It had been a long night.
This was partly a cop-out but really the most expeditious way she could think to convey that sense of time pulling and stretching out until it was so thin you couldn't imagine how it wasn't tearing. That a night could be the same number of hours yet feel so different in how it turned them and pulled them in a completely new direction. Like they had been played with.
So, this was how the dawn found her after that long, somewhat frantic night, with her forehead resting on one hand while she scribbled notes about that night. She knew the urgency of her task because she would need these notes for details to be easily recalled. She made bullets and underlined specifics, writing quickly, trying to capture the minutiae before it faded into wisps that became shifting fluid in her mind.
A sharp knock on the door frame drew a fraction of her attention, just enough for her to raise a finger saying, "just a moment", but not enough to stop her pen. When her thought had finally come to it's conclusion she scanned back over it's recitation on paper and felt a bit of calm when she found it to her liking. That always happened when she could feel prepared going into something. It was what had made her a successful doctor, her ability to spend quiet hours and moments thinking of ways to respond to emergencies and bring order to chaos. It soothed her.
"It's time," the man at the door said, his voice deflated, while he watched her gathering her papers and x-ray films, scans and other images, and trying to hide the fatigue in her limbs. He could see it written all over her, from the tendrils of hair that had slipped out of the bun at the base of her neck that she didn't bother to fix, to the way she moved like being slowed even more by the humid air. That could have just been the heat though, unrelenting as it was pressing down on them at all hours of the day.
Thinking of the heat the man took off his thick glasses and wiped them on the hem of his shirt, a nervous habit, but it did little more than smear around the collected moisture in the fabric instead of cleaning the lenses like he had wanted. He sighed and made a mental note to clean them properly before going to bed later. The woman passed through the door and together they set off down the hallway. Their steps echoing off the tiled walls that had long since started to chip away in disrepair.
At the end of the hall, before the double doors of the exit, the pair paused at the last room where a medpod hummed and clicked with displays and constant readouts monitoring the life inside. The woman went in and scanned the monitors one last time to write down a few numbers. She paused at the viewing window over the head of the pod, putting her hand on it and letting her breath out slowly not realizing the small pressing together of her eyebrows reveals her concern at the precarious situation of the pod's occupant. At least right then, the man inside was stable.
Outside in the bluish, predawn light, they skirted the edge of a cobblestone courtyard, keeping tucked under the eaves of roofs that would cascade torrential downpours during the rainy season and direct water to drains in the small courtyard, kept free of debris surreptitiously to avoid bringing attention to their activities in the small cluster of buildings partially hidden by jungle. The man and the woman made their way towards the last building, where another man sat on the stoop, his head leaning against the wall and his eyes closed finding a few moments of rest. When they approached, the man on the stoop opened his eyes and then rubbed them with the heels of his hands and stood slowly, extending every inch of his six-foot-five frame so it filled the doorway. He was unusually tall for anywhere, especially this planet, where the natives rarely broke six feet.
"Are you both ready?" the man on the stoop asked, knowing the answer but still providing the formality of the question.
The woman and the man with the glasses both nodded. The woman shifting her stack of papers and other materials, while the man tried again to clean his glasses.
"Well, let's get this show underway. No point in delaying the inevitable," the man on the stoop said, stepping aside to let the other two into the building. While the man with the glasses busied himself at a bank of monitors, typing at different stations and adjusting dials while watching a screen displaying a 'Call Status' image, the tall man settled at a table while the woman began laying out her materials opposite him.
The seconds slipped by while the connection to homebase was secured and the trio all said a silent prayer that this debriefing wouldn't take very long as their beds were all calling their names. But they didn't hold out too much hope that they would find rest anytime soon, as the harried face of a the senior ranking officer filled the main communications screen and a smaller window in the corner displayed their video feed that was surely taking up his view. He did not look happy.
But again, it had been one of those long, change-everything-in-the-blink-of-an-eye, kind of nights.