Chapter Text
This experiental core of empathy—that is, the shared affect between self and other—is often associated with the construct of emotional contagion, wherein one’s own emotional state results from the perception of another individual’s emotion and from nonconscious behavioral mimicry of others’ facial, vocal, and bodily expressions. Emotional contagion and nonconscious mimicry help to coordinate behavior and emotions between interaction partners and may serve communicative functions.
— from ‘“Mirror, Mirror, in My Mind”: Empathy, Interpersonal Competence, and the Mirror Neuron System’ in The Social Neuroscience of Empathy (2009), p. 184.
01D 03H 26M 31S
Warmth.
It drives the chill from her bones with a persistent tremor, until the blood practically feels like it’s boiling in her veins.
Warm as hot chocolate.
Jackie thinks she can still taste the remnants of it on her lips when she’s half-waking from that strange scene. Wonderful, terrible, all in all too fantastical to be real.
Nobody here loves her, after all.
It’s a bitter truth that she has to accept if she can’t escape it any longer, thrust back into this unlucky plane of existence with the soft touch of a hand stroking along the curve of her shoulder.
Someone shushes softly close to her ear, her cheek is pressed against the wood of the floor by her own weight. Slowly enough, Jackie manages to get her bearings. Before there were only flashes of wakefulness — of being carried indoors and put under whatever treatment Misty undoubtedly thought best — but now Jackie can distinguish the flicking motion of flames in the hearth as the light dances on her eyelids, becoming clearer with each passing second. She attempts something in her throat, though the intention gets lost somewhere along the way. The noise is left without meaning, but it catches the attention of whoever has declared themselves her guardian in Shauna’s undoubted absence.
Maybe Lottie, even though she said what she said at Doomcoming. Lottie’s always been the one to regret things first. Jackie could certainly find it in herself to forgive if it turned out to be her.
Taissa could even get her sympathy at this hour at the end of the world. Tai had her back when things got bad at dinner, Jackie knows that now. Wilderness mumbo-jumbo never got its claws into her like it did the rest of them.
Maybe it’s Nataliereturning with Travis and keeping the others at bay until they can talk shit out and focus on what’s really important. Jackie feels guilty about not seeing that aspect of her sooner, that unclouded drive to do what is right.
Misty couldn’t be this gentle, but it also wouldn’t be the first time that she surprised Jackie.
She’s moved; the arms that roll her onto her back do so slowly. Each new point of contact that her body makes with the floor blooms with a response from nerve endings sparking briefly awake and settling down again. The air she breathes feels damp. Fully on her back, Jackie now notices how the sound in her other ear is muffled; the crackle of the fire being less distinct than when she was facing it. She wants to feel for it, but her arm cramps up when she attempts to move it, and another hand — the one belonging to the person holding her — keeps it down with a soft but firm hold.
Again that soothing low whistle of air through teeth; a hand that brushes the hair out of her face. Jackie can barely find the strength to keep her eyes open, but through their struggle against her fatigue, and in the light of the fire, she can see the familiar shapes of Shauna’s face, softly smiling down at her.
Maybe she is still dreaming.
Jackie tries to ask, but her body still won’t cooperate on that just yet. Her eyelids fall shut, her fingertips burn with renewed life and clench together when the arm they’re attached to can’t move yet to make sure that this is real.
“It’s okay. It will be okay,” Shauna’s voice assures her from the darkness. She must be closer now, her breath tickling Jackie’s cheeks. Fingers thread through her hair and settle at the back of Jackie’s head, lifting it up carefully and setting her upright. She slumps forward, against Shauna’s shoulder, who has put an arm around her to stroke up and down her back.
It’s too kind a gesture with the rift now presen between them.
There’s the sound of movement in other parts of the cabin now. Jackie can’t see everybody that flits around in the glow of the fire and the deep shadows that cover the rest, but it’s an eerie silent flutter of limbs and clothes.
She realizes then that nobody is speaking. Not to anyone else other than her, at least.
Some crouch down, some hover at the fringes of the circle that forms. Other hands and arms glide across her still-weak form and it creeps Jackie the fuck out because they didn’t do this before, not when anyone else was down in the sick bay. Not with Coach Scott, not with Van…
Van, who sits down at her side and doesn’t even look at her but works in tandem with Akilah to put another blanket across Jackie’s shoulders. Lottie comes nearer, too, holding a cup.
“Here. This will warm you up.”
Jackie feels like she’ll throw up. Her insides contract, but she takes the cup from Lottie’s hands regardless, eager to feel her body being alive again, still leaning half on Shauna for support. Jackie sips at it and tastes the pine-needle amalgamation that Mari has been stirring up for weeks. Taking her eyes from the rim of the cup, she can see everyone look at her eagerly. There’s a pause, and then all their faces turn ever so slightly to disappointment.
It’s Shauna who reaches out again with a hand to cup her cheek. Her eyes flit about Jackie’s face, soft yet calculating, like Shauna always does. Her thumb strokes along the slope of Jackie’s face while she comes closer, leaning in, and then Jackie can feel their lips press together, the full and soft of it that Jackie would recognize blind. It’s a familiar motion of them slotting together as perfectly as she’d always wanted them to, but it comes too soon, too sudden, too unexpected after what Jackie thought was their final goodbye.
She tries to pull back but Shauna has her hand still at the back of Jackie’s head, and Jackie is too weak wrestle herself away. Shauna moves… statically. Nothing too deepen this, not even a nip of her teeth like Jackie knows her to do in particularly charged moments. It takes all of Jackie’s strength to raise her arm and push at Shauna’s shoulder, more as a signal than an actual force to put the distance between them, but the message is received: Shauna moves back. With eyes opened, still weak but hanging onto a sudden rush of adrenaline, Jackie takes in the lines of confusion forming on Shauna’s face.
When Shauna leans in again, and only gets the opportunity for a quick peck when Jackie flinches back, Jackie feels like all her senses are rushing back to her.
