Household Gods

When Nicole lay down, she had feared she’d never fall asleep. But once she was as comfortable in that bed as she could be, she spiraled irresistibly down into the deeps of sleep. Worry faded, hopelessness sank out of sight. Dreams rose up around her, strange and yet familiar. A stair going down, a stair going up, round and round and round and…

21

Nicole wound slowly back toward consciousness. She lay with her eyes closed. The mattress under her was hard and lumpy and uncomfortable. A sigh, her first willed breath of the morning, hissed out through her nostrils. Another day in Carnuntum. Another day to get through without too many disasters. Another day to pray with all her heart that she could somehow, someday, without dying first, get out of there.

She rolled over. The mattress wasn’t any more comfortable on her side than on her back. It crinkled and rustled, shifting under her, jabbing into a rib. What the -?

Her own mattress, such as it was, was stuffed with wool. It didn’t rustle when she rolled over on it. Was she sick again? Had Julia or someone moved her onto a straw pallet while she was delirious?

She opened her eyes. She was looking out an open doorway into a hall.

But she’d shut the bedroom door the night before, shut and barred it, as she always had, ever since she came to Carnuntum.

The doorway was taller, wider. Its edges weren’t indifferently whitewashed wood. They were – painted metal? And that shimmer close to her eyes, so close she had to shorten focus, almost cross her eyes, to see it, was a railing, bright silver – aluminum.

She was dreaming. She drew in another deep breath. And smelled – nothing. No city stink. No reek of shit and garbage and smoke and unwashed humanity. In their place was… not quite nothing, after all. A faint, tingling, half-unpleasant smell. Floor wax and – disinfectant? Yes.

She rolled onto her back again. This was a wonderful dream, realistic to the point of pain. She didn’t want ever to wake up.

She drank in every detail. The mattress under her, with its crinkly plastic cover. The sheets, white and faintly rough on her skin, but smoother than anything she’d known in Carnuntum. The ceiling: no hand-planed boards fitted together unevenly, but acoustic tiles, each one exactly like the one beside it, machine-made, perfect; and a frosted-glass panel over a pair of fluorescent tubes. Their pale, purplish-white glow was the brightest thing she’d seen, except for the sun itself, in well over a year.

Nicole shivered. Part was wonder. Part was chill. She’d got used to being chilly in Carnuntum, where fires and braziers didn’t do nearly enough to fight the cold.

She was in Carnuntum, then. As vivid as the dream was, as real as it felt, the cold was unmistakable.

Or else… it was air-conditioned to a fare-thee-well. She looked down at herself, at her body lying in the bed. Crisp white sheet, industrial strength. On top of it, a baby-blue blanket better dyed than the one she’d had in Carnuntum, but only about half as thick, and not wool, either. On top of the blanket, her arm.

Her arm. She needed a moment to recognize it. She hadn’t seen it in a year and a half. Pale, on the fleshy side, manicured fingers – no, this wasn’t Umma’s work-hardened arm. This one, without question, belonged to Nicole Gunther-Perrin. It had something – probably the lead for an IV – taped to it. There were other discomforts, wires, leads taped here and there, connected to monitors that beeped and whistled when she moved. And one niggle that mounted to annoyance, which felt like the worst bladder infection she’d ever had, and was – had to be – a catheter.

All of which meant, which had to mean -

She lifted the sheet and let out a startled snort of laughter. The white cotton gown, or front of a gown, was even less prepossessing than the grimy wool tunic in which she’d first awakened in Carnuntum. But the body it so halfheartedly concealed was hers, slightly flabby tummy, heavy thighs, and all.

A tall black woman in a nurse’s uniform strode into the room, alerted probably by the changes in the monitors. At sight of Nicole half sitting up, staring at her, she stopped. Her eyes went wide. “You’re awake,” she said.

Nicole swallowed against a sudden and completely involuntary surge of terror. The same terror with which she’d faced every morning in Carnuntum.

Would today be the day? Would she finally, somehow, blow her cover, and let the whole world know that she wasn’t anything like what she seemed?

She took refuge, and warmth, in a small flash of temper at the nurse’s belaboring of the obvious. “Scilicet vigilans sum. Sed ubi sum?’’

The woman’s eyes widened even further. “Say what, honey?” Under her breath, she muttered something that sounded like, Possible brain damage?