Night to remember
§
Later Saturday morning.
They sat at a small table in a quiet corner of the arts centre cafe. Although the floor-space was not particularly large, the extremely high ceiling of the converted building made the area seem vast and a little exposed so most people tended to choose the tables against the walls in preference to those at the centre. The corner tables were always the first to fill.
"So Michaela, what did you want to talk to me about?" Julian asked. "You don't need to ask my permission to leave the class if that is what you were thinking about. I meant it when I said that not everyone finds our class to be their cup of tea."
"Oh no, that's not it at all," she said hurriedly.
"I was just wondering about something."
"Yes?"
"Moira - Mrs Denman - said that on everyone else's second class they were all given a herbal mixture to take home with them and I wondered if you had forgotten to give it to me on Thursday?"
"Ah." Julian was taken aback at this. How should he reply?
"Would you like another cup of coffee? " Good one Julian, he thought to himself, stall for time.
"No thanks I'm fine, but I don't mind if you want to get one for yourself" She rallied back over the net and -
"No, I'm okay too on that front." Damn, major mistake, Julian thought, as soon as the words were out, you could have had lots of time to think up a reply while getting a coffee. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"The herbal mixture. Did you forget?"
The truth was that all the previous 'wrong sorts' joining the class had been loners with no helpful friends to clue them in as to how things went. So it was easy to avoid giving them the mixture. Without its effects the meditation exercises were impenetrably dull. Disheartened, the 'unwanted' usually left after one or two classes. One determined female had stuck it out for five classes but she had an atypically high boredom threshold and could not be seen as representative.
He should have guessed this situation might arise, should have worked out a plausible and instantly acceptable reason as to why Michaela hadn't been given the mixture, but it was too late for that now so he just said the first thing that came into his head and hoped for the best.
"Yes," he said,"I can't think what came over me, I forgot. Sorry."
"Would it be possible to have some before next class? I don't want to waste any more time. The first week went so well."
"Did it? Did it indeed? Splendid!" He almost sounded as if he meant it.
"Well may I?"
"Certainly you may." A plan was forming at last. Was it because of relief that when he now looked into Michaela's eyes there was a strange flipping sensation in his tummy or was it something else?
"Would you have dinner with me tonight? I can give it to you then if you like?" He heard himself say. "The herbal mixture I mean, I can give you the herbal mixture then." He felt the heat of a blush and fleetingly felt empathy for poor unattractive Miss Tweedle.
§§
It was the blush that made Michaela say yes. It made him seem so unthreatening that she had no heart to say no. Plus she welcomed the chance to spend more time with him. Maybe if she got to know him better she would be able to discuss the strange experience she had had the other night? She felt awkward admitting right now she had already used Moira's herbal mixture, but that might change over the course of an evening.
§§§
Saturday night.
Michaela's mum was beside herself, over the moon, and many other cliched emotions that would have appropriately graced a Big Match Special interview with a scoring centre-forward.
"Dinner! With a man! Tonight! Just like that, out of the blue?" A cloud scudded across her sunny countenance. "He is normal isn't he? He isn't odd in any way?"
"Yes Mum. He is very normal and not odd in any way that I can tell," said Michaela, genuinely believing she was speaking the truth.
§§§
Which just goes to show how wrong people can be, without having the slightest inkling of how absolutely wrong it is of them to believe the thing that they believe to be true when it is in fact not true but in fact wrong. In other words she was wrong. Julian was not normal. Julian was about as far from being normal as it was possible to be without actually being a contestant on Big Brother.
As if to underline just how not normal he was, Julian stirred at the saucepan of bubbling green liquid. Two years on the planet, two years in a humanoid body, but still at his core, an alien being.
