by C. V. Walter
Maw-lee rolled her eyes and pointed behind him. He turned to look then looked back at her.
"It's a door. I've locked it so nobody should be coming through," he said, aware she couldn't understand him but feeling the need to reassure her.
She pointed at him then at the door.
"Wait, you want me to leave?" he asked, pointing to himself and then to the door behind him.
She nodded, looking at him expectantly.
Mintonar shook his head. "No, it's too dangerous. If you injure yourself, I wouldn't know for long enough that it would be a problem. And if you don't avail yourself soon, you're going to hurt yourself, anyway."
She glared at him and he just pointed at the bowl again. Finally, her teeth gritted together, she pointed at him circled her fingers in the air. Understanding dawned and he turned around to face the door. He had no idea why she didn't want him to watch her but maybe her people had strange ideas around this kind of thing.
He really hoped the translation program would work soon.
Her sigh of relief was enough to make him want to turn around and make sure she was okay but he didn't want to make her more uncomfortable than she already was. The shriek of outrage she gave off had him spinning around to find her on her feet again and glaring at the seat. The controls to the side told him she'd been surprised by the cleaning cycle and he tried not to laugh.
His eyes were drawn to the pale flesh that had previously been covered by the soft fabric currently around her ankles. He found himself starting to salivate and licked his lips before he could help it. She was delicious.
When she bent to pull the fabric back up, he got a glimpse of other things and had to tear his gaze away before he found himself thinking of what else he might see if he watched long enough. He tried desperately to think of something else and was more than a little grateful when she faltered standing up.
She caught herself with one hand against the wall and he was behind her in an instant, the blanket in his hands so he could put them around her arms. She stiffened and looked up at him, her frown in place before she snapped at him.
"I wasn't looking," he lied. "I heard you fall and I'm here to help."
He hoped his tone conveyed what he wanted to tell her because he knew she didn't understand his words. She shrugged, pulling one of her arms free from his grasp and bent again to finish pulling up the fabric. Her breathing gave away the distress she was in even if she didn't complain and leaned into him once she'd finished. When he lifted her again, the blanket falling around her, she leaned her head against his chest and pulled the edge of the blanket over her shoulders and her side.
When they got back to the medical bay, he laid her on the table, careful to touch only the blanket so she could keep as much of her body touching it as possible. Her firm grasp on the blanket convinced him to let her keep it while he put the pain relief cuffs back around her legs. He took a moment to check them while he did and found where she'd fumbled with the catch enough to get them to let go but hadn't managed to get them to retract.
Light scratches on her legs showed him where she'd had trouble getting them out of the cuffs but she'd persisted and got herself off the table to wake him and ask for help. The monitors should have woken him first. A problem for later, he decided, as he stood up to check the cuffs on her wrists.
As he'd suspected, their power had run down. Without thinking, he raised the wrist cuffs from the table and she snatched her arm away from him.
Mintonar looked up and opened his mouth to explain, hoping she would be able to understand he was trying to help her. Instead, he understood her.
In a hard, angry voice, she said, "No."
Chapter 7
She'd startled him, Molly guessed. The look on his face told her as much. It was fascinating how much she was able to read him even if she didn't understand all the words he was saying. He was trying to help, that much was obvious, but she didn't like how he was doing it.
When the cuff retracted into the table, she relaxed slightly. Having the blanket helped. If she was feeling better, she might have mocked herself for childish behavior but for right now, she'd take whatever comfort she could get.
Her body hurt. As though she was just coming off the worst case of the flu she'd ever had, during which she'd been beaten black and blue with a rolled-up gym sock. Everything ached, even parts of her insides she didn't realize could ache.
Part of that was her fault, she knew. Something about the table and the cuffs Mintonar had put on her was helping with the pain. As a point of pride, she'd forced herself to get up and get herself out of the restraints before asking for help when she'd desperately needed to pee. She had been very proud of herself for doing that until she'd been shocked by a blast of warm water somewhere she hadn't been expecting it and moved very quickly off the alien toilet.
At that moment, everything had caught up with her and it had been all she could do to keep herself upright. Then Mintonar was behind her with the blanket and her cheeks had burned with shame at the need for help and the thought that he was watching her close enough to know she needed it. Whatever dignity she'd hoped to keep through any of this was long gone by that point and she'd forced herself to finish pulling up her panties.
She'd gotten a whiff of her body odor as she did so and decided, at some point, to ask for access to a shower. There was probably one in the room he'd taken her to. It had looked like that kind of space but she couldn't point to a single fixture in it and say what it was.
He held his hand out and gestured to her wrist. Molly let go of the blanket and raised it up for him. With gentle fingers, he turned the cuff and pointed at a flashing red light. His words explaining what was going on went straight over her head but she assumed dead batteries were universal. If the cuff was what had been keeping the pain at bay of the last few hours, that would explain why her everything hurt.
He gestured at the table where the restraint had been then to the cuff again. Apparently, they were the same thing but the table didn't run on batteries.
