Chapter 16
Tamara's headache gradually faded as the morning went on, but her guilt didn't. Rush was very still. She pottered around the infirmary, trying to keep herself occupied, determined not to leave him for any reason. She kept wishing he would say something because any conversation she tried to start died before it began. He seemed especially withdrawn today, lying on his side beneath the blanket, facing away from her. He didn't move whenever she checked on his I.V. or adjusted his blankets; he just ignored her completely. Was he upset? Gosh, she hoped not. Talking had been so easy lately and she hated to think that she had knocked it all out of groove. For an hour she sat in the chair by his head, just listening to him breathe. She could hear a rattling sound that hadn't been there before. She didn't know how to tell anymore when he was awake or asleep, and he hadn't eaten in so long that it was a small wonder he had no energy to do anything. He was probably too tired to talk. She sighed to herself, resting her face in her hands.
It was going to be soon. She could feel it. He probably could too; maybe that was why he was so reclusive today. The blood thinners were gone, and the pain medicine was close behind. She found herself looking at her supply cabinet, at the third shelf from the top, the far left side. That's where she kept the sedative. She would be using it soon.
"Everything okay, Lieutenant?" he asked suddenly. She heard him clear his throat.
Thank goodness he was talking. "Hmm?" she said, hesitant to say more for fear of scaring him off.
He shifted, struggling to twist onto his other side. "You haven't spoken today. Something wrong?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm okay," she assured him. "I just…didn't want to disturb you."
He raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't asleep."
She shrugged. "I couldn't tell." He just nodded, and she sighed. "Actually, I was afraid you were mad at me."
He narrowed one eye in confusion. "What for?"
She gestured to the alcohol bottle that still sat on the little table. "For flaking on you last night. We didn't even get to take a walk."
He looked amused. "You obviously needed the rest."
"Yeah, but…" She knew she hadn't fallen asleep as much as passed out. But he just waved a hand and shook his head.
"Doesn't matter anyway. I didn't…feel much like walking."
She wanted to feel reassured, but that really just made her sad. "Oh. Well, good then. How did you sleep?"
He shrugged. "Fine."
His classic answer. She could only nod. "Okay."
He coughed into his shoulder. "Anyway, now that we got that straightened out, don't you think you should go get something to eat?"
"Why, are you hungry?" The little sparkle of hope died when he shook his head.
"I meant for you."
She forced a smile, crossing her arms. "Why do you keep trying to get rid of me?"
He squinted at her, but she'd been studying his expressions long enough to know that there was no anger there. "I'm not trying to get rid of you," he countered.
He was giving her an excuse to step away for awhile. She smiled for real. "Thank you, but I'm perfectly fine right here. If I wanted, I could get someone to bring me something."
"Maybe you should. You're annoying when you're hungry."
She slapped his arm lightly. "You're just annoying."
That time he smiled.
The infirmary door opened then, and in came Matt with Chloe and Eli. Tamara suppressed her disappointment at their interruption and hailed them with a wave.
"Good morning," Chloe greeted them, although by now it was after noon. She looked the best out of the three. Matt was wobbling on his feet, obviously hungover, and Eli looked like he just woke up. Chloe came around to Rush's other side.
"Morning," Tamara replied.
"Morning," said Rush.
"The colonel wanted us to let you know that we're going to be gating to a planet pretty soon," said Scott, squinting against the lights. Tamara thought of Varro and had to fight hard against a smile pulling at her. Matt had stood no chance. "It might have some foodstuffs, and if we're lucky it'll last until Earth."
She nodded, unsure why it took all three of them to come and tell her that. She suspected Matt had been given the order and the other two were looking for an excuse to drop by. She heard Rush cough again, and when he didn't stop she eyed him. He really didn't sound good, and he kept rubbing his chest. "You all right?"
Rush nodded and cleared his throat again. "Water, please," he said, and Chloe handed him a mug.
"Becker thinks he can make it stretch," Matt went on, "so hopefully this'll be the last time we have to drop out of FTL. It'll be nice knowing that the next-"
Rush suddenly choked and dropped his mug to the floor, and Chloe stumbled away with a gasp. He curled forward, coughing furiously into his hands, sucking in thick, wet breaths. Blood was coming up with the water.
Eli was instantly swearing and shouting. "What's going on? Why is he doing that?!"
"I don't know!" Tamara yelled back. She thumped her hand between Rush's shoulders. "Hey, hey, come on! Breathe!"
