Mindline (The Dreamhealers 2)

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Jahir slipped an arm around her shoulders, over the wing joins, took like a blow the shock of her misery and felt Vasiht'h brace him against it like a rock steady against the force of a wave. The Malarai turned into him and let herself fall apart, and he held her, smelling the musty warmth of the feathers near his face as he rested his head on hers. She was so slight, as if she owned a bird's hollow bones, and he could no more let go of her than he could have let go of any of the people who'd been dying here. He let his sorrow mingle with hers, settle like sediment, win him breathing space.

  They left her to the brutal vigil. Neither of them spoke.

  Jahir brought seven victims back. Before the eighth could follow, one of the first began again. He rushed for that bedside and took up the hand and hit a wall so hard he thought he'd fallen—and then he had, in truth, beneath not just Vasiht'h but the entire healer-assist team, tearing him from the patient who'd careened to his ending.

  "No," Maya said, eyes fierce. "You are not having another heart attack."

  The anxious flutter in his chest relented. He looked up, dazed, could not rise. Had he?

  "Yes, you almost did," Vasiht'h said, torn between a corrosive anger and a bleak and hyperactive fear. "Again. No more. These people don't get second chances."

  "This patient might have been an anomaly—"

  "No," Maya said, her voice hard. "I hate to say it, alet, but they had their chance outside this hospital, to do the right thing. They've landed here, fine. We're going to do everything we can. But they don't get second chances if it means you have to have a coronary to give it to them."

  He couldn't argue with them. Not with Vasiht'h curled protectively around him, not with the entire team glaring down at him, so ferocious in his defense. The Glaseah gave their tacit intent words: You are already doing enough.

  It didn't feel like enough. But he had no desire to die here. He relented, let them help him into a chair in the hall, wordlessly drank the concoction passed to him by a caring hand. Then he rose and returned to the fight.

  He bought them time.

  Time for devastated families and friends to arrive to whisper their last goodbyes. Time for Septima and the entire team of surgeons and specialists who descended on the floor in her wake to fight for some kind of palliative. No one hoped for a cure anymore, only for a chance to mitigate the damage. He caught bits of conversation in the halls, agitated and swift: "…never seen anything like this, what the hell asteroid did they get it off of," "…hope this is the only thing they find out there…" "…bad enough, but no idea what the rhacking mechanism of action is for this thing…" "…afraid to touch it with anything but an autoclave…"

  The desperation and anger and heartbreak in the ward were crushing, so swift and thick he felt them as something to push against when he walked. He would not have been capable of fording those rapids without Vasiht'h at his side, and would not managed the work without Vasiht'h to draw him back from the storms when he went to them. He could push order onto disorder, could draw chaos out of a mind into himself, but he could not make it back, and when he thought himself lost the Glaseah's hand would be there, clutching hard enough that he expected bruises on his true flesh. Even more importantly, beneath his friend's terrified belief that this was insane and that he was pushing them both too hard, Jahir touched a core of faith and duty that matched his own. Vasiht'h would protest their course of action with every breath, but his heart was as fully committed as Jahir's. He could not countenance allowing these people to die alone either.

  They managed, together. Jahir heard the undercurrent of Vasiht'h's fervent prayer for an ending and shared it.

  Sometime close to dawn he stumbled into the break room to find something to drink while Vasiht'h parted from him for necessities. He was staring into an empty cabinet, seeking a clean mug, when Levine entered behind him. Her swift stride had degenerated into something closer to a shuffle, and he empathized powerfully with her fatigue. They were all working long past their proper shifts, in hopes that this flood-tide represented the last of the patients they would see before the police and Fleet shut down the channels completely.

  Without preamble, Levine said, "You could go rest. Nothing's going to change."

  "They will die," Jahir said, voice a husk. "That is change enough."

  "And we're not going to be able to stop them." She came close, stared up at his hands, then shook herself and went for the cabinet under the sink. She brought up a mug and offered it to him. "So there's no reason to kill yourself over it."

