Eye on Orion

by Laura D. Bastian

“Hi there. How are you feeling?” she asked as she took my temperature.

  I thought about it for a minute. My head ached and my throat seemed tender. The tubes, IVs and bandages all over my arms restricted my motion. But I felt surprisingly well, considering what I'd gone through.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Are you ready for a drink of water?”

  I nodded my head, unwilling to speak again until after the drink.

  She brought a cup with a straw up to my lips and let me sip some lukewarm water. When I'd finished, she put it down then checked the monitors.

  “I'll let the doctor know you're awake. We'll see if he'll let you try some breakfast.”

  “Okay,” I whispered as she walked out of the room.

  The clock on the wall showed 9:04 a.m. A rumpled blanket lay on the couch in the corner. The table to the right of me held flowers. I looked around at all of the machines, tubes, and wires attached to me. The IV was almost empty. My heartbeat on the monitor soothed me as I watched the spikes move across the screen.

  I examined my bandages. The memory of crawling across the hot ground at the Salt Flats and the resulting burns made my arms tingle. I reached up to my head and felt the bandage wrapped around my forehead and down around my ear on the left side. As I cautiously touched my face and bandages, the nurse came in, followed by a doctor in his late fifties. His black hair, peppered with gray reminded me of Shander. I closed my eyes to block that memory.

  “So how are you feeling?” he asked in a higher voice than I expected.

  “Alright, I guess.”

  He looked me over, then checked my eyes with a small penlight he’d pulled out of his pocket.

  “That's good. You are improving much faster than we expected when you first came in. You were dangerously dehydrated, with a pretty good concussion. I'm also impressed at how quickly your burns are healing. We thought it would take quite some time, but the burn cream we have on you seems to be working wonders.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “So are you feeling like you could eat something?” he asked.

  “I think so. I feel hungry.” My stomach rumbled in agreement.

  The nurse and doctor both smiled at me.

  Turning to the nurse, he said, “Go ahead and order her a light breakfast, and we'll see how she handles it. With the improvement of her head injury, she should be able to eat it without too much nausea.”

  “You keep taking it easy.” He patted my knee. “I think your parents are in the cafeteria. I'll send someone to tell them you're awake."

  “Thank you.”

  “I'll be back to check on you later, and we'll see about sending you home tomorrow if you keep improving.”

  “Thanks.”

  A few minutes later my parents came in the door. Mom rushed over to me and hesitated just a moment before gingerly hugging me around my shoulders. Dad walked in more slowly. When Mom moved back, he kissed me on the forehead, then straightened up and placed his hand on my shoulder.

  Mom had tears in her eyes as she looked at me.

  “Oh, honey,” she gushed. “We were so frightened when we came home and saw the door open and the front room and kitchen a mess. When we couldn't find you…The police had no idea where to search. They asked all the neighbors if they saw anything. Curtis across the street remembered a red car parked out in front for a few minutes, but he said he didn’t see anyone. Then the police put out an Amber Alert.”

  Mom wiped her eyes on a tissue and continued. “Then Jai called from the airport after coming back from visiting his dad. When we told him you were gone, he hung up, and a few hours later he called to say he’d found you and to come to the hospital.” She looked at me with confusion on her face as if she expected me to be able to fill in the blanks. I stared back at her, not willing to say anything yet.

  “He went looking for you. He somehow knew where to find you.” Dad shook his head slightly. “He said something funny about being able to feel you out there somewhere.” Dad seemed a little surprised it turned out to be true.

  “I'm happy he knew where to look.” Mom smiled. “Jai said he found you in terrible shape. I don't know what we would have done if we'd lost you. I love you so much.”

  “I love you too, Mom,” I said as she hugged me again.

  “What happened?” Dad asked.

  As I opened my mouth to try to defer the explanation, the nurse came in with my breakfast tray. I could avoid the answer for a bit.

  It didn't look too bad. The banana had only a few spots on it. The can of apple juice felt cold. The scrambled eggs jiggled a little when I poked at them with my fork, but the little pack of salt improved the taste immensely. Mom spread the jelly on the toast when I fumbled with the knife in my bandaged hands.

  As I finished up the last of my meal, I felt a flutter deep inside.

  Jai was close. I could feel it. I turned toward the door, sucking in a breath as my head began throbbing from the sudden movement. My parents looked at the door as well. When no one appeared, they looked back at me.

  I waited, smiling when he appeared. He stopped at the door and hesitated before coming in.

  “Jai! Come in,” Mom said.

  He walked in slowly, never taking his eyes off me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Pretty good, thanks to you,” I said.

  “I'm glad I could help.”

  “How did you know where to find her?” Dad asked.

  I saw the look of panic flash across Jai’s eyes briefly. I glanced at my dad and then back at Jai.

  “It's kind of hard to explain.” He looked at my dad then back at me. Our eyes locked, and he said quietly, “I just feel connected to her.”

  “Interesting.” Dad and Mom looked at me and then at Jai. I could tell they wanted to ask tons of questions. They didn’t look suspicious of Jai, but what did they think? I wished I had some of the Densinne. They glanced at each other. Mom shook her head, and Dad nodded thoughtfully. I knew they would ask questions later, but for now they would leave me alone.

