((Collaboration with DotCom and AmongHeroes))
Like a cartoon character being carried through an open kitchen windows on seductive wisps of steam, Deli was hardly aware of Abby's eventual departure behind her, flapping a hand over her shoulder with something that might have been a distracted, "G'bye!"
Green eyes flitted about the room and Deli followed not long after setting the chess set on the nearest level surface.
"Hi, Dr. Brock," she said, still not looking at him. "I smell coffee. Can I have some?"
“Ah, err…of course you may!” Gavin said to the question of coffee as Deli entered the lab like a whirlwind. He smiled in spite of himself, his eyes alighting first upon the chess set that the girl set before him, and then next upon the matchless Queen of Blowing Shit Up.
Though he did not know Delilah Espinosa de Jesús Dominguez del Beltran well, Gavin always marveled at the woman’s seemingly boundless energy and spunk. It even seemed to radiate from her tangle of ebony curls, and as he made his way to the coffeepot, Gavin had a thought that perhaps he should forego serving his traditional brew in lieu of decaf. He poured Deli a large helping anyway.
Turning to her, Gavin set the steaming mug down next to the chess board. “So, how are things Deli? I see you’re keen to wipe the floor with me, eh?”
Sitting down heavily in the chair opposite her, Gavin crossed his legs and picked up his own coffee with a smirk. “You know checkers are more my speed.”
"Uh-huh, I know," Deli said, distracted as she pulled her legs up under her and began to set up the chess board. "That's why I chose chess. White or black?"
The pieces went up quickly; she'd played so many games with Diego and Dacio in her younger years, setting them up seemed almost second nature. The instant her hands were free, the grabbed the steaming mug of coffee, pressing her palms against the hot porcelain until she felt tension begin to seep from her shoulders. She'd never actually liked coffee. It was bitter and it made her shaky and anxious. But she found the smell comforting, and almost enticing enough that she almost always dared to take a sip...and was almost always disappointed.
This was a rare exception. She sipped, cringed, held her breath, then smiled again, first cautiously, then delighted. "Your friend Abby was right," she announced. "I sort of like this. I guess that's why it's up here and not in the kitchens, huh?"
Gavin chuckled. “Age before beauty, Deli. I’ll take white.”
With a Chuck Taylor wagging idly over his crossed-knee, he watched Deli put up the pieces. The two of them had played only a few times, and the games had been close. Gavin did not entertain any delusions that he was an excellent chess player, and he had never been one to pursue the game. Yet, when it came to Deli, he found it a welcome distraction. A pleasant connection to another of the few remaining souls humanity counted among its own.
When Deli had finished, and had sat back to drink at her coffee, Gavin appraised the board with a raised brow and a deep “Hmmmmm.”
Since it was really the only opening he had ever bothered to memorize, Gavin reached out and moved the pawn directly in front of his king forward two spaces. Ruy Lopez, don’t fail me now. Gavin thought to himself, ending his turn with a confident nod of his head.
“You’re right. You won’t find this stuff down in the galley.” Gavin said in reply to Deli’s comment about the coffee. “It’s nothing super fancy, just some Dunkin Donuts stuff, a err…” Gavin paused, stuck midsentence as he searched for the correct word. “…good friend of mine managed to send me some before things got really hairy.”
He gave Deli a smile, moving purposefully on from the subject of his pause. “America used to run on Dunkin, but I guess just the select few on the Copernicus do now, I suppose. You’re welcome to as much as you’d like.”
Deli said nothing while Dr. Brock made his move, though a faint smile may have touched her lips. She instead studied her doctor/friend, watching him watch the pieces, trying to deduce where he was going to go next. Chess had always been more about the player than the strategy for Deli, the same sort of idyllic idiosyncrasies that had so discouraged her father back in Spain.
Fortunately, he hadn't been the one to teach her to play.
Deli dropped her gaze just a second before Gavin sat back, now pretending to suss out her own move, though she was really trying to remember whether or not she'd left her office unlocked down in the hangar. It didn't really matter...but she'd stored a bag of smuggled gummy bears in her desk, and she was going to be pretty bummed if they were gone when she got back. If she ever went back.
"Thanks," Deli said, setting her coffee down to kneel on her chair and lean over the board. Curls tumbled into her face; she blew them aside with a puff of air, which they resisted for a moment before reasserting themselves. "But I think it'd mean more to Sergeant Larson than it would me." She reached out and pushed her own pawn two spaces forward to meet the white then grinned up at her opponent.
"Jugando López contra una español, Dr. Brock?*" Deli sat back and nodded at the ancient donut shaped machine in the corner of the room. "Does that mean we don't have to use that today?"
*Playing Lopez against a Spaniard, Dr. Brock?
Gavin shrugged, smiled, and ran his forefinger and thumb simultaneously over the opposing sides of his mustache.
“What can I say, Deli? I’m a one trick pony.”
He leaned forward to the board, and after a pregnant time of discernment, Gavin charged forward with the Ruy Lopez opening undeterred.
