Mission Voyager (Part Four)
-Part Four-
(Jensen)
Standing by the door of the guest room to observe has become such a huge part of Jensen’s schedule in the past days. He stays there, leaning against the doorframe or bringing a chair along when he gets too tired, and looks. He lets his eyes wander over the mostly covered figure on the bed, keeping track of the machines beeping in the room as much as looking at the slight flickers and the movements of the sleeping body. At times Jensen doesn’t dare to get too close, heart rate picking up wildly whenever he steps beyond the door to go check if everything is okay.
But whenever he does, Jensen takes special attention to look at the human’s face calmly sleeping and pressed against the pillow. His eyes can’t get enough of it, paying special attention to the perfect curve of the nose or the curious little dots close to the left eye or under the chin. Moles. This human face seems to have several of them just as Jensen has freckles. Jensen pays attention to it all. The color of his skin, the pink of the lips, the shape of the eyebrows. Perhaps he’s being ridiculous. Any shifter out there has the exact same things the human currently living in his house does. They morph into humans, for god’s sake. Their anatomy is identical to the guy sleeping in front of him, yet for Jensen it’s not the same.
This is a real human. There’s no shifter DNA, nothing else under his bones and muscles. Pure humanity, nothing else. Exactly what he always wanted to be able to meet, right there, sleeping under his very same roof and close enough for Jensen to extend his hand and touch.
Jensen is both scared and extremely fascinated.
And he’s in trouble. He’s in so much trouble, Jensen doesn’t even want to think about it while he glances one last time at the human before turning around to go back into his living room. One of the first things shifters learn when they get to Earth is about how dangerous humans are. There’s nothing worst in the universe, nothing more dangerous or deadly. And for that reason, whenever a shifter has the misfortune to see a human they need to call for one of the Security Divisions right away. They are capacitated shifters who know how to deal with humans much better than anyone else. They are in charge to look for the humans and take them away to one of the facilities in all the cities, where humans can be kept safe and don’t pose any threat to shifters or themselves.
Jensen was supposed to call Danneel and the Security Division as soon as the human passed out in his living room nights ago. That’s standard protocol and Jensen has heard about it nonstop in the radio, the news, everywhere. And yet here he is, three days later, authorities and his accommodator still ignorant of the young man living in his house.
Jensen is so deep in trouble he can’t even see the light at the end o the tunnel. Three whole days and he has done nothing.
Well, not exactly nothing. He has been curing the human. As soon as the guy passed out, Jensen had taken him to the guest room to find the source of the blood loss. The man had a big wound on his arm, skin broken and muscle damaged. Jensen had stopped the bleeding, fixed his arm and stitched the wound immediately. He had kept examining the guy to find out what was wrong with him. The bleeding and pain alone from his arm couldn’t have made him pass out the way he did, as a specialist in human physiology, Jensen knew that much. He had medicine and equipment at home so he could easily check to find what could possibly have caused such poor health conditions on the passed out man who broke into his house with a gun.
A quick blood test let him know the guy is sick from malnutrition. The results showed his sugar was low and his immune system practically non-existent. By only looking at him, Jensen could guess that the guy had barely slept in days and was dehydrated. Their advance knowledge in medicine let Jensen start a quick treatment, putting the guy on supplements and different liquids, taking down his fever and treating what turns out to be a cold turning into an ugly pneumonia. Jensen changed the guy into some of his own clothes since the ones he was wearing were soaking wet and covered in blood, made him lay down on the bad and covered him in warm blankets while keeping up his treatment.
Now, the human has been out for almost three days and Jensen hasn’t left his house ever since. He called in sick for work the morning after spending all night up helping the guy and then cleaning the mess left in the living room. He explains he got home in the middle of a storm the night before and is now dealing with a cold. It’s the first lie Jensen has ever told in his life. He probably does very poorly on the phone, hands sweating and voice stuttering while he explains to Alona why he can’t call in and why he needs her to postpone all his patients or assign them to another healer. Jensen feels horrible the entire time, overwhelmed with guilt and to tired to to deal with. He’s lying to protect a human. Lying, to another shifter like him, for a human with a gun who clearly wanted to kill Jensen.
