The Choice: Part 9

The Choice
Part 9

She said, in a weak voice, “Hey,” after I walked in the room. I closed the door behind me and kneeled next to her.
I held her hand. “Are you okay?” I said. “Are you-”
“I'm alive,” she said. She smiled. A tear ran down my face when I saw it.
“Have you heard the official story?” I asked.
She nodded.
I nodded in return. “What are we going to do about the wolves, then? When they find out you're still alive, they're going to want to finish you off.”
Caroline shook her head. “I know what you're thinking,” she said. “Leave it alone. We'll deal with that when I'm not doped up.”
She tried to smile me off the subject, but I pressed it. “Caroline, I should have smelled them coming! That's twice now we've been taken off guard by them! I mean, what gives them the right to-”
She touched my hand, and I looked down at her. She was crying.
“Please,” she said, “Don't go down that road.”
“Caroline, I'm trying to protect you-”
“And I'm trying to protect you!” she yelled, though her voice was hoarse and barely had any volume. “I love you too much to watch you do this to yourself!”
“What if they come after you?”
“If it comes to that, we can leave the city-”
“You think they'll let us do that? This is a personal vendetta, Caroline!”
She stared at me as I spoke. “What?” I said.
“What do you think you heard?” She asked.
“Huh?”
“After...” she shifted in her bed, “after he shot me. What do you think he said to you?”
“He said it he did it because he just doesn't like me!” I said.
She shook her head. “No. You've got it all wrong.”
“I know what I heard, Caroline.”
“No you don't,” she said.
“I know what I heard, Caroline!”
“Please!” she shouted again. “Please, just...listen to me. Trust me. Like I trusted you.”
I felt my hands shaking. Suddenly I felt nauseous. I started to cry, and she put a hand on my arm. I shrugged it off.
“If you'd never trusted me,” I said, hating myself with every word, “you wouldn't be in this hospital bed.”
She looked at me as if she'd been struck. She said, “Listen to me. I will never blame you. I would never, for something like this. I love you. Do you have any idea how important you are to me?”
“I can't protect you,” I said. “I can't even from a member of our own race. What good am I? What's the point of even-”
“Shut up,” she said.
I looked up at her, wounded.
“You have always acted like a victim. Do you know what would happen if I died? You would mourn for the loss of my presence, for my influence on your life. It wouldn't even cross your mind to think about the fact that I was the one who actually died! You're not the one who got shot, and there's nothing that you could have done to stop it from happening, so just shut up and quit feeling so fucking sorry for yourself!”
I stuttered into silence, and looked down.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “You just...I don't know what I'd do without you. I thought -I thought I'd lost you.”
At this point, I broke down completely, but instead of leaning on her, I stood up and left the room.
“Wait!” she called after me, her voice trembling with emotion.
I stopped in the hallway, but I did not turn around. I wanted to, so much. I wanted to go back and cry in her arms and let the whole thing go, but I was vulnerable. I still felt like I'd let her down. And I had to prove that I was still worth a damn.
So I left the hospital that night and ran. Across the streets, through the alleys, cutting through backyards and playgrounds, until I reached the ROTC field. I went under the police tape and tried to ignore the drops of Caroline's blood that the CSI team had missed. I searched wildly for any piece of anything that could give me the scent of the wolves. A stray hair, a piece of cloth, something. But they were sly as ghosts, and it'd been a long shot anyway.
I wandered around the city, feeling angry and wanting to take someone's head off, until I found myself at the place where we'd first encountered the wolves. I sat down amidst the trees and bushes and felt the coolness of its strength wash over me. I looked up to Luna, who I had been ignoring the whole time, and I felt a wash of shame roll over me.
This was foolishness. These wolves knew how to hide. They knew how to cover their scent. And what's more, I had no experience in terms of tracking. And if I did find one of them, what then? I didn't stand a chance.
But they had shot her. They'd killed Matt and they'd shot her and left her for dead. Why not me? Why leave me alive, wanting to find vengeance, capable of taking it? Why not just shoot us both in the head and have done with it?
It was so angering, I just didn't understand. The logic behind the attack was tenuous at best. They were threatening enough to keep me at bay without violence. But this? This random act of cruelty? And what he'd said to me afterwords, how did that make sense at all? It would take someone with a heart as black as coal to commit such a crime simply because they didn't like someone.
And then Caroline's words registered with me. What I thought he said. She remembered him saying something different. Why had I just stormed off without hearing her out?
I had to question whether I believed my recollection was wrong. At first it seemed an impossible thing to consider, but it occurred to me how angry I was, and how my vision had gone red. Did something happen that I didn't remember? Had something happened differently that I remembered incorrectly?