Shay - Delphine AU | Part 17* (Rough Draft)
Could Shay and Delphine have been a thing in a different universe?
Prev: 1-5 (edited), 6-8, 9*, 10*, 11*, 12*, 13*, 14*, 15*, 16*, 17*
Stretched out upon the divested couch--short for Delphine's frame, somewhat low even for someone of Shay's stature to ply her trade, but serviceable to them both as an improvised massage table--and steeped in soft light and the flicker of candles, loosening beneath the press and knead of Shay's hands for the first time in a long time, Delphine dangled on the precipice of unconsciousness. She blinked sleepily upon the pillow of her crossed forearms and asked, "Are we friends?"
Shay's hands stopped. The lull lasted only a second before they resumed their practiced route. "What made you ask that?"
Delphine adjusted the lay of her cheek. "I was trying to remember how we became friends."
Shay leaned upon her forearm and slid on it up the length of Delphine's back, impeded somewhat by blouse and bra, barriers that hadn't existed in the past. "Like most people, I think."
Delphine released the breath she'd held under the pass. "How is it that most people become friends?"
Shay repeated the motion upon the other half of Delphine's back. "Well, I guess most friendships don't start with a massage, but I think it happens by spending time with one another."
"But . . ." The plastic grip of her bra strap dug briefly into Delphine's scapula and elicited a wince. ". . . just spending time with someone doesn't mean you become friends."
"But you don't become friends with someone unless you spend time with them," Shay pointed out. Delphine could hear the smile in her voice.
"Touché," muttered Delphine into her arm, "but not an answer to my question."
Shay kneaded in silence with the heels of her palms for a time. "Which one?"
"They are both related, aren't they?" Delphine lifted her head and craned her neck to glance at Shay. "Are we friends and, if we are, how did we get here?"
Shay focused on the motion of her hands. "You came to me for massages, I asked if you'd like to get coffee sometime, we ended up getting dinner instead, and for some reason after that we kept arranging to meet up."
"That made us friends?" Delphine wondered.
Shay's forehead crinkled in thought. "The some reason did."
"What was the reason?" Delphine asked, voice falling hushed. Her gut tensed.
"Honestly?" Shay replied. "I don't know."
Delphine relaxed in the wake of Shay's words, struck with a feeling she couldn't entirely identify. "That doesn't help me, then."
"Help you with what?"
"How to make a friend," Delphine murmured. She rested her head back upon her arms.
"You're trying to make a friend?" Shay asked, gently.
"I don't know," Delphine admitted. "It might make things easier. It might not."
"Does this have to do with work?" Shay asked with a strain of caution.
Delphine gasped in a humorless chuckle. "Yes."
The pressure from Shay's fingers eased. "I really don't understand what you do."
Delphine sighed. "Some days I don't know what I'm doing, either."
*
The laboratories and offices of the DYAD Institute never truly shut down, even on weekends, but those who ventured in were more akin to ghosts haunting the vast halls than the bustling busy bees in the hive during weekdays. The sense of abandon and dormancy reached Delphine even in the Old Wing though there was not a more forgotten and liminal space in all of the properties. She'd considered availing herself of Aldous's compartments, if only for the more enjoyable view she could mindlessly consume as her thoughts ran fruitlessly upon a wheel of frustrated ideas, but the Old Wing was to be her work home now--Cosima's and hers--and it was nice to have it to herself before she had to fully cede sovereignty to its ostensible tenant.
Thus she wasn't prepared when the electronic lock buzzed and the door opened.
Cosima stepped in, head bobbing to a rhythm, and got halfway into the room before she noticed Delphine staring at her from a computer workstation. Cosima froze, then reached up to pluck the earphones out of her ears.
"Hey," Cosima said slowly.
"Hello," Delphine said, somewhat more recovered.
"You . . . work weekends?" Cosima asked with such a conflict of tones that Delphine wasn't sure what the possible individual emotional elements might be, whether confusion or scorn or skepticism or wariness or alarm.
"Not usually," Delphine admitted, "though I do come in when I feel I need to."
Cosima nodded with the sluggishness of an outmoded CPU trying to process large packets of data. "So this weekend you felt like you needed to come in?"
"There were a few things I wanted to prepare, yes," answered Delphine. "And you? What brings you here?"