And next to his laptop, a pile of papers, each one in different handwriting as previously mentioned. But not yet mentioned is the strange language showing on the screen of the open laptop beside them. A language which would be completely unidentifiable even for the most knowledgeable of the world's linguistic scholars. If Doctor Who was real, then possibly he would be in with a fighting chance of deciphering it. Because the language displayed by that laptop is a message from the research fellows who had sent Julian to be their eyes and ears on the front-line. The front-line being this time, this dimension and this planet.
These researchers were backroom boys, dependent on the data provided by risk takers like Julian and generally speaking trepidatious souls. They would have immediately recognised a kindred spirit in the risk averse Miss Tweedle.
As Julian cooked up the fake batch of herbal mixture for Michaela, he hummed a dischordant non-melody he remembered from his own childhood. His plan was gelling nicely. He knew what to do and he was sure that nothing could go wrong. He was also considering taking a step forward in his data-gathering. Bombarded with sexual imagery at every turn, magazines, billboards, television were battering at his consciousness to sensitise him to the point where even Miss Tweedle's low-cut blouses were causing him disquiet. So far the only women he met apart from Miss Tweedle were 'his ladies' and those were supposed to be chosen according to the research fellows' criteria, meaning they were very mature and hence not the sort of women to cause any kind of disturbance in the trouser department. But now there was Michaela and he was beginning to wonder if his nervous tension might be alleviated by allowing his testosterone a bit of free-reign?
He hadn't felt any attraction to any of the other 'wrong sort' who had inadvertently strayed into his classes on previous occasions. Perhaps it had been too early on in his time as a human and his hormones had not yet been stewing away long enough to gain dominance. Who knew? All he knew was that he was seeing Michaela tonight and his trouser area approved mightily.
§§§
Michaela was looking forward to her night out as well. If only to appease her mother's increasing desperation to see her daughter back 'on track'.
Getting ready to go out was an unfamiliar feeling. This was the first time she had been out on a grown up date with a man. Her relationship with Jaz, if it could be termed a relationship had been completely haphazard and spontaneous. She had been the youngest person at Uni, having gained her A levels a year early due to her prodigious academic success. At school she had been known as a brain box, a swot and a geek. Although she had a few friends at school she hadn't been popular spending most of her time reading or studying. There had been neither the time nor the inclination for boyfriends. But things changed at University. To begin with there had been the beer. Oh dear, much too much beer. There had also been her attempts at smoking pot, or blow as she learned to call it. Avoiding coke and acid had not been a problem, as she wasn't a humanities student. Law students were either more sensible, disciplined or just realised their course would require them to maintain a few functioning brain cells in order to pass exams and get course works in on time and up to standard. So booze and dope were about as bad as it got, until the night she tried E.
Looking back she had been extremely lucky. She'd only got extremely friendly, met Jaz, had the first of a handful of casual nights of sex with him that had got her pregnant. It could have been a lot worse. One of the other students had ended up in casualty after collapsing with intracranial oedema caused by drinking too much water in an attempt to avoid dehydration. He hadn't died but it had been touch and go and was enough to persuade Michaela never again to take anything more onerous than hay fever tablets.
Since that unsatisfactory introduction to male female interaction Michaela had steered clear of the opposite sex as well as drugs and drink. Not so hard to manage when you are a teenage mother forced by circumstances to go back to live with your parents. It hadn't been a saint-like feat of self-denial by any means. Just the natural result of the powerful forces of exhaustion and besotted early motherhood. By the time she might have been ready to dip her toe in romantic waters again, Trent had been diagnosed and she had more important things on her mind.
So here she was, getting ready for a night out that didn't involve sex, drugs or rock and roll. Half-excited and half-terrified, she remembered Julian's blushing face as he asked her out and felt reassured. There was just something about him she liked. She was sure he wasn't like anyone else she had ever met.
§§§
Which just goes to show how you can be completely right and still be clueless about anything that matters.
Julian decanted Michaela's special concoction into a demijohn marked 'Michaela' and poured a little of it into a bottle. At that moment his laptop started buzzing intermittently. He cast his eyes to the ceiling (not literally although given his alien status it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he might have been able to do such a thing) and with a sigh of resignation went over to see what the research fellows wanted now.