Rush's face and hands were sticky and red. He kept fighting to inhale, kept fighting to speak, choking up little clumps of curdled blood. Scott was on the radio, shouting for Colonel Young, and Tamara wondered how in the world he thought the colonel could help. Chloe just stood horror-stricken to the side with both hands covering her mouth while Eli looked on with bugged eyes. Rush achieved a breath deep enough to deliver one last liquid cough, and then he fell into stillness, panting. Tamara held him close to her chest and sighed. He kept his hands close to his face, eyes fixed on something by the far wall. His entire body shuddered.
"Lieutenant," he gasped out.
"Yeah," she breathed. She squeezed his shoulder and crouched down in front of him. "You okay?"
He hesitated just a moment. "What would you like me to do with this?" He showed her his hands without looking at them. Cupped inside was an enormous, glistening red slug.
Chloe almost fainted. Matthew threw up. Eli turned away. Tamara hastily snapped on a pair of gloves and took the thing out of Rush's hands and placed it into a basin, clueless as to what she would do with it after that. Rush sat very still on the bed, not looking at anyone, his red-stained hands hovering in the air. Afraid to touch anything. His mouth was locked shut. Tamara hurried to change her gloves, then wet a rag and gently began washing off his face. He didn't move; he just closed his eyes and let her work. Chloe reached for his hands, but Tamara stopped her.
"Gloves," she said. "Biohazard."
Chloe shakily tugged on her own pair, clearly trying to resist the tears, and began wiping off his hands.
"T.J.?"
The colonel was at the door and looking not quite sure if he should come any closer. "Just a minute, sir," she said.
Young didn't wait. He made his way over, dodging the vomit on the floor and the queasy Eli on a spare bed. He came to stand by her and was obviously trying to maintain his composure, though his eyes said it all. "What happened?" he murmured with controlled evenness.
She gestured to the basin with her elbow. "He just brought up a bunch of clots from his lungs."
Rush shivered and kept his eyes shut. When he was cleaned up again, he slid down into the bed and burrowed into the blankets. The colonel waved T.J. out of the room and into the hall.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"You know what it means, Colonel," she snapped, more harshly than she meant. The adrenaline had receded, leaving her shaky, her nerves shot, and now her headache was back. At his lightly raised eyebrows, she said, "Sorry. But it just means he's very, very close. Do I know how close? No. But the blood thinners are gone, so at this point there's nothing keeping him alive aside from his own stubborn will. I'll be shocked if he is still here at this time tomorrow."
He reached for her, and she realized she was crying. She let him collect her, locking her arms behind him and sobbing into his shoulder, trying to draw comfort from his hand rubbing up and down her back. "I'm sorry, T.J.," he said. "I'm so sorry."
"I know it's coming," she whimpered. "But I'm not prepared, I'm not. I don't want him to die."
"I know."
She lifted her head to look back into the infirmary and saw Chloe in tears by Rush's bedside, holding one of his hands and brushing back his hair. Rush was saying something Tamara couldn't hear. Chloe was just shaking her head and sobbing. Matt was on the floor, cleaning up the mess he'd made, and Eli was pacing. Tamara held the colonel a little tighter, took a sequence of deep breaths to steady herself again, and pulled away. "I need to get back in there. He's going to to need pretty constant attention from here, I think."
He nodded and let her go. He waved for Scott to come with him, and the lieutenant reluctantly made his way out, casting unhappy glances behind him as he went.
Tamara returned to Rush's bedside and pressed the back of her hand against his forehead. No fever. That was strange after so long, and a crushing sadness fell over her as she realized that his body was finally giving up the fight. She pulled her hand away, not sure what to do with herself, and crossed her arms.
"You okay?" she asked him inanely.
He nodded. He was lying, but what could she do? Chloe remained steadfast at his side, but he had gone quiet now, staring longingly at something near his left hand. Or perhaps it was at his hand. He'd been doing that a lot lately.
"What's the matter?" Tamara gently asked, but he didn't answer. He was the worst kind of patient. It was impossible to treat someone who wouldn't tell you where it hurt.
Chloe stroked some hair away from his face. "His ring," she sighed, for him.
Tamara hesitated, unsure if she should ask. She watched the two of them share a look.
"The aliens took it," Chloe explained quietly.
She looked back at Rush. His eyes were closed now, tiny tears at the corners. She kept helplessly silent.
"I have an idea," Chloe said suddenly, and she got up and disappeared. Tamara took the opportunity to sit in the chair at his head, noticing vaguely that Eli was gone. She hadn't even seen him leave.
"Rush." He looked at her. Now that she had his attention, she didn't know what she wanted to say. She just wanted him to be aware, to stay with her for awhile. She smiled, just a bit. "Hey."
