Mindline

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  "Alliance medicine—"

  "Isn't magic," Vasiht'h finished. He grimaced. "Don't mistake me: I hope to Aksivaht'h Herself that someone comes up with some miracle cure that will reverse the catastrophic effects of their mistake. But it really is a catastrophic effect, and even if they do find that miracle it won't come in time for everyone." He nudged the plate with a finger. "Try to eat."

  Jahir stared at the light winking off the red cabochon of some nameless berry. "I would prefer broth."

  "Broth won't put weight on your frame," Vasiht'h said. "I'll make you a clear tea if you'll eat that scone."

  He almost said no, but the mindline brought him a taste, like apples and brown wheat and sunlight. His mouth watered.

  "I'll take that for a yes."

  Jahir sighed and broke off a piece of the scone. "I am not looking forward to the next few days."

  "Me neither," Vasiht'h said. "But we'll get through it together. And hopefully it'll be over soon."

  Chapter 19

  "Tell me it has been a gentle day," Jahir said when they found Paige in the break room the following afternoon.

  "For the values of gentle that apply around here," Paige answered affably. "The usual assortment of broken bones, heart issues, sudden allergic reactions, that sort of thing."

  "But no new drug victims," Vasiht'h said.

  "No. And none of them have died since the last one either," Paige said. "The whole staff's unhappy, though."

  /Can't blame them for that./ Which Jahir received with the weight of a rain on his back. Backs. The images could be confusing when the mindline delivered them directly, rather than allowing him to re-interpret them to suit his own experience. He savored the sensation of having a second spine and then focused on the present.

  "Seems like some kind of bulletin came through on the situation," Paige was continuing. She lifted a mug and a brow.

  "Is it buttered?" Jahir asked, trying not to sound as pained as he felt.

  She chuckled and opened the spigot. Dark brown coffee spilled into the cup, steam flaring around the stream. "You can take it clear if you're that tired of it."

  "Yes, please."

  "Right. You too, alet? I didn't catch your name."

  "Vasiht'h. And yes, that would be welcome, thanks."

  She passed them the mugs and said, "Anyway, ever since it came through everyone's been moody. Really, really moody. I'm guessing it wasn't good news."

  "No," Jahir said. "I imagine not. Thank you, alet."

  "It's not a problem." She glanced at Vasiht'h with lively interest. "A Glaseah and an Eldritch..."

  "Now you've seen everything?" Vasiht'h offered, smiling.

  "I hope not," she said. "But if I have, then this is a pretty fantastic finisher."

  Vasiht'h canted his head, his curiosity curling through the mindline like a plume of incense smoke. "Fantastic? Really?"

  "Oh, yes," Paige said, vehement. Her eyes sparkled. "So completely unlike, and yet you stand together and exude this rightness. I love it. Being around it is so relaxing." She tapped her fingertips on her own mug's wall and said, "Like... if such a good friendship could happen between you two, who couldn't it happen for? Makes you feel good about the universe."

  Jahir glanced at Vasiht'h for confirmation of the bemusement in the mindline, then said, "I am glad we had the power to make someone smile today."

  "This is awful now," Paige said. "But it will pass. You'll see how it works. You can't work in a setting like this and let it all get to you, so you don't." She pushed off her stool. "Good luck with the drug patients."

  "Thank you," Jahir answered, but it was a reflex; every other part of him was resonating as if struck. He felt Vasiht'h's solemn attention before the words came, and this time the incense smoke felt like gravity.

  /Not what you wanted to hear about what you'd have to become to stay here?/

  "No," Jahir said aloud. He centered himself. "But we are here now. For now."

  Levine and Septima's arrivals were not a surprise. He and Vasiht'h were in the second room, keeping their vigil while the Glaseah studied and Jahir wondered how he had become a silent witness to death after having studied in a profession that should have involved life, and struggle, and a great deal of talk. When the two women's shadows fell into the room, he glanced toward the door.