“S-Shauna…”
The others still stand around them, unresponsive. The silence weighs even harder than anything they could’ve said, even though Jackie knows that after Doomcoming— after Tai and Van—
Shauna, however, doesn’t seem to be that bothered by the audience. A wan smile pulls up a corner of her mouth. “We’re sorry,” she says. Her hand stays on Jackie’s cheek, holding still-warming skin, and while Jackie doesn’t understand what she means — because Shauna couldn’t possibly be sorry — it’s enough to make her drop the cup she was holding and sending its contents to the floor, breaking the silence with the clattering sound of the tin canister.
“I— Uhm—” Jackie’s eyes search to find someone else, anyone else, looking like they’re about to break from keeping up the pretense. “Very nice, but you already fucking exiled me, so knock it off, Shauna.” Jackie tries to position herself so that she can get up, but her arms and legs still feel horribly brittle. That, and the other Yellowjackets block her way all around.
“We understand it’s an adjustment,” Taissa speaks up instead, her face stoic as ever. “And believe us that we didn’t expect this to happen, either. It makes for an unfortunate but not impossible situation.”
“Get real. When exactly did you change your mind?” Jackie shrugs as a way to motion to the whole group. “You needed me out to start acting normal again? How long until Doomcoming happens again, huh?!”
“If you mean the recent burst of violence—” this time it’s Misty “— we can assure you that won’t happen again. We prefer not to cause harm, it goes against our— Oh… You seem upset. Is there anything we can do to help?”
Jackie isn’t sure of what to say. Her head feels like it’s cooking her brain inside her skull because none of this is making any sense. She wants to be angry. Angry at how they treated her and would’ve kept treating her if this was making any sense. Instead it’s this strange sudden burst of kindness. She wants to yell at them to give her a fucking break. She wants to knock Shauna to the floor and make it clear that this is way too much, that she can’t play with Jackie’s feelings like this. She wants to walk out into the woods again, and let it be over.
Fatigued, starving, and aching all over, Jackie decides that letting herself fall into the beckoning void at the back of her mind is the best option she has.
Maybe she’ll wake up for real this time.
01D 10H 03M 18S
These are sheets.
This is a bed. Worn, tattered, and soft from all the years that it must have been here.
She knows this bed when her fingers glide through the fabric and pull it up to keep the sunlight from directly hitting her face.
It’s not the one at home.
That one is wider, smells cleaner, and is slightly more stiff. The last six months or so were not a trick of the mind, and she dreads what this new day in the wilderness will bring.
Still, Jackie wakes up.
The room is lit by the early morning sun through the window. It’s less warm today; having none of that faint orange glow of late fall, and instead is tinged with a stark, cold, blue.
It’s still the cabin. Still this desolate wasteland with all the people in the world who hate her. Jackie huffs a breath and watches it float up as a faint cloud before it dissipates. Throwing the blanket half back, she sees herself still dressed in the clothes she walked out of the cabin with last night. Her fingers and toes tingle faintly, but it’s no longer painful.
Jackie manages to sit up and gets a glimpse of the now snow-covered outdoors of the wilderness. The view itself doesn’t surprise her exactly, she’d felt the first heavy flakes fall on her huddled self at the fire pit. At least it wasn’t a fake-out in the weather. The thick mass of untouched fluff makes the landscape appear almost cozy.
She raises her left hand to wipe the sleep out of her face, and notes the sudden, obvious absence of the last two fingers from the second knuckle down. The stumps of them still move, Jackie notes with morbid interest, though they’re wrapped with some gauze from the plane’s first-aid kit and strips of torn clothing. She throws the blanket off completely and while her other hand appears complete, it’s her right foot that’s also bandaged up. Three outer digits missing here. The unharmed hand moves to that side of her head that has the muffled sound and, sure enough, here it’s wrapped up, too. Feeling underneath the tight bundle of fabric has Jackie touch a tender and awfully flat piece of skin. Certainly not the shape of an ear that she’d otherwise expect here.
Okay.
Okay, this happened and it’s because of her own stupid actions. Fuck. She looks around to see if there’s any other sign of life, but the room is empty besides her. Her jacket is draped over the back of the one chair in the corner with her shoes put neatly underneath it. No distinct sounds can be heard in any other parts of the building, but now she has to factor in a fucking missing ear keeping those possible signs from registering at all.
Jackie swings her legs over the side of the bed, feeling joints snap from disuse and gently puts her feet down onto the cold floor. She’s about to stand up when the door opens.
It’s Lottie who pokes her head in and smiles. “You’re up,” she notes, with a hint of relief in her voice. “That took a while, you almost had us worried.”
Jackie swallows. Maybe what she remembers never happened. That part could still have been a dream, something made up by a struggling mind. “How long was I out?”
“For the remainder of the night, which was about six hours. You’d actually do well to get some more rest.” Lottie crosses the room and crouches down near the bed, holding out a bowl with simmering stew. “But now that you are awake, it’s best you have something to eat.”
Jackie hesitates for a moment, but accepts the offered meal. She places the bowl in her lap when this new reality of missing half a ring finger and pinkie throw off her grip on the thing. She pushes the mush around until finally taking a bite and chewing her way through it long and hard.
Lottie sits down, crosses her legs, and observes patiently. It feels like a Lottie thing to do, and yet Jackie can’t shake an instinctual alarm that something is off. She knows all of them that well, after all. It took a year of painstakingly cataloging each Yellowjacket to land herself the captain spot.
“Where’s Shauna?” she asks instead, because it still is the one question that matters the most.
Lottie shuffles around in what seems like an effort to get more comfortable, but Jackie reads it like she’s taking the moment to think on her answer.
“Shauna’s presence clearly upset you. We thought it best to keep her away for the time being.”
Jackie puts another spoon of stew in her mouth. “Wow. Thanks a lot for that,” she deadpans. It’s all that’s said until the bowl is empty.
“Lottie, can I ask you what happened?” Jackie notes the tilt of Lottie’s head and holds out her left hand. “Like here. What happened after I went outside.”
Lottie thinks for a moment, then begins talking.
“What exactly happened after you went outside is… nebulous, on your end. We know that inside the cabin there was a discussion about the incident that led you to exit this cabin in the first place. We think that while everyone else was asleep, including you, most likely, the snowfall set in. How long exactly this lasted before we got you inside is difficult to pinpoint as it happened parallel to our joining. It might have been an hour, but maybe two or even three. Once we did get you indoors, we discovered that several extremities had suffered severe frostbite. Measures had to be taken to avoid further harm to your body, and we hope that we did an okay job at stitching everything up to your satisfaction. If we had better materials on hand, the results would have been better, but there might still be an opportunity to soften some edges once we get you to a proper medical facility.”
