The Rainbow Maker's Tale

by Melanie Cusick-Jones

  * * *

  I regained consciousness several times for short periods before I awoke fully. During those little gaps the only thing I really took notice of was that Cassie was still with me. At first she had been lay beside me on the floor every time I opened my eyes, but when I woke this time, I found that she had moved to a chair nearby and furnished herself with a pillow and blanket from somewhere. Though my eyes were still weak, I could tell she was looking better: her cheeks held some colour now, and the shadows beneath her eyes were less deep.

  A glance at the monitor beside me confirmed that over twenty hours had passed since I first woke and looked at it. It also told me that my vitals were almost normal. One of the indicators reported that I was a little dehydrated. Absorbing this information, for the first time I noticed a drip running into my right hand, which must have been helping my condition. The bag attached to the other end, hung above my head on the bunk and appeared to be half full, so I was good on that front for a while longer.

  I was lying on my left side. It wasn’t comfortable, but I wasn’t confident in my ability to either move myself onto my back, or even if I could, whether that would be any kind of improvement. The return of conscious thought brought me other knowledge about my body that I’d been immune to during sleep. Sensation had returned to several areas that up until now I had no feeling in. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing…

  The fingers on my left hand burned dully and brought back to me the memory of when they had been broken: snapped one after another like twigs, whilst I screamed out in pain. My chest felt uncomfortably tight and I discovered a securely wound bandage compressing my ribcage – which must have been Cassie’s doing. It was the best treatment for the broken ribs I knew I had.

  I lay still for a long while and enjoyed simply being lucid. The distorted and confused mass of images and thoughts from the past days still tumbled through my head, but for the moment I could not face re-living my time outside the Family Quarter. Instead I tried to remember what had happened with Cassie from when she had appeared…but I found it hard to discern real Cassie from the imaginary ones I had surrounded myself with when I was alone and so I stopped trying to do that as well.

  Cassie was still asleep.

  My neck and throat were very painful – probably the worst of everything I could feel. At first I wondered if it might be the after effects of dehydration, although flashes of a memory made me think it was something more…It was dark, but I remembered a weight on my chest, pressing me into the ground so that I couldn’t escape. Something gripping me around the neck, squeezing away my voice…squeezing the air from my body…squeezing the life out of me… Remembering this made my empty stomach lurch and so I pushed the memory away quickly.

  Focus on the physical.

  If I didn’t do this, everything I thought of would end up dragging me back to places I did not want to go.

  With small tentative movements, I began testing my strength and mobility. My left hand was a no-go area and concentrating on it now, I found that there were splints on each of my fingers. Another job that Cassie had done well, I smiled as I recalled how many times she had unnecessarily doubted her skills as a Medic. That felt like it had happened a lifetime ago – to a different person.

  Examining the splints I saw that each of the fingers had been realigned and, given the trauma they had been through, I imagined that Cassie must have used some form of local anaesthetic in my hand to control the pain, as it was still limited to a muted ache. A damp package, loosely bandaged on top of my hand told me that she’d also found an ice pack…

  How had Cassie got all this stuff? It seemed astonishingly lucky.

  BEEP – BEEP – BEEP

  A loud wailing noise startled me from my deliberations and looking around – as much as I could with the limited movement my neck seemed to have – I saw a timer alarm flashing on the console beside Cassie, where she was sleeping in the chair. It must have been something she’d set for herself, but as I watched her, she seemed to struggle to wake up. Her sluggishness panicked me: was there something wrong with her? I had been so focused on my own injuries, I’d not even bothered to check Cassie, I just assumed she was OK.

  Cassie needed me!

  I tried to lever myself from the bunk using my right arm as a prop. Moving was so painful, but fear was controlling me now. My muscles were weak and uncooperative, but I was almost sat up…that’s when the alarm stopped.

  Cassie was moving – slowly still – but she was moving. I flopped back with relief, marvelling at the small gap between my head and the pillow as I dropped: it was completely disproportionate to the mammoth effort it had taken me to lift myself the same distance in the first place.