It’s so ridiculous Jensen can’t believe it himself after hanging up with Alona-who of course doesn’t suspect a thing because why would Jensen lie about being sick? She even sounds worried on the phone and asks Jensen to call her if he feels like he’s getting too sick so she can come over and help him. Lies are the start of a corrupt society, one of the worst things you can do to someone else. Lying. J“What’s wrong with me?” Jensen mumbles once he’s back in his living room, going to sit down on one of the couches with a heavy sigh. Pressing both hands to his face, he stops to breath and think.
He’s so wrong. Wrong about everything. About not telling the Security Division that some human broke in, about missing work and lying to Alona and even making her worry. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is why shifters had to take humans away, all they do is bring wrongness into the universe. Three days with one of them in his house and Jensen has already done more wrong than he has in all his years of existence.
No wonder humans were such a threat. And yet the guy had been terrified of him.
Three days and Jensen still can’t get that look out of his head. It’s there, every time he closes his eyes. That young guy, sobbing and looking so scared as he stared back into Jensen’s eyes. The sound of the human’s cries still break something in Jensen’s chest whenever he thinks of them. How miserable the human looked. How scared. Scared of Jensen. It baffles him. How could that be possible? That human had a gun! That Jensen had put in one of the closets in the house, leaving it on the floor where it fell the first day, not even wanting to touch a weapon designed to kill. That human had a gun and had broken into his house. And Jensen is a shifter, he would never hurt anybody or anything. How could the human be so scared of him?
Jensen shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling.
He should call the Collectors, make them take the human away to one of the facilities before he fully wakes up. He was weak before and maybe that stopped him from attacking Jensen, but what will happen when he’s back to full health again? Maybe Jensen shouldn’t let him stick around to find out. But right now the humans is sick. He’s really sick, and even after he wakes up it’s going to take him some days to fully recover. Sure, they could keep his body healthy back in the facility he gets taken into, but is not the same, Jensen guesses. He’s already the guy’s healer. He should at least make sure the human is all good before he calls someone to come for him, right? His mission as a healer is to cure and help all living things in the universe, and that includes humans, too. His grandfather taught him that. He would have wanted Jensen to make sure that poor scared thing was at least healthy before calling anybody. He did nothing but teach Jensen compassion and love for the creatures across the different galaxies and this case is no different. First he will make sure the human gets better and then he will call the Security Division, which by then will send some Collectors to transport the human somewhere else, where he can’t be a threat to anyone. It seems like a solid plan.
Besides, Jensen really wants to know why the human was scared of him. Why he didn’t shoot. Jensen knows it will be dangerous once that guy wakes up and he probably won’t be able to talk to him, who knows what will happen when the human regains consciousness. But Jensen wishes they could exchange just a few words, his curiosity for the beings he could never interact with keeping him awake at night now that he’s so close to one of them. Jensen wishes they weren’t so dangerous.
Perhaps this obsession with humans is not good. He’s a healer, he should know that. Any obsession is bad, Jensen should recognize that as a bad trait that comes with the human body and their emotions. Obsession and lying. Maybe this is the moment he should call Danneel, tell her what’s going on. Let her know that he’s starting to experience some of the things they had all been warned about. He tells all his new patients to do so, doesn’t he?
Letting out a sigh, he leans forward to take the phone from the coffee table next to the couch. He has few numbers saved in them, but Danneel’s is in there. He also has the number of her wristband, they can communicate that way for quick messages and call that way, too.
He starts scrolling down the short list of numbers in his phone until he finally findsHarris, Danneel and the word accommodator right beneath it. A single call and Jensen can put an end to this. He doesn’t have to lie any more or keep on doing things wrong. Nibbling on his lower lip, Jensen presses the green call button so it will dial the number. It only beeps twice before Jensen hears an alarm go off, making him jump out of the couch.
It’s coming from the guest room.
Jensen hangs up and throws the phone behind him before he can think twice, running towards the room and only stopping once he’s standing in front of the unconscious human, checking all the monitors and numbers to find out what’s wrong with him. The guy is breathing harder and he’s struggling on the bed, but he’s still asleep. His heart is beating out of control, that’s why the machines are beeping.
