EVELYN
"How we lookin' doc?" Jonathan asked as Evelyn examined her work. They were seated on the floor at the back of the store, supplies scattered around them. A record player in the corner was serenading them with an album that Evelyn hadn't heard of, but Jonathan deemed, "a classic".
"Not a doctor," She corrected him as she gently bandaged his swollen kneecap with a strip of cloth that looked suspiciously like a torn-up pillowcase, "I'm pre-med."
"Pre-med doesn't exist in the apocalypse," he reminded her, his speech slurring, "if you're stitching someone up or something, you're a doctor,"
"Stop talking I'm trying to concentrate," Evelyn said. She was really starting to regret that whisky.
"It functions as antiseptic and an anaesthetic," he'd joked earlier, when he'd pulled it out from beneath the cabinet, "two in one!"
She'd gone along with the idea only because she'd been horrified at the prospect of him enduring the whole procedure without painkillers. She had not taken into consideration what he'd actually be like once he'd drunken himself senseless. Still, she was glad the worst was over. That had been when she'd cleaned his wounds and set his knee. Shockingly he hadn't made much noise when she'd stitched him up, just the occasional grimace when she'd inserted the needle. It was too big, meant for sewing fabric. The dental floss they'd used as thread also wasn't helping any. She tried not to cringe as she took note of the messy stitches that dotted Jonathan's battered skin. Beth's stitches would have been neater, they'd been beautiful even before she was in med school, back when their Popo had taught them to sew. Beth had always been better at everything. Evelyn suddenly found herself desperately wishing her older sister was with them.
"This has been a really unlucky leg," Jonathan remarked breaking Evelyn from her reverie, and she swatted his hand away as he tried to poke at his bandages, "I'm going to look like a mummy with the way you're wrapping it and I have to say that's a whole different monster movie genre that I do not want a cross over for."
Evelyn rolled her eyes. It was hard to take him seriously when he talked like that. It didn't help that he'd insisted on applying their entire stock of Hello Kitty band-aids to his face and chest.
"Do you realize how lucky you are that you only dislocated one knee and not both? In fact, you are lucky to be alive at all!" she told him, ignoring his complaint.
Jonathan looked perplexed, "Lucky? I was struck by lightning, impaled, squished by a beam, cut, burned (thank you very much for that by the way) and I fell, like 5 stories, down a stairwell today!"
"You do realize that all of those things could have been avoided if you'd just made smarter life choices, right?" She said in exasperation. "You jumped down that stairwell, remember?"
"You're one to talk, you jumped with me," He reminded her with a lazy smirk, "and now you're stupidly trying to fix me up. Hate to break it to you but all the king's horses and all the king's men would not even attempt to put this mess back together again," He took another swig from the now half empty bottle and Evelyn fought the urge to snatch it away from him. At least it was distracting him from the pain, she reminded herself.
"Tell me, what would possess a person to create a radio show in the apocalypse anyway?" she said, finally asking the question that had been on her mind for months. Jonathan paused thoughtfully and took another long drink.
"Nothing matters," he said, setting the bottle down beside him, "That's the key, the sooner you realize that the better off you'll be." Then he launched into a horribly butchered rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody, "Nothing really matters, anyone can see. Nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me!"
Evelyn rolled her eyes in annoyance. She knew she shouldn't have tried to ask that when he was this drunk, she really could not have expected him to give her a serious answer.
"Honestly, you should have just left me to die," He drawled, "It's not too late. I'd be better off as one of them right now," He thrust his arm out gesturing towards the rest of the mall.
"Seriously, that would have been better than me saving your life?" Evelyn asked.
Jonathan looked at her. His expression wasn't much easier to read even when he was drunk and uninhibited, "Abso-freaking-lutely. Listen, you wouldn't have to be shackled to me right now if I was soulless. And another thing, do you think they care about anything at all? Do you think they feel pain? No! They don't have to, they're beyond that."
"You're starting to sound like those Serenity Society people," Evelyn warned. "I feel like someone like you would get bored wandering around like that."
