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There were other moments of vague awareness over the next few days, periods of drifting disorientation which would have terrified her had her thoughts been even a little clearer. Harriet had been seriously injured once before—a grav-cycle accident that broke both legs and an arm before she'd been fully enhanced—and Imperial medicine had put her back on her feet in a week. Now whole days passed before she could hang onto consciousness for more than a minute, and that said horrifying volumes about her injuries. Worse, she couldn't remember what had happened. She didn't have the least idea how she'd been hurt, but she clung to Sean's promise. She was all right. She was going to be all right if she just held on... .
And then, at last, she woke and the bed beneath her was still, and the vertigo and nausea had vanished. Her lips were dry, and she licked them, staring up into near total darkness.
"Harriet?" It was Brashan this time, and she turned her head slowly, heart leaping as muscles obeyed her once more. She blinked, trying to focus on his face, and her forehead furrowed as she failed. Try as she might, half her field of vision was a gyrating electrical storm wrapped in a blazing fog.
"B-Brash?" Her voice was husky. She tried to clear her throat, then gasped as a six-fingered alien hand slipped under her. It cradled the back of her head, easing her up while the mattress rose behind her, and another hand held a glass. Her lips fumbled with the straw, and then she sighed as ice-cold water filled her mouth. The desiccated tissues seemed to suck it up instantly, yet nothing had ever tasted half so wonderful.
He let her drink a moment more, then set the glass aside and settled her back against the pillow. She closed her right eye, and sighed again as the tormenting glare vanished. Her left eye obeyed her, focusing on his saurian, long-snouted face and noting the half-flattened concern of his crest.
"Brash," she repeated. Her hand rose, and his took it.
"Doctor Brash, please," he said with a Narhani's curled-lip smile.
"Should've guessed." She smiled back, and if her voice was weak, it sounded like hers once more. "You always were better with the med computers."
"Fortunately," another voice said, and she turned her head as Sandy appeared on her other side. Her friend smiled, but her eyes glistened as she sank into the chair and took her free hand.
"Oh, Harry," she whispered. Tears welled, and she brushed at them almost viciously. "You scared us, honey. God, how you scared us!"
Harriet's hand tightened, and Sandy bent to lay her cheek against it. She stayed there for a moment, brown hair falling in a short, silky cloud about a too-thin wrist, and then she drew a deep breath and straightened.
"Sorry," she said. "Didn't mean to go all mushy on you. But 'Doctor Brashan' damn well saved your life. I—" her voice wavered again before she got it back under control "—I didn't think he was going to be able to."
"Hush," Harriet soothed. "Hush, Sandy. I'm all right." She smiled a bit tremulously. "I know I am—Sean promised me."
"Yes. Yes, he did." Sandy produced a tissue and blew her nose, then managed a watery grin. "In fact, he's go
"Is everyone else all right?"
"We're fine, Harry. Fine. Sean's got some damage to his left arm—he drove himself too hard—but it's minor, and Tam's fine. Just exhausted. With you out, Brashan stuck here in sickbay, and Sean ready to kill anybody who suggested he leave you, poor Tam's been carrying most of the load."
"Tam and you, you mean," Harriet said, seeing the weariness in her face.
"Oh, maybe." Sandy shrugged. "But I haven't left the ship—Tam was the one who did all the traveling back and forth with the computer."
"Computer?" Harriet said blankly. "What computer?"
"The computer we—" Sandy started in a surprised voice, then stopped. "Oh. What's the last thing you remember?"
"We were... going to the valley?" Harriet said uncertainly. "There was some sort of... of defensive system, I think. Did I—" She released Brashan's hand to cover her right eye. "Is that what happened to me?"
"No." Sandy patted the hand she held. "That happened later. We'll tell you all about it, but what matters is we found a personal computer and brought it back. It's in miserable shape, but Tam's managed to recover some of it, and it looks like some kind of journal. I think—" she smiled fondly "—he's been concentrating on it to keep his mind off worrying about you."
"A journal?" Harriet rubbed her closed eye harder, and her open eye brightened. "That sounds good, Sandy. I just wish I—"
"Harriet." Brashan interrupted quietly, and his hand closed on her right wrist, stilling the fingers on her eye. "Why are you rubbing your eye?"
"I— Oh, it's probably nothing," she said, and heard the strangeness in her voice. Denial, she thought.
"Tell me," he commanded.
"I—" She swallowed. "I just can't get it to focus."
"I think it's more than that." His voice accepted no evasion, and she felt her lips quiver. She stilled them and turned to face him squarely.
"I think it's gone blind," she said, and heard Sandy's soft gasp beside her. "All I get is a... a blur and a glare."
"Is it bothering you now?"
"No." She drew a deep breath, curiously relieved to have admitted there was something wrong. "Not as long as it's closed."
"Open it." She obeyed, then squeezed it instantly back shut. The glare was worse than ever, jagged with pain even her implants couldn't damp.
"I... I can't." She licked her lips. "It hurts."
"I see," he said, and she felt her nerve steady under his composed voice. "I feared you might have difficulties, but when you said nothing—" His crest flipped a Narhani shrug.
"What's wrong?" She was pleased by how nearly normal she sounded.
"Nothing irreparable, I assure you. But as you know, Israel's sickbay, while capable of bone and tissue repair and implant adjustment, was never intended for enhancement or major implant repair. Her designers—" he smiled a wry, Narhani smile "—assumed injuries such as that would be treated aboard her mother ship, which, alas, is beyond our reach."
He paused, and she nodded for him to continue.
"You were struck in the right temple, left shoulder, and right lung by heavy projectiles," the centauroid explained gently. "Despite the crudity of the weapons used, they had sufficient power at such short range to shatter even enhanced human bone, but the one which struck your head fortunately impacted at an angle and your skull sufficed to turn it."
She breathed a bit harder as he cataloged her wounds but nodded for him to continue, and his eyes approved her courage.
"Your implants sealed the blood loss from the wounds to your shoulder and lung. There was considerable damage to the lung, but those injuries are healing satisfactorily. The head wound resulted in intracranial bleeding and tissue damage"—she tensed, but he continued calmly— "yet I see no sign of motor skill damage, though there may be some permanent memory loss. Your vision problem, however, stems not from tissue damage but from damage to your implant hardware. Fragments of bone were driven into the brain and also forward, piercing the eye socket. The injuries to the eye structures are responding to therapy, and the optic nerve was untouched, but an implant, unlike the body, ca
"It's only in the hardware?" Relief washed through her at his nod, but then she frowned. "Why not just shut it down through the overrides?"
"The damage is too extensive for me to access it. Short of removing it entirely—a task for a fully qualified neurosurgeon which I would hesitate to attempt and which would, at best, leave you effectively blind until we can obtain proper medical assistance, anyway—I can do nothing with it."