“Uncle, Uncle!” Jonathon burst in the door. “They’re coming!”

“They?”

“The aliens!”

I leapt out of bed and grabbed up my pistol and, together with everyone else, raced outside. “Where?” Uncle Andrew asked.

“There! Look, ladders.”

We had built our house on what you might call the fifth ‘story’ of the jungle… ie about five branches, big branches, high. The aliens, several dozen of them, were climbing up ladders, and had reached the ‘fourth’ story. I had just dropped flat to start shooting at them when I heard, from behind me, the ‘alarm’ that we had set up in the hut. From the way it was being beaten I knew that Justina must be beating it.

I had never seen anything like this outside of sims. There were literally dozens of enemy, adult enemy, coming up these ladders. They really were horrible climbers, but managed the ladders well enough.

They had to keep moving them up from level to level, though, which was what saved us. That, and the fact that they were armed mainly with knives and thing, not any kind of decent long range weapon. Two enemy, the two I shot first, had bows.

They found bows awkward, and had to hold them with a brace in their mouth, pulling back with one arm, and placing the ‘arrow’ with the third. It wasn’t really an arrow, more of a hooked Javelin, really.

“Aaah!” I heard from beside me, and, glancing over quickly, I saw that Bethany had been shot, in her leg. Keeping both eyes out for the enemy I schooshed over to where she was and examined the wound. The ‘arrow’, which must have been launched by an alien on her side, was still embedded in the wound, in her leg. The bleeding was minimal… either because it hadn’t hit anything major or, more likely, because it was blocking the bleeding.

“Medic!” I yelled, letting Adelphe know that her skills were required. “You OK?” I asked Bethany.

“I’ve had worse… in sim,” she said, doing her best to keep up her end of the battle. I fired several times leaning over her… I don’t think she had been quite keeping up before I got there. Of course, she was trained as a pathfinder, not a soldier.

It seemed forever that I lay there, next to her, looking and shooting in both directions before, suddenly, I heard Bethany squeal and felt her slide out from next to me. A quick glance showed that Adelphe, crouched very low, was dragging her back toward the hut.

“Where are the  Rihalans?” I heard Jonathon ask, from far off to the right. “Can’t they hear the alarm?”

“Most of them are probably too far away to hear it,” I said. “And the rest are so bad moving in trees that it will take them all day to get here.”

The Bnentarri were taking an awful beating. This kind of warfare was horrible for them. They are incredibly quick… on flat ground… but this climbing thing was impossible for them. It was hard for me to tell, covering so much ground, how many of those who fell fell because they were shot and how many simply because they lost their grip on the branches.

I heard a yell to my right and turned to see Jonathon struggling with a Bn. He had him up on  his hind legs, claws in arms, but the Bnentarri was still able to balance on his tail and get an occasional hind leg up and scratch him.

Cursing, or such curses as I knew, I dialed my pistol down to ‘narrow’ and ‘wound’. It wouldn’t do to poke a hole right through the Bnentarri into Jonathon. It took me four shots, leg shots, before I was able to wound one of the hind legs enough that the Bnentarri lost his ability to stand and dropped down.

Jonathon went with him, as we had been taught, and curled around onto the aliens back. From there it was just a frantic few second before, his throat cut, the alien thrashed into silence, and Jonathon dropped back down into firing postion.

“Medic!” I shouted, “Check Jonathon.”

I knew that saying ‘check’ would keep Adelphe from just abandoning Bethany in mid-operation to run out to Jonathon. “You OK?” I yelled at him.

“I’m bleeding pretty bad,” he said. “On my legs.”

“Well press on it if you can,” I said. If you can’t come over here.”

He must have handled it, because he didn’t comment more, and kept firing.

Suddenly I heard a roaring from above us, and saw a shuttle come in, hot. Zip lines came down, and soldiers raced down them. Seconds later, the lines, and the shuttle, were gone.

“Hey!” said a voice, as a body thumped down beside me. “How’s it going?”

I couldn’t quite recognize the voice, and the soldier was in a combat suit, which disguised him pretty completely. “Fine,” I said. “Two wounded, so far. Take over for Jonathon, over on my right… oh,” I said, as another soldier slid to a stop next to Jonathon. “Belay that, but tell him to send that one in for med,” I said. “He’s all scratched up, hind leg wounds.”

