“Hello?”
My word echoes around me like I’m in an empty room, making the whole place seem even more empty than it already is. The girl never replies to me; she only stands up there, leaning at the end of the roof.
Right then I realize that something is wrong with her. The light doesn’t come from her but from behind her. Soon, the glow gets more intense, strong enough to swallow the city whole in its brightness.
“Run! Don’t just stand there!!! Jump!” I start saying to her.
Jump!
This word echoes deep inside me like it’s a command I have to follow. I’m vaguely aware that I just said that to myself, but it doesn’t make it easier to disobey it.
Soon, the light is strong enough that I can’t do anything but close my eyes. There is no sound anymore, anything except a murmur coming from the distant dark.
“Jay...Jay...”
That name again. Who is calling me in that name?
Her voice is like a beacon of hope in this blinding light. Out of nowhere, a name pops in my mind:
Eladia.
“Jay, are you alright? Oh my god, Jay, you’re finally awake!”
When I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is that I’m not in pain anymore. In fact, it feels like I’m better than the last time I found myself waking up from a mystery slumber.
I take a deep breath and look around me only to see a line of familiar faces. Eladia is standing above me, her black hair caught in that hideous tail as always, but her brown eyes big and beautiful as I remember them.
Silver, the Android with the holographic human parts is sitting two feet behind her, close enough for me to see her but too far to talk to me. On her side, the wild boy from Primordial Earth, Zan, seems worried in his own, stoic way, sitting next to her.
I wonder, do I look like him when I’m worried?
Maybe.
For a moment, everything inside me feels normal in a twisted, confusing way. I know I must have been sleeping for a long time, but I don’t know how much. That means that I must ask her.
I turn my head and gaze straight into Eladia’s big brown eyes and then, everything comes to me at once. Our adventure back on Primordial Earth, that time we got intimate on that roof, and then when I woke up not knowing where I was, the time I found out she had been lying about my true identity the whole time.
At once, the room starts feeling too crowded for me. I command my hand to get her out of the way, but, for a reason unknown, my hand doesn’t follow my order. Instead, it stays frozen on my side, a dead chunk of meat.
“Where am I? What did you do to me? I can’t move,” I start saying, intending for my voice to be loud and clear but the only thing coming out is a silent mumble.
“Jay...Jay, you have to relax,” the female human, the one that betrayed me, says.
I don’t want to listen to her, but it doesn’t seem like I have a choice.
The human turns and nods at her faithful companions and they both rush out of the room, into the busy hallway. They leave me alone with this woman.
“Jay...Jay, please let me explain to you. You were seriously injured, and--”
“I don’t want to hear anything from you! Get out!”
The last part is closer to a roar. I can’t control my temper around her, now more than ever.
“Hey! This is not a bar, fella. This is a hospital. You don’t get to shout at anyone in here, do you understand?”
Another human walks inside the room, this one a male. Tall, blond, with dark brown eyes and a fit body. His face’s calm and soothing, especially for a male human.
“Who are you?” I say.
Eladia seems to recognize him.
“I’m the person that treats you while you’re here. You were pretty roughed up when your friends brought you here. You’ve been up and down for two weeks now. It wasn’t easy getting you up to shape again, buddy,” the man says.
He touches my chest with a metal object with a small screen on the top. He waits patiently for a second and then nods to himself. He does the same thing a couple more time to different parts of my body, nodding every time like he’s having a conversation with himself.
“You’re better today. One more week in the bed and you will be as good as new.”
His voice is hoarse and deep but reassuring in some way. It feels like, for a change, I can trust him.
“I can’t move my hands and legs,” I say, trying to push a yawn down into my chest.
“Don’t worry, it’s common in your case. You’re packed with some pretty strong meds, big fella. Now, don’t be rude to your friends. Ms. Matthews, can I see you for a moment outside?”
Eladia looks at the doctor and me, one after the other before nodding and leaving my side. For some reason, I want him to stay, but I can’t hold my eyes open for too long. My eyelids are suddenly heavy, and before I know it, I’m drifting back to sleep.
The last thing that crosses my mind is the man’s eyes.
I like that man.
Chapter Thirty-One
Eladia
“Ms. Matthews, you have to understand that Jay has not fully recovered yet. It’s a miracle that he managed to survive with injuries as severe as his, but for some reason, every time he wakes up it seems like he has a difficult time seeing you in the same room with him. Would you care to explain to me what’s going on between you two?”
Doctor Cross is without a doubt the best doctor in this hospital. Not only he’s young and handsome, but for some reason, he had no difficulty believing everything we said to him, even though we never quite shared the whole story with him.
