Surviving this unfamiliar dystopia exhausted him.
He pushed the door open, expecting to see that silly bathtub for dolls filled to the brim, and found it hard to hide the dismay opening on his countenance when he saw her sitting, waiting there by a plain basin of hot bubbly water. Stacked close by were soft fluffy towels, and by her knees was one of those water-proof mats that was large enough for him to lay on. She was dipping her hand into the bubbly water, testing its temperature.
Clara looked over at him, her eyes impossible to read. She smiled, trying to appear reassuring, and he hoped the expression was as genuine as her intentions.
"Whenever you're ready Zim, you can take off your robe."
He stood rooted like a statue as he held the opening of the purple robe tightly to his chest. He felt the cool of his nakedness under there, and the uninviting chill beyond the cocooning fabric. He was only used to the professor bathing him.
"Zim?" Her question made his right antenna ring. "Are you okay?"
He shook his head, hardly believing he was suffering human help and kindness he was still so afraid to trust in. He'd believed that if he kept moving, if he kept going forwards, he'd be unstoppable. Now he could not move for fear of pain.
He clung on to whatever he could when defeat had him sink to the deepest depths. Looking back, even slightly, filled him with horror, but a glimpse that way also revealed what he had overcome.
Clara maintained her smile despite his stony silences. "It's okay, Zim. I won't bite."
Zim peered over at the bubbly water in the bowl. He'd suffered their sponge-baths over the weeks, and not once did the water sting or burn him. The sight of it however still filled him with the instinctive distrust of it: being on Earth had stamped many fears and uncertainties into his heart, and he was not familiar with what was safe and what wasn't without the sanctions of his computer.
"Here. Let me." Clara walked over, knelt down by his indisposed form and slipped off the long and soft purple robe. His eyes took on a frightened, miserable cast, as if being naked opened up new ways of being disgraceful. It didn't matter how many times he was stripped and then clothed again; whenever he was bare before them, self-loathing and shame crowded the colour in his eyes.
He tried to hide himself behind skinny arms and skinny claws.
Hands touched his shoulders. He tensed, emitting a squeaky growl.
Her gentleness was unreal. Every time she touched him, his defences rose to the rafters, expecting something malignant beneath her contact. Life was hard edges, mistrusts, hate and pain. Without Membrane's protection, he was adamant that Clara would change from her superficial gentleness into something else.
She guided him over to the water-proof mat. "Sit on the mat, honey, and relax."
He gave her that sharp, assertive look, and she knelt beside him, waiting, showing infallible patience. Her smile was fading at the edges, her eyes more confused than anything.
"Leave m-me." Please. "I d-don't n-need y-your h-help."
"Being stubborn isn't going to help you, Zim. And just because you've left the lab doesn't automatically mean you're out of the woods. You are still convalescing. Now, are you going to argue, or are you going to sit down?"
His eyes shifted to the mat, and back to her.
Fighting her, he could see, was going to get him nowhere.
Stiffly, he sat down, making sure to keep his bony legs over his crotch area.
"After we get you clean and snuggled up, I'll make you some soup. How does that sound?" He nervously watched as she dunked the sponge into the bubbly water. She lifted it up and he instinctively tensed, eyes screwing shut, fists clamped. "You carry so much tension in your shoulders." He felt her knead the sponge into his back under the PAK's mantle. He'd expected the water to be tepid, but the sudden heat of it was a wonderful surprise. Then she worked the sponge into and around his neck. The moan came out before he could stop it in time.
This is really... really nice...
There was little use resisting the flexes of his right antenna. As a cat communicated joy through its ears or tail, he did the same thing with his antenna.
Her eyes were looking him over as she cleaned him, checking for any new bruises or marks that would indicate bedsores or signs of self-harm.
Though he was not answering, she chatted away with the same attention and care. "Is there anything you want to work on first? Or what you'll want to build?"
"Se-security." He choked.
"You don't need to tackle everything at once. You'll still get it all done, Zim. Just enjoy the day as well."
He began to lean a little more into the sponge-massages, eyes lowering from the soporific heat. The sponge-baths were usually brisk and quick affairs so that they didn't exact too much energy from him and so that he didn't get too cold.
She threw a towel over his shoulders and proceeded to massage him dry.
Zim had to secretly admit that they were providing a damn good service even if their help was still making him tense with shame, but for a moment he allowed himself the comfort.
