Chapter 24: Overdoing It

Chapter 24: Overdoing It

Paulie checked the local time on the small device he wore on his wrist and his eyebrows rose. He had been sitting in the library with Jakiikii all afternoon and into the night. His stomach rumbled as if confirming his new discovery and Jakiikii glanced at him tiredly. She looked drained, even more than he felt. She was slumped on the table, looking about ready to fall asleep as her angular head rested in her hands, he reached out and shook her gently.

“Hey, you awake still?” She jerked up and looked all around as her mottled skin flashed pale white for a second.

Her widened eyes fell on him and then immediately seemed to regain their focus. “Huh? Yes, what.. oh. Yeah, I am just tired and my blood sugar is low. I should have gone to eat something an hour ago, but you were making good progress and I didn't want to interrupt you.” She admitted with an exhausted yawn and Paulie frowned.

She was suffering on his account. He pushed his chair back and placed the datapad on the table. “Ok, that is enough of that for the day. Come on, we need to go and get something to eat. If I am hungry then you must be starving.” She nodded tiredly and stood before wobbling slightly. Jakiikii leaned into him for support, wrapping five arms around him as she held onto the dataslate in her remaining hand.

“Whoa.. I guess I was more tired than I thought.” She mumbled, her grumbling voice reverberating from deep in her chest cavity and through Paulie’s ribs as she leaned into him a little more heavily.

He gave her a slight worried glance as they took a few steps, but she slowed after a short distance and her grip on him tightened. He reached for her as she slipped and started to fall, catching her before she could hit the floor and scooping her up into his arms all the way.

“I.. huh..” Jakiikii huffed, her eyes blinking slowly as she grabbed onto him like a spider monkey. She wrapped all six arms around his shoulders and torso and buried her head into his chest as she groaned slightly. “Oh. I think I let it go too long, Paulie. I am dizzy.” She paused and then poked out one single eye and turned it to look at him before squinting and laying it flat onto her head again.

He was a little shocked by the sudden turn of events and asked quickly, “What do you need? What should I do?"

She shook her head slightly and tightened her grip on his clothing. “I just need some sugar. Take me to an aid station or a cafeteria, whatever is closer.” And with that she tucked back into his grip and he looked around before spotting a mildly concerned looking Mursk standing just to the side of the nearest book shelf.

“What happened? I only stepped away for a moment.” The man’s autotranslator warbled unemotionally, the synthesised speech of the machine fully at-odds with his agitated appearance. His antennae twitched and his hands were fidgeting like a man at a loss for want of action.

Paulie nodded to the man quickly, “We need to get her something to drink. Sugar, she pushed herself a little too hard I guess.”

“I am fine.” Jakiikii grumbled tiredly from his arms. He felt her grip tighten slightly and looked back toward the other man, cocking his head as if to make his point known.

Mursk, for his credit, didn’t hesitate. Instead he stepped closer and gestured to the opening behind him made by a gap in the bookshelves. “This way then, there is a medical aid station not two hundred meters down the main hall.” The big insectoid turned heel in his powered armour and led the way with Paulie carrying Jakiikii close on his booted heels. The soft clicking of the alien’s armoured feet on the carpeted floor seemed far too loud in his ears even as Jakiikii’s grumbling grew a little louder.

He kept glancing down at her as he walked, concerned that if he took his eyes off her for too long she might just disappear. But she seemed to be alright, she clung to him with enough strength to dissuade him of her absence anyway, and her subtle groans as she muttered to herself under her breath were a reassurance too. She looked in rough shape, but she seemed like she was still awake.

They rapidly walked to the nearest aid station, a small infirmary deep in the heart of the complex that looked like it had seen more action recently than it had ever been made for. Standing beside a small table covered in computers was a very tired looking smaukling in a form fitting white gown emblazoned with the blue medical symbol he had come to recognise as meaning medical aid. They turned towards Paulie as he stepped inside following Mursk, her bright pink eyes opening wide as her W-shaped pupils dilated in surprise.

She squawked, “Oh, what happened?!” Not even a moment’s hesitation and she had already rushed to Jakiikii and begun scanning her with some manner of medical instrument that beeped and whirred disapprovingly.

Paulie looked around and motioned to the nearby examining table. “Can we lay her down? She is exhausted, pushed herself too hard and is having..” He paused and tried to think of a word to accurately summarise the situation. “Issues.” He stated flatly.

