Don't Fret the Timing Page 3
His movements were sluggish. Slowly he pushed himself up, eyes still squeezed shut. She backed up a few inches so she was leaning against the wall and spread her legs so she was straddling the area where he sat. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him toward her. One handedly, she fumbled with the buttons on her shirt and opened the top several. She drew him into her arms, tight to her body so the side of his face lay against the skin along her collar bone and shoulder.
"Breath for me, slow and deep." Shit, shit, shit. She rubbed his back with one hand and down his arm and then took his nearly limp hand and held it against her cheek. Every once in a great while, the testing process broke open psychic barriers that often had been closed since childhood. Broke being the operative word. It was trauma, trauma that could lead to deep shock that manifested itself in a very physical way. Heart rhythms could become erratic, respiration depressed and uneven, neural responses near catatonic. She had to get him to reconnect, not entirely different from trying to reboot a computer after a hard drive crash. The last time she had this happen to a Division P prospect, it had scared the absolute crap out of her and her interviewee had ended up in the hospital for a couple of days. Afterward she had spent many hours with Stephen Benford, the Division P psychologist, trying to come up with strategies to help victims cope with the problem.
"Vaughn, take a deep breath for me. Come on, you can do it. Deep breath," she murmured. She pulled the knot in his tie undone and undid his top couple of buttons. He inhaled and as he exhaled a hard shiver shook his body. Sumiko pulled her jacket back up around his body and hugged him closer. "Listen to my heartbeat. I'm right here with you. Focus on me. Hear me breathing, feel my pulse. Feel me in your head."
She cupped her hand against his throat. His pulse was fast and unsteady, but at least his breathing seemed to be a little better. She could feel the faint warmth of it blowing across her skin. Sumiko double checked to make sure her own shields were completely down. Vaughn needed as much physical and mental contact as she could give him. She picked up his hand again and raised it to her face, pressing her mouth to the center of his palm, and kissed the skin there. His fingers flexed a little in response. She continued, her mouth placing warm kisses along chilly fingers. At last there was a reaction, slight and slow though it was. She checked his pulse again and carefully stroked her mind along his injured one. One hand moved softly against her leg, like he was trying to reach for her and lacked the coordination.
Sumiko tipped his face up toward hers and kissed him. His lips parted a little against hers and he drew a deeper breath. She tilted her head a fraction and continued. There was a trickle of visceral response through his barely conscious mind. Well, hell... She already knew there was some attraction on his part; it was as good a connection as any. Her fingers threaded through his hair, cradling his head to her shoulder. His mouth responded to hers, returning the kiss, nibbling slightly at her lower lip like a lover still half asleep.
His pulse was still fast as her fingers rested against his throat, but it was steady and stronger now. As she lifted her head, his eyes fluttered open and he looked at her with a somewhat glazed and unfocused gaze. She could tell the pain still pounded, but at least he was moderately alert and stable now.
"Cold..." he whispered.
"I know. You're in shock. Just lie still and concentrate on listening to my heartbeat." She wished for a bed, a blanket and a healer. None of the above was going to be forthcoming. She'd just have to make do. She was glad she'd remembered to lock the door, though. The very last thing she needed was for some other Secret Service agent to come wandering in. Not only would it be damnably hard to explain why she was sitting on the floor with Vaughn cradled in her arms and her shirt half open, adding another presence, especially a non-psi one, to his already traumatized senses would only make things worse. The best she could do was just keep on doing what she was doing right now and try to give him a chance to recover.
She rubbed his back some more, talking to him softly. "You'll be okay. It's just going to take a little while for you to pull it back together. I'm so sorry. There was no way for me to know this would happen."
He raised a shaky hand and touched his fingers to her lips. She kissed them.
"I can f-feel you," he mumbled. "I don' un'er stan'. In my head..."
"Yeah, you probably can. And no it's not your imagination. We'll talk about the why part later. For now, just focus on me."
