6 Undressing an Ashryan Man

Mira rummaged through her parents' storage room, looking for the IV equipment. There were boxes and boxes of things, and some that were stacked all the way to the ceiling. Everything she dug through had some vague medicinal purpose, but none of them were what she needed.

Ah! There it was!

Hidden behind several boxes of PPE was the IV equipment. It had been carefully covered and looked none-the-worse for wear.

She smiled as she pulled the equipment out. She remembered these, from the days when her parents still had a practicing clinic, before their sudden death.

Mira pursed her lips. These guys were aliens. What would be considered normal alien internal temperature? Could she even use saline solutions for their bodies? She needed more information.

Mira ran back into the living room with a digital thermometer, and gently pushed it into the prince's mouth.

"What are you feeding him?" Zander asked with some alarm. He and Daran were still seated in the living room area, waiting for Mira to return.

"This is not food. This is a temperature stick. I am not familiar with Ashryan physiology and I need to know what his body temperature is."

Zander's silver-blue eyes met Daran's hazel-green eyes, but they remained silent. As long as the prince was not harmed, they were willing to allow her to do whatever it took to keep him from dying.

At the sound of the thermometer's beep, however, their resolve cracked. Both jumped into action, ready to pry that evil looking beeping thing out of Prince Erick's mouth.

Mira held up a hand to calm them as she retrieved it from Erick Rashak's mouth. She scanned the readout and heaved a big sigh of relief. His core temperature, though on the high side due to his poisoning, was very similar to that of normal humans.

Mira now needed to do something a bit more difficult. She needed to know if they could tolerate saline solutions and any drugs she may need to give the prince.

She needed data, which meant she needed to draw some blood for analysis. Furthermore, she needed a sample of healthy blood so she could compare it with Erick's blood. What was the worst that could happen? Zander could just say no.

He could also strike her dead, like some nasty little bug.

Mira could feel the intensity of Zander's gaze burn a hole through her body, but she plucked up her courage and faced him, smiling with bright false bravado

"Zander---uhmmm---will you allow me to take a little bit of your blood?"

"For what?" He narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

"I need to check your body chemistry."

Zander gave her a hard stare. "You are an alchemist?"

Mira blinked. What in hell was an alchemist? What was he talking about?

She laughed shakily. "No, no. I mean...that is--we are from different worlds, and I want to make sure any medicines I give to Erick Rashak won't harm him."

Zander's silver-blue eyes regarded her for a moment, as if he was weighing her words. Suddenly, he nodded. "What do I have to do?"

"Just hold out your hand. I'll take care of everything." Mira said with as much conviction as she could.

She took a deep breath and approached him, as Zander stretched out his arm. The white cloth of his robe still covered him, so she gently pulled back his sleeve, revealing a strong, muscular forearm devoid of any scars or injuries. Mira could not help admiring the beauty of his body. The man was physically perfect.

Arghh! Stop drooling over the man and focus, Mira. He's not a piece of meat.

Mira was so focused on trying to think of him as just a gender-less being that she almost missed the words he was saying to her.

"Ahem..." Zander cleared his throat. "In my world--only in marriage is a woman allowed to undress a man." He said gruffly.

Mira looked up with surprise. He avoided her gaze, looking away at something to his left, his cheeks flushed with what looked like shyness.

She laughed inwardly. Holy mackerel! What kind of a world does this man live in, where simple touches between a man and a woman were so loaded with meaning that members of the opposite sex had to avoid touching each other to such an extreme?

Keeping her face as serious as she could, Mira responded in a soft gentle manner, so as to not scare the man. "This is hardly undressing, Zander. I'm just pulling up your sleeve."

He ignored her, his face looking redder by the minute.

"Didn't you say, 'under the healer's hands, there is no male or female, there is only the patient'?" She gently queried.

"Yes," he nodded, not looking at her. "Please carry on."

Within minutes, Mira had obtained a precious vial of his blood. She then ran back into the kitchen and connected the test equipment directly to Nellie, the house computer.

In short order, the entire composition of Zander's bodily fluids had been saved into Nellie's data banks.

It was surprising to her, but although their coloring was a bit different, they were just as human as she was. At the very least, they were able to eat and drink the same things that humans could tolerate, and their bodily needs were similar. Erick Rashak would be able to tolerate the saline solution.

It did not take long before she had set up the necessary equipment to begin the saline transfusion. The men watched with curiosity as she cleaned the back of Erick Rashak's hand with some rubbing alcohol, and then jabbed the needle in. She secured the site with some tape and then sat back to monitor the unconscious man.

"What is this supposed to do?" Zander asked, surveying the set up with curious eyes.

"He's dehydrated. Since he can't really handle water through his mouth, I'm giving him a little bit of a saline solution directly into his body to give him the water he needs." As Mira talked, she prepared another needle, scoring another vial of blood, this time, directly from Erick's arm.

While the house computer worked on the computations of Erick's blood, she gathered the men over to the dinning area so they could finally eat.

The food had grown a bit cold by this time, and although Mira offered to reheat the food, the men insisted that it was perfectly fine, and that this was much better than what they'd been eating for awhile. She could only guess how badly malnourished they must have been within the last few days.

While they ate, Mira noticed that Zander ate some of the soup and the vegetables, but avoided the chicken. Quill, on the other hand, only ate meat. Meanwhile, Daran feasted on the chicken with gusto, along with vegetables and everything else she served. She even had some left-over apple pie from the day before, which she served to them.

It looked like sweets were also big hit for these men, with the exception of Quill, who looked happy when she produced a stick of beef jerky the size of his body.

"Erick is missing out! You are a very good cook," Dara announced, as he gulped down the last of his apple pie.

"Thank you, Daran. And no worries, gentlemen. I have plenty of food for him when he awakens."

Zander said nothing, but Mira could feel the intensity of his gaze, any time he thought she was not looking at him. It was almost overwhelming, the intensity this man exuded, that she found herself rushing through breakfast so she could put a bit of distance between the two of them.

After breakfast, the men went outside and sat in the sun to 'recharge', while tiny batman fluttered around the garden, peeking into the gardenias and the alstroemeria. Mira was happy that they were at least enjoying the sunshine.

She returned to the kitchen to check on the blood tests, and as she read the data that was coming from Nellie's monitor screen, Mira suddenly smiled.

She knew how to cure this prince of his blood poisoning.