The soldier, his rifle never ceasing to move, spoke into his com and, seconds later, a soldier was helping Jonathon back into the hut.

“You guys came fast!” I said.

“We’re getting hit all over,” he said. “We were on our way to another station and got diverted here.

“Just because Bethany was hurt?” I asked, suddenly worried. “She looked OK to me.”

“No, not just that,” he said. “Your sister is in labor. She had radioed in earlier. We were going to bring a midwife down later but, given the attack, we brought her with us now.”

“Labor?!” I asked.

“Your wife’s hurt?” he asked, suddenly realizing what I’d said. “Bad?”

“Javelin wound, thigh,” I said, not wanting to answer his question with the term he had used.

“Get in there!” he said. “Your medic is in labor, and your own wife is hurt. We’ve got enough here, get moving. Family first!”

“Family first,” I echoed, and slid off to the door of the hut, tapping with our recognition pattern.

“Hey!” I heard, as the door opened to a suit dressed medic. “Hurt?” she asked.

“No,” I said, sliding in. “Family first.”

She looked in the corner, “Ah, yes, your wife. A bleeder, but Aliyah sewed it. If you can close, she can work on Jonathon, some, and then I can work on her. I have Jonathon stabilized with a bleed pack, but he needs some deep stitches.”

I went over to my wife. She had a nasty wound in her thigh. She was laying face down and gave me a wry grin over her shoulder. “Ouch!” she said.

“I guess,” I answered, picking up the needle and thread. “Hold still.”

We all knew how to do basic stitching, and I peeled back the poultice confidently. Much of my confidence evaporated when I saw the wound, however. It was long, and jagged. I tried to keep my face impassive, as she was still staring at me over her shoulder. “Does this hurt?” I asked, prodding carefully at the edge of the wound with a needle.

“No,” she said. “The anesthetic is working well.”

“Good,” I said and, after washing my hands in feverwash I got going.

I was about halfway done, having to do a lot more cleaning and cutting than I was comfortable with, when the tap sounded, urgently, on the door. I looked up. The soldier-medic was answering it, her pistol out in case of ‘company’.

“Bad one!” the soldier at the door said, pulling a Rihalan in. “Bite, upper arm.”

I replaced the poultice and left Bethany, arriving at the same time as Adelphe, who was clutching her stomach as she pulled back the field dressing. A bite indeed. The arm was pretty much gone from a few inches below the shoulder.

“I…” Adlephe said, and clutched her stomach.

“We’ll handle it,” the soldier-medic said. “Finish Jonathon if you can.”

She and I hauled the Riahlan over to the table, and up onto it. His clothes were half off already, and I made short work of the rest. He clutched at me a couple of times, as if objecting, but I ignored him. The soldier-medic was busy with feverwash and then the anesthesic poltice. “Anything else?” she asked me.

“He’s pretty raw in a few spots,” I said. “And a bunch of splinters. They must have drug him here over a bunch of rough spots.”

“Splinters can wait,” she said. “How is Bethany?”

“Half closed,” I said. “Otherwise OK. Vitals stable.”

“OK,” she said, “Wash up.”

We both washed well in the feverwash, and then she had me hold the boy down against the table. “I doubt the anesthetic has had time to work,” she said, “but we need to get this off before infection sets in.”

So saying she began scrubbing, hard, in the ripped area. The boy screamed and fought against me, trying to get at the medic… with curses flowing from his mouth. At least, I assumed they were curses, I never did learn to curse in Rihalan.

“Hold still!” I said, “Be a man.”

He said something to me after that in Rihalan and then, more calmly, “What is she doing?”

“Cutting your arm off,” I said. I didn’t believe in beating around the bush.

“What?!” he said, trying to turn his head to look.

“The Bnentarri bit it almost off,” I said. “If the medic leaves it on it will get infected and you will die.”

“But my arm!” he said, as if I didn’t know what I was saying.

“Is gone. It can’t be saved. Perhaps in a big hospital they could save it, but not here. Think, this will end your tour, and you can go home and get a wife.”

“What father will give me a wife, with only one arm?” he asked, despairingly.

“You will be a war hero!” I said. “Surely your family will boast about their son, who lost his arm while fighting the awful aliens.”

“Perhaps,” he said, nodding grudgingly, and then he screamed. I looked over. The medic was busy slicing through the remaining flesh, and had the bone saw ready.

