The day after the Novai arrived, I ventured outside again to investigate my surroundings. I needed to find out where we were in order to execute the next step in my plan: locating one of my prior associates. To most, the swaths of golden sand licking the landscape were far from telling, but my years of training as both a warrior and a criminal had taught me otherwise. Everything was significant, down to the smallest grain of sand to the geometric formations of entire dunes. It was simply a matter of putting together the pieces until I had a complete puzzle.
“Ugh, god.”
I turned to see Phoebe stepping out of the building. She shielded her eyes to shade herself from the sun’s wicked glare and spotted me, fanning herself with her free hand.
“Have you tired of the others already?” I asked with a grin, striding toward her so as not to yell across the distance between us.
She shook her head and said, “No. I didn’t even know you were out here. I just came outside to get some fresh air, but it’s worse out here than it is in there. Aren’t you hot?”
“My answer depends fully on your definition,” I sassed.
Phoebe rolled her eyes, but she smiled despite herself. “Even in the middle of nowhere, you’re still as snarky as ever, huh?”
“Oh, make no mistake,” I said, holding up a single finger and donning my most scholarly face. “There is no nowhere. We are always somewhere; we merely must discover where somewhere lies.”
“How Confucius of you,” she giggled.
I raised my eyebrows and said with amusement, “You will have to excuse me, but it sounded as if you sneezed.”
She laughed again and shook her head. “Never mind,” she dismissed. Tiny beads of sweat were beginning to form along her hairline in the arid heat. I wondered if she could feel them as they shivered on her skin and readied themselves to dribble down her temple. “So, is that what you’re doing in this hellish heat? Trying to ‘discover where somewhere lies’?”
I almost answered in the affirmative, but I stopped myself before I could breathe a sound. To my consternation, I realized I trusted Phoebe. My instinct had been to tell her the truth. While I did not make a habit out of lying, I surely would deceive to keep my schemes and misconducts hidden. Yet, after just a simple question from her lips, I was ready to reveal myself.
She may have enchanted me with her beauty and compassion, but I was not so much of a fool.
“No,” I answered offhandedly. “I did not want to be an imposition while the healers worked.”
“That’s thoughtful of you,” she remarked. I detected a hint of sarcasm in her tone, and her viridian eyes danced.
“I think so too,” I agreed with a smirk.
The door flew open again, though, this time, it was not at Phoebe’s hand. She spun on the spot, kicking up a fan of sand around her ankles and spraying the toes of my boots. A nurse with a long face poked her head through the gap and looked at Phoebe.
“We need you in here,” she said in a rush. She spoke so rapidly I could hardly understand her. “One of the Novai is having a seizure.”
Chapter Twenty
Phoebe
So many doctors and healers were surrounding the bed that, at first, I couldn’t see the patient. Toni raced around to the empty space beside Dr. Griep, and I drew up at her shoulder and looked down. Every inch of the Novai was shaking—not just shaking like he was cold, but spasming out of control. His fingers clenched and unclenched over and over again. His wrists strained against the cuffs so intensely that black veins protruded up his forearms. The eyeless divots in his face looked like they were smoking, with swirls of gray whirling visibly beneath the skin. His hips bucked into the air and slammed back down onto the mattress repeatedly, actually moving the bed frame by centimeters each time with his strength, and his knees bent like he was performing squats. Shouting in both English and A’li-uud monopolized my senses, but I didn’t hear a word that was being said. The edges of my vision were going white, and I was falling into a memory…
I spun around and watched my dress twirl. It was so pretty, light blue and sparkly and long. Just like Cinderella’s. Mom didn’t want me to wear it even though she bought it for me before Christmas, “We’re saving it for Christie’s wedding,” she told me, but Christie was getting married today, and now I got to wear my dress.
Finnie was wearing her dress too, but she had a pink one. She wasn’t in the wedding. I was. I was the flower girl, and I smiled at Finnie with smug pride.