Jensen walks towards the closet at one side of the room, pushing boxes and bottles out of the way in his rush to find the medicine he’s looking for, hands shaking a bit once he finds the blue liquid in the depth of the drawer. The machines are beeping harder than before and Jensen keeps throwing nervous looks over his shoulder, checking on the guy. Jensen knows it’s impossible to go into cardiac arrest from what is probably a simple nightmare. It’s medically and logically impossible, yet he can barely control himself as he rushes to take a syringe to inject the liquid into the guy’s forearm, needing a second to pull himself together so he can do a proper job finding the vein and pressing the needle into the skin.
Jensen can barely believe it himself as he takes out the needle and presses a small square of an absorbent patch to take away the few drops of blood that will come out. Applying an injection is one of the easiest things to do in this planet and any other. The technique changes from one place to another because all the bodies and organisms are different but the mechanics are basically the same. Jensen applies shots at the hospital almost every day.
This is the first time he was shaking so bad he was worried about not doing it properly. Is it because he knows shifters have more developed DNA and therefore can handle sickness better, even if they do get the same diseases any human could while they have the same bodies. But ultimately, if there was something they couldn’t cure in a human body-which doesn’t exist yet-all the shifter would have to do is chose another planet and morph their body again, instantly killing whatever sickness they have when they make the change. Humans can’t do that. Their bodies stay the same, they get old so incredibly fast and die very easily. They have unstable anatomies and are incredibly fragile.
Is that why? Jensen thinks, putting the syringe away and waiting for the medicine to help the guy calm down, though it doesn’t seem to be working as fast as it should. There’s a sudden cry that makes Jensen jump, has him step back immediately as he suspects the guy is about to wake up. But that’s not the case. He knows the human is still too weak to be conscious and it will take another day maybe for the medicine to do a full recovery. He’s just-he’s almost sobbing in his sleep.
Jensen watches him, still pressed against the wall, as the young man makes intelligible noises and tosses on the bed, fingers and legs twitching. Jensen knows it’s just a response from whatever dream the human is experiencing. The human brain is so outstanding it can produce images, emotions and sensations even while they are asleep. Jensen had experienced them before with other bodies, but human dreams tend to feel more confusing and real than any other. He knows the movement of the human’s legs and hands are all involuntary, a simple case of Periodic Limb Movement, as explained in the books. Yet is a little disturbing to watch. It’s like the guy wants to run away in his dreams, but he can’t.
There’s another sob and this time the face of the guy changes, like he’s in deep pain as he keeps breathing heavily. Jensen acts by pure instinct, reaching out after hearing the same cry of distress from the night the human broke into his house. He gets closer and puts his hand on the human’s shoulder, squeezing it softly. The guy tosses on the bed again and Jensen feels an even bigger need to make things better instead of moving away like before. He leaves his other hand over the guy’s chest, pressing down carefully.
“I-It’s alright,” Jensen whispers, squeezing his shoulder again. “You’re okay. I’m taking care of you. I’m a healer, that’s the shifter version of a doctor. I’m your doctor.”
It’s pointless to talk to the human. He can’t hear him in this state, not on the level of consciousness Jensen wishes he had. But he has to do something while the medicine takes effect. It seems just cruel to leave the guy suffering in his dreams.
“You were hurt but I’m making it better,” Jensen insists, thumb softly stroking the guy’s shoulder. He’s had little practice using human signs of affection or comfort. Jensen knows they use touching for that a lot, but he only has had relationships with his co-workers, some neighbors and Danneel-and those are all pretty formal. He has no idea what he’s supposed to do with his hands to communicate some kind of comfort. Sure, he has seen some romantic movies but putting it in practice is almost awkward. Even more so because the guy is asleep. Jensen’s patient takes a deep breath in his sleep and Jensen leans closer, still stroking his shoulder carefully. He’s just rubbing over the clothes, hoping it’s doing something.