"No way, because this is where I'm going to go when I die," Jonathan glanced around the room as if confirming his choice, "If I'm to spend the rest of eternity stuck in some same old routine, I want to be here, listening to music. Good music. Not like that overplayed disco—"
"Can you please just stop with the song thing?" She snapped, the harshness in her voice seemed to startle him, "I get it, you don't like Stayin' Alive!"
"Okay then, geez," he took another swig of whiskey.
That was it. He'd finally struck the nerve she'd been trying not to expose. She reached over and snatched the bottle from him. She hadn't planned on telling him, in fact, she'd made a point not to but somehow, she couldn't stop the words. Maybe it was because he was really getting on her nerves, or perhaps, it was, and maybe more likely, because even though she didn't want to tell him, she had to tell someone.
"You almost died okay? You almost— actually I'm pretty sure you did. You died. On that rooftop there was a minute where your heart stopped... you were dead. The only thing that saved your stupid miserable life that you keep trying to throw away for some reason, was that song, okay?"
Jonathan stared at her visibly confused, "what?"
Evelyn took a deep breath to compose herself, "100 to 120 compressions per minute. Stayin Alive" has a beat that's in sync with the recommended pace for chest compressions." Evelyn found her eyes drilling into the carpet, she couldn't look at him. "I didn't think to check— I wasn't thinking. It's really my fault. I should've thought ahead but all I wanted to do was get you out from under there." She stole a glance at him, but her eyes quickly began to fill with tears. She knew she would not be able to hold them much longer if she looked at him again, so she turned away. She was thankful for Jonathan's soulless proofed room because with the emotion she was displaying, they would have been overrun in minutes. She took another deep breath.
"You were under that big wooden beam and I lifted it off of you but I didn't know that you'd been impaled. And you were bleeding, bad, like really bad. I tried to stop it, but there was so much blood, and your pulse was already so weak and I—I froze. I..." She paused, chest heaving. "I might have a... freezing problem." The tears fell now; she couldn't keep them from falling any longer, "If that record hadn't been on the roof—If it wasn't just sitting there, I wouldn't have remembered to do CPR, I wouldn't have even thought to—" Her voice broke as she choked on the words. She was pre-med, she was supposed to be good in a crisis, great under pressure but in that moment, she'd frozen, just like the day of the Blackout... Just like when they'd encountered the soulless in the stairwell. Though she knew she would regret it, she looked up. Jonathan was staring at her. For some strange reason that Evelyn couldn't quite explain, the ignorant, dumbfounded expression on his face fueled the fire within her.
"You haven't even said thank you!" She shouted with sudden anger, she could feel the emotion bubbling inside her, protecting her from the sadness and failure that threatened to surface. She knew it was unfair, but she couldn't stop the raw emotion from pouring out of her. "I risked my life to come find you! I didn't have to! I could have been safe in the bunker, or I could be out searching for my family right now, but I came for you and all you keep saying is how I should have left you and you had made your peace with death!" She glared at him, daring him to speak. Jonathan's face was impossible to read, in fact Evelyn was coming to realize that it often was.
"Thank you," he said finally, his voice was stone cold sober, "Thank you for saving my life."
✦•······················•✦•······················•✦
JONATHAN
Jonathan opened his eyes to a dimly lit room. He couldn't tell whether it was day or night as the gate and heavy soundproofing drapes were still closed. With the movement of one leg, the tell-tale clink of empty bottles and pain brought the major events of the previous day back into focus. He retreated under the blanket and groaned. His back was stiff from lying on the floor, he must've passed out there. His head was throbbing, and his brain felt like it would swell beyond the capacity of his skull.
"How are you feeling, cowboy?" her voice caught him off guard and instinctively, he shot to his feet. Once standing, the room swayed almost costing him his balance and he reached out for the wall for support. Unfortunately, his hand slipped along the posters tacked to the peeling wallpaper and he sprawled onto the carpet with a crashing thump.
"Not good, I take it," Evelyn said perceptively, "Careful, you don't want to tear your stitches,"
Jonathan grunted in response. The room swirled and he was forced to wait for it to become stationary again before he could use a shelf of CDs to pull himself back to standing. He knew this feeling well, it meant he'd had some fun the night before but not much of it was there in his memory. His mouth was impossibly dry, so he was grateful when she handed him a bottle of water.
