Chapter 4 #2
The lights turned on automatically as they entered.
Tears pricked her eyes as she urged the man ahead, stumbling, toward the bed.
She stopped him with gentle pressure on his chest and leaned forward to pull back the bedcovers.
Then she guided him downward. He released a groan as his naked body settled, his arms falling to his sides.
“I’ll be right back,” she whispered, then dashed out into the hallway to the supply closet, grabbing two med kits before rushing back to the room.
The man lay exactly where she’d put him. Kneeling beside the bed, she set the med kits on the ground and opened the first. Her eyes passed over the laser scalpel to the dermal syringe. She palmed it and opened the second kit.
It held medicine cylinders of every type. She grabbed two, snapping the first into the syringe, then held it to his throat.
“This is a painkiller and a sedative,” she said, depressing the button on the side.
When it emptied, she swapped the cylinder for the other.
“And some anti-radiation drugs.” She injected it into his bloodstream.
“They’ll make you more comfortable.” She hoped.
It was hard to know when his body was so polluted already.
Next, she grabbed the regeneration gauze, and flicked her eyes over his body.
She didn’t have enough for all of him.
Swallowing, she focused on the worst parts: his face, his neck, his hands, his feet.
She crunched the gauze in her hand to activate its healing properties, then laid the strips across each section of red and blistered skin on his neck.
Her fingers twitched to remove his glasses, but his reaction earlier made her hesitate.
She finished with his head and moved lower. Thunder and lightning punctuated the time at irregular intervals. Her hands shook as she smoothed the gauze over the reddest part of the man’s thighs.
Sorrow rose inside her, clogging her throat. Sadness for this man, for Foster, and for her fields that were probably all washed away. What was the point of anything anymore?
Her breath hitched as an itching sensation crawled over her skin. Her eyes strayed to the three self-inflicted scars carved into her forearm. That familiar need rose in her, but she pushed it down to focus on the man.
With his feet completely wrapped, she used the last of the regeneration gauze over his shoulders, then settled the bedcovers over his body.
“Okay,” she said, and he flinched at the word.
Had he found relief, and she’d startled him? She hated the thought, and that she couldn’t do more for him, just another shot of painkillers in a few hours.
She had no way to call for help, to get a med team here to put him in stasis, with the storm taking out the grid. It had trapped them together as effectively as being sent to a brig.
Swallowing that disturbing thought, she spoke again, but kept her voice soft. “I’ll be nearby if you need anything.” She backed out of the room until she stood in the hallway. A tap to the control panel, and the door slid closed, blocking her view of the man on Foster’s bed.
She stood there for long seconds, frozen, staring at the door.
Who the hell was he, and why was he here? He wasn’t a scientist from Research Station 214, didn’t have a CORE uniform. His clothing wasn’t CORE-issue either. Apprehension rose in her again, her intuition telling her to retreat.
The solitude and safety of her quarters called to her, but along with it, the kit she’d hid under the sink in the washroom. She lifted her hand and touched the three lines on her inner forearm. Better to keep herself busy than cave to the urge of forcefully muting the world through pain.
She sure as hell wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Spinning around, Wynn padded down the hallway and through the lab, the sound of her footsteps swallowed by the constant rumblings outside. The door to the greenhouse slid open at her approach, and she stepped her bare feet onto a grated floor similar to the one in the decontamination zone.
Transparent aluminum stretched before her, a rounded tunnel encasing shades of emerald, viridian, and jade below the strips of synth lights. The storm flashed and twisted above while rain bombarded the panes in cascades, running down the walls in thick rivers.
Taking a deep breath of soil and green into her lungs, Wynn strode forward, focusing on where the metal grating bit at her bare feet.
It helped to calm her, those pricks of pain that slowed the spiraling around her.
She reached and touched the leaves as she passed.
They tickled her skin, a counterpoint to the stinging in her feet.
She kept walking, past the larger saplings, and the tiny ones, to the section filled with pots of dirt.
With the shelves bare, the view out of the greenhouse was unobstructed storm.
Clouds in every shade of gray, black, and purple swallowed the interior like she stood in the belly of a beast. A streak of lightning tore from the sky.
It hit near Research Station 214, or maybe right on it, illuminating the tether like a monument.
Another bolt followed, then another, in what looked like an orchestrated attack on the scientific community.
Unbelievable. In all her time on Earth, she’d never seen the equivalent.
Her heart raced, and her insides clenched.
Beautiful and dangerous. She turned slightly, noting the glow of the enviro-net in the distance.
It might be operational, but that didn’t mean runoff hadn’t affected her newly planted seeds.
A crack of thunder boomed around her, rattling the interior of the greenhouse.
Wynn clenched her jaw and turned her back on the storm to grab the trowel sitting on the edge of the workbench and the container of unmodified seeds beside it.
She would focus on tasks, on making this outpost produce results even as the storm ravaged the work she’d accomplished over the past week.
Tapping on the work surface’s terminal, she found a downloaded spaceball game, letting the announcers’ voices fill the greenhouse like an echoing cave. When she became bored with that, she changed to a soothing playlist, then an uplifting one, before finding another game.
But no matter what she listened to, her thoughts returned to the person in Foster’s room. Another person she couldn’t save.
There was nothing more she could do. He’d be dead by morning.