Chapter Text
Do it slowly, maintaining the low temperature.
One could suppose there was merit in remembering that some things lay beyond one’s control. Like trying to take a mental break from awaiting surgeries and a fresh batch of interns to supervise –
going as far as a nearby family restaurant, with the smell of freshly cooked broth lingering in the air;
according to research, taking pauses in medical practice improved performance and patient safety, decreasing the number of medical errors and patient morbidity, after all;
and miserably failing - his thoughts unwillingly circling back.
A short, wheezing breath of an older woman who left before he could inquire about her taking tests for heart failure.
The prominent veins of a construction worker working on the pavement, ideal for intravenous catherisation.
A young man walking down the street with closed eyes, his head swaying slightly with every step he took.
Drops of coffee splashed down his hand as he spun around.
Narcolepsy? No, sleep walking? He shouldn’t try to wake the man, should he? And yet, his instincts lunged his hand forward before the man could go into the traffic.
A bright gaze met his. Then, the young man blinked, a strand of light hair falling into his blue eyes.
“How can I help you?” His voice was calm and even, offering no hesitance or confusion of a just-awaken or substances-influenced man.
For an instant, Zayne faltered. Had he imagined it? No, the man had had the posture of someone nodding off. As a leading surgeon, for hours leaning over bleeding tissue with a scalpel, he trusted his judgment- he had to.
“Are you feeling alright? As a pedestrian, you are a part of the traffic. Fatigue, not to mention sleep walking, endangers both you and others around you.”
No muscle twitched in the man’s face at this cautionary warning from a stranger. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Zayne regarded him closer. He didn’t have a white cane, so he couldn’t mean it literally. Wait, wasn’t that sentence from the book - “Like safety. It’s isn’t expensive, it’s priceless, if we shall start quoting others.”
He made sure to lace his words with a hint of humour. Encounters with his patients and colleagues made him aware how sometimes his insistence on accuracy and safety made him come across as cold or overbearing; how his profession made it difficult to recognise boundaries between a helpful and an intrusive suggestion.
“Shall we?” The man tilted his head as if considering it, his dishevelled hair catching light and glistening silver under the afternoon sun. “I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.”
“As long as it’s not oncoming car’s headlights,“ the quip rolled off Zayne’s tongue before he could stop himself. “I mean, that’s a beautiful citation - may I ask how it relates to my question?”
That was –who deflected the questions with quotes on the spot? With that blank, guiltless look on their face?
“I’m sorry,” in one fluid gesture the man yawned into his elbow, “what were we talking about? “
Zayne pressed his lips together. Was this how others felt while talking with him - as if trying to reason with an immovable object? “I’m sorry to intrude but you clearly seem exhausted. Please, take care of yourself. It’d be a shame to read about a preventable accident in tomorrow’s posts.”
Something in man’s expression shifted, sharpened - as if he took notice of Zayne for the first time.
“Please, don’t worry. This time, I was just resting my eyes,” he offered after a beat, a slight tilt in his tone turning the statement into a half-question.
Zayne was not sure what to think. This time? “Were you?”
“One can try.” The air of nonchalance accompanying the declaration reminded Zayne of one of the most demanding type of patient - the ones needed an extraordinary reason to start care for their own health, resigned to their fate. Sometimes happily.
His thoughts were cut off by the man looking down at his forearm. “Your hand is surprisingly cold. Are you sure you are okay?”
Zayne's hand was still wrapped around the man’s wrist. His index finger over his radial artery. Steady, even pulse – and way too low, as if of a person actually sleeping or an athlete –
“Pardon me.“ He withdrew his hand as if burnt. “I didn’t mean to - I’m afraid the occupational hazard got the better of me.”
For some reason that induced the first noticeable reaction – a subtle furrow of the man’s brows. “You don’t look like a grave robber,” he muttered under his nose.
Zayne blinked. “Good thing I’m not one, then. Do grave robbers have a habit of checking for pulse?”
The man’s gaze slid over his shoulder to look into the distance as if suddenly interested by a sale in the shop’s window. “If we are talking about a spaceship graveyard with a crew that went into hibernation.”
Zayne cleared his throat. “That’s a very specific scenario.” How did his day shift from writing a report about a coronary artery bypass graft in someone with Protocore-N syndrome to considering robberies of fallen spaceships? “I’m afraid I’m just a physician though.”
“Is it?” The man brushed an invisible dust speck from his white jacket. “Just watched a horror movie like that. “
Space horror movie? Not Zayne’s favourite genre but-
“So what would a doctor say about someone having freezing hands in warm spring weather?” The man’s question cut into his thoughts. As if on cue, warm breeze brushed against Zayne’s face, bringing an intoxicating aroma of blooming lilacs.
Startled, Zayne regarded the man - he blinked owlishly back at him.
“Did you just turn this whole conversation back to me?” Unexpectedly, laughter tickled the back of Zayne’s throat. “Must admit, that’s the move my patients rarely use.”
The man smiled. It was a small, fleeting thing– a bit absentminded, like a glimpse of the moon behind a cloud.
Zayne looked down to check the time on his watch. “ I’m afraid I have to- “ The words died on his lips when he lifted his head.
The man was gone. No sign of him on the street – not on the sidewalk, nor on the road. Gone as if he never had been there, conjured by a lapse in Zayne’s focus that warm spring afternoon.
The corners of Zayne’ mouth curled up. It was a fitting ending for the absurd encounter. There was no use in thinking how did the man manage to vanish that quickly; he had the work to get back to.
At least, for the moment, it had taken his mind off it.
