meet the saints
Commander Hilary Erhard entered the new MedLab facility through the automatic sliding glass doors.
The woman organizing the desk looked at her with cool blue intelligent eyes. "Good morning, Commander Erhard."
Erhard smiled warmly. "Good morning, I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
The woman issued a half-smile. "Devereaux, Suzanne Devereaux."
Erhard's smile dried up. "Ah, yes, Mrs. Devereaux. I'm sorry about your husband. My condolences."
The woman didn't miss a beat. "Thank you, he died as he wished, at home, in the country he loved. We shed our tears before I left. Please, call me Suzanne."
A scowl briefly flashed acoss the Commander's face, and vanished instantly. "Do you have the space you need, do you think?"
"I think so, yes. It's certainly an improvement over what we had. We're all grateful for that, thank you."
Erhard was finding the recent widow's aplomb vaguely disconcerting. "How long have you worked with Aggie and Rails?"
Suzanne Devereaux laughed, and Hilary Erhard was slightly startled by her cool beauty.
"I volunteered yesterday."
Erhard's scowl returned and vanished again. "You seem to be coping well."
Suzanne Devereaux's eyes squinted and relaxed again, as she sensed a challenge behind Erhard's casual demeanor.
"We have no choice but to cope. Your people did the heavy lifting, Aggie & Rails do the Medtech work, I do the organization." She forced a smile. "It's pretty ad hoc, but so far it seems to work."
Erhard forced a smile of her own. "Good, that's good to hear. I like people who can think on their feet."
Devereaux's smile vanished. "What choice is there?"
Erhard nodded. "Good point."
"Ah need a drayink." A gruff voice from behind the curtain.
Suzanne called out "Coming, Leon." Suzanne looked at Erhard. "I must tend to a patient."
Erhard smiled and said "Please, I'll just look around."
Suzanne was about to move towards the curtain to tend to Leon Freedman. "Anything in particular I can help you with?"
Erhard shook her head slowly, still smiling. "No, nothing in particular. You go ahead and tend to your patient."
"All right, then." Somewhat reluctantly Suzanne disappeared behind the curtain.
Erhard listened as Suzanne went on with the business of giving Leon Freedman a drink of water. She found herself listening for all the sounds, the water being poured, the glass, the spigot, the steps on the floor, the low voices as Suzanne presumably gave the water to the man.
She looked at the storage cupboards, neatly labelled, a padlock on a refrigerator, others on three more spaces where pharmaceuticals were kept.
Erhard heard the steps as Suzanne returned to the MedLab foyer. "You seem to handle yourself well. Do you have nursing training?"
Suzanne's eyes were like cold steel. "I gave him a glass of water. The only other training was my husband the last two years."
Erhard was determined to keep a pleasant face on. "It seems to serve you well."
"Is the plan to bring in Air Force people to replace those of us who are unqualified?" Suzanne looked pleasant enough.
"No, no, I would defer to Aggie, Rails & Dr. Stormer on matters of that kind." Erhard was trying hard to put her finger on what was bothering her.
Suzanne smiled coolly again. "Good, because it gives me something productive to do until we get to our new home."
Erhard grinned her toothy grin. "Idle hands, devil's playground, that kind of thing?"
Her recent experience with Rails had made Suzanne a bit cautious. "Something like that, yes."
"And the twins? Aggie, Rails?"
Suzanne finally laughed. "They spend a lot of their downtime in my suite."
Erhard met good humour with the same. "Oooh, bigtime fun for the new friends, I imagine."
Suzanne looked at her almost casually. "They're very close."
Hilary Erhard nodded. "Lovers, you mean. I know."
Suzanne had a subtle instinct for the right thing to say. "It's good you know. I'd hate to think you were looking for evidence of impropriety. Once you get to know them a bit, they're made for each other. It's really very sweet."
That finally got a genuine smile from Erhard. "It's good that you're not homophobic."
Suzanne set her elbows down on the counter. "I was born in New Orleans. I had my first male lover when I was 18."
Commander Erhard was falling under the Devereaux charm. "A late starter, huh?"
Suzanne leaned forward and spoke very quietly if a little smugly. "Actually, I started rather early."
Erhard actually laughed salaciously. "Wow! I imagine you cut quite a swath through the young women of the South!" She was remembering her awkward early years, her own elbows on the counter.
Suzanne's mouth relaxed ever so slightly. She let her eyes soften as she leaned forward. "I'd have done you in about a minute." Her lips looked slightly wet and very inviting. Hilary Erhard felt very much the same way.
"Well, I can imagine you would!"
They shared a laugh, Hilary's because she was thourghly disarmed, Suzanne's because she knew she'd won the battle.
