Breakable by mosylu

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One by one, Devon uncapped her numerous pill bottles and tipped them into her hand. It was harder than usual to get just one of each, and not a palmful. Julia had filled each bottle to the brim. Finally, she had the ones she needed, and could scoop the rattling plastic bottles into her pack.

Spread out in a curve on the edge of her plate, all her pills looked like the beginnings of a bead necklace. She studied them owlishly, then rearranged one or two to suit her aesthetic preferences. She couldn’t take them until she’d eaten, but setting them out helped her remember to do so--an old trick from Uly’s Syndrome days.

John was arguing with True over something--she could hear the rise and fall of exasperated voices. Probably the necessity of attending Yale’s lunchtime lessons. It was history today, a subject which interested True somewhat less than toenail lint.

Finally, the girl stalked over to Yale and Uly. John, turning around, accidentally looked at her. She tilted her head to the empty space beside her. He hesitated, then turned away.

She all but growled. Infuriating man. Why didn’t he come with a manual like one of his precious machines? How was anyone supposed to know what he was thinking? How was she? And of course, there was the other question she’d failed to answer to her own satisfaction. So what? If he did have feelings for her, so damn what?

She was awfully afraid that the answer to that lay in the answer to the first question.

Devon dug tiny pits into the purpley-grey skin of her fruit with her fingernail, flicking the scraps onto her plate. The thing of it was, when she thought of John, looked at him, spoke to him, a dizzying tangle of feelings seemed to wrap around her brain. She tried to compare it to the way she’d felt about Shepard, but it was like apples and oranges. There was no way. Shepard had been a fantasy, an escape, a dream. Literally. Was there anything so handy as a dream lover, who knew all your deepest desires and went away when you woke up?

John was the farthest thing from a dream lover. He snarled and growled at her, annoyed her on purpose, seemed completely unaware of what she was feeling unless she damn well told him. Some white knight. Ha. More like a fire-breathing dragon.

But he was real life, day-to-day, and he was there for her. Always, without hesitation, there for her, even if it took the form of pointing out the flaws in her brilliant ideas. Claws, scales, and all, she could count on him, and did.

What was so great about white knights, anyway?

She finished her meal in a thoughtful mood and took the pills quickly, a smooth routine choreographed by habit. The larger ones sometimes stuck in her throat, and she took an extra-large swallow from her canteen to help them down. They left a chalky, chemical taste in her mouth.

She sighed, picking up the last one and rolling it in her palm. It was tiny and sweet-tasting, which was why she routinely saved it for last. She had no idea if that made a difference. Probably not. Julia had never specified.

She’d just lifted it to her mouth when she realized that she had no actual idea what this pill did. She lowered her hand, staring at it.

Immunobooster? Nitroglycerin? Or maybe just vitamins?

Not a clue. She didn’t know the first thing about any of the pills she so grudgingly swallowed every mealtime. She didn’t know what they fixed. She didn’t even know what was wrong with her to fix.

She’d known the names and uses of every single pill that Uly had ever taken over the years, but that didn’t help her now. Those pills, round and perfect, had been made in factories and came in sterile, sealed orange pharmacy bottles with the names printed neatly on the labels. These square, lumpy things in the odd assortment of bottles came from Julia’s own lab.

Devon closed her hand around the little pill and wondered what would happen if she didn’t take it. She thought of collapsing again and broke out into a cold sweat. She took it quickly, not even pausing to enjoy the serendipitous citrusy taste, and pushed herself up from the ground. Her knees held nicely, thankyouverymuch. She was improving.

"Julia?" she said, and the doctor looked up. "Can I talk to you?"

"Sure," Julia said. "Are you feeling all right?"

The question would have annoyed her yesterday. Today she only said, "I feel fine," telling the truth, and hoping it looked as if she were. "I’d just like to ask you something. In private, if you don’t mind."

"Of course." Julia got to her feet, and they found a secluded piece of shade. "What is it?"

Devon folded her arms. "I need to know what’s wrong with me."

"What?"

