Cure for Calamity - SCP Foundation

At first, I thought I’d suddenly lost my senses. I paced my sterile white chamber in anxiety, wringing my hands while attempting to still appear calm. If those so-called doctors were watching me through the cameras, it would do no good for them to observe emotional instability. I’d already heard them mutter of diagnoses, but I was sure I wasn’t borderline anything. Relatively sure.

Eventually I went to my medical bag, retrieving a small vial of a component that I recalled as being particularly fragrant. Just the memory of the smell was enough to grimace, but the threat of hyposmia was worse. When I unstopped the cork, I was hit with a terribly strong odour, confirming in graphic detail the extent to which I could smell. I quickly closed the vial and dropped it back into my bag, vaguely wishing I’d picked a better scent for the reality check.

But even if I could smell harsh medical supplies, that didn’t explain the absence of the Sickness’s distinctive scent from the facility’s notably sick halls.

It wouldn’t make sense for me to suddenly lose the ability to perceive the Pestilence; if I had, it would have likely been a slow taper into oblivion. But this was as if someone had snapped their fingers and annihilated the diseased human race.

After a long good bit of deliberation– it could have been hours, or very well days, for there were no devices to keep time in the room– I came to a decision, and fished inside my robes for the small plastic rectangle I’d stashed away long ago. With precise motions, I swiped the keycard into a box beside the door; it beeped, and the light indicator turned green. Finally, the door opened with a clunk, magnetic locks disengaging, and I pushed it open to reveal an empty hallway.

I frowned, a bit puzzled by the lack of guards. If they’d been observing me through the cameras, they would have noted my escape, and personnel would surely come running. But there was nobody, only the faint hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.

Actually, there was someone. A researcher in a plain lab coat, slumped on the ground as if they’d been paralysed mid-step. No notable injuries, though I would only be able to ascertain the cause of death if I performed an autopsy.

As I knelt down to roll the researcher over, my thoughts alighted on the memory of a humanoid. Not the one in front of me, but instead many containment cells over; much smaller than the person laying on the ground, and much paler, albino colouring accented by the slight blue hue of his skin. I didn’t know where exactly they held him, but as I peered at the clipboard that had clattered to the ground beside the labcoat-clad corpse, I found a solid clue.

‘DELIVER SCP-6118 TO THE HUMANOID HOSPITAL - IN ROOM 14 OF BIOHAZARD WING. NEEDS TO BE DELIVERED BY 16h00 FOR TPN SETUP. RESISTANCE NOT ANTICIPATED.’

The date printed on the memo was a day prior to the one shown by the researcher’s watch. Nobody had come for the body. It dawned on me that the lack of the Disease was not due to a cessation of my senses, but because there were no humans nearby, if in the building at all, to exude such a stench.

There were notes underneath the instructions, mostly about safety precautions, such as mask-wearing and thorough sanitisation of the hospital room he was to stay in. Who knew the alien fell ill so easily– I would need to tailor my actions accordingly. Only a negligent doctor would fail to take into account the physical condition of his patients.

On physical conditions, I thought as I walked, the alien had appeared quite slight in our last encounter, and I was hit with a bout of worry at the indication that he wouldn’t have been fed in multiple days. Total parenteral nutrition was quite the unconventional approach for methods of intake, and I wondered why the Foundation had gone that route for him.

I paused mid-step. I was worried? That had to have been nonsense, as I hadn’t been worried for the wellbeing of another organism in decades, if not centuries– much less something humanoid.

I tried to shake the feeling as I continued on my way to where the biohazard containment wing no doubt lay. Despite my relatively well-practised suppression of emotions, I couldn’t force aside the feeling at the back of my mind. This was concerning.

The keycard I’d gotten ahold of was, thankfully, of a high enough level that I easily accessed the biohazardous containment sector. Chemical disinfectant sprayed from the ceiling as I stood inside the access airlock, and it coated my robes before being blown off by cold air. The airlock in front of me opened, and I stepped off the grate, moving out of the decontamination area.

My eyes scanned the doors’ numbers, counting up. 10… 11… 12… 14. There was no room number thirteen, but for that I had no complaints. It was a nice change from some of the cursèd things that went on within the facility, and moreover organisation as a whole.

As I was about to approach room number 14, however, I noticed more fallen bodies in the corridor. It would not do for the alien to be greeted with corpses in what I assumed was going to be his first time out of his cell while not under control by the Foundation.

It would be quite slow to drag each deceased human through the decontamination airlock, and time was of the essence in that situation. I didn’t need to do a thorough job of cleansing their bodies, due to there being no humans left for them to spread their disease to, so I simply got to work restoring enough of their animation for them to drag themselves awayalong.

