Chapter 280: Doctor Shawn’s Crush

We moved back through Brighton Park the same way we’d come in, the afternoon light sitting heavy and gold over the cracked pavement.

Theo and Flinn were still posted near the main barricade exit, which wasn’t surprising actually. Theo spotted our little group first and he narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“What exactly is going on here?” he asked, gaze moving from face to face and landing with particular weight on Shawn, who was ambling along at the back of the group like a man taking a leisurely walk through a world that hadn’t mostly ended.

“We’re heading out for a bit,” Maribel said simply.

“Without our only doctor?” Theo’s eyebrows climbed. “I don’t think that qualifies as a good idea, Maribel.”

“You don’t get to decide where I go, boy,” Shawn said, without particular heat but with complete finality, shooting Theo a look that discouraged further input.

“With respect, Doctor, your survival matters to this community in a fairly significant way,” Theo said, which was a diplomatic reframe if I’d ever heard one.

“And you, Maribel?” Flinn had moved up beside Theo, his eyes tracking to her with an attention that was just slightly more focused than the situation strictly required. “Why are you going?”

“To make sure nothing eats Shawn,” she said.

“Right, but where are you actually going?” He pressed.

“Shawn needs to collect some things. And the girl needs a new pair of glasses.” Maribel gestured toward Daisy without ceremony. “So we’re going to find both.”

Flinn’s expression shifted. His eyes moved from Daisy to me, and the warmth that had been directed at Maribel cooled by a few noticeable degrees. “So you’re taking our only doctor out into the open city for strangers.”

“You did hear the part where your doctor also needs to collect things,” I said. “Or did that not make it through?”

Flinn’s jaw tightened. He gave me the kind of look that says I don’t like you without the inconvenience of having to say it out loud.

I understood their worry about Shawn, truly, I did. Losing your community’s only medical professional to a scavenging run gone wrong was the kind of blow that a group didn’t easily recover from. But Maribel was going to be right there, and the three of us weren’t exactly defenceless, and the alternative was Daisy walking around indefinitely with one functioning lens and a crack running down the middle of her world.

“The next time either of you ends up shivering and miserable on a sick bed,” Shawn said, his voice conversational and merciless, “I won’t be answering my door. And you won’t be welcome to knock on it.”

The silence that followed that statement was loud.

“Alright,” Theo said, and moved to push the barricade door open giving up.

“Just be careful out there, Maribel,” Flinn said, his voice dropping into something quieter and more sincere as she passed. His eyes followed her just a beat longer than they needed to.

“I know,” she said, with a brief, easy smile. “I always am.”

We stepped out into the street and the barricade swung shut behind us.

Maribel and Shawn took the front, while I walked behind with Cindy and Daisy, keeping my eyes on the sightlines out of habit.

“Maribel,” Cindy called suddenly.

“What,” Maribel said, not turning around.

“Flinn has a massive crush on you.”

Maribel stopped walking for just a half-step, then continued, her head turning slightly. “What?”

“I’m quite confident about this,” Cindy said pleasantly. “He was looking at you the way people look at things they’re worried about losing. And the moment you mentioned going outside with—” she gestured at me, “—another man, his entire face changed.”

“That’s… no,” Maribel said. “He’s just protective. He’s like that with the whole group.”

“He is not like that with the whole group,” Cindy said. “He is like that with you, he didn’t care much about Shawn. There’s a difference and it’s quite visible once you’re looking for it.”

Maribel went quiet. I could see it from behind, the slight shift in her posture, the way her head tilted just barely, like a thought had arrived that she was turning over carefully and for the first time. Like the idea had never occurred to her before and now that it had, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it.

I’d noticed Flinn’s looks myself, the way his attention sharpened around Maribel in a way that was different from how it worked with everyone else.

I wasn’t particularly good at reading feelings, romantic feelings especially tended to pass through my awareness like radio signals through a wall but even I’d caught the outline of it. If Cindy was saying it clearly and directly, it was almost certainly true.

“Ah, youth,” Shawn said from beside Maribel, the slight smirk working its way onto his face. “It’s a fine thing to be on the receiving end of.”

“I’m not on the receiving end of anything,” Maribel said.

“You should let yourself think about it,” he said, his voice shifting into something that was almost gentle. “There’s nothing wrong with it. You’re allowed to have something beyond the fight, Maribel. There’s time.”

“I’d rather spend my time thinking about how to get Callighan out of this city,” she replied, dry as ever.

“And when Callighan is gone?” Shawn asked.

“Then the next problem.”

Shawn made a sound of good-natured despair. “You’ll die having solved every problem except your own loneliness, and there won’t be anyone at your bedside to hold your hand. Is that the plan?”

“Worry about yourself, old man!” She snapped at him.

“I’m fine,” he said simply.

“Are you though?” Cindy asked. “Has anyone ever Doctor Shawn, have you been in love? Properly?”

“Once,” he said. “Secondary school. She was remarkable. She chose someone taller.”

The matter-of-fact delivery of that sentence was somehow the saddest part.

“And since then?” Cindy asked. “Nothing? Not even one date?”

“She was my true love,” Shawn said, seriously.

“Your true love is probably currently wandering down a side street somewhere with half her stomach missing,” I said. “At some point you have to move on from that.”

Shawn turned and gave me a look that could have curdled something.

“Ryan,” Daisy said quietly, grabbing my sleeve.

“I’m just saying—”

“I know what you’re saying,” Shawn said, turning back to face forward. “There is someone, as it happens. Recently. Someone who has caught my attention.”