  "So everyone has been telling me over and over," Jahir said. "Yet no one else has gone home, Doctor." He slipped his fingers through the mug's handle. "We are keeping sacred vigil, each and every one of us. Do not deny me the privilege."

  "You really think it's a privilege?" She moved closer, enough that momentum brushed her coat's hems against his legs. Nor, he noted blearily, had she released the mug into his grasp.

  He marshaled himself and spoke the only truth the past hours had left him with. "To serve life is always a privilege."

  In retrospect, he should have seen it coming. Should have seen it implied, as inevitable as dawn in a day, by the attraction she'd been unable to disguise despite her attempts when they were first introduced. It was his exhaustion that hobbled him, mind and body, and after she touched him, her desire, swamping his revulsion. In his several centuries, he had been endowed with many chaste kisses, awarded by family, by priests, even once by the Queen on his being named as heir to the Seni. He had not yet been the recipient of a passionate kiss, and would not have wanted this to be his first experience of it: dulled with the despair of too much death while being touched by someone who wanted him too much, and whom he very much did not want. That she knew it partway through and this epiphany flooded him with her unwanted humiliation and embarrassment only made it more painful, and that it brought with those emotions far too much insight into her character gave him an unwelcome responsibility.

  Levine backed away, pressing the side of her hand to her mouth. "I… I'm sorry. I thought—" Her stammers chopped off as she flushed bright coral.

  "Doctor," Jahir said, after he'd caught his breath. The memory of her tongue made his stomach clench. "A misunderstanding, only."

  "Hell of a misunderstanding," she said. "I didn't mean to impose.…" Her façade crumpled and she turned away quickly.

  He made sure of their privacy and said, quieter, "You are lonely. It was natural to have hopes." Sorting through the vivid but unwanted impressions, he added, "It is not racism to harbor no attraction for your Pelted colleagues."

  "Oh really?" she asked, caustic. "At what point would you say that line gets drawn? When is it just 'my taste' and when is it bigotry?"

  "I don't know," he said, tired. "But consider that you have made an advance now on someone who is not the same species as you."

  That made her bark a reluctant laugh. "Yes, but you look human. Just…" A long pause as she looked over her shoulder at him, with all her longing and regret in her light eyes. "More beautiful than any human has any right to be."

  This was more trauma than he could heal… too old a scar for a night that had already stretched too long for his patience and endurance. He had not asked for the taste of her mouth on his, or the intimacy of her breath and the tensile length of her body on his, nor for the desire she'd forced him to feel through her skin. "I apologize, if I presented too great a temptation."

  Her shoulders stiffened. "Oh… Oh, God, no. It wasn't your fault. It's mine and…" She covered her face. "And I'm tired, and you're half dead on your feet, and there was and will never be a good time for this conversation. Alet, I am sorry. I took liberties. If you feel you need to take action against me—"

  He grimaced but she pushed on, "then I will own those consequences. What I did was wrong."

  "It was a moment. You have repented of it. That is enough."

  She studied his face, her own still flushed. Then she jerked her head in a nod and hurried fro
m the break room.

  Fortunately, he found a chair in time to sit, for his knees no longer consented to their duties. He rested his elbows on them and then put his face in his hands and waited for the trembling to pass. The taste of her remained but he could not bring himself to rise and fill the cup. It was not solely the unwanted touch that aggravated his nausea, but too much of everything combined with the sudden proof of life struggling to push past death and pain, of a very sentient need to fight fear with vitality and a connection with others that he found achingly difficult to sustain in the maelstrom of the situation he found himself in. He stood in the center of storms, and did not know how he had thought himself in love with the excitement of surviving them.

  Vasiht'h found him thus and filled the cup for him, with coffee Jahir could smell through the Glaseah's more sensitive nose. The mindline loomed, more real than the world around him until his friend pushed the cup into his hand.

  "What was it?"