She was careful with him as he was mostly all bone, with little to no insulation protecting his organs.
Clara had fresh nightwear ready just an arm length away. He woodenly replied, stretching out each arm as best he could, and felt the fluffy soft material cloak his littleness. He knew he would sweat through this too, and he sighed.
"There. That'll soothe those shivers away."
How did she never find this strange? Perhaps in the lab there had been a sense of displacement, of surrealism when you had a fantastical scientist hurrying about with his fanatical machines and caring for an exotic otherworldly creature, but here, in an ordinary house, she acted as though she was looking after someone she had known for a long time. He tried to see past her affections, her warmth to spy the truth. But he could never find anything other than her sincerity.
"You wanna go for some homemade soup?"
They were always propelling food his way. "Not r-really hungry."
"That's okay, just manage what you can." She picked up the basin and sluiced the used water down the big human-sized bathtub's plughole. Seeing that as his cue, he woozily climbed to his feet. The floor tilted just a little before righting itself again, but the fleck of dizzying colours took longer to leave his vision.
She noticed. She came over, knelt down and wrapped an arm around him. "Do you feel okay, honey?"
The question was so very simple, and yet it entailed too much.
Zim only leaned into her, tired and dizzy. His lower legs were shaky. He had been dependent on his self-sufficient self-healing PAK - and he had never needed to give pause and regard his injuries – only to ever see them as novel and irrelevant inconveniences.
Living in this mortal hell without this reliability made him that much more careful and that much more timid. Every little bit of pain was much more terrifying and much more intimate.
They told him that he'd get stronger, with time. He didn't believe them.
"Let me take you to bed, Zim. It's no trouble." Her arms went around him. He fetched a set of claws into the fabric of her cardigan to hold on when she spooned him into her arms. Her hold was secure, and there was never a moment where he felt she might drop him, but for insecurity's sake he held on anyway.
She carried him back into his softly lit bedroom. The nightlight was painting the ceiling with dappling colour. When she set him down on the bed, she immediately bundled up his legs and torso, and shored up the pillows so that he could lean against them. He had long stopped stiffening or shrinking away whenever she went near or touched his PAK.
"I'm going to heat up your supper. You snuggle down and rest."
"Cl-Clara h-human?" His choke was filled with what sounded like water.
"Yes, honey?"
"Can I h-have something to d-drink?"
"Of course. Do you have anything in mind?"
He shook his head.
"That's okay, I'll get you something."
His wrinkled fuchsia eyes were drawn to her with a heavy intensity.
"Zim. Everything will be okay. Just remember that we're here to support you, and protect you. This isn't a limited affair. This is for life." She reached out, and stroked his cheek. His fear cooled: sliding away like shadows after the lights had been turned on.
When she left, he sat, cupping the blanket to his chest. He sipped in breath, gladdened when there was no wall of pain. Lying down all night made the coughing worse and he had scrunched up, hacking and spluttering until he was coughing up blood. Now he was breathing easy – and the scary event seemed far, far away.
He waited for her to return, looking for her company. Being alone wasn't quite as welcoming as it used to be, so he tried to hide the smile when she returned with a little tray of food.
"Just manage what you can, honey." She set the food on the bed tray after positioning it over his lap. Though hardly hungry, his spooch grumbled.
He reached for the cup of honeyed milk, and he slurped it down, his thirst seemingly increasing with every gulp. Before he had scarcely begun, she was prying the cup out of his little claws. "Not so fast, Zim! You can have some more in a little while. Wait for that to go down first."
"Who d-do you t-think y-you a-are?" He rasped.
She frowned at him, as if she had hoped their relationship wouldn't backtrack like this, and that she might be spared his anger. "The voice of reason. Be my guest if you want to vomit down your nice new clothes and bed sheets."
A dangerous glitter intensified in his eyes as he looked up at her, stupefied by her sudden sharpness. She didn't back down. His right antenna bobbed up and down, and the querulous fire in his eyes dissipated. "You su-sure are bossy."
"Well, someone's got to look after you. We both know you're terrible at it." She said with more kindness. "You can bark at me all you like, but I've got a job to do, and nothing you say or do will stop me from doing it."
That made him cock his head slightly, expression softening.
"Now try some soup. It isn't all that bad."
"D-don't stand there – w-watching me." He grunted.