“Don’t I look pretty?” I bragged.
“I like pink more than blue,” she said. She tossed her head, something she had learned from me. When I did it, I thought I looked grown up, but when she did it, she looked dumb. But she was only seven. I was nine, so I was lots older and more grown up than her, and I told her so.
“I get to throw the flowers at the wedding,” I announced. Then, mockingly, I added, “You have to sit with Mom and Dad because you’re still a baby.”
She glared. “I am not a baby!”
“You are too.”
“I am not!” She stamped her foot and made a snarly face.
For a second, I thought she was trying to scare me into saying I was sorry. Her eyes were squinted, her nose wrinkled, and her top lip raised. But she didn’t go back to normal.
“Your face is gonna get stuck like that,” I jibed.
Still, she glowered at me, and I felt my stomach tumble with bad butterflies. It was like she was frozen.
“Finnie, stop it.”
Suddenly, she fell. Her whole body just dropped backwards, and she fell flat on her back with a bang. I didn’t move, hoping she was fooling and would jump right up with her stupid little sister laugh, but she didn’t. Her arms started shaking, then her legs, and then her head flopped from side to side. I ran to her and grabbed her cheeks. Her eyes were wide open and looked up at me, but she didn’t see me. She just shook.
Terror ripped through me, and I screamed, “MOM!”
“Undo the cuffs!” I heard the order from Dr. Griep clearly, but I couldn’t move. Antoinette did it for me. She bent over the Novai’s right wrist and released his arm. It flew up and bounced back down with the force of his previously-restrained momentum before remaining on the mattress and quaking violently. His other arm did the same as one of the A’li-uud healers managed to free him from the cuff.
His ankles were still held in place. “We cannot let him go,” said another healer loudly. “He is confined for his safety and ours.”
“If he’s held down, he could dislocate his joints, and we won’t be able to keep him restrained while they heal. Undo them. We’ll strap him back in when the seizure’s done,” Dr. Griep insisted.
The healer reluctantly obeyed, and, within seconds, the Novai’s legs were freed too. His whole body was now jerking, and everyone around him prepared to catch him if he rolled off the bed on either side. I just stared, frozen to the spot and horrified.
Mom raced into the bedroom. She looked very pretty with her curled hair and fluttery dress, but I could tell she was scared. That scared me even more. I started to cry.
“What happened?” she demanded, dropping to her knees beside Finnie and bumping my hands out of the way.
“Nothing,” I whimpered. “She just fell over and started shivering.”
Mom pulled back one of Finnie’s eyelids. I saw her finger shaking almost as bad as Finnie’s. “Jack!” she yelled.
One of the healers leaned down and screeched. I knew the sound—he was speaking Novai—but I felt sick to my stomach. My whole body was hot and cold all over, and I was drenched in sweat unrelated to the godawful temperature of the air. Antoinette’s elbow kept bumping into me while she tried to help tilt the Novai’s chin up, but I hardly noticed. I was rapidly going numb, and I was sure my knees were about to give out at any minute.
“Jack, she’s not breathing!”
“He’s not breathing!” yelled Dr. Griep.
“Call 9-1-1!”
“Mom,” I sobbe
d. I was desperate to hear her tell me it was okay, it would be okay. “Mama, I didn’t do it.”
“I know you didn’t, baby,” she told me. My father had already left the room to call an ambulance, but I was starting to think nothing would help. Finnie hadn’t stopped shaking, and she was shaking so badly she bounced against the floor. Mom reached over my sister to grab my hand, and she looked at me with a very serious face. “I need you to get me a glass of water so Finnie has something to drink when this stops, okay? Can you do that?”
I looked down at Finnie, her small body in her pink dress convulsing. She was making awful grunting sounds, and then she gagged. Thick, white, foamy gunk spilled from the corner of her mouth, and I started crying harder. Mom slipped her hand under Finnie’s head to stop it from smacking against the floor over and over again and jiggled my hand.
