I sigh. “Great.” She brought one of those so that she doesn’t have to untie me. So that she doesn’t have to risk my overpowering her when she ties me back up. But it also means I have to relieve myself into that thing right in front of her.
This is humiliating.
She unties my legs and then puts the bedpan in position. As soon as I’m done, she takes it to the bathroom and empties it. The toilet flushes.
I glance at the tray. There’s a sandwich with what looks like roast beef, and apple slices cut up in a bowl. My stomach rumbles.
Monica comes back into the room and reties my ankles. Then she picks up the tray, sitting on the bed beside me.
“How do you expect me to eat if I can’t use my hands?”
She picks up one of the sandwich slices and holds it up to my mouth, looking bored. “Open wide.”
“Seriously?”
“Do you want to eat or not? I’m cool with letting you starve.”
My stomach growls in protest. This is ridiculous.
I open my mouth and take a bite, glaring at her.
“Did he tell you to do this?” I ask around a mouthful of roast beef with mustard. “Did he tell you to come in here and feed me like a baby?”
“I do what I have to for the club.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Just what I said.”
As if that explains everything.
“You want some water?” She holds up one of the bottles. A few drops of condensation drip onto my stomach. They tickle as they trickle down my side without my being able to wipe them away.
It’s cooler in here now. Someone must have turned up the central air.
I nod.
Monica unscrews the cap and holds the bottle to my lips, letting me take a few gulps. The liquid is cool and refreshing.
I take a few more bites of the sandwich, and then meet her eyes. “I don’t get it. How are you okay with what’s happening here?”
She gives me a humorless smile. “Trying to appeal to my conscience, Sticky Fingers?”
Yeah, it’s probably pointless to try to appeal to any sense of female solidarity here. From the minute I saw the way the women reacted to what Dee did, I could feel there is a strong sense of sisterhood among the women. The problem is, I’m not part of it. And if what Tequila said is true, I never will be.
“Yeah, I guess I am. But I really want to know. Doesn’t this bother you?” I flick my eyes to one of my bound wrists.
She gives me the last bite of the sandwich. She looks right at the ropes, then at me without sympathy. “Even if it did, it wouldn’t matter.”
“Why?”
She sets the tray down and draws back. “You really don’t get it, do you?” She sighs. “Let me clue you in, Martian Girl. This?” She waves her hands around the room. “This place, these people? This club is everything, Stephanie. This is our whole life. Everything all of us do is for the club. Loyalty is the name of the game. No one goes against the Outlaws. No half in, half out. You’re either in, or you aren’t.”
I lean forward, or I do so as best I can under the circumstances. “Wait a minute. Monica, are you being forced to do this? Are they keeping you here?”
I’ve heard this kind of thing before. Sort of. In the Colony, the pastors talk about how everything everyone does is for the good of the whole, how we must remain loyal, not only to God, but to each other. Once, I’d believed in their us against them garbage. That the world was a terrible place, evil, out to get us, and the only way to survive was to keep the rest of them out and stick together.
I get the feeling that there’s nothing Godly about what the men do here, but she still sounds like the women in the Colony started to sound once I’d seen the truth. She still sounds like a woman trapped in an organization that uses intimidation and plays on their fears to keep them in line.
But as soon as I ask the question, I know I’ve misread the whole situation.
“Pfft. Hardly.” She laughs. “Trust me, I’m not being forced to do anything I don’t want to do. I choose to be here.”
I process this, letting her words sink in. Theoretically, everything she said could be chalked up to fear. She could have convinced herself she’s better off here than trying to leave.
Over time, I’d begun to realize that when some people in the Colony talked about how much they loved the fellowship, how much they loved the church, it wasn’t loyalty they were showing. It was fear. I’d seen it behind their eyes, fear I’d been blind to for my whole life. I’d seen it in the way Sarah would glance at the guards. I’d seen it in Seth’s wife when she thought no one was watching her. But this is different. I can hear the loyalty, hear the adoration Monica has for this…club, and it isn’t a blind adoration one shows when they’ve been brainwashed.
She means what she says. She isn’t a prisoner.
There’s a rapping on the door. Monica grabs a big towel from Spider’s bathroom and comes back, throwing it over me.
‘What are you doing?”
Without responding, she fiddles with the towel, clearly making sure all of my lady bits are covered. Then she goes to the door and opens it.
A tall, slender biker with a clean-shaven face and sharp grey eyes steps in carrying a leather satchel. Monica gestures to me, as if to say, She’s the one you’re here for.
He nods and crosses the room to me, setting his satchel on the nightstand, while Monica sits beside me on the bed again.
“Who is he?” I ask her. “Why is he here?”
A smile twists her lips. She says nothing, evidently enjoying watching me squirm.
The grey-eyed biker opens his satchel as he looks me over with an amused sparkle in eyes that are half hidden behind tinted spectacles. “Spider certainly has an interesting way of dealing with women who go against him.”
I click my teeth, my face burning with humiliation.
Grinning from ear to ear, he rummages through his satchel and pulls out a syringe.
I jerk my shoulders up. “Whoa, what is that? Are you going to drug me now?”
“No drugs.” When I twist in my bindings, he grips my shoulder. “Relax. I’m a doctor, and this is a birth control implant. Spider’s orders.”
“An implant? Is there such a thing?”
“Don’t tell me, you’ve never heard of those, either?” Monica quips.
“No,” I snap. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
They didn’t have anything like that in the Colony. I find the concept of something so technical baffling.
“The implant can be removed easily any time. It will not prevent you from having children once Spider has it removed, and it’ll remain effective for five years.”
I sigh and stare at the ceiling, refusing to watch the needle going in, shutting out the pin prick of pain. The notion of having the decision to bear children taken from me, however temporarily, by a man I don’t trust is frightening. Other implications—that my body belongs to Spider to do with as he wishes, and that his taking me is inevitable—settle like a brick on my chest.
My eyes sting with tears of fear, a trapped feeling wrapping around my throat. I push the tears back, refusing to let either of them see me cry.
The doctor goes over the potential side effects of the implant. Mood changes, weight gain, headaches, changes in menstrual cycles. He tells me that if I have any symptoms, they should be mild and temporary, passing within a few months, and that if I have any more serious ones, to let Spider know. I barely register what he says, his voice a muted buzzing in my ear as my brain tries to process what’s becoming of my life. Spider’s control over me has never felt so absolute.