“Besides,” Gavin said with wink, “the expression is ‘fight fire with fire.’ So why not fight a Spaniard with a Spaniard?”
Only after shifting his next chess piece, and returning himself to his reclining position, did Gavin follow Deli’s gaze over his shoulder, and to the CT scanner. He looked momentarily to the old, white, donut shaped apparatus, and shook his head.
“No, we shouldn’t need it this time.” Gavin knew Deli despised the tight confines and archaic sounds of the machine, and if there wasn’t a need, he wouldn’t subject her to such.
“We should be just fine using the neuro-hood.” Gavin said, pointing to a device the size of a toaster setup on a rolling rack, similar to an IV stand.
The hood consisted of various paired receptor leads that read the brainwaves of the wearer, and transposed them into a discernable visual model. Just like Microsoft Windows for the human brain, Gavin thought with a slight smile. He didn’t add that if Deli’s readings from the hood were abnormal, that he would indeed have to check her with the CT scanner. It was a necessary precaution, as Deli couldn’t be cleared to handle demolitions unless she had Gavin’s stamp of approval. Epilepsy was a bitch.
Gavin turned back to Deli and smiled. “It shouldn’t take us long. After I lose this game, I’ll do a quick reading with the hood. I’m sure everything will check out just fine. Then you’ll get your shot, and voila…” Gavin shrugged and opened his hands, as if to say ‘nothing to it but to do it,’ “…you’ll be good to go for another few weeks. Blowing shit up, and such.”
"They told me if I was gonna have a seizure, it'd be waking up," Deli said candidly, still staring reproachfully at the CT machine. That had been before the spastic seizure of panic, of course. Before sedation and self-loathing and begging to be left behind. After the quarter dosage of Nuerosine to make sure she didn't die before blast off. "But I didn't, so I think I'm batting 0 for 1 now. That's almost nothing in...two years. Five, if you count being a Del-cicle."
She set her mug precariously on the arm of her chair and forgot about it as she drew her knees up under her chin. She sent one last look to the old CT scanner, then turned contentedly back to the game. She was only half paying attention, but then that was true of any given moment with Deli. It didn't really matter whether she lost or won anyway, she knew. They wouldn't let her back in the hangar without Dr. Brock's consent. And she wouldn't get much further than that without Reece's.
It had never been about winning the game, anyway.
"Maybe," she murmured into her knees, frowning a little as she counted empty spaces on the board. "Maybe not. I think your friend Abby is going to tell on me." She chewed her lip for a moment, brow furrowed, then reached forward to push another pawn out into open space. "I'm not the guy they thought I'd be," she added, without bothering to explain precisely what she meant, since she only sort of knew herself anyway. "They don't trust me downstairs to begin with. You could give me and A++ and all they'd hear is the epilepsy part."
She hadn't meant to say that last part, or any of it, really. It was more than she figured anyone, let alone Gavin Brock, was prepared to hear. And much more than she'd ever willingly share. Maybe the waking had made her loopy. Or less loopy. Something was off balance, one way or another.
"If they don't let me help down there, I wanna do something else," she said suddenly, now looking directly at Dr. Brock, almost challenging him to look away. "They woke me up, and it's too soon to go back to sleep. It's not like I can sit around for a year, I'll definitely break something. Maybe I could start...knitting, or something." She tilted her head up to study the ceiling of the office idly. "Maybe I could make a...a ship cozy or something. They'd have to let me outside to put it on."
Gavin nodded in sage agreement. “Yes, the transition from the hibernation would've been the most likely time for a seizure to occur, so it's good to hear that the Neruosine worked to a tee.”
As Deli continued, Gavin watched as the boisterous woman pulled her knees up into the chair, and spoke of her misgivings. He frowned in response, leaning towards his right hand to pull at the ends of his mustache once more.
“Abby? Tell on you? I can’t fathom such a thing.” He said, looking to Deli seriously. “Abby cares for the people aboard this ship. More than anyone I have yet met aboard, in my opinion. You included, Deli. You can certainly trust in her discretion.”
Gavin sat forward, his expression shifting to a confident smile. “As for the others, if I clear you, it doesn’t matter what they elect to hear. You’ll be doing the job you were chosen to do, end of story. They’ll see you know your craft, and I’m sure their tune will change.”
He shifted his attention down to the chess board as Deli moved her pawn forward. It was a good move, even if she was only half-paying attention to the game. Gavin always marveled at how Deli’s focus could be in a million different places at once, yet exactly where it needed to be. He tapped at his chin while he contemplated his next move. It took him a few moments, but in the end Gavin decided to charge forward in a risky maneuver with his knight. Once he had finished, he looked up, and only then did he comprehend what Deli had said about knitting a cozy or the whole of the Copernicus.
“A cozy?” Gavin laughed aloud. “For the ship? I should very much like to see that feat of knitting mastery. As for them ‘letting’ you do your job, if they give you any heartburn after I clear you, let me know. I’ll back you.”
