Survival Of The Fittest

[Evie McKown got bored of watching glue dissolve.]

Evie had never understood the way other people spoke about bed, or sleep. The memes, the throwaway jokes, masking an apparently sincere desire to go back to the oblivion of sleep and never have to do anything. No, Evie didn't get it, and here in the oppressive boredom of the hospital, she sympathised even less. A restless energy stirred in opposition to the ruin of her left leg, and the second the doctors had handed her a pair of crutches and advised her that - if she took it easy - she could move again, needless to say she'd gotten immediately out of bed.

Near enough two weeks on an island conserving her energy, desperately avoiding the endless sleep of death, Evie now more than ever had no desire to lay still. She wanted to be active. She wanted more than to survive now; she wanted to live.

Unfortunately, real exercise was off the table. Scraping the proverbial rust from her joints would have to wait. Dusting the cobwebs out of her mind, and providing something to think about other than endlessly dwelling on what might've been, that she could do.

Click. Down came the crutches.

Swing. Forwards came her good leg.

Evie hadn't broken a bone before. At worst, she'd twisted ankles from time to time. Cuts and scrapes aplenty, but nothing comparable to a gunshot. She immediately sensed that the new and thankfully temporary normal of walking with assistance was going to be extremely annoying. A new thing to distract her mind from sooner rather than later.

Click.

Swing.

It took a few seconds to figure out the proper posture for using one hand for support whilst the other opened her door.

Click.

Swing.

Again and again, making the brief journey to the recreation room irritatingly long, filling it with the audio reminder of what she already knew, poking at the metaphorical scab over and over.

It came as a disappointment, though not a surprise, that the rec room had little to offer. TV, magazines, books, a handful of very basic board games. Before settling onto a chair she could easily lean her crutches against, she tossed the weathered copy of Scrabble onto the table by way of open invitation, and sat down to see what the television had to offer.

Anything but the news. In two days, so they said, the Feds would want to interview her about her experience. At least until Boxing Day she could put it from her mind.

No. Anything but the news.

((Jacob Winters continued from the v8 rescue))

Jacob was sprawled out on one of the couches nearby, dressed in sweatpants and hoodie he'd been provided to replace his dirty and torn outfit, his bare feet propped up on the couch's arm and his cane leaning against its back. He'd been napping there earlier - he wasn't sure for how long, but the sunlight through the window certainly looked different - but he'd awoken eventually and spent the past fifteen minutes or so staring blankly at the TV without really absorbing what was on or even able to see much of it well. Truthfully, that'd been most of what he'd done in any situation since they arrived; he'd been spacey and distant for their entire internment in this shithole so far. Maybe it was the fact that their escape still didn't feel real, like at any moment he'd snap out of it and be back on the island. Maybe it was him thinking of everyone - Greg, Mildred, Kathleen, Dawn, Jezzie, and so many more - who didn't get the chance to get out. Maybe it was just homesickness, wondering what his family and friends and boyfriend had all been going through and wishing desperately he was back in Salem and not here. Or maybe it was the concussion-turned-mild-TBI Salem had so graciously left him with, a parting gift before the fucker went and died. Probably it was all of them at once.

Still, despite the brain injury and the still-limited mobility of his leg, he'd gotten off relatively light compared to some of the other kids they'd picked up. He'd gleaned that much from the state many of them arrived at the rescue in, and from the scraps he'd picked up here and there since then. Admittedly, he'd spoken very little to most of his fellow survivors, by choice; none of them were anyone he'd really known that well before all this, and none of them were people he'd come to know on the island. What could they possibly have to say to each other? The only thing they had in common is grave injuries, dead friends and a future haunted by lifelong trauma and plagued with unwanted media attention. That a lot of them were murderers - hypocritical as it was for him to judge - certainly didn't help matters. He was pretty sure at least one or two of them actively hated him for some of the company he kept. So keeping some distance just seemed the best move.

But he didn't also particularly want to just sulk in his room, brooding all alone. The place was miserable regardless, but he didn't have to wallow. So he'd tried walking around the base, or at least the parts they had access to, trying to get used to the cane they'd given him to help with getting around; the doctors suggested it was fairly likely he'd be using it for a while, possibly forever, so he'd better learn how to walk on it if he wanted to get around at anything resembling a decent pace. He'd futzed around in the rec room some as well, regardless of how little there was to do there. He'd struggled through reading the provided books and magazines, a task made almost herculean with the way his eyes now blurred when trying to read much of anything. Some boardgames were laying around too, but that required someone who wanted to play them with him. It was hard to find that when you were uncomfortable around and intentionally avoiding everyone.

So when Evie stumbled her way into the room and pointedly threw down a box of Scrabble onto the nearby table, he took it as an invitation to at least do something other than veg out.

"... bored, huh?" He pulled himself to sit up on the couch and squinted her way, struggling to see her through the haze that lay over his eyes. "Same, honestly. This place fucking sucks."