Lottie falls silent at that, appearing satisfied with her talk so far.
“Okay.” Jackie blinks. “Can we, uh, rewind? What you said about why it took so long while I was outside. This… uhm… parallel thing”
“Our joining?”
“I think so, yeah.”
Lottie nods with understanding. “An oversight. Apologies. We couldn’t exactly find the right words for it, since it’s hard to explain an experience you aren’t part of.”
“Oh. Okay.” Jackie raises her arms to hug herself. A chill creeps up her spine. “What do you mean?”
Lottie’s smile doesn’t falter. “We can explain it, but give us a moment,” she says. “Would you like some water first?”
Jackie nods, and it’s quiet again. They wait. Lottie doesn’t get up, and Jackie is about to say something about it when the door opens again and Melissa brings in a now familiar blue mug to hand her. “We were able to heat up the snow in time, so it’s as clean as can be,” Melissa says, and smiles before she takes her exit again.
Jackie feels nauseous, but she drinks from the cup while looking from the closed door back to Lottie. Normal water, and stale-tasting at that. She sighs and puts the cup aside, nodding at Lottie to continue, even if she already has questions.
“What we refer to as our joining is an intricate process, but you can see it as every human being on the planet connecting through a… psychic glue, of sorts.”
“Glue? What the fuck are you talking about?” Jackie can feel the dread gripping her. They have to be joking. They have to be setting up his grand scheme to point and laugh at her when it’s done.
“The gist of it is that a signal was discovered from deep in outer space a few years ago. It was deciphered as a set of tones that aligned to an RNA… recipe, of sorts. This sequence was reproduced in a lab and from there — through animal testing and human contact — found its way across the planet. It acts as what you might refer to as a virus, even if it isn’t quite that. It connects every susceptible mind, which is Us. The joining of the individuals here happened later than most, given this remote location. Areal exposure also has the complication of a longer incubation time, during which the body is practically immobile as it acclimates to this joining. This is why we could not help you in time. Transmission through bodily fluids has been most effective, but evidently did not in your situation.”
“Okay…” Jackie takes it in. “So that’s why you gave me the mug? Because you… spit in it, or something? That’s why Shauna…?”
Lottie keeps smiling.
Jackie shakes her head, returning to the earlier thread of conversation. “So, if I understood that correctly, some spooky space shit happened that makes you act all weird, and for some unknown reason I’m not in on it, but you won’t, like, kill me over it.”
“It’s a biological imperative, but we truly mean you no harm.”
Jackie has to scoff at that. The absurdity of it all, the impossibility of it given where exactly they are. She’s seen them almost gutting each other, for fuck’s sake. “So is this cult life 2.0? You want to rub some sticks together and say a magic word that has everyone sing along to the same tune?”
“We understand that these harsh conditions put you in a precarious position before, and we aim to change that for your wellbeing as well as these individuals. Relocation was stalled during the cleanup period and your recovery, but we should be able to send an appropriate mode of transport soon.”
Jackie blanks at those words. “You mean that… we’re getting rescued?”
“You could call it that, sure. We’re taking preparations now to have it be as safe as possible. You don’t have to worry about anything. We’ll take care of it.” Lottie stands, and puts a hand on Jackie’s shoulder. “We appreciate you’re still here, Jackie.” At that, she exits the room.
Jackie remains as she is for a while, processing the whole of it. It couldn’t have happened, and yet... She’s sure that Van would call it easy but entertaining material for an X-Files episode, but it’s not like she can actually ask Van about it unless she’s talking to… Them? Us? Some weird, big blob of people minds, all stuck together. It could still be an elaborate joke, but Jackie’s unsure if they’d play around with the idea of rescue like this. It’s all simply too confusing for her, too unreal.
She pulls her legs onto the bed again, takes the blanket to pull it all the way around her, and curls up to shut the rest of the world out.
03D 12H 17M 43S
They help her to the rescue site. Natalie tells her in the morning that with the hit her body took from the hypothermia, Jackie is weakened and shouldn’t overexert herself until they’re in a safe environment, so two others help her walk by holding her steady at the arms. At Jackie’s question if that doesn’t go for Coach Scott or literally everyone else given their starvation situation, Natalie brushes it off with the comment that they can take care of themselves later on. It’s Jackie who apparently needs to be handled like glass.
She allows it, of course. It’s nice to be sort-of carried around to what is presumably their point of departure after half a year of hoping that rescue was still in the cards for them at all. She asks about the ‘how?’ of it all, and gets in return the same answer phrased maybe slightly different each time.
Everyone’s connected (except for her), so they all know where they are (except for her), and that means they can locate them with ease and carry everyone out of here (luckily, this part does include her).
“It will be done in several laps. There aren’t aircrafts able to land here which could carry everyone present here in one go. Of course, you will have priority on the first flight back,” Nat says as they keep on walking towards Laura Lee’s old take-off lane. Apparently, the others had cut some more of the wood away yesterday to create a suitable landing space.
“We’re able to send some other individuals along with you. The order of which isn’t important to us. There will be room for four more alongside you on the first trip. Do you have a particular preference?” Natalie asks.
Jackie takes her time going through the group. Everyone had been waiting for this moment, hoping it would happen someday soon. Now, they seem to treat it no different than a bus ride to the next game in Regionals. She’s picking up one more and more odd things throughout the day; behavior that doesn’t make any sense.
Misty isn’t nagging anyone for attention. Taissa and Van aren’t talking, nor are Gen, Mari, Akilah, and Melissa in their usual gossip circle. Javi walked out of the woods at some point, and Travis didn’t even flinch.
It makes Jackie feel lonely amidst the group.
When her eyes land on Coach, it’s obvious that he’d be on the first flight. His leg needs to be properly cared for, just to be sure. The same goes for Van with how deep her scars go. She skips over the heads surrounding her, sixteen in total.
