incident, and most of it fell on Rick "Stop Pretending to Be a Cop, Those Aren't a Thing Anymore, You Brain-Damaged Asshole" Grimes).
As the teen got closer to the cockpit, she realized that Jenner was there, too, sitting in the driver's seat and watching blankly as Jacqui suffered beside him. The look in his eyes unnerved Stevie, making her skin prickle with goosebumps and a frigid shiver race down her spine.
"You were thorough," Jenner drawled, not bothering to turn his head while his long fingers reached up to creepily caress the portable heart monitor looted from the CDC and now positioned on the dashboard, kept out of the sun by the reflective shade stretching across the whole windshield. He must've been going through the surviving med bags, and in the stuffy gloom of the dim cabin, Stevie tracked the wires stretching from the small device to Jacqui's body and disappearing under her grimy, sweat-stained shirt. There were a few other machines that Stevie didn't know the names or purposes of, but she did recognize the blood pressure cuff and the finger clip thing. What was it called? Pulse ox? Regardless, none of the machines beeped or gave off any other sound, so at least they had an apocalypse-friendly setting.
Unashamed of her blatant thievery, the teen declared, "Yeah, well, stuff that's gonna blow up in less than twelve hours is basically abandoned property. The legal concept of finders keepers applies."
Something was wrong, but the exact reason for her unease remained just out of reach.
Was it the buckled seat belt, a rarity at the end of the world even while vehicles were in motion?
The array of devices, obvious overkill for a case of heatstroke?
The sour reek of fear and rot, discernible over the must of the ancient RV and coming from inside rather than outside it?
The stack of colorful construction paper on Jenner's lap?
The black crayon in his free hand while he quickly jotted readings from the machines?
The little battery-powered fan clipped to the visor but not spinning?
That last one was where her gaze fixated, for whatever reason.
And Jenner knew, somehow, though he still never turned toward her or reoriented himself at all. Maybe he was watching her through one of the mirrors. Maybe he was a creepy human–lizard hybrid with infrared-sensing abilities. Calmly, he stated, "I didn't want anything interfering with my temperature readings."
Jacqui's breathing grew faster and shorter in a way that even Stevie could identify as dire, in a way that any doctor worth his fancy white coat should've been concerned about, especially while stubbornly refusing to remove said coat or his tie despite the oppressive heat.
But Jenner wasn't. At all. If anything, he appeared marginally more intrigued than he'd been just moments before, leaning forward as his patient suffered without any hint of current or future aid. His cold eyes barely strayed from her to the machines, and his hand was a blur as it rushed to immortalize the moment in wax.
Jacqui's last breath was a ragged, wretched, rattling thing, sucking in and wheezing out.
xxxxxxxxxx
Boom.
As briefly mentioned in the last chapter (I still have no idea why it's occasionally malfunctioning and welcome ideas on how to fix the stupid thing), Jacqui and Jenner ended up fighting off the walker in the RV (originally the one that went after Andrea in the bathroom). In the process, Jacqui got bit. She begged Jenner not to tell anyone; Jenner agreed, as long as he got to observe her inevitable decline—for science! He doesn't know that Stevie made it out of the CDC with several hard drives full of his data, so he just seized the chance to restart the research (which is the only thing left to give his life any sense of purpose).
I feel like Jenner's mad scientist potential was never really pursued in the show. Yeah, he locked up and tried to blow up the group, but he was just majorly depressed and hopeless and didn't follow through on his mass mercy killing intrusive thought.
My Jenner has been kidnapped and forced into the outside world, a devastated and lawless world that he resents and wants nothing to do with but nonetheless the world that his beloved genius saintly dead wife asked him to try to save. She never specified how, however, and modern medicine has its roots in truly atrocious crimes against humanity—for science!
Plus, original Jacqui had that screeching tantrum when original Jim got bit and tried to hide it. He was definitely wrong to do so, but she handled the issue poorly; he was barely showing symptoms and not trying to attack or hurt her in any way, and she basically set an angry mob on him. So, yeah, she gets to face the same situation that original Jim did and make the same bad choice and suffer the same inevitable end.
Review, please, assuming that this chapter isn't cursed like the last one is. It wouldn't surprise me. Everything is pretty horrible right now.
***If you still can't see Chapter 16, I've pasted it below.***
Chapter 16 – The Butcher's Bill
Jim was dead.
Stevie had seen that coming a mile off but lamented the loss, especially the way it had happened.
Poor Glenn.
His black eye was evidence that he'd attempted to keep Jim from sprinting headlong into the incoming horde.
Maybe Jim had been nobly trying to buy the rest of them time. Maybe Jim had been hallucinating, trapped in a PTSD episode or flashback, reliving the moment he'd lost his own family, choosing to sacrifice himself as he'd clearly wished to weeks ago. Maybe Jim had just been utterly done after Jenner's revelation and had leapt into death at the jagged hands and teeth of the animated corpses, knowingly committing suicide by undead cannibals in a gory fit of guilt and grief and nihilism.
Jim had died without a bang, with barely a whimper, pointlessly, either luckily or unluckily silenced by rotten chompers ripping out his throat before even more rotten chompers started tearing apart the rest of him.