Devon plowed ahead, not giving Julia time to formulate platitudes. "I know that I had a virus. I know that you think the bio-stat implants held it off in everyone but me. I know that in all your experiments, koba toxin was the only thing that killed it. I know you came back to the ship, took me out of cold sleep, and injected me. With a full dose, because the virus had almost completely overrun my body. I know that--" She looked at her toes. Here was the hard part. Here was the part she’d only just admitted to herself. "I know--"

"Devon," Julia said.

"I know I--I died." The words fell awkwardly from her mouth. She said them again, because however awkward they felt, they were true. "I know I died."

Julia was very pale now, but she managed to say, "All right. What is it, then?"

"What I need to know is what’s wrong with me now. What am I up against?"

"The virus is gone, Devon. The toxin took it out completely. It only exists now as a profile in my data bank. I think if anyone else comes down with it, drug therapy should include a very mild dosage of--"

"Not the virus!" She only just stopped herself from shouting it. Julia was avoiding the issue. "Me." She opened her bag and shook it for emphasis, the bottles rattling against each other like maracas. "Why do I still have to take these? What do they do? What’s wrong with me?"

"You’re not going to die," Julia said after a shocked moment. "I promise you you’re not going to die."

"But I’m certainly not at peak condition." She reached in and picked out a bottle at random. The pills inside were big and pale blue. She took them with dinner. Sometimes she had to split them in half to swallow them. When she did that, the powdery residue from the broken edges remained bitter on her tongue until she washed it away. "What do these do?"

Julia took the bottle and turned it in her fingers. The pills clattered softly against the plastic. "They’re for your liver," she said finally. "Part of the regeneration therapy."

"Why does my liver need to be regenerated, and how do those help?"

"It’s highly technical--"

"I’d like to know what I’m putting into my body every day."

Julia looked into the backpack. "Devon," she said. "It would take hours to explain every single one of these."

"Then just give me the highlights. What’s broken, and how are you fixing it?"

"You’re not broken," Julia snapped.

Devon looked her straight in the eye. "Prove it."

The doctor held her gaze. Some internal battle raged for several seconds before she drew herself up like a junior intern reporting to the head of the hospital. "You can read my lab notes yourself, or I can summarize from them. Which would you prefer?"

If Julia summarized, she might soften it . . . but then again, Devon was no doctor and the notes were sure to be highly scientific. "A summary, please."

"I’ll get my datapad."

While Julia walked back to get her bag, Devon looked over at the group, who were no doubt speculating like crazy. John lifted his head to look at her. His face was unreadable.

She returned the steady gaze, wondering if he guessed what she’d wanted to know, and what he thought of it if he had.

Several minutes later, Devon sat looking out at the Transrover. Her throat had knotted up. She swallowed against it and felt her eyes moisten.

Julia hadn’t softened a thing.

They’d sat on the ground at some point during the recitation. Devon had to sit. There was something vaguely nauseating about hearing your own body described in such clinical terms, even though Julia had used a neutral and distancing "the" instead of "your." The heart, the nervous system, the neural scans.

The body, to put it bluntly, had been a hell of a mess. Every system had been scrambled by the virus. Heart palpitations combined with inadequate oxygen intake combined with liver overload combined with circulatory dysfunction combined with--it went on and on.

But at least she knew.

"Devon," Julia said.

Devon, still looking at the Transrover, said distantly, "Things aren’t ever going to be the same again, are they?"

"You’re well on the way to an almost complete recovery."

"Almost," Devon said. "My heart. I’ll need a replacement eventually, won’t I?"

"It got pretty strained, true--but with luck, you may not need a transplant for another ten or fifteen years. And your liver will regenerate, given time, nutrition, and drug therapy."

Devon ignored that bit of good news. "Even in fifteen years, I’ll only be fifty-one. Is that a standard age for a heart transplant, in a woman with no family history of heart disease and fairly good living habits?"

Julia had to say, "No."

Devon reached down and turned over the bottles and bottles of pills she’d dumped out of her backpack. "And these. I thought I’d be free of them someday, but there’s at least a few that I’ll need to take the rest of my life, won’t I? The immunoboosters, the nitro--"

"Yes."