"Greetings Julian" the shadowy figure said. *
"Oh Hi, Sydney, what d'you want now?" **
"Just wanted to flag up that one of the subjects seems to be exhibiting atypical readings. Can you shed any light on this?"
"Which subject are we talking about?"
"Moira Denman."
"Okay. I'll look into that."
"Good. "
"Anything else?"
"Not really. Everything proceeding smoothly?"
"Yes. Nothing to report"
"Right then. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye"
Julian snapped the laptop shut. Skype was a very useful way to talk interdimensionally, but he sometimes wondered how they managed to calculate the call charges.
§§§
Julian arrived with a taxi to collect Michaela.
The evening started off in a leisurely fashion as each person waited to see what the other might do, fully confident that the other person must be much more experienced at dealing with the opposite sex than they were themselves.
The taxi pulled up outside Anastasia's, a Greek restaurant, and Julian got out and rushed round to open the door for his companion as he had seen done in some of the movies he had been watching for the last two years. Unfortunately Michaela must not have been watching the same movies because she opened her door for herself and dealt him a punishing blow to both his pride and the soft tissue of his abdominal area.
She was still apologising as the waitress served up the starters. Calamari and Tzatsiki - Michaela's favourite and something that Julian also liked, he assured her when she ordered. So it was entirely unexpected when after eating two crunchy squid rings and a couple of forkfuls of the cucumber salad his face began to swell and he started to have a problem breathing.
"Just stay calm and try not to panic." Michaela said immediately "I'm pretty sure I know what this is. We'll have to get you to the hospital, but luckily it isn't far, the Heath is only ten minutes away at the most. We can be there in plenty of time to get you sorted out."
She turned to a waitress who was hovering anxiously in the background.
Could someone give us a lift to the A&E? I'm pretty sure he's having a serious allergic reaction. We need to get him to the hospital quickly."
"Don't you want an ambulance, love?" the waitress asked.
"It'll take too long to get organised. But if that's the only option, it'll have to do." Michaela said quietly so as not to panic her companion.
"I'll get the manager." The waitress said firmly, obviously keen to pass this to a higher authority.
Luckily the manager took the situation in quickly and offered to take them in his car straight away.
"Please ring ahead to the A&E to let them know we're on the way and that I think it might be an anaphylactic shock reaction," Michaela instructed the waitress.
The manager nodded his assent to the waitress and she went off to do as she had been asked. It was at this point that Michaela remembered the last time she'd used the handbag she had with her had been in the summer. Maybe, just maybe? Holding her breath she rifled through her bag while the restaurant manager looked at her aghast, plainly thinking she was looking for a cigarette or something else equally inappropriate. But her fingers found what she was hoping for. An old dog-eared packet of Hayfever tablets. Piriton to be precise.
"Glass of water please." She requested in a tone that didn't allow for non compliance.
"Open your mouth Julian," she told him, "and take this." ('This' being a small white tablet.) "And drink some of this to help you swallow."
She gave him the glass of water and he did as he was told with a gulp.
"Okay, where's the car?"
"This way." The manager hurried them out of the restaurant to his car leaving the other diners with nothing better to do than return their attention to their meals and each other.
§§
In the back of the car Julian could feel his condition easing slightly. He felt bitterly disappointed at the way his planned romantic evening was turning out. He was also thoroughly frightened for the first time in his life. He had experienced anxious moments before, the process which had brought him to his current shape and form hadn't been risk-free. But that had been a planned and calculated risk. This was outside his control, one moment he was enjoying sharing time with Michaela, and the next he was gasping, panicky, hot and cold and unable to breathe. He looked at her sitting next to him. Her face was calm but serious. Her steady focus gave him confidence.
