Symbiosis: Chapter 41

Wilson Mills sat by Rianya’s bedside with a cold data pad in one hand and his other hand on the side of her warm neck. For three full days she blistered at 40.5 degrees, unresponsive to medications, leaving only cool towels frequently exchanged, hour after hour, to protect her from permanent brain impairment.

 He’d been wrong in assessing her condition. Never having complete responsibility for the life of an alien, his stress had actually diminished when she descended into a coma, knowing she was unconscious and no longer experiencing the crushing agony of pneumonia. Her pain was his own. Her life was in his hands.

Once more he checked her vital stats and recorded no change in the last hour. Her temperature was 38.4, just a little over normal for her species. Apparently her immune system was in overdrive, keeping her asleep so it could work at top efficiency. In the way that a human body had no control over its sympathetic nervous system and the accompanying beta brainwave pattern, her species’ immune system also shut down her nervous system, putting her brain into a steady theta alpha pattern.

“Mr. Mills,” Quixote said as he entered the sick bay.

“In here, sir.”

“Has there been any improvement in Ms. Rianya’s health condition?” Mills looked at Quixote and sighed.

“Her meninges are still inflamed, but her fever seems to have broken for the most part. I have her on 25% oxygen; her lungs are still compromised. She’s in a kind of hibernation healing state, so perhaps you could say she’s improved, but not out of the woods.”

“Bridge to Quixote.”

“Quixote here.”

“Lieutenant Lee is signaling the us. Should I respond?” Mr. Watson asked him.

“Where is Dukvita?”

“He’s on the off side of Cinco.”

“Respond to Lieutenant Lee, Factor Eleven in force, understood?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Tell him to collect the team and come aboard.” He tapped the intercom off. “Mr. Mills, you’re fading; what is it?”

He tried to speak but words wouldn’t come out of his dry mouth, He massaged his throat with one hand.

“I’m…scared, Quixote. I’m scared.” The lieutenant commander, a reptilian of exceptional intelligence and compassion, stepped close to him, and put his claw gently on Mills’ shoulder.

“Focus on your task, Mr. Mills. I have confidence that you are wholly competent to ensure her recovery.”

