Case Study: Wet

“Thank God you’ve come,” the healer-assist said. “They won’t listen to me. I know what I’m seeing, but they’re so sure nothing like this happens ‘in civilized space’—” The human halted abruptly, hand at his ear.

Jahir and Vasiht’h stopped simultaneously, on the same foot even. The mindline had intensified when they’d stepped off the Pad into the bustle of the acute care facility at the hospital, so much that their bodies had synchronized in response. Their guide was listening to a telegem earbud and the moment its news accelerated his heart-rate they were both already moving to follow him. “Quick, he’s seizing. This way!”

They ran, Vasiht’h’s footfalls a quadruple drumbeat to Jahir’s longer strides. They passed in a blur, pale tall Eldritch with hair a white flag, centauroid Glaseah, glossy black fur reflecting the bright hall lights. Vasiht’h’s clearances for the hospital was over a year old but everyone recognized Jahir, and no alarm sounded when they sprinted after the man who’d summoned them and into a room where another human was flailing hard enough to have induced the halo-arch to withdraw to keep him from injuring himself against it. Jahir was already shouting over the chaos “DON’T SEDATE HIM, NO SEDATIVES!” when he crashed into the side of the bed and reached for the body. Vasiht’h pulled back to avoid touching the patient, friction burning his paw pads and haunches almost grazing the floor.

“Who the hell—”

“What is he—”

“He’s cleared, he’s a specialist!”

“His vitals—”

All of it vanished as Jahir dropped into the man’s mind like a plummet. The mindline shot after him, his anchor to the real world, and he trusted it and Vasiht’h to haul him out. If they didn’t, he’d die with the addict, because wet left no survivors.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” the attending physician said, hostility defrayed by the sudden change in the statistics still being reported by the halo-arch. “And how did you get here? I know him, but who are you and what’s he doing here and not over in general admission?”

Vasiht’h flexed his toes, slowly, slowly. The sensations from the mindline he shared with Jahir were distant flickers, too sickeningly quick for normalcy, and feeling them brought back terrible memories... but his task in this required him to be calm in body and spirit, so he breathed deeply, concentrated on letting his anxieties fade. Before he’d finished, the healer-assist who’d summoned them spoke.

“I asked them in. They’re xenotherapists, they’ve seen addiction cases before.”

“This is not—”

“This is a klaidopin case,” Vasiht’h said before the physician could barrel on.

“You mean we’ve got a wet addict?” one of the other assists said, startled.

The physician scowled. “So HEA Rogers said, but there was no specific evidence, and this is not a part of the Alliance known for street drugs. If you hear hoofbeats in Texas, you don’t assume zebras.”

“Wet gives a look,” the healer-assist said stubbornly. “I’ve seen it before. This patient has it.”

“A look,” the physician repeated.

“And a feel,” Vasiht’h said. “Which we could sense from across the room.” Which was, Goddess save him, the absolute truth. He’d seen enough wet cases to know one after that benighted residency he’d insisted Jahir accept.

The physician frowned at the patient, whose body was limp under Jahir’s hands. “What is he doing, then?”

“Bringing him out of the episode,” Vasiht’h said, flexing his toes again. The claws pricked out. “We’re linked espers. We work with people’s dreams; it’s given us a lot of practice dealing with the subconscious mind.”

“And is that what’s causing the seizure?”

“No,” Vasiht’h said, suppressing his anxiety with difficulty. “This isn’t a dream or a psychosis. It’s a self-destructing brain. There’s no negotiating with it. It’s like a spinning gun emptying itself. The best you can hope for is to grab it without being shot.”

 

Flashes of color. Light. Sound. Utterly nonsensical. Jahir fell into it, head tucked down and arms protecting it from the barrage. The battery was physical, as far as his consciousness was concerned. Worse than blows. Like being sideswiped with knives, some of them slicing, others bruising but promising worse. He drew in a deep breath and exploded outward, willing order onto chaos. The strain of it was winnowing. He never knew, throwing himself into a dying mind, if this one would be too far along for him to help—or make it out.

He pushed. The mind pushed back, trying to overwrite him, to make him undifferentiated from it, to make him as fast, as disordered, as frenzied and senseless as it was. He refused. He breathed out a white calm.

Be still.

NOISE

Be quieted.

LIGHT

Be calm.

EVERYWHERE EVERY WHICH WHERE GO THERE GO HERE NOW EVERYTHING EVERY EVERY EVERY

It was always his hope that the first attempt would work. When it didn’t, he reversed... and drew the excess energy into himself, and with it, the disease.

 

The patient’s vitals abruptly stabilized.

“What the hell?” the physician murmured, but Vasiht’h was already diving for the bed. He dragged Jahir off it bodily and wrapped his arms and forepaws around his partner, tucking his head against Jahir’s in time to catch it as it fell limp. With a knife made of anger and fear he cut the bond between the patient and his partner and dove into the horrible reflection impressed on Jahir’s mind, into disorder and meaninglessness and fury. But unlike Jahir he was fighting on familiar ground, and he had his long history with the Eldritch to call on, years and years of working with intertwined minds until some part of them resonated with one another. When he reached, when he made himself the center, the spinning slowly stopped, the colors softened, and the noise fell away, until he could feel Jahir’s arms around his upper back, smell the sweat on the Eldritch’s brow.

“All here?” he said, low.

“All here,” Jahir answered, hoarse.

“We need a recovery room,” Vasiht’h said, ignoring Jahir’s weak denial, a bare wash through the mindline.