There were more fallen bodies than intended, so after a long period of work, I opted to leave the last one deceased. I indicated to the reanimated Foundation personnel to follow me, then took ahold of the limp one’s ankles and dragged it along the linoleum towards the airlock.

As they shuffled and stumbled behind me, one let out a groan, likely from trapped gas in its stomach that had accumulated post rigour mortis, and the now-stiff bodily tissues strained to move in the way a human typically would. Operating on pre-deceased individuals provided much worse results.

“Shh! Haven’t I told you to be quiet?” I scolded in a whisper, hoping that the alien in room 14 hadn’t taken note of the noise. I wasn’t aware of his sleep schedule, but I’d operated almost completely through the night, and I hoped not to wake him so early in the morning.

After a great deal more of shuffling and stumbling, we all made it into the now-cramped decontamination airlock; a couple of the reanimated corpses swatted at the air as the chemical mist sprayed down, but the others stared blankly at the walls, minds empty when not occupied by an order.

Once clean, we made our way down the hallway together. I led them far enough that the alien wouldn’t encounter any of the zombie-like creatures, then told them to go wander about and come back to me if anything interesting happened. They were rather slow, and did not possess the mental faculties pertinent for proper scouting, but I didn’t want them around me for his sake. People tended to be disturbed by reanimated bodies.

I returned to the biohazard sector, shooing away the reanimated personnel that tried to follow, and went through the decontamination cycle again.

I approached the door of room 14 quietly, nerves inexplicably rising within me for the second time. Nonetheless, I made myself swipe the keycard, reciting in my head the greeting I’d thoroughly planned out. ‘Hello there, I imagine you’ve been lacking nutritional intake, so I was wondering if you would come with me so that we can remedy that issue…’

But that would be awfully strange, wouldn’t it? In our last meeting, I’d all but towered over him, and he didn’t exactly appear physically strong in any regard– not to mention that he may have been weaker than usual due to malnutrition. If he was intimidated by me, or even afraid, that would be no grounds for trust.

The magnetic locks disengaged, and like a coward, I turned and briskly walked away. I kept walking until I’d cleared the airlock, and then some, retreating around an adjacent corner so that I could peer through the doors’ small windows without being seen. For now, I decided, I would pay close attention to his actions without interfering. Perhaps he was perfectly fine to remain in his cell; if this was the case, perhaps I could utilise the observational room that I assumed was connected to it.

I waited for a few long moments, attentively watching the windows from my position. At first, it seemed that no movement would be had, but then I saw the door open. Slowly, hesitantly, he stepped out of his room and into the hallway; he appeared even paler than when I first saw him, and it likely wasn’t just due to the lighting. He stepped with uncertainty, swaying a little bit on his feet as if lightheaded and about to fall.

Still, I kept my feet firmly planted as he looked around the hallway, concerned for his reaction if I revealed myself now. He seemed to be contemplating heading to his left, away from where I was– that was bad, as if I followed him further into the biohazardous containment wing, the sound of the airlock would alert him to my presence. But, much to my relief, he decided on going to his right; I stepped into a nearby doorway as he approached the hallway intersection, hiding myself from view until he passed.

And once he did, I followed him from a distance, hiding around corners as he wandered through the halls. It was easy, for his pace was rather slow and halting; it was hard to see the structure of his legs under his baggy jumpsuit, but from the small amount of his feet that peeked out from the hems of the pant legs, he appeared to have digitigrade walking posture. Even with his short stature, he could likely sprint faster than an adult male human– at walking, however, he was much poorer. Such were the advantages and disadvantages of natural selection. It did intrigue me as to what the conditions of his planet were like, but that knowledge could only be obtained by speaking to him directly.

As I made mental notes of the kinds of questions I’d like to ask, it became apparent that the alien didn’t know where he was going. He was limited by his lack of a keycard, and so he turned and retraced his steps repeatedly. Overall, he was headed in the direction of the hospital, so I thought of sneaking around to open doors for a more direct path– but then something strange came over my senses.

Something reeked, awfully caustic on the sinuses. The alien seemed to notice it too; his posture stiffened, and he stopped moving in the middle of a hallway intersection. I was positioned down the corridor to his side, and while I didn’t see anything down the continuing hall, it also branched off perpendicularly. He didn’t seem to be recognising anything in front of him, so that left…

He turned around slowly, with rigid movements– it was as if something had taken over his body, fighting him for control of its motions.