Cosima wiped at the air in a counterclockwise direction relative to herself and shook her head. "Hold up. Rewind. What are you preparing?"
"Everything we have related to the illness." No reason to lie. Presenting Cosima with what they had been able to assemble of the full picture had been Delphine's express purpose. "To give us a starting point."
"Like Katja."
Delphine nodded, not allowing any interval of hesitation. "What we were able to gather from her." She cocked her head. "But why did you come in?"
Cosima frowned, not at Delphine's question, but in consideration of what preceded it. She might not have heard Delphine's question at all, if her body language served as indication. Cosima followed the wire of her headphones to the phone attached to it and fiddled with the screen. The tinny buzz from the earbuds shorted out. Unplugging the wire and rolling the mass into a ball, which she shoved back into her pocket along with the phone, Cosima shrugged. "The person I'm staying with needed their home back, so I figured I'd hang here. As good a place as any. I mean--" Her eyes glanced at Delphine through the top edge of her lenses. "--it's my lab, right?"
Delphine smiled wanly and indicated behind her with a twitch of her head. "They delivered the couch."
Cosima grinned. "Sweet."
"If you need to find your own accommodations," Delphine said offhandedly as Cosima dumped bag and then coat onto an empty chair, "HR can help you."
"You mean I can't just sleep here?" Cosima asked, back to Delphine so that her face was unobservable.
Delphine hesitated. "I'm not sure the couch is that comfortable."
Cosima flashed a grin over her shoulder. "So I can stay if it's comfortable?"
Delphine thought briefly of the couch in Shay's apartment, which, despite its shortcomings, had proven safe and comfortable and precisely suited to Shay's intentions (or the ones she claimed, Delphine wasn't ready to verbally cede her the victory).
"I mean that I don't know if you want to have to sleep on it if it's not comfortable," Delphine said. "You will need your rest."
Cosima made a small sound like a harrumph of laughter as she dug about her bag. "Good call. Thanks, doc." She hauled out her laptop. The sight of the skin made Delphine smile just as it had the first time she'd beheld it. "So how far have you gotten?"
Delphine considered, then turned the monitor to face Cosima.
In the word document she had open, the cursor blinked at the end of a single sentence.
Cosima laughed. "Making lots of progress there, Dr. Cormier." She considered Delphine for a moment. "I figured you for someone much more efficient."
"It's Saturday," Delphine proclaimed in self-defense.
"Yeah, well that's not going to help me," Cosima said, setting down the laptop and conducting a high and low search for an electrical socket. One at the base of the station proved serviceable and Cosima straightened up with an arch look. "Why not just tell me since I'm here? Or, better yet, give me access to DYAD's databases."
"I planned to provide the relevant documents," Delphine said. "Relevant" made the corners of Cosima's mouth jerk up. "I was serious about HR helping you find a place to stay in Toronto."
"I know," Cosima said airily. "But they already got to decide where I was going to live once and I'm not sure I want to give them that choice again."
"What do you mean?"
"They chose my surrogate mother, didn't they?" Cosima said. "I'd call that my first place of residence."
Delphine checked a smile, lost against the effort, and succumbed to a helpless grin. "Alright. That's fair. How did that work out for you?"
"How do you mean?" Cosima asked, more fully lending Delphine her attention. "Like do I have a good relationship with my parents?"
Delphine nodded. "Yes."
"I love my parents," Cosima said, matter-of-fact. "My folks are great."
"So it worked out well," Delphine pointed out.
"But it could have possibly been not great," countered Cosima.
"Which is true of everyone and their parents, biological and otherwise," Delphine argued.
"But in our case," Cosima said, leaning toward Delphine, "we could have been put into bad situations--deliberately."
Delphine absorbed her words. "You mean to say that DYAD could have intentionally chosen poor mothers and parents for their subjects."
"Nature versus nurture." Cosima shrugged. "If you've only got one shot, why not aim to cover the whole spectrum?"
Amazement briefly muted Delphine. She shook her head. "What would make you think that such an idea would occur to the scientists who conceived the experiment?"
"I don't know," Cosima said dismissively, turning away, "a monitor system that places strangers close to their subjects via intimate relationships in order to spy on them?"
Delphine inhaled sharply. She'd walked into that blow. And yet. This wasn't going to work if every interaction between them was going to be barbed and boobytrapped in this manner.
