by Neal Jones
Carol moved quickly to her daughter, reaching out to smooth her hair. "Good morning, sweetheart. How do you feel?"
"Like shit."
"Amy!" Carol scolded.
"Well I do!"
Rosenberg smiled. "It's all right. I like an honest patient."
"Fine. I feel a little nauseous. Is that better?"
"That's the Rylintrol." Ben pointed to the I.V. "It's making sure that the virus has been fully eradicated. I'll have the nurse give you something to settle your stomach."
Amy laid back and turned to her mother. "I want to go home."
"We will. Our new home. Just as soon as you're well enough to travel."
"No, I don't mean the Pelray colony. I want to go back home, to L'Whera. I don't want to be part of that stupid study. I'm tired of being sick, and I don't want to be in a hospital anymore."
"Sweetheart –"
"Just leave me alone, okay? I just want to be alone!" Amy turned on her side, curled up, and closed her eyes.
Ben stood and walked over to Carol. "Let's get something to eat. The cafeteria's only one floor up. Doctor Jenner will be here in a few minutes to check on you, Amy." He paused long enough to check her chart, and then handed the pad to the nurse. "I'll be back later as well. We'll talk then."
"Fine, whatever," Amy mumbled.
( 4 )
"The mood swings didn't start until a couple months ago." Carol stared at her cup of coffee while she spoke, and then, as an afterthought, reached for the sugar container. "I knew this was coming, that it was part of the disease, but I still didn't think they would be so bad. During one episode she scratched her fingers bloody trying to strip the wallpaper in her bedroom while screaming at me. Ripped out three fingernails. Two weeks later she jumped off the roof of the house because she thought she could fly. Broke both legs." She stirred her coffee but didn't drink it.
"There's medication that can help balance the mood swings."
Carol nodded. "It works great as long as Amy keeps taking it. But as soon as she's feeling good, and she's happy, then she thinks she doesn't need it. If I insist she take the next dose, she refuses. It turns into an argument, which turns into a battle, and we just end up screaming at each other. I get so frustrated that I just can't help it, and I –" Her voice broke, and she bowed her head, blinking back the tears.
Ben reached out to place a comforting hand over hers.
"What kind of mother hopes for the day when her daughter will just fall asleep and not wake up?" Carol grabbed a napkin and dabbed at her eyes and then blew her nose. "I love her, I love her so much, but I just can't take this anymore. The doctors' visits, the hospitalizations, the endless medications, and behind it all is the goddamn waiting. Just waiting for that day when she looks me, and she'll want something, and she won't be able to tell me what it is. Or she won't even remember where she is." Carol started to cry again, and this time she made no attempt to stop the tears.
Ben scooted his chair closer and wrapped an arm around her. She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. He was grateful that the cafeteria was mostly empty, and he was once again overwhelmed with the memory of comforting his mother when Chloe would suffer a violent episode. Sometimes he could calm Chloe too, but other times he would have to just hold her until the medicine took effect. More often than not she would fall asleep in his arms, and he would be so tired from the ordeal that he drifted off as well.
After several minutes, Carol regained her composure and wiped her eyes. She sat up and offered Ben a weak smile. "I'm sorry, doctor."
"Call me Ben."
"I can usually keep it together, but lately..."
"Carol, do you have any friends or family close by? Anyone from back home?"
She nodded and sipped her coffee, which was cold by now, but she didn't mind. "My sister and her family. They lived with us on L'Whera, and we used to be close. Amy loved her cousins, but then she was diagnosed with Iverson's, and at first everything was still okay."
"Until stage two."
Carol nodded and cupped both hands around her mug. "Once the mood swings started, Amy was no longer welcome for play dates or slumber parties. And since I couldn't leave her home alone or find a babysitter, that meant that I was no longer invited out for movies or dinner with the adults. Lisa – that's my sister – still came over every once in awhile for coffee or lunch, as long as it was a good day for Amy. And it wasn't as if she had an episode every single day. Amy, I mean. Those two that I told you about were the worst. Most of the time she was just irritable, and she would hide in her room and watch HT or listen to music." Carol stared into her coffee, lost in thought.