My mind threw itself through possibilities of what could be going on, before finally latching onto an answer. The horrible smell, uneasy feeling in the air, his blank expression as he stumbled forwards… I wasn’t susceptible to such kinds of psychogenic effects, but I knew where they were coming from.

Then the alien began to walk forwards, jerking and unsteady; the predator drawing its prey in.

With no time to spare, and little care to whether or not I was seen, I darted out from where I concealed myself. He disappeared from my line of sight, and though the sound of my boots was heavy on the linoleum floor, he didn’t turn around, nor seem to even hear me.

I rounded the corner just as his hands reached out, trembling, to a mangled and decomposing humanoid. Upon its face was a parasite, a piece of porcelain secreting corrosive fluid, that leered menacingly at the small alien before it. His hands reached out to the mask, fingers digging through the acrid black sludge, and detached the parasite from its host.

No! I wanted to shout, running towards the pair just as the corroded body toppled upon the alien, porcelain mask falling to the floor out of his reach. At least that was a relief, for his face would stay safe from the fluid, but at that moment I was highly concerned with the amount of it that had just made contact with his hands and chest.

I made it there a couple of seconds later, grabbing a fistful of the host’s orange jumpsuit and hauling its weighty body off, dropping it carelessly to the side. The alien didn’t react, and as I dropped to my knees beside him, I realised he had lost consciousness. Fortunate for my staying concealed, and fortunate for him, this would be much less painful if he was not awake to experience it.

I set down my bag and opened it, hastily procuring a strong base and applying it to all the areas affected by the acid. Once neutralised, since we were not far from the hospital, I decided it would be best if I took him there to wash off the black sludge and assess the damage that had occurred to his body.

When taking him in my arms, I noticed how light he was. Perhaps it could be expected of someone of his stature, but even then, he might as well have been made of feathers. That would be something I needed to look into, I thought as I quickly made my way to the hospital.

As I took off his jumpsuit, much of the byproduct left by the neutralised acid came off when I peeled the fabric away from the wound. Fresh blood took its place, running down his chest, past the edge of the damaged flesh and onto deathly pale skin. His blood was unlike anything I’d seen before, milky blue and rather viscous as it coagulated; something that looked more like it would come from a machine than a person.

He didn’t exactly look naturally grown, either. I’d noticed from just a cursory examination that his body was unnaturally symmetrical; human faces are slightly lopsided, for the simple fact that growing a child with one’s body is an arduous and complicated task bound to have errors and variations, therefore it gave him a noticeably artificial appearance.

The only part of his body that was not perfectly mirrored was a catheter embedded underneath his right collarbone, a piece of metal fused into the skin. Such things were not regular medical implants, and even humans with such devices didn’t have them embedded so permanently. It was almost as if someone had known he was going to need it, and implanted it while he’d been very young, his body growing around it as he’d become larger.

From a cursory palpitation of his abdomen, he didn’t appear to have anything remotely resembling a stomach or intestines, but he also didn’t have any surgical scars in that area. There was no way a natural-born organism would develop without any way to digest food.

It made me wonder how he’d come to be. If what was on the hospital bed in front of me wasn’t a naturally evolved organism, what did that mean?

Intelligent design?

That couldn’t be, could it? Such things had been thoroughly disproved by modern science. But there wasn’t exactly another explanation, and besides, he hadn’t originated from Earth’s cursed soil– perhaps God had started over on another planet, or perhaps he’d simply fallen from Heaven…

When I’d met him for the first time, I’d mused over his striking resemblance to renaissance paintings of angels– all he was missing was the wings, really. Though he did differ in his petite frame and slender body, appearing much less lovingly gifted with nourishment, and instead as if he’d been deprived of anything and everything an organism needed for its wellbeing.

I found myself pondering whether or not I had what it would take to restore him to such a state of wellbeing, to nurse him back to health so to speak. The idea was strangely and inexplicably appealing, even though I’d never tried such a thing before– there was no reason to, since my patients were almost universally those who needed to be permanently altered due to their disease. Their afflictions were much beyond the likes of what could be fixed with proper feeding and medical care. But he was not like them. He was not like anyone I’d ever seen.

Pulling myself away from my thoughts, I focused back on the matter at hand, his wounds. When I used gauze to dab away the cyanohematoic blood, the raw flesh underneath was a pale violet, beads of blue rapidly collecting from the broken blood vessels soon after. The eaten skin spanned from the top of his breastbone to the ends of undefined pectorals and then down some, a bit above the place his costal cartilage separated. Such a wound was troublesome in context of the health of my… patient, and I quickly got to work applying bandages.