"We don't have much of that," she reminded him as he forced himself to take a slow sip and resist the urge to gulp it down, "that's the last of my stash but we don't have to worry about that for now. How are you feeling?"
"Lucky to be alive," he responded. He met her gaze; he may not have remembered too much of what happened the night before, but he remembered enough.
"You've been out all day," Evelyn said, twisting a strand of long black hair between her fingers. She had let it down and it now cascaded down her shoulders in soft waves, "I wasn't sure what to do while you were out of commission so I... cleaned up around here a bit. I hope that's okay."
Jonathan glanced around and marvelled at what he saw, his usual haphazard piles and chaotic systems of organization were gone and instead the front shelves appeared to actually be organized in alphabetical order.
"I've been meaning to do that." He responded automatically.
Evelyn shrugged. She moved towards the shelves of vinyl and flipped through the albums casually, "You've got a lot of records here," she noted.
Jonathan resisted the urge to comment that she was pointing out the obvious again. She did that a lot. As her fingers flicked through his records, he felt a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach. He'd invited her here, he reminded himself, he'd given her access to what he had started to consider his fortress of solitude. It should have felt like more of a violation that she was here. The way she'd moved all his stuff around with such entitlement should have felt like she'd rifled through his bedroom or read his diary... so why did he find himself watching her with curiosity more than loathing.
"What's with all the record players?" she asked inclining her head towards the collection he'd amassed by the surge protector.
"Only that outlet seems to get any power, I mean it's intermittent, but they do charge up eventually. When the EMPs knocked everything out initially, most electronics went down but this old analog stuff still works."
Evelyn nodded thoughtfully, "I suppose that's a good thing, isn't it? I've heard the sound quality is better, but I never listened to anything on vinyl before," Jonathan resisted the urge to quirk a brow at her strange brand of apocalypse optimism.
"It is and now you have," Jonathan said, guiding himself along the shelves to join her.
How did you find me? He wanted to ask. How did you find my radio station? The question had been bugging him for some time now, but he couldn't find the courage to ask it so instead he went with "So how did you find a working radio?"
"Someone gave it to me," she said.
Jonathan let out a humourless laugh, "that's a hell of a gift considering most didn't survive the EMPs. You'd think if you found one, you would be smart enough to keep it for yourself—"
"Someone left it to me," Evelyn said amending her statement.
"Oh..." Jonathan responded. The seriousness in her tone felt like a blow to the stomach. He wished he hadn't kept talking, everyone had a story: where they were when the world ended and what happened to them between the initial outbreak of Sigma and everything that came after.
"You're wondering about my coming-to story." Evelyn said as if reading his mind, "I was at school when it all happened."
"What?" Jonathan said, caught off guard by her insight.
"Simon Fraser University."
"The prison?" His cliché comment about the university's architecture tugged Evelyn's lips into a small smile that she quickly disguised by brushing a strand of long black hair from her face.
She narrowed her eyes at him, "I literally told you that."
"When?" Jonathan asked, his eyes wide.
"When I told you I was pre-med!" Evelyn said, "remember?"
Jonathan threw up his hands, "you seriously can't expect me to remember anything from last night."
"You're right," Evelyn conceded, "You were completely wasted."
"Wait a minute, how old are you? because I've been here thinking you were around my age, but you're in university?"
"Well how old are you?" she asked.
"You can't answer my question with the same question, I asked first!"
"I'm 18," she said, raising her eyebrow.
"Yeah, but pre-Blackout you'd have been 16. You didn't tell me you were some kind of genius kid! University at 16?"
Evelyn frowned, "I was homeschooled. I may have skipped a grade or two. Don't act so surprised. It's pretty common."
Jonathan held up his hands in surrender, "I'm sorry, I just didn't realize I was talking to Doogie Howser."
Evelyn knocked his arm playfully and he did his best to hide the fact that his body was still recovering from a thousand bruises.
"Well now that I've answered, you owe me an answer."