His eyes drifted shut, but his head turned to nuzzle his face against her skin. "Smell good," he murmured. "Where's th' wheelchair?"
"It's still there, about three feet away. I told you I'm not paralyzed. I was in a car accident about eleven months ago. It broke my pelvis, my hip and fractured my femur. It also did some damage to the sciatic nerve cluster. The lower part of my body has enough hardware to set off metal detectors in three states. I spent the first couple months pretty much in a hospital bed. These days after a ton of physical therapy and the help of a very gifted healer who I see every week, I can stand up and take a few really pathetic steps. It's hopeful that in another six months I might be out of the wheelchair and graduate up to arm crutches or maybe a cane."
"You hurt..." he said. It was a statement not a question.
With all her defenses down she wasn't all that surprised that he sensed it. "Yeah, some. It's been a rough couple of days on me too. Traveling's not very easy anymore."
He was regaining more coordination. His fingers were tracing a little aimless path along the back of her wrist. "I reckon I ought to try to get my ass up off the floor," he said.
She noticed the faint Texas drawl that had slipped through. "Not yet, just stay put a little longer. If you fall, I can't catch you, or help you up. And you do not want somebody headblind touching you right now."
"Wha's headblind?"
"Somebody who's not psi. If it was somebody you knew really well, like a sibling or a girlfriend you might be able to tolerate it... Otherwise, it would probably be pretty damn uncomfortable. Do you have a girlfriend?" She suspected not, but sometimes it was hard to tell.
"Nope, not currently..." His head was still resting on her shoulder. He moved a little like he was trying to sit up. His face scrunched up and his hand went up to press the heel of it against his eye socket. "Fuck..." he whispered.
"Sorry, I can't do anything about the pain, not here anyway."
He clenched his teeth and pushed himself up, sitting with his arms loosely wrapped around his knees, head hanging forward. "I think this outstrips any hangover I've ever had. I feel like someone hit me with a two by four or maybe a tire iron."
"We need to get you out of here. Sleep will help some." She crawled to her knees and clutched the edge of the desk to steady herself as she stood. Vaughn squinted up at her.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. You're the one I'm worried about. How far away do you live?" Sumiko settled in her chair and gathered her coat up from the floor.
"About six miles."
"Here in the city?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I'll call a cab. There's no way you can drive and that's too far to walk. See if you can get yourself put together a little." She pulled out her cell phone and proceeded to re-button her shirt.
"We kind of look like..." his voice trailed off and his face flushed a little in embarrassment.
"I know, but if we had you'd probably feel a whole lot better than you do now," she replied. Vaughn slowly got up off the floor. She noticed that his grip on the edge of the desk just about rivaled hers. "Have a seat. Drink some water. Can you do your tie without a mirror?"
"Yeah, I'll manage."
She dialed for a cab. It took another few minutes before they were ready to leave. Vaughn was still awfully pale and in visible pain. "Go get your coat and sunglasses if you have them."
Chapter 4
In the cab, Vaughn leaned his head against the glass of the window. The headache still raged and there was the added weirdness that every person they had encountered on the way seemed to be generating some sort of static that scoured around inside his head like sandpaper on sunburn. In the partial privacy of the back of the cab, Sumiko's hand took hold of his. She squeezed his fingers gently and he had the desire to put his head on her shoulder the way it had been in the office.
"It's like having eighteen different radio stations all playing at the same time and no volume control," she said. He nodded and closed his eyes. It took about ten minutes to get to his apartment building. He helped the cab driver get the wheelchair out of the back and Vaughn was blissfully glad for the first time that his building had the right sort of access, a ramp beside the steps.
Upstairs in his fourth floor apartment he unlocked the door and pushed it wide for Sumiko, only to belatedly remember that he had ditched his gym bag and several pairs of shoes about two feet inside. He hastily jammed them off to one side to get them out of the way.