She couldn't help but shake her head, smiling at his stubbornness. "All right, all right. Just don't forget to use your napkin."
He gave her a long look to make sure she was leaving him in peace before he lifted up a spoon and dipped it into the soup.
Clara heard a soft bump above her, like someone had just dropped a soccer ball on the floor upstairs. She paused and listened, and when she approached the bottom of the stairs, she could hear his shrill, frantic shouts.
She hurried up the stairs to find Zim throwing his clothing out of his wardrobe. His dresser drawers were all open, and blankets and towels spilled haphazardly out of them.
"Where's my uniform? What have they done with it?" More and more items he snatched out, his squeaks shrill and raspy. The chest that contained his gadgets and blueprints had been thrown open. The Gir doll had been left to rest against the cupboards. In the piles were the soft, colourful reams of clothing Clara had made especially to suit his dainty, bony frame.
His manic behaviour started to scare her.
"Zim, honey?"
He turned, vermillion eyes hard and full of venom.
"Zim?" She tried again, suddenly afraid to cross the threshold of the doorway and enter his territory.
"You took it!" He snapped. "Took all of it!"
"Took what?" She tried to keep her voice from shaking.
"My uniform, that's w-what!" Despite the lined padding of his white and blue sweater, his skeletal chest could be seen heaving in and out in elevated breaths.
"You don't need uniforms anymore, honey. You have all these nice clothes I made for you."
He stood slightly crooked at the shoulders so that it looked like he was stooping. Slowly his eyes lost that hard tint, and he blinked and looked at the strewn piles he had made.
Clara came in, very slowly, and knelt by his side.
Conflict was derivative in his nature, but when he was faced with amiable targets, and a life that gave him comfort and gentleness, he lost his footing in regards to suspected enmity, and he was often too late to realize that there was nothing to antagonise, or be antagonised by.
"I can make you something like a uniform." Clara went to say. "I can make you anything. Would you like me to make something for Gir too?"
Milky starlight fell into those eyes as if Clara had hit those precious buttons that opened the gateway to his deepest emotions. His good antenna curved upwards, and his eyes flickered.
"Zim, honey, what is it you want me to do?" Clara eased a hand onto his shoulder. She felt him tensely briefly before relaxing. Her gentleness had never failed to cool his fire.
"I just... thought I had my uniform... somewhere..." He looked abashed. His abrasive breathing started to soften.
She tried to conceal her worry, and smiled pensively. "That's okay. Why don't you relax and watch some TV? I'll put these away."
"N-No! No! I'll h-help!" And he started picking items of clothing with the furious haste of the guilty.
"Zim? Is everything okay?"
"Yes, yes! Everything's perfect!" He crammed the clothes and towels and blankets back into their habitual slots and drawers with unrefined disorderliness. Clara started slipping clothing back onto their little hangers and sliding them tidily into his miniature wardrobe. He avoided all eye contact with her.
"Done!" He closed the last drawer. "You can leave!"
She desperately wanted him to talk to her. "Zim?"
His response was sudden. "Leave me alone!" He spun round and almost fell from his weakened left leg. Grunting, he left the room with his head bowed low.
She sat there for awhile in the following the silence, wondering what to do. Slowly she stood up and walked over to his oval window. Looking out, she saw the little elderly creature walk at a limp down the garden path, head still bowed in shame. He headed for the garage, and then disappeared into the building.
-x-
Buzzing.
It was all he was aware of. Kind of like static on a TV. Spots, like incandescent fireflies, splashed too brightly into his vision.
He was aware of something else too, something dripping; wet and heavy, somewhere not far.
Thoughts registered, deep down, and a brief flare of panic followed the sudden notion that the dripping might be rain, and that he would get wet, and that would surely hurt. But the panic seeped clean away, like blood going down a drain.
The buzzing was more persistent moreover. He had the impression he was being pecked at by birds, and sullied by all things dirty and repulsive.
The panic returned, making more headway as an incoming wave does on a sandy beach. But, like that wave, it receded again.
His lips jerked at a foul taste.
The buzzing in the darkness was loud.
He felt something crawl across his face.
Both eyes cracked open, though he couldn't see much for looking.
He stared up at this thick, black thing above him, his mind puzzling at what it could possibly be. It felt like ages until he realized with dumb deliberation that it was part of the ship. The left wing. And that he was lying beneath it.
