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Episode 2: Recovery

Valerie woke to pain. Her head throbbed in a gentle rhythm. She lay in the darkness wondering if this was from work or a hangover. Had Fitzhugh found some whiskey again?

But something about the pain nagged at her. She couldn't nail down the thought, but there was something wrong with having a headache right now.

She figured it out when she tried to sit up. Her legs felt as if they were ripping apart. She gasped and fell back to lay still. "That's it," she muttered. "It didn't hurt enough."

Valerie remembered the trap now. And a girl. And a giant. At the memory of the giant she started to sit up again. This time she screamed.

A light appeared. Somewhere beyond her feet was a circle of soft yellow light. The girl was outlined by it as she pulled back a curtain.

"Are you okay, Valerie?" she asked.

Val sank back into the cushion she was on. "Yeah," she muttered. "Just a small pain where my legs are torn halfway off." She stretched a hand down and felt gingerly at her thighs. Thick fabric stretched across them.

"You shouldn't mess with the bandages," the girl said.

"What's your name?" Valerie asked.

"Gessy," was the reply. Valerie wasn't sure if there wasn't a small pout in that voice.

"I'm sorry I forgot your name, Gessy, but I was distracted when you told me before."

"That's okay!" Gessy said happily. She left the curtains drawn as she came into the room. In the light, Valerie saw a small chamber, about the size of a cheap motel room. There was the cushion she was on and a colored box in the corner. The curtained doorway was the only way in or out. It looked kind of like a mouse-hole cut out of cardboard.

Gessy sat on the edge of the cushion and watched the woman look around the room. "Like it? It's my room. You can stay here until you're all better."

"It's fine, Gessy," she said. It was worse than prison, she thought, but she didn't want to offend her nurse. The girl smiled brightly and scooted a bit closer.

"I've never had a visitor," she said as she stared at Valerie. They looked each other over. Gessy seemed to be about 18, Val would have guessed. She just dressed and wore her hair to look far younger. She wondered what the girl saw as she looked at Val.

"So, where are we?" she asked Gessy.

"My room," was the slow reply. "I told you."

"I mean, where is your room? Are we in...the giant's house?"

"The giant is named Deckett," Gessy lectured. "He's a nature artist and we go all over the world looking for plants he can take pictures of and paint for science book illustrations. I've been to both continents."

"Well, good for you," Val replied. "Do you have fun?"

"Oh, yes. We just go everywhere. And I meet little people here and there and..." The cheery voice faltered. Gessy had been leaning forward, now she moved away from the older woman.

"Gessy, what's wrong?"

"I'm supposed to be careful around you," she said quietly.

"Oh, you're fine," Valerie assured her. "As long as I don't move and you don't shake the bed, my legs don't hurt."

"Not that. You're feral." She hunched her shoulders and turned away. "You're going to be mean."

"What? No. No, I'm not. Why would I be mean to you?" There was no reply. "Gessy? Please, tell me what you're talking about."

"Ferals always want to escape," the girl said softly. "They always want the domestics to go escape with them. They don't want us to be happy with out giants."

"Well," Val started, "we do think freedom is important, but that's not mean."

"You'll get mean," Gessy said. She turned to look Valerie in the face. "You'll hurt me. You'll say mean things about pets. About me being a pet. About me being wrong. And you'll want to drag me out the window or under the door when you go."

"Gessy," Val said calmly as she could, "I am not in a position to judge you. I won't hurt you. I can't." She gestured at her legs. "Heck, I even need your help to get to the bathroom."

"You need the potty?" Gessy asked. In an instant, her hunch disappeared and her face lit up. "I can help with that." She ran out the door.

Valerie shook her head at the mercurial moods of her hostess. Then she started trying to figure out how to get out of the bed without her legs falling off.

Gessy stepped back in with a bedpan. "I know just what to do!" she said happily.

----

They were just finishing the clean up when the giant came in. Well, he'd been outside the little box-room for a while. When Gessy carried the pan outside Valerie got a glimpse of Deckett's hand picking it up.

She found the idea of a giant male outside the 'room' to be a little hard to handle as she lay naked on the bed. When she was offered a giant-made smock just like Gessy wore, she took it without hesitation.

He respected her privacy enough to wait until Gessy offered an 'all clear' to kneel down and look in.

"How is my patient?" he asked.

"My head throbs and my legs hurt," she told him.

He nodded. "Well, you can have some pain medicine. We wanted to make sure the stuff I gave you on the way home had worn off before we mix dosages. And you should eat it with food."

Valerie looked from him to the bandages on her legs and back. "Are you a doctor? Or did you take a first aid for little people course?"

Deckett laughed. She wasn’t used to giants that laughed. At least, those that weren't laughing mockingly. His wide grin was infectious and she smiled back at him.

"Nothing to it," he said. While he spoke, he reached in and lifted the cushion out. He carried it, with Valerie and Gessy sitting on it, over to a table and set it down on a placemat.

"First things first," he said. "Your pain medication." Deckett pulled a small tube out of his pocket. He held it over Gessy's cupped hands and squeezed out about a cup of a white doughy mass. She offered it to Valerie. He gestured and Valerie ate the drug. It tasted kind of like mushrooms. Her headache faded almost instantly.