 

Half an hour later, Jahir was holding a cup of hot tea in a quiet room with a fish tank embedded in one wall. Vasiht’h was sitting on the floor beside him, legs stretched and toes digging into the floor. The physician had joined them, taking the chair across from them.

“He seems to be stable for now. We didn’t have to sedate him.”

“You can’t sedate him,” Jahir said. “Sedation kills them.” He cleared his throat. “There is no stopping the process. The moment he overdosed, his fate was sealed.”

“I don’t know much about klaidopin,” the physician admitted. “But it can’t possibly be that cut and dried. Is this withdrawal? Can we address the symptoms?”

“That’s what you were trying to do before we got here, isn’t it?” Vasiht’h asked.

Jahir shook his head, hair shifting against his throat. His eyes were closed. “The withdrawal symptoms are irrelevant. By the time you have to worry about them, it’s too late. The brain’s compromised.”

“No one’s ever been able to mitigate the damage?”

“No,” Jahir said, and opened his eyes. “He has three days, maybe two.”

The physician studied him. “Whatever you did seems to have cost you a great deal.”

“It does,” Vasiht’h said before Jahir could say otherwise. “It always does. It’s why we don’t work acute cases.”

“And you say he’ll die?” the physician continued.

“Three days,” Jahir murmured. “Maybe.”

“Then why did you intervene?” the physician said. “If it was today or three days from now, why waste yourself on it?”

“To give you those three days,” Jahir said, looking up at him without lifting his head. “No one’s ever been able to mitigate the damage. But someone, someday, might find out how.”

The physician sat back in his chair. None of them spoke for several long moments. Then he stood. “You can stay until you’re ready to go. And thank you for your assistance.” He paused. “I may ask for your help again. If that’s all right.”

“We’d be glad to help, anytime,” Jahir said. “And you’re welcome.”

The two said nothing to one another after the physician left, but Jahir liberated a hand from the mug to rest it on the back of Vasiht’h’s shoulder. Through it their sense of one another in the mindline intensified until the aura of the hospital receded.

 

The healer-assist checked on them later. “Need more tea?”

“No,” Jahir said, rousing himself with a sigh. “Thank you for calling us in.”

“It was an act of courage to go around the doctor,” Vasiht’h added.

The man snorted, sitting on the chair the physician had vacated. “If a doctor tells you a zebra’s a horse, it’s not courage to tell him he’s wrong. Besides, he’s not all bad. You gave him something to do, didn’t you?”

Jahir started. “Did he tell you?”

The man guffawed. “No. But I haven’t been going to the two of you for my problems for a year without knowing how you work. You always give me something to work on so I feel like I have some power over something, like I can do something productive, right? It helps me, so it’ll help him. Us professional healers are all alike.” He smiled. “So what did you give him?”

“The task of looking for a cure for wet-related brain damage,” Jahir said dryly.

The healer-assist whistled. “Well, guess a guy’s gotta have ambitions. You two need anything else?”

“No, we’ll be leaving in a few minutes,” Vasiht’h said firmly.

“Daley?” Jahir said. “Where did this patient come from?”

“No clue,” the healer-assist said. “Someone dumped him on our doorstep and left without giving us his name. He had a standard jumpsuit on. No patches or names on it. I’m betting he came off one of the transients at the dock. Some independent freighter captain, maybe, getting rid of a problem. “

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Jahir murmured. “If you would... be sure to inform Fleet. They’ll want to know.”

“I will.”

“Thank you, Daley.”

“See you in two weeks,” Vasiht’h added.

The healer-assist paused at the door. “Want me to tell you when he passes?”

Vasiht’h said “No” at the same time Jahir said, “Please.” They looked at one another and Vasiht’h sighed, relenting. Jahir said, “I’d like to know.”

 

They saw their clients as normal for the following two days, but both were aware of the silence that lingered in the mindline, the awkwardness in their interactions. They no longer moved in lock-step; they were not even aware enough of one another’s physical bodies to avoid occasionally bumping into one another. When the call from the hospital came Jahir intercepted it, accepted the news, and then disappeared into the kitchen. Ten minutes later he brought a single mug of steaming kerinne to the common room where Vasiht’h was reading a book on his data tablet.

“For me?” Vasiht’h said, taking it.

“I’m sorry,” Jahir said.

Vasiht’h looked away. “I... I am too. Just the memory of that stint we did in Heliocentrus—”

“I know,” Jahir said. “And I remain sorry to this day. Sorry that I didn’t listen to you, and sorry that we went through it.”

“But not sorry for the experience,” Vasiht’h said.

“No,” Jahir answered softly. “I learned too much about people. And about myself.” He smiled. “And about you too, and where we both belong.”

Vasiht’h sighed out, slowly, the steam blowing off the surface of the drink. “I guess the patient died.”

“Just now,” Jahir said, sitting on the floor beside him, knees up and arms resting on them. Their shoulders were just touching.

Vasiht’h swallowed. “Every time you did that, arii, back when it was new to us...all those dying people...” He flexed his fingers on the mug. “Every time you did it, I knew you weren’t going to come back.”

Jahir met his eyes, then leaned over and rested his brow against his partner’s. /I can’t make any promises/ became /I know/ became /I love you because you have to try/ and neither of them bothered to untangle it.

“Go get a cup of coffee,” Vasiht’h said. “And let’s do something normal for the night.”

“Gladly,” Jahir said.