“Hold now!” I said, “Show courage.”

He ‘held’… still anyway. His voice continued shriller and shriller until, finally, the medic was done, the flap of skin sewn over the gap, and he could relax.

She took over his care and I returned to Bethany, who was asleep. At first I panicked but a quick feel of her pulse showed that she was just asleep, not dead. I took my needle back up and she was out enough, and anesthetized enough, that she didn’t stir as I started sewing again.

“Ooooh!” Adlephe screamed, just as I finished sewing my last stitch. I looked over. She had finished with Jonathon, who was also sleeping, and the medic was crouching down between her legs. I had had the emergency child birth class, and the douala class, and knew what she was looking for.

“Sorry, only four,” the medic said, straightening up, and Adlephe, well, Adelphe wasn’t happy and she used words that I had never heard before (from her). The medic gave me a glance out of the corner of her eye and winked.

I looked back at Bethany. She was still asleep. “I think I will return to duty,” I said.

“Very well,” the medic said, after glancing, herself, at Bethany.

“How is it going?” I asked, plopping myself down next to my soldier friend.

“Better,” he said. “The attack is dying down.

“We need to visit the posts,” I said.

“True, that,” he said. He whistled and, in a few seconds, had us permission to go from Carl.

This soldier crawled down limbs better than the Rihalans, and we are able to go fairly quickly. At the first post we found three dead boys. “Stupid,” he said. “No sentries. These three were killed in their sleep.”

“There were supposed to be four, here,” I said, and he grimaced.

At the next post the boys were fighting, and doing well. We arrived and quickly killed two of the four enemy that were hiding near them.

My next stop was selfish. I led my soldier friend on to the post where I had left my ‘wise’ Rihalan. We approached cautiously, but all was quiet. I was sick with fear as we approached the post itself. We had been leapfrogging and it was the soldiers turn to go forward as we reached the post.

“Nobody here, no signs of a struggle,” he said.

“What?” I came in, myself. Sure enough, the post was completely empty. Suddenly we heard a whistling noise and, poking our heads out and looking up, we saw an arm wave from a branch far above us.

“Brothers,” a voice called, as we started to climb. “Good of you to come. We feared for you.”

We came up, three levels above, to a strange sight. The boys were all sitting, naked except for a small strip of cloth, all the colors of the jungle, each on different branches, yards apart from each other. Except for my ‘wise’ friend they were each looking down, scanning the jungle.

“We saw enemy coming and fled here,” my friend said. “I had arranged it as a backstop for us, and we had moved things up here. I had heard that the enemy didn’t like to climb, and that has proved to be true. They came to our post below, those that were still able to come, and, finding it empty, and our shots coming from above them, have largely been discouraged and gone away.”

“Largely?”

“We still have visitors from time to time,” he said, grinning. “

“We have been visiting the other posts, some of which are manned by dead men. Do you think you all can move a couple of posts closer? Maybe stay up at this height, but move over?”

“Sure,” the Rihalan said.

—

We visited two more posts, both untouched, and then went back towards our house. We came in sight and I saw Father sitting by the front door, while soldiers stood guard on the edges of the platform and out into the jungle. For some reason everyone but Father looked nervous, and he looked… sad?

“Father?” I said, sliding down a branch nearby and coming up to him. “Is everyone all right?” Just then I heard a shriek from inside the hut and paled. Father held up his hand,

“It’s just Aliyah,” he said, “having our baby.”

“Why aren’t you in there?” I blurted out, surprised. All the other fathers I had known had been present for the births of their children… when they could, of course. Family first.

“She doesn’t like me,” he said. At first I thought he meant ‘doesn’t like me there when she gives birth’, which really shouldn’t matter. But then I saw his face and realized this was their first.

“What?” I said, “She loves you! She tells me all the time. She tells you all the time,” I added, thinking about it.

“She may,” he said. “Probably she does. But she doesn’t like me.”

I stared at him and he said, finally, “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. But it hit me hard when she told me to leave.”

“You see, I made a big mistake back when we partnered. I didn’t do things the way I should have, and then I lied to her about it.”

“What, what did you do wrong?” I asked, amazed. Father had always seemed to me to be the best lover a partner could have… always worrying about what Adelphe wanted or needed. He wasn’t a husband, of course, which was sad, but he was better than most of the other partners I had seen.

