The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

thought to call Ulrich to share his latest successful patient surgery or achievement of Milo’s, he’d fantasized about choking Cora with that necklace.

“Kristian.”

“What?” he grunted.

“It’s already been nine days.”

Stunned, he shook his head, then blinked as he finished processing her words. Feverishly working through the implications, he felt his forehead. Still cool. Early signs, such as a headache, abdominal cramps, or muscle aches, would be masked by the morphine drip. Also, the incubation period for Ebola could be as long as twenty-one days. But the Spanish flu and RVF took only two to seven days to incubate.

“Rollie ran the tests, I assume.”

“Yes.” Cora’s voice had sounded like they were underwater. “Rollie, Lily, and Finn are all fine—physically, I mean. Finn and Lily are helping with Hannah and Milo, who’re both in shock.”

Finn must have told his wife and Sylvia everything. His version of it. Imagining their reactions, Kristian felt an urge to vomit. Even if he weren’t currently in isolation, Hannah would refuse to see—or forgive—him. Likely, Sylvia was equally angry, and disappointed in him. This is Finn’s fault, he thought. The plan would have worked if it hadn’t been for his brash, halfwit half brother. Regardless, he would have to be the one to make things right, even if it meant accepting full blame. Because it was his family’s well-being at stake. “I need to get home.”

“Kristian, you’re . . . positive for the three without vaccines.”

“What?” He inhaled deeply but only felt more light-headed. The morphine, messing with his mind, must be blocking the initial symptoms, he concluded. Or, alternatively, along with her pathogens, she’d transmitted her active, unique antibodies. Overcome by the possibility, Kristian rose onto his elbows. “Holy shit.” But that approach failed with Otto’s mice and Ulrich’s human test subjects, he reminded himself.

His chest heaving, Kristian projected the outcome for each scenario: either he’d be dead within a week or his survival would signify a major breakthrough.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, patting his shoulder.

Repulsed by her touch and needing space to think, he knocked her away.

Stumbling, she regained her balance, then clutched her necklace. “Oh, right. You don’t know.”

“Know what?” he asked, glaring at the dried blood stains spotting the ratty sweatshirt he’d thrown to her after Rollie had sawed through the plastic cords. His blood, all over her. Her blood, coursing through him. How has she not cleaned herself up yet? he wondered. He wanted off this rock, now.

“Kristian, the fact that you’re symptom-free shows that, as I always hoped and prayed, you’re just like me.”

“I’m nothing like you,” he said vehemently. “Go to hell.” He wished there was an afterlife, with a special barbed-wire cage there just for her, far more miserable and cramped than this island. And beside it, an operating table.

“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” she said in a soothing, condescending tone.

“What are you talking about?”

Her attention shifted to a pair of metal carts against the yellow-tiled wall. One contained medical instruments. The other held a case of water, a small package wrapped in newsprint, and what appeared to be a misshapen chocolate cake.

“There’s something more you need to know,” she said, wheeling the cart with the amateurish cake closer to him.

“I’m done with this conversation. Whatever it is, Rollie can tell me.”

“No. This has to come from me,” she said, examining the palm of her right hand. “There’s no easy way to say it, so I just will.” She looked him straight in the eyes, the same way she had seconds before she’d killed his grandfather—the man who’d so patiently supported him through everything from overcoming his early childhood speech impediment to studying for his board exams. He yearned to lunge from the bed, grab an instrument from the tray, and stab her.

Curiosity, however, held him back; he returned her stare.

“Ulrich, his research spanned far more than”—her voice quivered—“virology. One of his goals was to create immortality for the Gettler lineage,” she said, watching for his reaction.

He kept a straight face to deny her the pleasure of knowing she had his attention.

“You’re, um, the result of that experiment, using him and me,” she concluded, her lips closing in a smile.

“What?!” Kristian roared.

Blinking hard, he tried to make sense of his surroundings and what she’d just said: Ulrich, not Rollie, was his father. And she was his mother.

“Shit!” Why hadn’t Rollie—his half brother—told him?

“You were born in this very room.”

Serenely smiling, Cora gazed at an empty spot near his gurney, and a tear ran down her scarred cheek.

It couldn’t be true. It simply couldn’t.

They both, however, did have the O-positive blood type. He pictured the Punnett square that proved the inheritance feasible. But they also shared this trait with 38 percent of the world’s population. Why would he have suspected it was anything more than coincidental? “If I have your immunities, which only work here, how have I been able to live in Manhattan my entire life? Surely you infected me with your germs during the birth.”

“The antibodies in my breast milk. While you lived here with me, I was nursing you,” she said, her eyes closed. “You loved hunting for spiders, digging in the dirt, watching the ships from my spy holes on the morgue roof.”

Groaning, Kristian tried to block out her words, yet he couldn’t ignore a nagging sensation that they were factual. Once, he’d asked why there were no baby pictures of him, much less an album. Rollie had shrugged off the question with a vague line about Petra not having been good at that sort of thing. Yet in Finn’s baby book, some of the entries had been penned in Rollie’s neat, tight script.

“You are not my mother,” he said, “and you never will be, you vile piece of filth.”

As if he’d just punched her, Cora staggered backward.

“I’m done here.” He swung his legs off the gurney and reached for the IV needle.

“You can’t go yet,” she said, rushing to block his path. “You’re still recovering, and I need to teach you