The dripping was more tangible.
His hand lay open. Sliding down from the crevasses of his claws were oily black tendrils. Another drip fell on his hand from the wing, adding to the tiny rivulet. He went to flex those claws, and watched them respond with academic surprise.
Something with wings stroked across his right eyelid.
His skin crawled at the awful sensation. It brought with it an urge to move, an urge to escape the horror of things crawling on him, but his body responded with categorical numbness. Each hand may as well have been chained to the concrete he lay on. He could barely lift them. His legs fared no better.
Panic did not just flare up this time, it boomed through him like an avalanche. His eyes flittered under hooded eyelids for any sign of Clara or Dib. When he tried to tackle words, a squeaky grunt came out of him. He wanted to yell, wanted to scream. It was as if someone was sitting on him, paralyzing him from the neck down. He produced another mewling grunt. The oil leak was making his hand go a funny colour.
Using tremendous strength, he shifted his hand, and the oil leak dripped onto concrete.
There was a cold current of air, and the sky went dark. Shakily he flicked his eyes up, and saw someone hover over him. They were a world away.
He went to speak, and only nonsensical squeaks came out.
She was a fuzzy silhouette half the time, her eyes hard to focus on as if she was nothing but a hazy, shifting afterimage. But her physical touch was inordinately real. The world tipped as she went to lift him. Zim owlishly stared through glazed eyes.
His eyelids crept downwards again, the comfort of darkness all the more appealing than trying to stay awake.
Clara saw that she was losing him. She propped him up higher in her arms. Zim was little more than a limp ragdoll. His eyelids had sunken all the way down, his antennae as floppy as black felt. His ripped one only helped accentuate his fragility. "Zim? Baby, don't do this to me! Stay awake! Please you gotta stay awake!"
A blob of dark green appeared under his nigh-invisible nasal slits. Attracted by the smell of blood, the flies kept hovering over and around him.
Clara went to lift him towards the house when Zim slipped into a seizure. The spasms seemed to climb through him, like conductive electric, and in shy moments his little body was cramping into painfully tight curls. His jaws clacked together convulsively, eyes rolling all the way back. Spittle was running from the side of his mouth and onto the floor. His head was rocking up and off her arms, and when he seized up, there was the awful clanging sounds of his PAK smacking the floor before she had time to place her hand under it.
Senses frozen, body stiff in fear, she knelt back down, laying his quivery legs on the footpath. He made distressed grunts, chest heaving discordantly as if his diaphragm was tightening.
Terror swept in and numbed her. It was the whiny, grunty sounds of misery spilling from Zim's throat that broke that dreadful paralysis and she quickly pulled off her cardigan jumper and positioned it under him so that it would cushion his skull and PAK.
Her hands were shaking as badly as his were. "Shush, baby, shush." She began stroking his chest in soft, circular patterns.
She could feel the spasms deep inside, muscles clenching and fluctuating with no semblance of order. He spluttered up hitched and choked gurgles. His claws arched, freezing up in mid-grasp.
She brought a shaky hand to her mouth and cried into it.
Just stay calm! Wait for him to come out of it.
Behind her, the flies settled on the spot where he had lain. A spanner lay close by. There was oil on his hand too, and on the concrete were droplets of dark green.
It was impossible to stay calm. She had no phone on her, no way to contact anybody until she got back inside.
In an attempt to tackle her own shock she continued stroking his chest.
The basement was where he'd had his last episode of them when he was still weak. After a few weeks, then a few months without incident, they had put it behind them.
She wanted to lift him, tuck him up in her arms and cradle him, but she knew enough to know that it wasn't wise to move or restrain him when he was having seizures.
Clara noticed a sudden, sweet, metallic smell. She only had to look a little further to see the darkening material around the front of Zim's pants.
She stroked the outline of his skull, just shy of his shredded antenna; "I'm so, so sorry, honey. It'll be over soon. I'm here, I'm here."
The grunty noises he was making faded, and she was left with the terrible sounds of his right knee striking the floor, or the thrash of his slender muscles as they involuntarily seized, cramped, relaxed, and seized again.
His right antenna did not respond at all as if its inner cord had snapped.
Claws scratched weakly across the floor. Then he drew an uneasy, strangled breath, and his body sunk into an eerie limpness that frightened her as badly as the seizure. When she drew a claw into the warmth of her hands, and felt its creeping chill and bounding pulse.
