by Celia Crown
“Stop looking at me.”
Stop distracting me from this monumental task. I must find out if this rock broke off from another planet that we don’t know of and see if it’s carrying radiation. All meteors have some radiative content, but the amount varies, and this rock is a mystery.
We have time, but there is not enough to save everyone if we don’t work hard. No one life is worth more than another, and I have heard some whispers around NASA that a handful of rich people are making their already existing bunkers sturdier to last for years with supplies. Or, some are bribing NASA agents to slip them information about the potential impact sites so they can get on their private jets and move to the other side of the world.
I don’t know if anyone has taken up that offer, but the internal investigating team has already started their work and is cracking down on those who took bribes while the rest are working on the solution for the impending deal.
The news is reporting it as the End of the World, again. It’s been predicted that every couple of years would be the end, but it never happens, while the people who sold their properties and went into hiding were considered morons.
This time, they are lucky to have an existing bunker because this is not premeditation since there is a literal ginormous rock that death used as his home run score heading right towards us.
“You are beautiful,” Adrian cocks his head with a white slash of his teeth; that smirk has me clenching my knees shut.
“Be quiet,” I scowl half-heartedly, “You’re distracting me.”
He hums and doesn’t say anything back. He knows this is an emergency, and the world counts on us to do something about it. I wish I can give them comfort because the news has already reported riots and violent crimes. They believe that if they are going to die, then they might as well die doing something so forbidden that it’s frowned on by society.
I cross out the equations and go on to the next one. I have a list of them to do to get the correct answer that I need. I don’t want the right answer using the wrong methods; anything can go wrong if it isn’t the exact steps that need to be taken.
If I’m going to help the Center for Disease Control, get an antidote, and provide protection from the potential radiation that the meteor carries, then I’m going to have to work faster with the same accurate result that I desperately wish for.
I’m treading on dangerous territory. I don’t understand how the stations in space didn’t detect this quicker. Given the direction it’s coming from, it’s possibly from Saturn. But, it’s not possible because it hasn’t been reported that a foreign object is coming from our solar system.
Even the smartest minds are baffled at this event that no one can seem to agree on what it could have been. Many speculate it is a phenomenon of the mysteries of black holes; anything can get sucked in and once or twice, it spits out something no one knows about.
They are temperamental, and it’s frightening. The system did detect a small black hole, and it was gone seconds later. It did have enough time to spit out the rock from god knows where, and it’s outlandish that the black hole would do something like this.
“Calm down,” a hand rubs the back of my neck, running a firm grip down my tense shoulder.
“You’re too stressed. It won’t help if you can’t think straight,” Adrian flips my hair away from my face, and he takes the blue pen from my hand.
My furious scribbling halts and I’m about to tell him that I need it back when he glares down at me. The sternness in the chocolate hues blazes in warning. A shift in his jaw ticks and I shut my mouth with words dying in the back of my throat.
“You’re hurting,” he says, frowning and turning my chair so he can kneel in front of me.
We come to eye level as Adrian’s words confuse me. My hands do tingle from all the writing, and it’s all red with the pen’s indentation on them, but they don’t hurt. And I have been sitting all day, so it’s not my feet.
Adrian cups my cheek; his warm palm makes me sigh as I nuzzle into the support to lean heavily on it. His other hand travels up to my temple, rubbing small circles to put pressure on the pounding ticks. I’m getting a headache, and I didn’t even know it. I was too focused to notice it.
“I’m okay,” I murmur, closing my eyes to take a small break from the lights.
“You’re not okay,” Adrian clicks his tongue, tugging on my hair. I love the pressure he puts on my head to make the headache go away temporarily.
“I want you to eat something and then take a nap, and do not argue with me. I will hold you down and shove it down your throat.”
I open my amber eyes, narrowing them at him with no heat in them. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would, and it’s for your own good,” he counters back.
“But I have stuff to do! The equations—” my throat rumbles in protest.
The contempt in Adrian’s glare is not going to get me to back down, “I just have a couple more to finish, and then we will know which option is the best and the correct one.”
“We will compromise,” he suggests while knowing that I won’t back down, but my headache is getting worse ever since he pointed it out.
Maybe if he just let me be, then I wouldn’t have noticed at all. This man is either the most considerate person here, or he’s doing his job as a bodyguard, and that means even a headache is his enemy.
“I want you to lay on the couch, and I don’t want to see you move when I come back,” he says.
I open my mouth to question his motives when he presses his finger to my lips; it’s a physical way to silence me and I have half a mind to glare at him. I want to talk and make sure he knows what I want, but he seems to know everything despite the fact we were strangers three weeks ago.
He’s been at my side ever since, and he doesn’t mind his protection duty. My employers were more than happy to pass along the job to Adrian because he’s a doctor and knows how to take care of me if I’m sick.
I’m sure my other bodyguards had gotten the same lecture about my health from my superiors, but Adrian is a doctor so he knows the risk of me working too hard and he can monitor my health while being a bodyguard.