"Carol?"
She looked up. "Hhmmm? Sorry."
"You keep apologizing, and you don't have to. I know what you're going through."
"You've had a child diagnosed with this disease?"
He shook his head. "My sister. She was nine and I was fourteen. It was three weeks before her tenth birthday. She had an accident on the playground at school and broke her arm. She fell off the jungle gym because she'd suddenly become very dizzy. A few tests and a couple doctors' appointments later, and we were told that she was stage one. It was a little more than year later when she entered stage two."
"I'm so sorry."
"It's why I chose this career. I wanted to find a cure for this disease."
Carol started to take another sip of coffee but changed her mind. It was too cold now. "Doctor Geitman said there's a new drug that might help stave off the effects of stage three." She frowned. "Tetra...kerri..."
"Tetraketamine."
"Yes, that sounds right."
"I've read about it. It looks promising."
Carol sighed softly as she cast a glance around the cafeteria. A group of off-duty nurses had just come in and were huddled at the food dispensers. She listened to the cacophony of their overlapping conversations, which tripped and flowed like spring water far above the heaviness of her grief and pain.
"By the way," Ben said after a few moments, "Your test results came back negative."
Carol gave him a quizzical glance.
"The Murdohn virus."
"Oh. Yes. Thank you."
"It looks like Amy was the only other passenger infected, besides the Murdohn couple of course."
"How soon before Amy can be ready to travel?"
"Another two days at least. I'd like to keep her in the hospital under observation, just in case there's any other problems or side effects."
Carol accepted this without comment and pushed her chair back. "I'd like to go talk to her."
"Why don't you get something to eat? Let me talk to Amy first."
Carol thought for a moment and then nodded. After he left the cafeteria, she stood at the food dispensers, staring at the menu on the screen, unable to think of a single thing she was hungry for. She finally settled for another cup of coffee, but when she returned to her table, the mug sat untouched. Carol just stared into space, lost in thought.
( 5 )
The nurse was leaving Amy's room as Ben approached.
"Has Doctor Jenner seen her yet?"
"You just missed him."
Ben nodded and continued into Amy's room. He lifted the compad from its pouch beside the bio-monitor and reviewed Jenner's notes. Amy was still on her side, eyes tightly shut, pretending to be asleep. Ben returned the pad to its station and pulled up a chair. He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and watched the patient.
"What do you want?" she muttered at last.
"Just to talk. That's all."
Amy sighed and opened her eyes. "All right. Fine. Talk."
"How do you feel right now?"
"How do I look like I feel?"
"A little pissed off."
"Yeah, I am. I'm tired of being in hospitals."
"That's understandable."
"You can drop the whole sympathy act, okay? You have no idea what this is like, I'm just another patient, and we'll be out of your
hair soon enough."
"My sister was eleven when she was diagnosed at stage two. She didn't like being in the hospitals either. Her name was Chloe. Whenever she had to stay overnight, she wanted me with her."
Amy scowled but didn't reply.
"I don't know exactly what this feels like for you, Amy, but I have a pretty good idea. You're frustrated most of the time because you have no control over your moods. You feel happy and content one minute, and then for no reason you feel sad, lonely, maybe even angry. But when you're on the medication to correct the chemical imbalance in your brain that causes all of that, you don't feel like yourself. You feel restless or sleepy. Chloe said once that it was like being trapped in someone else's skin. She'd spend hours pacing the house, just wandering from room to room like she was looking for something." Ben chuckled as another memory sprang to mind, like the unexpected discovery of a lost toy at the bottom of the chest. "One time, she spent all day cleaning the house. And I mean clean. She emptied all the kitchen cupboards, rearranged the medicine cabinets in both bathrooms, and did at least ten loads of laundry. I couldn't believe it."