  /Oh, great./

  That irritation felt like rolling over and falling off a pile of cushions. Jahir suppressed a very inappropriate amusement, particularly since his feeling on the matter was more apprehension than frustration, and said, "Aletsen. Is there aught we can do for you?"

  "Actually, we were wondering if we could have a talk with you outside," Levine said. As Vasiht'h started to rise, she added, "Your friend's not necessary. We're not going to be doing any dramatic interventions." She offered him a lopsided smile. "Just talk."

  /I don't like it./

  /They may have legitimate reasons for their request./

  Vasiht'h's arch tone was peppery in the mouth. /Like what?/

  /Perhaps they wish to discuss issues that may have legal ramifications for the hospital? You are not an employee, technically./

  Vasiht'h's eyes narrowed.

  Jahir allowed some of his unhappiness to bleed into the mindline, something that forced him to face that it existed. That he didn't want to be here. /It would get me out of this room, arii./

  The Glaseah's sigh would have been inaudible had he not heard the echo of it soft between their minds. Jahir turned to the women and said, "As you please."

  He followed the women to one of the unused conference rooms, noting how much had changed since yesterday. Septima walked like someone embattled, shoulders tight and hunched forward, ears flattened backward and tail low, tip twitching. Levine had her hands in her coat pockets as if she needed a place to keep them to prevent any fidgeting, and she had her head bowed as she waved them into the room. Jahir sat on one side, and the two of them sat on the other, and they studied one another for several moments. The women looked haggard. He could only imagine what he looked like.

  "We all got a memo this morning," Levine said.

  "I had heard," Jahir offered when she seemed to be searching for words. "The investigator informed me of his intent."

  "So you know a little of what we're fighting here."

  "Somewhat."

  "And you know that we hope this will be the last round of it," Levine said. "And that these patients are going to be the final few we get before Fleet and the Heliocentrus police shut these criminals down."

  "Yes," he said, wondering now where this was leading, and why Septima was being so quiet when she hadn't seemed disposed to quiet before.

  "What we wanted to say is..."

  "I don't think I can fix this," Septima said abruptly. "And while I'd like you to help me try, your two keepers are adamant on the subject. They don't want you involved."

  Levine cleared her throat, cheeks flushing, but added nothing. He looked at her, then at the Harat-Shar, and lifted his brows. "My two keepers being... Jiron and Radimir, presumably?"

  "Yes. They think this is killing you. Which is a touch hyperbolic on their part, but I'm not expecting exacting medical standards out of psychologists."

  Levine's mouth tightened... but she didn't object either.

  "And you," he said to her, "would like me to try."

  "I," she said, pausing to pick her words carefully, "think that your presence in their final moments might be the only comfort they get before they die. But I'm not going to force you to do anything you can't do."

  Jahir glanced at Septima. "And helping you would entail... what, precisely?"

  "Come into surgery with me," she urged. "Do whatever magic trick it is you do to keep these people from dying. Maybe then I'll have enough time to figure out how to fix them."

  How astonishing to be accused of magic by the Alliance after years of his finding their technological magical. Truly, perspective—and ignorance—colored everything. "And if I collapse?
"

  "You'll already be in an operating room," Septima said. "We'll catch you. We're not going to let anything happen to you."

  ...Of course not, because they needed him. His sole expertise. He remembered Radimir's speech about nothing being so urgent in their field that it needed a quickness, or presumably, a uniqueness.

  The worst of it was that he found it hard not to say yes. The chance to find a solution to the physical reduction of these people? If he could have a hand in that....

  In his mind, Vasiht'h seemed to whisper, At the cost of your life?

  And that was a question he could not answer, save perhaps that some part of him, some very miniscule part of him, but a real part none the less, deeply resented having been forced into the position of answering it. He closed his eyes, threading his hands together on his lap, and began to speak.

  The piercing tone of an alert interrupted them. Levine fumbled for her tablet. "Yes?"

  "We've got nine incoming, and they're all your drug victims, Doctor."

  He and Levine met eyes across the table, and then they were out the door. He came to an abrupt halt a few steps down the hall and braced himself against it with an elbow, panting. The mindline flooded him with warmth as Vasiht'h's footfalls beat a double-drum against the floor. "Arii!"