The apartment seemed quieter than normal, but then maybe that was just the comparison to the past thirty to forty minutes.
"Can I get you a drink? I was thinking maybe a pot of coffee would be a good idea," he said.
"You don't have to entertain me. This is not a date. This is me trying to help you cope with what happened. Get rid of the tie, take off your shoes, and change clothes if you like. You'd probably feel better if you lie down for a while."
"I'm okay now. My head just hurts," Vaughn replied. He wrenched the tie loose and stuffed it in his pocket. He went in the kitchen and pulled the filter from the top of the pot, turning to dump it into the trash. He missed. The wet grounds splattered across the floor. "Shit..." he mut
tered and grabbed a handful of paper towels to clean up the mess.
"Vaughn. Make coffee later. For now, just go sit down," Sumiko said from the doorway.
He heaved a sigh and finished cleaning up the mess before going back to the den. He flopped on the sofa, running his hands back through his hair. "I feel like crap. My head is killing me. I'm being uncoordinated. What the hell did you do to me? Explain to me about this shield thing."
"Okay, part one equals where I pushed my mind up against yours until you yanked up your shielding by pure defense reflex. It hurts. I've had it done to me. Do you mind if I sit beside you?" She wheeled herself so that she was positioned in front of him.
"No, that's fine. Do you... need help?" he asked.
"Nope, I've got it." He watched her stand a little unsteadily and take the few steps to the sofa. She sat at an angle beside him and took his hands, placing them on the sides of her head. "Close your eyes and just feel," she said.
Touching her was... nice. She felt steady and solid, which he found odd considering she was a slender, almost frail woman who'd suffered some serious physical injuries. She chuckled. "Psi presence doesn't really have much to do with what you look like physically," she commented. Then she did something. He couldn't figure out what it was. There was this hard slick surface that somehow made him think of bullet proof glass. Even though he knew perfectly well that he was still touching her, it was sort of like she wasn't there anymore. It made him feel lost and uneasy. "This is what my shields feel like. They protect me from being bombarded by constant exposure to other people's minds. Regular headblind people don't regulate what they send out and don't notice what anybody else does either. Make yours feel like mine."
"What? How?"
"Mostly people use a visual image. You can think force field or semi-permeable membrane or sheet of glass, anything that works for you."
"And I'm supposed to just think about it and it'll happen?" He was dubious.
"It might just happen. Usually it takes some practice to get them to go up and down easily and regulate just how strong you want them to be. I just want you to try. I'm not going to force you to respond the way I did before… You're still reeling far too much from that."
He tried to imagine a force field, something hovering between himself and her. "So?" he prompted.
"No, it's not working. You need some rest. We can try later."
He dropped his hands into his lap. "Umm, so what about the other part? I mean you warned me that I was probably going to have a killer headache, but it felt like I could hardly get my body to work and I was so cold and... I kind of wondered if I was having a stroke or something..."
"Sometimes, and then only very rarely, when an untrained psi is pushed hard enough to make the shields pop up... things break open."
"You broke me? Is this going to kill me?!"
"No, no. You're okay, or at least you will be. Ever dislocated a joint?"
"My shoulder, once, in college."
"Children have particularly flexible joints. It takes a lot of trauma for them to dislocate something. When you become an adult, things tighten up, unless you specifically work at maintaining or regaining that flexibility. Psi stuff is a lot like that. You're an empath, but you fight it hard. The average everyday world says nobody's supposed to be able to sense when other people are happy or sad or upset or lying to you. As you grow up into adulthood, you convince yourself to block out the extra information. What I did to you... broke the block. It's traumatic. It makes your nervous system go crazy, and sends you into shock. Generally it takes another psi to help you untangle the mess."
"Unh... I swear this conversation is just making my head hurt that much worse..." Vaughn said.
"Go to bed. Even an hour of sleep will help some."
"Are you going back to your hotel?"