"It's okay, honey. You're safe."
The blue fluids sluggishly gushed up the tube. Though his body was still curled up, his sides began to heave up and down to the rhythm of starved lungs. His left arm and leg were still plagued by perennial tremors, but the rest of him lay limp.
Anymore paroxysmal throes raging through him started to space out, and the duration of these subsiding moments also began to lengthen. She cooed softly to him, her caresses continuing long after the last painful shudder had been and gone. But he wasn't drawn back to consciousness, and remained deathly limp and floppy.
Cold, panicked sweat had soaked his shirt and pants.
The blue liquids flowing up the tube were slower going round, and were much choppier. When she placed a hand on his chest, and held it there, she could feel his heart pounding, but its rhythm was intermittent and unsteady.
Zim hitched into difficult coughs, coughs that brought up apple green froth.
She didn't feel brave.
Keeping him snuggled in her lap she helped sit him up a little, hoping against hope that moving him slightly like this wouldn't trigger another seizure.
The hitching and spluttering resumed, almost to a strangled pitch. It was a desperate, ugly kind of sound; a noisy mixture of chokes and rasps with no real breathing involved. It was the sounds of a creature drowning, and sometimes – most times in these moments – he didn't seem to know how to breathe at all.
Leaving him just for a moment to grab a phone seemed the right thing to do. But, in that moment when she'd grabbed hold of that final decision, Zim's eyes flashed open to red watery ribbons and grunty mewls tore out of his throat. He was waking.
Tears splashed down his face, intermingling with the frothy drool around his lips and chin.
Clara tried to breathe past the sudden grief crushing her own chest. "Zim, I'm here. Breathe for me. Breathe for me baby."
It was a nightmarish mix of strenuous hyperventilation and coughing as he choked down breath. One seemed to hassle the other.
She knew these sounds, these ineffectual splutters and squeaky chokes that did nothing for the lungs or heart. It took her back to the bad days in the professor's lab when Zim had really distressing nights, back when he found breathing too hard and too painful to manage alone, back when he had to be kept warm, back when the professor had medical kick-starters on standby in case his heart couldn't endure the battle.
She sat him up higher; positioning him like one would position a limp doll, and then she turned him round, and hugged him against her shoulder, patting the place beneath his PAK to try and dislodge the fluids in his throat and chest.
"I want you to breathe with me, Zim. Nice and slow." She emphasised the sound of her own breathing, doing it slowly. When she inhaled, he tried to emulate her, coming up short every time as if his crushing fear was adding weight to his chest. Clara held his left hand in hers and repeated her breathing until Zim was finally able to take easier, slower breaths. They were still on the fast side but the improvement was noticeable.
"Shush now, shush, I'm here. You're gonna be okay."
There was a laboured squeak as ribs stubbornly drew in and out again.
"Stay calm honey, it's okay. I'm here." His breaths were coming and going in and out too fast to do any good. "I'm going to carry you inside, butterball, where it's warm."
She could feel the shakes gather inside him again.
She sat with him, rocking him gently in her arms, listening to him breathe, hand jammed over a set of limp claws that were icy cold. His heavy head leaned against her shoulder, the wetness of his clothes plastered against her own. The little creature's body was drenched.
She was aware of the flies. They buzzed close to her ears. One stubborn blue bottle kept aiming to land on his shredded antenna. Every time she tried to shoo it off, it came straight back like a boomerang.
"Ready, Zim? It's going to be okay. You'll be comfortable indoors." She squeezed his hand, encouraging him to concentrate on her, "I need you to keep breathing slowly and deeply." She gave him a moment. "Okay, sweetpea. Here we go. Nice and calm now." She kept a hand against his head as he seemed to have no control over it, for his skull rolled across his shoulders like an iron ball.
Whenever he coughed, she could hear the liquid in his throat and chest.
She was mindful to keep his head on her shoulder; his damp rear supported by her other hand. Usually he fetched his claws into some article of her clothing that reflected deeper insecurities, but this time he didn't hold on.
Lifting his limp form, and holding him close, she carefully walked down the garden path and through the threshold of the door, the darker shadows from the kitchen looming over them. She hummed a tune to him all the while.