"Fine," Delphine exhaled sharply. "But tell me this: objectively speaking, how would you have done it? How would you have maintained observation of an experiment like this short of keeping all the subjects confined in one place?"
"Seriously?" Cosima asked.
Delphine threw up a careless hand. "Yes. I was asked the same question and not until I received the answer could I begin to see the breadth of obstacles present and resources needed."
"And the answer made sense to you when you heard it?" Cosima asked, crossing her arms.
Delphine nodded, measured and contemplative. "It was . . . surprisingly simple."
"Yeah, it made sense to me, too," Cosima concurred curtly.
It was possible Delphine gaped at Cosima.
"So why do I keep bitching about it?" Cosima presented rhetorically. "Just because it makes sense doesn't mean it's not screwed up. You only have to think about it for two seconds to see that. You can see that, right?"
Greg wafted to the forefront of Delphine's thoughts. Greg always by Jennifer's side. Greg who avoided Delphine's eyes. Greg who had been in communication with Leekie from the beginning.
"You're my monitor, aren't you?" Cosima asked.
Delphine exhaled unevenly through her nose. "Yes."
Cosima nodded once, succinct, and turned away to look into the monitor of her laptop, expression blank but tight.
Delphine sucked in her lips. Closed her eyes. Ran a hand through her hair.
"That's . . . my assignment," Delphine said quietly into the density of the tense silence, opening her eyes. "That's what Aldous calls it."
Cosima scoffed at her laptop. "But not what you call it?"
"What I know is that you're sick and that as a doctor I want to help you."
"And the rest of it, the experiment? You expect me to believe that doesn't matter to you?"
"I didn't create it. I didn't set it up."
"Yeah, you just willingly participate in it."
"Do you think they put out an advertisement?" Delphine snapped, sharper than she'd intended. "'Research assistant needed for a human cloning trial'?"
"You're going to try to tell me that if they had you wouldn't have jumped at the chance?"
They held one another's gazes.
Delphine relaxed into her chair.
"I would have," Delphine said quietly. "Just as I think you would have, if you had seen an advertisement like that. Not knowing fully what it entailed."
Cosima's jaw flexed and eased. "Are you trying to say you regret your decision?"
"I'm pointing out that the only way to see the details of the bigger picture was to commit entirely from the beginning."
Cosima spread her arms. "Well, I'm all in! In ways you and Leekie aren't. But no one seems to be showing me any bigger picture."
Delphine breathed evenly.
Then she nodded and stood.
*
"Come with me," Delphine said simply and gave Cosima no reason and no opportunity to argue as she quick-footed out of the lab and wended out of the Old Ward entirely. In her wake, after just a moment's silence, Cosima's heels sounded off the floor and echoed in the corridors until Delphine slowed her pace and Cosima drew up alongside. The other scientist glanced sidelong up at Delphine's face. Delphine kept her attention fixed ahead. In tense, hurried silence they traversed the deserted halls.
The first security point drew real interest from Cosima. As Delphine's card swiped over the reader, Cosima's expression settled into a sober mask. Delphine ushered Cosima through the unlocked door, then again once more through another security point at the end of another trek. When the second door closed behind them, Delphine caught Cosima's elbow and held her back. The firmness of her grip raised a dimple between Cosima's eyes, but a glimpse of Delphine's expression scuttled any protest.
The in-patient care ward was staffed at all hours of every day of the week, but not constantly and not vigilantly. Delphine could only hazard a guess at the rounds schedule. Their luck saw the reception desk unmanned. A further scan of the hallways in both directions signaled they were in the clear. Setting a brisk pace, Delphine guided Cosima around the corner and slipped her charge into the room marked for patient "J.F."
Delphine closed the door behind them as quietly as she could manage and pitched her voice nearly at the same volume. "We cannot stay long."
Turning around, Delphine realized Cosima might not have heard her. Not because the reports of the monitors drowned out Delphine's warning. Simply because the figure in the bed. Cosima approached the bed slowly, her footsteps now light and unremarkable, and circled around the far side, eyes fixed on the face.
Seeing the caution with which Cosima moved and yet the unmistakable allure that drew her to the bedside, Delphine felt the undeniable certainty that it was always going to come to this, her bringing Cosima to see Jennifer, despite orders, despite deterrents. It wasn't a written overview she'd wanted to give Cosima, thus why she'd been inspired no further than a single sentence. It was this.
