Her Alien Protector: A Sci-fi Romance

Part 20

Kayla

My heart breaks for Rigel. Ava is deteriorating fast, and Rigel clings to her, rocking her back and forth as if that will somehow save her.

When Tarak gets close, wanting to check on Ava's breathing, Rigel snarls and snaps at him with his teeth. If I didn't know better, I would say Rigel is going feral.

If we don't do something soon, Ava is not going to survive. Time to triage.

The first thing that needs to happen is breaking into Rigel's cocoon. I kneel next to him and slowly place my hand on his quivering wing. Rigel's red-rimmed eyes snap to mine.

"Rigel," I say, trying to keep my voice calm. "I want to help Ava. The only way I can do that is if you move back?"

He gently lays her on the floor and backs away. The constant rustling of Rigel's wings tells me that he is still close—but it is enough for me to crouch next to Ava.

Time to get to work.

Ava's forehead feels hot to the touch, but my bigger concern is her desperate need for oxygen. All the tools that were supposed to help, from the cannula to face masks, are scourge sized.

Think, Kayla, think. If I were aboard my previous ship, the Phoenix Borealis, I could patch something together by using old ship parts and a 3-D printer.

I'm not on the Phoenix, though. I'm on the Firefly, and I don't even know what half the equipment on this ship does. If only the Firefly had tools to build for us. Wait, maybe it does.

"Computer, do we have the capability of printing a functioning face mask," I ask.

"Affirmative. A printer with such capabilities is in the lab."

Wow, I truly had not made the proper assessments of all the equipment, although I can work with this.

"Computer, print a mask based on the dimensions of the human, Ava."

"Unavailable. I only have the full dimensions and measurements for Commander Tarak, a scourge, and the human, Kayla. No other parameters have been provided," the wall says.

Only now does the true scope of what I have done occur to me. Tarak made the precautionary safety plans for our journey—storing our data—but he had no way of knowing I would bring Rigel and Ava, so we have no data on them.

Maybe we can improvise. Ava and I are both adult humans, so...

I take a deep breath. "Computer, create an oxygen mask based on the measurements of the human, Kayla."

"Initiating."

"How long will it take until the mask is usable?"

"Twenty Earth minutes," says the ship.

Her wheezing cuts into my spiraling thoughts. A printed mask can only solve part of our problem. We will need to do something else to help her breathe in the interim.

Somehow, in the time it takes to give the brief instructions to the computer, Rigel creeps closer, his arms already trying to pull Ava back into them.

So far, Rigel has listened to me, but if Ava gets worse, he might hinder us.

"Rigel," I say and his glistening eyes snap to me. "Time is of the essence. At this very moment, the computer is printing a face mask for Ava. I need you to wait in the lab. The second the computer tells you it is ready, bring it to me. Do you think you can do that?"

Rigel stumbles toward the door. When the door closes behind him, I turn to Tarak.

"Tarak, I need..."

Her respiratory pathway is closing. Unless we reopen them, all the oxygen in the world will not help her. Ava needs epinephrine, stat.

Do scourges use epinephrine? It must be a hormone they know since the scourge translation is readily available to the translator chip in my brain. Please, please, let them use it, too, or Ava is already dead.

"What do you need Kayla," asks Tarak.

"Epinephrine. Do you have it in a first aid kit and... use them in injectors?"

"I do not know the name, but we do have emergency injections, here," he says, pulling several canisters out of the first aid supplies. My eyes are drawn to a bright-colored tube, similar to the way humans might package it. Could it be? I seize it, skimming the label: EP. Maybe the scourge abbreviation?

I rip it out of the package and like everything else on this infernal ship, the injector looks gigantic. "Who is that meant for?"

Tarak's big eyes stare at me and he clenches and unclenches his fists.

"Who is this epinephrine autoinjector dosed for," I ask the computer.

"That epinephrine injector has the appropriate dosage for an adult scourge," says the computer.

"We use it when scourges can't breathe. Her face is blue. We must use it now," says Tarak.

"Let me think..." An epinephrine shot dosed appropriately could be lifesaving, but if it is the wrong dose? If it is too low, Ava's bronchioles won't open, and she'll die from lack of air. If it is too much, her heart will stop, and nothing will restart it.

Since scourges are much larger than humans that means...

It might necessitate a different dosage, one that is not currently allotted in the injector. There are other variables that can contribute to a different dosage—size, metabolism, or even a receptor's affinity.

The door to the helm opens and Rigel rushes in, holding the newly created mask in his shaky hands. I take it from him, we hook it up to the machine with the oxygen canister.

She breathes. Rigel holds the mask to her face and runs his hand through her damp hair.

"Kayla, do it, now," says Tarak.

"I can't," I say to Tarak.

The pulse oximeter beeps. I know what it says before I read it: the machine can pump all the oxygen in the world but without opening her bronchioles—

"Insufficient oxygen levels," says the wall computer.

If there were more time, I would find some way to at least approximate the values for each variable. There isn't time, though.

Rough estimation it is then. I estimate Ava's weight.

"Computer, what is the weight of an average adult scourge? Provide the answer using Earth kilograms," I say.

"The average scourge weighs 220 kilograms."

What? I hold the autoinjector and I'm shaking. Ava is probably one-third of a scourge's weight. Based on this information alone, I can't give this to her.

Out of the corner of my eye, Tarak presses a similarly bright-colored autoinjector into Ava's thigh, dispensing the medication.

"Tarak, what did you..."

"She needed it to breathe," says Tarak. "There was no other way."

"But..." I'm speechless.

Rigel's desperate eyes lock onto me. "Is it enough?"

Unable to speak around the growing lump in my throat, I glance away.

Rigel keeps one hand on Ava's mask and lays his other hand on Ava's pulse point on her neck. "Should her heart be racing? Kayla...? Kayla!"