“I’m glad one of us does.”

~~~

“The shuttle is aboard, commander,” Mr. Watson reported.

“Very good.” Quixote tapped the intercom. “Lieutenant Lee, please report to the doyen’s office immediately.” He turned to the two men on the bridge. “You know where to find me.”

“Commander?” Lee called with a knock on the door.

“Lieutenant, thank you for being expedient. Come in. We have a lot to discuss.”

“I know. I don’t think I was detected leaving orbit, but I can’t be certain.”

“I’m sure you would have been fired upon had you been, so I agree. Precise, skillful flying. Your transmission reports you picked up doctors Ferris and Adams, security officers York, Bowen, and Wagner, and Engineer Painter and Crewman Campbell.” The fellow nodded and reached for a glass and the pitcher of water on the conference table.

“Quixote…Captain Jackson and Doctor Gregory are nowhere to be found. They were last seen in New Hope at the stadium. I’m not sure the witnesses I spoke to knew if the men were Jackson and Gregory, but they knew humans when they saw them. No doubt in their minds.”

Did you speak with any transportation officers or just bystanders?”

“I didn’t want to draw attention so I just talked to whoever was standing around. I was afraid if I poked around too much there might not be anyone to fly the crew back to Maria Mitchell.”

“Yes, a wise decision on your part, Mr. Lee.”

“I didn’t want to abandon them, but if I didn’t leave when I did we’d have been in the Pegasi orbital path.”

“I understand, Mr. Lee. The question is now, how do we find them and get the hell away from this damn forsaken planet?” He drummed two claws on the table not looking at the helmsman’s face, but a slight increase in the radiant temperature from his direction caused him to turn. The lieutenant’s eyes were wide, the rest of his face static, and he sat straight up in the chair. “I apologize, Mr. Lee.”

“No, don’t, sir. I’ve just never heard you, uh, speak with such flair in the past.”

“If there was ever a time to verbally express frustration this would be it.” Xe looked down to avoid additional eye contact with the subordinate officer. “Have you slept recently?”

“I’ve been busy for the last few hours, otherwise yes.”

“Very good. I’d appreciate your taking leave of Ensign Rougeau at your soonest convenience. Change your uniform, have a brief meal and plan being on duty until at least zero hundred hours. That's all.”

Quixote decided against calling other members to the office and instead chose to visit the respective stations of the returned crew starting with sick bay. That would undoubtedly be priority one.

The doors to sick bay parted as xe approached but before stepping both feet inside Dr. Jane Ferris stood before xim with tears in her eyes. Quixote never knew which of her eyes to focus on when interacting with her, the blue one or brown one. The blue one displayed greater contrast, so blue it was.

“Does the captain know? About Rianya?” she whispered.

“We haven’t heard from the captain for quite some time.”

“Oh, Quixote,” she chirruped, clamping her hand over her mouth and walking out of sick bay.

“Dr. Adams!” Quixote called loudly, hurrying across the slick floor minding not to skid toward Rianya’s chamber. The doctor popped into the hallway and stopped Quixote with his hand held out.

“How long?” Dr. Adams asked. Quixote actually felt his blood pressure drop, a dizzy wave passed above his head, and his mind hazed over. He shook his head.

“Mr. Mills?” Adams asked.

“I spoke with him this morning. I haven’t since. What's wrong?”

“It’s a goddamn good thing I’m here! Get out of my way!” the doctor yelled, waving his arms to clear a path to his equipment station. “Find Mills and haul his ass up here right now! The captain’s wife is grave. Where the hell did Ferris go?” The man rushed from his station with an armload of assorted supplies and gadgets back to his patient’s room. Quixote took a deep breath for Rianya’s mortality.

“I’ll go find them,” xe said to the doctor.

“Just stay here!” the white haired, diminutive human barked. He threw a blanket at Quixote and pointed at Rianya while he injected something through her skin at the base of her neck. Quixote promptly unfolded the cover and gently laid it on the woman he’d come to call a rare and true friend. Xe tucked the sides in around her and looked at Adams expectant of more instructions. Only the monitors made any sound as Adams hovered over Rianya, his focus laser sharp on her face. He lifted her lip and pushed on her gums; the white spot slowly flushed.

He touched her face, her neck, her hands, her feet, then her neck again, then the mouth again. The spot flushed much quicker this time. Adams took a slow, deep breath and let it out quickly. Stepping to the intercom he thumped the button hard.

“Sick bay to Ferris and Mills, report to stations STAT! Ferris and Mills, report STAT!” he fairly shouted into the mic. He slammed it again, rifled through a drawer until he found a com device, and marched back to face Quixote. “She needs 24 hour watch! She’s in hypovolemic shock.”

“Which means…?”

“She’s bleeding in her chest cavity from a pneumonia abscess on her left superior lung.”

“Doctor Adams, Mr. Mills has been diligent throughout your absence. He’s not been carefree about his responsibility, I assure you. I’m certain his interlude is warranted.”

“Twenty four hour watch is not twenty three hours and forty five minutes!”

“Doctor Adams,” Mills said as he rushed in.

“Where the hell have you been? Rianya would have been dead in another minute if I hadn’t come in here when I did!” Quixote thought the doctor might slap Mr. Mills but instead his fists clenched and pounded against his own thighs.

“I knew you and Jane were on board. I had to use the lavatory, and check on Zalara.”

“Four minutes to brain death! Next time use a bedpan or call someone before you leave a patient’s side! How many other people on this ship can watch Zalara? You’re not the only one.” Quixote cringed on Mills’ behalf. The doctor’s body was bright red not only in skin tone but his temperature as well. Mills’ skin tone was white.

“What happened?” Mills asked.

“I got here as quick as I could,” Ferris said, bursting in. Her face was red but cool, damp. Quixote wondered if they could sense each other’s feelings by reading faces the way xe, and frankly, Rianya also, could do. It wasn’t hard to miss.

“Hypovolemic shock. Look at this!” Adams stomped over to the monitor just outside the patient bay and flung a pointed finger at the image. “One of the internal pulmonary furuncles must have burst and she was bleeding out into her pleural cavity. Her BP was plunging like a stone! I have to operate and you two better get sterile fast. And I mean sterile, not sanitized, sterile! Quixote!” The dinosaur jumped a little when he heard his name. “Turn the OR table to 37 degrees and get an instrument pack from the closet. Don’t bring it under the field, just into the room.” Adams joined the other two in the sterilization room and placed his hands under the ultra violet lights. 

After carrying out his tasks, Quixote watched as the three medics rolled her bed from the room to the OR, moved her to the heated table, then pulled the blanket off. Mills aimed a portable UV light at Rianya’s left ribcage. Momentarily Adams inserted a tube attached to a bag that somehow vacuumed out the blood from her body and kept it in the bag.

Mammalian blood was red, as was his, but warm and highly oxygenated. It seemed likely the doctor was going to recycle her blood back into her body as he hooked the bag to a small mechanical device that operated on a hydraulic piston. Now seemed like a good time to leave since he couldn’t do any more for Rianya. He’d save his questions for the doctors, and promptly went in search of the security crew.