She woke slowly, gritting her teeth to hold back a moan. She ached with the accumulation of small pains and larger ones all competing for her attention. All over, from the tips of her fingers to the ends of her toes. It wasn't an uncommon feeling, it was one that had accompanied her for a long time, but today it seemed somehow worse, against the softness of the quilt on her skin, the give of the mattress beneath her. Pain in comfort. An offer of something better and the threat of something worse. Because comfort was only ever there to be taken away and the pain lived on and on.
The hand was gone from hers as had the soft breathing of those who had surrounded her in sleep. The Soft Voice still sat where he had been when she had returned to rest though now the shuffle of papers had joined his own noises. He stood and she tensed a little as he stepped towards her.
"Good afternoon. I hope you enjoyed your rest. We have a lot to do today."
She woke slowly, again. The pain was absent, her mind filled with the lightness of care that drugs brought. Footsteps sounded nearby and the small amount of adrenaline pushed some of the fog to one side. She was back on the raised chair, something sharp moved in her arm as she shifted, her left wrist felt heavy and tight. The footsteps paused behind her and she flinched, pulling herself into a ball and hoping that she could be hidden behind the chair she was stretched out on. There was a sigh from behind her and the footsteps moved up to her side. Knowing that there was no hope of not being seen now, she cringed back, not sure what to expect. The man stood at her side for a moment, still, observing and then there were a few moments of activity. He didn't seem to touch her but she was suddenly filled with a leaden tiredness, weighing her down and dragging at her mind. She returned to oblivion.
Jesse watched from the doorway as Adam brushed a lock of hair from Shalimar's relaxed face. She had returned to her foetal position in the middle of the medilab bed and Jesse realised that she must have woken up and Adam had just sedated her again. Backed up by the faint creamy swirl of sedative in the clear sugary solution that Adam had been feeding her intravenously to combat the malnutrition that was obvious on her thin form. He stepped up beside their mentor, enjoying being able to be close to the feral - absent for so long - without risking scaring her.
"How's Emma?" Adam asked, knowing that the molecular had been checking on her.
"She's still sound asleep. That's almost forty hours straight now Adam, do you think she's OK?"
"She's fine, she's finally allowing her body to metabolise the sedatives. It will take her a few days to sleep them off completely. It's been a big strain on her, what ever she was doing to reach Shalimar." Their attention turned back to the feral beside them.
"How long will it be before you know if the operation went right?" Jesse asked quietly.
"The pin's out now, and it came out all in one piece and cleanly All I can do is hope. We won't know until she sits up and walks out of here. In any other case at this point she would start on a course of physiotherapy, but I really can't see any realistic way of doing that. We'll just have to see what happens." Adam sighed and looked back down at the blond, curled up on the bed. "Help me straighten her out, I'll do one more scan and she can go back onto the mattress. It'll be more comfortable for when she wakes up again."