I used a coagulating spray to hopefully lessen the bleeding, then retrieved a wide roll of gauze. It brought me into a rather meditative trance as I held him up with one gloved palm on his back, wrapping the bandage around his narrow ribcage. My fingers traced his vertebrae, the protruding bumps feeling oddly soothing to stroke.

As I did, I began to hum.

Les anges dans nos campagnes…1

I added metal bandage clips to the gauze’s free edge, then set him down on the hospital bed. His chest rose and fell ever so slightly, and I took a moment to observe his face. It was… not aesthetically unpleasant to look at, that was for sure.

His nose bridge was low and straight, leading up to a smooth brow bone with tail-less eyebrows, beneath which lay large eyes with upturned outer edges. He lacked buccal fat, and his jaw was sharp and angled; I wondered if he’d eaten solid food before having a catheter implanted due to the level of facial development.2

The paleness of his skin made the dark circles under his eyes stand out even more, but it was still beautiful in a sense, just as the well-defined bones in his chest and back gave him a look of fragility. He was quite unwell, but I could make him better… I would make him better.

Glo-o-o-o-ooria…

Tearing my eyes away, I moved down to his hands. The acid had mostly affected his fingertips and palms, which was much simpler to bandage. I took his hand in my gloved one, and realised for the first time how delicate it was– much smaller than mine, with very long, slender fingers. He had no calluses, and I wondered what kind of life he’d had before being contained by the Foundation, where he’d lived, what work he’d done.

I found myself wishing that it had been something pleasant, such as a pianist or harpist, things befitting his rather angelic appearance. But I was not blind to the scars that ran up and down his arms, long healed but not gone; his skin was hairless, so it was easy to see the long scars scattered along his forearms, some trailing up his biceps and all the way to his shoulders.

Glo-o-o-o-ooria…

I applied a large piece of finely-woven gauze to each palm, then wrapped his hands with a softer roll. Once all the wounds were covered, I curled his fingers into a loose fist and wrapped the excess gauze around them; I would be there to assist him with anything he needed, and I didn’t want him to wake up and accidentally hurt himself somehow. I inferred from the scars that such a thing had happened many times, something I would definitely put a stop to now that he was in my care.

After looking over my handiwork a few times, I noted down the time from the watch I’d taken off the deceased researcher. I resolved to check his dressings in twenty minutes, to see if the bleeding had stopped, then deal with the exudate. There would likely be a considerable learning curve when it came to his species’ healing process, but I was prepared to be educated.

But instead of doing the practical thing– getting up and using the time to search around the area, specifically with the hope of ascertaining whatever could have happened for the humans in the Foundation to be annihilated where they stood– I spent the full twenty minutes at his bedside, watching his chest rise and fall in a restless sleep.

I had been exploring around the hospital, moving the occasional corpse that I found therein. I ended up storing many of them in an empty closet, far away from where my patient was recovering– it would do no good for him to be surrounded by such disturbing things.

When I’d gotten back from one of my excursions, however, the alien had moved; the blankets were a mess, his hands limp over top instead of where I’d carefully tucked them in by his sides. Still, he appeared to be asleep, which reassured me that it hadn’t been anything more serious than some restless movement.

I set my medical bag down and hurried over to the hospital bed. After carefully examining his bandages, I determined that there wasn’t any fresh blood, so he hadn’t injured himself at all. That was good, but I would definitely need to keep closer tabs on him going forwards.

After tucking him again, this time with his arms over top of the blanket, I retrieved a fresh IV bag from the container labelled ‘SCP-6118’ above instructions for administration. I’d never had a patient reliant on intravenous nutrition before, but I quickly grew accustomed to feeding him, a strange satisfaction settling in my body each time I disposed of an empty bag. He needed it to recover from the injuries, of course, but he was also quite thin, to the point of troubling me some. I would need to weigh him once he was able to get out of bed on his own.

I hooked the IV bag onto its stand and fed the line through an attached pump, then told it to prime itself. The machine clicked softly in the background as I fussed over the alien, adjusting his gown and brushing his hair out of his face. Perhaps he would let me comb it for him once he was awake.

The next time he woke up, I was organising some medical supplies to the side of the room. The noise of movement alerted me, and I turned around to see him attempting to remove his blankets, but ultimately failing due to the fact that I had taken away the mobility of his hands by bandaging them as they were..

I moved to the head of the hospital bed and put my hands on his shoulders, then slid them down his arms. He froze, and I worried for a moment that I had startled him.

“Shh, it’s alright. You’re safe now,” I murmured, doing my best to sound reassuring. The poor thing must have been so confused, waking up with someone strange in the room with him.