He licked his lips and looked ready to speak, but then looked away and said nothing. She got up and got him a glass of water, allowing him to rinse and spit into the basin.
"How's your pain?" she tried. It was hard to keep the hysterical waver out of her voice.
"Still there," he said softly. "But tolerable."
He had to know that they were running out of analgesics. He'd been taking so much, so often, and they'd not had much to begin with. She wondered if he was really managing or just trying to conserve. He hadn't asked about the blood thinners, and she hadn't told him, but neither had she given him any, and he had no doubt already pieced that together on his own. She reached out and combed her fingers through his hair, rubbing his head and neck. He closed his eyes and swallowed.
Chloe returned then with a little piece of paper. A peek showed Tamara that it was a photograph of Rush with a pretty brunette. She didn't need to be told it was his wife. Chloe timidly held it out to him, softly asking, "Does this help?"
He opened his eyes, which widened, and he took the picture from her with a nod and a very weak thank-you. He pulled the photo reverently to his chest and closed his eyes, and Chloe smiled a little, then excused herself and left the infirmary. Tamara, sensing that he would rather be alone, squeezed his shoulder and moved away to give him some space. She stayed out of his line of sight and began slowly sorting her supplies. Whoever came onto the ship after them would need to know what and where things were.
She felt a powerful, territorial kind of jealousy at the idea that there would be some other doctor here pretty soon. Even though she wasn't staying, this was still her infirmary. She had gotten it up and running, she had arranged it how she liked it, she had reset bones, stitched wounds, transplanted kidneys, and soothed souls in this room. And now she was going to have to turn it over to someone else who was probably just going to mess it all up. They'd better not move the desk, she thought, frowning. It was in the perfect spot to be able to see all of the patients at once.
She had no real right to tell anyone what to do here, she knew that. But that didn't mean she had to like it. She was the first medic ever to serve on this ship, and as such, her knowledge and experience caused her to absolutely reject the thought of other doctors and nurses who thought they knew better coming on board. It made her physically ill. For a moment, she wished she could stay.
She sneaked a glance at Rush. He probably felt the same way knowing he was going to be replaced. He loved this ship. He knew it inside and out, and now it was going to be put in the hands of someone who could never appreciate it the way he did. She knew what it would do to him to be stuck on Earth knowing some other scientist was walking these halls, pushing buttons, exploring systems, repairing damages. Unlocking secrets. It would be unbearable for him…if he had been going to live to see it. Not for the first time, or the second, she caught herself thinking of the two words that had been bouncing around inside her skull since the day the colonel said them: Cyanide pill.
No, she told herself immediately, physically shaking the thought out of her head. She would not entertain that idea. She simply would not. He was a good man, and he had saved her life for a good reason, and she refused to consider anything to the contrary.
She consolidated two half-empty boxes of plastic tubing into one. She counted syringes, stacked squares of gauze, and bundled up cotton swabs. Then she moved on to the really interesting supplies: the various plants and medicinals she had collected from a passel of planets. She wondered what Earthly diseases could be cured with these alien treasures. She'd learned more within these walls than she ever could in Seattle, she knew that much. Earth medicine almost sounded dull in comparison, though infinitely more valuable to her for the amount of time she had left there. She might even get the chance to personally witness the miracles these things could accomplish.
Because of him.
She looked again at Rush. She found him staring at the wall, his hands resting in his lap, gaze empty. The photograph had fallen to the floor. She went to his side and picked it up, sitting in the chair as she handed it to him. "Here."
"Thank you."
"Something wrong?" she asked. He shook his head. Lying again. "Are you sure?"
He kept his eyes on the wall, lost inside his own head. She looked at the picture and the hands holding it, noticing dried blood around his fingernails. She tugged on a pair of gloves and tenderly began to clean it all away.
"Not much time left, is there?" Rush finally asked. He still wasn't looking at her, but she shook her head anyway.
"No," she said softly. She swallowed hard. "It'll be soon, Rush."
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, not answering. Her task was completed in silence, and when she was done she shed the gloves and took the load to the biohazard bin. Upon returning to his side she just sat quietly, looking at the picture again, until a new thought came over her, and she reached out and covered his hands with her own.
"Hey," she whispered. "Talk to me."
"About what?"
She squeezed his hands. "Anything. Everything. Tell me about yourself."
He frowned and finally looked at her. "What?"
"I hardly know anything about you," she said. "I want to know more."
"Why?"