Carefully she settled him down on the sofa, cushioning his head with a pillow and lifting his legs with another. His hooded eyes held that rigid, unfocused gaze: and dark crescents had appeared beneath them. His muscles were tense, the palms of his hands bloody where his claws had jabbed them. The drying blood from his nosebleed painted his lips in wet emerald.
He tried to take a deeper breath, only to clench up, surrendering to another painful coughing episode that had Clara wincing.
"It'll pass, Zim. Shush. It'll pass."
She rose to grab a blanket. He was shivery and wet, but leaving him provoked the Irken to react in terror, his wheezing transforming to a strangled pitch.
Clara was at his side in seconds, clenching his trembling claws in hers. "Easy, Zim, easy. I'm here. I'm h-here..." She ran a hand over his forehead and cheek. He didn't feel very warm, but he grew calmer as she caressed him with soft cuddles and soft words.
Her mind was a fevered whirlwind - thoughts were blinkered - mouth dry as panic barrelled through every door and every shutter.
"C-C-Cla..." He couldn't finish.
He tried to position his elbows from under him to lift himself up, eyes glazed and blank. Clara gently placed a hand on his chest to push him back down. "Relax, honey. It's okay. Don't worry about a thing."
It took another few moments for him to get his breathing under control. Dampness had accumulated on the cushion under his head, and there was the heady scent of metallic urine in the air.
His right antenna bobbed with timorous life, and the quick flashing in his tubing had eased. Her comfort seemed to be shepherding him away from the darkest of his panic. The death-squeaks: and the symphonic consequence of his cardiac asthma were lessening with each cautious lungful.
A latent shiver, from body cramp or shock caused Zim to rattle heavily.
His right hand, weak and directionless, rose to clasp his chest.
Clara guided his hand away and gently rubbed his chest for him, hoping this would help knead away any pain. As she ran a massaging hand up and down his chest, she could feel the pointy curves of his ribs beneath the sweat of his clothing. "I need to get blankets for you, honey. I won't be long. You be good and stay exactly where you are. That's an order." The panic, and the fear of her leaving him, even for a moment, made him reluctant to settle.
Sweat had saturated his clothing as surely as water. His green skin that had been a healthier pastel shade had now paled to a washed out lime. It accentuated the feverish gloom ringing his eyelids and the shiny sheen of sweat on his forehead.
He moaned. It seemed to be all he could do with the strength he had left.
"I'll be back, honey, I'll be back."
The old Elite mewled in panic. He sounded like an animal squealing for its life.
Clara stumbled through grief as much as she stumbled through her duties in a cloud of surrealism and disbelief. She was in a nightmare and there was no exit.
There was no telling how long he'd lain out there before she found him.
In moments she was back, padding him in blankets in an attempt to tame his shivers. His face had a whitish look to it, eyes wide and staring. "D-Dib... Dib..."
"It's all right, Zim. It's all right now."
He was gulping, shaking in illness or terror. "D-Dibb..."
"Oh baby, he's not here right now. Shush, shush. I'm here. Breathe. Breathe."
He took a breath too sharp for his lungs, and his coughing was relentless. He reactively tensed, a high whine erupting from his throat at the pain.
Supporting his glowing PAK with her arm so that he couldn't slump down too far, Clara unhooked the plastic mask and unrolled the tubing. Gracelessly she planted the mask over his face and adjusted the valve to the required specification. The canister's nozzle started to hiss as it delivered oxygen. Zim breathed in with effort: and was met for his pains with more coughing.
Her panic heightened. "Slow down, honey. Take your time. It's okay. Take a breath. That's it, and let it out again through your nose. There you go." She stroked the back of his neck. "That's better, honey."
There were ashy tint to his cheeks but the dark terror in his eyes wasn't so palpable. Just being able to breathe, with her beside him seemed enough to placate his panic, but his surging shivers continued.
"D-Di..." His croak was breathless.
"I know, baby, I know, but he's not here right now. How about I get you something to drink? I'll call Dib and tell him to come home as soon as he can."
Zim's limp antenna slowly lifted, and a light seemed to click back on behind his empty eyes.
He went to speak, but his words rattled out like autumn leaves.
She plucked a clean tissue from her pocket, lifted the mask and gently wiped away the line of blood that had started to dry from his nosebleed.
Despite her best efforts, he was still shivering. Clara reached for his claws, and squeezed on them.
Clutching the phone, she shakily dialled and then pressed it to her ear.