I put the blankets back where they were, smoothing out the wrinkles before placing my hands back on his shoulders. He was quite cold, which was something I’d noticed every time I’d touched him; I’d seen in his file that they kept him at low temperatures, but it didn’t seem to be to sustain a state of health. Instead, the notes about cold stupors made me concerned as to what happened when his body temperature lowered too much; it was getting to be a hell of an urge to resist gathering him into my arms to warm him up.

He gazed up at the ceiling from where he lay, and it was the first time I got a good look at his eyes. His irises were larger than that of any humanoid I’d seen, and he blinked in a long, sleepy rhythm, reminding me much of a feline. Both blue irises were framed in a ring of copper, but it was a much lighter and more beautiful colour than the kind I’d observed in humans with Wilson’s disease. I wondered if they weren’t a symptom of a disease, but instead a natural occurrence for his species with their likely copper-based blood.

He seemed to be comforted as I stroked his shoulders, blinks drawing out until he finally closed his eyes and relaxed back against the bed, asleep again. I gently squeezed him, then did a final finnicking of the blankets and returned to what had been doing, a large smile plastered on my face all the while.

Most of the damage from the acid was uniform, but there were some small islands of skin left untouched while the surronding skin had been eaten away. One day, while changing his bandages, I noticed that said ‘islands’ had begun to turn to dead skin, likely due to not receiving enough bloodflow due to their isolated positions.

I weighed my options, and decided that it would be the least invasive if I applied debridement bandages3 on the affected areas to remove the dead cells.

That was simple. The more difficult part was removing them.

I slowly, carefully peeled away one piece of the now-dry gauze, taking some offending skin with it. The fresh flesh underneath it beaded and glistened with blood, and I had the extremely uncharacteristic urge to wince; I’d cut people up all sorts of ways with my own two hands, but I was strangely adverse to hurting this small alien, even if it was to promote better wound healing overall. It was a phenomenon I couldn’t explain to myself, even after spending hour after hour at his bedside, almost as if in search of an answer written somewhere on his delicate features.

As I peeled up another, he stirred slightly, and I whispered a quiet apology out of some strange sense of guilt. This continued, with me pulling away the gauze and apologising under my breath after every soft noise of discomfort he made.

I mentally prayed that he wouldn’t wake up, but as the last piece came off, his eyes suddenly opened and he looked right at me. His face went from expressionless to surprised, and he tried to sit up. I watched, alarmed, as the motion caused the healed edges of the wound on his chest to break apart and run with blue fluid.

“Easy now, you’re okay,” I told him as I lowered him back down to the bed. He didn’t resist, which was both surprising and satisfying; he realistically couldn’t have known that I had been taking care of him, especially not for such a long period of time, but I liked to believe that some part of him was aware of it, or at least subconsciously used to my touch.

“Wh-what– I don’t– who–” he stammered, pupils fluctuating as his eyes tried to focus on me.

“I’m changing your bandages. I apologise for the discomfort,” I explained as I turned to retrieve fresh gauze and salve. It would hopefully take away some of the pain, for both of our sakes.

“How– What? You’re…”

I could see the recognition in his eyes, as he was no doubt recalling our first meeting. “I understand that you may have many questions. I can try to answer them, in time. Right now, you must rest.”

He tried to sit again, and I placed my hands on his chest to push him back down as gently as possible. “Lie down. I am not done changing your bandages.”

The alien didn’t resist, but when he looked down at his injured chest, his pupils constricted; I could feel his pulses begin to race from where I made contact with his skin. I didn’t want him to be in distress, and had little experience calming down panicking individuals, so I reached into my bag and retrieved a vial of medication. I drew some of it into a syringe, then injected the fluid into the T-connector attached to his IV line.

After a few seconds, his pupils dilated and he relaxed against the bed. It was no doubt a relief to both of us, since what I really needed to do at that moment was re-bandage him, and that would prove difficult if he was uncomfortable and on edge.

“Do not be afraid,” I told him softly. “I am helping you.”

He nodded, and I retrieved fresh bandages to apply to his wounds. He let me wrap them around his chest, but appeared restless, eyes flitting around his injured body and then up to me. The medication was supposed to make him friendly and relaxed, and it appeared to be working; when I’d first met him, he’d been very meek and agitated, keeping his hands tucked in at his sides and his head down. But at that moment, he reached up for my mask with his hands, whose packing gauze I’d removed in order to change the underlying bandages. I grasped his wrists and pulled them back down, setting his arms at his sides.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he said distantly.

“These are unfortunate circumstances, but I am glad to see you again.”