Okay, four others. Coach Scott and Van because of injuries. Lottie probably as well, with how long her meds have been out. The last spot, Jackie begrudgingly admits to herself, feels like it should go to Shauna. Not that a few hours should make a difference, but the baby situation definitely needs to be checked out.
Then again, she’s not so sure about being on a plane with Shauna again for a few hours.
Or being on a plane at all, actually.
“Can’t we drive out of here?” Jackie blurts out. “Or have these people come to us and walk back? On the ground?”
“Don’t worry, the best pilots in the world will be helping us out,” Travis replies from her right, his arm hooked underneath her shoulders for support.
“And the statistics for flight safety remain as safe as before. Maybe even better, since other air traffic is kept to a minimum,” Melissa adds from the left.
“But if you’re still worried, we brought something along that might help,” Natalie concludes. “We wouldn’t otherwise encourage the use of benzos, but think that for this situation it should be okay if it adds to your wellbeing.”
“Funny that you, of all people, should say that, Nat.”
Natalie shrugs with a smile, like she gets the joke. It makes Jackie feel all the more uncomfortable. The… real Natalie would tell her to eat shit over this kind of comment.
Within that same vein, the sight of a medical helicopter touching down in front of her doesn’t feel like something amazing. It rather feels like waiting; waiting for the inevitable moment when the magic trick is revealed and all of this will go away. No rescue, no friendly faces, no more going home.
The same old nowhere, over and over.
But she enters the vehicle and it is real. The pilots each wave at her as she circles around the cockpit, and she’s pretty sure that one of them mouths a ‘Hey, Jackie’. The ones from the group she pointed out when Robin repeated Natalie’s question from earlier follow along and strap into the seats like this is common knowledge to them. Jackie struggles to figure out where to put each belt and buckle, and can already feel her heart thudding with the idea of being in the sky again. Lottie helps her out, clicking each metal clasp shut before reaching for a small pouch in the helicopter interior and pulling out a zip-lock plastic bag with two baby-blue pills.
“We’ll fly to Vancouver, which is the nearest metropolitan area with a suitable hospital. It will take a while to get there, so if you think these will help, then they’re yours.”
Jackie accepts the offer, and Lottie sits down in her own seat. As the helicopter blades overhead whirl to life, Jackie considers the pills, then looks to Shauna at the far end of the row and, seeing her entirely unaffected by the flight to come, decides to take one of the pills and lets it dissolve on her tongue.
Jackie feels the jolt of the helicopter leaving the ground, swinging momentarily in the air, and drifts into soft sleep.
04D 01H 46M 25S
In her fear of waking up to the unpleasant sight of wood log walls, the stark white of a hospital room doesn’t look so bad to Jackie’s groggy eyes. There’s no steady beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor, but not everything can be like the movies, after all. Jackie turns her head and discovers she has a private room. Small, with all the basic amenities she’d expect from a hospital, complete with framed abstract prints on the wall and a vase with flowers in the corner on a side table. The curtains billow with a draft, but it doesn’t feel too cold. The sky outside the window is dark.
It’s night, and there is nobody here to watch over her.
The door of the room is hidden from her view. The short path to it curves around a build-in closet system, but she can see the faint glow of light from the hallway that must be there.
Jackie turns over to reach for the lamp on the bedside table. Its light reveals a rolling table parked beside the bed with a glass of water, a plate with two oat bars, and a folded card that reads ‘Good morning, Jackie!’ There’s a small, smiling sun drawn underneath the text.
She drinks half the glass and breaks off a third of the oat bar. Eating something more or less solid with actual flavor for once makes it into a more tasteful experience than she could ever have expected from a bunch of nuts packed together. She paces herself with the remainder of the bar, and saves the second to nibble on while she opens the card to read. It’s in a small but clear handwriting that she doesn’t recognize.
Hi Jackie!
We hope you slept well through the night. Given your recent experience, a proper bed may be something to grow accustomed to again, but trust us that any restlessness you might have felt on this first night will pass soon enough. The world is there for you to explore again, and we’ll do our best to make it as comfortable for you as we can.
If you need any immediate assistance, have questions for us, or simply want to have a chat, then be sure to press the call button, and we’ll be with you shortly.
We expected you to have some specific questions, so allow us to try and answer those here for you.
— You will be okay! No life-threatening conditions were discovered while we did a quick check. Sorry if we did this without your immediate permission, but we took the liberty with it being in your own best interest.
— We expect to the best of our assessment skills that some percentage of hearing may return to the ear that had to be partially amputated. No further loss of its function is expected, at the very least.
— If you’d like, we can fit prosthetics for your fingers and toes.
— All the other individuals from your soccer team are currently in this building, too. Unless you wish for any of them to keep you company, they are expected to be discharged in a couple of days. Most of them you will be able to find in the General Ward, but Ben Scott and Van Palmer are in the Surgical Ward as they recover. If you wish to see Shauna Shipman, she will also be on this ward, but further away.
— We understand that even with our best intentions to accommodate your wishes this is still a highly disruptive experience for you. Do not hesitate to ask us for anything you might need, on both short-term and long-term basis.
We’re here to help, Jackie.
:)
The card is closed. Jackie chews on the second oat bar while she thinks. What the fuck is she even supposed to do here? Wait for someone to come in and check on her? She doesn’t know when this card was written and if she woke up too early or overslept. Still, she doesn’t feel the need to press the call button and ask for any clarification on that, or anything else.
There wasn’t any mention of her parents, or anyone else coming over to meet her and see how she’s doing. Isn’t that the kind of thing that should be happening? Happy, tear-filled reunions for the long-lost daughter? Any answers she got from the card were firmly grounded in the here and now within the hospital walls. It’s hard to imagine that a world outside of it still exists; she’s by now noticed the lack of ambient city noise like traffic passing the building.
So Jackie decides to set a goal for while she’s awake.
She puts her feet down on the ground and slowly tries putting her weight on them. They feel unbalanced, but sturdy enough to carry her. She places both hands on the wall to lean on while shuffling step by step towards the window.