RIP Jim. We hardly knew ye. We had no idea what to do with the stringy, bloody bits that were left of ye. We redistributed ye's stuff. (Jesus HVAC Christ, did ye really need that many condoms?)
Note to self: Do not ever agree to give a eulogy.
Glenn's other black eye, much more swollen and purple, and bloody mouth and gnarly concussion were, paradoxically, evidence that Merle wasn't as heartless as he seemed. Like Stevie, Glenn had needed to be fished out of a trunk that Merle had stuffed him into. Unlike Stevie, Glenn had not gone quietly (futilely attempting to chase Jim and presumably stop his suicide run) or been afforded an air vent (there had been no handy pipe-and-paracord contraption at hand or a conscious person inside the trunk to tie it properly). Still, Glenn had been only half-dead from heat stroke rather than all-dead by walkers by the time the remnants of the group found him, so… win?
Even knowing that Merle never would've hit her (while he was mostly sober), even knowing that throwing the sort of fit that would've tempted him to hit her would've gotten everyone killed, Stevie felt immensely guilty about ultimately submitting to and eventually emerging unscathed from her involuntary confinement. If Merle hadn't forced the issue, Stevie never would've hidden.
Stevie would've sprinted ahead and wrapped herself around her sister. If escaping into the woods had become necessary, then at least Stevie would've been with Sophia.
Instead, Merle was with Sophia.
Lost in the woods.
Forget poison ivy in his underwear. Merle would be lucky if Stevie managed to source fire ants before a cottonmouth.
Ok. Ok. Ok.
So.
One dead.
One thrashed.
Two missing.
The Harrison sisters were engaged in matching mental breakdowns, Amy fragile after cowering totally alone under a car while the herd shuffled past, Andrea keyed up after cowering in the RV bathroom while a walker wandered into said RV and was messily (somehow, utterly surprisingly) dispatched by Jacqui and Jenner.
Yeah, about that… Jacqui wore a thousand-yard stare, and Jenner appeared kind of invigorated, watching the dazed woman like she was a firefly in a jar, like he was gleefully anticipating the right conditions to paint his blood-splattered face with her glowing innards.
Stevie would circle back to that. It was weird, and she had a bad feeling. But at the moment, she also had much bigger issues to handle.
The most immediate concern, after the fact that Sophia had needed to flee into the woods due to Carol's and Lori's disgusting failure at caretaking, was T-Dog's nasty gash.
Giggity.
No. Stop it. Bad Stevie. Not the time.
"Tourniquet," the teen snapped, clumsily scrambling to remove her own belt and its various attachments when no one else leapt to action. And why was she doing that? Why was she wasting time not chasing her sister?
Because Rick had chased her, slower than Merle, but at least that meant there were two grown men willing to die for Sophia, assuming they were with her at all. Well, Merle was. Probably. (Or fucking else.) The descriptions were spotty, but both useless mothers had agreed that he'd been just a few steps behind the girl when she'd been forced to flee. And even if Stevie left at that moment, the likelihood of finding her sister when the younger girl and her entourage had at least a ten-minute head start was slim to none. So, Stevie had been convinced to not put herself in danger as well, to give the three missing members time to return before she panicked and went after Sophia and possibly got herself lost, too.
(Stevie didn't like that plan, but she could at least recognize the logic in it.)
"Can you walk?" Stevie asked T, not bothering to react to his snarl of pain when she mercilessly cinched the arteries in his bleeding arm. After he nodded wearily, she motioned for Daryl to help her drag him up and then to Jenner. It quickly became clear that Daryl was doing most of said dragging, so Stevie jogged ahead to alert the doctor and search through the jumble of bags looted from the CDC for IV supplies, suture kits, bandages, antibiotics, and painkillers; those items and more should've been plentiful, if Rick hadn't blown up all the med bags. The group hadn't had time for inventory and organization of the haul, so most of it was still packed and crammed into the Humvee and RV.
Luckily for T-Dog, Stevie found what she was looking for in the former location and rushed back to see that he'd been splayed out in the shade of the latter's awning, sharing a blowup mattress with Glenn, who had an instant icepack held to his pummeled face. Both were the picture of misery (especially considering that T hadn't fully recovered from the time Merle had beaten him up in Atlanta).
One dead.
One thrashed.
Three missing.
Two doing some kind of synchronized catatonic crying thing.
Two acting shifty as hell.
One partially filleted.
Thankfully, all the rest of the kids were fine, including Carl. He wasn't particularly happy that Stevie had stuffed him in a trunk, but after seeing how Merle had handled Glenn, the boy didn't bother complaining. The three youngest hadn't even woken from their afternoon naps, and Stevie had no intention of allowing them down from the roof of the RV until the convoy was ready to roll out.
Which would not be happening until Sophia was back.
Michonne had switched with Dale to sit sentry on said roof. While the old man fluttered around the blond sisters and Jenner tended to T-Dog (though managed to devote the majority of his attention to Jacqui), Stevie paced restlessly and stayed far the hell away from her mother while she sobbed in Lori's arms about the walkers after her baby.
