Although Allied forces were victorious at what later became known as the
First Battle of Chin’toka, they paid a heavy price: more than thirty starships
were lost and casualties swelled into the thousands. While admirals and
captains of ships that had survived the melee began to hammer out details of
the next offensive, several Olympic-class Federation hospital ships flew in to
tend the wounded…
Olympic-class starship by The Red Admiral. David Boreanaz by An-gel Sakura. Sophia Myles, text, and full cover by Christina Moore. |
_____
Pain.
Fire—he was on fire. Or at least it sure as
hell felt like he was, as he felt nothing but searing agony from the top of his
head all the way down to his—
Wait, where were his legs? What had happened to his legs?!
He screamed as long and loud as his voice
would carry. And when his air ran out, he took as deep a breath as his aching
ribs would let him and screamed again. As his second wail died down, he made
himself look to where his legs should be. Though the air around him was quickly
being choked off with thick, acrid smoke from a number of fires in the room,
although he now noticed that blood had run down his face and was falling into
both eyes, he looked down and saw that he was pinned: one of the free-standing
consoles had somehow been uprooted from the floor and had knocked him over, landing
right across his pelvis.
He was no doctor, but he knew right away he
had a spinal injury.
Shit.
“HELP ME!” he screamed. “SOMEBODY HELP ME!”
Even while he screamed, he tested his arms—they
worked, thank God—and tried to lift the console. Finding he could get no
purchase, he braced his hands against the flat surface facing him and pushed
with all the strength he could muster. It wasn’t much, and he quickly gave up
when the pain went from searing to excruciating. He was a big guy for a squint—what
his captain liked to call the science officers—and he could certainly take his
licks. But when the pain level ratcheted up from merely agonizing to feeling
like someone had taken a branding iron out of an inferno and thrust it into his
back, the pain radiating up and down his torso and arms, he knew when to give
up and wait for rescue.
God, he hoped they came soon. Someone,
anyone… there had to be someone. If
they didn’t hear him screaming, certainly they’d come by to check, to make sure
the room was clear. There’d be an SAR-Ops unit along anytime now.
He tried comforting himself with the fact
that the upper half of his body still seemed in working order. Reaching up with
his hands, he wiped the blood from his eyes, smearing it and soot and who knew
what else me might have collected across his face. He took full stock and
flexed each finger, blinked each eyelid, worked his jaw. The top half of him
definitely still worked, so he only had the bottom half to worry about.
And no, he wasn’t thinking about that. While certainly no man wanted to
lose any kind of functionality with that part of his anatomy, all he could
think of right then, the mantra that kept running through his head, was a
prayer that he hadn’t lost the use of his legs. He fervently hoped that some
kind of miracle surgery would fix him up and he’d be able to walk again. His
career would be all but over if he couldn’t stand up on his own two feet.
He coughed for what felt like the dozenth
time, and even through the din of the blaring Red Alert klaxon, the squishy,
wet pop he heard all too clearly did not sound like a good thing. His suspicion
was confirmed a moment later when blood rushed up and into his mouth. He spit
it out and coughed again, trying to clear the thick, tangy fluid from his
throat. Checking along both sides with his hands—carefully, of course—he soon
realized that his injuries were far more extensive than a simple pinched nerve.
He had broken ribs on both sides and one of his lungs (the left, he determined)
had been punctured.
Great. Now he couldn’t even scream.
No matter how big and strong he was, he knew
with sudden, absolute clarity that this was a fight he wasn’t going to win. And
really, that seemed so unfair.
<>
She was trained for this—they’d covered many
such scenarios on the holodeck at Starfleet Academy—but no simulation could
have ever prepared her for the stark reality. The immediate aftermath of a long
and bloody battle was the last place any of them wanted to be, yet here they
were walking the corridors of a ship destined to be space junk after today,
looking for survivors.
If there were any.
Three teams had been sent over from the Apgar to the burned-out hulk of what
remained of an Excelsior-class starship, and so few reports had come across the
open comm channel of survivors being found. The saucer section was all but gone
and so were both nacelles, but there had been pockets of atmosphere detected on
several decks of the remnant, and so here she was. Her team leader called out
that they had one more deck to sweep and then they were beaming out, because
the warp core was dangerously unstable and they weren’t risking anymore lives.
Her acknowledgment was barely audible even to
her own ears. Words, she had found, were pointless. No one spoke, they just
checked each body they came across for signs of life, and upon finding none
silently moved on to the next one. Devastation was everywhere, and had there
been anyone left alive the place would have been in total chaos. Truth was, she
would have welcomed the insanity over the eerie silence—the still-sounding
alert klaxon notwithstanding. People running back and forth, not knowing where
they were going but knowing they had to be somewhere
would have been far preferable to finding one dead officer after another.