§§
Michaela looked back at him. His face was pale and she reached across to touch his forehead. Clammy but not hot. His throat hadn't swollen any more since she had given him the antihistamine so that was a good thing. She held his hand. It seemed like the right thing to do somehow.
"Don't worry you'll be fine once we get a doctor to check you over."
The car turned into the Heath hospital grounds and stopped outside the University Hospital's A&E department.
"Thanks very much for the lift." Michaela said.
"Do you want me to wait?" the restaurant manager asked - he hadn't even told them his name or asked theirs she realised.
"There's no need. We can manage from here thanks. I can call my parents or a taxi, whatever. But thanks, you've been very kind. "
"No, no, not at all. Just call the restaurant and let us know how he gets on."
"I will," she promised.
Michaela helped Julian into the reception area and sat him down while she went to talk to the receptionist.
§§§
Early Sunday morning.
It was 12.30 when Michaela's key turned the lock of her front door. As soon as she got inside, her Mum pounced as if she had been waiting in the hallway in eager anticipation of her return. Which was because she had been.
"So?" she asked without preamble "How did it go? Did you have a good time? Are you seeing him again? Did he seem interested at the end of the evening?"
Michaela couldn't resist it. "Not sure really. He was fast asleep in bed when I left him."
She enjoyed watching her Mum's jaw drop open, flow of questions halted abruptly, expressions dancing across her face as clearly as the LED words on an electronic signboard.
Michaela savoured the moment. She felt she was owed some fun. Then to put her Mum out of her misery, it wasn't her fault after all, said, "He had an allergic reaction to something in the starters and we spent most of the evening in the A&E at the Heath. He's been kept in for observation, but he'll be okay."
Mum's face obviously didn't know whether to smile with relief that her worst fears were unjustified, to show sympathy for Michaela's disastrous date, or to show her own crashing disappointment that this hadn't been the fairy tale start of a conventional love story for her sadly unlucky daughter. So she chose something else, pulled a fake angry expression and gently thumped her.
"Cheeky little madam. You nearly gave me a heart attack. You'll be the death of me one day."
Into Michaela's head flashed the image of herself standing at her parents grave side and she shivered involuntarily. Hugging her Mum she said "Is there anything to eat - I'm starving."
§§
It was two o'clock and that funeral scene was playing over and over in her head as she tried to get to sleep. She still wasn't certain whether it had been a dream or something else.
She swung her feet out of bed and into her white towelling slippers to protect her feet from the cold painted floorboards then padded across to the bookcase to get the hidden bottle out again. Now she knew it was just an oversight that she hadn't been given her own, she didn't feel guilty about using this one any more.
She dropped three drops into the glass she kept next to her bed, put the bottle back on the bookshelf and took the glass into the bathroom to get some water from the tap. She breathed out heavily, drank the liquid in her glass, rinsed it out and left it to drain next to the sink and went back to bed.
§§§
Julian lay awake in the hospital bed with his eyes closed. Michaela and her serious face and wise eyes were keeping him from sleep. He supposed she would never want to go out with him again after tonight's complete fiasco and he would have groaned out loud except he didn't want to attract the attention of the strange guy in the bed next to him. Julian the alien from another dimension lay quietly waiting for the morning and pondering that the more a person didn't belong the more they attempted to blend into the background. The guy in the bed next to him must have had the luxury of feeling very at home on the planet and in the hospital because he made no attempt to blend in. Instead he gave the impression that if any of the medical staff or patients breathed the wrong way in his direction then they would be the ones doing the blending. In that they would be the soft easily bruised fruit and his fist would be the blending machine.
*Well not really, he said something unintelligible in an indecipherable alien language and called him a similarly indecipherable alien name, but given you probably aren't Doctor Who (assuming he doesn't exist) you wouldn't understand it transcribed accurately so I am doing you a big favour and saving you from vainly attempting to Babelfish it or tax Google's Translation service. I will take it as a given that you are suitably grateful so you don't have to mention it.
**see * above.
