Page 40 of Darkness I Become
“It was unattended,” Cade replied, and his indifference struck her. “Out here, that means it’s ours.”
“But what if they need the sleeping bag to keep warm? Or—”
“Asha,” he said, short and irritated. “It’s survival. That’s it. There’s nothing personal about it. You need to learn that there are some things you can’t change.”
She fell silent, upset by his tone. She wasn’t used to him speaking to her like that, and the comment aboutthings you can’t changesounded too close to a rebuke for the way she’d been disgusted by the social hierarchy at the Nest.
Well, I’m not going to accept it,Asha thought angrily.Not forever, anyway.
After they got back to the Nest, she decided to distance herself from Cade for the evening. She instead asked Leo if she could help him prep medicines for their journey to Hillside, the first settlement they were to visit. He let her tag along on his trip to Dom’s house, where he would collect medicinal plants for his kit.
“You can help harvest, if you like,” Leo said with a small smile. “Dom might have something for you to eat, too.”
“Eat?” Asha asked, raising an eyebrow.
“He maintains a vegetable garden.”
Asha wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of greenery that practically engulfed Dom’s small, modest home. He had carefully maintained flowerbeds that wrapped around the entire building. The shrubbery was impeccably trimmed, and the ivy that crawled up the walls was artfully arranged. Leo had told her he was an avid gardener, but she still hadn’t been able to picture stoic, grumpy Dom as the type to fuss over delicate daffodils.
He answered the door exactly as she expected: with a short, clipped greeting, before stepping aside to admit them. He led them out the back door and into the yard, where Asha was once again floored by the sheer number of plants. He tended a large vegetable garden, but he also had a separate garden for what she assumed were the herbs and medicinal plants that Leo was after.
“You planted all this?” Asha dared to ask Dom, awestruck.
He grunted, then rubbed the back of his neck. “Yep.”
After a moment, it became clear that that was all she was going to get from him, so she knelt in the dirt next to Leo, who was examining various plants in the herb garden. Dom watched for a minute, then retreated back into the house.
“He likes plants more than people,” Leo confided in a low, confidential tone, his amusement palpable.
“I couldn’t tell,” Asha replied wryly. “He’s seriously talented. I couldn’t do all this.”
“I know. Best not to tell him, though. He’ll get all awkward about it.”
She giggled, forgetting all about her earlier annoyance with Cade. Leo opened his medical bag, and Asha recognized it as the basic kit that paramedics used at the compound. The top had holders for syringes, scissors, surgical tools, a small flashlight, a blood pressure cuff, and a stethoscope. The rest was filled with typical supplies like bandages, as well as various jars and bottles of medicine. What made Asha stop dead, however, was a small, red-labeled auto-injector of clear liquid strapped to the top of the bag.
“Is that Regenerex?” she asked in wonder.
“It is,” Leo replied as he trimmed peppermint leaves off the plant.
Her brow furrowed. She’d only seen the distinctive packaging once before: in the nurse’s office at the school where she worked. It hadincredibly rapid regenerative healing abilities and was capable of healing even serious wounds in hours. A teenage boy had had a bad fall in the early days of her working there, and the drug had saved his life.
“It’s standard in every military doctor’s kit,” Leo continued, stashing leaves in a pouch from his pack. “Just the one shot, though. It’s not easy to manufacture, so we’d use it only for cases that’d be truly terminal otherwise.”
“I’m surprised you still have it, with everything.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t use it on just anyone, frankly. It’s pretty much irreplaceable now, so I’d save it for Cade, Dom, or myself.”
At Cade’s name, Asha flinched. She was beginning to regret how she’d left things with him. Her anger may have been disproportionate, but it came from what she realized was a real need to tell him something important: that she wasn’t willing to put up with gang life forever.
She spotted some of the other medicines Leo had: long-life antibiotics, morphine, and a cluster of other drugs that she didn’t know the use for.
“You have so much compound medicine left,” Asha said. “How?”
“Why do you think we’re harvesting plants right now?” Leo replied, as though it were obvious. “I use herbal medicine for minor to moderate complaints. I save the good stuff for situations where it’s truly needed.”
“Like when Angel…” She trailed off, but he nodded solemnly. It explained why having her tooth pulled hadn’t hurt nearly as much as expected. She felt oddly touched that he’d given her a hit from his precious supply of morphine.
She finished helping Leo with the plants, said an awkward goodbye to Dom, and returned home. Night had fallen by then, and the house was dark except for flickering light coming from the bedroom.
