Courage

by Angela B. Macala-Guajardo

  Everything went black and Roxie slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 13

  Jenna felt a sudden panic and thought she saw a flash of Roxie’s face. She got to her feet and approached the racing EKG. The girl’s heart rate and blood pressure had risen to slightly above normal maybe an hour ago. Her blood pressure was still the same, but her heart was beating triple time now. She tucked a few loose strands of hair back and turned her attention to the girl. Roxie’s chest rose and fell as fast as an infant’s and her breathing was dangerously shallow. Her face rivaled a tomato covered in sweat, nothing she hadn’t expected. Jenna lifted a portion of the sheet and studied the heavily poisoned arm. It looked no better or worse than before. It wasn’t time for more anti inflammatory medicine. Jenna ruled out a delayed reaction to air poisoning, realizing it was the delayed reaction from dragon venom. It was trying to shut down the girl’s lungs. Jenna hurried to the hanging cabinets and began searching for lung medicine.

  Hard as she looked, she couldn’t find it. Every second counted, and every second longer Roxie fought for air, she came a second closer to death. This truth wrestled with her instinctively calm caretaker persona as her search became more frantic. Her movements became clumsier. Instead of pushing around and shoving aside bottles, boxes and containers, she started knocking them onto the counter and floor. After an intense minute of vain search, she gave up and paged Donai.

  “Hi, Jenna. What’s up?” Donai said.

  Jenna barely restrained herself from screaming in the doctor’s ear. “Donai, you have to get up here! The girl’s having trouble breathing! I can’t find the hyper-oxide medicine!”

  “I’m on my way! Over and out.”

  Jenna darted back to Roxie’s side and opened her Sensor powers to her, checking her aura for where her body ailed the most. Sure enough, black and yellow shone over Roxie’s lungs like two oval suns, along with more black, brown and yellow along the entirety of her upper body. Jenna pulled her sight away like one would pull a weed out of the ground, caught her breath, and made one more attempt at finding the hyper-oxide medicine. Not finding it, she began picking up what she knocked over and set everything on the counter.

  Donai ran into the ER and called Jenna’s name. She spun in place and waved him over with both arms. Donai marched over to the cabinets and searched them with just his eyes. “Maybe I should page some over.” In truth, the cabinets looked like she’d searched every last cubic inch of space.

  “Just hold on a sec. I know it’s in here somewhere.” Donai sidestepped two cabinets over and opened the door. A battalion of small white boxes and plastic bottles stared them down, but Jenna failed to spot what they were looking for. Donai reached in.

  “I already checked in there,” Jenna said tersely. This was a waste of time. She should have just ignored her teammate and paged the asthma center.

  “Did you, now?” Donai said with a half smile. He reached all the way into the back with his head almost entering the cabinet, and pulled out a box boldly labeled, “Hyper-Oxide 100ML” in black lettering, then ordered the acorn-shaped robot called Geta to collect a few things from the drawers.

  “You found it,” she said disbelievingly, and feeling a bit embarrassed.

  “Hold her mask steady.” Donai took out a labeled glass cartridge the size of two fingers and deposited it in his breast pocket, then set the box on the counter. Geta fished out a stainless steel needle gun from the drawers. It looked like a child’s water gun made of metal, and with a large, one-inch needle in the nose.

  Jenna stationed herself by Roxie’s left side and held the oxygen mask steady. The swirling air caused by Aerigo buffeted her, warning her not to get too close. Roxie’s EKG beeped rapidly and Jenna’s pulse raced with it. She hoped she hadn’t wasted too much time during her fruitless hunt.

  Donai loaded one of the cartridges in the needle gun, popped into place with a distinct snap, and inserted the needle end in the central port of the oxygen mask and pulled the trigger. The air turned into a white smoke. With every shallow breath, a bit of smoke was sucked into the girl’s failing lungs and, once all the smoke was gone, Donai pulled the trigger again, filling up the mask again. “Geta, grab another dose of antivenin.” He put a hand on the mask and nodded his head in the direction of the counter.