Delphine sidled up to the other side of the bed. She spared a glance for Jennifer, the diminished disturbance in the sheets sprouting wires from torso and arms, cheekbones prominent and taut in the sunken face, and squelched the turning of her heart with a rough swallow of the little moisture in her mouth, but focused on Cosima. The brunette's chest heaved in shallow breaths. One hand crept up and settled, hesitantly, on the banister rail, fingers curling, gripping, knuckles going white.
"She won't wake," Delphine said in the same hushed tone. "She fell into a coma a few days ago."
No visible reaction registered in Cosima's countenance at her words. The intent eyes never wavered from Jennifer's form. But after a time the brunette reached down and gingerly rested her fingers atop Jennifer's inert hand.
Then Cosima whipped around and stormed out of the room.
Delphine gaped after her. Her immediate impulse was to follow, but a thought held her back, something like the memory of Shay gazing out with reluctance and apprehension between the slightest of breaks in the doorway. A moment allowed Delphine to gather herself and, with no one watching, gently seize Jennifer's other hand and squeeze, once.
When Delphine stepped out into the hall, she found Cosima standing to the side like a sentry, eyes focused into the distance straight ahead.
*
The reverse journey to the Old Wing occurred in inverse fashion. Cosima set the pace, brisk, hustling with a surety that lent the false impression that she was familiar with the halls. Stubborn, simmering silence issued from her as a palpable force imposing the same upon Delphine. The glances Delphine darted in Cosima's direction availed nothing given the other woman's lack of expression. When they gained the privacy of the lab, Delphine said, "You cannot tell anyone what you just saw," and Cosima said, "Who was that?"
Their words collided and left them both watching one another warily, attempting to judge who would--should--speak first.
"Her name is Jennifer . . . Fitzsimmons," Delphine said slowly, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, "and you were not supposed to see her."
Cosima leaned back against a lab station counter, tongue pushed against the back of her teeth, and mirrored Delphine's stance. "Not supposed to see her."
"Jennifer was the first case we were aware of," Delphine continued with the same measured circumspection, "about six months before Katja Obinger."
Cosima's eyes drilled into Delphine. "You guys have known about this for that long? Were you going to tell us or just let us drop like flies?"
Delphine felt a spark in her own ire at the flare of Cosima's. "This is a disease that has defied our attempts to identify it. With how little we know of its cause, onset,and development, it's not as if we could concoct a test for it overnight. We didn't even have hard evidence it could be genetic until additional cases appeared."
"Like me," Cosima scoffed, pushing off the edge of the table and pacing away in agitation.
"Yes," breathed Delphine, deflating, "like you."
"How many others?" Cosima asked.
"I don't know," confessed Delphine.
"You don't know?" barked Cosima.
"They don't tell me everything, either," Delphine said, head bowed.
"But you know about Jennifer," Cosima said, the edge still sharp in her voice.
"I worked with Jennifer," Delphine said, almost more to herself, eyes fixed on the floor.
"What?"
"I was the assisting physician assigned to her." Delphine raised her eyes. "Until I was assigned to you."
Cosima's jaw flexed. "She didn't look like she was doing too hot back there."
Delphine nodded. "I know."
"Is this supposed to make me feel better?" Cosima quipped. "Because it's not."
Delphine sighed and found the nearest seat to sink onto. "It's not supposed to make you feel better. I want you to know that I want to work with you, Cosima. What I know about this, you'll know." She wiped at her eyes. "Please, believe me."
Cosima tapped the surface of the table. "You're asking me to trust you?"
Delphine shook her head. "I'm asking you to work with me. We need to work together. The faster, the better."
"And put everything else aside," sniggered Cosima.
Delphine tossed up a hand carelessly. "If you cannot put it aside, then at least don't make it a priority. It's a waste of time and energy to fight me on everything."
There was a second wherein Cosima didn't react, then she loosed a huff of laughter. "So what should I do? Try to sleep with you instead?"
"What?" gasped Delphine, eyes wide.
Her reaction tripped something cautious and uncertain in Cosima's gaze. All hints of sarcasm and cynicism fell away. In the vacuum appeared a consideration tentative and reluctant. Her tone assumed a manner all business:
"Show me what you've got."