  "Something has gone very wrong," he said, and before the tide of anxiety could crest into real fear, "Not me. There are more coming. Too many more."

  "How many is too many?" Vasiht'h asked, ears flattening.

  "Nine."

  "Nine!"

  "And one of them is dying," Jahir finished, neither knowing nor caring how he knew. But he had his answer as he forced himself to run down the hall, ignoring Vasiht'h's distress. The stretcher passing him was the one he wanted, and he fell in alongside it, grabbed for a hand. The disorder was so vast. There was no imposing himself on it, when the days had depleted him of anything to use as framework.

  So he took it into himself, instead, and found the answer to the question. He could no more stand by and let someone die if he could prevent it than he could have watched someone collapse in a street without attempting to help.

  Vasiht'h's cry of dismay strangled in his throat as the mindline stretched to breaking. He hauled on it as if it were a rope he could grasp in his hands but that didn't bring Jahir closer... so he went after him and it was like swimming into the grip of an undertow. Never in his life had he been so terrified. What would it be like to die this way? Horrible, torn to shreds, his last moments a panic...

  No!

  He pulled back, refusing chaos.

  No!

  Bit by bit, he clawed Jahir free of it until they both spilled into physical reality, tangled limbs, every nerve over-sensitized. Above them, the stunned healers-assist at the side of the stretcher were staring at the patient monitor. Vasiht'h didn't have to be told that his partner had committed another of his miracles. What mattered was getting said partner off the hall floor, and Jahir was resisting him.

  "Need to... go... that way..."

  "If this is about someone else dying," Vasiht'h began, lips pulling back from his teeth.

  "No." Exhaustion so heavy it felt crushing. "Need to know... what's happening. Why so many?"

  "If I go find out will you promise to sit in a chair and not dash off after anyone else?" Vasiht'h asked. "Because if you don't promise, I'm not moving."

  "I'll stay." Jahir's slow, shallow breath strained his ribcage; Vasiht'h felt the lightning pain of it through his own torso. "Please, find out."

  "As much as I can," Vasiht'h promised, and unconstrained by Selnor's gravity he ran until he found someone who could talk to him: Radimir, who like Jahir had finally sat down after assigning everyone to their new rooms. The Harat-Shar was deflated, hands limp in his lap and shoulders slumped.

  "Alet?" Vasiht'h asked, cautious. "What happened?"

  "This is just the beginning," Radimir said. "The beginning, and the ending." He ran a hand over his head, creasing one ear. "There were three separate parties with this stuff. This was the result of one of them."

  "Three parties?" Vasiht'h asked, incredulous.

  "We're hoping we get to the last two in time, but if we don't... they'll be coming here." Radimir looked up at him. "It's going to be a long night. That's the bad news."

  "There's good news?"

  "Oh yes." The Harat-Shar's smile was feral, humorless. "A victim here, a victim there... that's hard to trace. Three parties' worth of people, with contacts to buy this trash?" He shook his head. "The police couldn't ask for a better chance at finding out what's going on."

  ...but it was going to get worse before it got better. Some of that must have marred his expression because the Harat-Shar said, "You should take your Eldritch and go home, alet. These people are going to die and there's nothing either of you can do to prevent it. Now that we know that, there's no reason to make him watch."

  "He would argue that there's a chance," Vasiht'h said. "Come to that, your Harat-Shariin surgeon would probably disagree with your assessment."

  "She can disagree all she wants. It won't change facts." Radmir sighed and pushed himself up. "It's her job to try to solve the problem. That's what we're paying her for. The two of you? This isn't your fight. You're not trained for it. You don't have the tools. And frankly it's a waste. You don't put therapists in a room with a corpse."

  "They're not corpses yet," Vasiht'h said automatically.

  "Yet," Radimir agreed.

  To the Harat-Shar's back, Vasiht'h said, "He won't go home. You and I both know it."

  Radimir paused. Sighed gustily. "Then do what you have to do."