  The robot did as told, then returned to the gurney and handed the needle over. Once the white smoke was gone, Donai injected the antivenin in a port in the handle of the needle gun and pressed a small button on the device. A tiny red light lit up just above his trigger finger. The needle gun hummed like an electric shaver for a few seconds and a green light replaced the red. Roxie’s heart was still racing, but her breathing had slowed and deepened a bit. Donai reinserted the needle gun as Jenna held the mask steady. At that moment, she felt the swirling air pick up. It wasn’t enough to send much more than loose papers flying, but it was enough to cause her to look over her shoulder. Aerigo still looked poorly mummified in his second set of ice packs and surgical tape. His face was flushed and drawn, eyes closed, nothing different from the moment he’d passed out. Jenna turned back to the girl.

  Donai was looking past Jenna, his face crinkled in worry.

  “We’re almost done, Donai,” she said gently.

  Donai pulled the trigger and the smoke inside turned a healthy emerald green, then slowly disappeared. He repeated the process twice more, until the hyper oxide medicine was spent. Geta deposited the spent cartridge in the garbage built into the counter and Donai began putting everything away. Jenna helped as she opened her Sensor eye to what Aerigo was doing. To her dismay, she saw an escalating internal power struggle. The yellow energy swirling into his abdomen was trying to force its way in through the wall his aura was trying to put up. His aura was losing. It was too thin to begin with. The gyrating air was picking up speed. She closed her Sensor eye. “Donai, something’s wrong with Aerigo,” she said in a low voice that she’d meant to keep calm, but was saturated with worry.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “I don’t know. His energy is imbalanced but... he’s shown some measure of control the whole time.”

  “This time, Jenna. You need to see what Skitt and I have uncovered. He’s actually quite dangerous, even though he doesn’t want to be. You were right about him recharging. He can get the energy from anywhere, even sentient life. We’re very lucky he hasn’t inadvertently killed anyone.” He checked Roxie’s vitals and scanned her body for dragon venom levels, which read a high but halted progression. Her breathing was coming easier, and her heart rate slowly relaxing, but she had a ways to go before finding herself in the stable zone.

  Donai looked at his wristwatch and Jenna did as well. She had lost track of time ever since the two Aigis had been admitted. The second hand ticked routinely along its rotary path. The other hands read 12:17--no 1:45--no 6:59. “What the heck?” All three hands began spinning faster than their eyes could follow, and then all the lights in the hospital buzzed and flared before going out altogether. “Not again!” His voice echoed in the silenced room. Other voices cried their shock from down the hall.

  The backup power kicked in, but struggled like it had earlier in the morning. They settled on the dullness of an energy efficient light that had just been turned on after not being used in a while. The vortex surrounding Aerigo strengthened to that of a gusty front blowing in. Jenna put a hand on her head to keep her loose hair from blowing into her eyes, and held onto Roxie’s gurney for support. Aerigo raised his arms as if trying to block something. Surgical tape ripped and a few ice packs went for a short ride in the air current before splatting on the floor. Aerigo’s whole body went rigid. Cabinet doors rattled and flew open, sending boxes, bottles, and medical paraphernalia on a curved trip to the floor. Donai and Jenna bent over Roxie, guarding her from the debris, and Donai kept one hand on her oxygen mask.

  Aerigo stayed rigid several painstaking seconds longer, and then his arms dropped to his sides. The backup power went out
and the main system kicked back on without issue. The swirling air died. Aerigo moaned and licked his lips and began to stir.

  * * *

  Aerigo broke off the recharging process, no longer able to sustain it. The golden tendril of light pouring into his abdomen thinned and vanished. Just a moment ago the power had tried to pour into him faster, nearly choking his ability to control where he gathered the energy from. The recharging process was cut off completely now, with no chance of starting up again until he got some food in him.

  Aerigo pried open his tired eyes and was greeted with a hazy view of the hospital’s white ceiling, his head pounding against the invisible vice clamped around it. He was so tired, dehydrated, and in need of food. He moved a hand and felt something like plastic bags full of a chunky liquid taped to his arms, along with something clamped to his left index finger. He rubbed his eyes and looked at his left hand. There was a beige plastic object clamped and taped to his finger, and the object had a short antenna protruding from the end. Heart rate monitor.