I can’t go on now and tell him that we’re possible targeted by a man wearing a red, demon mask since we’re the only witnesses to the murders he committed. Nor I can tell him that Zan is a new human species that comes from Primordial Earth. Or that the small cube that can’t be moved too far away from Jay’s body is a Nusae artifact that could mean the solution of the Great Mystery.
Either way, Dale Cross, the doctor, had no problem trusting us in the first place since he only knows half the truth hiding behind our wounds. Still, he has been kind and protective, certainly a man worth protecting from our dangerous truth.
“Let’s just say we had a fight before he got hurt and he doesn’t seem able to handle it well yet. Isn’t that a good enough reason for him to be angry?”
His left brow arches above his eye into a cute scowl; this man is hot even when he’s angry. He kinda reminds me of Jay on that end.
“Eladia,” he says, lowering his voice, “you know you can trust me. I won’t hurt you. When people go through a traumatic experience like what you went through, it changes them enough to forget their petty arguments. Also, you saved his life. You were the ones that brought him to the hospital when he was almost dead. I’m sure he can find it in his heart to forgive you.”
Dale is right. I can’t keep lying to him as I did with Jay. That attitude didn’t get me very far with him. He’s so mad at me now that he can’t put his anger beside and just forgive me. But, would I do the same if I were in his place?
“You know doctor, you’re right. But,” I stop, adding a dramatic pause to my saying, “I can’t tell you what’s really going on right now. You have to trust us...me...on this.”
His face softens up, and he sighs. Dale seems like the considerate kind of guy, the type of human that cares what happens to you. He’s certainly not like those extremists that want to rush the human race to the top rank.
“Okay. I understand. However, the next time you’re in the middle of an adventure, remember what we had to go through to save him in the first place. Okay?” I nod. “Perfect. I really have to go and make my rounds now. I’ll be back later tonight to check up on him. He’s gonna need quite a lot of rest to fully recover, but I’m confident he’ll be fine. That serum I came up certainly seems to help him a lot.”
Doctor Cross casts me one last smile and stretches his hand to pat my shoulder before turning away
to leave. I want to ask him to stay with us just to make sure there’s nothing wrong with Jay. But, after two weeks of always being on our side, I kinda trust this man with our life.
I walk back into the room. The television is on and kinda loud. We have the room for ourselves, but it's way too loud even for a company of four, like us. There's a breaking news report. I focus on that for a moment.
“We are now live from Mosa, Yaerus where a second hit of the infamous Tech-Infection was just discovered. A middle-aged lady was found earlier this evening in her apartment standing in the middle of a large number of guttered animals.
“The police has been called and managed to decompress the situation in mere minutes, and although we still have no info about the so-called disease, this is the second hit this week and the fiftieth on Yaerus. The only thing common to that disease is--”
I decide to shut the television off. It seems like the world keeps dealing with their problems even without us running around making new ones.
Now that there's no sound coming from the TV, I notice that there is some kind of commotion on the hallway behind me. For a hospital, it's nothing out of the ordinary, but it still makes me get on my feet and check if everything is alright. It's nothing like the day we first arrived in the hospital but still, there are countless people running up and down the hallway, searching for something.
Silver has returned to her lessons with Zan, who has improved his handle of the language quite a bit through the last two weeks. Maybe hearing other people talk around him, and with the help of the miraculous and lovable Dale Cross, the boy had blossomed into a true man. He still has to overcome his share of difficulties before having complete control of the language, but he’s getting there.
Well, with nothing else to do all day but study for the last couple weeks, the young man could only get better. Still, after I turn my head and watch Jay sleep, my mind returns to my previous concerns.
Dale is right. It was a miracle that Jay didn’t die when we first got him here. He was bleeding badly, and he had lost so much blood already that his usually platinum skin was now plain white. I couldn’t stand watching him suffer before I passed out. The sight of him, looking like a dead man, frightened me.
When I finally I came up to the hospital, the doctors reassured me that he was still alive, although just barely.
I turn my head and see Silver walk towards me. “Eladia, is everything okay? Did doctor Dale need something?”
Silver has a small “user-crush” with Dale, like everyone else in this room. Those two would stay up for hours discussing medicine and philosophy and anything that I never had the time to speak about with her. It was like Dale was the piece missing from our already peculiar bunch of people, and even though Jay was the only one among us in dire need of medical attention, all of us ended up under Doctor Cross’ reassuring care.
“No, no. He was just asking about my relationship with Jay.”
“And? Did you say anything to him?”
“Of course not. I told him that it’s complicated and that I owe him an explanation sometime in the future. Kinda like what I say to all the men around me lately.”
