Free LovewithaChanceofZombies by Delphine Dryden Page B

can leave if
you need to. I’ll understand. This wasn’t what you signed on for.”
    “You can’t do this by yourself,” Lena objected.
    “I wouldn’t try. I’d use the syringes instead, like I
planned to before. Will you stay with me until…?”
    Until I’m dead. He didn’t need to say it. Lena didn’t
need to hear it. “No.”
    “No?”
    “No. I mean I’ll stay, period. I’ll help you.” She tossed
the tools back in the bag and joined him by the bed.
    Lucas frowned down at her. “I want to kiss you but I can’t.
Can’t risk it now.”
    “I know,” she said with a matter-of-fact nod. “Come on.
Let’s get started.”

Chapter Nine
     
    By the time the knock finally came, Lucas had been under for
nearly an hour. Lena sat on a chair next to his bed, listening to the hypnotic
chorus of sounds from the monitors and the respirator. Everything had gone
smoothly, with Lucas’ obsessively detailed outline providing Lena with all the
guidance she’d needed to complete the process once Lucas had done what he could
on his own.
    He looked smaller, she thought, all hooked up and sleeping like
the dead.
    Not sleeping. Comatose , she reminded herself. An
important difference.
    When the knock came again, harder, she sighed and went to
the door. “We’re not coming out,” she called.
    “Stanton!” Watson’s muffled voice came through the wood.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? This isn’t a game, now open the damn
door!”
    “Sorry, sir. The doctor is not in.”
    Another pounding knock, then a pause. “What are you talking
about, Lena? What have you done?”
    “He’s already under, sir. You can see him in another three
days.”
    “Jesus. Stanton, you can’t do this. You may be
insubordinate, but you’ve never been stupid or crazy. Unlock the door!”
    She didn’t answer again, and after a few more minutes of
ranting, Watson went away. To make his announcement, she supposed. Possibly
with some slight changes in wording, to allow for these new circumstances.
    Before she pushed off from the door, where she’d been
leaning as Watson yelled, she ran her fingers over the five locks. One at a
time, she checked them for soundness. Screws secure, doorframe holding firm,
each hunk of metal doing its job to keep them safe.
    After that it became part of her hourly routine. Check the
monitors, check the vital signs, check the fluids going in and out, check the
locks.
    I only have to do this seventy-two times , she told
herself. Three days. And then Lucas would wake up. She tried not to let herself
think about the odds of that happening, the slim chance she had to pull off
getting him safely through the coma and out the other side. The chance of it
working as they hoped was slimmer still, but thinking about that wouldn’t help
her now. Lena checked the locks instead, and then started the whole routine
again.
    Watson came back later that night, knocking on the door more
gently this time.
    “Still not coming out, sir,” Lena told him. She rested her
whole body against the door, leaning on the familiar voice of authority on the
other side for support, even if she couldn’t do what he was ordering her to do.
    “I figured.” His voice was grim, and she could well imagine
the expression on his face. “It’s getting ugly out there, Stanton. The folks
are not happy with this situation. Half of them want to ‘free’ Nye, and the
other half want to shoot him.”
    “Do they have torches and pitchforks yet?”
    “This isn’t the time to be a smart-ass, Stanton.”
    Lena thought there was probably no better time in the world
to be a smart-ass. What did she have to lose now? The only thing that truly
mattered, she realized, was lying on a bed behind her, breathing into a
ventilator tube and turning into a zombie.
    “I’m in love with him, you know,” she told Watson. “Thank
you for that.”
    “I know, honey. But you’ve got to accept—”
    “Not yet, I don’t,” she said firmly. “I can’t