Page 4 of Unnatural (Men and Monsters #2)

Autumn lay in her bed, staring upward, the large, dropped ceiling morphing into the nighttime sky.

She blinked it away, the bright, full moon disappearing, the outline of the fluorescent lights coming into focus.

Reality. She sighed. The medication helped, but she was a natural at merging fantasy—dreams—with reality.

No wonder she felt as if she’d been sleepwalking through most of her life.

She turned to the side, uncomfortable. She was so skinny that her bones poked at her skin from the inside and hurt. Stop complaining, Autumn. You have it far better than most around here.

True. Not that that said anything great.

Her gaze hung on her journal, still sitting on the window seat where she’d been writing in it earlier. Carefully, she got out of bed, walking to where it lay open. She read over the words she’d written.

Does my birth mother ever miss me, I wonder?

Does she think of the day I was born? Was it dewy that October morning?

Did she name me Autumn, or did someone else?

Maybe it was her favorite season. Perhaps she once jumped in piles of leaves and ate caramel apples.

Maybe those happy memories surfaced when she looked into my eyes.

Did she first ask to hold me as my cry filled the room?

Does she hear that phantom sound sometimes when she comes awake suddenly in the dark of the night?

Does she think of me when the leaves change color and fall to the ground?

Does the memory smell like firelight and taste like apples?

Does she feel a reaching inside? Does she cry? Does she wonder? Or is it only me?

Pain pierced her, emotional more than physical, but it only added to her overall feeling of sickness, and she decided against writing any more. She returned to her bed, climbing in and lying gingerly against the pillows.

She lifted her hand, stretching her fingers, and it wavered in front of her, skeletal. God, she really did feel especially nauseated tonight. She could tolerate most of the side effects, but she hated the nausea. She hated it.

She turned her hand, peering at her thumb, the corner of her nail completely clean now. She was troubled by the dirt. Just a tiny smudge that had come from beneath her fingernail, yet combined with the dream…

What are you thinking, Autumn?

She didn’t know. Only that equal parts fear and excitement sparkled inside her and the feeling was unfamiliar…overwhelming.

What could it mean?

Either the dirt was a mere coincidence but one she couldn’t explain, or she’d actually been out in those woods.

Impossible. She looked at the scratches on her arms, the ones she’d assumed she herself had made.

The medication made them sleep very deeply, and that, combined with the skin conditions so many of the ADHM kids faced, often resulted in them scratching themselves in the middle of the night.

It was one reason their nails were constantly trimmed.

But the scratches on her arms—though not deep—looked razor thin.

Something that might happen if one fell on a bed of pine needles.

“Stop it,” she muttered to herself. She didn’t want to feel crazy on top of all the other ailments she suffered.

Her body belonged to the disease she’d been born with.

To the choices her mother had made. It belonged to the doctors who tried to keep her comfortable.

It belonged to the medication that had to keep her sick in order to keep her well, the ultimate unfair trade-off.

But her mind? Her mind belonged to her. As did her will.

Her spirit. Her heart. Those precious treasures were hers , and no person, no drug, no disease could ever, ever touch them or make them less without her permission.

She turned again, gritting her teeth at the discomfort, settling, and staring at the strip of dim light coming from beneath the door to her room.

Was it possible that she’d slipped out of bed and into the forest?

Had she been sleepwalking and actually gone there?

It wasn’t as if the Mercy Hospital for Children was a prison.

There was very little security. She could have slipped out, unnoticed.

She pictured herself, walking like a zombie out of her room, past the temporarily empty nurses’ station, down the elevator, and out the front door.

Perhaps she’d run through the woods from the monster of her imagination, the one who’d turned out to be a dreamy, fascinating boy.

Of course, she’d made him up too, dreamed him, even if her body had traveled to the place where she’d picked up a speck of dirt that had lodged beneath her fingernail.

But what if you didn’t?

Her heart gave a sudden gallop, and for the breath of a moment, the thought itself made her feel fully alive instead of half-dead. As always, the heavenly moment was extremely short-lived.

But the thought remained.

How did I dream him up? Autumn had thought initially that he was a culmination of that which she knew from experience and that which she believed about herself.