A ghost of a smile flitted across Amy's face, while Ben's faded.
"She entered stage three when she was fourteen. She lasted only three months." For a few moments, Ben became lost in the memory of that day. Chloe's mind was so far gone that she never knew where she was or recognized anyone in her family, much less the doctors and nurses that cared for her daily. She would panic and cry, and either Ben or his mother would comfort her. And then, just before dinner, as she slipped comfortably into a late afternoon nap, her brain finally shut down altogether, and Chloe suffered cardiac arrest. Ben was the one who reached out and shut off the bio-monitor and life support. His mother had signed the DNR papers a year earlier, but she couldn't muster the strength now to terminate the machines.
The doctor coughed and roused himself from his reverie, closing his mind to the past like a bandage being wrapped around an old wound. "Amy, you have every right to be afraid, and if you don't want to talk about it, I understand."
She turned away from him, curling up on her side and closing her eyes. "Just go away please. I want to be alone."
Ben hesitated but finally nodded and stood. His last thought as he left the room was how small Amy appeared as she hunched beneath her covers, almost as if she was trying to disappear.
Chapter 11
____________________
( 1 )
MAJOR SAVECK ENTERED HIS QUARTERS and sat behind his desk. He stared at the blank terminal screen for several minutes before slipping the comm chip into its slot above the keypad. He hesitated another moment and then switched on the screen. The gold-and-blue symbol that represented Exxar-One's central commnet rotated lazily in the upper corner while the computer performed a quick security scan of the message before downloading it.
The stern visage of Farak Saveck appeared seconds later, and Kralin had to remind himself that his father was several parsecs away. Nevertheless, he felt the familiar tension spread outwards from the center of his chest, like the chain reaction of a stardrive reactor explosion.
"Hello, son. Since you have not responded to my earlier letters, I can assume that you've either not received them, or if you have, you've chosen to delete them without reading them. That's why I used your friend Kaylem as a messenger this time." Farak paused, coughing, and then cleared his throat. "Your mother has been ill for several months now with Xetit's syndrome. When she was first diagnosed, the treatments that Doctor Zokem prescribed seemed to help, but now her disease is not responding, and Zokem says that she only has a few weeks, maybe less." Another pause, this one longer, and Kralin suddenly realized how old his father looked. Old and tired. "It's time that you came home, Kralin. You need to say goodbye to your mother."
The message ended and the screen went dark.
"Abrupt and to the point," Kralin murmured. "Just like always."
He remained seated for several minutes, staring at the empty screen. His father was right. Kralin had deleted the letters without reading them, though he knew in his gut that something was wrong. Farak wouldn't have broken two decades of silence for something trivial, not even to simply reconnect with his estranged son. Kralin supposed a part of him had deleted the letters because he didn't want to accept that something was wrong, that he might be forced to return home. He replayed the message, and this time he focused on his father's appearance. Farak looked more than just tired. He looked exhausted, and Kralin realized that it must have been only at his mother's insistence that Farak had dispatched one last letter. He was too proud to ask for help directly, but it was obvious that he needed it, and Kralin wondered how well the vineyard was doing. It was a safe assumption that his father was still managing it full time, and while it was also safe to assume that he would have hired a home caretaker for Jharis, Kralin knew that Farak would have insisted on caring for his wife in the evenings. For a man of his age, that kind of double workload would be exhausting.
Kralin sighed as he ejected the chip and laid it beside the keypad. He didn't want to go home. His mother knew that he loved her. He'd told her as much before he left for the War Academy twenty years earlier. And his father...well, his feelings for his father hadn't changed either. Just the thought of having to face him again made Kralin nauseous, and he cursed himself for being so childish. What was there to be afraid of? Farak was well into his twilight years, and Kralin was no longer the scrawny, anxious teenager that had fled to join his brother at the Beta-Erendii colony before the war.
