CHAPTER TWO
Because Tia was in no danger of dying, and because there was no craft available to come fetch her capable of Singularity Drive, the AI drone that had been sent to take her to a Central Worlds hospital took two more weeks to arrive. Two more long, interminable weeks, during which the faces of her Mum and Dad grew drawn and frightened, and in which her condition not only did not improve, it deteriorated.
By the end of that two weeks, she was in much worse shape; she had not only lost all feeling in her limbs, she had lost use of them as well. The clumsiness that had begun when she had trouble with buttons and zippers had turned into paralysis. If she hadn't felt the need to keep her parents' spirits up, she'd have cried. She couldn't even hold Ted anymore.
She joked about it to her Mum, pretending that she had always wanted to be waited on hand and foot. She had to joke about it; although she was terrified, the look of fear in her parents' eyes drove her own terrors away. She was determined, absolutely determined, not to let them know how frightened she was. They were already scared enough, if she lost her courage, they might panic.
The time crawled by, as she watched holo after holo and played endless games of chess against Braddon, and kept telling herself that once she got to the hospital everything would be fine. Of course it would be fine. There wasn't anything that a Central Worlds hospital couldn't cure. Everyone knew that! Only congenital defects couldn't be cured. But she had been fine, right up until the day this started. It was probably something stupid.
'Socrates says it has to be pinched nerves,' Pota repeated, for the hundredth time, the day the ship was due. 'Once they get you to the hospital, you'll have to be really brave, pumpkin. They're probably going to have to operate on you, and it's probably going to take several months before you're back to normal.'
She brushed Tia's hair and tied it in back in a neat tail, the way Tia liked it. 'I won't be able to do any lessons, then, will I?' she asked, mostly to keep her mother's mind busy with something trivial. Mom doesn't handle reality and real-time very well... Dad doesn't either. 'They're probably going to have me in a cast or something, and all dopey with pain-pills. I'm going to fall behind, aren't I?'
'Well,' Pota said, with false cheer, 'yes, I'm afraid so. But that will probably make the Psychs all very happy, you know, they think that you're too far ahead as it is. But just think, you'll have the whole library at the hospital to dig into any time you want it!'
That was enough even to divert her for a minute. The entire library at the hospital, magnitudes bigger than any library they could carry with them. All the holos she wanted to watch, and proper reading screens set up, instead of the jury-rig Dad had put together.
'They're here,' Braddon called from the outer room. Pota compressed her lips into a line again and lifted Tia out of the bed. And for the first time in weeks, Tia was bundled into her pressure-suit, put inside as if Pota was dressing a giant doll. Braddon came in to help in a moment, as she tried to cooperate as much as she could. She would be going outside again. This time, though, she probably wouldn't be coming back. Not to this dome, anyway.
'Wait!' she called, just before Pota sealed her in. 'Wait, I want my bear!' And at the look of doubt her parents exchanged, she put on the most pleading expression she could manage. 'Please?' She couldn't stand the idea that she'd be going off to a strange place with nothing familiar or warm in it Even if she couldn't hold him, she could still talk to him and feel his fur against her cheek. 'Please?'
'All right, pumpkin,' Pota said, relenting. 'I think there's just room for him in there with you.' Fortunately Ted was very squashable, and Tia herself was slender. There was room for him in the body of the suit, and Tia took comfort in the feel of his warm little bulk against her waist.
She didn't have any time to think of anything else, for at that moment, two strangers dressed in the white pressure-suits of CenCom Medical came in. There was a strange hiss at the back of her air-pack, and the room went away.
She woke again in a strange white room, dressed in a white paper gown. The only spot of color in the whole place was Ted. He was propped beside her, in the crook of her arm, his head peeking out from beneath the white blanket
She blinked, trying to orient herself, and the cold hand of fear damped down on her throat. Where was she? A hospital room, probably, but where were Mum and Dad? How did she get here so fast? What had those two strangers done to her?
And why wasn't she feeling better? Why couldn't she feel anything?
'She's awake,' said a voice she didn't recognize. She turned her head, which was all she could move, to see someone in another white pressure-suit standing beside her, anonymous behind a dark faceplate. The red cross of Medical was on one shoulder, and there was a name-tag over the breast, but she couldn't read it from this angle. She couldn't even tell if the person in the suit was male or female, or even human or humanoid.
The faceplate bent over her; she would have shrunk away if she could, feeling scared in spite of herself, the plate was so blank, so impersonal. But then she realized that the person in the suit had bent down so that she could see the face inside, past the glare of lights on the plexi surface, and she relaxed a little.
'Hello, Hypatia,' said the person, a lady actually, a very nice lady from her face. Her voice sounded kind of tinny, coming through the suit speaker; a little like Moira's over the ancient com. The comparison made her feel a little calmer. At least the lady knew her name and pronounced it right.