“I’ll be back,” he says, ruffling my hair and the dizziness comes to me as my head moves with his hand.
I moan in disdain, grimacing as the throbbing in my temple worsens. Adrian is on his feet and into another door that leads to the storage room where I keep my other files. Though he made me organize it so he can put daily supplies in there after I made the point that my office is my second home, Adrian made it his mission to make it homey as possible with supplies that can be found in common households.
I could use the break. It’s not like I can think properly right now with this distraction in my head. A painkiller would be nice, but I prefer to stay away from medicine if I can because my parents have ingrained in my head that any medicine will do a tiny bit of harm to my body as time goes by if I take it more often for trivial things.
Not bothering to find out if it is true or not is my fault, but it’s the belief that I grew up hearing. So even if someone told me with scientific proof that it has no harm, I would still have my hesitation because it’s too deep into my mind.
As I stumble like a zombie to the couch, I knock over some books piled on the floor and fall face down on the cushion. I groan and lay there to let my headache settle into a constant throb, but I manage to lay on my side while curling into a ball.
It is nicer than I thought when I close my eyes, but Adrian doesn’t know that he is right. I don’t want to see that smug smirk again, and he always wants to prove me wrong when it comes to my personal matters.
I am Tabby Sterling and it is my body. Of course, I would know it better than he does. Yet, he proves me wrong time and time again. That man is a superhuman with his ability to decipher what I feel and what I’m thinking right off the bat as if he is reading my mind.
I’ll let this matter off the hook. He is the doctor with his fanc
y degree, after all, so I’m giving credit where credit is due.
The couch shifts. The indentation on my back sinks down as a heavy blanket drops over me. The heaviness grounds me to the present as the headache threatens to take over my thoughts. A soft pillow gets tucked under me as a hand runs through my hair.
I moan quietly, with a grateful hum that sounds through as I snuggle into the pillow. Adrian tucks the blanket under my body to cocoon me in while he takes a seat at the large couch with my head by his thighs.
I specifically requested this couch for its convenience when I work late or got too caught up with a new finding. I often crash here; this is perfect and cozier than the bed sometimes.
“No medicine?” I murmur in a low voice.
Adrian keeps running his fingers through my hair and rubs my skull with his thumb. The gesture is supportive and calming as my focus behind my closed eyes turns hazy. “You wouldn’t take it anyway,” he whispers in a hushed tone.
I appreciate his mindfulness of me, and his raspy voice lures me to a nice place that is waiting for me to fall into.
Sleep is what happens for the next four hours, and when I wake up, it’s the worst thing I have felt in a long time. The dullness in my head is like a dense fog shrouding my eyes as the blurriness in my vision won’t go away after thinking and rubbing my eyes. My throat is sore and tight; the dryness cracks my voice as I groan.
My bones are liquid, unmovable, and sluggish as a cold shiver wrecks my body. I don’t have the strength to pull the blanket tighter around me as I only huff with annoyance.
I’m sick. I hate being sick, and nothing makes me feel worse than being helpless when there are people counting on me. However, I’m in no position to help others when I must take care of myself first.
There are other capable scientists who are far smarter than I am, and they are doing everything they can to sway the inevitable away. I am grateful for them because the lives of civilization are in good hands. I’ll just take a couple of hours to myself before I get back on my feet and finish my work.
“How are you feeling?” Adrian’s velvety voice asks beside my ear.
My voice won’t come out. It’s not possible for me to answer him, so I make a face while hoping he understands what I’m trying to convey. Adrian is good at reading people. He’ll take no offense at me trying to salvage my voice if there is any left.
A little bit of honey and lemon would do the trick, and a package or two of cough drops can get me through the day.
“I have medicine,” he says, sliding an arm under my neck to bring me up.
My body protests with several cracks of air bubbles while my voice still doesn’t want to work with me to tell him that I don’t want to be moved.
“Drink first,” Adrian says as he pries my mouth open with his fingers and cold water soothes my dry throat.
I take it greedily until he takes it away to pop a bitter pill into my mouth. Laying in his arm feels nice; it’s a cross between heaven and hell because this man is hot. Appearance and temperature-wise, he can be related to the Egyptian god, Ra, and I would question his heritage.
“Sick,” I whimper out, eyes tightly shut as I take on the pain shooting through my body when Adrian lifts me up from the couch.
He wraps the blanket around me with the resemblance of a burrito and takes me to the room that I reserve as my second bedroom.
“What is it?” he asks.
His normal volume is a booming echo in my skull, and I wince at the harsh throb that forces my temple to take the pain.
“Don’t want you sick,” I murmur the best I can without putting too much strain on my voice.
“I will be fine. I have a strong immune system. A little cold won’t get to me.”
I wish I had that type of confidence that even a common cold is unable to touch him and doesn’t want to penetrate him because he will metaphorically burn the bacteria to a crisp before they can infect him.