Devon nodded, letting it settle in. She lifted her head and looked around. A breeze flicked her hair away from her face briefly, and she squinted against the sun. "Okay," she said. "Okay. I understand."

Julia studied her with a mixture of concern and confusion. Eventually, she said, with only a tinge of irony, "Does that mean you’re going to start taking care of yourself?"

Devon grinned at her, oddly lighthearted. "I’m afraid so."

Julia’s brows raised. "Devon," she said, her face now very concerned.

Devon cut her off. "It’s all right. I’ve been working so hard to make things the way they were that I couldn’t handle things the way they are--medically and otherwise. Now I can let go. It’s all right. It really is."

"Good," Julia said. She stared at her hands, loosely linked between her knees. "As long as you don’t--I--

Devon blinked at her. Julia-the-doctor had suddenly disappeared. The young woman--and she is very young, isn’t she?--sitting in front of her was momentarily tired, scared, upset.

Julia-her-friend lifted her head and said, "I don’t know what we’d do if we lost you again."

Devon drank that in, the words healing over the last of the wounds that had been festering for the past six weeks. Her last creeping terror--the fear of being unnecessary--vanished like mist burned away by the morning sun. "Julia? Am I a bad person for being happy to hear that?"

A laugh escaped, gurgling as if it had forced its way past tears. "No," Julia said, swiping at her eyes. "No. No, you’re not."

When they got going again, Devon felt as if she were looking at the world through eyes made new. You almost lost this, her heart told her. You almost lost this place, the sunlight, the blue of the sky, the ground underfoot. You almost lost the ache in your calves, climbing up a hill. You almost lost the taste of dust in your mouth. You almost lost the clank-crank-clank of the Transrover, trundling along. You almost lost True singing space sailor songs off-key, with not more than three-quarters of a clue how raunchy the lyrics are, Bess being rot-your-teeth-out perky, and Eden Advance’s answer to the Three Stooges, Cameron, Walman, and Baines.

Love it while you’re here. Because if you lose it tomorrow, at least you had today.

At the mid-afternoon break, she went looking for her son, and found him perched in the Transrover’s cargo bins. She shaded her eyes to look up at him. "Hi, sweetie."

"Hi, Mom."

"How are you doing up there?"

He shrugged. "M’okay." He added, rather shyly, "Do you want to come up?"

"I’d love to." She braced her boot on the bottom rail, wrapped her hands around the top one, and gave a testing pull. Right away, she knew that she wasn’t yet strong enough to hoist herself up in one motion as she’d done countless times before. Almost--not quite. Even yesterday, she might have tried anyway, but today she dropped her hands and smiled at her son. "Maybe I’ll stand here, though." She hesitated, then admitted, "I think today I’d fall if I tried to get up there."

Uly looked surprised. Then he said, "You can climb up the tires."

She looked doubtfully at the big, muddy tires. "I can?"

"Me ‘n’ True do. We do all the time."

She scraped away mud and wedged the toe of her boot into the tread. For a moment, she thought that her grown-up feet wouldn’t be able to follow the path that child-size ones navigated with ease, but she made it up the tire and then into the cargo bin. Uly clapped while she wiped away sweat.

"Wow," she panted, sitting down beside him. "That works great, honey." She'd never realized he knew how to climb up like that. Whenever she saw him perched atop the cargo, she'd assumed some other adult in the group had hoisted him up there. "Thanks for showing me."

"You’re welcome." They sat in convivial silence for several moments. Then he said, "Mom? Can I talk to you about something?"

She looked at him quickly. "Of course. You always can, you know that, right?"

He looked at her sideways, then out at the horizon. "It’s about how come I yelled at you yesterday. I know I apologized and everything, but I also have to tell you that--" He hesitated, teetering on that one word, then plunged. "That I don't like it when you l--pretend you're feeling better and you're not. It makes me scared. That’s why I yelled." Before she could answer that, he said quickly, "I know you don't want me to worry and that's why you pretend, but I do and I don't know any way to stop ‘cause I love you. And I wish you wouldn't get mad at me for worrying."

