Delirium - Lauren Oliver [88]
I nod.
She shakes her head, staring at me like she’s never seen me before. “I can’t believe that. I can’t believe you snuck out during a raid—for me.”
“Yeah, well.” I shift uncomfortably. It feels like I’ve been talking for ages, and Hana and Alex have both been staring at me the whole time. My cheeks are flaming hot.
Just then there’s a sharp knock on the door that opens to the store, and Jed calls out, “Lena? Are you in there?”
I gesture frantically to Alex. Hana shoves him behind the door just as Jed starts pushing at it from the other side. He manages to get the door open only a few inches before it collides with the crate of applesauce.
In those few inches of space, I can see one of Jed’s eyes blinking at me disapprovingly.
“What are you doing in there?”
Hana pops her head around the door and waves. “Hi, Jed,” she says cheerfully, once again switching effortlessly into cheerful public mode. “I just came by to give Lena something. And we started gossiping.”
“We have customers,” Jed says sullenly.
“I’ll be out in a second,” I say, trying to match Hana’s tone. The fact that Jed and Alex are separated by only a few inches of plywood is terrifying.
Jed grunts and retreats, closing the door again. Hana, Alex, and I look at one another in silence. All three of us exhale at the same time, a collective sigh of relief.
When Alex speaks again, he keeps his voice to a whisper. “I brought some things for your leg,” he says. He takes the backpack off and sets it on the ground, then starts pulling out peroxide, Bacitracin, bandages, adhesive tape, cotton balls. He kneels in front of me. “Can I?” he says. I roll up my jeans, and he starts unwinding the strips of T-shirt. I can’t believe Hana is standing there watching a boy—an Invalid—touch my skin. I know she would never in a million years have expected it, and I look away, embarrassed and proud at the same time.
Hana inhales sharply once the makeshift bandages come off my leg. Without meaning to I’ve been squeezing my eyes shut.
“Damn, Lena,” she says. “That dog got you good.”
“She’ll be fine,” Alex says, and the quiet confidence in his voice makes warmth spread through my whole body. I crack open an eye and sneak a look at the back of my calf. My stomach does a flop. It looks like an enormous chunk has been torn out of my leg. A few square inches of skin are just plain missing.
“Maybe you should go to the hospital,” Hana says doubtfully.
“And tell them what?” Alex uncaps the tube of peroxide and begins wetting cotton balls. “That she got hurt during a raid on an underground party?”
Hana doesn’t answer. She knows I can’t actually go to the doctor. I’d be strapped down in the labs, or thrown in the Crypts, before I could finish giving my name.
“It doesn’t hurt that bad,” I say, which is a lie. Hana again gives me that look, like we’ve never met before, and I realize that she’s actually—and possibly for the first time in our lives—impressed with me. In awe of me, even.
Alex dabs on a thick coat of antibacterial cream and then starts wrestling with the gauze and the adhesive tape. I don’t have to ask where he got so many supplies. Another benefit to having security access in the labs, I assume.
Hana drops to her knees. “You’re doing it wrong,” she says, and it’s a relief to hear her normal, bossy tone. I almost laugh. “My cousin’s a nurse. Let me.”
She practically elbows him out of the way. Alex shuffles over and raises his hands in surrender. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, and then winks at me.
Then I do start laughing. Fits of giggling overtake me, and I have to clamp my hands over my mouth to keep from shrieking and gasping and totally blowing our cover. For a second Hana and Alex just stare at me, amazed, but then they look at each other and start grinning stupidly.
I know we’re all thinking the same thing.
It’s crazy. It’s stupid. It’s dangerous. But somehow, standing in the sweltering storeroom surrounded by boxes of mac ’n’ cheese and canned beets and baby powder, the three