"Nope. I'm not leaving until I feel you're at least mostly back in gear. Go take a nap. I'll check on you in an hour or so," she said.
The pounding in his head was driving him to the brink of exhaustion. He went to the bedroom, toed off his shoes and untucked his shirt. He stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes.
***
Sumiko watched some cooking show on TV and thumbed through a computer magazine that was lying on the floor beside the sofa. It had been about an hour and a half since Vaughn had trudged off to his bedroom. Sumiko made her way in that direction, carefully holding onto furniture and the wall.
Dim light from the street lamps filtered through a partially open curtain. Vaughn was curled on top of the blankets. She stood, observing him for a minute. His body was tight, one hand clenched in a fist, the other against his forehead. It was a posture of pain. Sumiko was an expert on pain. If she could get him to relax, maybe the pain would slack off. She sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed her hand along the back of his neck. He gave a little groan.
"Roll over on your stomach," she said. Sumiko had been on the receiving end of a lot of therapeutic massages over the past months from physical therapists, a healer, and even a couple of friends. She began to rub the back of his neck and shoulders, kneading at the knotted muscles. She debated on the merits of asking him to take off his shirt, then decided that was treading somewhere she hadn't quite decided she wanted to go yet. Doing something that might hopefully ease his pain... that was feasible.
After a while his body began to go slack with the limp heaviness of sleep. Sumiko grazed her mind carefully across his. The pain was leaving, but in her opinion she thought he was likely to still be in recovery the following day. She was tired herself and stretched out on the bed beside him. He really was wicked cute. She would just close her eyes for a few minutes.
***
Waking up in bed next to the woman conducting your job interview was probably a serious professional no-no. In the darkness, Vaughn could just barely see past the curve of Sumiko's chest to read the digital clock on his night stand. 11:41 pm. He'd been asleep for about four hours. He was still just about dead exhausted, but most of the vicious headache was gone.
They were both still fully dressed. Nothing had happened except she had rubbed his back, neck and shoulders until he had fallen asleep. This whole deal had been beyond bizarre. Everything from being scoped for a job with a group of government psychics to the tests Ms. Pierce had done and the whole way his brain and body had responded, it was just plain weird. Should he wake her up and apologize? Let her sleep the rest of the night and offer her breakfast? The fact that he was attracted to her made this even odder. He had fuzzy memories of a kiss, a kiss that had gone way beyond a brush of the lips. Hell, he wouldn't mind revisiting that. His mind jumped to a thought of the last woman he'd been in bed with, Devon. She'd been beautiful, but Lord what a shallow narcissistic bitch. Getting involved with that woman had been a seriously bad choice.
Vaughn heard Sumiko take a deeper breath and make one of those soft "I could use a good stretch" sounds. Great. Now the profound embarrassment was about to start.
"How's the head?" Sumiko asked sleepily.
"Better."
There was a good foot of space between them. Vaughn thought about reaching out to touch her. The darkness seemed both intimate and isolating and he couldn't decide if touching her was somehow an invasion.
Soft fingertips carded through his hair at his temple, trailing down his cheek. Her thumb ghosted across his mouth. It felt like a lover's caress. They weren't lovers. They weren't colleagues. They weren't really even friends; they barely knew each other. Was it just flat out lust? It felt too gentle and too caring to be a sex thing. If he kissed her, would that be the end of his Division P option?
"Vaughn. You already have the job offer. Only those with true psi talent ever experience psychic shock the way you did. Yeah, I do have a couple more tests for you, but that's only so can I offer a full eval for training purposes. And yes, I'm fishing in your head again. Occupational habit," she finished.
He felt his face blush hot with embarrassment. Here she was poking around inside his head and he was basically thinking about sex. At least in the dark, she couldn't see how red his face probably was. Why the hell did he feel constantly off kilter and unsure around her? Was it the job she did? Was it the wheelchair thing? Maybe... But she was capable of standing, and even walking a little. Didn't that imply she could...?