........
NOW its done, Jesi.
I am halfway through writing what Sid thinks of the next morning, but am not sure when I might get finished.
We shall see.
........
Put the syringe down real soft because a doctor is never rough with his instruments or his patients, take one last look at the sleeping merc who’s draped across my gurney like a hound-dog across an old porch, strip off the blood-stained gloves and hang up the apron, walk down the hallway and into my tiny room, shut the door softly and then punch the wall so hard they’ll hear the crack away up in the bridge.
Zhu fuen chse!
Does every single thing on this gorram ship have to be made of metal?
Hell.
They just brought him aboard.
Because he’s a ‘friend’.
Anybody else they’d have left him there to bleed to death, which wouldn’t have taken too long, scalp wound like that.
But since ol’ Sidney Xou is a friend of theirs, they couldn’t just leave him planet-side. Not when they have such a reliable doctor on board to patch him up.
Headboard of the bed ain’t metal. Course it just splits in half when I kick it, which don’t help none.
Since when do Culhain and George even have friends? Not since I’ve seen, anyhow, and if they have to start, why start with him?
Hell.
When I watched them wheel him in and I saw all that blood, wo de ma if I wasn’t scared for the bastard.
I slowed the bleeding down and started to go for the anaesthetic and then just stopped and looked.
Three years can add a lot of scars, I bet, but his face looks just the same.
Which don’t matter.
He was just…Sid was just…
Hell.
All out of things to hit.
He woke up just when I slipped the needle home, opened his eye and saw me.
Three years can add a lot of women too, I bet.
I was all set to scowl at him, but he just smiled, and then I couldn’t.
Just smiled, like three years hadn’t gone by and he was waking up and seeing me next to him, liking the sight.
Never happened. He skipped out before I ever opened my eyes, never to be seen again.
Till now.
He smiled and then he blacked out again, but before he did, he said something.
Something. He didn’t he did not he did not he did not he did NOT say my name.
Gorram it.
It was a mumble.
He’d hit his head.
What he tried to say was ai ya. Damn. Not Ayla.
Like as not he wouldn’t even remember my name, man of as many worlds as he is.
I’ll have to go in there in the morning.
I’ll have to check his vitals and make sure the scanner didn’t miss anything important.
I’ll have to talk to him and there’s not a thing in the ‘verse I’ll know how to say.
He’ll like as not call me bao bei.
Hell.
I want to break something, but there’s nothing breakable left.
Not here anyway.
Lots in the infirmary, though.
I don’t let myself think too much about that idea, just pick up my boots from the floor, flick the light off and slip out into the hall.
Nobody’s out and about at this hour but me. Empty humming hallway is all there is between there and here.
When I shut the door behind me, I don’t look at him, just grab a bandage for my hand and wrap it up, and then sit down on the floor because I’m liable to fall anyhow.
Not a thing in this gorram galaxy ever goes the way it ought.
His seabag’s beside me, and I reach for it, wanting to count his guns and find an excuse to hate him – not that I need one – but all of the sudden I’m tired, so tired, and it’s easier to lie down than it was to sit.
Easier to shut my eyes than to keep staring at Sid.
Second last thing I think as I slip off into sleep is that I’m going to feel all manner of foolish when he wakes up and sees me stretched out on the floor with my head on his seabag.
Last thing I think is that it smells like him.
Hell.
No comments:
Post a Comment