She smiled up at the giant and Gessy. "That's good stuff," she said. The girl clapped her hands.

"We've really advanced our medical system in the last couple of years," Deckett explained. "Once you figure the dosage, it works itself out. And I tend to work in the field, far from actual doctors. I can set your leg, fix a bird's wing or inflate a collapsed lung."

She wasn't sure if she was being compared to a wild animal. She was sure she didn't want to be treated as a stray so she tried to get him into an intelligent conversation.

"Gessy says you have a problem with feral...humans?" He glanced at the girl but not angrily. Valerie realized too late that she might have gotten her roommate into trouble.

"Any of the little people that're not born and raised by people are considered feral," he replied. "And they dislike being in captivity. They sometimes try to convince the domestically raised humans to resist captivity.

"Legally, anyone born on Earth belongs to the government." He turned to wink slowly at the two women on his table. "Of course, we won't tell anyone you're here." He turned and started assembling a meal.

"Thanks," she said. She realized that the smock she wore was actually part of a 'disguise.' "But... You'll still let me go, right?" Gessy took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"Of course he will. He promised Betty." Valerie asked about that and the rest of the conversation she'd missed.

Dinner was ready by the time she was caught up. Deckett lowered his plate and allowed Gessy to collect two human-sized plates of food from it.

"One more thing," he said, lowering a box to Gessy. She took a lozenge out of it and put it on Valerie's plate. The giant gestured at the box and explained. "Vitamins. Earthers living in the wild are notoriously short on vitamins. You definitely need to stock up on them while you're healing."

She took the cookie-sized pill and bit into it. He nodded approvingly and they ate. Gessy helped feed Valerie, seeing to her comfort before taking her own meal.

After the meal was done, the giant moved the women back to Gessy's room. She made sure that Valerie was comfortable after he replaced the cushion.

"Yes, fine," she assured the girl. "You're a very good caretaker." Gessy beamed. Valerie yawned and sank down into the mattress.

"Deckett says you're going to sleep a lot," Gessy said. The girl spread some blankets over the bed and crawled in beside the Earthling. "It's nice to have company," she whispered and carefully cuddled close. She avoided the sensitive legs, but between the stress and the drugs Valerie suspected she'd have slept through about anything.

She drifted to sleep to the sound of Gessy's steady breathing beside her.

------

For two days Valerie spent most of her time sleeping. Gessy was never far away and always willing to help.

When they were both awake, there were a lot of questions about life on Earth or life in the wild. Gessy didn't volunteer much about living with giants. She was defensive about how a wild human might judge her for being a pet.

Valerie tried to avoid offending either of her hosts but there were a few awkward moments.

On the third day of her recovery Valerie and Gessy were talking about the crew and passengers of the Spindrift. Valerie was describing some of their narrow escapes from capture.

"You really like them," Gessy said. She was sitting at the foot of the bed with her arms wrapped around her knees.

Val was lying flat, as always. "Yes," she agreed. "They're my family."

"Do you think they'd like to visit here, too? There's plenty of room."

Valerie stroked the soft cover of the bed they were on. "Well, Fitzhugh would probably like to live like this, but everyone else would hate the cost." Silence stretched out after her comment.

She lifted her head to see Gessy glaring at her. "I said visit," the girl hissed. "Not come be pets forever and ever and ever. I know you don't want to live like me. I'm only indoors. I only eat every night. I never have to worry about dogs or cats or spiders or..."

The teen stopped hissing and started softly crying. "I like my giant and you think I'm a fool. Well. Well. Well, then, to hell with you!" She stormed out before Valerie could apologize.

Somewhere beyond her view through the door Gessy was talking to Deckett. Well, one was sobbing and the other was making soothing noises. Then the sobbing softened. There was quiet for a while.

Valerie was trying to imagine what could happen now. She wondered what she could do to make up to the girl. And what Deckett might do to her.

While she was phrasing her apology she started to hear screaming. Gessy's voice rose in horrible shrieks. Wild thoughts of some sort of punishment appeared in Val's head. But that didn't make sense. She was the one that had pissed the girl off...

Before she could figure out what would drive Deckett to hurt the girl, the screaming came closer. With a yelp, Gessy ran through the curtains and around the bed. She crouched down as far away from the doorway as she could get and breathed heavily.

"Gessy! What's happening?" Valerie tried to look around to see if she was hurt. What she saw changed everything. Gessy was smiling.

"Shhhhhhh!" the girl urged. "There's a tickle monster out there!" The room darkened as a giant hand filled the doorway. Gessy squealed and dug down under the cushion.

Deckett reached very carefully around the bed without disturbing the patient in the least.

Once Valerie was sure she wasn't in danger of a painful collision, she got caught up in the game and called warnings to her roommate. "Duck!" she shouted, or "Jump!" Gessy giggled and darted back and forth but the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

With a whoop of glee she was caught and dragged out of the room. After a few more distant screams she finally 'escaped' from the monster and staggered back to her bed.

Well past her usual bedtime she curled up beside Valerie and was instantly to sleep. Val stroked the huge pigtails and smiled.

Until she realized she needed to use the bedpan and Gessy refused to wake up.



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