  “Why aren't you at work, Dad?” I asked when the thought came to me.

  “I closed the nursery for the day yesterday while searching for you. And today, I didn't want to miss out on when you woke up.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I whispered through my emotions. He never closed the nursery during the summer except on Sundays. He must have been really worried about me.

  “You don't have to stay here all day if you don't want to. I'd like to rest a little. The doctor said he might let me go home tomorrow.”

  “That's great news,” Mom said.

  I laid my head back on the pillows and closed my eyes.

  “You rest,” Mom said. “We need to go make some phone calls and let our friends and neighbors know you're alright.”

  I nodded.

  My parents came over and kissed me on the forehead again. “Sleep well,” they said.

  “Why don't you sit with her for a bit? I'm sure you want a chance to talk,” Mom said, turning to Jai.

  I was surprised at that, but pleased she'd thought of it.

  My dad added, “Make sure you don't tire her out. Let her get some sleep.” He smiled at Jai to soften the words, but I knew he was serious.

  “Yes, sir. I won't keep her up. I know she needs to rest.”

  “Good. We'll be around the hospital if you need us, just ask one of the nurses to come get us. We'll let them know where we are.” Mom walked out the door.

  “I think I'm gonna have to tell them more of the truth. They know there is something I haven't told them,” I said through a yawn.

  “True. But we'll have to go about this carefully.” He walked over to me and placed his hand on my head. “Go ahead and sleep.”

  “What are you doing?” I felt a warmth beginning at the top of my head where his hands rested.

  “I'm trying to speed things along. I can only do a little at a time or the doctors would be too suspicious.” He shook his head. “If I'd had a little more
time before the ambulance got there, I could have done a lot more, and they probably would have let you go home today. Now I just have to do it bit by bit every time I get to come in and visit you.”

  “Did you visit me before?” The idea warmed my heart.

  “Yes. Your parents let me come in last night after the doctors did the tests on you. I stayed with you for a few minutes until the nurses kicked me out.”

  “I'll be happy to go home. Thank you for everything.”

  He took his hand off my head and kissed me softly. “Thank you for what you did to protect my family. When you get home, I'd like to hear what really happened, but for now, you get some rest.”

  He sat next to me on the small chair and held my hand. I felt all his emotions but soon I couldn’t sort them all through, so I gave up and just enjoyed his presence as I drifted off.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Explanations

  I healed so quickly, the doctor sent me home that next morning. My parents were careful around me, trying to make sure I didn't do anything too strenuous. For days they didn't leave me alone in a room. When they found out Amira, Delilah, and Marshal had left town and Jai was all alone, they refused to let me go over there to visit. They invited Jai over to our house to visit as long as he wanted. That is, if one of my parents were present.

  Jai and I had ample time to talk, but not about the one thing we wanted to. My parents were always present. I had tried using the Densinne, but it gave me massive headaches. That setback nearly made my parents take me back to the hospital, freaked it was some delayed reaction to the concussion. It took a lot of fancy talk to keep them from rushing me to the ER. Eventually, they calmed down enough and soon started leaving me alone in the front room with Jai.

  Jai pulled out the purple bottle and gently twirled it between his fingers.

  “I hate that stuff.” I leaned away from the bottle.

  “What is it?”

  “Shander called it Tamire.” I shuddered. “It knocked me out when he sprayed it on me.”

  Jai shook his head.

  “What is it about your people that you like to drug innocent girls?” I teased.

  He lowered his eyes, looking at the bottle, and I could feel his embarrassment through our connection.

  I squeezed his hand, trying to give him a sense of my teasing. “He said it was something that could make a person susceptible to suggestions. For me it just knocked me out for hours. That’s how he got me out of the house.”

  Jai gripped the bottle hard enough I worried it might shatter. Eventually he loosened his hold and put it back in his pocket. “How did you stop him from Traveling with you?” Jai touched the spare medallion he wore under his shirt.

  “I told him I couldn't remember how to Travel. Once he explained it, I asked him about factoring in the movements of our planets and how they were in different locations than when we started. I made him believe the king and scientists at home — I mean, on Rommader — had left that part out when they told him how to Travel.” I smiled again when Jai looked at me in surprise.

  “He believed you?”

  “Yeah. It took some quick thinking and lying through my teeth, but he finally thought my explanation made sense.”

  Jai leaned over and kissed me quickly. “So clever. What happened?”

  “Once we started to Travel, I tried to yank away from him and come here to my house. But I couldn't get my footing because it was like I wasn't standing on anything. I saw my front room, the Salt Flats, and then some marble room in a huge palace.”

  “That would probably be one of his chambers in the palace on Rommader.”

  “Anyway, we struggled in the air or wherever we were. I managed to grab the bottle of Tamire out of his pocket and spray it at him. It got on me too and made me begin to lose consciousness. I sprayed it at him again and told him to leave me alone and die.”

  Jai laughed out loud.

  I smiled but shook my head. “I don't know where he went. I don't know if he managed to get to Rommader, if he took my advice and Traveled to a different spot, or if he just keeled over and died.”