"Because no one does." And once he was gone, there would be nobody left to tell his story. The memory of him would fade and he would become just another name, one of billions that had disappeared into the past, and no one would know any more about him than what could be found online. Which, she assumed, really wasn't much more than professional biographies or academic journal articles. She couldn't save his life, but she could help him live forever in a different way. "Everyone deserves to be remembered," she told him gently. "What do I tell my family about the man who saved my life? What do we tell our children? Don't you want to leave something of yourself behind?"
He gave no answer, staring at her, before turning his face to the other wall. She didn't leave. She sat and she waited, still holding his hand, noting how he didn't pull it away. She wouldn't ask again; she would let him come in his own time. And in time, her patience was rewarded.
"I grew up in Glasgow," he began, very quietly. "Scotland."
"I love Scotland," she answered without thinking.
He looked at her in surprise. "You've been?"
Embarrassment warmed her face. "Well, no…but I've, um…seen pictures."
He stared at her, and she feared she would lose him, but then he laughed in perplexity. "Wow."
She smiled, relieved. "I know, sorry. I really would love to visit, though. I hear the Highlands are beautiful."
"Well, what you've heard isn't half as beautiful as they really are."
She smiled. "I'll have to see them for myself one day."
He nodded. "You should. Go in the summer."
"I will."
"I hope you like rain."
She grinned. "I love rain."
"Then you really will love Scotland."
She squeezed again. "Tell me about your family."
He hesitated, then nodded. His father was a shipyard worker, he told her. He didn't remember his mother because she'd left when he was very small. He had no brothers or sisters or other family that he knew of. He grew up poor, but his father had loved him fiercely. The man died two months before Rush was sent to Icarus.
"Climbing accident," he explained. "He lost his grip."
Tamara flinched. "I'm sorry."
He nodded. "Me too."
She patted his hand and smiled. "Tell me about your wife."
He did. Slowly, at first, with no small measure of self-consciousness, but the more he spoke, the easier it came. Tamara hung on every word. She knew intuitively that she was beginning to uncover the man Gloria had loved. She had long known he was in there somewhere, buried deep beneath all the nettles and stone. This was the Nicholas Rush of the past, all affection, all class, genuine, before his heart died.
He stared at the picture, brushing his thumb over the woman's face. His Gloria was a concert violinist, he said. He'd first seen her when she was playing for the families in the waiting area of the hospital treating her, where he was working cleaning rooms at the time. He liked embarrassing her sometimes by pulling her off the stage during rehearsals to dance. She liked embarrassing him by showing up during his lectures and kissing him in front of his students. (He really rather liked that, he confessed, but he was afraid she would stop if he told her so.) She liked gardens and books, and she especially liked both together. Italian food was her weakness. She won three battles against the cancer before she finally lost the war. Through it all, through everything, her loveliness was unrivaled; her patience, infinite; her love, boundless. She was his anchor, his pillar, and his entire soul. She took all of that with her when she was put to rest back home in England, in the same garden of stone where their daughter slept.
At some point Chloe and Eli returned to the infirmary with food from the planet. Rush didn't send them away. They sat around, and he told them of working at Cornell with Andrew Covel and how he was ultimately recruited by Daniel Jackson. He told them about the time he broke a former friend's jaw. The night he talked someone down from the Golden Gate Bridge. How he always feared, growing up, that he would never find a place where he would fit. He had found it on Destiny.
He didn't have a favorite color. He loved American Westerns. He disliked bananas (it was a texture thing), and he wasn't convinced marshmallows were a food. He couldn't tell the difference between a good wine and a bad wine. He enjoyed the violin the least of all instruments, even though he loved it the most.
Like shrapnel, these fragments of him fixed in Tamara's heart and mind. They went deep. Unstitchable wounds. But even as it hurt to keep them, she welcomed the pain that would ensure their never being forgotten. When he finally got quiet, either out of things to say or perhaps lacking the energy to continue, Tamara looked to the open doorway and saw Colonel Young leaning against the frame with his arms folded, listening. He met her gaze for just a second before he closed his eyes and disappeared.
Chloe and Eli left also, in close conference, whispering.
Tamara alone was left, and there was nothing she could say except a very weary, "Thank you."
–
Nicholas had talked himself to exhaustion. His mind registered the lieutenant's expression of gratitude just enough to wonder about it, but he felt too disconnected then to muster a reply. These were things he'd never told anyone. No one had ever bothered to ask. He was thankful that she had, thankful to be given a chance to show himself as he used to be, since he was fairly certain most people didn't believe he had ever been anything other than what he was. It was a lesson in catharsis. What was better was having someone to listen who really, genuinely cared. He said a prayer of thanks for Tamara, glad the world would get to enjoy her for awhile longer, and in a rare moment of tranquility he didn't regret giving away his injection.
