Chapter 9

Mason was leaning against the wall outside one of the exam rooms of the orthopedic practice.

"Are you okay?" Tyra asked.

He looked up from the patient file he was scribbling notes into. "Yeah. Why?"

"You look tired and you haven't said but about five words to me all day."

Mason was silent for a moment. "I… having Cam gone is hard." He knew Tyra had a realistic concept of the emptiness. Her husband had only recently gotten back from a seven month deployment. Cam had only been gone for about a week.

She put a hand on his arm. "Do you want to come have dinner with me, Ross and Lizzie tonight? Eating dinner alone can really rub your nose in the loneliness."

"Thanks, but no, I have surgery in the morning. I'll probably try to make an early night of it." In one way he probably could've used the distraction, but over the past two days he'd been having shielding problems. The idea of spending extra hours in the company of other people was probably just going to make him more frazzled, even if those people were good friends. Headblind friends. The thought occurred to him that driving out to Division P and talking to Peter or maybe Danny might help him feel less like he was coming slightly unglued.

At the end of the day, Mason sat staring at MRI images on his computer. He had three new patients who'd had the scans done this week and he never trusted what the reports had to say. Too many radiologists blew through fifty scans a day and missed all sorts of things. A little chime from the Blackberry on his hip let him know he had new email. He pulled the phone loose and glanced at the screen.

There was one from Cam. Thank God for twenty-first century technology. Even though Cam wasn't volunteering information about his relationship to the Navy, before he left, he and Mason had agreed that they weren't going to make any extraordinary efforts to keep their feelings for each other out of their emails. So far the few emails that they had exchanged had been pretty low key and wouldn't have raised eyebrows for anyone.

Mason popped the new one open.

My day totally sucked. How 'bout yours? I pulled a bolter today. Yeah the deck was pitching a little but I've been doing this for a batch of years. No excuse. The LSO about chewed my ass off. Bolter =missed the wire and had to go around for another pass – I suddenly realized you probably have no idea what that word means.

LSO threatened to send me to the flight doc on board, says I look like crap. I'm having a hard time sleeping. Don't know why. Maybe the ton of people thing. You know what I mean. Sorry about dumping on you. Should be back in six more days. Miss you.

Those last two words were like a sucker punch. Mason had to get up from his desk and walk across the room to quell the surge of emotion in his chest. He stared out his office window into the dark parking lot.

Cam had been gone for nine days so far. The first four hadn't been so bad. Over the next three, the whole empty house every evening and empty bed every night thing had really begun to get to Mason. He spent more time at work and more time at the hospital trying to take his mind off the loneliness. It had helped in one way, but then the shielding problem began creeping in. Jesus God… he felt pathetic.

How did Tyra cope with having her hubby gone for months? Did the fact she was headblind make a difference? Tyra was one of Mason's best friends. She had been newly married when she first started working for the practice. He'd known her through one deployment, the birth of her daughter and then another deployment. They'd taken a dance class together for a couple of months in an effort to help her weather her husband's absence. That thought made him grin just a little. Ross, Tyra's husband, had been surprisingly amused by that. He had laughed and said it got him off the hook and since Mason was gay, he was no threat to their marriage.

Mason's thoughts circled back to the hollowness he was feeling with Cam's absence and he was uncertain what he should put in his reply so he procrastinated and called Peter.

"Hey, what's up?" Peter answered.

"Are you going to be around for a while this evening? I… I need… an opinion," Mason said. He knew he was being vague but it felt hard to explain his problem over the phone.

"Yeah, I've got nothing much going on. Danny's in Baltimore and I'm at loose ends."

"I'll see you in about an hour then."

***

When Mason showed up at Peter's apartment, Peter immediately knew there was something wrong. Okay, it didn't fall in the dripping blood, grab a crash cart category, but it raised red flags. Peter and Mason had an odd friendship that had started out in the mentor-student category and had segued sideways into something closer to colleagues over the past half a year.

"Come in. Take a load off. Want a beer?" Peter offered.

"That's sounds like a good idea." Mason sank into a chair in Peter's den. Peter returned from the kitchen and handed him an open bottle. He also took that opportunity to wrap his fingers around Mason's wrist. Mason gave him a slight glare, but made no move to pull his hand free.

Peter got a flash of unhappiness, annoyance and resignation in one quick pass. There were hints of something subtly wrong underneath, but he couldn't quite place it.

"You know, you could just ask me why I'm here," Mason said.

"Okay. So why did you drive the better part of an hour rather than talk to me on the phone?" Peter let go of Mason's hand and sat on the sofa across from him.

"Having Cam gone… I miss him. I know that's not your problem, nor is it something you can actually help me with, but the past couple days… I feel like I'm having shielding problems. I'd chalked it up to my own pathetic-ness, but Cam sent me some email that implies he's having similar issues." Mason handed Peter his Blackberry with the email opened. "You have some idea how hard-ass he is about trying to hide anything that implies he's in pain. If he mentioned it, it must be close to driving him up a tree."

Peter read through the email. "Have you been doing any of the grounding exercises?"

"Yes, I tried that. It doesn't seem to help. It's not awful. It's not like taking codeine or some other narcotic. It… it just feels wrong and difficult and I don't know why it's happening."

Peter handed the phone back to him. "Are you having trouble getting the shielding up or keeping it up or what? Be more specific."

"Up and down seems fine as an action. It seems more like a strength issue or maybe it's a permeability thing. The background noise is louder and more abrasive. It makes me feel edgy."

"Are you having sleep problems like Cam?"