  Jahir cleared his throat and made himself take the offering in both hands. The heat stung his fingers and he flexed them. "Levine."

  Vasiht'h scowled. "And?"

  This was not a matter for accidental public disclosure. He gave reply through the mindline, feeling them raw and immediate without the insulation of spoken words and their ambiguous distances. /She mistook her own interest in me for mine./

  The Glaseah took the cup back from him and drank from it quickly. "Ah, Goddess, her lipstick tastes like fake raspberries."

  Jahir began laughing, accepted the cup that Vasiht'h nearly pushed up to his lips for him, washed the taste out of his own mouth too. Wiping it, he said, "That was not the response I was expecting, I admit."

  "From me? From her? From yourself?"

  "All of it?" He sighed and managed a wan smile. "All of it."

  Vasiht'h glanced out the door, then said, low, "Nearly half of them are already dead, arii."

  Jahir followed his gaze. Then, allowing the Glaseah to feel his resolve, he answered, "The other half are not."

  Vasiht'h sighed and rose, and together they went out again.

  It took three days for the last victim to expire and leave the crisis care ward emptied of everything but routine. Three days of what felt like nonstop movement to Vasiht'h, until his ankles ached and the pads on the bottom of his paws cracked and started oozing, and he hopped on three feet until he could find a first aid kit and seal them up. What little sleep he stole came to him only because he was forcing Jahir to rest, and the moment his partner was in a chair or leaning against a wall or stretched on an unused bed, his own head fell forward too. They inevitably woke within twenty minutes and returned to work, not just on the victims, but with their families, their friends, the staff when stress distorted their perspectives and drove them past their limits. With every interaction, the mindline flexed and broadened, something that ordinarily would have been pleasure and now felt like pain, like a stretch held past the point of comfort and into tearing. He was exhausted, footsore, and wanted nothing more than to go to a temple and collapse in a cloud of incense smoke and the implied presence of the Mother.

  But he kept going, because Jahir needed him, because the patients needed them, and because the staff needed them.

  There was a comfort to working in a team this big, even if he could watch the friction of the situation stripping the gears. To know that if one of them failed, someone else would be there to shore up the weakness. But none of that compensated for the stress of simply being here.

  On that third day, after they'd watched the last body leave the ward, Jiron came to them. His eyes were a grimy red, his face sagging and lined and his hair a disheveled draggle stuck to his brow and the sides of his neck. "Go home," he said.

  Vasiht'h found a particle of energy somewhere, enough to tense in anticipation of his roommate's defiance. But Jahir said simply, "All right," and staggered toward the door. Vasiht'h hurried after, his reflexes dulled by the long stretches of adrenaline-fueled vigilance, and put his shoulder up against the Eldritch's hip to keep him from falling. Together they stumbled back to the apartment, where Jahir did not pause to eat or change or even say good night, but fell into his bed and was unconscious before he struck the mattress.

  Vasiht'h tottered after him and found himself leaning on the door. There was so much to do. Wasn't there? Schoolwork he'd been ignoring. Letters he should have been answering. Calls he wanted to make—Goddess, Sehvi, and his parents. He should cook something so they'd have something to eat when they woke, because no doubt they'd only wake to use the bathroom and then collapse again, and Jahir needed food so badly Vasiht'h could feel it in the hollows of his bones, an ache so deep it bypassed his stomach and became a cell-deep yearning. He should do all these things, and instead he managed the distance between door and his pillows and no more. His only nod to all that had happened was to fall asleep with his torso on the bed, where he could feel the warmth of the Eldritch's skin. His fingers crept out until they caught smooth metal, and he hooked his fingers in Jahir's medical bracelet, and then he lost the world and all the stunned grief, and his last thought before doing so was: It was hell and it was harder than everything we've ever done but we made it.