That stopped the conversation cleanly.

“Really,” Maribel said, and now she was the one who turned, looking at him with genuine curiosity. “Who? Carmen?”

“Carmen?” Shawn repeated, as if the suggestion was faintly absurd. “Half the unattached men in this community are already lining up in that direction. I prefer not to join a queue.”

“Well, she is gorgeous,” Maribel said, more reflectively than anything. “And kind with it, which is rarer. Though I think even if she wanted to move on she’d find it difficult. Her ex-husband, even if their marriage had run its course, losing him in the outbreak, the way things ended with no real closure, that kind of grief doesn’t go on a schedule.”

“No,” Shawn agreed, more quietly. “It doesn’t.”

The street ahead curved slightly and he paused at the corner, checking the way forward before gesturing us on. Old instinct or new habit, after a few months of this world, the distinction between the two had mostly dissolved.

I reached back toward Cindy without looking and she was already digging through her bag, pulling out the water bottle and passing it forward. I mumbled a thanks, uncapped it, and took a long sip as we walked, half-listening to the conversation and half-running my eyes across the street ahead out of habit. Clear so far. A distant shuffle somewhere behind a parked car two blocks down that resolved itself into a lone straggler moving away from us, no threat, no urgency. Just the ordinary background noise of a city that had stopped being ordinary about three months ago.

“So,” Cindy said, picking the thread back up. “If not Carmen though I don’t know who it is, then who?”

I was genuinely a little curious too, though I kept that off my face. Probably someone from the community I hadn’t met yet. Someone I’d have no frame of reference for. I raised the bottle for another sip.

Shawn smiled to himself.

“Clara.”

The water went the wrong direction entirely.

“Pfff—”

It came out in a single, undignified spray, directly onto the back of Shawn’s head and the collar of his jacket, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it because it had already happened.

The man stopped walking.

Cindy made a sound beside me that was half-gasp, half-laugh, quickly smothered behind her hand. Daisy had both hands pressed over her mouth, eyes wide.

Shawn turned around slowly, in the manner of a man exercising significant restraint. He reached into his jacket pocket, produced a cloth, and began wiping the back of his neck with the careful, deliberate movements of someone deciding how to feel about what had just occurred.

“I’m…sorry about that,” I managed, wiping my own mouth with the back of my hand.

“Is it truly that shocking,” Shawn said groaning.

“I just… how?” I asked. “How did that even happen? She was your patient for about like a day.”

“She was,” he confirmed, folding the cloth away. “And while I was treating her, she paid attention. To what I was doing, to why I was doing it. She asked questions, real ones, not the polite kind people ask when they’re just trying to fill the silence. She understood what I was actually trying to accomplish.” He paused, and something in his expression went somewhere serious. “It has been a very long time since someone looked at my work and actually saw it.”

“That’s… one way for it to happen,” Cindy said, and her voice had lost the laughter. She meant it.

“When you choose someone,” Shawn said, back to walking now, “you have to see past the obvious. Past what’s comfortable or convenient or simply available. You have to find the spark. And I see one in that woman.”

I turned that over for a second.

Then I thought about Clara. She’d mentioned Shawn in the context of being grateful for treatment and that had been the full extent of it.

“I’m not sure she’s seen the same spark in you,” I said.

Shawn’s eyes cut sideways to me.

Maribel stifled a laugh.

“And what,” he said slowly, “would you know about love, boy?”

“R…Right,” I said, after a second, feeling a bit guilty. “Fair point. What would I know about love…”

I looked at the pavement for a moment.

Cindy giggled besides me.

Then the sound of fabric shifting drew my attention as Cindy reached up and began working the buttons of the shirt I’d lent her. I’d almost forgotten she was still wearing it, her dress had been soaked through when I’d handed it over and it had clearly done its job because she was pulling it off now in the afternoon heat, folding it loosely as she walked.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to me.

“All dried out?” I asked.

“Completely,” she said, smiling as I took it. Then she leaned half a step closer and dropped her voice to something that was only for me. “And it smells like you.”

I looked at her.

She was already looking ahead, expression perfectly composed, like she hadn’t said anything. Her dress moved in the slight breeze and the afternoon light was doing something particular with her hair and I made the conscious decision to look somewhere else very quickly.

She was really looking good today…

I swung my bag down, stuffed the shirt inside, then pulled it back on and shouldered the bag again. It was too warm for it, honestly, but wandering around in just a tank top through unfamiliar streets while trying to make a good impression on a community that was still deciding what to make of me felt like the wrong call.

“How much further?” I asked, refocusing.

“Not far,” Shawn said. “Twenty minutes on foot, maybe a little less if we keep moving. Just keep your eyes open, I don’t want surprises on this particular route.”

Noted.

In this city, surprises rarely came in good varieties though.

We walked.

Then…

“Ngh—”

I turned.

Cindy had one hand pressed to the side of her head, her expression caught somewhere between discomfort and concentration, like a sound had gone off just below the range of hearing and her brain was trying to process it.

“You alright?” I asked, already stepping toward her.

“Yeah,” she said, dropping her hand and looking at me. Her eyes were slightly different, not wrong, just sharper around the edges somehow, like something behind them had adjusted. “Ryan—”

She glanced ahead. Maribel and Shawn had pulled a few steps further forward, their conversation continuing, neither of them looking back. Daisy was close but focused on her footing around a section of broken pavement.

Cindy waited until the gap was wide enough. Then she looked at me directly, her voice dropping low.

“I think,” she said carefully, “I just awakened some kind of ability.”

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