That caused him to briefly smile, which was quite a fetching look on him. When we’d met before, he’d been so expressionless that I’d nearly thought he wore a mask– the so-called scientists that attempted to debrief me afterwards had made comments about it as well– I was glad to see him happy for once, even if it was due to a medicated state.

“What happened to me?” he mumbled, eyelids fluttering as he looked up at the bright ceiling light.

I placed my hand on his cheek and tilted it to the side, leaning over him a bit more to block out the harsh light. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt at the question; it was, after all, my fault that he’d gotten hurt. I could just as well have gone directly into his cell and brought him food that way, or pretended to accidentally run into him in the hall so that I could guide him the rest of the way. If I’d even simply followed from a closer distance, I would have been able to stop him before he made contact with that horrible individual.

I took a measured breath before answering. “Dỳo has a disgusting sense of humour. He is sadistic, and devoid of morals.”

He kept his head where it lay, but looked up at me with his eyes– and eyes they were. Even though I’d seen them before, somehow he had become even more captivating, light eyelashes contrasting with the almost-absence of sclerae and dark, dilated pupils. The medication had also relaxed his blood vessels, giving his pale skin a blue flush across the midface. My palms began to sweat underneath the thick gloves I wore.

“You know each other?” he asked, clearly unaware.

“Regrettably.” I paused, momentarily recalling the parasitoid’s numerous human rights violations. Thank God we had never interacted save exchanging a few harsh words. “He’s cruel, and you’ve had enough cruelty.”

The alien seemed content by this.

“Everything is alright now, though,” I reassured him. “I’ll be sure to keep that horrible person far away from you.” I patted his arms, and he made a sort of cooing noise mixed with stifled laughter. He was definitely loopy, and I worried for a moment that I’d given him too much of the medication, with how little substance his body had and all.

His hands drifted up again, this time trying to grasp at my forearms; they were far too bulky for him to be able to fit the slight appendages around, but in his efforts he tore open the weak surface of his healing wounds. I slid my hands down into his, interlacing our fingers together despite their highly differing sizes, effectively immobilising his feverish movements.

“Just… let me take care of you for now, alright?”

“Okay,” he agreed. I tried not to pay attention to the strange sensation of satisfaction it gave me to have his permission, since it wasn’t like he exactly had another choice in his injured and medicated state. But, still, in our first meeting he’d been so… cold, and quite afraid, at least at first. That wasn’t the kind of person who would willingly lay here and let me tend to his wounds.

Perhaps I was indulging in a fantasy that he… liked me. That he… wanted me to be doing this, even appreciated it. Perhaps it was to pretend that I didn’t like it so much, or at very least make that not be such a strange concept to me.

Fuck. It had been a mistake to medicate him. I would have been better off taking my chances trying to talk him down from panic, because at least that way I wouldn’t have been swimming in high, delusional hopes.

“What happened to the Foundation?” he slurred, soft voice bringing me out of my mental toils.

“Ah, yes.” I was more than happy to have the distraction, something to do with my mouth so that I couldn’t keep thinking. “You probably have a great deal of confusion about that. How should I explain it? Well, a few days ago, something descended upon mankind. A great Curing, I surmise. One moment, these halls were wracked with the stench of human life. The next, a mere whisper remained. I was lucky enough to have a spare keycard tucked away, and I was therefore able to vacate my room to search the halls. There were corpses strewn about the corridors, with no apparent cause of death.”

He seemed rather lost, the words mostly floating over him instead of being absorbed. That wasn’t exactly good, but at least it meant that he likely wouldn’t care too much about the next part. “I… I gravitated towards you. Cleaned up– uh, cured– the bodies around your cell.” I looked away, heart rate already raising from such a small statement. “Human bodies tend to get ugly when they decompose, that’s all.”

“So that was you, back in the hall?” he asked. Putain de merde, maybe he had comprehended my fluffed-out admission after all.

“I need to reapply bandages to your hands,” I stated firmly, withdrawing mine from his. I found the edge of the gauze tucked into a segment at his wrist, and began to pull it free, busying myself with unwrapping the dressing.

The air hit some raw skin, and his previously flat nose bridge crinkled up slightly. “That kinda hurts.”

“Ah, ne t’inquiètes pas.” I reached into my bag and produced another syringe, this one containing a strong sedative that would inhibit his pain receptors and make him drowsy. I’d pre-prepared a couple for use in the event that he suddenly woke up at an inconvenient time. Technically, any time was an inconvenient one if they sent me into these spells, but that didn’t mean I didn’t… enjoy it. Just a little.

I administered it through his IV line, and he didn’t complain of any more pain as I took the rest of the bandages off; I made extra sure to keep his wandering hands down, since he wouldn’t be able to tell if he was damaging himself without any way to sense it– that was my job.