  Returned to a reasonably comfortable position I was better able to focus on Cassie. After switching off the alarm, she settled back into her chair resting her head on the pillow. I watched as she sighed once and then forced her eyes open. She tutted – at an unknown irritation – as she blinked over and over again until her eyes apparently became accustomed to the dim light in the cabin.

  “Hey, sleepy head...” I whispered.

  Even though I spoke as gently as I could, not wanting to startle her, the basic action of air passing inside my throat set it ablaze. I swallowed but it didn’t help.

  Cassie’s eyes snapped towards the bunk, widening in surprise as she saw me. Immediately she tried to move, but her body was tangled inside the blanket she’d been asleep under a few seconds earlier.

  “No. Don’t move. I’m fine.” I told her, hoping that it would stop her struggling.

  Her movements stopped and she rasied her head slowly to stare back at me. “Are you really?” she whispered, her voice cracking over the three small words.

  I nodded once and her face crumpled.

  “Don’t cry, please Cassie, don’t cry.” I tried to sound strong, though my voice cracked. My right arm automatically began pushing me upwards again, I wanted to reach out and wrap her in my arms. “I’m OK. We made it.”

  She nodded, but the silent tears continued tumbling down her cheeks and I couldn’t hold back any longer. Shoving as hard as I could, I pushed myself a little higher in the bunk, despite the protesting of my ribs and chest.

  “Don’t!” Cassie choked through her tears. “Please – I’ll be OK. I’m just relieved and scared and happy…I didn’t mean to cry.” Her words hicupped over one another as she used the grimy sleeve of her suit to brush the wetness from her eyes.

  I did as she asked, not moving, not wanting to make things worse for her, but the tears were still falling. “Come here,” I pleaded – needing her to be with me now.

  Throwing the blankets aside, she hobbled stiff-legged towards me across the short distance. I shuffled backwards as far as I could in the bunk, staying on my left side so that she could crawl in beside me. Lifting the blanket, she gently moved my left hand towards the pillow, putting it out of the way. In her other hand she took the wires and tubes still connected to me and moved those behind my head.

  As she eased in beside me, I pulled the blanket over us both and closed my right arm around her, dragging its tube with it as I moved. Underneth her neck I slid my left arm tighter around her, lifting it to meet my right hand on her back, and pulling her against my chest.

  Ouch. I winced at my own movements.

  “Ribs?” she guessed.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, grimacing again as I sucked in a breath.

  Cassie pressed her face into my shoulder and I wondered if she might be crying, but then she spoke. “I think you broke three. Two on the left side.”

  That sounded about right, from how I felt and what I remembered happening. “I know,” I whispered back. I didn’t want her dwelling on this – worrying about me. It was obvious that she’d done absolutely everything possible to treat my injuries and –

  I was distracted as Cassie fidgeted in my arms, suddenly rubbing her hand against her forehead as though she ha
d a headache. “Are you really OK?” I asked.

  “Just a bit of a headache. I was pretty dehydrated.”

  Dismissive of herself as ever – nice to see nothing had changed there! I rattled the IV in my right hand. “Me too, I guess.” From the looks of it, Cassie had focused on helping me, and maybe hadn’t taken too much care of herself. I must have been in really bad shape…I remembered the darkness, the empty nothing spaces I’d drifted through…I had been dying. She brought me back to life.

  My gaze rested on her face as she pulled away from my shoulder. When I found her eyes, I let myself drift seeing only the beautiful green-gold colour and wondering at how it was possible we had made it to this place – wherever we were.

  At length Cassie spoke, breaking the silent bubble around us. “How do you feel?”

  “Not too bad, to be honest…nice job on the finger splints by the way.” I smiled once more at the same memory of Cassie’s insecurity about her academic ability. “You would have made a good medic. If it had been real.”

  “I think real starts here.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed.

  We lay still and quiet for a while, there was no where else I wanted to be, than here with the amazing young woman I had my arms wrapped around. It was not a time for thinking about the past or the future, about where we were or how we got there…This was a time just for us and I lost myself in the wonderful peace that being with Cassie brought me.