She dressed, grabbed her purse and headed back out.
It was after five when she got to the medical centre. Ro had been there for an hour and a half. He was still being treated, his case still being discussed by the doctors. All they would tell her was that they were still doing tests. A nurse asked her to sit in the waiting room, so she did.
She was not the only person in the waiting room, but she was the only human. There was a male and a female Teissian sitting by themselves, and a female with a child in her lap who got called shortly after Maggie arrived and didn’t come back. Maggie watched everyone who went past the window into the hall, unable to do anything else for fear of missing something, the moment when she would see Ro go past, or someone would come to get her. She imagined hearing a flatline, and seeing doctors run into a room. She couldn’t hear a heart monitor, everything was hushed and quiet, but that didn’t matter. She imagined that if she watched, she wouldn’t miss her last opportunity to see him again. If she saw the nurse coming, she could meet them halfway and see Ro those few seconds earlier.
She didn’t read a magazine. She kept her Gadgit in her hand as she white-knuckled the seat cushion. She knew it was silly to think Ro might message her or call her, but he might. He might. She kept checking it in case she just hadn’t heard it go off, but it was never him. People from work were messaging her, and she had a minor heart attack every time she saw the logo for a new message, driving herself crazy. She grew frustrated and wished everyone else would leave her alone. She stopped replying.
After an hour or two, she was the last person in the waiting room. She hadn’t eaten, but she wasn’t hungry. She just felt hollow, like there was a big numb hole where her stomach had been, chilling her. Her heart was still there, she could feel it hurting.
All the medical staff were human, she noticed. There were Teissians moving around, but she realised they were receptionists, administrators, security, cleaners.
There was a little A4 print out telling her visiting hours were between ten AM and seven PM. Maggie found herself staring at that a lot as seven came closer then crept by.
Finally, a little after eight pm, a nurse took pity on her, opening the door and gesturing her forward. Maggie felt like throwing up. And crying. And grabbing the woman and shaking her.
“He’s stable for now,” the woman whispered.
Maggie nodded, adjusting her bag on her shoulder, trying to find the words and talk past her tongue.
“I can take you to see him, but you can’t stay,” the nurse offered, and Maggie nodded again, promising anything.
“Wha- Er, what’s wrong with him?” Maggie whispered as the nurse started leading her down a corridor. Maggie kept her head down, feeling as if someone was going to stop them.
She sighed through her nose. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss it,” she replied.
“Oh, o-okay,” Maggie agreed meekly, not going to argue when the woman was currently running her staff card through a scanner, making a little red light turn green. The sign over the door read RESUSSITATION. There was a hiss as the door released and the nurse pushed it open, unintimidated by all the warnings.
“Come on,” she said, jerking her head and holding the door open for Maggie, who scurried through. “He’ll probably be moved to Intensive Care tomorrow.”
“Is that better?” Maggie asked. They both sounded bad, but Resussitation sounded like he had died.
“It is,” the nurse said, throwing her a smile over her shoulder.
The medical centre was small, and there weren’t many rooms on this wing. Three or four rooms down, the nurse stopped in front of a closed door. Maggie read a sticker over a little blue light that said this was a temperature-controlled room. There was a little handwritten card in a plastic slot with a long Teissian name on it. “Ro” was the fourth syllable from the end, written in capital letters. Maggie hadn’t even known his full name.
The nurse entered a code and pushed the door open. “Just a few seconds, can’t let the heat in,” she said.
Maggie looked into the room and gave an involuntary cry, her hands jumping to her mouth. It was Ro alright, lying still in a bed with rails on the sides. Wires and tubes were clipped all over him, and he was asleep, or unconscious. Maggie took a shaky step into the room – it felt freezing, it had to be twenty degrees colder than the rest of the building – but the nurse stopped her.
“Don’t touch him, you’re too warm,” she warned.