"Honey," she said, barely knowing what to say after that. "I--I--" She stared at him. "I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. I shouldn't be angry with you for worrying about me. I just--"

"You don't want me to feel bad," he said. "But I feel worse when you’re mad at me."

"Exactly. Yes. I'm not giving you enough credit, and I'm sorry. I’ll try not to do that again." She tipped his face up to hers. "But honey, in return you have to promise to come up and tell me, ‘Mom, I’m concerned about you,’ instead of screaming at me, okay?"

He grinned. "Okay." He leaned into her side. She put her arm around him, and they were silent for a few minutes more.

Finally, she said, "Honey? How was it for you? When--I was gone?"

He stayed silent for so long that she turned to look down at him. He was frowning out at the horizon.

"Uly?"

"Nobody would leave me alone," he said. "Everyone wanted to talk to me and find out if I was sad. You know, about you. I didn't want to talk to any of them."

"John said you talked to him, though. About me, and about . . . other things."

"Oh. Well. Yeah." Then, seemingly apropos of nothing, he said, "Did you know his dad died when he was younger than me?"

"No," she said softly.

"It was an accident. At work. His dad wasn’t wearing a safety thing and he fell."

"I never heard that," she managed through her knotted throat.

"And his mom, something broke in her brain. Like what happened to Robin Jones."

Robin Jones had been another one of Uly’s peers that hadn’t survived to the launch. "An aneurysm, baby. She had an aneurysm." John’s file had said merely that both parents were dead, and nothing about when, or how. "How old was he when that happened?"

Uly hastened to reassure her. "He wasn’t little, he was grown up, he even had True already. But he said he still missed her something awful. ‘Cause she was his mom." He suddenly turned his face into her shoulder. His voice came out muffled and wobbly. "I missed you, Mom. Lots."

She wrapped both arms around him, rocking gently to comfort. "I missed you too."

He lifted his head to say, "But you were asleep."

She put her nose down into his sun-warmed, dust-smelling hair. "I missed you in my dreams."

She lay in the shaded cargo bin, eyes still closed, lazy as a cat. She’d slept; she knew that. She didn’t have the energy to try and figure out what had woken her. Her mind drifted like a snowflake. Uly’s words from earlier swam up.

It was an accident. . . . he fell.

. . . something broke in her brain.

And farther back, Yale now: . . . they accidentally jammed Elle’s air supply. She’s been registered neuro-dead ever since.

John’s own voice now, before Uly’s but more recent than Yale’s. Do it, Doc. His hands, warm and strong in the middle of unspeakable pain. Just do it, quick. She can’t hold out much longer.

Uly’s voice again, but heard and not remembered. ". . . better wake my mom before we unload."

That was it. That was what had woken her. The caravan had stopped, and with it the cradle-like rocking of the Transrover. She sighed through her nose. She didn’t want to pull herself the rest of the way out of consciousness. It was probably useless now, though. Camp to pitch, dinner to eat, route to plan.

She opened her eyes.

John jerked his hand back from her shoulder, dropping it down by his side. Because of the height of the cargo bin, they were eye-to-eye, even if it was skewed ninety degrees.

"Hey," he said, his voice low and rough.

"Hey," she said. Lying like this, when he stood, she should have felt invalidish, helpless. Instead, she felt decadent, as if she only had to smile at him and he would climb up and join her, his big body heavy on hers, pressing her down into the uncertain cushioning of blankets and bundles. . . .

Whew.

"We’re stopped for the night," he said. "Thought you should know."

He was looking at her strangely, and she wondered if her thoughts had showed in her eyes, or if he simply shared them. "All right."

A few heartbeats went by, and he spoke again. "’Scuse me--I’m just gonna--" He reached up and tugged at the cloth that covered her. She shifted, releasing the trapped edge from under her body, and used the slight momentum to sit up. Only then did she realize what he held in his hands, what had covered her as she slept.

He shook his jacket once or twice to get the wrinkles out, then shrugged into it. He didn’t look at her as he rounded the back of the ‘rover and started unloading.

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