She dared to trace a finger down one of Erhard's. "I think maybe you'd better go, Commander." When Erhard smiled shyly like the first young girl Suzanne had seduced, Suzanne added "Old habits die hard."
Erhard rose quietly, excited by the flirtation. "I think perhaps you're right." She patted Suzanne's hand, reluctant to leave. "I think for sure you're right, in fact." She bent forward as if revealing a state secret. "My close friends call me Hill."
"Mine call, me Suze." Suzanne let her exquisitely beautiful face sink onto her hand. "In private."
Erhard smiled and nodded. "In private." She took a deep breath and stood. "Well, Mrs. Devereaux, I must be on my way."
Suzanne dutifully straightened up. "Thank you for coming in, Commander."
Leon's voice came back through the curtain. "Keep it down, tryin' tuh sleep in heah."
Erhard & Devereaux shared a silent laugh as Erhard went on her way.
As Erhard went left, Aggie & Rails showed up from the right.
Aggie smiled at Suzanne and Lori kissed her on the cheek. "Here are the keys, thank you very much. What did Commander Erhard want?"
Suzanne smiled in her dreamy way. "When she came in or when she went out?"
Aggie wagged her famous wagging finger. "You are a major tease, Suzanne."
"Hill just wanted to know if we needed extra space or equipment." Suzanne knew full well the impact of her careful selection of words.
Rails looked at her. "Hill?"
Aggie looked at her. "Wow! You know her Super Secret Lesbian name?"
"Don't be silly, her name is Hilary, it's just a short form." Suzanne looked unfazed.
Rails was changing her shoes and socks. "If we both did you, do you think you could get Hill to come up with an ECT unit?"
Suzanne was looking at a list of supplies. "Probably."
Aggie smacked Rails' exquisite behind and whispered "We don't need an ECT unit."
Rails made elaborate hand gestures which made no sense to Aggie or Suzanne, whose peripheral vision was excellent.
Aggie gave up the effort to be secretive. "What does that even mean when you do that?" She mimicked what she could remember.
Suzanne didn't even look up when she spoke. "My guess is it was sort of 'it's as good an excuse as any for a threesome with me."
Rails looked petulantly at Aggie, pointed a finger at Suzanne. "See? She got it right and she's like way older than you and she wasn't even looking!"
Rails disappeared down the small hall to use the washroom.
"Trouble in the Garden Of Paradise?" Suzanne looked inquisitively at Aggie.
Aggie shook her head. "Hardly. Just adapting to change. A week ago she was straight and repressed, last night she nearly took out my appendix two separate ways."
The image shook Suzanne's self-control a bit. "I'll rethink the ECT deal. How are you coping?"
Aggie was gazing out through the glass doors. "I'm dead-meat in love and I can barely walk."
Suzanne shook her head in wonder. "God, she must be great!"
Aggie nodded enthusiastically. "She's a saint in bed, I swear you can do everything to her and she just never stops getting off."
Suzanne kept shaking her head. "That tight ass, that body ..."
Aggie nodded, biting her tongue. "I know, and she's so sweet .."
"Kiny'all shuddup, ahm tryin' tuh sleep!"
Lori came out from the washroom, poked her head inside the curtain and yelled. "Shut the fuck up, Leon!" She started rummaging in her bag.
Suzanne was lost in reverie. "She really is stunning, I mean I get it, I really do."
Aggie was still looking out the window. "Plus she can get rough or be tender .."
Suzanne sank her forehead onto one hand. "I can imagine ..."
"Ah need mo' water!"
Rails disappeared behind the curtain. "My god, Leon, you are so needy!"
Suzanne and Aggie heard the clang of glass and the sound of running water as Lori Railsback tended to Leon's needs.
Aggie was trying to recover. "And she's good with patients."
Suzanne was thinking about Hill. "She is, I mean you lucked out, Rails is the total package."
Aggie began shaking her head. "I know. I think maybe we should take the keys back, do we have enough time?"
Suzanne checked her watch. "No, but you could do her in the washroom."
Aggie nodded. "I think I'd better do that."
Suzanne nodded. "I think so before you puddle up the foyer."
Lori came back from tending to Leon. "Ok, that's done, What's next?"
Aggie kissed her hard on the mouth and wrestled Rails into the washroom.
Suzanne rose slowly and walked behind the curtain, sitting beside Leon's bed as Lori's sounds filled the room.
"Ah alluz heert you lezboz wuz sposed tuh be quaht."
Suzanne sipped a glass of water. "We just tell men that so it doesn't scare the crap out of them."