The corners of his mouth lifted, "Well, you'll be pleased to know that your patient, Dr. Howser, is an 18-year-old high school non-finisher on account of all hell breaking loose while I was in grade 11. Since then, I've been taking a lovely extended gap year. Now you were saying, your coming-to story?"
Jonathan listened as Evelyn relayed the general details of what happened to her during the Blackout and how she'd ended up living down in the bunkers. Jonathan made no interruptions save for moving to sit on the nearby couch when his legs and chest started aching too much for him to continue to stand.
"So... if it was so safe, why did you leave?" He asked when she'd finished.
"To find my family," she said, "they are still out there, and they're probably worried sick, looking for me too."
Jonathan couldn't help but admire the conviction in her voice. How she was so confident that they were alive even when the odds were stacked against that outcome, baffled him.
"Searching for them is what led me to your radio show, actually," Evelyn added. Her voice grew quiet, "there was this guy, Adam, he was one of our scavengers."
She paused, there was a distant look in her eye, "he used to be a TA before the Blackout. He was the one who found the radio on one of the raids and he was kind enough to let me listen in when he scrolled through the channels searching for any other survivor colonies. Anyways, he used to leave the radio with me to take care of when he was away but one day he never came back."
Jonathan nodded solemnly; unfortunately, he'd heard too many stories like the one Evelyn had shared.
"He sounds nice," Jonathan said. He knew his words sounded lame but for the life of him, he couldn't think of anything else to say.
Evelyn nodded, "he is...was the nicest. One of those all-around truly kind human beings."
"Yeah?"
"He had a family, I think. He'd been separated from them during the Blackout."
He hadn't known her for long but for some unknown reason, it pained him to see Evelyn so sad. Perhaps because she was always so irritatingly upbeat and bossy that it was strange to see her even the slightest bit upset.
"Maybe he just went out looking for them," Jonathan suggested hoping the words didn't sound as hollow as he knew they were.
Evelyn offered him a small smile, "I hope so. Anyways, that's how I came across your radio show."
Jonathan felt his face grow hot again. He wondered if Evelyn could feel the embarrassment radiating off him. "Who makes a radio show in the apocalypse?" she had asked. What did she think of him? Wasting resources on something so frivolous, especially when there are far more important things happening in the world. A silence settled between them. "Why did you come for me?" he said finally, breaking the silence.
"Whenever we, my family, talked about preparing for emergencies," Evelyn said, "like earthquakes and what have you, we always set up meeting spots as a family in the city. But we have a lot of them because we moved a lot..."
"I know what that's like," Jonathan sighed thinking about all the times his dad had uprooted their family to follow his all-important military career. It had been base after base until his mother had finally put her foot down and insisted that they stay in one place while his father moved around without them.
"So Metrotown was one of them?" Jonathan asked.
Evelyn's face fell, "from what I can gather they aren't here."
Jonathan suddenly thought back to how attentive she'd been when he'd showed her the taxi line, to the soulless that had wandered past them during yesterday's 'shopping trip' and wondered if Evelyn had felt some relief when none of the Shells resembled her family members or perhaps it just added to her uncertainty.
"I'm also hoping to check any survivor camps in the surrounding area in case they were taken there, like I was taken in at SFU. I picked up on a few bits of radio chatter from some of the colonies but I'm afraid I've got a pretty bad sense of direction. It took me weeks just to find my way here."
Jonathan could see the way she was looking at him, her large brown eyes filled with such hope, he had the strangest feeling that no matter what he did, he couldn't let her down.
"River District, where I'm from, is nearby, maybe they went there," he found himself saying against his better judgement, "Maybe I could take you there."
Evelyn beamed at him, and Jonathan could not decide whether it was merely his cracked ribs or the fear of giving Evelyn false hope that made his chest suddenly feel tight. It was the least he could do to get her to River District, he decided. She had saved his life after all and it was not as if he needed to go out of his way, he would have to go back to River District eventually, he only had so much food stocked up. It wouldn't be hard for her just to follow him, he'd do a quick poke around the records and if any of them were related to Evelyn, the two of them could part ways mutually benefited. They wouldn't owe each other anything after that.