Molly shook her head again. "No. I don't care if it's the same thing, I can't move when I'm in it and that's just not on. I won't be tied down. I'd rather be in pain."
Memories of being sick and alone in her tiny apartment after her divorce flooded her. No energy to get up, no money to get something delivered, she'd slept on the couch with a case of bottled water nearby until the urgent need to pee forced her to the bathroom. She hadn't been aware enough of anything to find something for her fever or the aches and pains that went with it so she'd pulled the blankets around herself and slept as well as she could until they went away. It hadn't been fun and she wouldn't sign up for that kind of pain again but she also wouldn't be forced into laying still on a table, either.
She could see him thinking and she wished him luck with a solution. He pointed at the ones around her calves and ankles and she frowned then shrugged. They didn't bother her as much when her hands were free. He asked her something and she sighed. She struggled to sit up and he came to put a hand on her shoulder. Absently, she batted him away and felt the shock of the contact down her arm to her chest. She gasped but gritted her teeth and forced herself into a sitting position.
Slowly, carefully, she leaned down and touched the release on the cuffs around her calves then put them back on. She laid down, pulling the blanket around her aching body until it was covering everything but her face and neck. What energy she'd had when she'd woken up drained out of her and she closed her eyes.
He was moving around the table, leaning over her to adjust the monitor and she smiled when she remembered why it was out of place. That had been fun, too. She'd drifted out of sleep with an urgent pressure on her bladder and no way to adequately convey what she needed. The monitor was close to her and she'd wondered if there was anything on it that she could understand beyond the lines she'd been able to identify as her heart rate and her breathing.
As it turned out, there were a lot of options, one of which was
obviously the ongoing status of several of her bodily functions. She wanted to study more of the different screens to see if she could figure out what they were talking about. Science had been one of her favorite subjects in school, though she'd preferred physics and chemistry to biology, and she enjoyed poking at things to see how they worked.
The thought came to her that she wouldn't mind poking Mintonar to see how he worked, as well. She wasn't entirely certain what she meant by that but half-made plans to be slightly irritating in order to provoke a reaction made her smile while she lay there, not truly falling asleep but without the energy to engage as if she were awake.
His hand stroked down her arm and her eyelids tried to fly open. He was touching her on the outside of the blanket and after she'd gotten over the surprise, found the pressure and the motion quite pleasant. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to curl up in his lap so he could keep stroking her. The thought made her smile and she wondered when she'd turned into a cat.
He was talking but it didn't sound like it was directed at her so she kept her eyes closed and listened to the words she couldn't understand. Her entire body ached but his hand stroking her arm and his gentle tone of voice soothed her in a way she hadn't thought possible.
With it came a surge of guilt she tried to tamp down. Now that she wasn't focused on panic and how much she hurt, the need to be up and doing something filled her, along with a need to call her son and let him know she was alive. He'd pass the news on to everybody else she knew was worrying and she wanted to hear from him.
Molly sighed in frustration, mostly at herself, and Mintonar stopped moving. She could feel his eyes on her and felt like maybe she should open hers to let him know she was well but she couldn't. Instead, she closed them even tighter in the vain hope that it would stop the tears leaking out of the corners. She knew it was a stress reaction, the body's way of releasing excess stress hormones, but it felt like another weakness.
A hand hovered over her cheek and she turned her head away, not wanting to deal with the feelings his touch sent through her. She didn't know why it did that, what it meant, and she really wasn't ready to deal with the fact that she enjoyed it. Well, when she wasn't in the middle of a panic attack, at least.
Deep, shuddering breaths filled her lungs and she forced herself to calm down.
A soft cloth ran gently down her cheek and she smiled, though her tears came faster. He was probably taking a sample, she told herself, even if he's being gentle about it.
She turned her head and looked up at him. The concern etched in his face made her heart ache and she wanted to reach out to him. Instead, she pulled the blanket closer to her chin and gave him a watery smile.
"I'm sorry I'm weepy," she told him. "I know you can't understand me but I thought I'd explain just a little. I'm tired and achy and I hurt everywhere but I can't stand to be tied down the way you'd have to so I won't hurt so I'm just going to deal with it, okay? I think I'm past the worst unless you have to do emergency surgery which I really hope isn't the case because that would mean this is a whole level of suck I just can't deal with."
Mintonars head tilted to the side. "I'm sorry," he said slowly.
Molly gasped, her heart racing just a little. "Is the translator working? Can you understand me?"
He frowned, shook his head, and repeated, "I'm sorry."
"Ah," Molly said, disappointed. "Guess it still hasn't caught up yet. But it's making progress and that's good."
He gestured for her to continue and she laughed.
"I don't know if I have the energy to talk enough right now to help more," she said. Then a thought occurred to her and she grinned. "Hey, good thing I don't swear the way most of my team does. Trying to explain to you all the connotations of 'fuck' would be really awkward with the way..."
Her voice trailed off and he frowned. Shaking herself mentally, Molly gave him a small smile. "Well, not my job right now anyway. Like I said, I'm sorry I'm weepy. I do that when I'm tired and frustrated and right now that's almost all I feel. I should probably sleep but I don't think my mind is going to let me shut off enough to do more than rest."
