I know she believes it. I’m not sure I do.
Hannah comes over with her clothes and crouches down too. “Do you think it’s the air mix?” she asks Margot.
Neither of them do, but they don’t have an answer either.
“We’ll get her in the med unit when we get home.” I help Chrys to stay upright while she pulls her pants back on. “I want the previous data to compare this to,” I say before Margot can argue that they have one on site.
“Sometimes, I think you can read my mind,” she says, watching me carefully.And we both know you can. So you take her home and you get this figured out, or I will be a problem.
I don’t acknowledge what she’s thought, and Hannah doesn’t notice the pause in the spoken conversation. She’s too busy taking care of Chrys. She asks about the drink Margot made.
“I didn’t even take a sip of it. I had coffee before this, so I didn’t need it.”
When I pick Chrys up, she makes a tiny noise of objection.
“I know you can walk, but you’ll humor me this time.”
She sighs and says “fine” and tucks her head against my shoulder.
I focus on Margot’s suspicion because Hannah’s thoughts are too often colored by grief. Shock and even Risk try to avoid her for different reasons.
Margot tells me to drive safe as Chrys says goodbye to the other women watching us from the other side of the room.
Their thoughts are a cacophony of worry, surprise and… approval.
I’m grateful when we step into the lift and it’s just the two of us again.
Chrys’ hand curls in the front of my shirt and her thoughts bounce from spaghetti to a seventh birthday party to Jessica’s lab homework on her bed.
“I am so tired of sleeping,” she says with a sigh as we step back out into the daylight.
Her position in my arms gets a few pointed looks from men heading inside, but they all mentally agree that Margot wouldn’t have let me leave if it was a problem. They ignore us and move on.
A song I’ve never heard pops into Chrys’ mind behind what I assume is Earth math, but it could be one of the thousands of languages on her planet.
When I set her down in the car seat, I softly tap on her forehead. “It’s noisy in there.”
“Yeah… that’s just how it is sometimes.”
“No wonder you’re always tired. Your mind doesn’t stop.”
“Jess likes to say I never learned how to rest.” She laughs when she says it, but it’s not a happy memory.
“Jess doesn’t always know what she’s talking about.”
This time, her laugh is genuine. I get in the car beside her and pull the cover down over us.
“Let’s get you home and see what’s going on.”
Chrys falls asleep right after we pass the city limits. Her dream thoughts are quiet, but they meander the same way her waking thoughts do.
A hundred connections made in moments… I don’t think shewouldbe asleep if she wasn’t still affected by the sedatives.
The car beeps at me every few seconds, reminding me that I’m speeding—I never put the wiring back together.
I ignore it. The sooner we get home, the better.
When I ease the car into its charging point, she takes a deep breath and stretches… like she wasn’t actually asleep at all, just resting her eyes.
