'I am. So are you,' said Liberty quietly. She sat on a chair by his bedside. For all the talk of short visits, Liberty had endeavoured to spend as much time with Alexander as she possibly could. She'd never been one for following rules that weren't good and logical. If her presence had upset or agitated him, she'd have left at once. But it hadn't. He'd been calmer, and that meant she wasn't going anywhere. She'd give way to the doctors, and to Rawdon Crawley when he arrived, but otherwise she stayed, when she could.
She worried for Alexander, and what Liberty did with feelings she didn't like was to push them away and occupy herself. On Rica, that meant repairing machinery, building things, getting her hands dirty. But the station didn't need that, and she didn't want to leave Alexander, so what did she do? She worked on the beginnings of her Station Charter. She tried to write with Alexander's quill, a note for one of his bewilderingly old-Earth friends, and had to retreat from the medbay with ink all over her hands.
It was strange that he'd come to matter to her so quickly, but he had a brilliant mind, and he talked to her seriously, and he cared about things the way Ricans did. Liberty thought she had been glad to escape that intensity at first, but it hadn't been long before she missed it. She'd leapt at the chance to help with the meetings, and now there they were every day in that little office. Or they had been, until this. The medical equipment unnerved Liberty too, because it wasn't Rican, but she liked and trusted Dr Cuddy, whom she had been seeing about her baby, and she was perfectly capable of advocating for herself. Or for Alexander, it seemed.
Suddenly self-conscious in a way she hadn't been before, she removed her hand, still adorned with those old inkstains, from where it lay atop one of his. The contact had seemed to calm him, but now he was awake and lucid it felt too much. He was a friend, and a friend she hadn't known very long.
'You were with Jefferson again, I think' she told him lightly. Liberty assumed that his murmurings were all fever dreams, people from his old life.