//
Next
Prev: 1-5 (edited), 6-8, 9*, 10*, 11*, 12*, 13*, 14*, 15*, 16*, 17*
Stretched out upon the divested couch--short for Delphine's frame, somewhat low even for someone of Shay's stature to ply her trade, but serviceable to them both as an improvised massage table--and steeped in soft light and the flicker of candles, loosening beneath the press and knead of Shay's hands for the first time in a long time, Delphine dangled on the precipice of unconsciousness. She blinked sleepily upon the pillow of her crossed forearms and asked, "Are we friends?"
Shay's hands stopped. The lull lasted only a second before they resumed their practiced route. "What made you ask that?"
Delphine adjusted the lay of her cheek. "I was trying to remember how we became friends."
Shay leaned upon her forearm and slid on it up the length of Delphine's back, impeded somewhat by blouse and bra, barriers that hadn't existed in the past. "Like most people, I think."
Delphine released the breath she'd held under the pass. "How is it that most people become friends?"
Shay repeated the motion upon the other half of Delphine's back. "Well, I guess most friendships don't start with a massage, but I think it happens by spending time with one another."
"But . . ." The plastic grip of her bra strap dug briefly into Delphine's scapula and elicited a wince. ". . . just spending time with someone doesn't mean you become friends."
"But you don't become friends with someone unless you spend time with them," Shay pointed out. Delphine could hear the smile in her voice.
"Touché," muttered Delphine into her arm, "but not an answer to my question."
Shay kneaded in silence with the heels of her palms for a time. "Which one?"
"They are both related, aren't they?" Delphine lifted her head and craned her neck to glance at Shay. "Are we friends and, if we are, how did we get here?"
Shay focused on the motion of her hands. "You came to me for massages, I asked if you'd like to get coffee sometime, we ended up getting dinner instead, and for some reason after that we kept arranging to meet up."
"That made us friends?" Delphine wondered.
Shay's forehead crinkled in thought. "The some reason did."
"What was the reason?" Delphine asked, voice falling hushed. Her gut tensed.
"Honestly?" Shay replied. "I don't know."
Delphine relaxed in the wake of Shay's words, struck with a feeling she couldn't entirely identify. "That doesn't help me, then."
"Help you with what?"
"How to make a friend," Delphine murmured. She rested her head back upon her arms.
"You're trying to make a friend?" Shay asked, gently.
"I don't know," Delphine admitted. "It might make things easier. It might not."
"Does this have to do with work?" Shay asked with a strain of caution.
Delphine gasped in a humorless chuckle. "Yes."
The pressure from Shay's fingers eased. "I really don't understand what you do."
Delphine sighed. "Some days I don't know what I'm doing, either."
*
The laboratories and offices of the DYAD Institute never truly shut down, even on weekends, but those who ventured in were more akin to ghosts haunting the vast halls than the bustling busy bees in the hive during weekdays. The sense of abandon and dormancy reached Delphine even in the Old Wing though there was not a more forgotten and liminal space in all of the properties. She'd considered availing herself of Aldous's compartments, if only for the more enjoyable view she could mindlessly consume as her thoughts ran fruitlessly upon a wheel of frustrated ideas, but the Old Wing was to be her work home now--Cosima's and hers--and it was nice to have it to herself before she had to fully cede sovereignty to its ostensible tenant.
Thus she wasn't prepared when the electronic lock buzzed and the door opened.
Cosima stepped in, head bobbing to a rhythm, and got halfway into the room before she noticed Delphine staring at her from a computer workstation. Cosima froze, then reached up to pluck the earphones out of her ears.
"Hey," Cosima said slowly.
"Hello," Delphine said, somewhat more recovered.
"You . . . work weekends?" Cosima asked with such a conflict of tones that Delphine wasn't sure what the possible individual emotional elements might be, whether confusion or scorn or skepticism or wariness or alarm.
"Not usually," Delphine admitted, "though I do come in when I feel I need to."
Cosima nodded with the sluggishness of an outmoded CPU trying to process large packets of data. "So this weekend you felt like you needed to come in?"
"There were a few things I wanted to prepare, yes," answered Delphine. "And you? What brings you here?"
Cosima wiped at the air in a counterclockwise direction relative to herself and shook her head. "Hold up. Rewind. What are you preparing?"