It was depressing, and a void began to open
up in her chest.
The used another Jeffries tube junction to
climb down to the next deck, where her brain suddenly told her several of the
ship’s science labs would be located. A teammate reached out a hand to help her
out of the hatch when she’d come down, and she saw reflected in his eyes the
same emptiness she knew must have been filling hers. He was a friend, and had
there been time for it, she would have reached out and hugged him just to feel
his chest rise and fall against her own, a sure sign that someone other than
herself was alive on this ghost ship.
With a silent nod, she pulled out her
tricorder once more and began a sweep. She was so used to finding nothing that
when the scanner blipped differently, she almost ignored it. But training
kicked in even as she was turning the other direction, and she turned back, her
tricorder trilling loudly.
Her antennae twitched and writhed with
excitement. “We’ve got a live one!” she called out, instinctively jogging down
the corridor. “One lifesign, a Human-Klingon male, and he’s fading—let’s go
people!”
The other doctor and two nurses in her search
group followed her immediately, no one questioning her even though she wasn’t
the one in charge. They just ran with her toward the first sign of hope they’d
had in hours.
She might not have noticed the sign on the
door that said “Sensor Analysis Lab” had she not stopped short of smashing her
nose into it. In her excitement she’d forgotten that most of the ship’s power
systems were down and that the doors had to be opened manually.
“Let’s get this door open, fellas,” the team
leader said as he joined her, and he and the nurses set to work opening the
wall panel leading to magnetic hand grips that would enable them to open the
door. Silently she urged them to hurry, her tricorder telling her that the man
behind the door had suffered extensive injuries and that he didn’t have much
time left.
Please
don’t let us be too late, she prayed silently.
Her fellow doctor and one of the nurses had
gotten the door open a few inches, and the second nurse thrust his hands into
the opening, wrapping them around one half of the double doors and groaning as
he pushed with all his might. She moved forward and joined him, grabbing the
other door and pushing as hard as she could. The door gave, but slowly, and she
heaved again. The other doctor and nurse joined them in trying to pry the doors
open and with the four of them working on it, they soon had them parted wide
enough for a person to slip through sideways.
She was the first one through, following her
tricorder over to a pair of legs sticking out from under a free-standing
console that wasn’t standing any longer. Moving around it she knelt quickly
down to scan her patient, noting that for a man who registered as half-Klingon,
he sure didn't look it—there were no crainial ridges or dark skin pigmentation
present. Truthfully, he looked fully Human.
Putting that aside, she called out her scan
results. “Pelvic fracture, compression of the spinal cord, bilateral rib
fractures and a punctured lung,” she said, opening up her medical kit. “We have
to get him out of here or he’s going to drown in his own blood.”
Her colleague nodded and directed the two
nurses to help him lift the console off of the man—the patient was hers. She
paid little attention to the three, concentrating on injecting the man, a full
commander, with a combined pain killer and fever reducer. She then checked the
gash on his forehead and noted that the bleeding had stopped there, but his
left lung, according to her scanner, was full of blood.
Suddenly the man screamed, gurgling and
coughing on the blood in his lung, and she turned briefly to see that the
console had been lifted. She gasped as a hand suddenly and tightly grabbed her
arm, and looking down she found him looking up at her, tears streaming out of
the corners of his eyes even as blood trickled down the side of his mouth.
“Th… th…” he started to say, but she leaned
close, gently touching a finger to his lips.
“Please don’t try to talk, Commander,” she
said, putting her instruments into her kit. “We’re from the hospital ship Virginia Apgar, and we’re going to help
you.”
She could see he relaxed upon hearing her
voice, and she offered a tentative smile as she slapped her commbadge. “Nir’ahn
to Apgar, two to beam directly to
Trauma 1.”
“Acknowledged,
Doctor.”
She grabbed her medical kit in one hand and
held her patient’s hand in the other, waiting just a few seconds before the
familiar tingle of the transport began, though in the last second before she
lost consciousness through dematerialization, she could have sworn she heard
the man speak.
It sounded like he’d said, “Blue angel.”
<>
U.S.S. Virginia Apgar, en route to Starbase 133
Medical
Officer’s Log, Calista Nir’ahn recording. Supplemental…
I’ve
just finished five hours of surgery on patient Murphy, Commander Dominic,
formerly Senior Science Officer of the U.S.S. Sherwood. Patient suffered numerous internal and
superficial external injuries—see attached medical file—but is currently
resting comfortably in ICU. I estimate six to eight weeks recovery time, during
which the patient will undergo physical and psychological therapy.
