The Best of Us

'Charlie! Hey, wake up!'

I had no idea where I was or how I got there. Trying to gather my senses, the first thing I noticed was the intense nausea I was feeling and a sensation of terrible weakness in my limbs. Judging by the cold pressure of the floor beneath my heavy limbs, I was lying on the ground, but my head was resting on some sort of soft fabric, not uncomfortable at all. And someone was clearly concerned about me.

'Charlie, come on...'

I lay perfectly still, possible variations on rooms I've slept in swirling around me, my still hazy thoughts unable to settle on one. And I was in no hurry to open my eyes. Despite the nausea and the weakness I felt deep inside my muscles, I felt strangely calm. As if I was just where I needed to be, wherever that was.

'I'm sorry,' he mumbled, and I felt the ever so gentle touch of his fingers on my cheek, warm against my cold and clammy skin. 'I should never have let you do this.'

As I let the deep, warm timbre of his voice permeate my consciousness and bring me back to reality, my memories began returning. My mind settled on one room out of thousands of rooms where I could be laying, and as it did so, the lab materialized itself around me, with the workbenches and the old, run-down shelves and the glass flasks and test tubes and the white, tiled walls. And him. I remembered now; he really hadn't wanted me to do it. We spent at least twenty minutes arguing. He said that it had been his idea in the first place, so if anyone, it should be him who we test it on. That was true, but it was definitely a joint effort. I won, obviously, which must have been the reason for me lying on the floor, seemingly having fainted. Did he catch me? Probably. That was his job. I remembered now. I had told him that if anything were to happen to me, he was the doctor out of the two of us, not me. He had the power to help me, and not the other way around. And so he agreed to inject me with the extract, very reluctantly. But we both knew this was the way forward. We would have loved to rush to the hospital to give it to the boy right away, as soon as we were finished, but we both knew that his battered body couldn't possibly survive another allergic reaction.

'I shouldn't have agreed...' he whispered. 'It should've been me. I'm so sorry.'

There was regret in his voice, and anxiety, but something else as well, something that ran much deeper than all of those. His long, elegant surgeon's fingers were still stroking my cheek, with a tenderness that made my heart throb. The love and respect I felt for this man suddenly washed over me like a wave, pushing back the clammy, nauseous weakness. I gathered my strength and managed to dredge up a smile.

'I am your assistant after all, am I not?' I asked, opening my eyes.

He was looking down at me with an expression of anxiety, curiosity and... yes, love, most definitely love. His warm brown eyes were gleaming as he broke into a wide smile.

'My dear Charlie, you never fail to amaze me,' he said proudly, brushing the sweat-dampened blonde curls from my eyes and planting a soft kiss on my forehead.

'Uh... what happened, exactly?' I asked, realizing I still didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle.

'You passed out, I'm afraid,' he said softly. 'Happens to the best of us.'

I groaned. He had always had the propensity to make the worst puns.

'So how are you feeling?' he inquired, slipping back into his doctor persona. I didn't mind - I liked the doctor persona just as much.

'Well... I feel a little dizzy and nauseous, and I'm feeling some palpitations,' I replied, trying to be as exact with my description as I could. I knew how important it was to record everything meticulously, if we were going anywhere with all of this - and it looked very much like we were.