"No, nothing more than just sleeping alone sucks. But I'm at home and he's on a ship with a few thousand other people." Mason picked at the label on the beer bottle with a fingernail.

"Good point."

"It seems like with him it may be leading to flying mistakes. Although I don't know how to separate serious fatigue from whatever distraction effects he's experiencing from shielding problems," Mason admitted.

"I'm not sure the two are capable of being separated. I think the whole vicious circle thing may come into play. Lack of sleep leading to trouble focusing leading to protection issues and on around."

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Do you think this is going to get worse? Or is it just going to take a while to adjust?" asked Peter.

"That was supposed to be my question to you."

"Well, fuck…. I don't know," said Peter.

"The first few days I didn't really notice any problems, but the last two days... it feels progressive. From the purely medical point of view I know that can be misleading. Take a total knee replacement for instance. A lot of people experience a couple weeks of increasing pain as they try to regain mobility, then it starts getting better."

"True. I don't suppose you can actually talk to Cam on the phone while he's out?"

"No, not unless I can justify this as an emergency. We're stuck with email. At least this is a short cruise. Fifteen days."

"What can I do for you? Do you want me to mess around in your head and see what I come up with?" Peter asked.

"Oh, now you actually ask me," replied Mason with a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

"You could talk to Stephen. He may be able to tell the difference between what's emotional and what's more physical."

"Um, no offense 'cause I do actually like the guy, but I'd rather it was you than him."

"He might conceivably be better at solving the problem."

"I'll keep that in mind. I'm okay. I'm functional. I can do my job. It's just…"

Peter sensed the frustration in Mason and he relented. "Okay, okay, I'm just throwing out ideas." He got up and pulled the rolling desk chair from under the desk in the corner of the room. "Just lean your head back against the cushion." Peter pushed the chair around behind the upholstered chair where Mason was and sat where he could easily place his fingers against Mason's temple. "Just close your eyes and pull up your shields. I'm going to poke around."

Mason obeyed.

Exploring the texture of the protective layer in Mason's mind, Peter was hard pressed to decide exactly what was wrong. The surface wasn't quite smooth, but Peter had seen much worse. A few cautiously applied prods proved Mason was capable of defending against average contact.

"Are you okay with letting me in?" Peter asked.

"Yeah, fine. I think you get off on poking around another healer's brain."

"Do not… much," Peter teased.

With Mason's shielding dropped, Peter's psychic touch was more careful. What he found both surprised him and mystified him. The damage was subtle. It probably didn't even qualify as damage per se. It was more like hypersensitive edges, a little reminiscent of skin rubbed until a blister was almost about to form but stopped short. He put a little pressure on the spot and Mason flinched, eyes squeezing shut. Mason's shields came up in a messy half-assed reflex.

"Okay, easy, I won't do that again," Peter said. He thought about trying to soothe the pain, then realized he wasn't sure how.

"Are you done?" Mason demanded, voice tense.

"Yeah, I'm done. Sorry."

"So? What did I do wrong this time?"

"I'm not sure you did anything wrong. I don't really know what the problem is or how to fix it," Peter admitted.

"Great." Mason rubbed his eyes.

"Drink your beer. I need to think about this for a while, and Stephen still may be a better option at figuring this out than me."

***

The pain of the headache thudded behind Cam's eyes with nauseating force as he sat on the edge of his bunk on board the carrier. His shift would start in an hour and there would be the obligatory briefing before he flew, followed by the air discrepancy book check before he ever climbed into the cockpit of his F/A-18. That gave him maybe three hours. Too bad he wasn't scheduled to be a "tower flower" today, he probably could have faked his way through just being up on the oh-ten level and answering questions for the air boss as launches and recoveries occurred down on the flight deck.

He sat there with a boot in his hand, flight suit half unzipped wondering whether he was really capable of getting behind the stick. Leaning down to set his shoe on the floor made the decision for him. The surge of agony with bending over nearly made him vomit.

No pilot wanted to be declared med down, but there was just no way he was fit to fly. His vision was doing wonky things because of the head pain and the lights in the room felt laser bright. Sunshine would be worse.

Cam fumbled his other boot on and reluctantly made the decision to go down to sick bay. Hopefully somebody there would give him a handful of Motrin at least and sign off on letting him come back here to sleep for a couple of hours, or at least lie down there and not have to move.

As he headed from the 03 level down toward the second deck, the pain got worse and so did his vision. Damn, he could barely see out of his right eye. It felt like somebody had stabbed a big-ass dagger into the side of his head.

Halfway down the ladder between 01 and the main deck, Cam missed a step. He felt himself falling and made a flailing attempt to grab the railing. He missed. His back and elbow slammed into the steps then his ass and he hit the deck at the bottom with enough force to drive the air out of his lungs. Lost in pain and fighting to draw a breath, he lay in a crumpled heap.

"Holy shit dude! Um, Sir. Are you okay?" asked a male voice.

Cam managed to open his eyes enough to see some Petty officer who looked barely old enough to shave bending over him.

"No," and Cam passed out.

***

Cam woke up as he was being strapped to a back board. A couple of corpsmen and a doctor carried him down two more decks and through about fifty compartments to sick bay. He was X-rayed and asked dozens of questions and generally poked and prodded before the decision was made that he was suffering from "only" a migraine and a lot of bruises from his stumble in a really bad spot. They kept him in sick bay for a couple of hours to make sure nothing else showed up, then had the squadron corpsman walk him back to his cabin to rest.

The Percocet and phenergan combo obliterated his already shaky shields but he ceased to care because he got six straight hours of drugged into oblivion sleep.