I sigh and melt back into my armchair. My eyes quickly fall on Jay’s motionless body. Another memory of the last couple weeks surfaces. Those two fateful days when I was sure he would die on me, the days that we found out that Jay is a hydro-recovery organism. Well, at least that’s how Dale put it.
One night, after another one of his lengthy operations, the doctor came out of the operating room looking as skeptical as a man with bad news can only be. He came to me and whispered something about Jay never getting through the night. I don’t quite remember what he said to me back then since I hadn’t been able to sleep for the last three days. All my memories from that time are a complete mess.
All of his vitals had taken a fall for the worst, and most of his internal organs were malfunctioning, ready to collapse at any moment. And as if that wasn’t enough to make me worry, Dale also told me that even after all the drugs they stuffed in him, dosages that would have killed a common man, didn’t work at all with him.
That’s when the doctor started asking questions to me, the likes of ‘where is he from?’ and ‘what’s his blood type?’ and ‘are you his close acquaintances?’. Stuff like that.
When I couldn’t answer any of his questions, the man confronted me in an honest and straightforward way.
“Look Ms. Matthews. I know that it has been a long week so far for both of us, but if you don’t trust me there is a big change that your friend, Jay, will die. I’m sure there’s a way for us to save him, but you have to work with me. I took an oath to protect and care for all living species, but you never did. However, if you don’t start talking soon, I’m sure both of will be burdened with this man’s death for the rest of our lives.”
Right then, I would have told him even my father’s bank account password if he asked me to. From that moment on, I started talking to him, telling him everything I could, treading in thin ropes, not entirely sure if was doing the right thing.
But, while I was telling him our story, the man kept searching for a clue on how to help him. He found it in our first intimate moment together, that time when Jay dived into the small lake back on Primordial Earth and later seemed restored and reinvigorated.
“If that’s true, then...then we’ve been treating him the wrong way this whole time.”
That night, and for the next three days, the doctor made sure that Jay survived by moving him to a special room they used for hydro-recovery organisms, like the Detir and the Pots. As a student, I remember taking a class on the history of outer-space organisms that mentioned the hydro-recovery system. In that class we learned that these types of organisms spend a great deal of their evolution path living close or inside the water, eventually leading up to their partial dependency of aquatic environments.
Humans are not hydro-recovery organisms even though life on Primordial Earth started from the oceans. But Detir and Pots, mostly populating planets covered by over 90% with water, had a different kind of coping mechanism that allowed them to recover a great deal of their strength after getting in contact with the aquatic element.
From that day on, Jay started getting better fast, and the new rounds of medicines started working on him. During the last week, even though he had his ups and downs, spending half an hour every two days awake and screaming in agony, he started recovering. The difficult part came when he stopped shouting and started making a ruckus trying to leave the hospital every time he was awake. That’s why the doctor had to come up with a serum that deprived him of his use of hands and feet for a while, just enough to calm him.
I feel guilty for letting him do that, but I’m certain it’s in his best interest. Yeah, lying to him to protect him was for his best interest as well, but I can’t help wanting to protect him from the agony of having to face a difficult truth.
He’s not alone inside that body.
Doctor Dale suddenly appears in the door. He once again signals me to follow him outside; I quickly do so.
“Sorry to bother you again, but I wanted to ask you something before I totally forgot it. Would it be too much if you let me keep Jay here for a couple more weeks to run some tests on him and--”
“No,” I say in a totalitarian tone. That was out of the question.
“Okay,” he says to me promptly and rushes to his next task.
I smile at his back and somehow feel better with his goofy behavior. It’s like he sensed I was worrying about Jay and decided to pass by and lighten the mood. That’s Doctor Cross for you.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jay
I open my eyes and look at the ceiling. It is too dark in here to make out the details, but it seems like it’s a plain white, common part of a regular room. The endless lights of Mosa cast their dim presence in the furniture, making the shadows inside the room dance impatiently.
My eyes are cloudy, and my limbs feel heav
y, but I’ve regained some control of my senses. For a moment, it feels like I’m dreaming, but soon I realize I’m not. I feel like I’ve been here before or that I had spent many hours in this room, although this is the first time that I realize it. The pain I feel in the lower part of my body makes this whole scene feel too real.
I can smell people everywhere around me, people that I kinda expected they’d be here. A gentle sigh comes from my left side. I turn and see Eladia’s face. Her dark hair is still caught up in that hideous ponytail, but for some reason, she looks more beautiful than ever.
She smells of shampoo and exhaustion, the heady smell that comes from a person that hasn’t showered for many days. But, it kinda suits her. Eladia is born to live outside in the open, to have her adventures away from the close quarters of a room.
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 84