  Fine wording, Vasiht'h thought, struggling with grumpiness. What you have to do. None of it had to be done. And he didn't want to be doing it at all. He returned to Jahir's side, and saw anew the fatigue that had become so habitual it had altered the posture that had seemed bred into his friend's bones: that easy, straight-backed grace, the finish to all the movements, and most importantly, their control so as not to intrude by accident or purpose into the space of people who might touch his mind.

  Jahir lifted his head, waiting.

  "It's a real, honest-to-Goddess outbreak," Vasiht'h said. "And this might be the opportunity the police have been praying for. But there are going to be a lot of bodies before it's over, and they're coming tonight." He controlled his anxiety as much as possible and said, "You know, instead of standing watch over them, we could put ourselves to work on their families. I'm sure they'll be arriving at some point. They'll need support."

  "And they will have it," Jahir said. "From us, or from someone else." His breath ended in a small shudder. "We can bring them back."

  "For what?" Vasiht'h asked. "So they can die a day later?"

  "So their loved ones have time to say farewell," Jahir answered, quiet.

  Vasiht'h covered his face. He couldn't bear to look up until a hand slipped into the crook of his elbow, tugged gently. When he looked past his fingers, his partner was looking through them.

  /Arii. Beneath your fear, you could no more let them die this way than I can./

  /No,/ Vasiht'h admitted, because the mindline permitted no lies. Denial, perhaps. Delusion. But not outright lies.

  "Then stay with me," Jahir said aloud, voice rusted with exhaustion. Another alert began singing down the hall, but the eruption of movement and noise seemed to stream around them, leaving them insulated in a quiet only they could pierce. Because it was a reciprocation of the question that Vasiht'h had sprung on him at the door when he first arrived. He had been the one asking for the Eldritch to commit to him. And now...

  "Always," Vasiht'h said.

  They didn't go home that night. Vasiht'h didn't argue it, but Jahir felt his agitation through the mindline. They acknowledged it there, in the rich space between them, and then kept moving. Four more failed in the hours that followed, and each time they did Jahir brought them back, fighting the screaming un-sense of their minds and counting on Vasiht'h t
o pull him back from that darkness. Each time he did so, it was harder to come back; he was surprised to find his clothes clinging to his skin and wondered when he'd begun sweating.

  The next cluster came an hour into the night shift, six more and one of them died before they'd even passed him through triage. Jahir was aware of Septima diving in and out of rooms, attempting to learn something, anything she could use; all his attention remained focused on the unfortunates, and worse, the families that had begun arriving. He had not appreciated how completely the hospital staff had been insulating him from the families until they no longer could. Then their anguish cried out for intervention, and he had nothing left to give them... not so much as a listening ear. And that injustice gnawed at him, whispered something about imbalances that he had no time to consider. If Vasiht'h was aware of it, the Glaseah was soon too tired to comment.

  The last group arrived several hours after midnight, and they were accompanied by a figure Jahir recognized, though it took him far too long to recognize what should have been an unmistakable silhouette: the Malari from the port, who jogged in behind the eighth stretcher, wiping her cheeks with her shoulder as she guided it down the hall.

  "You know her?" Vasiht'h asked, bleary.

  "In passing," Jahir said, but her suffering was so acute he forced himself to rise and follow her to the room where she had stopped moving, like a toy deprived of a hand to push it along. She was staring at the face of the woman in the bed, tears dropping from her eyes onto the arms she had folded high over her chest. Her spine was bent, wings so tightly tucked together they trembled.

  "Alet?" Jahir asked, gentle.

  She shivered. "When I was new here, she took me in. And she's been my best friend ever since." She looked past her shoulder at him. "Twelve years. For twelve years. And now this." She dashed a hand against one eye, smearing her tears. "I've read the bulletin. This is it for her. And for what!"

  "We're sorry," Vasiht'h said.

  In his voice, somehow, was all the grief of the past few days, so obvious that it won her attention. She looked down at him, shaken, then back at the body. And then she began sobbing.