Another time Zayne was in need for reprieve after particularly long surgery - as Greyson had insisted on it - he found himself at the marina, tucked against the bay. There, he took in the pungent smell of seaweed bestowing the shore after the storm, and low thud of wooden boats scraping against the logs of the pier.
If he was one to focus on such things, he would say he felt like a regurgitated fish spit out on the beach. As there was no use in contemplating this, he marched through sand, it crunching and sliding under his loafers.
As the beneficial properties of ions in sea air was still debated among researchers, at least the change of his surroundings -
His gaze slid down the beach until it caught on some men working on fishing nets on the pier.
At first, he wasn’t sure what caught his attention. He stared at them without seeing them, cotton balls filling his mind. Then, the fogginess in his mind receded.
Unstable angina pectoris, seemingly routine treatment with a stent placement - until the Wanderers attacked in the middle of the operation.
The older man’s movements were even, no sign of short breath, nor fatigue when he laughed.
Then, the other man turned around and the view of his youthful face scratched against Zayne’s brains like a scalpel against a metal tray.
He couldn’t pinpoint when he had seen the man. Most his acquaintances of similar age either worked or had studied with him. Could he be a student? He did seem slightly younger than him –
“Oi, isn’t that Doctor Zayne?” His former patient’s face break into a smile as he straightened up. “Do you fancy a fish or two, doctor?”
“I’m sorry?” Broken out of his stupor, Zayne’s legs unwillingly carried him closer. How did his interactions with patients outside of hospital usually go? How long did he have to talk with them to not appear impolite or uncaring?
“There is nothing like a freshly caught sea trout with a pinch of salt and some lemon juice.” The man's hands moved quickly, and before Zayne knew it, he had a bag filled with water and two fishes presented to him.
He regarded the new weight in his hand for what he felt like a long moment, trying to gather his thoughts. Did he even posses a pan? Okay, he did, that was an irrational question- “ I appreciate the gesture, I can’t accept it though,” he found himself saying.
“Nonsense!” The man pulled the bucket further away as if preventing him from suddenly reaching out.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said, turning to the younger man beside him. “You know, Xav, Doctor Zayne insisted on continuing to operate me despite the Wanderers’ attacks just outside the ward. Not every doctor would do that.”
The young man looked up from the fishnet he was untangling and smiled. The smile transformed his face – and something in Zayne’s brain clicked.
He had met him once, hadn’t he? Bradycardia, possibly narcolepsy? He had seemed detached and drowsy, yet quoted books and talked about movies.
Xav – Xavier? - tilted his head to look sideways at the other fisherman. “So, is he someone we shouldn’t talk with about how much you smoke?”
The older man half-chuckled, half-sighed, and shook his head. “Yes, Xav, exactly that. Thanks a lot for not mentioning it.”
With a renewed energy – as if to cover up his companion’s half-serious teasing - he turned back to Zayne. “So, how is it going with you, doctor? Recently, I read an article about your contribution to research in Arctic. Was it as dangerous as it sounded?”
The question was standard enough- yet Zayne’s brain seemed to lag, refusing to muster any suiting answer. What was the usual comment about those bare mountains that brought death to his colleague and friend? “It’s confidential,” he said, at last.
How could he untangle himself from this conversation without just taking off without a word?
His former patient opened his mouth – clearly intrigued – and unexpectedly the other man, Xavier, spoke up, a thermos in his hand, “We were about to drink green tea, eat almond cookies and just listen to seagulls. Would you like to join us?”
Zayne stared at him.
He should have declined. He wasn’t one to shorten the distance between him and his patients, or seek out accidental company.
And yet, Zayne found himself doing just that – a steaming cup warming his hand while he stretched his legs, reclined on a deckchair alongside two other men.
His former patient hummed something under his breath, looking at the horizon; Xavier lay with his eyes closed, as if listening intently to a song only he heard.
For a moment, he watched them, the unlikely pair -the older man with more vigour than expected, and the younger one with the air of calm somehow in contrast with his almost boyish looks and the abrupt way he ended conversations.
They didn’t seem related, or connected in any visible way to easily explain their friendship -
Why couldn’t his mind just shut off for the moment and stop analysing, stop picking at things like a kid at clots about to scab?
He let his gaze turn to waves, to their lulling movement back and forth, water sprinkling and crashing, the sound of it slowly seeping in and replacing the buzz in his head.
Silence stretched between them as if they had done it for years, easy despite their age differences and unalike life paths, and for one moment Zayne let himself just be.
The student, then, Zayne concluded when he met the man – Xavier – for the third time.
Light slanting through the blinds cast stripes of shadow over his face as he leaned over a book in the windowsill seat. Headphones on, a rumpled hoodie, pressed lips and a furrowed brow - he seemed indifferent to the hum of the university library after the medical faculty conference.
A movement in Zayne’s peripheral vision caught his attention. A chubby bird fluttered its wings behind the window, and the branch swayed under its weight and grazed against the glass. With a jerk of his head, Xavier lifted his eyes-
Zayne slipped between the shelves of books, the varnished parquet creaking in the wake of his retreating footsteps.
It was an adequate course of action. Even if, as an academic, he couldn’t contain a spark of curiosity about the subject of someone’s absorbed study, - was it the reason behind his attempt at sleep walking in broad light? - it seemed inappropriate to stay.
They might have been of a similar age, but for Zayne, student life seemed as distant as the Deespace Tunnel. Even back then, he hadn’t been entirely a part of it - as the youngest and most often secluding himself in a laboratory.
Intruding on it was like inserting yourself into a badly fitting surgical coat. Awkward and unpractical; serving no clear purpose.
Walking away was the most natural thing to do.