After a while of working in silence, I applied the last bandage closure, and then he spoke up again. “Why did you unlock my door?”

Merde alors !4 I couldn’t exactly start explaining it all to him, now could I? What was I to say, that I was just… infatuated with his existence, unable to pull myself away from his presence no matter how hard I tried?

“Well, I…” I paused, doing my best to gather words while being put on the spot without alerting him to my struggle. “I wanted to give you the choice to leave,” I finally offered. It wasn’t completely untrue.

He seemed to accept this as an answer, murmuring a small “Thanks” before relaxing back against the hospital bed and closing his eyes.

I pulled the blankets back up over him and made sure everything was in proper order, then simply sat there and watched him drift off to sleep, the evening out of his breaths lulling us both into a state of tranquillity.

It was habitual of me to spend a lot of time pacing.

With my patient showing more signs of restlessness during his sleep, I surmised it wouldn’t be long until the thin barrier of unconsciousness was broken again. The notion made anxiety seize my nervous system, a stomachache crawling up from the pit of my gut– what was I to do when that happened? I couldn’t constantly medicate him to avoid talking, for both physiological and ethical reasons. But why was I so afraid of it anyways?

I knew the answer, and well. I was notorious for messing up all my relationships, whether that be with colleagues, friends, or even those I considered family. Sometimes it was forgetting my brother’s birthday,5 other times being utterly incompetent at talking about anything but my cure, and occasionally just lashing out with little to no justification. Things could go from calm to tumultuous in a moment’s notice, it seemed, as I was at the mercy of my brain’s broken chemistry.

And if I ruined this… No! I couldn’t ruin something God created with His own hands, that was simply not an option. There was no way around interacting with the creature; I would simply have to figure out how to withstand it.

I let out a great sigh and stopped my pacing. As my patient was bound to be disturbed into waking by too much noise, I’d been doing it outside of his room in a nearby hallway instead. Of course, I would never let myself go too long without checking on him, and so I made my way back to do just that.

But when I opened the door and entered the room, he was absent. The blankets were a mess, and the IV hung unattached from its pole with the line leaking nutritional fluid onto the bed. I rushed over and shut the line off, then replaced the dampened blanket before hurrying into the hallway to see where my patient had gone.

The distant sound of a shower running guided me to a nearby sector of the hospital. It shut off before I could find its source, but I located a map on the wall and used it to make my way to the wing’s small bathroom.

I pushed the door open and found him standing by freshly wetted tiles, struggling to fasten the special closure at the back of his hospital gown. He appeared uninjured, and I almost sighed with relief as I expressed my thankfulness in the form of a mental prayer.

“There you are. I’ve been trying to find you. Why did you–” I started, but paused upon realising that he was shaking slightly. That made sense, as the water of the hospital’s showers was lukewarm in the best conditions. “Are you cold? Come here.”

I outstretched my arms to him, but all he did was look at me with a slightly confused expression. I sighed and closed the distance between us, then placed my arms around him and gently rubbed my hands across his shoulders and back. He was, in fact, cold to the touch, and I was incredibly glad to be a homeotherm for the simple ability to provide for him in that moment.

As I did so, small tremors ran through his muscles, tensing up in a repetitive pattern underneath my palms. “Oh, you’re shivering…” I said softly, drawing his body ever so slightly closer to mine. “I know these showers are frigid.”

I would have greatly preferred for him to let me know he wished to bathe, as that way I would have been able to figure out a way to heat up water for him. It wouldn’t have been anything luxurious, but even a warm sponge bath would have felt better than being rained on by icy fluid. Besides, that way I would be able to use soap while controlling where it went, namely not into his wounds.

I did, however, understand why he’d tried to do it by himself. I imagined he wasn’t enthused by the idea of a strange man washing his bare skin. I sure wouldn’t have minded, but that wasn’t what mattered.

After a little while, he stopped shivering and began to feel closer to room temperature. Not wanting to come across as overly physical, I stepped away and walked behind him to do up the closures he’d been struggling with.

That’s when I noticed that his back was bare, and the wounds on his hands were visible. In all my excitement, I hadn’t noticed whatsoever.

“Where are your bandages?” I asked, concerned.

I could see the muscles in his shoulders and back tense, pulled taught around the bumps of his spine. “I… took them off.”

“Were they bothering you?”

“No… I just… I-I wanted to take a shower.”

“Next time, let me know, alright? I need to at the very least know where you are.“

He nodded.

“Is that why you got out of bed?” I asked.

“Um…” There was an incredibly long pause, wherein I began to worry I had made him uncomfortable. “…I wasn’t tired anymore, so I decided to get up,” he finally responded.

