✅ Project SETI: Surrogates for Extra-Terrestrial Insemination

Part XXV: Switch

          Nova quickly guided the ship out of the building and into the open air. As he did, he looked up the last place Gabriel had set the autopilot to and found it was a fuel station in orbit about an hour away. He reasoned that they'd have a better chance of getting real help in a highly public place with lots of witnesses, set it to fly there, then rushed to Gabriel's side.

          "Oh, god..." Nova mumbled when he saw his condition. He was on his back, convulsing violently, and staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. He sat on his haunches, gently positioned the top of Gabriel's thrashing head between his knees, and held his face still with his hands.

          He looked up at the piloting console just ahead and found the large digital clock mounted on it. It told him it was 08:21:50, and was grateful for the even number to count from. He watched it as it ticked up and estimated it took him roughly two minutes to get the ship into autopilot, which meant that he'd been seizing for about two minutes and fifteen seconds.

          Nova could feel himself wanting to panic when he felt Gabriel's jaw snap shut. He tried his best to push it down and focus when he began to choke and hiccup—he knew first aid, he just needed to remember what to do for seizures specifically...

          He felt Gabriel's facial muscles relax again just a few seconds later, so he gently propped his mouth open and saw that he was choking on his own blood and saliva. Nova frowned; he needed to be turned onto his side, but he hadn't stopped convulsing yet. It wasn't ideal to try to force the body into a specific position while it was rigid and jerking, but he was going to aspirate if he didn't act soon.

          Nova shifted to pull him onto his side anyway. He sat with the side of his legs against his back so that he was largely unhindered, but still in the recovery position. He coughed out the saliva-blood combination that was blocking his airway and continued to breathe fast and shallow afterward. He was comforted to hear him breathe again, but it was strained, and he didn't like the sound of it at all.

          Nova looked up at the clock again after a few beats. It was now 08:22:36—he'd been seizing for almost three solid minutes, and it didn't seem to be letting up in severity at all. He looked down at Gabriel with an intensely sympathetic look as he continued to shake erratically against his legs. He held his head steady with one hand, and tried to palpate his carotid pulse with the other. Nova frowned when he had to move his fingers around to get a read on his pulse, and when he finally felt it, it was fast and weak. It went away completely when he pushed into it a little more, and he took a few seconds to squeeze his eyes closed and willed away another wave of anxiety as best he could. He opened his eyes again with a sharp steadying sigh and held the back of his hand up to Gabriel's mouth, but it was so fast and slight that it was nearly undetectable.

          He looked around the area of the ship in his immediate proximity in search of a medical kit of some kind. Surely, Gabriel's spacefaring vessel would have something like that—perhaps even more, knowing him. Then he saw it: a compact white box with a handle sitting on a shelf between the firearms and piloting console.

          He carefully stood up and closed the distance between him and the kit in a single bound. He grabbed it and saw another larger, similar-looking kit behind it. He recognized it as a portable nebulizer unit and grabbed that, too. When he turned around again, he saw that Gabriel was on his back now, but his shaking and jerking was receding into less forceful twitching.

          "Hang on, daddy..." Nova cooed as he opened the box. It was well stocked—inside was a small automatic defibrillator with a blood pressure cuff attachment, a couple of bottles of pills, a few vials of intravenous drugs and the supplies to draw them up and administer them, shears, tape, antiseptic available as liquid or a diluted wipe, a varied selection of bandages and tourniquets, as well as a few mending lasers and extra energy cells for them.