The curtains are so thin that she can look through them and see a blurred-out cityscape. Pulling them aside, the dark view becomes filled with more recognizable shapes. There’s a glistening body of water in the distance, some river or whatever that Shauna would probably know the name of. Further in the distance she can spot the rough edges of a mountain range. Between them are tall buildings of another part of the city, but without any of the lights on. The black boxes stand there with no sign of life. No headlights of cars or trains to dot the night, either.
It’s an uncanny image. It snaps back the realization of what the fuck is going on, and that this whole thing goes way beyond her own Yellowjackets. Jackie tries to recall as much of what they told her and comes up with one almost certain fact.
The whole world, all like this.
And as far as Jackie knows, she’s all alone.
04D 11H 27M 54S
Breakfast, or brunch, or lunch, or whatever the first meal of the day becomes at almost noon, is a colorful assortment of crackers, butter, juice, and a small bowl of fruit neatly sliced into cubes. This time Jackie is awake to see the nurse who brings it in.
“Are you feeling alright, Jackie?” the woman asks. She’s a middle-aged redhead who reminds her a bit of Deborah Shipman in the way she carries herself, but that may be how every nurse in the world behaves on the job.
“Yeah. ‘M fine,” Jackie answers, and watches as the nurse — Tina, she spies on the name tag — opens the closet door and lays out an outfit that could resemble something Jackie would have at home. Jeans, blouse, sweater vest.
“Do you guys have a personal shopper here?” Jackie can’t help but ask.
Tina smiles and shakes her head. “No, but given your last purchases at the mall, it seemed like a good combination.”
Jackie looks to the clothes, then back to Tina. “What the fuck. Did you spy on me?”
“We’d never,” Tina shakes her head again, “But we remember that Lottie Matthews picked out something similar when you went shopping for outfits during spring break of ‘94. She thought the argyle patterns suited you. The cashier at the Abercrombie agreed.” She hovers there for a moment, like a waiter at a fancy restaurant anticipating to be dismissed. “They are still quite in style at the moment, actually. Several contributors to Vogue were floating the idea of having an article on the pattern in a future issue.”
The room stays quiet for a moment. “Forget I asked,” Jackie mumbles, and picks at her fruit instead.
“We’ll leave you to get dressed. If you need any help, do notify us, but otherwise we’ll be right outside the door for anything you might need.” Tina wrings her hands and turns on her heels. The door falls shut softly behind her.
Jackie eats her fruit while she ponders on the ‘we’ and ‘us’ of it all. It keeps coming up like it’s a new thing, something that has to be repeated to seem real. They shouldn’t have been rescued. That shouldn’t have happened. It couldn’t have happened unless someone knew exactly where they were.
Also, Jackie realizes, there was no way for the team to know that a helicopter was coming, either. Why cut the trees down if they didn’t get as much as a distant signal that rescue was on the way. It’s like they knew. Like they all knew and weren’t even surprised or excited by it. It makes her think of that movie Shauna wanted to watch so badly for a Halloween sleepover, with Donald Sutherland and the weird, gooey stuff.
The idea kind of kills her appetite. Jackie leaves the juice aside and focuses on getting out of bed next. Her limbs move easier than last night, and a shower in the attached bathroom also helps, but getting dressed sure takes longer than usual. Out of curiosity, she opens the closet door and finds one more outfit — similar to her current one but with a long-sleeved sweater instead — as well as her varsity jacket on a separate hanger. She takes it out and puts it on over the rest. It doesn’t serve much purpose other than make her feel safer, somehow.
A new pair of shoes is placed near the chair. They’re more or less like the tennis shoes she brought on the trip to Nationals, but definitely fresh out of some box. The right one has a piece of foam on the inside that makes it fit better with the missing toes. It feels different when she stands and puts her weight on them, but she finds that going away after a while.
Jackie breathes in deep, holds it in for two seconds, and lets it out again with a long sigh. Everything happened. It’s all in the recent past and the current situation keeps hitting her with some kind of emotional whiplash. Things shouldn’t just be ‘okay’ when they so clearly are not. She shouldn’t be safe and sound when only three nights ago she was at the very real risk of freezing all her veins shut.
In a way, Jackie feels split in half; part of her is still out there, stuck in the woods and gritting teeth against the gnawing of her stomach and the harsh betrayal of someone she truly trusted with her life, and another is here in the comfort of Vancouver and its General Hospital figuring out if it is she or the world that has gone insane.
Both issues she can try to solve, but she prioritizes the former in fear of what the answer might be to the latter. If anyone can act like everything is completely fine, Jackie thinks, it’s her.
She leaves her room without much fanfare. There are some people in the hallway, but most calmly walk right along like they got someplace else to be. The only weird thing is that everyone takes the chance they get to greet her.
“Hi, Jackie!” “Good morning, Jackie.” “Hello, Jackie. How are you today?”
Jackie nods back at some of them and presses her lips together tightly. Upon entering some central area with a desk, she forgoes asking the nurse at the desk for directions and relies on the wall-mounted markers instead. The Surgical Ward shouldn’t be far; one floor down from where she currently is. She ignores the people on her way when she walks to the elevator, even when the doors slide open and a man exits to wait outside, seemingly having brought the elevator here just for her. Jackie scowls, and presses the button that closes the doors faster.
It’s more deserted on the Surgical Ward. Maybe because there are a lot more empty beds. Upstairs, Jackie could see at a glance that there were people on the floor receiving some level of care as well, but they also seemed… calmer than she would expect at a hospital. She remembers from the few visits to the Wiskayok hospital that there was always someone yelling or crying or shouting on the wards. More talking happened there at the very least, and the people here act like the place doubles as a library.
She walks down the hall without taking directions. It goes slowly, since there’s still a persistent aching in her limbs, but Jackie feels determined in where she wants to go.
Who she wants to visit.
Coach Scott appears first. The door to his room is half ajar when Jackie sees him sitting on the side of his bed with a metal rod filling in the blank space of his lower leg. She hesitates to say hi to him, but decides against it when he looks at her with the same aloof grin as the other twenty people she passed on the way here. She didn’t ever see Coach smile while they were out there, and she doesn’t expect him to be so happy so soon after.
Body Snatchers, she thinks when she continues. That’s what that movie was called.