Maggie stood in the doorway in dismay. She wanted Ro to wake up and look at her, not lie there in a dotted hospital gown, covered from the waist down by a scratchy blue blanket, his legs making odd shapes under it as his long heels lay flat.
“Was it my fault?” Maggie choked out, pulling her hands away from her mouth.
She felt the nurse’s hand come up to her shoulder and start rubbing her back, but the touch was meaningless. “No, no,” the woman said, but it was unconvincing. She probably said that to everyone. She started to close the door again and Maggie forced herself to stumble back into the hall, out of the way.
“You can come back tomorrow, see him then,” the nurse continued as Maggie tried to catch her breath, get her face steady, not burst into tears again. “He’s not in danger tonight.”
Maggie was a little relieved, but she hadn’t missed that the nurse made no promises about tomorrow, or the next day.
“Why is he unconscious?” Maggie asked, digging her nails into her palms as she forced herself to ask useful questions, and stay on top of her emotions. She closed her eyes, suddenly tired.
“It’s the cold, it slows them down. Stops whatever’s happening from happening. Don’t worry, the doctors are in control. They know what they’re doing,” she promised.
Maggie nodded, and there was a moment’s quiet.
“Are you close?” the nurse asked quietly.
Maggie’s eyes snapped open and she looked at her. The nurse looked nothing but sympathetic, her expression suggesting she already knew the answer, and Maggie actually had to remember that yeah, it wasn’t obvious why this human woman had waited hours by herself just for a glimpse of a Balin male. Relationships like theirs still weren’t common, not in the open. Maggie had assumed the staff all knew who Ro was to her, but of course they wouldn’t.
“Yes, he’s my boyfriend,” she said. “We’ve been together-” Maggie cut herself off. How long had they actually been a couple? Since the office party? That was barely a month ago. It felt much longer than that, because she had been in love with him since way before their first kiss. She just shook her head as if she didn’t know, or couldn’t speak.
“Come back tomorrow, sweetie,” the nurse said, rubbing her hand over Maggie’s arm. “You can sit with him then. Just bring some warm clothes, hmm?”
“Yeah,” Maggie nodded. “Yeah, okay. Thank you.” Maggie pushed herself off the wall, and the nurse gently directed her back the way they had come.
Maggie went home, though it felt like a waste of time shuttling back and forth when there was only one place she wanted to be. Maybe, if Ro had to be in hospital for more than a day or two, she could try to get his apartment keys and stay there, to be closer. She was sure he would give them to her, but if he stayed unconscious, she didn’t know who to ask. She didn’t want to just take them.
At home, she crawled into bed and crushed her second pillow against her chest. She thought about him, alone, hurt, and cried her eyes out. Part of her knew it was silly, that no one felt lonely when they were asleep, but she couldn’t get over the feeling that she should be there, that he would wake up and wonder where she was, and be scared surrounded by strangers and machinery.
She slept terribly and couldn’t wait for her alarm to go off so she could get ready and get to the medical centre for nine-thirty. She called in sick to work, and put in a request for compassionate leave. She’d never had a cause to use it before, but she had no qualms about demanding her full allowance for the year. She was not going to work again any time soo
n, even if it did leave her team two staff members down. They could draft in someone from another team to cover if it got bad. She was going to be with Ro.
The next morning, she signed in at Reception, and a nurse got her though the doors to Intensive Care. As soon as she was through, she stopped. Standing at the nurses’ station was Kez, and another Balin she didn’t recognise. She hesitated, but she headed over. She wouldn’t run away. She wouldn’t let anyone keep her away from Ro. The Balin she didn’t know was filling out a form, but Kez looked up at her as she approached, his expression closing off.
“Hey,” she said.
The other Balin raised his head. He was bigger than most other Teissians, broader in the shoulders. He looked pretty musclebound compared to their typically lithe physiques. His scales were dark, dark purple, with swirls of violet at his temples.
Kez narrowed his eyes at her.
“Hello,” the stranger said, clearly just being polite and expecting her to move on, not knowing who she was.