It was a strange sound, like crackling tinfoil. At first Suzanne didn't know what it was.
When Lori finally came back down to low moan level, Suzanne noticed the bed was shaking.
She got up and pulled on Leon's shoulder, and Leon lay spreadeagled on the bed, cackling with crude laughter.
Suzanne Devereaux bent over him and cradled him in her arms, and they laughed together until tears ran down their faces.
They didn't stop until the loud cracking sound reached them.
"Whossat? Leon looked startled. "Sound lak a icsplozhun!"
Suzanne laid him back on the bed and went back to the foyer.
The water on the floor was the first clue.
Suzanne hung her head for a second, then grabbed her voxbox and returned to Leon's bedside. She motioned to him everything was fine, and punched in a number from one of her lists.
"Hill? Suze .. yeah, hi .. listen, we've had a bit of an accident and we need a new toilet. Yes, I know they're steel, Cyrus made them."
Leon looked for all the world like he was being electrocuted, his face contorted, his teeth bared. After a few seconds he lost it altogether, and the cackling laughter Suzanne had heard before was replaced by the loud laughter of Leon Freedman, his loudest laugh in almost 300 years.
When she clicked off, Suzanne sat again with him as the lovers finished each other off and tried to cover the evidence of the broken toilet.
"Am ah gonna be all right?"
She reached forward and took his hand. "Leon, I promise you on the life of my late husband, as long as I'm here, no harm will ever come to you."
Leon looked a little sad behind his smile. "You know that ain't true, but ah know you mean well. They all here, ya know. We gonna have tuh kill'em all."
She looked at him without smiling, but with none of the coolness about her either. "Yes, I know they're all here, and yes, we're going to have to kill them all."
Leon raised his head a little. "Looka me. Ah wanna see yer eyes."
She met his gaze full on.
Leon squinted. "So soon?"
She nodded sadly.
"How the hell we gun do that?"
She sat back down, relieved at having passed Leon's truth test. "Well, first we have to get up close to them."
He nodded and sighed. "Real quiet like in the jungles."
She nodded and squeezed his hand. "Yes, sir, that's what we have to do."
Leon thought she looked sad. "Sorright, yanno. Ah bin heah befo. All we need is some knives. We got promises to keep."
She got up reluctantly as Aggie & Rails resurfaced. "And miles to go before we sleep."
Leon laid his head back down on the pillow as she disappeared. "And miles to go before we sleep."
The woman organizing the desk looked at her with cool blue intelligent eyes. "Good morning, Commander Erhard."
Erhard smiled warmly. "Good morning, I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
The woman issued a half-smile. "Devereaux, Suzanne Devereaux."
Erhard's smile dried up. "Ah, yes, Mrs. Devereaux. I'm sorry about your husband. My condolences."
The woman didn't miss a beat. "Thank you, he died as he wished, at home, in the country he loved. We shed our tears before I left. Please, call me Suzanne."
A scowl briefly flashed acoss the Commander's face, and vanished instantly. "Do you have the space you need, do you think?"
"I think so, yes. It's certainly an improvement over what we had. We're all grateful for that, thank you."
Erhard was finding the recent widow's aplomb vaguely disconcerting. "How long have you worked with Aggie and Rails?"
Suzanne Devereaux laughed, and Hilary Erhard was slightly startled by her cool beauty.
"I volunteered yesterday."
Erhard's scowl returned and vanished again. "You seem to be coping well."
Suzanne Devereaux's eyes squinted and relaxed again, as she sensed a challenge behind Erhard's casual demeanor.
"We have no choice but to cope. Your people did the heavy lifting, Aggie & Rails do the Medtech work, I do the organization." She forced a smile. "It's pretty ad hoc, but so far it seems to work."
Erhard forced a smile of her own. "Good, that's good to hear. I like people who can think on their feet."
Devereaux's smile vanished. "What choice is there?"
Erhard nodded. "Good point."
"Ah need a drayink." A gruff voice from behind the curtain.
Suzanne called out "Coming, Leon." Suzanne looked at Erhard. "I must tend to a patient."
Erhard smiled and said "Please, I'll just look around."
Suzanne was about to move towards the curtain to tend to Leon Freedman. "Anything in particular I can help you with?"
Erhard shook her head slowly, still smiling. "No, nothing in particular. You go ahead and tend to your patient."
"All right, then." Somewhat reluctantly Suzanne disappeared behind the curtain.
Erhard listened as Suzanne went on with the business of giving Leon Freedman a drink of water. She found herself listening for all the sounds, the water being poured, the glass, the spigot, the steps on the floor, the low voices as Suzanne presumably gave the water to the man.