“Phoebe, I need your help. Go get me the water, okay? You can do it. I’ll stay here with Finnie. Okay?”
The Novai was spitting, bubbly droplets spewing from his mouth. A stream dribbled down his cheek to the pillow under his head. Gurgling sounds were emanating from his throat. I stumbled backward.
“Phoebe, I need your help!”
The voice was not my mother’s, but Antoinette’s. She was looking over her shoulder at me while holding onto the Novai’s chin as tightly as she could to keep it turned upward.
“We have to keep his airway clear! Help me hold him!”
I took another step back, shaking my head, as tears began welling in my eyes. I felt their slick warmth ooze over the lip of my lower lid and slither down my face. My chest hurt because I wasn’t able to breathe, and my heart felt like it had gone into overdrive. The Novai gagged, and Toni turned back to him and doubled down her efforts. A sob escaped my lips.
“Phoebe.” A hand pressed against the small of my back. “Come with me.” I didn’t move, and fingers wrapped forcefully around my upper arm. “Come.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Zuran
She was so warm that, when I touched her, I felt heat beneath my fingertips. Her cheeks had lost all color, turned from energetic pink to wan white. As I grabbed her, she swayed against my hold.
“Phoebe, come,” I ordered firmly.
She tripped slightly, but I secured my other hand around her waist and tugged her back. For the first few steps, she lurched unsteadily, but, as the sounds of the ruckus behind us started to fade and we made our way across the hall toward the residences, she regained her balance and started to walk alongside me. Sweat covered her body in a thick sheen. Her mouth was quivering, and tears continued to flow freely from her eyes. Thankfully, though, she seemed to have pulled herself from the depths of her mind and return to reality with me.
I opened the door to the residential corridor and helped her down the hall toward her room. She was weeping heavily, her form vibrating with the power of her despair, and she covered her eyes to hide her tears and just allowed me to lead her. Once inside her room, I guided her to her bed and eased her down upon it, where she hunched over and cried into her knees.
Emotional support, particularly of the painful kind, had never been a gift I possessed, but I felt something tearing inside me as I watched her ache. It was only reasonable, I supposed. A heart able to love and care like hers would reasonably be able to hurt exponentially worse as well. I wondered if I ought to comfort her, put my arm around her or hold her, but I decided to quietly step back and lower myself onto the only chair in the room instead and wait for her to calm.
Slowly, her bawling turned to whimpers, which, in turn, became sniffles. She lifted her head from her lap and smeared her palm across her face, but her skin still shimmered with moisture.
“Sorry,” she croaked. “This is embarrassing.”
I did not acknowledge her apology as I felt it entirely unnecessarily and asked, “What happened?”
She coughed throatily and looked around for something with which to wipe her nose. I leaned to the desk and extracted a hanna leaf from a narrow box. Hanna was a large yellow shrub with leaves so thick they could be shaved into thousands of razor-thin slips. The slips were highly absorbent and a household staple around Dhal’at as both a personal care item and a cleaning product. She took the hanna from me, studied it for a split second, and then brushed it under her nostrils with another sniff. Even with her skin blotchy and her orifices leaking, she was still a sight to behold.
“Thanks,” she said. She sighed heavily. “I just had a moment, I guess.”
“A moment is a span of time.” I rested my elbows on my knees, leaned toward her insistently, and repeated, “What happened?”
It was clear she was reluctant to tell me by the way she tightened her mouth and averted her eyes, but I refused to relent. I may not have been medically trained, but I knew enough to know she had panicked out there, and that could be a risk to everyone involved if it were to happen again. Aside from that, I wanted to understand. I wanted to know what hurt her.
I wanted to know her.
“My sister,” she whispered finally, fresh tears forming. “She had a seizure when I was nine. She had a lot of seizures, actually, but that was the first.”
A mental image of a young Phoebe flooded my brain, and I urged, “Tell me.”