"Everything we have related to the illness." No reason to lie. Presenting Cosima with what they had been able to assemble of the full picture had been Delphine's express purpose. "To give us a starting point."
"Like Katja."
Delphine nodded, not allowing any interval of hesitation. "What we were able to gather from her." She cocked her head. "But why did you come in?"
Cosima frowned, not at Delphine's question, but in consideration of what preceded it. She might not have heard Delphine's question at all, if her body language served as indication. Cosima followed the wire of her headphones to the phone attached to it and fiddled with the screen. The tinny buzz from the earbuds shorted out. Unplugging the wire and rolling the mass into a ball, which she shoved back into her pocket along with the phone, Cosima shrugged. "The person I'm staying with needed their home back, so I figured I'd hang here. As good a place as any. I mean--" Her eyes glanced at Delphine through the top edge of her lenses. "--it's my lab, right?"
Delphine smiled wanly and indicated behind her with a twitch of her head. "They delivered the couch."
Cosima grinned. "Sweet."
"If you need to find your own accommodations," Delphine said offhandedly as Cosima dumped bag and then coat onto an empty chair, "HR can help you."
"You mean I can't just sleep here?" Cosima asked, back to Delphine so that her face was unobservable.
Delphine hesitated. "I'm not sure the couch is that comfortable."
Cosima flashed a grin over her shoulder. "So I can stay if it's comfortable?"
Delphine thought briefly of the couch in Shay's apartment, which, despite its shortcomings, had proven safe and comfortable and precisely suited to Shay's intentions (or the ones she claimed, Delphine wasn't ready to verbally cede her the victory).
"I mean that I don't know if you want to have to sleep on it if it's not comfortable," Delphine said. "You will need your rest."
Cosima made a small sound like a harrumph of laughter as she dug about her bag. "Good call. Thanks, doc." She hauled out her laptop. The sight of the skin made Delphine smile just as it had the first time she'd beheld it. "So how far have you gotten?"
Delphine considered, then turned the monitor to face Cosima.
In the word document she had open, the cursor blinked at the end of a single sentence.
Cosima laughed. "Making lots of progress there, Dr. Cormier." She considered Delphine for a moment. "I figured you for someone much more efficient."
"It's Saturday," Delphine proclaimed in self-defense.
"Yeah, well that's not going to help me," Cosima said, setting down the laptop and conducting a high and low search for an electrical socket. One at the base of the station proved serviceable and Cosima straightened up with an arch look. "Why not just tell me since I'm here? Or, better yet, give me access to DYAD's databases."
"I planned to provide the relevant documents," Delphine said. "Relevant" made the corners of Cosima's mouth jerk up. "I was serious about HR helping you find a place to stay in Toronto."
"I know," Cosima said airily. "But they already got to decide where I was going to live once and I'm not sure I want to give them that choice again."
"What do you mean?"
"They chose my surrogate mother, didn't they?" Cosima said. "I'd call that my first place of residence."
Delphine checked a smile, lost against the effort, and succumbed to a helpless grin. "Alright. That's fair. How did that work out for you?"
"How do you mean?" Cosima asked, more fully lending Delphine her attention. "Like do I have a good relationship with my parents?"
Delphine nodded. "Yes."
"I love my parents," Cosima said, matter-of-fact. "My folks are great."
"So it worked out well," Delphine pointed out.
"But it could have possibly been not great," countered Cosima.
"Which is true of everyone and their parents, biological and otherwise," Delphine argued.
"But in our case," Cosima said, leaning toward Delphine, "we could have been put into bad situations--deliberately."
Delphine absorbed her words. "You mean to say that DYAD could have intentionally chosen poor mothers and parents for their subjects."
"Nature versus nurture." Cosima shrugged. "If you've only got one shot, why not aim to cover the whole spectrum?"
Amazement briefly muted Delphine. She shook her head. "What would make you think that such an idea would occur to the scientists who conceived the experiment?"
"I don't know," Cosima said dismissively, turning away, "a monitor system that places strangers close to their subjects via intimate relationships in order to spy on them?"
Delphine inhaled sharply. She'd walked into that blow. And yet. This wasn't going to work if every interaction between them was going to be barbed and boobytrapped in this manner.
