The Infected 1: Proxy (22 page)

He explained quietly. "Nothing really, it's just that Penny's probably the one patient here that really doesn't need a privacy curtain. She kind of brought her own." This earned him a stuck out tongue from the invisible girl in front of him.

No one else said anything about it, but he suspected they thought he was being a jerk. He hoped not. Brian knew he'd have to be careful with this situation. His worry for Penny might make him say some stupid things if he wasn't. It was nerves mainly, but without seeing her reaction, people wouldn't be able to tell his playful teasing from him just being abusive.

When he moved back Kern shook his head and pointed at him to get back to Penny's side.

"Brian, we can't see her. We can't get x-rays, we've tried before, all of this has to be done carefully, the old fashioned way, and you're the only one that can work with her well enough to make it happen. For the time being you're her primary care person, got it? So get over here and pay attention." He sounded serious and a little worried.

Brian felt nervous, scared that he'd mess up and hurt her. For the first time in his life he had to cut clothing off of someone, taking her sweats off all the way with a cut up the side, she wore Lycra shorts underneath, a silvery color that hugged her upper thighs snugly and were long enough to be over the break. Burrows told him to get those off too, but promised Penny that they just needed to clear the wound and that she could stay covered otherwise. He made it work with some creative cutting, clearing the leg, but leaving most of the shorts in place.

As Brian focused the girl became solid, when he stepped back she ghosted out, but as he concentrated again, trying not to hurt her, she went back to opaque. To his eyes at least. No one else could see her at all. Kern handed him a syringe and asked him to give it to her.

"Uh, I've never done this before..." They walked him through it, Burrows short handing everything by grabbing a needle with saline in it and making him inject it into his own hip, so that he'd know what to do. He did it well enough they decided, and had him repeat it instantly on their patient. Penny gulped audibly when he did it.

"I hate needles, Brian..." She said when he came toward her with it in his hand.

"Close your eyes then. It won't hurt that much and you can pretend I'm stabbing you with a banana instead of a needle. Ready?" Without giving her a chance to do more than nod, he did it, earning a gasp.

The doctors worked on her for over an hour and a half. They had a device for putting her leg in place, too big for her, meant for some of the truly massive team members that couldn't have their legs or sometimes arms, set any other way. Not by the regular human doctors. Brian got her in the contraption slowly, having functional use of only one arm. About halfway through, the device got stuck, her leg half in, causing her to gasp in pain, even through the meds. He slipped his arm out of the sling - when it became clear that the doctors couldn't fix it without being able to see her leg, not without hurting her - and lifted gently, picking up her leg up and out of the way so that Kern could stuff padding into the armature.

Burrows stared at him as he did it, eyes wide.

"Brian..." The doctor didn't say anything else though.

Which was good. It had to be done and the woman knew it. Her scolding him for being a dumb-ass wouldn't help at all in the moment.

His face had screwed up in pain, a fierce and sharp ripple burned from his upper arm into his soul. Brian tried to hide it, not wanting Penny to worry. He lowered the leg gently trying not to pant or grunt. This time it fit perfectly and the jam had been cleared. From there the professionals could do the work so he left that to them and moved around to hold the woman's hand on the far side of the bed.

"Hang in there... Almost done now." He said, not having a clue how close to the end they were. It turned out they really were close, the machine setting the leg in about twenty seconds, the bone making a soft click when it went back into place. Kern felt the leg, not hearing her whimpering as he poked at it.

"Feels good as far as I can tell. It's so hard to judge. Check it for me, Dr. Burrows?"

After that they had to get the leg into a soft splint and then give her some more pain medicine and muscle relaxants, which they made Brian do again. He had to help them get her into a bed before she drifted off totally and decided that he'd stay with her for the duration. If no one else could see her, that meant it would all be up to him. The room they gave her looked familiar, but wasn't one he'd been put in yet, they just all looked that much alike. He settled down next to the bed, his shoulder throbbing, so he slipped it back into the sling. Burrows noticed and left the room, telling him to wait.

He grinned at Penny.

"At last the shoe is on the other foot! I don't know exactly what they gave you, but I'd guess you're going to get pretty sleepy soon. I'll stay here as long as I can, so no worries there, all right?"

She nodded sleepily.

"Thanks for coming and finding me. I thought... I thought I'd die there. No one would think to look for me for a long time and..."

Brian shook his head. "Not gonna happen. I noticed as soon as you didn't show up for lunch and Mark would have noticed when you didn't eat your sandwich and come looking for you eventually. Probably would have found you hours earlier, with his powers. Christian would have heard you mentally sooner or later too. You've got people, we won't let you get too lost you know." He reached over and held her hand gently.

Penny smiled at him sleepily.

Ten minutes later Burrows came back in with five syringes and told Brian to strip.

"OK, just the shirt." She winked at Penny, which made the girl chuckle tiredly. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked pale. That he could see that rather amazed him. The doctor couldn't though, or hear the drugged laughter.

"This is, strictly speaking not legal. So no telling Miss Cooper. I'm injecting Brian with a few things that the Russians experimented with during the cold war, to speed up healing. It works, but it can't be done very often. Also I'm going to numb the hell out of the wound. If anyone asks, you've never heard of this and I only gave you a shot for pain, got it? I like practicing medicine and may want a real job someday, which I can't do if they pull my license."

She took the bandages off and finally let Brian have a good look at the wound. He had a half dozen overlapping bites and they went deep, but the flesh still remained, he noticed. He hadn't really been sure, not wanting to pat it and check before. This looked a lot easier to heal from than he'd feared. The shoulder was a mass of red marks and purple and black bruises, and ached like few things had in his experience, but, yeah, he could recover from this. He smiled, earning a weird look from the Doc.