It’s harder to skip past Van’s room when Jackie finds it. Van’s face is bandaged up again on the bad half of it, but Van doesn’t show any defeat or anxiety about it. She’s working her way through a fruit bowl of her own when she puts up a hand to greet Jackie.
“Van…” Jackie begins, “How are you?”
Van holds the moment with a finger raised, swallows, and puts a thumb up. “Van will be alright, Jackie.”
“Right,” Jackie nods. “That’s nice.”
“We appreciate you asking, though. It’s always nice to be seen, even if it’s only a part of us.”
“Wow, uh, thanks?” Jackie picks at her fingers, feeling not exactly ‘seen’ but more observed by Van waiting for her to say more. “Van, do you know how that movie went with the aliens and Donald Sutherland? The body snatcher thing, I mean.”
“Ah, of course. Do you want a plot summary, or more an overview of its central themes? It has something to say about how society felt under the Red Scare at the time, but you could even read it with a queer lens and argue how—”
“Just the main stuff, please,” Jackie interrupts. Van doesn’t look the least bit offended being cut off, which is how Jackie gets that itch again that something is really really wrong.
“Well, the premise is that an alien organism lands on earth and multiplies there by copying humans it comes into contact with. The protagonists try to discover what it is and stop it in time, but given that you’ve already seen it, we don’t have to worry about mentioning that it doesn’t end too positively.” Van folds her hands together and waits patiently. It’s nothing like her.
“Is that what happened here? With you?” — Van shakes her head — “Did aliens land on earth?”
“Nothing like that. The sequence that facilitated our joining could be considered alien, but it was created here on Earth. The formula came from elsewhere, but the method wasn’t extraterrestrial. Nobody crumbled to dust to be replaced by a double, we can assure you of that, Jackie.”
“So…” Jackie thinks, bites her lip, “you’re still… Van? Van who rents the video tapes on a sleepover and can do a kick-flip like it’s nothing?”
“The very same. Stopped a cannonball in the overtime on a Regionals final, argued a week’s detention down to one afternoon in sophomore year.”
“You’re alive?”
“We are.”
“And you’re the same?”
“In a way, but—”
Jackie doesn’t wait for the rest. She’s turned on her heels and back in the hall to make her way down the remaining doors while her calves ache against the sudden exercise they’re getting.
If Van says she’s the same, then…
Her shoes smack against the linoleum floor. Few members of the hospital staff dot the hall and move out of her way.
“Jackie—”
“We think that—”
“You should maybe take—”
The sentence forms through different mouths.
“It easy—”
“Before you hurt—”
Her heart thuds hard in her chest, her breath is a strained panting. Where is she where is she where is she.
“Yourself or—”
The floor gives off a squeak. One foot slides forward and pulls her weight with it, tipping her forward, off-balance and tumbling over her own feet. Jackie can feel the impact of her cheek against the floor reverberate through her skull. It aches, but everything seems to keep in place with only the faint taste of iron seeping in where her teeth broke the skin on the inside of her mouth.
It’s the first time today that Jackie completely relaxes. Like, what the fuck does it matter anymore? She doesn’t attempt to get up, nor open her eyes or lick the blood away that’s pooling around her gums. Jackie stays still and lets herself exist until she can hear footsteps come closer and is turned over by someone else.
“Jackie? Are you okay?” And what feels like a deja vu in too short an amount of time, Jackie sees Shauna looking down at her with genuine concern. “You didn’t break anything, right?” She’s wearing a hospital gown, just like Van, but looks healthy otherwise.
Jackie hums, hoping it reads as an ‘I’m okay’. She’s been through worse on a Wednesday-afternoon scrimmage. Shauna’s hand comes to rest on her shoulder, rubbing softly with a thumb, and Jackie reaches across herself to hold the hand in hers, tight. She tries to pull herself up with it, but needs Shauna’s other hand at her back to help her all the way there. Once she’s seated, Jackie hugs her tight, burrowing her face in the crook of Shauna’s neck and breathing in what smells so distinctly like her amidst the sharp tones of a hospital. Shauna allows it, rubbing a hand up and down Jackie’s back, and Jackie keeps herself wrapped around Shauna’s body in the middle of the hallway.
“Jackie? Do you want to get somewhere more comfortable?”
Jackie shakes her head.
“Are you sure? We think it could—”
“Stop saying that.”
“We’re not sure what you mean—”
“That!” Jackie pulls back, scowling at Shauna’s wide eyes. “The ‘we’, the ‘us’. Stop doing that.”
Shauna opens her mouth, then reconsiders. “Okay, that’s understandable, but almost impossible. Pronouns make up an integral part of communication.” Her face pulls into something apologetic. “We’re afraid we can’t do that. Or, well, it’s difficult. Sorry. It’s nothing personal.”
“Everything about this is personal, Shauna. Don’t pretend like it isn’t,” Jackie glares. Her hands grip the gown tighter, and she wants to say more but... “Forget it,” she relents. “I’m— I don’t know. I’m glad you’re here, I just don’t know how— how this all works.”
Shauna nods and carefully takes Jackie’s wrists to pull her loose. “Want to talk about it?”
Kind Shauna, listening Shauna, ever-the-wiser Shauna. Her smile is gentle and coaxing. A sign of trust.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jackie says, and allows herself to be pulled upright.
04D 12H 56M 17S
Jackie looks down at her own cup of cloudy, lukewarm tea. She didn’t feel that thirsty for it when another nurse gave it to her, and now it’s probably too cold to enjoy at all.
They’re sitting on Shauna’s bed, legs folded and toes almost touching together. If Jackie tries hard enough, she can pretend that nothing is going on. The only reality that exists is that Shauna had surgery and is recovering from that. They’re catching up after surviving a highly traumatic event, but they got through it together.
Just like she promised.
Shauna’s flippant about the baby situation when Jackie gets the courage to ask about it. She’s clinical in her explanation of what exactly was done and brief on the other stuff. It never would have lived, she elaborates, and if Shauna had been unlucky enough, she would’ve died right along with it.
Jackie pushes away the thought of a cold, dead Shauna. Unresponsive and stiff. So unlike she could ever imagine her to be, but the animated, cheerful Shauna here in the room with her still creates a similarly uncanny feeling.