((Juanita Reid continued from I'm Worse at What I Do Best))

A series of rhythmic staccato clicks heralded the arrival of a third person. Juanita Reid, with disheveled hair, sallow bags under her eyes, and a large purply-red bruise on her chin, wheeled her way into the room.

The wheelchair was new. Well, new to her. In actuality, it was probably old enough to have been a prop on M*A*S*H. Day before yesterday she'd tried to get out of bed and her leg had abruptly decided that the working conditions here were abysmal and called it quits. She'd gone down in a heap, hitting the floor chin-first and earning the newest addition to her gallery of scrapes and bruises. A nice little reminder that the pain wasn't over just because the game was.

However many tests and painkillers later, the prognosis was that she wasn't going to be walking unassisted any time soon. She'd need more tests, probably a surgery at some point. So, rather than trying to muscle her way around on crutches, she'd opted for the chair. It was tough on the arms and stiff on the lower back, but it beat walking. Besides, her coccyx had survived relatively unscathed up to this point, so it could take a little extra punishment.

She'd spent the intervening time staring at the ceiling, ticking away the hours until her family got here. They'd called, however many days ago that was. Her mom had already been sobbing. Her dad's voice cracked partway through "Hello." Her brothers had been steadier, emotional and concerned but not as invested, detached in that way that adult brothers are. They'd asked her, first off, if she was okay. She'd lied, and said that it was all okay now. Mumbled something about how she was alive, and she'd made it, and... and yeah, yeah, she was doing good. Her mom said, "Thank God," and some of the background voices had tutted their agreement. Everybody back home was praying, they'd said, and Juanita wondered if the phone would pick up the sound of her heart shattering.

She hadn't told them. They hadn't asked. She wondered about that, after she'd finished injecting enough tiredness into her voice that her family had kindly suggested that they'd hang up now and let her rest. They hadn't asked what she'd done to survive. Whether she'd killed someone. Did that mean that they already knew? Or that they didn't want to know? She'd stared at the ceiling that whole night, wondering. They couldn't have known, she'd decided. They would have said something. Her brothers would have let it slip. Her mom's tears would have been anguished, rather than grateful.

But they'd find out. They were coming. Tomorrow they'd be here, and they'd find out. They'd know everything that she'd done. Someone was going to tell them. And then it everything was going to change, forever. She'd never be her parents' little girl or her brothers' little sister. She'd be a murderer, the stranger who came back wearing Juanita's skin. So she'd stared up at the ceiling and tried to play out the conversation, and in her parents' voices she called herself every horrible thing she could think of, in the vain hope that that'd make it hurt less when she heard it for real. In the privacy of her head she cursed and swore and rejected the horrible thing that was Juanita. Then when she ran out of invectives she'd circled back and done it all again. And again. Then a fourth time, mentally inserting the word "fucking" in front of every noun. She was winding up for the fifth round when one of the aides came in to change the sheets. Some primal sense of embarrassment prevented her from continuing her self-loathing in the presence of a stranger, so she'd dumped herself into her chair and cast off, aimless.

If Evie hadn't been in the rec room, she'd have turned around and wheeled right back out again. Evie was still, technically, an ally. And an even bigger murderer than her, which meant anybody looking to settle scores would go for her first.

She nodded awkwardly at Jacob. They hadn't crossed paths. He might have hated her, might not. Hard to tell. He didn't appear to have attacked Evie, so that was probably a good sign.

She didn't really know what to say to either of them. One she didn't know, the other one had shot her and then been inadvertently abandoned in the escape. She eventually settled on, "...Hey."

"Beats the other place," Evie shot back. The intonation marked it as a joke, a funny little quip, but the truth behind the words was plenty evident nonetheless. Part of the island experience had been a certain variety of boredom, holing up in safety trying not to get shot could certainly drag on, but to experience boredom again without an omnipresent paranoid tension was an unambiguous improvement. Still fucking sucked, though. Then again, where else would she rather be? At home, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for everybody she knew to find out she was a killer now? Walking the streets of Salem a pariah? Getting lost in the bustle of Boston so she could be nobody at all?

There was a good reason she'd pretended to be in too rough a shape to answer the phone, and put off calling her parents back since then. Instead, the limbo that fucking sucked was at least a particular kind of safe, of comfortable. The same faces from the island, everyone who already knew, except without the fighting-for-their-lives part.

So, Scrabble. To Evie, it was more familiar in its online incarnation as Words With Friends. There was a sort of bitter irony to think of it that way, the words she'd actually like to have with her friends, the words they'd like to have with her, none of those likely to crop up in a casual game to distract the lot of them from all the things that were too hard to talk about. The scars all over their bodies were plain enough to see; so it was the least anyone could do to not call attention to the invisible ones. To sit down and pretend not to hate and fear one another, and enjoy a brief reprieve from, well, what their lives had collectively become now.

"Want to play?"

Evie paused for a beat. Too blunt. She had to add something. Something welcoming. Something a real human being would say to a friend.

"I don't bite any more."

Well that was awful.