“I forced her to partner with me, sort of. I was afraid to ask her, myself. You have no idea how shy I used to be. I had thought about partnering with several girls, but I couldn’t bear to ask them. And then, when I wanted to partner with Aliyah, I couldn’t bring myself to ask. And I knew if I joined the Colonization Force they would… they would force her to partner with me.”

“I went and looked her up, on the computer. You could do that. Indeed, they encouraged it. And she… well, you know her. Strong, capable, intellectual. She was everything I wasn’t, and I knew she would never agree to partner with me. So I… I was wandering down the street, and saw the office, and suddenly it all seemed to come together. I could avoid final choice, and everyone would be proud of me for joining up, and… and I would get Aliyah.”

I sat and tried to wrap my mind around this. It was all foreign to me. I had never thought I would have to ask some girl to marry me. The doctor would present my father with a list of choices, he would talk to the girl’s father, and then they would tell us about it.

Or, like had happened, he would need to send off for some girl… and force her! I realized, suddenly. Bethany. Sitting at home, with even an ‘exemption’ thing, suddenly getting a notice that she was forced to come and marry me! If Adelphe was upset at being culled for Father, how must Bethany feel?

“You can go in,” he said, suddenly, and I paled again. “Your wife was asking for you,” he added and, steeling myself, I went in.

“Who?!” said the soldier-medic but then, “Oh, it’s you. She’s over there,” she added, as I stood and stared at Adelphe. I had never, ever, seen her like this. She was standing, moaning, clutching herself… almost as if she was in a different world.

“Carl?” I heard, and I turned away from Adelphe.

“Bethany,” I said, hurrying over. She was laying on a mat, next to that Rihalan, holding Justina. The Rihalan was awake, if a bit bleary, and he changed his amazed gaze from Adelphe to me, as if he was in some bizarre dream. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said, moving a bit, wincing, and then, “or as fine as you can be when you get a Javelin through your thigh.”

“Brother?” Justina said, “Is Adelphe OK?”

She hadn’t seen too many births before, and had been asleep for much of mother’s last. “Yes, ‘Stina,” I said. “She will probably be OK. She’s just having a baby.”

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t like sugar coating things. Speaking of which…

“I’m sorry,” I said to Bethany.

“Oh, it wasn’t your fault!” she said to me, rubbing her leg above her wound, “More mine, if anything, but mostly the Bn.”

“No, I mean about our marriage.”

“What?!” she said, looking up at me sharply.

“I shouldn’t have let them force you to come,” I said.

“What?!! Do you… do you not like me?” she asked, sounding hurt and shocked.

“Oh, no. I mean, that’s not what I meant,” I said, not wanting her to misunderstand. Of course I liked her. She wasn’t that well trained, but it wasn’t her fault. “I was talking to Father, and he said that Adelphe didn’t like him because he forced her to partner with him…”

Bethany reached up and put her hand over my mouth, looking nervously at Adelphe… who was paying us not attention at all. “Hush, love. It isn’t like that at all. Not anymore. And she always liked him. You can like and hate someone at the same time, you know. You can especially love and hate them at the same time.”

I supposed you could, but what did that have to do with… “But why doesn’t she want him here?”

“What?” she said, “Oh, I must have been asleep. Tell him to come in.”

“But she said she doesn’t want…”

“Tell him I want to see him!” she commanded me, in a tone my mother would have used and, not knowing anything else to do, I hurried out.

“Bethany needs to see you,” I said, and Father, shocked, hurried in after me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, hurrying up, and looking at Bethany, Justina, the Rihalan, everywere but at Adelphe.

“She needs you,” Bethany said, waving her head at Adelphe. “Get over there!”

“But,” he said, but she continued to use that same tone and said,

“Get over there, she needs you!”

I sat next to Bethany, who held my hand as Justina crawled onto my lap. I had never seen Father look so tentative but, when he got close, Adelphe looked up from her moaning, seemed to recognize him, relaxed, and said, “Oh, honey, hold me…” and he rushed forward the last few steps, supporting her.

That seemed to be all she needed because, a minute later, she squatted on the ground and, as I had seen so many times before, a baby came forth into the world. Not without so more screams and pushing and all, but it came forth.

“It’s a boy!” Father said, amazed, holding it up to her breast.

