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He’d meant what he’d told Lillian—a patient was never a problem. They were the whole reason he did this, so he pushed his glasses up his nose and into place as he pushed himself up from his desk. He affixed a kind smile to his face just as the door swung open.
And then his heart surged back up into his chest, and his treacherous face pulled up into a smile that was too genuine by half. “Garrett!”
“Maxwell!” Garrett grinned, his stubbled cheeks dimpling and making Maxwell’s heart flutter ridiculously. A small qeshian child had his arms wrapped around Garrett’s neck, and it did all sorts of hated things to Maxwell’s insides to see Garrett’s muscular arms wrapped casually around him as though Garrett had been made for caretaking and kindness. “I knew you’d be in here.”
“I’m never anywhere else.” Maxwell found himself skirting the desk and approaching the big man before he’d actually decided to. “And who’s this?”
“Maxwell, this is Rhast.” Garrett bounced the kid out farther onto his hip so he could hold him with one arm and gestured at him with the other. “I met him down on Tava, and he helped me escape from some pirates as we were leaving.”
“Pirates?” Maxwell widened his eyes. “Well, that’s very exciting!”
Rhast didn’t look so certain. His skin shifted from grass green to a limey yellow, and he tightened his grip around Garrett’s neck.
“Rhast, this is Maxwell.” Garrett gently loosened Rhast’s stranglehold with his free hand and smiled impishly at Maxwell. “He’s one of my favorite people on the planet and probably in the galaxy.”
Maxwell rolled his eyes. In the past year or so, Garrett had developed a habit of saying things like that to him, and he refused to let the younger man see exactly how much it affected him. Still, Garrett persisted and always accompanied the comments with that playful smile, so Maxwell was never sure whether Garrett knew what it did to him or if he just enjoyed trying to get a rise out of him.
“But more importantly,” Garrett continued in the face of Maxwell’s eye roll and Rhast’s dubious frown, “he’s going to help you with that cough.”
“Ah, so that’s what this is about.” Maxwell settled comfortably into his physician’s role and motioned for Garrett to follow him to the last sanitized examination table in the large room. “Can you tell me how long you’ve been coughing, Rhast?”
“Um, since three days after the big ship crashed?” Rhast let Garrett deposit him on the examination table and looked up at Maxwell with the yellow on his skin just starting to swirl away. If by “big ship,” Rhast meant the Barzen, then he’d been struggling with the cough for over two weeks now.
“That’s quite a while.” Maxwell reached down to his chest for his stethoscope, and his hand hit his shirt instead. Right, because he’d taken it off to eat his dinner, so he’d have left it on his—Garrett held out the stethoscope to him just as he lifted his head with a frown. Garrett grinned, and Maxwell hid his thumping heart with another eye roll. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t so bad before.” Rhast obligingly turned his torso so Maxwell could press the stethoscope to his back. “But now, sometimes it’s hard to breathe.”
“That must be scary.” Maxwell tried to focus on his little patient, but his eyes kept finding Garrett, who now puttered about the room, restocking bandages and stripping off the dirty paper from tables and replacing it with clean. He’d visited often enough that he knew what always needed doing and how Maxwell liked it done, and he did with a perfectly content look on his handsome face.
Rhast drew Maxwell’s attention again with a swallow that Maxwell heard through the stethoscope. “I don’t like it.”
“No, I’m sure not.” Maxwell focused back on his work. “Take a deep breath for me, please.” Pure static crackled up through the stethoscope, and Maxwell winced. Thank god Garrett had brought the boy when he did. He moved the stethoscope to the other side of Rhast’s back. “Again.”
Rhast only got through half the breath before a violent coughing fit racked his little body, but it was enough for Maxwell to hear all he needed to. He dropped his stethoscope to his chest and reached out to rub Rhast’s back. He only just managed to yank his hand back before it made contact with Garrett’s, who had beaten him to it and was somehow already rubbing comforting circles across Rhast’s shoulders.
Garrett turned his honey-colored eyes up to Maxwell. “Is it the same thing that’s going around the camp?”
“I believe so. Some flu that must have begun spreading before the war started.” Maxwell returned to the drawer of antivirals and fought a wave of guilt to see its supply lower than it should be. He needed to finish that stupid form. He pulled out a fresh bottle and turned back to Rhast and Garrett. “But the good news is that it’s easily treatable.”
Rhast glanced up at Garrett, and Garrett gave him that easy grin and squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll be breathing like normal in no time.”
“You’ll just have to swallow a couple pills every day for the next week or so.” Maxwell filled a clean glass with water and handed it to Rhast. When the boy didn’t grab it, he set it next to him instead.
“I’ve never swallowed pills before.” With yellow tinting his cheeks, Rhast eyed the two tablets that Maxwell tipped into his palm and held out to him. “I thought only adults did that.”
Maxwell raised an eyebrow. “Well, you’ve fought off pirates now, so you’re more than a match for a few pills.”
Rhast scrunched his nose. “We didn’t fight them. We ran from them.”
“So you showed wisdom and good judgment too.” Maxwell smiled and then glanced at Garrett for help.
“Alright, Rhast, down they go.” Garrett pressed the glass of water into Rhast’s hand and took the pills from Maxwell, the calloused pads of his fingers brushing against Maxwell’s palm. “Put the pill on your tongue”—Garrett stuck his tongue out and mimed sticking a pill in the center of it—“then take a big drink of water, and you won’t even notice.”
Rhast pursed his lips and then took the pills from Garrett with a determined look. “Okay. I can do it.”
“That a boy.” Garrett crossed his arms with a proud grin, and Maxwell hid his smile as Rhast gamely followed Garrett’s instructions.
“I’ll send word to the temple,” Maxwell told Garrett quietly as he passed him to pick up his data tablet. Maxwell wasn’t much for religion, but the old qesh that ran the temple was a good man, and he would make sure the boy had a warm bed, good food, and someone to watch over him.