As I have thought, he is Ra, the sun god.
I can’t tell him that; his ego will inflate more than the size of Russia, and he doesn’t need another thing to gloat about when he has my whole life memorized even down to the details that I had forgotten.
“I will make you something to eat and wake you up,” he says, setting me down gently as to not disturb my body.
I sigh in relief as my body is on even planes again. My bones practically sing for the softness of the mattress, and I know I made the right choice to pick this bed and had some of the poor agents to force it in through the door without cutting the mattress in half.
“Don’t want to eat,” I whine.
The thought of food makes me nauseated. I can barely hold the water down my tummy right now, and food will only make it worse.
I’ll throw up on the bed because I can’t run to the bathroom with my sluggish body. Being weighed down by the sickness gives me more laziness while hating the immobility. I have no other choice but to let Adrian take care of me just as he said he would.
“You have to; you need the energy.”
“No,” I say with a pout.
My eyes haven’t opened once, and I would like to keep it that way. I don’t want the chance of having the bright lights in the bedroom blind me. Adrian would be considerate enough to leave it off, but I never know what that man is thinking about.
“I’ll feed you,” he chuckles. The rumble of his chest comes out as a purr.
I drag out my answer with a noise that never confirms or denies this offer, but he takes it as a “yes.”. Adrian would have picked for me anyway. There is no point arguing with a man whose logic is just as stiff as his stubbornness.
A cough erupts from my lips, breaking the dry seal that has my lips stuck together. The aching in my throat spasms with soreness and a ripple of another cough punches its way out.
Adrian turns me flat on the bed and lifts my aching body up to let the back of my neck rest on his crooked leg. Air comes easier to my lungs as I gasp for the precious oxygen. This position allows the blocked airways to part, and I have never been more thankful for Adrian being a doctor.
I will never complain about his worries when he tells me something. I will listen from now on because I didn’t listen when he said I had a headache and look where that got me.
“Sleep, I’ll be right here.”
His hand comes to smooth a thumb down the column of my neck. My pulse slows as he keeps his hand steady and in one rhythm.
I’m out cold again.
Chapter Six
Adrian
Tabby talks in her sleep. There’s a sleepy haze in her eyes when she drifts in and out of her consciousness. There are different levels of sleep, and the deepest is when she talks to herself.
They aren’t full conversations, but it is simple words that don’t make much sense if I combine them together. Even in her dream, her mind is a work of wonder that has my chest swelling with pride.
My Tabby is too brilliant for her own good, and I want to be there to help her through her daily life. More so when she gets approached with offers that sound too good to be true. Tabby doesn’t understand the business side because she is a girl of action and intelligence. But in the business world, she is a lamb in the middle of hungry wolves.
Sly and cunning, those are the traits of businessmen.
Tabby would get roped into their charms and be used without realizing it. She would be too focused on trying to do as much good as she can. She doesn’t care about what stress and an inadequate amount of sleep can do to her frail body.
She may think that she is able to do all-nighters right now, but that’s because she’s young and full of life. When she gets older, she will feel the effect of those nights of working through the moonlight.
I thread my fingers through her hair; it’s damp with her sweat when she gets blinding nightmares at times. They get worse when daylight disappears, and I stay up, with occasional naps to fuel my body, to make sure she is alright.
The first day h
er cold manifested with a massive headache, she fell asleep without eating, and I couldn’t wake her up.
I was worried, not because she wouldn’t wake up, but I was concerned about her breathing. I have seen conditions where once someone has a fever, they fall into a coma with undiagnosed medical conditions.
Usually, it is caused by organic or man-made chemicals. Other times it is due to physical trauma that wouldn’t present itself until it is acted upon by another force.
Her fever skyrocketed on the second day. It burned up too quick and too hot; it was not normal since she was not shivering.
The human body is a unique thing; I know that when a fever is present, the patient feels as if they are burning up, yet they are wracked by cold shivers.
Tabby’s case was different. She was hot everywhere, and the shivers weren’t there. It was impossible to diagnose her when I had limited information, and the bloodwork I had drawn from her on our first-day meeting after thirty years was clean.
There weren’t odd anomalies that raised questions, but her body muscles had decreased when I compared her data to the previous figures before she went up into the shuttle.
It isn’t uncommon for astronauts to practice decompression and mimic gravity in a controlled environment, but some had reportedly suffered blood diseases that got triggered from the shift in their body’s natural defense mechanism when they were in the chamber.
“Sunny…”
I glance down at her. She lays on my thigh to make sure her airway isn’t blocked when she sleeps.
Her fever broke on the third day, and she ate sporadically, but I kept her awake to get her hydrated.
She sleeps less on the fourth day, but she demanded a shower because she felt disgusting. I helped her into the bathroom, and Tabby refused to let me in to help her.
I am a professional, and as a doctor, I have seen human anatomy, and I have touched cadavers when I was in medical school. Naked bodies do not mean anything to me, but I can’t say the same thing about Tabby.