“Are you pleased?” Adelphe said, and I watched a look of fear cross his face until he looked, really looked, at Adelphe. And then he relaxed, and said,

“Oh, yes,” he said. I turned back to Bethany,

“Do you like me?” I asked Bethany.

She glanced nervously at Justina, but then patted me on the knee, “Yes, I like you. It has been a hard start, I don’t deny that. I’m sure I wasn’t the kind of girl you expected to marry. I hardly know what marriage is, the way that your people teach it. But I’m learning.”

“You… you’ve been doing fine!” I protested. Did she think I didn’t like her? I didn’t understand girls.

I shut up after that, as I didn’t seem to be helping what I was trying to do. It was awkward to apologize to someone who wouldn’t acknowledge what you had done wrong. I watched Adelphe and Father hug (he surely must be wrong about him not liking her) while the afterbirth was delivered (a truly gross activity) and then watched the baby nurse for a while, before I said, “I probably need to get back to work.”

I spent the next few days with my soldier friend rounding up Rihalans, pulling them back in tighter, and waging continual if light war against the enemy, who still seemed to be throwing themselves against each outpost of ours.

The baby did fine, and Adelphe bounced back quickly. Bethany did less well, as the wound got a bit infected. Adelphe and the soldier-medic kept treating her, but then Adelphe called me over one day and said, “We’re going to evac you. This climate is just great for infections, and she had a big wound. Father called for the shuttle, and it should be here in an hour. Get yourselves dressed,” she said, grinning, “I don’t think those clothes will go over on board.

I looked down at myself and over at Bethany and grinned, just trying to imagine what my aunts would say. I showered and changed and then bathed Bethany and Justina and I helped her into her suit.

“When will you come back, Carl?” Justina asked.

“I don’t know, ‘Stina. We need to fix up Bethany.”

She nodded, nervously. I was sure she would be fine with Adelphe and Father, though.

The shuttle ride was cool. It was the first time outside of sim that I got to put someone in a basket. Bethany protested, of course, but, really, she couldn’t walk or even stand long enough to really grab the line; so up in the basket she went. I followed on the line and, once I was aboard the shuttle took off.

“Where are we going next?” I asked the pilot, crawling through the hatch enough to stick my head in.

“Deliveries,” he said. “We have about half a dozen left to do, then up to the ship. Get back to your wife! Family first!”

“Family first,” I agreed, and went back to Bethany. But Adelphe had given her some sleepy tea before we left and it was taking effect, so I laid myself down next to her basket stretcher and, well, took a nap.

“Wake up, sport,” a voice said, “And help me carry your wife!”

I awoke to see a man, soldier dressed, shaking my shoulder. I rubbed my eyes and got to my feet, grabbing the tail end of Bethany’s stretcher. It only took us a minute to go from the shuttle to the  small compartement we used on ship for a sickbay (and other things). No one else was there, and we laid her on the bed. The soldier helped me unsnap the stretcher and move her onto the bed. I knew how to hook her up to the machines so, in a couple of minutes more, I had her undressed and hooked up, with a sheet over her which I knew the medic would take off but, Bethany was raised on New Texas and I knew she would appreciate it even for the couple of minutes.

“Well, how is my patient?” a voice asked and I turned to see an older lady, soldier medic dressed.

“Sleepy,” I said. “My sister gave her a tea before she came up, and she has been mostly sleeping since.” Bethany gave the lady a groggy look and, as if to prove me right, closed her eyes.

“Well, let’s see this leg,” the lady said, and pulled the sheet off Bethany’s leg. “Definitely infected,” she said, “but we should get that cleared up here fast enough. Those jungle environtments are just full of bugs. Not much in the way of bugs here, though, she said. Then she looked at me, “Except on you, perhaps. Go shower while I finish my exam.”

I nodded and went off obediently. Medics were worse than mothers for being obeyed. I had hardly made it to the shower before I was surrounded by my various cousins and all, all asking me about Bethany, about life on the surface, about the battle, and did I know how many of the pathfinders had died?”

No, I didn’t, I said to them, because we hadn’t heard. They all got quiet and then Brian, a good frind of mine who had just married himself two years ago, started in on the litany. I was appalled!

“Almost half of them,” he said. “And even more of the Rihalans.”