"Fine," Delphine exhaled sharply. "But tell me this: objectively speaking, how would you have done it? How would you have maintained observation of an experiment like this short of keeping all the subjects confined in one place?"
"Seriously?" Cosima asked.
Delphine threw up a careless hand. "Yes. I was asked the same question and not until I received the answer could I begin to see the breadth of obstacles present and resources needed."
"And the answer made sense to you when you heard it?" Cosima asked, crossing her arms.
Delphine nodded, measured and contemplative. "It was . . . surprisingly simple."
"Yeah, it made sense to me, too," Cosima concurred curtly.
It was possible Delphine gaped at Cosima.
"So why do I keep bitching about it?" Cosima presented rhetorically. "Just because it makes sense doesn't mean it's not screwed up. You only have to think about it for two seconds to see that. You can see that, right?"
Greg wafted to the forefront of Delphine's thoughts. Greg always by Jennifer's side. Greg who avoided Delphine's eyes. Greg who had been in communication with Leekie from the beginning.
"You're my monitor, aren't you?" Cosima asked.
Delphine exhaled unevenly through her nose. "Yes."
Cosima nodded once, succinct, and turned away to look into the monitor of her laptop, expression blank but tight.
Delphine sucked in her lips. Closed her eyes. Ran a hand through her hair.
"That's . . . my assignment," Delphine said quietly into the density of the tense silence, opening her eyes. "That's what Aldous calls it."
Cosima scoffed at her laptop. "But not what you call it?"
"What I know is that you're sick and that as a doctor I want to help you."
"And the rest of it, the experiment? You expect me to believe that doesn't matter to you?"
"I didn't create it. I didn't set it up."
"Yeah, you just willingly participate in it."
"Do you think they put out an advertisement?" Delphine snapped, sharper than she'd intended. "'Research assistant needed for a human cloning trial'?"
"You're going to try to tell me that if they had you wouldn't have jumped at the chance?"
They held one another's gazes.
Delphine relaxed into her chair.
"I would have," Delphine said quietly. "Just as I think you would have, if you had seen an advertisement like that. Not knowing fully what it entailed."
Cosima's jaw flexed and eased. "Are you trying to say you regret your decision?"
"I'm pointing out that the only way to see the details of the bigger picture was to commit entirely from the beginning."
Cosima spread her arms. "Well, I'm all in! In ways you and Leekie aren't. But no one seems to be showing me any bigger picture."
Delphine breathed evenly.
Then she nodded and stood.
*
"Come with me," Delphine said simply and gave Cosima no reason and no opportunity to argue as she quick-footed out of the lab and wended out of the Old Ward entirely. In her wake, after just a moment's silence, Cosima's heels sounded off the floor and echoed in the corridors until Delphine slowed her pace and Cosima drew up alongside. The other scientist glanced sidelong up at Delphine's face. Delphine kept her attention fixed ahead. In tense, hurried silence they traversed the deserted halls.
The first security point drew real interest from Cosima. As Delphine's card swiped over the reader, Cosima's expression settled into a sober mask. Delphine ushered Cosima through the unlocked door, then again once more through another security point at the end of another trek. When the second door closed behind them, Delphine caught Cosima's elbow and held her back. The firmness of her grip raised a dimple between Cosima's eyes, but a glimpse of Delphine's expression scuttled any protest.
The in-patient care ward was staffed at all hours of every day of the week, but not constantly and not vigilantly. Delphine could only hazard a guess at the rounds schedule. Their luck saw the reception desk unmanned. A further scan of the hallways in both directions signaled they were in the clear. Setting a brisk pace, Delphine guided Cosima around the corner and slipped her charge into the room marked for patient "J.F."
Delphine closed the door behind them as quietly as she could manage and pitched her voice nearly at the same volume. "We cannot stay long."
Turning around, Delphine realized Cosima might not have heard her. Not because the reports of the monitors drowned out Delphine's warning. Simply because the figure in the bed. Cosima approached the bed slowly, her footsteps now light and unremarkable, and circled around the far side, eyes fixed on the face.
Seeing the caution with which Cosima moved and yet the unmistakable allure that drew her to the bedside, Delphine felt the undeniable certainty that it was always going to come to this, her bringing Cosima to see Jennifer, despite orders, despite deterrents. It wasn't a written overview she'd wanted to give Cosima, thus why she'd been inspired no further than a single sentence. It was this.
