Pathways - Jeri Taylor [156]
One of the monsters moved in his direction, hearing rather than seeing the members of his group because its eyes were obliterated, its hideous limbs outstretched, scorched skin dangling. Terrified that the thing would touch him, he turned away.
“Wahhhh . . . wahhh . . .”
The thing spoke with what could clearly be identified— even though the words were distorted by the monstrous mingling of lips, teeth, and tongue—as a child’s voice. Appalled, Neelix turned back.
The child was pointing toward its grotesque mouth. “Wahhh . . . wahhh . . .” it repeated, and suddenly Neelix realized the poor creature was asking for water. He reached for his container, uncapped it, and held it out. The child couldn’t see it.
Neelix held the container to what had once been lips and tipped the liquid into the ravaged mouth. The child managed a few sips but then began choking from the pain of swallowing through such damaged tissue. Neelix felt himself begin to tremble. What was he to do for this creature? This was beyond his experience.
He glanced around and saw the members of the team busy with others of the unfortunate survivors. They seemed to know what they were doing, and he wondered briefly how they could function so calmly when presented with a calamity of this magnitude.
He remembered that he had a pain medication in his medical container, and reached in for it. But before he could administer it, the child tumbled into his arms, unconscious, leaving hunks of burnt matter on his clothing. Revulsion threw gorge into his throat, but then it subsided, and Neelix felt the tiny weight of the child, the frantic beating of its heart. He picked it up effortlessly and moved toward the others. He made a determination that this child would live.
Thirty-seven people survived the Metreon Cascade, all that remained of a population of more than two hundred thousand. Those thirty-seven were alive only because they were in an underground recreational facility miles from ground zero. They were taken to medical facilities on Talax, where doctors were stupefied by their condition. Traditional burn treatments were simply ineffective, and gradually, one by one, the survivors began to die.
The child’s name, Neelix learned, was Palaxia. Though badly disfigured, she had suffered less damage to her internal organs than some of the others, and the doctors believed she had a chance to survive. She was resilient, they said, and possessed a will to live. That was often the factor that made the difference.
Neelix spent weeks by her side. She was blind, eyeballs having melted in the blast, and so he read to her for hours at a time—inspirational stories of Talaxian heroes who had overcome difficult circumstances, hoping that she would be heartened by the examples. He had no way of knowing if this was so, of course, as Palaxia had lost the power of articulate speech, scar tissue having occluded her larynx. But she could hear, and he imagined that the sound of his voice, hour upon hour, was comforting to her.
Skin grafts were applied and quickly sloughed off. This process was repeated three times before doctors began shaking their heads and admitting that they didn’t know what to do next.
Palaxia was kept on powerful pain medications. Without them, she would have been in constant agony. With them, she still suffered, but at what the doctors called a “tolerable level.” Neelix wondered how they managed to determine this, or even how they assessed the level at which she hurt, but was glad something was being done for her.
Palaxia, for her part, lay quietly on the bed, tiny chest rising and falling, face and body swathed in dressings, enduring her agony privately, in a world she could share with no one.
And Neelix sat with her day after day, reading, talking, even singing some of his favorite songs from Prixin, although he usually couldn’t finish them because his own grief would overcome him.
Palaxia lived five and one half weeks, three weeks longer than any of the other survivors. Neelix was with her as her breathing became more ragged; she stopped