  Chapter 20

  Vasiht'h could not remember ever waking up so groggy. He blinked sleep-crusted eyes and licked dry teeth, stared at the thin sunlight falling through the edge of the window. His back had kinked in two places, and the only cure for that was hot water... and it was obvious he wasn't going to get back to sleep. He pushed back from the bed and glanced at its occupant, chanced a feather-soft touch, mind-to-mind and found only the dull blank of complete unconsciousness. That quiescence suited him; he wanted a respite from the noise, needed space.

  In the silence of the apartment, he washed, made his roommate a small meal and tea and left it in stasis, and then buckled his bags on and let himself out. The sunlight felt like a benison, and completely unreal, as if it had been years since he'd seen it rather than days. He stared up into the brilliance of Selnor's sky, squinting, and then went into the day. He had no specific destination; meandering, he went from one of the public parks to a plaza market and past it to a gallery district. The murmur of conversation, the normalcy of laughter and talk, the sight of children frisking alongside their parents or darting between trees... the pleasure of looking at fresh fruit and vegetables and thinking nothing more urgent than whether he wanted to eat it for dinner later... slowly these things began to work on his jangled nerves. By the time he reached the siv't he felt he could sit in front of the Goddess without twitching, and cleaned the altar for his incense with hands that no longer shook.

  Settling there, he tucked his paws neatly beneath his body and let his wings ease open... and in him, something crumbled, and hot tears seeped from his eyes. He covered his face and let them come. The resin smoke implied Her embrace as it broke around him. He cried for the dead, for their families, for the waste. He cried for the staff, and for himself. Most of all, he cried for Jahir, for having needed to come here for the lesson only She knew he'd needed, because whatever She'd needed to teach him had required so much of him.

  When all of it had drained from him, he breathed out and relaxed for the first time in days. Picking through his bag he found a wipe and cleaned his face. So many things he could say to Her. So many things in his heart, still. What he chose was, "Thank you."

  Then he went back home, not rushing, enjoying the tropical breeze that stole between the buildings to ruffle his fur, the warmth of the sun. The apartment was still silent when he entered; Vasiht'h paused, listening with both ears and mind, and heard nothing. Relieved that Jahir hadn't shorted himself on the rest he so obviously needed, the Glaseah went to the kitchen and considered the ingredients he had left, and set to the meditation of cooking.

  Once supper was in the oven, he sat with his data tablet. A few moments later, he stopped on the news feed's report of the wet crackdown. He read the précis but couldn't bring himself to continue on to the de
tail. It was still on his tablet when the door chime distracted him.

  Surely not the police again? Vasiht'h closed the door to the bedroom to keep the noise from waking Jahir and then went to see who'd come.

  Grace Levine was standing on their threshold.

  Since 'what do you want' seemed unnecessarily rude, Vasiht'h stepped back and said, "If you're looking for Jahir, he's asleep."

  "Good," she said. And then, embarrassed. "Ah, I mean... that's good. He needed the rest. May I..."

  "Come in?" he said, frowning. "But—"

  "You'll tell him," she said. "Whatever I say. Won't you?"

  Vasiht'h folded his arms.

  "Because that's all I need," she said. "And honestly, if I tell him, he'll probably argue with me." She grimaced, ran a hand along her temple as if discouraging a nascent headache. "In that way he has of politely not arguing with you, but you know he's disagreeing with you."

  Curiosity pricked, Vasiht'h said, "All right."

  The human entered, her discomfort making her awkward. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets, walking to the couch but remaining on her feet beside it. "You heard the news?"

  "That they found the culprits? I saw, but I didn't read the full thing."

  Levine nodded, a jerk of her chin. "It's worth reading. They did good work." She looked away, rolling her lower lip between her teeth.

  "Just say it," Vasiht'h said, torn between pity for her obvious unease and irritation with her for being here, for intruding, and very definitely for how she'd made Jahir feel.

  "We've ended your friend's residency contract," she said. "For health reasons."

  Vasiht'h stared at her.

  "I wrote his evaluation myself," she said. "I think he'll find it fair."

  "You're sending him away?" Vasiht'h asked, incredulous.