Waiting Room

“Miss? Would you like a seat? I can—”

Kailey put a hand out, keeping the man from rising. “No, thank you. It’s all right. I… I need to walk this off,” she said, and resumed her pacing around the perimeter of the ER waiting area.

Kailey paced not because she was nervous (well, she was, but she’d gotten mostly used to that), but because it was one of her guilty pleasures. Though she didn’t care much for the clomping oddity of walking in combat boots — she wondered again how they’d managed to find a pair small enough to fit her — she relished the challenge of the flat sole, the low rise of the heel, the rub of the two pairs of socks she had to wear to keep from blistering. But even the aggravating pain of a blister was a welcome feeling.

She could feel — the wrinkle in the sock on her left foot, the groove in the floor, between the tiles as she paced over it. She wished she could take the boots and socks off and walk barefoot. When they let her walk around the Institute, she went barefoot in the labs, and in the dojo. The rest of the time, they kept her motor control idle, and Jordan had to wheel her from place to place, then back to her room, and lift her into bed. She had feeling, but they didn’t allow her movement except in the labs, or when she was out on assignment with the Joint Projects Task Force.

So she paced, walking while she could. Once this assignment was over, who knew when she’d next be out and about.

A black SUV swung through the ER’s visitor drop off, and a tall, rangy man in khaki slacks, matching button-down shirt, and short-cropped hair much the same color ambled up to the sliding doors, glancing around the room, his eyes hidden behind painfully cliched mirrored aviator’s shades.

Kailey looked up as she paced up to him, along the front of the ER, which was all window behind the row of people waiting. Most of them had begun ignoring Kailey as she clomped past, but the change in her pace as she approached the man in khaki caused more than a few to glance up from stale magazines or newspapers.

“Real subtle, there, Skywalker,” she said, clomping to a stop.

“Don’t you dare click your heels and salute,” he growled.

Kailey’s shoulders sagged a bit.

“We’re supposed to be inconspicuous, remember?”

Kailey rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Like getting dropped off by a black SUV with UN JPTF plates, and then marching in here is ‘inconspicuous.’”

“Look who’s talking, miss ‘I’ll-just-land-this-thing-on-your-roof.’ I almost hope that somebody coming in on a Life Flight croaks because they have to reroute.”

Kailey balled her hand into a fist.

** Blood Pressure and Adrenal spike. Standby to engage Panic mode. **

Guenevere, stand down. Confirm Rocky Road. Log amend: Stupid Danz end log.

** Panic mode presets abort: journaled **

She slowed her breathing.

“The AI showed immediate landing. It looks like one of the floaters took a stray hit. Where was I supposed to set down?”

“Cool your jets, there, Hot Cakes. It was a good call, setting down here, in case you’d been hurt. You all right? You look pale. Well, paler than usual.”

“Achy. My legs are tired. I feel like I’ve run about ten marathons. At once. I’m still buzzing over that weird flash thing, too. I think it fried some of the nanos, because I’m getting some blind spots in my legs and feet.”

“What else?”

Kailey stared up at him, her jaw set.

“You can tell me, or I can have the Wizard pull logs.”

“Well… I might still be having some lower back pains.”

“‘Might be?’ Either you are, or you aren’t.”

Guenevere, full reception from L 3-6 filaments.

She gave a sharp cry before she could bite back the pain, and staggered back a step as the pain impulses started flowing again.

“That would be a ‘yes,’” the lieutenant said, as he grabbed her, dropping the shopping bag he’d been holding. He hoisted her up in his arms with a little more effort than her frame would indicate.

“You’re a lot heavier than you look,” he grunted.

“Well, titanium weighs a bit more than bone, all those little bits add up,” she gasped. “Wow, it’s gotten really bad,” she said with a wince.

He gave her a heft to resettle her weight in his arms, causing her to yelp. A good portion of the eyes in the waiting room turned their way.

The lieutenant strode over to admitting.

“Point me the way to— what is it that you need?” he asked the girl.

“Dialysis. Too many dead nanos. They’re piling up.”

“Right. That’s got to feel like a whole rock garden of kidney stones,” he said. “Dialysis unit? Which way?” he asked to the woman behind the counter.

“Sir, if you’ll just—” She slid a clipboard towards him.

His eyes didn’t leave the woman behind the counter. “Quickly, please, the girl is in quite a bit of pain.”

“But she’s been pacing here for over an hour—”

“When she should have been in the dialysis unit. Which way, please?”

The woman got up from behind the counter, waving him through into the treatment section.

“The medkit, in the cockpit,” Kailey gasped. “It has an emergency filter, and a run of nanos in saline.”

“Great, so you’re going to give me the keys to the XG, then?” the lieutenant said with a grin. “Which pocket?”

“Yeah, like I’d let you rifle my pockets. Who knows where you’d put your fingers.”

The nurse pushed open a pair of double doors, led them down another hall, the pointed to another wing.

“Third door on the right should be free.”

“We’ll need a technician and a qualified nurse,” Kailey said, and the woman nodded, heading for the nurse’s station.

The lieutenant kicked the door open, and deposited Kailey in the chair.

“What else do I need to do?” he asked. “I only know the basics of the process, from what I’ve read in the files.”

Kailey waved him away. “Go to the plane. Bring the whole medkit. It’ll have schematics the tech can follow to jury rig this thing.”

“Right. And how do I get in? You still haven’t given me the keys.”

She pointed to her head. “Key’s in here, silly. I’ll just wait for the proximity alert to go off, and after the static field is done making you tingle, I’ll pop the canopy.”

“You’d let it fry me for sheer spite, wouldn’t you?”

“Relax. Phasers are set to ‘stun.’”

Lieutenant Danz turned, and asked the quickest way to the roof.