Tymber Dalton - Out of Bight, Out of Mind

“I know. It’s okay.” She shrugged off her hospital gown and stepped into the shower. He stripped and stepped in with her. He wanted to bathe her, but she made him sit on the fold-down seat. “No, I want to do this.” She slowly washed him, holding him as she did. He draped his arms around her hips and rested his forehead against her chest as she stroked his hair. “I’m back for good. You won’t lose me again.”

That was when he started sobbing. As the bathroom steamed up, she held him, soothing him, rocking him to comfort his grief. After several minutes he finally pulled himself together. He gently touched her stomach, where the faint pink line from the surgical wound was visible.

“Maybe we should quit the DSMC.” He kissed her tummy. “Stay on Earth, get a house. We’ll get a big house, and Yanna and Pabo can live on the other side and study Earth from Earth. We can sleep late every day and raise a houseful of kids.”

“You wouldn’t be happy on Earth.”

“Yeah, I would. With the three of you, I’m happy no matter where we are. That’s all that matters to me is you three. You all are my home.”

After a while he stood and she shaved him. Then he bathed her. Nearly an hour had passed by the time they dressed and emerged from the bathroom.

Her hospital room was empty, but she sensed Pabo’s protective, watchful presence guarding the door outside.

Caph helped her back into bed and once again took up the chair on her right, holding her hand while they watched a Martian news program about her return and the Beyant treaty signing on the vid screen.

The ambassador and Yanna showed up a while later. The ambassador carried flowers and scowled a little at Caph until Yanna explained who he was.

The ambassador’s English wasn’t very good, so he preferred to speak to her in Beyant. “I was told this is a Terran tradition,” he said as he leaned in to place a kiss on her forehead. “To bring flowers to the ill.” A nurse brought a vase in for her, then left again after taking her vital signs.

Emi smiled as Yanna arranged the flowers on the dresser. “Thank you, rah’tein ,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”

Yanna sat on her other side and tipped his head toward Caph. “Does he always look at you so intently?” he asked.

She smiled. “He has since I’ve been here.” Her smile faded. “He’s very sad about the baby.”

Ambassador Raoulx agreed. “Even I can see it. He loves you very deeply.”

Caph rested his head on the bed again and stared at her. He brought her hand to his lips, kissed it, then cupped his other hand around it, too.

“Do you need to translate for him?” the ambassador asked.

“I don’t think he honestly cares what I say or what language I speak as long as he can sit here and listen to me.”

The ambassador laughed. “I would concur with that assessment.”

Yanna nodded. “He would sit there all day long and listen to you, I’m sure.”

“I think I like him,” the ambassador said with a decisive nod. “He seems worthy of you. I believe you are in very safe hands with him. And the others, of course.”

Emi smiled and turned to Caph. “He likes you,” she told him in English.

“I don’t care if he likes me or not. Who the hell is he?”

“Your father-in-law, Ambassador Raoulx. Yanna’s father. You can call him rah’tein .”

Caph blushed a little. “Oh. Tell him it’s a pleasure to meet him.”

She translated. The ambassador smiled as he extended a hand over the bed toward Caph. Caph reluctantly let go of Emi’s hand and shook with him before taking her hand again.

“Is it normal for a Terran male to be so…clingy?” the ambassador asked her.

“I think he will be clingy for a while, rah’tein .” She squeezed Caph’s hand and smiled at him. While she still had no clear memories of him, her heart and soul did remember the feelings she’d had for him. And without a doubt, she knew how much he loved her. “And that’s fine by me.”

Emi was never left truly alone. If one or all of her men weren’t in the room with her, then either Yanna or Pabo were. If given privacy, at least two men guarded the door of her room. And Aaron, Caph, and Ford usually all spent nights crammed in the room with her, taking turns on the pullout sofa and sitting in a recliner chair next to her bed.

On day three of her stay in the medical unit, Aaron arrived with an older man and woman Emi knew from Ford’s pictures were Markkus and Delaney D’ambroise.

Kelsey’s mother and father.

Aaron introduced them anyway. “Em, they really wanted to come see you.”

She sensed his worry, that she would be overwhelmed, and she offered him a smile. “It’s okay. Thank you for bringing them.” She also knew he had a lot to do, between catching up on overdue maintenance on the Tamora Bight , as well as paperwork, filing incident reports, talking to tribunal representatives over Kayehalau’s attack on her and his subsequent suicide. “If you have a lot to do, it’s okay.”

He kissed her. “I’ll be back in two hours for lunch.”

Emi felt a wave of parental concern from both of them as they leaned in to hug and kiss her. Tears glistened in Delaney’s eyes. “Sweetie, it’s so good to see you.”

“Thanks, Mom.” It did feel a little odd calling her that, but she knew that like everything else, she would grow used to it. “I’m sorry I don’t have any memories of you. Ford told me all about you, though. And Kelsey.”

Markkus was easily as big as Caph. “We know. They warned us.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. His eyes looked red, as if he’d been crying. “It’s so good to see you alive. You have no idea.”

She wanted to cry for them, for their joy as well as their renewed grief over losing their daughter. Her ordeal had dredged up a lot of memories for them, and not all of them good ones. “I wish we were getting together under better circumstances.”

Delaney patted her arm. “These are fantastic circumstances. You’ve come back, alive and…well.”

Emi didn’t miss the slight hesitation in the woman’s voice, the way she skipped, nearly tripping, over the subject.

“It’s okay. Dr. Graymard says we’re going to be transferred back to Earth for a while. They’re going to see if they can restore my memories.”

Delaney opened her purse. “I brought pictures and videos with us, if you’d like to see them.” She withdrew a handheld.

“Yes, please. That would be wonderful.”

Markkus and Delaney helped her out of bed and over to the sofa, where they sat flanking her. They were still sitting there when Aaron returned. Emi had laughed and cried with the couple, asked them countless questions about her men as well as Kelsey, and even felt the slightest glimmer of recognition when retelling events involving her.

“Do you want to have lunch with us?” Aaron asked them. “Caph and Ford are on their way, too. Caph would have blown off the tribunal wonks if I hadn’t ordered him to talk to them.”

Emi grabbed their hands. “Please, stay?” She felt eager to talk with them, thirsty for more details and memories.

Learning about herself and her past through her men wasn’t bad. But hearing about them from someone else’s point of view was priceless.

Not to mention the longer she stayed with them, the more loved by them she felt, and she wasn’t ready to relinquish that yet. In a world where her life had, in essence, started only months ago, she felt desperate to fill in the gaps, even if it was just in emotions and not in actual memories.

Feelings also served to feed her soul.