He stood there, obviously waiting for her to say more and she sighed.
"Alright, since you can't understand me anyway, I'm going make a request. If you're not busy, and I'm sure you are, could you sit and pet me for a while? Just like you were would be fine. I can't roll over which is what I'd rather do but could you, just-"
She cut herself off in frustration. She hated asking for things and asking like this felt too much like begging. When she'd left her ex, she'd made herself a promise to never beg for affection or comfort again. Saying what she wanted should be enough and if it wasn't, she'd move on.
But, she argued, he couldn't understand her. If she really wanted something from him, she had to find a way to actually communicate or it didn't really count as asking. With a deep breath, she pulled one of her arms out from beneath the blanket, surprised at the chill when her skin hit the air, and pointed at him. He raised an eyebrow at her and waited.
She pointed at the stool behind him and said, "Sit."
He looked at back at the stool then at her. "Sit?"
Her heart thumped and she smiled. "I didn't think you'd know that word. Yes, sit."
Mintonar walked to the stool and sat, watching her expectantly.
"Okay, now come here," she told him, pointing to the floor next to the table.
He frowned and walked over to her.
"No," she said in frustration and gritted her teeth. She pointed at the stool then to the floor by the table. "Bring it here and sit."
A smile crawled across his face and he brought the stool so he could sit next to her. He sat, obviously waiting for her next command.
Molly gestured to his hand, her own shaking, and he raised it. She ran her hand down her arm and motioned for his hand. "Pet," she demanded.
He ran his hand down her blanket covered arm and she sighed. Pulling her arm back under the blanket, she let her head roll back and closed her eyes. "Thank you," she said, her voice tired.
Chapter 8
Mintonar obeyed her demand, a bemused expression on his face as he watched her. When he stopped briefly, she opened an eye and glared at him until he resumed his actions.
There were other things he needed to be doing, other projects he should be working on, but he found he couldn't bear to leave her like this. Something about the motion, the touching, eased the ache in his chest while it eased the tension on her face.
Maw-lee called what he was doing 'pet', a word he didn't quite understand, though the translator was working on it. He'd gotten a few words in the last half hour and was even able to repeat a few of them. Saying "I'm sorry" and meaning it for what he understood the words to mean was one of the best things he'd done since she'd woken up.
Now, he could 'sit' and 'pet', commands he had a feeling weren't necessarily always said to another intelligent life form, if he'd judged her tone correctly. He didn't mind. They were short, easy to understand, and allowed him to sit there and watch her while he ran his hand down her arm.
He wasn't sure why this seemed to soothe her but it was so simple, so pleasant, he couldn't hope to deny her. There was a thought in the back of his head, easily pushed aside for now, about how it would feel to do this against her bare flesh.
Maybe, someday, she'd let him comfort her without fabric between them.
She'd be off the table, soon. The worst of her injuries were almost entirely healed and the nanos had gotten enough information about her system to finish their internal repair work. The reports they were sending to the monitors indicated old injuries and scar tissue were being worked on which meant the most life threatening had been dealt with. Her body would have to do the rest for the pain to stop being a problem.
Mintonar knew she hurt, and badly, and wanted nothing so much as to ease her pain as much as he could. That she wouldn't let him use the tools at his disposal grated. He didn't understa
nd why she objected as strongly as she did but he was hopeful he would be able to ask her soon.
While her eyes were closed, he used the comm and his free hand to control the monitors above her and study everything they'd gathered so far. The list of injuries was extensive; broken bones, ruptured organs and blood vessels. It was a wonder she was still alive when they'd pulled her in. And that she'd been able to breathe the atmosphere on the ship once they had.
She'd needed help those first few hours and it was a struggle to keep her alive long enough for the table to start working. He hadn't expected it to work, that desperate attempt to keep her body functioning long enough to keep her clinging to life. Even now, he wouldn't have given himself great odds on being able to do so by himself.
And that was where the table came in. It was less a table and more a projector of a million microscopic force fields, all working together to read a body and hold its pieces together, forcing them to work when they need to. The table kept her stable, gave him constantly updated visual data about what she looked like inside, and the ability to make tiny, minute changes to fix things he couldn't otherwise get to without creating more trauma.
The pain cuffs kept the nerve endings less responsive, allowing him to work without triggering a stress response and without doing further damage by suppressing functions she needed to live. Now, she was healing without those tools and he knew her stress response was slowing down her repairs. Every moment, she was working through a cocktail of hormones the nanos were having trouble identifying were good or bad.
Maybe they were both, he considered, scrolling back through the information for the past day. There were significant spikes in all of them when he found the times he'd touched her bare skin. Spikes in everything, he realized, and again he wanted nothing more than to stroke his arm down her bare skin and see what happened.
Her breathing deepened and all the indicators showed she was asleep. He considered moving away from her and getting on with some of his other work, at least for a little while, but he stayed and kept stroking her arm for a while longer.