Luck, however, delivered a diversion. Clicking, not so unlike her own crutches, but not the same either. Squeaking. Wheels. Evie could figure out it was a somewhat-unloved wheelchair before she turned her head to see Juanita's arrival. It didn't come as a huge surprise to see her not even walking given the state of her when they'd last seen one another, and how many days since then the other girl had been seemingly confined to bed-rest. Not a surprise, but saddening. The scars on their bodies were plain enough to see and familiar, but that didn't make looking over the damage any less upsetting. Before their time on the island Evie had hardly known Juanita, sharing a few classes and crossing paths at the gym, yet now she was perhaps the closest friend she had left. That itself was a marker of how much the terrorists had taken from them all. Seeing Juanita demoted from crutch to wheelchair was another. Both hurt.

"Hey yourself,"

Evie hadn't seen Juanita since they'd split up in the graveyard. She dimly recalled hearing her voice amidst Kaede's pepper-spray attack and the ensuing firefight, but couldn't entirely trust that memory given the circumstances. Whatever had happened to her between then and the rescue couldn't have been good, but at least she'd survived it. Now didn't seem like the opportune moment to enquire.

"Would you like to join us?" Evie turned back towards Jacob, "Assuming you are in?"

Jacob shrugged. He hadn't expected another player, but he wouldn't say no. He wished he could tell who it was - he could kinda see her from across the room, but not enough to recognize her, and her singular "hey" hadn't cleared it up - but it probably didn't matter. Anyone left was gonna be about the same to him, and she hadn't raged at seeing him laying around. They could probably get along fine.

"Sure. As good a way to waste time as any."

Jacob's arm snaked its way behind the couch and grabbed his cane. He planted it firmly on the floor and awkwardly lifted himself to his feet. His head swam a bit as he rose, stopping only as he stood up fully. The floor was a bit uncomfortably cold, and his left leg whined at the sudden shift, even with as little weight as it was being asked to bear. Still, he wasn't complaining. Compared to Evie and their new buddy here - on crutches and in a wheelchair respectively - he was probably in the best shape of the trio. Aside from the brain damage.

"... might need help, uh... making out the tiles. My vision's kinda fucked." He very gently tapped his temple with his free hand. "TBI."

Juanita heard Jacob's last utterance as "Teeby eye," and wondered what kind of eye condition that might have been. Then she realized he'd probably said "TBI," like an acronym. But the heck if she knew what it stood for. "Too-something-beginning-with-B-Information" was the closest she could guess at and that sounded very wrong. So she just nodded, before realizing that he might not be able to see that, and supplemented it by saying, "Ah" in a knowing sort of way.

"They're, uh... engraved," she said. "The letter tiles. So you could... try reading them by feel, maybe?"

This trick would not have worked in the Reid household. The Q had gone missing during an argument about whether "Chad" (scoring 30 on a triple-word score) counted as a word. If you typed it all lower-case then spell-check said it wasn't a word. And, of course, it was a name, which was a proper noun, but it was also a country, which was also a proper noun, but nobody knew what you called a person from Chad, and if they were just called Chads the way that that Brits were called Brits, then was that a proper noun? There had been yelling and name-calling and then Patrick had gotten the dictionary and slammed it on the table so hard that half the tiles flew off, and it turned out that "chad," all lower-case, was a word for the little bit of waste material that happened when you punched out of a punch card, but at that point it was academic. They'd never recovered the Q, and had wound up Sharpie-ing a new one onto one of the blank tiles.

Juanita gave Evie an awkward grimace, not sure if what she'd said to Jacob would have come off helpful or condescending or... what. Evie knew med stuff, right? She could probably back Juanita up on this.

With the others’ assent, Evie set about setting up. Not a grand task, just a board to unfold, tile racks to place, and double checking that no errant pieces had escaped the bag and hidden themselves away in the corners of the box.

Hunting down each last one until it was done. What did that remind her of?

At first, the young survivor parsed Jacob’s apology as something of a jest. Couldn’t very well strategise properly if your opponents knew what letters you had up your sleeve, and then closing with TMI, was that what he’d said? No. Not too much information. TBI? Not sure what it meant, but it rang a bell. She’d figure it out in good time. Until then, she presented as if she understood. Showed a position of strength while Juanita suggested feeling the engraved shapes, then looked to her as if for… approval? Support? The grimace brought Evie’s mind back to a poolside, an embarrassing injury, the look of a friend who wanted assistance but didn’t know how to ask for it. The same friend bleeding in the snow, only able to plead in the most literal sense.

It wasn’t going to go away, was it?

“Yeah, that should work, good thinking Sp— sorry, Juanita. Jumbling my…”

She let it trail off. No amount of explanation was going to make the excuse of mixing up sounds that different from each other land any better. Instead, Evie leaned across the table brandishing the bag of letters. Everything would be fine once they just lost themselves in play. Scrabble had been a comfort activity for her in lockdown, a way for the McKowns to stay sane and stay connected while cooped up against their wills. Surely the same could hold true here and now.

“Here, best letter scoring goes first right?”