Page 44 of Redstone
Tamara would have tried to answer him, but she started to cough instead. And once she started, she couldn’t make herself stop.
“What …” Demarcos’ hand smacked her on the back, but there was nothing to come up. It was biochemistry blocking her airway now, and Tamara would have smirked if she hadn’t been freaking out because she couldn’t breathe; she couldn’tbreathe, and the itching was spreading, and the lights were fading already, and she couldn’t … she was going to …
Unconsciousness had never felt so welcome.
***
Tamara had always had good hearing. Even for a regular person, her ears would have been good—far better than her eyes, which had taken three surgeries to correct to their still-less-than-perfect state now. She had also had a great deal of experience in her youth at pretending to be asleep when she was in hospitals, mostly to avoid dealing with her father and the look she knew would be on his face when she woke up. She could even modulate her heart rate, which was a useful trick when she wanted to listen in on a conversation. Especially such a heated one.
“Absolutely outrageous.” She had heard that voice before—not often, but more than once.
The next person to speak spurred a much more immediate sense of recognition. “Keep your voice down.”
“It’smyinfirmary, Mr. Gyllenny, and I’ll raise my voice however and whenever I choose to! What sort of idiot goes gallivanting about the universe with all of these disabilities? Honestly, a natural? You might as well plop a baby down in the middle of an ocean and expect them to know how to swim. Their terrible immune systems must make traveling with them an utter nightmare, not to mention their absolute inability to respond to more than the most basic of therapeutic techniques!” The doctor sounded like he was on the verge of despair. “I have too many idiots with major wounds being brought in to deal with something as ridiculous as anallergic reactionright now!”
“But she’s going to be all right?” Demarcos pressed. He sounded genuinely concerned. It was rather nice, actually.
“She’ll be fine. Regen couldn’t do anything for her, but the proper antihistamine injection did the trick. She should wake up momentarily. I expect she’ll come up with all sorts of excuses to stay here,” he added derisively. “Naturals are fragile creatures. If you’re staying, then you keep her calm and under control. Any sign of hysterics and I’ll render her unconscious and have her delivered back to her room immediately.”
“Did they not teach you any sort of compassion in your medical training?”
Dr. Kleinman snorted. “You think compassion is what anyone in this hellhole deserves? They deserve to lose power and freeze to death as far as I’m concerned. My job is to keep the people who end up here alive, not to coddle them, Mr. Gyllenny. If it bothers you so much, I suggest you avoid ending up a patient.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Demarcos said. Tamara heard the door swoosh open, and the doctor briefly cursing atsomedamn robot, these things are always malfunctioning, before it closed again.
“Well,” she croaked, not quite feeling like opening her eyes yet. Her face still felt a little swollen, and her lips were numb. She could breathe without assistance, though. That was good. “He’s a fucking prince, huh?”
“Holy shit.” It came out more like a sigh than a curse, and when Tamara finally looked up, she saw Demarcos staring down at her, a combination of relief and anger written all over his face. “What in the lowest ten was that?” he demanded. “You poisoned yourself?”
Tamara winced. “Keep your voice down.” She made as though it hurt her ears, but in actuality, she wasn’t pleased that he was trying to give the game away while they were being surveilled. Not that she wasn’t going to do her best to get rid of this footage, but it didn’t pay to get sloppy. “And those were a new brand of crackers; I’d never tried them before.”Obviously.
“Right, right.” Demarcos subsided a little, sitting down on the edge of her bed. It didn’t automatically compensate for his weight like it should have—apparently, the leveling system embedded in it had gone to hell, and no one had bothered to fix it—and she rolled into the side of his hip. He felt warm even through her jumpsuit. “So, what now, Carson?”
“Well, first …” She glanced around, then suddenly put two and two together. “Shit! Open the door!”
Demarcos frowned. “There’s a bot out there acting weird, are you sure you—”
“Open the door! I’m feeling …” She cast about for a reason that a casual observer would accept. “Severely claustrophobic! Open the door, now!” Demarcos rolled his eyes and obeyed, and the bot immediately rolled into the room.
“Close it,” Tamara hissed just as the robot swept her up into its arms and cradled her against its metallic chest. The greeneyestrip glowed brightly as it rocked her back and forth and said, “There, there. There, there. There, there.”
The door opened a moment later, and Dr. Kleinman bustled in angrily. “This thing is all wrong! It doesn’t respond to standard commands in a timely fashion. Put herdown.” The bot paused in its rocking, then gently laid Tamara back down on the bed.
“I’ll have this thing deactivated and torn apart,” he muttered. “And you’re awake. Good. Get back to your quarters, and—”
“I feel nauseous.” It was the first excuse she could come up with, but Tamara knew she needed to check her clothes, now, and she couldn’t afford to leave the infirmary to do it. “I can’t go yet.”
“You’re fine, and I have other people to tend to and need this space.”
There were more excuses coming, but Tamara had already heard enough. One of the most useful, and least appealing, parts of her training under Admiral Liang was building in a neurosensory feedback loop that would provoke illness. It wasn’t fun but throwing up backed people off like nobody’s business. Shuffling her feet together, Tamara pressed the ball of her right foothardinto the instep of her left while simultaneously squeezing the fleshy section of her right hand between thumb and forefinger.
The sudden rush of sickness made her double over, retching as the scant contents of her stomach hit the floor. At least her throat didn’t swell up although from the look of disgust on the doctor’s face she wasn’t entirely sure he would have helped her if it had.
“It’ll pass,” she assured him, eyes watering and nose streaming. “I just need a few more minutes, I think.”
“Take an hour,” Dr. Kleinman muttered, and he turned and left without another word. ZeeBee didn’t follow him, just stood there placidly.
“What the hell?” Demarcos said quietly. “Are you okay?”