“You should be resting, even if you are not feeling tired,” I reminded him.

“I’m a full-sized person that can make my own decisions.”

I looked him up and down, this being the first time we were standing in proximity to each other. Despite his digitigrade posture,6 he came up to my low shoulder. The statement was rather amusing to me in this regard.

“You don’t look full-sized. And right now, you are my patient, therefore I am the one making the decisions.” I did up the back of his gown, which seemed to relax him slightly. “Please return to your room with me.”

I opened the door for him, then led him into the hallway and down it. We reached the room I’d been treating him in, and I motioned him to the bed, which he sat down on. I gathered supplies from one of the room’s cabinets, then took them over and sat down in a chair I brought to his bedside.

He remained silent as I pushed his gown down to his waist, exposing the wound on his chest. With the aid of carefully utilised medications, some of them from the Foundation’s hospital and some of them being my own, his wounds had made much progress in healing. One had previously taken up almost his entire chest, but its surface area had shrunken to just a highly scabbed area about a quarter smaller.

I sanitised everything and changed my exam gloves to fresh ones– I’d gotten into the habit of wearing gloves constantly, since I was constantly in his presence– before retrieving a tin of salve and opening it. He watched as I scooped some out with my fingers, then spread the dark green substance onto the semi-healed wound over his chest.

Ever since his wounds healed enough to anoint them, I’d been applying it liberally. The substance had remained in my bag for quite a while, being of very high quality and therefore reserved for healing of importance that equaled it. For quite some time, my previous patients had been rather meaningless to me, but there was no better use than the healing of an angel.

Once his wounds were sufficiently covered, I took a length of the same wide gauze from last time and wrapped his chest in it. I was a little nervous with him fully conscious in front of me, intelligent eyes watchful of my movements, and miscalculated where the end of the length would go; instead of on his front, it ended between his scapulae, so I got a bit closer in order to reach around him.

I may have gotten a little closer than necessary, but whatever bodily alert system that had always alerted me– with great discomfort– to physical contact seemed to be malfunctioning. My fingers trailed just an inch as I placed the bandage clips, but he didn’t seem to mind, if notice at all.

Pulling myself back, I moved onto his hands, applying the salve and bandaging them much faster in order to avoid repeating my mistake. Once finished, I did his gown back up again, his lack of reaction nagging at me as I wondered if I had made him uncomfortable.

“Alright, get into bed,” I instructed, breaking the silence. He moved his legs onto the mattress, and I was about to place the fresh blanket over him before he grasped it and pulled it around himself.

I took that as an indication that he wouldn’t like me to help him get comfortable. It caused me a twinge of sadness, but I stood up nonetheless and stepped back so that I wasn’t encroaching on his space anymore and clasped my hands behind my back.

“Rest now. I will be attending to my work, but I implore you to come and find me if you need anything.”

He nodded, and I slowly walked to the door before giving him one last look. It was quite a mistake, as a moral rugby match immediately spawned in my mind, one side thrashing about to make me go running back to his side, and the other wailing on its opponent to get me to leave him alone for one bloody second.

The latter played dirty. I forced myself to exit, quietly closing the door behind me before I could second-guess myself yet again.

Once on the other side, I stood for about a second before I sank to my knees, shaking hands pressed over my pounding heart. I felt as if I’d run a kilometre, when all I’d done was warm up my patient and tend to his wounds.

But it wasn’t that. I’d… hugged him, basically. Perhaps he hadn’t hugged me back, but we could work on that. Something about the interaction had made my head swirl as if I was high on the medications I’d given him. Like when I’d felt Islamic silk after a lifetime of Europe’s rough textiles. Like I’d inhaled pure oxygen on the brink of being suffocated.

He was not like the rest, that was absolutely evident. I was fascinated by him, curious about an organism for the first time in centuries. My chest ached from the massive overclock of its heart, so I forced myself to take even breaths while thinking of something, anything else.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

What’s happening to me?

Footnotes

1. The untranslated version of Angels We Have Heard on High, a french catholic hymn.

2. Eating a lot of chewy/hard foods during developmental years will make the jaw much stronger and more defined than if one eats only soft foods.

3. This is also sometimes called “wet-to-dry” bandages.

4. Meaning something like “Well, shit!”, it’s kind of hard to capture the exact sentiment through a translation. You can read a FR/EN thread on it here if you’re bilingual. Sorry anglophones :(

5. This unfortunate event occurred in 1732.

6. Only his forefoot and toes touch the ground. In layman’s terms, you might call this “standing on the tip toes”.