She looked at the storage cupboards, neatly labelled, a padlock on a refrigerator, others on three more spaces where pharmaceuticals were kept.
Erhard heard the steps as Suzanne returned to the MedLab foyer. "You seem to handle yourself well. Do you have nursing training?"
Suzanne's eyes were like cold steel. "I gave him a glass of water. The only other training was my husband the last two years."
Erhard was determined to keep a pleasant face on. "It seems to serve you well."
"Is the plan to bring in Air Force people to replace those of us who are unqualified?" Suzanne looked pleasant enough.
"No, no, I would defer to Aggie, Rails & Dr. Stormer on matters of that kind." Erhard was trying hard to put her finger on what was bothering her.
Suzanne smiled coolly again. "Good, because it gives me something productive to do until we get to our new home."
Erhard grinned her toothy grin. "Idle hands, devil's playground, that kind of thing?"
Her recent experience with Rails had made Suzanne a bit cautious. "Something like that, yes."
"And the twins? Aggie, Rails?"
Suzanne finally laughed. "They spend a lot of their downtime in my suite."
Erhard met good humour with the same. "Oooh, bigtime fun for the new friends, I imagine."
Suzanne looked at her almost casually. "They're very close."
Hilary Erhard nodded. "Lovers, you mean. I know."
Suzanne had a subtle instinct for the right thing to say. "It's good you know. I'd hate to think you were looking for evidence of impropriety. Once you get to know them a bit, they're made for each other. It's really very sweet."
That finally got a genuine smile from Erhard. "It's good that you're not homophobic."
Suzanne set her elbows down on the counter. "I was born in New Orleans. I had my first male lover when I was 18."
Commander Erhard was falling under the Devereaux charm. "A late starter, huh?"
Suzanne leaned forward and spoke very quietly if a little smugly. "Actually, I started rather early."
Erhard actually laughed salaciously. "Wow! I imagine you cut quite a swath through the young women of the South!" She was remembering her awkward early years, her own elbows on the counter.
Suzanne's mouth relaxed ever so slightly. She let her eyes soften as she leaned forward. "I'd have done you in about a minute." Her lips looked slightly wet and very inviting. Hilary Erhard felt very much the same way.
"Well, I can imagine you would!"
They shared a laugh, Hilary's because she was thourghly disarmed, Suzanne's because she knew she'd won the battle.
She dared to trace a finger down one of Erhard's. "I think maybe you'd better go, Commander." When Erhard smiled shyly like the first young girl Suzanne had seduced, Suzanne added "Old habits die hard."
Erhard rose quietly, excited by the flirtation. "I think perhaps you're right." She patted Suzanne's hand, reluctant to leave. "I think for sure you're right, in fact." She bent forward as if revealing a state secret. "My close friends call me Hill."
"Mine call, me Suze." Suzanne let her exquisitely beautiful face sink onto her hand. "In private."
Erhard smiled and nodded. "In private." She took a deep breath and stood. "Well, Mrs. Devereaux, I must be on my way."
Suzanne dutifully straightened up. "Thank you for coming in, Commander."
Leon's voice came back through the curtain. "Keep it down, tryin' tuh sleep in heah."
Erhard & Devereaux shared a silent laugh as Erhard went on her way.
As Erhard went left, Aggie & Rails showed up from the right.
Aggie smiled at Suzanne and Lori kissed her on the cheek. "Here are the keys, thank you very much. What did Commander Erhard want?"
Suzanne smiled in her dreamy way. "When she came in or when she went out?"
Aggie wagged her famous wagging finger. "You are a major tease, Suzanne."
"Hill just wanted to know if we needed extra space or equipment." Suzanne knew full well the impact of her careful selection of words.
Rails looked at her. "Hill?"
Aggie looked at her. "Wow! You know her Super Secret Lesbian name?"
"Don't be silly, her name is Hilary, it's just a short form." Suzanne looked unfazed.
Rails was changing her shoes and socks. "If we both did you, do you think you could get Hill to come up with an ECT unit?"
Suzanne was looking at a list of supplies. "Probably."
Aggie smacked Rails' exquisite behind and whispered "We don't need an ECT unit."
Rails made elaborate hand gestures which made no sense to Aggie or Suzanne, whose peripheral vision was excellent.
Aggie gave up the effort to be secretive. "What does that even mean when you do that?" She mimicked what she could remember.
Suzanne didn't even look up when she spoke. "My guess is it was sort of 'it's as good an excuse as any for a threesome with me."
Rails looked petulantly at Aggie, pointed a finger at Suzanne. "See? She got it right and she's like way older than you and she wasn't even looking!"
Rails disappeared down the small hall to use the washroom.