“We were in our room. We shared a room.” She glanced up at me just as a bead of liquid tumbled down her cheek in the tracks left from the others. “My mom’s cousin was getting married, and I was in the wedding. I was so excited, but I was mean. I kept rubbing it in Finnie’s—Finola’s—face that I got to be the flower girl and she didn’t get to be anything.”
I remained silent so as not to dissuade her from continuing her story, but new images burst into my mind: Venan and I as little A’li-uud. He had been so easy to bother, and I had found it great fun to rile him up until he squealed that he was going to tell Mother or Father. As we grew older, his tattling threats turned from our parents to the guards around Ka-lik’et. When I started to reach my rebellious years and nicked items from distracted merchants, he told me he would tell one of the guards if I refused to return the object and I would be arrested.
I never did get arrested, at least not for theft. Yet, my uptight, pompous, overachieving brother was sitting in a cell at P’otes-tat Ulti for capital murder that very moment.
“She made a face at me because I was teasing her, and then she froze.” Phoebe stifled a new sob, and her voice cracked. “She just froze. The next thing I knew, she had fallen over and was shaking. I didn’t know it was a seizure, then, obviously. I didn’t know what was happening. I just knew something was really, really wrong, and I yelled for my mom.”
“Did she die in front of you?” I asked quietly.
Phoebe shook her head and wiped her nose again. “No,” she said. She motioned for the box of hanna, which I slid across the desk to her, and she plucked another one to dab her eyes. “She survived. My dad called an ambulance, and they took her to the hospital.” I had not the faintest idea what an ambulance was, but I inferred from the context it was a team of healers or something similar. It didn’t matter. “They told us she had to stay there for a few days so they could run some tests.” Her words splintered, and she dropped her face into her hands. “She never came home.”
“But she survived,” I protested. Perhaps she had glossed over an important part of the story.
“Yeah, that time,” Phoebe agreed. “But she had another one while she was there. And another one. They found out she had a malignant brain tumor. It was so advanced they felt treatment wouldn’t help, and Mom and Dad decided not to put her through the awful side effects of treatment if it wouldn’t matter anyway. She died within four months.”
She looked back up to me again. The whites of her eyes were red, her eyelids swollen, and her face was drenched with tears. “Just before she had the seizure, I told her she wasn’t in the wedding because she was just a baby. The last thing she said to me at home, in our room, was, ‘I am not.’”
I stilled
. The last thing I had done before Venan was taken away was infuriate him by telling Mother and Father everything that had happened at the palace. I could not fathom his final exchange with me being one of such hostility. Our relationship was far from affectionate, but, if he were sentenced to death for what he had done, I could not live with myself knowing the last words he said to me were in anger. Hearing Phoebe’s story solidified my resolve; I would get my message to him. Venan would know I supported him.
Never before had I sympathized so deeply with another being, A’li-uud or otherwise, and my body acted of its own accord. I rose to my feet, crossed to the bed, and gathered Phoebe in my arms. I pulled her against me, turned her face into my chest, and I held her as she wept with renewed grief. It may have been her memory to remember, but she would not bear this pain alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Phoebe
Freaking out at the bedside of a suffering patient had always been one of my biggest fears. Thus far in my life, I’d successfully avoided it by hyper-focusing on the task at hand. The closest I’d come was in college when we’d practiced on acting students. It just so happened I was given the actor who’d been assigned meningitis, and he went into a series of faux-spasms that almost sent me into a full-out panic attack. Luckily, I’d managed to get ahold of myself, take deep breaths, and refocus. I’d passed the course with a low A, and I assumed I’d gotten my flashbacks under control.
Until the Novai.
Maybe I was just too tired, or maybe the tension in the room was too thick. Maybe I’d been on Albaterra too long and had allowed my past on Earth to slip into the latent part of my brain, and then the worst of it came barreling out at the wrong moment. Hell, maybe I subconsciously figured seeing a Novai have a seizure was too unlike seeing Finnie have a seizure.
Zuran: A Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 6 Page 9