"Hey, I've seen worse. On me." Feeling happy, he winked at her and then looked down as she started sticking him with needles. If he survived this long enough, Brian figured he could get a job in a sideshow as one of those people that stuck needles through their body. A geek. He laughed at the idea. Brian knew he'd never last that long. Plus he'd already been a geek in college. High school too, come to that.

Once he had his clothing back on, Bridget ran in, followed by Mark who looked at the bed and then smiled.

"Dang, Penny! Don't worry us like that. Now we have half our team down." He said it sounding dreamy and peaceful, like he almost always did. "And you, Brian... report this stuff OK? Christian's having a conniption right now about no one telling her about this until a few minutes ago when Bridgie came to get us."

Brian just shrugged. "Nothing against Christian, but she isn't exactly on my go-to list of people. I mean, I hardly ever see her or anything. I get why, a bit, I think, but it kind of knocks her down on the people I think about first in cases like this."

Bridget walked over to the bed and started poking at the air about where she thought Penny's arm should be, put her hand on the woman's chest, obviously realizing what she'd done and gave a squeeze before pulling her hand back. "Darn, Penny, you've got a rack on you! I'm jealous." She looked down at her chest and then over at Brian heaving an exaggerated sigh.

"Tobin said that he helped you get her from the stairs, so I went to see what Christian knew. I'm surprised that Tobin did it or told me about it. His first mode makes him really shy... but he's a great guy. That had to take a lot of guts for him to do, talk to you like that, then the doctors too. Like a regular guy fighting lions bare handed or something."

Bridget reached out and felt up Penny again until Mark drug her out, nearly twenty seconds later.

Brian stayed with Penny until they kicked him out to go sleep at nine, giving him more pain killers. He got up during the night and walked over to check on her twice. The night nurse nodding at him each time, having been told not to stop him apparently. Which was good, because it would have been a real hassle trying to sneak past. If he were healthy it would have been easy enough to just crawl past on the floor, using the desk as cover, but with his shoulder that would be miserable.

He spent the next three days barely sleeping, staying with Penny and walking around the track in the mornings with Karen, with her subtly pushing him to go faster. His arm didn't heal instantly from the shots he got from Burrows, but it felt better by the seventh day after he got back, which was huge compared to the eight weeks they'd told him to expect originally.

Penny moved back to her own room, so he insisted on going to his room too. That way he could be around to wait on her if she needed. She laughed at him and told him that she'd be fine, now that she had some crutches.

"After all, this is going to take a while to heal, twelve weeks or so they said. Looks like I can get caught up on my reading finally." She laughed, a hollow sound. It spoke to him of loneliness and unwanted isolation. He walked over to her and put an arm over her shoulder, standing next to her. It felt awkward, like he might be pushing things, but she seemed comforted, which had been his point.

"Anyway, you know, thanks for being there for me... I'm not used to it."

"Any time. Helping people is why I came here." He smiled at her. It was literally true, he realized, not just a throwaway line.

Looking away, she went still for a few seconds, then sat on her bed, the silver metal of the crutches flashing as she set them aside, laying them next to her. The cream-colored rubber on the bottom already showed a little wear, probably meaning someone else had used them before. When she spoke next she didn't look up at him at all.

"Look, Brian... You're my best friend... But I'm not... you know, looking for anyone right now. I..." Her voice trailed off as he felt his stomach drop. He couldn't think of anything he'd done to earn the "Let's just be friends" speech. He hadn't even asked her out or anything. Not hinted even or been inappropriate... At least he didn't think he had.

"Anyway, I just thought I should say that..." Not looking up she seemed to fade a bit.

"Um, sure. Well, I'm here for you if you need me... I guess." He knew he sounded a little sad, but couldn't help it. He hadn't thought about her being more than a friend, but now he felt rejected. It hurt, but he tried to set it aside. Maybe he'd just been around too much lately?

"Anyway, I should go now. I'll see you later maybe?" He tried to sound happy about it, without seeming bitter or anything. Obviously he'd messed up somehow. How that was, really Brian didn't have a clue.

Her answer sounded glum and noncommittal. "Sure. I guess."

Well fuck. Total brush off then, complete with an obvious "don't call me, I won't call you".

Penny hadn't seemed like the kind of person to get all stuck up about things like that, cutting him off before he'd even made a move seemed... harsh. Taking a deep breath he tried to work it out. At first he wanted to blame his looks, not that hot he knew, average at best. Also, he'd kind of been beat up most of the time he knew her, so that didn't help a lot.

Then he realized it could be something else. After all, if she became dependent on him, what would happen when he died? Brian could be gone in a day, an hour even. Then she'd be left alone again, even surrounded by all these people.

Not having anything else to do, and not wanting to sit alone and think, he headed down to the gym and desolately hit the heavy bag with his right fist over and over again. Not hard and not fast, but he didn't stop for a long time. He could make a fist now - with either hand, a major improvement over before - so he didn't crush his fingers every time he tapped the bag. Brian tried to mix things up, a back-fist followed by a hook to the middle, a straight followed by a high elbow. He kept it up, trying not to think about anything but the people that could be helped if he could learn any of this stuff well enough to survive the week. Brian felt like crying, but didn't let it happen. People already probably thought he was a pussy, always getting hurt, he didn't need to make a fool of himself in the gym too.

He jumped when a voice began calling out directions behind him. Marcia stood there, and told him to get his elbow up on the hooks. Then called out suggestions, which he followed as best he could, for another twenty minutes, then she had him go over to the open mat space.

"Let's work escapes from grabs, holds, and locks - you can to that with one arm for now. I expect you to be able to switch sides when you can though, so practice mentally in your down time. Good mental practice counts as much as physical, if you're in decent enough shape to carry it."