Kez turned to him and muttered something, and Maggie heard her name.
“Oh! You’re Ro’s human female,” the other said, understanding brightening his features.
Maggie nodded, stuffing her hands in her pockets. She was wearing jeans and thick socks under her boots, with a hoody hanging in the crook of her elbow. She’d come prepared. “That’s right, that’s me,” she said.
He reached around Kez to offer his hand for a shake, making Kez snort indignantly and move to his other side. Maggie took the male’s hand, noting that his hand swallowed hers, but his grip was gentle, despite the massive hooked claws that were scary just to look at. “My name is Vig. I’m the Community Leader for Ro’s block. He talked about you all the time.”
A painful lump formed in Maggie’s throat, but she pushed it down. No one had told her Ro had died overnight. It looked like he was still around, still alive. “He did?”
Vig nodded. “He was very pleased to have you,” he said. “You shouldn’t blame yourself for what he’s done,” he continued, gesturing at the door to Ro’s room. “He knew the consequences. You, I suspect, did not.”
“I’m sorry, can you tell me what happened to him?” Maggie asked, feeling at a disadvantage, ashamed to have to ask when it was clear the two of them already knew. “They wouldn’t tell me, because I’m not family.”
Vig snorted. “Family. What family could he have here?” he asked, shaking his head. He looked back at the form he was filling out on the table. “It’s why I’m here, filling these forms out. Community Leaders act as family in these situations. I’m giving Kez the same privileges, I could include you too?”
“Please!” Maggie said, grabbing Vig’s arm, then letting go when she’d realised what she’d done, but Vig just smiled.
Kez on the other hand clearly disagreed, objecting to Vig in Balin.
“You don’t think he would want her to?” Vig asked him in English.
“If he did, he would have told her what he was doing,” he said, glaring at Maggie.
“Did you tell the doctors where he got what he was taking?” Maggie threw back at him. She wasn’t going to let him say it was her fault when she still didn’t know what was going on.
Vig chuckled. “Kez… Come on, she’s the only one of us who can actually go in that room for longer than a couple of minutes. Ro should have someone who can visit him. Nurse? How do I get another one of these forms?”
The nurse took the tablet and tapped a few commands before handing it back with a smile.
“Thank you.”
Maggie watched him for a second. “So what happened to him?” Maggie reminded him.
“Oh, umm…” Vig glanced at Kez as if he too wondered whether he should say, but this time Maggie got the impression it was because it was something embarrassing, not because Vig was trying to keep her out.
Maggie was losing her patience. “Kez told me it was some kind of stimulant, that he’s been taking it all week?”
“Yes, it was a very potent Balin medicine. We have need of it if, for example, we have been challenged to a fight to the death. It happens. It makes a male’s heart beat faster, makes him aggressive. Ro was using it to… please you, outside of his heat cycles. It can have that effect too.”
“I never told him to do that,” Maggie said again. She wanted them to know that, that she had never been dissatisfied with him, or wanted him to be more than he was.
Vig hummed and shrugged as if he didn’t believe her but it didn’t matter if she had. His voice was as deep as Ro’s, but it vibrated out of his deep chest and wasn’t anywhere near as smooth. It definitely didn’t have the same calming effect on her. “As I said, he knew the risk. I’m sure he doesn’t blame you.”
“So he was just going to keep taking it? For how long?” Maggie pressed. She couldn’t believe it. So that was the explanation for his moods? Dangerous meds he was taking to be able to have sex with her. She gasped as it hit her. “He can’t have sex when he’s not in heat?” she asked.
Vig and Kez both stared at her blankly, as if she had asked something totally obvious.
Then Vig chuckled again, breaking the tension. “No,” he said. “What do you think a heat is for? Though I’m sure he would find your faith in his virility flattering.”