“So when do you think we’ll be going home?” Jackie asks instead to keep away this looming monster of grief that she could never overcome.
“Well, that’s up to you. It can be arranged whenever you wish to, though we’d recommend waiting a few days more until you are properly recovered.”
Of course, this Shauna doesn’t care about the façade that Jackie tries so desperately to uphold for herself.
“I don’t mean me. We, okay? Your amazing us. The team. We have to… we can’t not all go home after all this.”
Shauna shifts. “If it would make you happy that we’d join you, then that can be arranged, yes.”
“What the fuck does it matter what would make me happy, Shauna? You can’t stay here. Don’t you want to see home again? Your mom?”
There’s a pause. Shauna puts her mug aside and folds her arms with a sigh. “We don’t think you’d like our answer to that question, Jackie.”
It’s not phrased as a threat, but it does make her feel… afraid.
“But we don’t have to,” Shauna continues, “We can go to your home, with you, if you’d like that.”
“Of course— I mean…” Jackie opens and closes her mouth and in the end decides on saying nothing. If she can set foot in New Jersey again anytime soon, she’d be happy enough to walk the rest of the way to Wiskayok. “I would feel terrible if after all this…” Jackie picks at her fingers. It dawns on her that she doesn’t have to explain herself, not to whatever is there in Shauna’s place now.
“We understand. It would maybe… close a door for you on that. We apologize that this happened in the midst of it.”
“Wouldn’t have been rescued in the first place without it,” Jackie mumbles.
If Shauna hears it, she chooses to ignore it. She reaches for the nightstand to take a magazine from its surface. It’s a Cosmopolitan, not her favorite, but that doesn’t matter after going six months without anything to read but aged porn mags. “Want to do one of these quizzes?” Shauna asks, and folds the magazine open to the corresponding page when she puts it down between them.
Can you plan the perfect Halloween party?
Right. It’s October.
“I guess we would’ve been at Rutgers by now.” Have the dorm room sorted out, maybe join a sorority. Okay, definitely a join on Jackie’s part, but she would go easy on trying to pull Shauna along. They could’ve done tryouts for the Scarlet Knights. Get migraines from studying for the midterms. Be annoyed by each other’s sleeping habits and walk home stumbling over their own feet from a party.
And all this still would have happened, probably. The only difference would be her all alone in New Brunswick instead of Vancouver.
Jackie looks up when Shauna keeps from making a comment, and sees her looking… guilty.
“What?” Jackie asks, unable to keep the demanding tone from slipping in.
“Well… uh… Shauna wouldn’t have been at Rutgers. But you knew this already.”
Jackie bites her lip. Of course. Of fucking course. She shoves the magazine towards Shauna. “You read the questions. I’ll answer this round.”
Shauna picks up the Cosmo, looking like a kicked puppy. It’s rare to see her like that, but it always hits Jackie right where it hurts.
“Question 1: What defines your costume style? The options are: scary, cute, sexy, or no costume at all.”
“Cute. Did you know I had our costume all planned out for this Halloween?”
Shauna lowers the magazine slightly. “No. What was the idea?”
“Clueless. Cher and Tai. You wouldn’t even have to change clothes with all the flannels in your closet.”
A pause. Then Shauna breaks out in a chuckle — “Uh-huh. Right.” — and rolls her eyes in mock offense. Jackie laughs along, the earlier tension sufficiently done away with. It’s alright. She can pretend. She can pretend herself right back to normalcy.
“Okay, question 2: Where would you…”
07D 10H 29M 25S
They don’t go home immediately. Jackie is hesitant to make that decision just yet. With each day that passes, she does begin to feel better in her own body. Walking up and down the hospital halls becomes less of a drag, and so she makes the effort to visit everyone that got back with her from the wilderness.
They all give off the same weird energy, but Jackie thinks she’s getting used to that by now.
What she did change is her room. When she told Shauna that she wanted to stay in her room, staff brought Jackie’s few remaining possessions still there without question. There isn’t a lot to do, but they entertain themselves enough with the stack of magazines and a Gameboy that a nurse brings in. Jackie could convince herself that Shauna is acting more like herself in the time that passes here, but it feels like a choice on the other girl’s end.
There also is the persisting ‘we’ of it all.
But it’s Shauna who reminds her of the possibility of really, truly, finally going home. It’s Shauna who gently coaxes her in a direction to say yes by arguing that it’s what everyone would want.
So now Jackie finds herself walking through Vancouver International without luggage, without a passport, and without having to go through customs. There’s nobody here with the exception of their group of crash survivors walking easily through the central hall and tax-free shopping areas. Some muzak is on the speakers to accompany their mass of footsteps echoing through the place, and thankfully the lights are on, but it’s so… abandoned.
Lifeless and deserted.
Jackie follows at the back of the pack, looking around for something to put her attention on that isn’t the quiet march of her team. Shauna’s beside her, and glances at her for a second in Jackie’s periphery. A hand slides in hers, fingers entwined, and suddenly the group starts talking with each other; conversations picking up here and there, bantering and joking and laughing like they’re on the way back from Nationals (trophy secured, of course). She catches something about Mari’s cousins, and Lottie’s plans for a house party, and Natalie popping in to make an innuendo in response to something Jackie didn’t quite catch.
“You think they’ll pick us up with a party bus when we land, Jax?” Shauna beams. Her fingers are warm, slotted between Jackie’s, and she seems so genuine about it. Would Shauna ask that? Jackie knows now she never cared for the sport — and maybe even the team — to begin with. Shauna wouldn’t care about a grand celebration tour home, but would ask it if it made Jackie happen.
In another life.
Jackie slows her step until she stops completely, halting Shauna in the process, too. The others pause as well, looking back at her.
“Sorry,” Shauna says, “We thought that since you seemed…”
“No it’s… uh… It’s fine. It just— It just felt wrong to me.”
Shauna squeezes her hand. “Understood.”
The group continues on slowly, and this time stays mute.
Maybe she was wrong about trying to pretend; it can’t go back to normal. Laura Lee is dead. Coach Martinez is dead. The plane staff is dead. Pretending that didn’t happen makes her feel disgusted. It feels like trampling all over their memory.
