Playlist for the Apocalypse

Chapter 7: Spirit in the Sky

EVELYN

"How we lookin' doc?" Jonathan asked as Evelyn examined her work. They were seated on the floor at the back of the store, supplies scattered around them. A record player in the corner was serenading them with an album that Evelyn hadn't heard of, but Jonathan deemed, "a classic".

"Not a doctor," She corrected him as she gently bandaged his swollen kneecap with a strip of cloth that looked suspiciously like a torn-up pillowcase, "I'm pre-med."

"Pre-med doesn't exist in the apocalypse," he reminded her, his speech slurring, "if you're stitching someone up or something, you're a doctor,"

"Stop talking I'm trying to concentrate," Evelyn said. She was really starting to regret that whisky.

"It functions as antiseptic and an anaesthetic," he'd joked earlier, when he'd pulled it out from beneath the cabinet, "two in one!"

She'd gone along with the idea only because she'd been horrified at the prospect of him enduring the whole procedure without painkillers. She had not taken into consideration what he'd actually be like once he'd drunken himself senseless. Still, she was glad the worst was over. That had been when she'd cleaned his wounds and set his knee. Shockingly he hadn't made much noise when she'd stitched him up, just the occasional grimace when she'd inserted the needle. It was too big, meant for sewing fabric. The dental floss they'd used as thread also wasn't helping any. She tried not to cringe as she took note of the messy stitches that dotted Jonathan's battered skin. Beth's stitches would have been neater, they'd been beautiful even before she was in med school, back when their Popo had taught them to sew. Beth had always been better at everything. Evelyn suddenly found herself desperately wishing her older sister was with them.

"This has been a really unlucky leg," Jonathan remarked breaking Evelyn from her reverie, and she swatted his hand away as he tried to poke at his bandages, "I'm going to look like a mummy with the way you're wrapping it and I have to say that's a whole different monster movie genre that I do not want a cross over for."

Evelyn rolled her eyes. It was hard to take him seriously when he talked like that. It didn't help that he'd insisted on applying their entire stock of Hello Kitty band-aids to his face and chest.

"Do you realize how lucky you are that you only dislocated one knee and not both? In fact, you are lucky to be alive at all!" she told him, ignoring his complaint.

Jonathan looked perplexed, "Lucky? I was struck by lightning, impaled, squished by a beam, cut, burned (thank you very much for that by the way) and I fell, like 5 stories, down a stairwell today!"

"You do realize that all of those things could have been avoided if you'd just made smarter life choices, right?" She said in exasperation. "You jumped down that stairwell, remember?"

"You're one to talk, you jumped with me," He reminded her with a lazy smirk, "and now you're stupidly trying to fix me up. Hate to break it to you but all the king's horses and all the king's men would not even attempt to put this mess back together again," He took another swig from the now half empty bottle and Evelyn fought the urge to snatch it away from him. At least it was distracting him from the pain, she reminded herself.

"Tell me, what would possess a person to create a radio show in the apocalypse anyway?" she said, finally asking the question that had been on her mind for months. Jonathan paused thoughtfully and took another long drink.

"Nothing matters," he said, setting the bottle down beside him, "That's the key, the sooner you realize that the better off you'll be." Then he launched into a horribly butchered rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody, "Nothing really matters, anyone can see. Nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me!"