I… I almost cried. I mean, I knew most of them. I knew them pretty well, considering. I could remember bringing them fish, and barbecuing, and swimming. And Adephe! These were her friends, from her planet, that she had trained with! And half of them were dead!

I finished my shower, went through the UV sterilizer, dressed, and went back to Bethany. When I got there the medic had her completely hooked up to all the tubes and things. “Ah, the husband, good. We’re are about to start the deletion.”

A deletion! I hadn’t seen one of those in a while… since one of my friends had cancer. I knew they did them for bad infections too. “Ready?” she asked, and, when I nodded my head we watched, together, Bethany’s blood shoot up the tube.

“Now, this will just clear the pathogens out of the blood, of course,” the medic said. “For the leg we are going to be a bit more direct.”

I nodded. This next I had seen lots of times, and I watched, eagerly, as she positioned the machine over the wound. When she pushed the button there was nothing, really, to see, but I knew that the machine was zapping all of Bethany’s dead skin and infected bits, and then washing it out with ‘saline’ solution which had a strong antibiotic.

I looked at Bethany. She was sleeping, of course. These processes were kind of hard on the body, so the medic had given her some sleepy drug.

“By the way,” the medic said, “congratulations.”

“Umm, well, I wouldn’t exactly be that proud of what we did,” I said. “We were very lucky that no one was killed, and the soldier arriving really helped us.”

She looked at me as if I was an idiot, and then proved that I was. “I didn’t mean that! That was horrible, of course, and I’m glad you are alive. I meant the baby.”

Baby? Baby?! I looked at Bethany, then back at the medic. “You didn’t know?”

“No…” I said, “She didn’t tell me.”

“Well, maybe she didn’t know. It is her first, obviously, and she isn’t very far along. Didn’t you notice that her time hadn’t come, say, two weeks ago?”

I shook my head. I had been so busy with so many things going on that I hadn’t even thought about her ‘time’ and all.

“Well, anyways, congratulations. Just think, you’ll be the one to get to tell her when she wakes up.”

I looked down at Bethany, amazed at that idea. And then I looked around, grabbing a chair and sitting next to her. I had planned on going back to my friends while she slept but, with this news, I wasn’t going anywhere. The soldier medic looked at me, grinned, and said, “If you have time, she will need another bath, the materials are in that closet. And I believe that someone said that there are new letters from home, her home, anyway, and that some of them are addressed to you.

New letters from her home? To me? I thought about that, nervously, while I bathed Bethany; a basic skill that we had all learned in sim, and not the only time I had ever been assigned it. Why were they writing to me? Or, maybe, maybe it wasn’t to me, but to Bethany, and they just tagged me on the letter, in case, like, she died or something, so I could give the letters to Aliyah.

I finished her bath and then, went over to the computer, nervously, and pulled up my account. Sure enough, there were letters addressed to me. I scrolled down the list. Fifty letters?! And they were really for me; the headers showed only my address, with only a dead carbon copy to Aliyah and Bethany. Nervous and confused, I clicked on the first letter.

“Oh, Carl!” the lady on the letter looked kind of like Aliyah and kind of like Bethany. Only older and all. “They told us your name was Carl, you know. We didn’t find out about Andrew’s name until much later, but we found out yours right away.”

We hope to get letters from you, of course, although boys rarely write. But maybe Bethany will convince you to write. Let me tell you about  our family…

I sat back, an hour later, dazed. My new mother-in-law had, it seemed, written practically ever day. She had told me what they had for dinner! And which ones Bethany was good at making, in case I wanted her to make it. (Some of them had sounded good, too, although, in general, I didn’t like NT cooking, and much of it would be impossible to make here).

“Carl?” I whirled to the bed,

“Bethany?”

“Hey,” she said. She looked just terrible, all pale and everything, and she was reaching out toward me.

“Lay, still, love,” I said, going over and hugging her, and then putting her sheet back on from where it slipped.

“Where, where are we?”

“On our ship, Love, the pathfinder ship.”

“Why? Oh,” she said, looking at her leg. “Am I, am I going to be ok?”

“yes, yes love.” I said, stroking her shoulder. “The medic says you should be fine. Just relax.”

“Ok,” she said and, closing her eyes, seemed to fall asleep as soon as they closed. Too late, I realized I had forgotten to talk to her about… her condition. That was probably best, anyway, as she was so tired.