Beneath The Waves (bxb)

3. What Doesn't Kill You

My mind just couldn't relax enough to let me sleep for more than an hour or so, and when I awoke, I felt pretty much like crap. Forcing my body to sit up, I rubbed at my eyes and glanced sideways at the alarm clock on my old wooden nightstand. It was flashing one o'clock.

Oh... right. Never reset it after the power flickered the other day.

Groaning, I leaned over and pressed the reset button on it before sliding out of bed. My right eye was throbbing, and the bite on my arm wasn't feeling the best, either, but I would just deal with it. Scientists got injured in the field all the time, whether it be by rabid mermen or pissed off roommates. It's a dangerous, dangerous profession. Since I wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon, I stifled a yawn and trudged outside after a quick stop in the bathroom and kitchen. Jayson, of course, had his trusty clipboard out, and from the looks of it, he had been doing quite a bit of observing. Giving a sleepy smile, I tapped the cold can of root beer I'd gotten from the fridge against his bare shoulder, making him jump from surprise. Heh, he always got obsessively focused when he was working.

"Here."

Jay's brows rose as he took the can and popped the lid, chugging a good amount before belching loudly into his free hand. Okay, he wasn't the best with his mannerisms, but root beer burping was much better than when he actually got real beer into his system. Let's just say that I was guilty of throwing away more than a few of his beers while he was out.

"How's he doing?"

He gestured toward the water with his root beer can before taking another long drink. My attention stayed on the water, looking for the mer. There were a few ripples in the far right corner, telling me that he had likely just dove under when I came outside. It was a good thing we had our pool modified for experiments, or it would definitely be too small for the merman to move around in. As it was, Jay and I had put our money together, a good forty thousand, along with some grant cash, and had the bottom of the pool dropped an extra ten feet and the sides expanded a couple in either direction. The final measurements were somewhere around sixteen feet deep with a length of twenty feet and a width of twelve. The size alone was great, but once it was finished we worked our arses off transplanting sand and underwater plants. Everything in the pool was alive except for a few small rock formations that Jayson had wanted to bring in for his fish to be able to hide behind.

"Oh yeah, there's only one of my research fish left. I'm pretty sure it's Bubbles, and he's hiding behind the rocks on the left side."

Oops.

I suddenly felt bad about my mer eating most of his fish, but there wasn't anything I could really do about it. It's not like the mer was going to listen if I told it to stop. Hell, considering the way he was acting at the beach, I wouldn't be surprised if he would eat a human if given the chance. A disgruntled splash made me blink out of my thoughts. Err, another pool of blood began to spread along the top, and I heard a tired sigh next to me.

"Rest in peace, little Bubbles," Jayson whispered solemnly. I licked my lips and shifted my weight a little.

"Sorry... but hey, weren't you going to eat them after the experiment anyways?"

He glared over his shoulder at me, and I quickly bit my lip to keep from smirking.

"That is beyond the point. Anyways, since you're up, you better start calling around. Do you know any good doctors or vets that might be able to dart him and work in this setting? 'Cause, as cool as he is, I'm not letting him inside the house to tear it, and us, up."

I fished my phone from my pocket, having completely forgotten to even take my pants off before I passed out. Thankfully, it still had two bars of battery left. Plopping my butt down in one of the extra folding chairs we had for pool observation, I flipped open the old thing and dialed the one person I could think of who might be able to keep our mer a secret but still treat his injuries.