Delphine sidled up to the other side of the bed. She spared a glance for Jennifer, the diminished disturbance in the sheets sprouting wires from torso and arms, cheekbones prominent and taut in the sunken face, and squelched the turning of her heart with a rough swallow of the little moisture in her mouth, but focused on Cosima. The brunette's chest heaved in shallow breaths. One hand crept up and settled, hesitantly, on the banister rail, fingers curling, gripping, knuckles going white.
"She won't wake," Delphine said in the same hushed tone. "She fell into a coma a few days ago."
No visible reaction registered in Cosima's countenance at her words. The intent eyes never wavered from Jennifer's form. But after a time the brunette reached down and gingerly rested her fingers atop Jennifer's inert hand.
Then Cosima whipped around and stormed out of the room.
Delphine gaped after her. Her immediate impulse was to follow, but a thought held her back, something like the memory of Shay gazing out with reluctance and apprehension between the slightest of breaks in the doorway. A moment allowed Delphine to gather herself and, with no one watching, gently seize Jennifer's other hand and squeeze, once.
When Delphine stepped out into the hall, she found Cosima standing to the side like a sentry, eyes focused into the distance straight ahead.
*
The reverse journey to the Old Wing occurred in inverse fashion. Cosima set the pace, brisk, hustling with a surety that lent the false impression that she was familiar with the halls. Stubborn, simmering silence issued from her as a palpable force imposing the same upon Delphine. The glances Delphine darted in Cosima's direction availed nothing given the other woman's lack of expression. When they gained the privacy of the lab, Delphine said, "You cannot tell anyone what you just saw," and Cosima said, "Who was that?"
Their words collided and left them both watching one another warily, attempting to judge who would--should--speak first.
"Her name is Jennifer . . . Fitzsimmons," Delphine said slowly, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, "and you were not supposed to see her."
Cosima leaned back against a lab station counter, tongue pushed against the back of her teeth, and mirrored Delphine's stance. "Not supposed to see her."
"Jennifer was the first case we were aware of," Delphine continued with the same measured circumspection, "about six months before Katja Obinger."
Cosima's eyes drilled into Delphine. "You guys have known about this for that long? Were you going to tell us or just let us drop like flies?"
Delphine felt a spark in her own ire at the flare of Cosima's. "This is a disease that has defied our attempts to identify it. With how little we know of its cause, onset,and development, it's not as if we could concoct a test for it overnight. We didn't even have hard evidence it could be genetic until additional cases appeared."
"Like me," Cosima scoffed, pushing off the edge of the table and pacing away in agitation.
"Yes," breathed Delphine, deflating, "like you."
"How many others?" Cosima asked.
"I don't know," confessed Delphine.
"You don't know?" barked Cosima.
"They don't tell me everything, either," Delphine said, head bowed.
"But you know about Jennifer," Cosima said, the edge still sharp in her voice.
"I worked with Jennifer," Delphine said, almost more to herself, eyes fixed on the floor.
"What?"
"I was the assisting physician assigned to her." Delphine raised her eyes. "Until I was assigned to you."
Cosima's jaw flexed. "She didn't look like she was doing too hot back there."
Delphine nodded. "I know."
"Is this supposed to make me feel better?" Cosima quipped. "Because it's not."
Delphine sighed and found the nearest seat to sink onto. "It's not supposed to make you feel better. I want you to know that I want to work with you, Cosima. What I know about this, you'll know." She wiped at her eyes. "Please, believe me."
Cosima tapped the surface of the table. "You're asking me to trust you?"
Delphine shook her head. "I'm asking you to work with me. We need to work together. The faster, the better."
"And put everything else aside," sniggered Cosima.
Delphine tossed up a hand carelessly. "If you cannot put it aside, then at least don't make it a priority. It's a waste of time and energy to fight me on everything."
There was a second wherein Cosima didn't react, then she loosed a huff of laughter. "So what should I do? Try to sleep with you instead?"
"What?" gasped Delphine, eyes wide.
Her reaction tripped something cautious and uncertain in Cosima's gaze. All hints of sarcasm and cynicism fell away. In the vacuum appeared a consideration tentative and reluctant. Her tone assumed a manner all business:
"Show me what you've got."
//
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