“It’s fine. You’re fine,” Jensen mumbles, feeling almost ridiculous yet unable to stop himself. He’s so strangely worried he’ll do anything to help the human relax. “I-I’ll make sure you get better so don’t worry. I’m your healer. I promise I’ll take care of you.”
As Jensen keeps on talking, the heart rate of the human starts to stabilize, his face relaxing again as his tossing completely stops. And all Jensen can do is watch him, like is it’s such a wonder to observe, when he has done things like this all his life. Keeping his hand on the human’s shoulder he uses the one previously pressing down on his chest to fix the blankets over him, only stopping once his palm slides over the human’s heart, feeling it beat slow and steady against it.
Jensen watches the guy’s face just like before, following the curve of his nose and the shape of his lips while he feels his heart thud against his right hand. He’s not sure how long he stays like that, marveling on the fact that the sleeping human is there and alive. It’s incredible. Jensen comes from galaxies away from Earth, born so far away and so long ago it was most probable for him to never see this human in his life than for them to ever meet. He has been alive ten times more than this guy and probably will live another ten times more, and yet, somehow, he ended up right here. Feeling the human breathe in and out, chest rising and falling under his hand.
He leaves the room after making absolutely sure the guy is okay once again and his heartbeat won’t go all over the place again. The medicine Jensen gave him should help him keep calm for the rest of the night. Moving his hand away from the human’s chest is the last thing he does, still feeling the ghost of the heartbeat against the tip of his fingers.
Jensen doesn’t realize how long it’s been until he’s back in his living room, noticing that it’s dark outside and he’s incredibly hungry. How long did he stay in there, simply watching the human sleep peacefully and feeling his heartbeat?
The phone he threw on the couch starts to ring, pulling Jensen out of his thoughts as he walks over and takes the call without looking at the screen.
“Jensen,” Danneel chirps into the phone as soon as he picks up, taking him by surprise. He’s confused as in why Danneel is calling him until she keeps talking. “I found a missing call from you once I got home, I’m sorry. Did you need something?”
He looks back at the corridor that leads towards the guest room. Yeah. He was the one calling Danneel, thinking about reporting the human before it was too late. Jensen had been wrong about lying to Alona, wrong about not reporting the young man to the Security Division.
“Jensen?” Danneel insist after he says nothing, this time a little more concerned.
“I-” Jensen whispers, holding his right hand out and watching his fingers flex. He had felt the guy’s heat steady, felt him alive right under his fingers. Jensen did that, he helped the human calm down as he spoke to him. And in that moment, the human didn’t feel any different from Jensen. It was just a second, but they were the same. And not only physically. Jensen felt him, and he didn’t feel like a threat.
“Yeah, I called you.”
“Is everything okay?” That’s not Danneel’s friendly voice anymore. Is not the happy voice that tells Jensen to find a hobby or make more friends whenever her visits are over and Jensen is walking her to the door. She’s using her accommodator voice now, and it makes something in Jensen snap out of it.
“Yes.” He assures immediately. “It’s fine. I just wanted to let you know I have been missing work the past days. It was raining when I got home and-”
“Let me guess, you got the flu?” Danneel finishes for him and Jensen is glad for that. So far he hasn’t told her any lies so he doesn’t have to feel guiltier about it. She’s just jumping to conclusions on her own and Jensen is not correcting her. Which is also not okay, but it’s better than straight up lying. “Oh, Jensen. I’m sure all the work you have been doing was too much to handle. Stay home as much as you need to, okay? I have told you to not overexert yourself.”
“I’m trying,” Jensen answers, sitting on the couch and appreciating Danneel’s concern, even if he doesn’t deserve it. “I’ll go back to work soon as I can.”
Again, not a lie. He’s just keeping details to himself.
“You better not rush to go back to work. I’ll tell your boss to not let you stay if you still seem sick. Take some days to yourself and feel better, okay?”
“Alright,” Jensen agrees, going back to stare at his hand. It’s tingling, and it feels warm. He wishes he could go back to the room and check on the human once more. “I’ll take the time I need before going back to the hospital.”
The time he needs being the time the human needs. It might be all the same thing. Jensen just wants to keep his promise before calling the Collectors.
| Part Five |