“I thought heat was just when he had to have sex. I didn’t think-” Her head whipped to the door of Ro’s room. “That idiot!” she cursed, remembering the night he had only used his hands and mouth to make love to her, all the things that had been said and how he must have interpreted what she’d meant. “He should have just explained it to me!”
Her hands balled into fists. Oh, she was mad now. He’d almost killed himself over sex, when he could have just said one simple sentence to let her know what was going on with him. She would have been fine with it. Her complaint had been that she had thought he wasn’t attracted to her, didn’t want her anymore. If she had known he simply couldn’t perform all the time, she would have accepted that. He was more important to her than just sex.
“He thought you would leave him,” Kez supplied, his voice quiet. He was looking at her as if she had surprised him. “That’s what he always said when I told him I wouldn’t give him any more of the drug. He said a human male would be able to satisfy you, so he had to be able to as well.”
“That’s not true, Kez,” Maggie promised him. “I want him for more than that.”
Kez held her earnest eyes for a moment, then looked away with a grunt.
“Anyway,” Vig resumed. “It made his blood pressure so high that it burst the cap-capil-”
“Capilliaries?” Maggie offered.
“Those, in his face, and made him faint, as you saw. If that hadn’t happened, he probably would have had a stroke or a heart attack today. His organs have been damaged, but the doctors say they will heal on their own in time. His heart, and his- Well, what we have instead of your liver and kidneys. The doctors are keeping him asleep because they are not sure how to wake him up without any of the drug still in his system causing him to overdose again. Because it is Balin medicine, they are not sure how to get it out of him,” Vig told her, clearly reciting what he had been told as best he could.
“Jesus…” Maggie said at the end of it all. He really had nearly killed himself. If he hadn’t passed out, or if he had done it in private, she knew he would have just kept on taking the drug. He had been one day away from death.
Vig hummed in agreement, looking at his bedroom door. “To think he came all this way from Teiss just to do this.” He shook his head and turned back to his form.
A nurse appeared beside them.
“You can go in now, it’s ten,” she said with a smile.
Maggie took a deep breath, steeling herself. She was the first into the room after the nurse entered the code, the men behind her. It looked just the same as the room from the day before. The blinds were drawn to keep the light dim. Ro was lying still as a statue under the blanket. Screens in the wall displayed
his vital signs.
The nurse bustled past them as they drifted in, shocked. She pulled round a chair. “You can sit here, honey, if you’re going to stay. You can touch him, but not skin to skin, okay? We’ve got to keep his temperature as even as possible.”
“Thank you,” Maggie said, dropping her bag beside the chair.
She heard Vig shiver behind her, and looked at them. Kez looked like she felt, his face sad and stunned, disbelieving. She pulled on her hoody to give him a moment to compose himself. She didn’t know if she forgave him yet for the role he had played, but she could empathise with the guilt he must be feeling.
She couldn’t hold Ro’s hand, but just seeing him was encouraging. He looked… fine, if not for all the tubes and wires. He could have been asleep on her couch after a movie. He never slept on his back in bed. It looked uncomfortable with the zig-zags of his legs. She sat down and put her hand on his shin, feeling the bone, the firmness of his flesh.
“Look after him,” Kez told her.
“She will,” said Vig, pushing Kez towards the door and giving Maggie her privacy. “Now come on, we have to get out or we’ll fall asleep ourselves, and I don’t have time for a coma today.”
Chapter 31
Ro didn’t wake up for four days.
Maggie learned a lot about the Balin from his nurses while she waited at his bedside. They really were susceptible to changes in the temperature around them. Apparently it was standard procedure when a Balin arrived in critical condition to cool them down to about 48 degrees Fahrenheit. If they were bleeding, their heart rate would become so sluggish they could even survive surgery without a transfusion. If they were overdosing, or poisoned, or reacting to anything really, they would stop. Their bodies stopped absorbing chemicals, stopped digesting food. If their organs were failing, cooling them down lowered the demand on those organs so that the risk was gone.
The New Guy (Office Aliens Book 2) Page 25