They reach their gate and walk on. They get to the plane and take their seats. They take off and, eventually, when Jackie’s gently shaken awake from her second Valium this week, they land.
Newark Liberty International. Home sweet home.
Here, too, there is nobody. No staff walking around or other travelers to worm their way through. Coach Martinez was keen on doing a quick headcount of the group every two minutes to avoid anyone getting lost, now they just have to follow the signs to arrivals and walk through the whole area without so much as pausing a single step.
The doors slide open and Jackie sees half a scene that she daydreamed a number of times. In all her imagined homecomings, they’d be met with a cacophony of press and relieved parents. Cameras, microphones, suffocating embraces. Instead… the adults are there, sure. Parents and family and loved ones, but nobody cheers or cries or has any sort of palpable reaction to their return. Jackie departs from Shauna’s side when she spots her parents, and walks over to them at a faster pace than she’d expected of herself.
Her mother isn’t wearing her usual perfume, or any at all, for that matter. Marilyn’s favored floral spray lingers in the clothes she’s wearing, a familiar scent that Jackie recognizes immediately when she grips her tight.
“Welcome home, Jackie,” Marilyn whispers.
She holds her without much pressure. It’s maternal in a way that she never was; arms wrapped around and cheek turned to rest on the top of Jackie’s head.
Jackie sighs. “You never called me that,” she replies.
“It’s what you prefer, isn’t it?” Marilyn tucks a strand of hair out of Jackie’s face, behind the ear that is still whole enough to hold anything behind it. The real Mrs Taylor would consider her daughter ruined beyond repair if she saw her like this.
“You never cared about what I liked. It was always about you, and your wishes, and your comfort.” She sees the frown form on her mother’s face and hates that she can pinpoint it as one formed in confusion, not in anger or even frustration.
“We don’t wish to harm you, Jackie.” Marilyn reaches out but Jackie slaps the hand away. In a way, she’d always wanted to do that; flip their positions and hit back hard without keeping herself back. Now, though, she can’t even enjoy it. Her own anger rises at the lack of response and push-back. Why can’t she have something to be unashamedly mad at?
“Tough shit. I thought you cared about making this feel real to me, so do that! Shauna hates me, the team hates me, my mother hates me. Nobody here would care if I’d died out there! That’s easy to remember, right? They don’t give a fuck about me and my wellbeing, least of all my mother, so don’t pretend like she suddenly had a change of heart.”
There. That should do it.
Jackie waits for her mother to grimace with disgust, with resentment, with the kind of emotion she knows her to have. Marilyn opens her mouth and only stammers around the words she wants to form, all stuck on incomprehensible sounds.
“Mom..?”
But it’s her father who falls down first. It’s one loud thud that’s followed by a number of others all around. The crowd partially collapses, some remaining stiffly standing, but all in the grip of a seizure.
“Oh fuck…” Jackie looks around, taking in the scene and seeing nobody unaffected. “Oh fuck!” Nobody who can tell her what’s going on. She tries to focus on her mother, holding her face in her hands and feeling the skin beneath her palms quiver erratically from how much she’s shaking. “Mom? What’s going on?”
Marilyn only puffs out air at irregular intervals in response. The whites of her half-lidded eyes are visible through her lashes.
This is not good.
Jackie abandons her mother to turn and survey the rest of the group. No changes are there, either. Some have more violent spasms than others, or are on the floor in an uncomfortable pile of bodies. She zeros in on Shauna, who lays at the edge of the group with her head pushed all the way back and down to the floor, and slides down to crouch beside her.
“Shipman? Talk to me, please?”
Shauna sounds like she’s choking. In an effort to feel like she’s helping, Jackie shucks off her varsity jacket and bundles it up as a pillow to rest Shauna’s head on. It’s something, right?
“Please… I’m sorry, Shauna, I— I don’t know what— Why— How does this go away? What makes this go away?”
Jackie’s hands hover, but she doesn’t know if touch would do more harm than good. Then, at her side, one figure gets up from the ground, bend over and with heaving breaths. Jackie turns to see at least one familiar face actually looking at her, broken out of this mess.
“Taissa?”
Taissa sits, then stands up on wobbling legs and briefly holds her head with a pained grimace. She steps over the bodies strewn about her until she reaches Jackie, and looks down with some confused amazement. “You’re not…” she mumbles. Jackie’s unsure if it’s a thought spoken aloud or actually directed at her.
“Tai, what’s going on? Does this mean it’s over? Did you break out of this… mass freak act?” Jackie hopes for an answer. If anyone would gladly give her a rundown, it would be Taissa, but the other girl slowly shakes her head.
“She is part of it,” Tai says solemnly, and puts a hand to her chest. “This only made it trip. It’s still there. It will push me out again when it recovers.” She smiles when she sees Jackie’s confusion. “She used to call me ‘the other one’,” Tai points to Van, who stands a few feet away, “but now they are all one other.” Her arm arcs around to point at Jackie. “And you are not.”
It’s not accusatory in the way that Jackie’s used to from Taissa. It’s a fact, stated plain and simple. She takes hold of Shauna’s trembling hand and rubs the back of it with her thumb. “How do we fix this?” she asks.
Tai shrugs. “That’s for you to find out. I can’t help much more now unless this stumble continues on for longer, but I’ll try to keep watch while they’re back.”
Jackie stammers. “Are you even Taissa? Why do you keep saying—”
Shauna’s hand stills. Taissa freezes up and closes her eyes, then breathes out, in synch with everyone else in the room, with a long exhale.
“Sorry about that, Jackie,” Akilah says as she sits up.
“We didn’t mean to scare you,” Mari adds.
“It caught us by surprise as well. Perhaps it’s a growing pain that may go away after a while,” Taissa says, and her voice sounds different this time, her whole being emitting an entirely other energy than before.
“Please don’t think it was your fault.” Jackie turns to Shauna, who smiles and squeezes her hand. “We didn’t know this would happen.”
Panic spikes in her gut. It will never change. This will keep on going with her all alone out here. As if she’s saying that for all to hear, the warm, soft hand on her back comes perfectly timed.
“It’s all okay,” Deborah Shipman tells her with all the warmth that Jackie has missed in so long. “Would you like us to bring you home?”