The more details that emerged from the incident, the more distance Stevie needed to stop herself from throttling the pair. It wasn't just that Carol and Lori had let Sophia wander far enough away from them that the girl had been under a car alone (hidden from Merle when he'd come to try to find her). It wasn't just that she'd been under a car at all after Stevie had urged her and the two women to favor trunks (among which Merle had been futilely searching until he'd had no choice but to hide himself). It wasn't just that Carol hadn't immediately and unhesitatingly chased after her own kid or attempted to distract the walkers by drawing them toward herself (like Merle hadn't hesitated to sprint after Sophia the second he'd realized that she'd prematurely broken from cover and gotten into a bad situation).
It was Carol's excuses that threatened to send Stevie into unprecedented rage, again.
"I didn't mean to let Sophia get so far ahead! I-I didn't! I was just… distracted… A-And then Rick said to get under the cars!"
"Lori pushed me under before I could get to Sophia! I would've run to her, but I couldn't!"
"Lori held me back when the walkers started chasing Sophia! My baby! Two walkers are after my baby!"
Straight-up negligence. Blind adherence to any available authority figure. Utter lack of accountability. Weakness. Cowardice. Victimhood. It all rankled. And Stevie bit her cheek nearly raw to keep herself from screaming, If Lori was holding you back, then you should've broken her nose to get free! She would've done far worse if you'd tried to keep her from saving her own kid! For fuck's sake, I can't stand the uppity bitch, but at least her maternal instinct rates slightly above turnip!
But Stevie was done trying to reason with the quivering blob of Jello that Carol had become. Stevie was done talking sense and being sneered at as an unruly adolescent just because Carol would rather sob than admit fault or accept responsibility.
Stevie was done.
"Hey," Daryl grunted, coming to stand near the teen as she continued to pace along the guardrail, well away from the rest of the campers. A cigarette dangled from his lips but remained unlit. And the hunter had positioned himself upwind of her, too, certainly recalling her aversion to the smell of smoke. "Merle won't let nothin happen to yer sister," he insisted, squinted gaze slowly sweeping the tree line. His skill at comforting could use some work, but the fact that he was trying spoke volumes.
Sparing him a slight, shaky smile, Stevie agreed, "Sure ain't Rick I trust to bring her back."
Daryl huffed out what passed for a laugh from him. "My brother taught me most a' what I know 'bout bein in the woods," he muttered, shoulders already crawling up toward his ears with the effort of sharing personal information. "And whatever ya said ta him at the quarry… He's been a lot better since. More like the old Merle rather than ol' Merle." They shared a brief chuckle at the lame joke before he added, "Got Jenner ta give him detox meds at the CDC. Gave me all his hard shit ta hold. Seems real serious 'bout stayin sharp out here."
Her resulting smile was much more genuine than the first, and she stated, "I'm glad… And if I couldn't be the one with Sophia, I'm grateful it's him." She didn't mention her (perhaps unfair) fantasies about killing the man but was able to make herself stand still, though every muscle in her body felt tight to the point of pain. Arms folded together in a mockery of the hug she wanted and wouldn't get, Stevie leaned her weight into Bruno's bulk and sighed.
There was no more conversation, just growing dread as the sun dipped lower and lower with no sign of movement from the forest. At some point, the slim watch hidden beneath the stack of friendship bracelets on Stevie's left wrist vibrated softly, and she dug out and threw back the appropriate meds, guzzling half a bottle of water with them and offering the other half to the other half of her silent vigil.
Daryl shook his head, looking a little surprised. Well, if he hadn't noticed her alarm going off every twelve hours, then it was doing exactly what she wanted it to. She missed the watch she'd had before the dead started walking; that one had been completely obnoxious, much more her style but obviously not suited to the changed circumstances.
And then Rick appeared.
Alone.
xxxxxxxxxx
Why did I make Jim commit suicide by walker herd? Two reasons.
(1) I thought it would be fun to give him a chaotic, violent, and gory end to juxtapose his "Goodnight, sweet prince" canon death, which I've always thought was really stupid. Can we all preemptively agree that in the event of a zombie apocalypse, deliberately leaving people to turn and thus become future hazards to ourselves and others is not allowed? Cool? Cool.
(2) We're closing in on the Greene farm arc, and I already have too many characters to juggle; the last thing I need to add to that is the annoyance of having a Jim and a Jimmy at the same time.
(I totally thought of those reasons after the fact. Originally, I had all the extra characters (Jim, Jacqui, Jenner, Amy, and Merle) scattering and getting lost in the woods along with Sophia, but I changed my mind. If you can guess why, you get internet opals.)
Anyway, I think my posting schedule is officially dead, at least for now. I'll try to get it restarted at some point, but this year has already been shitty and unpredictable. So, no promises. Review, please :)
*IDK what was wrong with the original Chapter 16. It (seemingly randomly) went back and forth between being fine and giving error messages. I thought maybe it would sort itself out eventually, but that didn't appear to happen. So, I just deleted it and reuploaded. Hopefully, it's fixed now. Please let me know if there are still problems. I apologize to anyone who had already reviewed; I have no idea if those will be preserved, but regardless, I appreciate your kind words.