  “He’s awake!” a male voice exclaimed in Kintish.

  Two startled doctors he recognized were watching him from the far side of Roxie’s gurney, both of them bent over her protectively. None of them looked like he’d done any harm to them with his power. Aerigo licked his lips again. They were dry and chapped. The inside of his mouth tasted disgusting. He needed a trip to the bathroom with some toothpaste and a toothbrush, along with lots of fresh, cold water. He forced himself to sit up.

  Donai rounded Roxie’s gurney and pressed a button on Aerigo’s, causing the head of the bed to rise. Aerigo gratefully reclined against it. At some point ice packs had been taped all over him. He took one from his arm and pressed it to his temple and squinted against the blood pounding away. Sitting up made him feel worse, but he needed to get sustenance in him.

  “Please tell me you’re thirsty,” Donai said. “You’re still hot to the touch and you stopped sweating about an hour ago.”

  Aerigo nodded, then whispered in Kintish, “Please bring food, too.” He didn’t feel like eating. The thought of food nauseated him, but he could feel his limbs on the verge on stiffening up and his body going into shock. Despite an Aigis’ muscular density, it took a lot for dehydration and starvation to shut their bodies down, but when that did happen, it took far more effort than it would for human to help make them well. Aerigo really, really didn’t want to go through that again.

  Donai took out his palm computer from his breast pocket and began thumbing away. Jenna went to the sink and set a stainless steel tray beside it, then covered it in little plastic cups that were meant for helping a patient wash down pills, and began filling them one by one with water. Aerigo noticed the messy state of the ER. He cleared his throat and whispered, “What happened?”

  Donai paused in his thumbing and gave him a crooked smile. “You happened.”

  “How?”

  The doctor lost his smile and furrowed his brows. “You’re not aware that your recharging process creates a mini tornado? Whatever just happened right before you woke strengthened it quite a bit.”

  Aerigo shook his aching head. The ice pack felt lukewarm. He dropped it on the gurney and put a fresh one to his other temple. “I’ve no awareness of the waking world when I’m recharging.”

  “Ah. Let me check and see if we have any sodium crackers in the cabinets.” He finished whatever he’d thumbed into his palm computer, then slipped it back in his pocket and headed to the cabinets. He checked the cluttered floor before turning to the floor cabinets, which were all closed.

  “I need enough food for about five people.”

  Jenna approached Aerigo with her laden tray of little water cups. She pressed a button on the gurney with a knuckle, and a metal arm on each side of the bed shot out at an angle, then created a rectangular skeleton the size of a tray over Aerigo’s lap. Jenna set the water on it. Aerigo reached for a cup. His arm shook so bad, he had to put his ice pack down and pick up the cup with both arms as he brought it to his parched lips. Jenna put one hand on his shoulder and helped him drink. Humiliating as it was, Aerigo lay his arms back by his sides and let the doctor help him. She didn’t care how weak he was. This was her job. Together, they worked through the entire tray, but he was still terribly thirsty.

  Donai came over with a stack of sodium crackers wrapped in plastic. He ripped it open and set them on the tray. “More food and some bottled water will be here shortly. Everything we give you should be safe for you to ingest. Kismet specially grows food for our elderly natives and all aliens. You lack the liver that has adapted to the permanent pollution to our ecosystem. By the way, would you be able to help me get an IV in you? I don’t want to rely on you being able to wake up every time you need more water. That, and the faster you’re healthy, the sooner we can give your companion a blood transfusion. Do you know what blood type you are?”

  “I don’t remember.” He’d probably been told six hundred years ago, but that bit of trivia hadn’t stuck. Aerigo held out his left arm, palm up and placed two fingers over the crux of his elbow. Donai disappeared behind the gurney and reappeared on his other side with an IV needle wrapped in a plastic bag, along with some latex gloves. Since Aerigo was still overheated, all his veins were as close to the outer layer of his skin as possible, long lines of deep teal. Aerigo gritted his teeth as he used his own power to make himself vulnerable. Weakening his skin felt like dripping acid on it. Sticking a needle into a vein smarted, but once the needle was inside, Aerigo removed his fingers and the pain went away. Now the skin surrounding the needle itched dully as it tried to figure out how to repair the tiny puncture. Thankfully his skin wouldn’t envelope the needle; just push it out within maybe an hour, even with being taped down, but by then he’d have enough fluids in him.