Gavin opened his hands and looked back over his shoulder to the neuro-hood. “Speaking of-shall we get started? We can get the test done while we finish playing. In fact, maybe I’ll get a good insight into that strategic brain of yours for our next game, Deli.”
Deli felt him watching her as she studied the board, felt the weight of the gaze on the crown of her head and sat still so as not to disturb it or knock it away. It was, she figured, only fair. Besides, Dr. Brock was a smart man. He was just a doctor -- all details and fact over intuition -- but he would still notice if she changed the subject too quickly. She waited for him to ponder his own move, and then, just as before, studied him in her own way while he was distracted.
"She doesn't want anyone else to die," Deli said softly after a moment. "She won't let me work there if she thinks I'll hurt someone." I might. I could. I have. But she didn't add that part.
Still. The rest of his words made her smile, one that was more indulgent than sincere, but one that eased some of tension from her shoulders, too. By the time he looked up, she was giggling again.
"The nurse at my old hospital taught me how to knit when I was eight," she said just as brightly as though they'd been discussing candy instead of murder. "I kept making race cars out of the tongue depressors, so she bought me yarn and needles to keep my hands busy. I was never very good at it. But I've got a year."
She made a face, then shrugged, then stood, almost knocking over her rapidly cooling coffee in the process. "Sure, then, let's get it over with," she said, though even her resigned tones were a little too chipper to be bitter. "And next time we play, I'll show you a new opener."
With mirth still turning up his face, Gavin stood and moved to where the nuero-hood stood upon its wheeled stand.
“I’d appreciate the tutelage,” Gavin said as he pulled the device towards where Deli sat. “There would be something poetic about beating you with an opening that you had taught me.”
Gavin transitioned to softly humming Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’ as he came to stand behind Deli. With his reading glasses perched in their usual spot near the tip of his nose, he worked with practiced ease. In just a few moments, Gavin had pulled the neuro-hood’s leads from their position on the stand, and had affixed them upon Deli’s temples and forehead. He had to carefully manipulate the wires across the thick mop of Deli’s dark curls, but he managed to do so without pulling any of the leads free of her head.
Satisfied, Gavin undocked the tablet computer from the stand, and activated the hood. Instantly, the screen came to life with several lines that jumped and wove their way across the display in irregular looking sinus-like rhythms.
“Very good,” Gavin said, pleased that the neuro-hood was working properly. He moved back to take his seat, and glanced to the board down the length of his nose. Deli hadn’t fallen for the bait with his knight, and if he was not careful, his queen would be in dire straits. He reached forward and tried to delay her with a move of his remaining bishop before sitting back to give the readout of the neuro-hood his full attention.
The waves that represented Deli’s brain activity, though naturally irregular, created a discernable pattern to the trained eye. Gavin studied each of the lines closely, and did not move onto the next without making certain that there existed no abnormalities. Of the four lines on the screen, all checked out as normal activity save for the last one. Though it was subtle, the occasional flutter would appear in the line at varying intervals—some farther apart, with others coming in quick succession. It was a classic representation of epileptic brain activity, and though not a cause for immediate concern, it told Gavin that Deli’s shot of Neurosine was wearing off.
Gavin turned the tablet towards Deli, and pointed to the pulsing line that had drawn his attention. “Well, nothing to be concerned with, Deli.” Gavin said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Here’s the rhythm that has always been indicative of the possible seizure activity. Same thing I’ve seen since you first came to me, and nothing to be worried about. All we need to do is give you your normal dosage of eslicarbazepine, and you should be set for about three weeks or so.”
He set the tablet down so Deli could continue to look at the lines if she so desired. Moving to a climate-controlled locker, Gavin entered a passcode, and opened the fridge-like door. Pulling out a small vacuum vial and a clean syringe, Gavin drew the appropriate amount of the anti-seizure medication before closing the locker.
With the syringe and an antiseptic wipe in hand, Gavin returned to where Deli sat. He cleaned off a portion of her upper arm with the wipe, pausing briefly to allow her to make another move on the chess board.
“Here comes a poke,” He said before driving the small needle into the flesh of Deli’s shoulder.
After depressing the plunger, Gavin moved his eyes over to the neuro-hood’s display. Almost instantaneously, the slight trimmer in the bottom line disappeared, and became more regular. A genuine smile spread over Gavin’s face, and he pulled a Band-Aid from a nearby drawer. With a satisfied air, he placed the Garfield bandage over the spot where he had injected Deli.
“All done. You’ll be right as rain now, and utterly fit for resuming your explosive duties…”
As he spoke, Gavin caught sight of the chess board out of the corner of his eye, and his smile wilted into an expression of pleasant disbelief. Reaching over to his king, Gavin tilted the marble piece onto its side. Looking to Deli, he gave the woman a light punch upon the opposite arm from the one he had injected.
“Well played. Well played indeed.”