The major stood and wandered into his kitchen where it took him ten minutes of browsing the food processor menu before he finally settled on a syn roast with grilled vegetables. He dug around in the pantry for an unopened bottle of wine that he'd purchased some years before. He'd been saving it for a special occasion, but now was as good as time as any, if not better. He popped the cork, grabbed a stein from the cupboard, and just as he sat down at the table to eat, his commlink twittered. It was the sound used for a reminder alarm, and Kralin spewed a string of curses at his syn roast as he remembered the celebration that Tosar had arranged for that evening.
"Fuck it," the major muttered. He'd picked up that particular expression from Commodore Gabriel, and once he learned what it meant, he liked it much better than some of the traditional Chrisarii expletives. He was in no mood to attend a stupid religious ceremony, and he proceeded to take his time with his roast, taking long pulls from his stein between bites.
( 2 )
Gabriel stood on the second level of the promenade, watching the crowd of Chrisarii believers press in as close to the makeshift stage as security would allow. The platform had been set up in front of the entrance to the cathedral, and the celebration that Tosar had arranged was about to begin. The Shil'Ra, Erimos, Aliira, her mother, and the pair of conclave elders were all grouped together on the platform, and all but Messani and Aliira were attired in formal robes. Tosar raised his hands to quiet the throng, and then he launched into an opening prayer that was as long and formal as his ceremonial robes. Gabriel decided he'd seen enough, but just as he turned away, he spied Decev walking towards him from the PTL.
"I didn't expect to see you here," the science officer said as she fell in step beside him.
"I was curious. And it was on the way to Grax's."
Mariah nodded. "I heard he's having a celebration of his own."
Marc chuckled. "Yes, I heard that too. Something about this week being the harvest festival back on his homeworld."
"That's the one. Though in my research there was nothing mentioned about exotic dancers and half price admissions to the local brothel."
"Well, that sounds a lot more fun than just sitting down to a feast and singing a few songs."
"Marc?"
Gabriel and Decev turned to see Laura headed in their direction.
"I'll see you later," Mariah said, and then beat a hasty retreat into the nearest clothing store.
"I'm sorry
. Am I interrupting something?" Laura asked.
"No, not at all."
"Marc, relax. I'm not going to start an argument. Truce, okay?"
"All right." He started walking and she kept pace with him. "I'm headed to Grax's for dinner."
"That sounds lovely. Mind if I join you?"
"Would it matter if I said yes?"
"Actually it would." She glanced at him, bemused. "I'm serious about declaring a truce. Jeanette told me about your visit yesterday, and that you two spent most of the evening together. Thank you for that."
"You were right. I was being selfish -"
"- and immature."
"I thought you said you wanted a truce."
"All right, all right. Sorry."
As they arrived at Grax's, they were greeted by the Orethian who had a shapely, skimpily clad humanoid female draped on each arm. Beyond the threshold the restaurant and bar looked crowded, and the dance floor on the second level was packed.
"Commodore! Miss Sysko! Welcome! Is it just the two of you this evening?"
Gabriel looked beyond Grax's shoulder and frowned. "Actually I've changed my mind. Looks a little too busy -"
"Nonsense," Laura interrupted. "I feel like celebrating. We'll take whatever's available on the second level."
"Wonderful! Excuse me, ladies." Grax detached himself from his employees and led Gabriel and Laura to a table on the side of the restaurant opposite the dance floor. "Here's your menus, and if you want it a little quieter you can use the privacy enhancer." He motioned to a coin-sized device in the center of the table next to the seasoning shakers.
"Thank you," Laura said as she reached for a menu.
"You seem happy. Is this just because of Jeanette and I?"
"Part of it. The other part is that we had another breakthrough today with our efforts to circumvent the security protocols in the gateway's mainframe. And with Ilkara returning tomorrow, we should have the hypergate linked to the network by this time tomorrow night."