He was particularly thankful she had asked during one of his rational moments when he still had the wherewithal to remember these things. He wasn't stupid - not yet, anyway. He knew his mind was failing. Every day it got a little worse - forgetting where he was, forgetting why he was there, forgetting how to do simple math. His ability to retain information was abandoning him more and more often and kept taking longer and longer to return. After the lieutenant fell asleep last night, he had spent a long time lying awake, feeling inexplicably lonely, anxious, unable to sleep, his muscles torqued with cramps. He had tried to comfort himself with numbers until he was finally forced to admit that he couldn't remember what the number five was supposed to look like. He'd turned his mind over to chasing another distraction instead - memories of Gloria - but discovered in a moment of strangling horror that he had completely forgotten her face. That was when it occurred to him just how bad this nightmare was going to be. He'd panicked then, searching his dying mind for any hint of her, but she was gone, stolen from him once more, and he was practically hyperventilating by the time that former Alliance member came to calm him down and give him the painkillers. He was too wrung out to stay awake for much longer after that.
Chloe, in her untold wisdom, had saved him by bringing him that photograph. It took everything he had not to break down in tears like he hadn't done since he was a child.
He dreaded the day he forgot forever what was really important. Gloria's voice. Gloria's name. The sound of her violin (thank heaven for his iPod). Those precious years they'd had together. How much he had loved her, and why. It was bad enough that he'd already forgotten Eli and Chloe once. He had spent this entire morning just trying to remember Tamara's name. He couldn't even work anymore, and at this point he was too afraid to try. He probably would blow up the ship. How much more would be taken from him before the end? Would he remember enough to know? Would he know enough to care?
He hated to think of how many people would see him like this. He didn't want this. He wasn't so unmoved as to think that his mind was the only good thing he had left, but that didn't mean he wasn't terrified of degenerating into a drooling idiot before all and sundry. He had made Tamara promise that she would give him the sedative before it got that far. He didn't want to fade, memory by memory, into obscurity. Into oblivion. Into a state where he didn't know who he was, or what he was, or why he was, only that he was, never to know more, never to understand anything beyond a one-dimensional awareness of his own existence, and then at the end of it all, to perish. He couldn't think of anything more frightening than forgetting himself.
Except, perhaps, being forgotten by everyone else.
He might have disengaged there for a while. Perhaps he was dozing with his eyes open. The next thing he knew was that Chloe was back, standing at his side. She smiled when she realized he saw her. He wondered where Tamara went.
"Hey," Chloe said. She stopped fiddling with the iPod dock on the table and sat in the chair. She was fancied up, wearing that pink dress she'd worn to Icarus, and her hair fell in soft waves around her shoulders, freshly done. "I thought of something earlier."
"You look nice," he told her. He was still trying to catch up.
She blushed. "Thanks. That's part of it. Can you do me a favor?"
He didn't know what he would possibly be able to do for her. "Well, that depends."
"It's not big," she said. "I just want you to stand up."
That was suspiciously simple. "Stand up? That's it?"
She smiled and nodded. "That's it."
He knew full well that wasn't it, but she had that look again of shining hope dimmed by doubt, and he didn't want to smother that. So he turned and swiveled his legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the pain crawling along his body, standing to his feet with her help. She immediately stepped up close to him, put her other arm around his back, and nuzzled into his neck.
"What are you doing?" he asked her.
"Shh."
A soft, slow song began to play. She rocked him gently from side to side, and he belatedly realized what was going on. "You could have just said so," he teased, holding her close. Her grip on his back tightened. A kino appeared and hovered nearby, and he scowled. "Eli…"
"No, it's okay," Chloe said. "I asked him to do it."
"Why?"
"Because this is a special occasion."
Was it? Her voice sounded strange. Almost like she was afraid - but no, that wasn't the right word. Uncertain, maybe? Cautious. Stepping onto something that might shatter beneath her.
"And what's that?" he wanted to know.
She raised her head to look at him, and he frowned to see tears in her eyes. Softly, with a trembling lip and an unsteady voice, she said, "Daddy-daughter wedding dance?"
She found the kino. He was unable to breathe again, but it wasn't like this morning when he was choking. It was an attack of emotion, something like joy, something like pain, something that made him hold her a little tighter and press his lips against her forehead. Her hand traced soothing tracks across his back. He swallowed hard and nodded. "I can do that."
She held fast to him, mindful of his frail state. They said nothing, just swaying to the music, paying no mind to the kino making very slow wheels around them. They lingered there like that for so many songs that he lost all count. He didn't want to let her go. Somehow, with her, like this...he didn't hurt as much.