"Trouble in the Garden Of Paradise?" Suzanne looked inquisitively at Aggie.
Aggie shook her head. "Hardly. Just adapting to change. A week ago she was straight and repressed, last night she nearly took out my appendix two separate ways."
The image shook Suzanne's self-control a bit. "I'll rethink the ECT deal. How are you coping?"
Aggie was gazing out through the glass doors. "I'm dead-meat in love and I can barely walk."
Suzanne shook her head in wonder. "God, she must be great!"
Aggie nodded enthusiastically. "She's a saint in bed, I swear you can do everything to her and she just never stops getting off."
Suzanne kept shaking her head. "That tight ass, that body ..."
Aggie nodded, biting her tongue. "I know, and she's so sweet .."
"Kiny'all shuddup, ahm tryin' tuh sleep!"
Lori came out from the washroom, poked her head inside the curtain and yelled. "Shut the fuck up, Leon!" She started rummaging in her bag.
Suzanne was lost in reverie. "She really is stunning, I mean I get it, I really do."
Aggie was still looking out the window. "Plus she can get rough or be tender .."
Suzanne sank her forehead onto one hand. "I can imagine ..."
"Ah need mo' water!"
Rails disappeared behind the curtain. "My god, Leon, you are so needy!"
Suzanne and Aggie heard the clang of glass and the sound of running water as Lori Railsback tended to Leon's needs.
Aggie was trying to recover. "And she's good with patients."
Suzanne was thinking about Hill. "She is, I mean you lucked out, Rails is the total package."
Aggie began shaking her head. "I know. I think maybe we should take the keys back, do we have enough time?"
Suzanne checked her watch. "No, but you could do her in the washroom."
Aggie nodded. "I think I'd better do that."
Suzanne nodded. "I think so before you puddle up the foyer."
Lori came back from tending to Leon. "Ok, that's done, What's next?"
Aggie kissed her hard on the mouth and wrestled Rails into the washroom.
Suzanne rose slowly and walked behind the curtain, sitting beside Leon's bed as Lori's sounds filled the room.
"Ah alluz heert you lezboz wuz sposed tuh be quaht."
Suzanne sipped a glass of water. "We just tell men that so it doesn't scare the crap out of them."
It was a strange sound, like crackling tinfoil. At first Suzanne didn't know what it was.
When Lori finally came back down to low moan level, Suzanne noticed the bed was shaking.
She got up and pulled on Leon's shoulder, and Leon lay spreadeagled on the bed, cackling with crude laughter.
Suzanne Devereaux bent over him and cradled him in her arms, and they laughed together until tears ran down their faces.
They didn't stop until the loud cracking sound reached them.
"Whossat? Leon looked startled. "Sound lak a icsplozhun!"
Suzanne laid him back on the bed and went back to the foyer.
The water on the floor was the first clue.
Suzanne hung her head for a second, then grabbed her voxbox and returned to Leon's bedside. She motioned to him everything was fine, and punched in a number from one of her lists.
"Hill? Suze .. yeah, hi .. listen, we've had a bit of an accident and we need a new toilet. Yes, I know they're steel, Cyrus made them."
Leon looked for all the world like he was being electrocuted, his face contorted, his teeth bared. After a few seconds he lost it altogether, and the cackling laughter Suzanne had heard before was replaced by the loud laughter of Leon Freedman, his loudest laugh in almost 300 years.
When she clicked off, Suzanne sat again with him as the lovers finished each other off and tried to cover the evidence of the broken toilet.
"Am ah gonna be all right?"
She reached forward and took his hand. "Leon, I promise you on the life of my late husband, as long as I'm here, no harm will ever come to you."
Leon looked a little sad behind his smile. "You know that ain't true, but ah know you mean well. They all here, ya know. We gonna have tuh kill'em all."
She looked at him without smiling, but with none of the coolness about her either. "Yes, I know they're all here, and yes, we're going to have to kill them all."
Leon raised his head a little. "Looka me. Ah wanna see yer eyes."
She met his gaze full on.
Leon squinted. "So soon?"
She nodded sadly.
"How the hell we gun do that?"
She sat back down, relieved at having passed Leon's truth test. "Well, first we have to get up close to them."
He nodded and sighed. "Real quiet like in the jungles."
She nodded and squeezed his hand. "Yes, sir, that's what we have to do."
Leon thought she looked sad. "Sorright, yanno. Ah bin heah befo. All we need is some knives. We got promises to keep."
She got up reluctantly as Aggie & Rails resurfaced. "And miles to go before we sleep."
Leon laid his head back down on the pillow as she disappeared. "And miles to go before we sleep."