  Donai hung up a bag of IV and connected it to the IV port, then gave the bag a few squeezes. Aerigo felt the liquid’s coldness as it streamed into his burning veins. “Jenna, swap out the bags every half hour, or however quick Aerigo goes through them.” His pocket beeped, startling him. “Oh, and the food is by the elevator. Mind getting that too?”

  “Be right back,” Jenna said.

  Aerigo looked at Rox and his heart twisted.

  “She’s still alive, Aerigo. We just treated her for the last round of attacks on her body. Her final challenge will be to see how much of her right arm, if any, she gets to use again.”

  Aerigo looked at his ocean blue sodium crackers, unable to look at Rox anymore. He couldn’t help but feel terribly guilty about her current state of health. He couldn’t think of a different series of choices he could have made, other than to have never searched for Rox. He never should have forced her into the position where she had to protect him.

  “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but an arm is a small price to pay for surviving dragon venom. Why do you look so guilty?”

  “I was supposed to keep her safe.”

  “From what?”

  He wanted to blurt “everything” but it was a ridiculous thing to say. “It’s a long story. I really need to force myself to eat right now.”

  “No worries. I ordered you a little bit of everything from the cafeteria, even some dessert.”

  Aerigo raised an eyebrow at the doctor.

  Donai put up his hands and broke into a full smile. “Save it for Rox for when she wakes if you don’t want it. Jenna, Skitt, and I all believe you did a damn good job saving her life.”

  Aerigo reached for a cracker and stuck one corner in his mouth. It felt like trying to swallow sand. His mouth wouldn’t salivate. He barely swallowed it down and put the rest of the cracker back on the tray, then heaved up the cracker. Salty acid filled his mouth, but he swallowed it back down. He had to keep bland food down before he could eat any protein or carbs, which arrived through the doorway on a hovering metal cart being guided by Jenna.

  “Whoa! How’d you do that?” Donai said, his eyes bulging at the almost empty IV bag. “Let me get a lot
more. Do you still weigh about 525 pounds?”

  “Yes. I need a lot of water. I don’t know how much though. Sorry, I’m not much help.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ve been researching Aigis.”

  Jenna said, “No wonder it felt like we needed a forklift to get him on the gurney!” She walked over with four large bottles of water in her arms, each as long as a forearm. Aerigo hoped that was enough to make food go down and stay down. Jenna set the waters on the tray and loosened their caps. “Aerigo, I need you to take a few sips from each so I can add an electrolyte mixture to them. It’ll make the water a little sweeter. Is that okay?”

  Aerigo nodded. Anything to keep his body from going into shock. His legs were starting to cramp up. He took the first bottle as Donai swapped IV bags, and took a swig, then set the bottle down, and did the same thing to the other bottles. The electrolyte powder turned the water a leaf green as Jenna carefully poured the packet in. She poured an entire packet into each bottle, then capped and shook them individually. Aerigo sucked all four bottles down one at a time, making each bottle crinkle as it collapsed on itself. He stopped halfway through each bottle to catch his breath, putting up a hand when the doctors advised him to slow down. They didn’t understand how fast his body would burn through the water. Maybe he should’ve said something first, but too late.

  Aerigo’s thirst was almost completely quenched by the end of the fourth bottle, but at least he felt ready to eat, despite still not feeling hungry.

  He handed the last collapsed bottle to Jenna, reached for the cracker he’d bitten in to earlier, and popped it into his mouth. This time it felt and tasted like a cracker, however his stomach rejected it, along with some of the water. Aerigo managed to swallow it all back down and forced himself to keep eating. All that water he drank was soaking into the rest of his body like a thirsty desert plant. His stomach felt empty already.

  Aerigo forced down one cracker after another, and his stomach heaved up every other one for the first couple of minutes. Once he was halfway through the package, his stomach accepted them greedily. He began to eat faster.