  “Why didn't you just tell him you weren't Amira?”

  “I tried, but he didn’t believe me. Eventually, I decided to go along with it and try to trick him into going somewhere else. Then Amira wouldn't have to deal with him back on Rommader.”

  “We are completely in your debt,” Jai said with reverence. He hugged me close for a minute, and I enjoyed the waves of feelings passing across our connection.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I got the soonest flight out of there but it wasn't for hours, and then I had three different layovers. The trip took more than twenty hours. I hadn’t felt you for so long. I was terrified he had managed to force you to Travel with him. Then you kept coming in and out of my awareness. I called your house to find you still missing. I took a cab to where we left Marshal’s jeep near the Salt Flats, knowing Shander would’ve taken you there. I rushed out there as soon as I could and found you looking all beat-up. You had blisters on your arms and face from the sun.”

  I reached up and touched my face, not realizing it had blistered. The doctors hadn't said anything about that.

  “I started to Heal you as soon as I could. The surface burns where I touched began to disappear almost immediately, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong with you. It seemed like there was something wrong with your head. You had a huge bruise on the one side, but it felt like parts of you were missing. I reached out in the air around me trying to see if maybe your matter had been disturbed in your Traveling. I found tiny pieces of you. They were spread out so far. It took a while to find them all, but when I got them to come back to you, you started to respond to me.”

  “I didn't know who or where I was when I first woke up. After I got to the car and had passed out for the last time, it felt like I was in a black void of nothingness. I didn't even know if I was human. You pulled me back from the nothingness.”

  Jai wrapped his arm around me, pulling me closer.

  “So how do you think things are going for Amira?” I asked after a few minutes of silence.

  “I'm sure she is handling things fine. She will be a great queen. If Shander made it back, she'll take care of him.”

  “He admitted to poisoning the king. He's been doing it for a long time, hoping it would kill him.”

  Jai stiffened next to me, and the anger rose in him. He struggled with his emotions for a few moments before speaking. “Amira has had time to learn and plan what to do next. And with the support she will have when she gets there, she'll be able to do just fine, if he does go back. If Shander isn't there to poison the king, he will recover soon. The Healers will be able to help him as much as they can.”

  “That's good to know,” I said. I didn't want to bring up the possibility Shander could have had others do the poisoning. We couldn't do anything about it now anyway.

  We sat in silence on the couch for a while. Mom came back in and looked at me and then at Jai. I could see her mind beginning to work overtime. She sat down on the recliner and started into a book she pulled out of the arm of the chair.

  I wanted to close my eyes and pretend to doze off on his shoulder but figured I'd better not.

  “What are you reading, Mom?” I asked.

  “A book Melissa suggested to me. It's a murder mystery. So far it's pretty good.”

  When she told us the title, Jai said, “I've read that one. I enjoyed it.”

  They talked about it, and Mom started making predictions on who had done it and how it would turn out. Jai impressed me by keeping the conversation going without giving away the ending of the book. They talked about it for quite a while until I did doze off for real.

  When I woke up, I lay on the pillow on the couch by myself. I looked around for Jai or Mom, but couldn't see either of them.

  I got up and wandered to the kitchen. Mom and Jai sat at the kitchen counter working on dinner together. Jai peeled ca
rrots while Mom prepared the meat for the roast.

  I was amazed at how well Jai could talk with my mom. I didn't think many other teenage boys could relate so well to the parents of their girlfriend.

  We were more than boyfriend and girlfriend though. But how on earth could I explain that to my parents? I didn't even know what to make of it some days. My parents liked Jai. Since he had saved my life, they were grateful to him, but they also liked him as a person.

  “Where did your parents go?” Mom asked.

  “Marshal got a great job offer from an influential family and has gone far away to work there. I'm not supposed to reveal his location.”

  Mom looked like she was dying to ask more but instead said, “I thought you and Amira were close. Why did she go and not you?”

  “I couldn't bring myself to be away from Holly for that long,” he answered truthfully.

  I saw Mom’s surprise as she looked at him. “I know you two are getting to be extra close, but I didn't realize you would be parted from your family to be with her.” She seemed thoughtful for a moment as she turned her attention back to the food in front of her.

  “How are you going to live here on your own? You are too young to have a house to yourself, aren't you?” I could hear the concern in her voice. It made me love my mom even more.

  “My dad is moving here soon. He suffered an injury before I got there, so he needs some time to recuperate.”

  “Well, that's nice he'll come here with you. What does he do for a living?”

  “He's retired. He worked for a government and has a good retirement plan. He mostly likes to read and do research on things he's interested in.”

  Jai turned and saw me standing in the doorway. He smiled and my heartbeat sped up.

  “Hi, sleepy-head,” my mother said when she noticed me there too.

  “Hi,” I said. “So how long was I out?”

  “Oh, for about an hour. We figured we'd leave you be and come in and make dinner,” Mom said.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Sure, why don't you help him chop up these vegetables, and then you can make a salad.”

  I went over to get a knife and cutting board and joined them at the counter. We worked easily together. We would grab the carrots and cut them in rhythm, then dump them into the pot at the same time and reach for the next carrot. Our breathing was the same as well.