And he was. The nasty-looking scar, long but straight, obviously made by a surgical blade.

The bolt, which might represent the idea that she was being held together precariously in some fashion bound to fail, or maybe the feeling that she was part machine. Part thing.

Or even that her body would work far better than it did if her various diseased parts were replaced by metal and steel.

Yes, that all made sense. But what about his hair? His eyes? The curiosity and flash of…hope she’d seen in his gaze? Those things felt foreign. They felt as if they’d come from outside herself.

Which might mean he did too.

Autumn had no earthly idea how to explain that suspicion, yet it persisted all the same.

A small knock sounded on the door, and it was pushed open. The night nurse, Salma, came in with a warm smile and a tray in her hand. Autumn pulled herself to a sitting position, giving Salma a smile in return.

“You didn’t eat much dinner,” Salma said, glancing at Autumn’s chart and setting the tray containing her nightly cocktail of medicine on the bedside table. “The nausea again?”

Autumn placed her hand on her concave stomach. “It’s bad tonight.”

Salma’s eyes filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.

” She put her hand on Autumn’s forehead the way a mother would do.

A few of the nurses were like that. Others relied solely on equipment and readings to ascertain the patients’ health status.

Autumn had been tended to by enough nurses to know that that was what separated the good ones from the wonderful ones.

The wonderful ones, like Salma, made you feel as if you were being cared for in the same way they would care for their very own child.

And to motherless children like Autumn, it made all the difference. All the difference.

Not only that, but other than their friends who suffered with the same condition, their doctors and nurses were the only ones who touched them.

The tenderness of an embrace, the warmth of another hand in theirs, was deeply longed for but mostly nonexistent.

Autumn and others who were well enough sometimes took day trips to museums and science centers in New York City and sometimes the movies.

Autumn saw the way people looked at them with their oxygen tanks and wheelchairs and various other medical apparatus and shrunk away as if they might catch whatever they had with a mere brush of skin.

Salma sat down on the side of Autumn’s bed, taking her hands. Autumn gripped her. Salma’s hands were warm and soft. She turned Autumn’s arms over and gazed down worriedly at the scratches. “You haven’t suffered from rashes in months. What are you scratching yourself for?”

Autumn shrugged. “How do I know? I did it in my sleep.”

Salma pressed her lips together, her expression showing displeasure. But Autumn didn’t get the feeling Salma was displeased with her. Maybe just the situation. The unfairness of it all. “Do you want me to bandage you up so you won’t accidentally make it worse tonight?”

“No. I think it was just a one-time thing.”

Salma stared at Autumn’s arms for a few moments longer. “There seemed to be a lot of scratching going on last night,” she murmured before giving Autumn’s hands one final squeeze and letting go.

“What do you mean?”

But Salma shook her head. “Oh nothing. Just the full moon I guess.”

The full moon.

“Did you know that more babies are born during full moons?” Salma asked.

“No. Why is that?”

“No scientific reason, but it’s true even so. Not everything can be measured, at least not by us. My mother used to say that the full moon brings on all manner of strange behavior. It influences things.”

“Like dreams?” Now that Autumn thought about it, the dreams of running and the one of him had all come during the full moon. Is that why I made him of moonlight?

“Definitely dreams.” Salma leaned in conspiratorially. “If the moon is powerful enough to move the tides, just imagine what else it can sway.”

Can it bring dreams to life?

Autumn’s lips curved, but she didn’t speak of the boy with Salma. She’d been ruminating on it, and she wanted to clear it from her mind for at least a little while.

“Will you tell me about your mother, Salma?” If I can’t know my own, then let me know yours. Salma was so sweet—Autumn figured only someone good and kind could have raised a woman like Salma. “Did everyone love her?”

A wistful smile crossed Salma’s lips, and she let out a fluttery laugh. “Oh no. She wasn’t like you, sent here to tend to others’ hearts. She’d say it just like it was, whether it hurt your feelings or not.” But despite what sounded a bit like criticism, love was shining from her eyes.

“What’s better?” Autumn wondered. To forever be mindful of harsh words or overly honest opinions or to lay it out there, come what may?