The alien’s colorful crest feathers rose atop its head like a signal flare. “Oh nothing too serious then. A classic case of hypoglycemia, I need to administer her fluids then. Nothing more.” The doctor seemed to relax a little, as though she had been expecting some far more severe diagnosis.

Paulie glanced at Jakiikii and she just nodded tiredly as one eye opened and looked his way.

He cursed himself for a fool silently in his head. How could he have let her do this? She did have a tendency to get a little too focused, he had noticed it before on multiple occasions, but this was the first time he had seen her drive herself to literal exhaustion. And all because he was shit at learning yuuvian. He smacked a hand off his thigh as he leaned over and took a series of deep breaths, trying to calm his rapidly beating heart and stem the anxiety that had threatened to take hold of his system.

The smaukling quickly grabbed out some equipment and with practiced ease sterilised, numbed and then administered an IV into one of Jakiikii’s arms. Within minutes there was a slow but steady drip of sugars, vitamins and other nutrient-rich liquid feeding her taxed system. The slightly amber-colored liquid looked to him like watery honey, but he was sure it was some medical-grade amalgamation.

Jakiikii’s eyes closed and then the petals folded down and pressed up against the rounded portion of her head behind them like a flower bud closing for the night as her breathing slowed and she fell asleep. The feathered alien nodded their beaked head and then turned to look at Paulie.

“I think she will be fine. She needs some rest so her body can incorporate these.” She poked the slowly feeding drip-bag with a dull claw and clacked her beak twice in quick succession as if pleased with her handiwork.

Paulie nodded and looked around the room, there was a stool near one of the walls and he grabbed it, pulling it close to Jakiikii’s bedside as the others watched. “She needs rest, but I won’t leave her here alone.”

The doctor shrugged, “Suit yourself.” They squawked then stepped away as Mursk moved closer to him and Jakiikii.

The alien’s wings fluttered a little behind him as he shook his bug-like head. Compound eyes glinting like polished sapphires in the bright overhead lights of the aid station. “You and her, you have a very close bond.”

Paulie placed a hand on one of Jakiikii’s shoulders gently, her soft breathing slower and deeper now as she slept on her side, the breathing vents upon her back opening and closing with every new intake of air.

He nodded softly. “Yes.”

Mursk seemed to be looking for the words to speak, but instead shuffled a little closer and then placed one of his own suited hands on Paulie’s other arm. Paulie looked up at the alien curiously, even in his sitting posture, the armoured alien was barely taller than he was.

Mursk’s mouthparts twitched and he chittered in his native tongue. The autotranslator worked to pull all emotion and inflection out of the alien’s words, but the meaning cut through the noise regardless.

“I will guard you both. Not because it has been asked of me, but because it is my own will that will see it done.” And then he removed his hand from Paulie’s shoulder and with a bare twitch of his long and feathery antennae he moved to go and stand watch at the doorway of the room.

The words were simple, but their meaning was clear. What had started as a simple posting had clearly become more than a job to the insectoid alien. Paulie found himself smiling even as his underlying worry for Jakiikii cut through the moment.

Paulie turned his eyes back towards the woman he loved. This strange creature from another world. So unlike him, and yet..

He sniffed as the emotions of the last few days that had been building up in him tried again to tear free from his heart. A tear formed in the corner of his vision and he blinked it away quickly, this was not the time to break down in emotional torrents, no, now was the time for action. He grabbed the data tablet that she had still been clutching when he carried her into the room. He was hungry, but not so much that he could not make better use of his time than just sitting and moping in the silence.

He used his slightly improved knowledge of the GGI’s language to navigate the tablet to the learning program and then turned the volume down as low as it would go, he leaned forward onto the side of the padded examination table. He pressed the next lesson and started the program, the familiar jingle making him purse his lips even as he began tapping at the screen and following the prompts to the best of his limited ability. Apparently his level of competency had improved, as he failed slightly less than he had previously when he started. But the program still seemed to think he was a particularly dense youth as it kept prompting him with images of shiny award badges and trendy jingles.

He did this for a while, he was not really sure how long. But as the words began to blur and his head sunk down onto his shoulder he drifted off to sleep. Brightly colored symbols and alien phrases danced in his mind's eye even as the darker implications of something stirred deeper in the depths of his unwaking. Suppressed for now by the strange medications of a renegade doctor he had met deep in the bowels of the city.