Calista Nir’ahn sat back with a sigh as she
ended her log recording. The search of the Sherwood
had been trying, and the five hours she’d spent in surgery saving the life of
the man she had found had plain wore her out. But she’d done it—she’d repaired
all his broken bones, drained and re-inflated his lung, repaired the hole one
of his broken ribs had punched in it, relieved the compression on his spinal
cord (when he woke, he’d certainly be pleased to know he hadn’t lost the
ability to walk), and healed all his cuts and bruises. The commander would be
weak for a while, and his pain would be managed with medication.
A light on her desktop monitor began to
blink, and she switched it on again. The medical files their CMO had requested
on the few survivors they’d located had been transmitted from HQ, so she
searched through the list for that of her patient. She needed to see it to
confirm what her scans had told her about him.
Opening the file, she found that he was
indeed a Human-Klingon hybrid, born on stardate 12371.8 to Alexandra Murphy, a
Human female, and H’Gaar, a Klingon male. Looking at the grainy picture on file
for the commander’s father, she was reminded yet again of how very un-Klingon
her patient looked, for H’Gaar had all the physical characteristics normally
associated with Klingons—pronounced, bony exocrainial ridges being the most
prominent among them. Commander Murphy had his father’s strong, square jaw and
heavy brow, and she suspected they would have the same eyes, but that was as
far as the resemblance went. It was a little odd to her, as she knew that
Klingon characteristics such as the forehead ridges were dominant in all
cross-species children for several generations.
Just under his personal information, however,
she finally saw the notation as to precisely why Murphy looked nothing like a Klingon: He was a carrier of the
Augment Virus. Of course, considering his father was obviously a carrier and
still looked the way… well, the way Klingons were supposed to, the Andorian
knew that just being a carrier didn’t mean that a Klingon would be affected by
it. In the two hundred years since it had been introduced to the Klingon genome—something
they generally refused to discuss with outsiders—the virus had evolved from a
dominant trait to a recessive one, and in the last three generations evidence
of its continued existence was almost never seen.
Dominic Murphy, apparently, was one of those
rare cases where the Augment genes had decided to be dominant.
Calista could not help being curious as to
why his parents had elected not to have cosmetic surgery performed on him, or
why he himself had not done it. On the one hand, she supposed she could
understand why it hadn’t been done when he was a child, because multiple
surgeries would be required as he grew, so it would be best to simply wait
until he’d reached physical maturity. But why hadn’t the commander had the
surgery on his own? She could certainly be wrong, she mused, but she knew that
Klingons were very proud, and she just figured a Klingon would want to look
like a Klingon.
Reading through the rest of his medical file,
she made note of any injuries he had suffered and treatments he had undergone,
making sure there was nothing she would have to watch out for. Other than the
Augment Virus, there was nothing to be concerned about, and even that wasn’t a
real concern considering he wasn’t a candidate for blood, organ, or tissue
donation. Because there were no other Klingons aboard the Apgar, Dr. Tir’Shaan had requested several pints of blood be
donated from one of the Klingon ships that had fought at Chin’toka before they
had left the system, so they had plenty of in case he needed another
transfusion.
With another heavy sigh, she switched off the
monitor once more and stood, stretching to work out the kinks in her back, then
walked out of the office she shared with three other doctors (only the CMO had
a private office) and headed for the ICU to check on her patient.
In the sterilization booth she waited for the
scanner to declare her clean enough to enter the ward, and as had become a
habit ever since she’d first set foot on this ship, she reached into the pocket
of her lab coat for the tricorder she always carried. One of the nurses making
rounds smiled wearily as she walked through. “Hello, Dr. Nir’ahn,” the woman
said, her voice also weary.
Calista returned her greeting with her own
tired smile. “How are the patients doing, Ensign?”
The medical assistant, seated at a monitoring
station, looked out across the room. “Everyone’s asleep, I believe. No problems
since you left a little while ago.”
The Andorian nodded. “Good to hear,” she
said, “but you know us doctors can’t help taking a look.”
A grin was the reply she got, along with a
chuckle, and so after offering a nod, she continued into the ward. Intensive
Care Unit 1 was full, and she was not the only doctor who had come in to check
on patients. She and her colleagues merely nodded at one another, and at last, at
the far end of the room, she stepped up to Dominic Murphy’s bedside.
The monitor over his head said his vitals
were stable. His skin was still rather pale from blood loss, but his color was
slowly coming back—he already looked better than the last time she had seen him
about thirty minutes ago. His intravenous drip of pain medication and sedative
were flowing steadily, as was the saline solution keeping him hydrated. Opening
up her tricorder, she pulled the scanning wand out of the top and ran it over him
from head to foot, absently noting once again that he had a few redundant
organs (typical even of Klingon hybrids), including a third lung—a third lung
that wouldn’t have done him a bit of good with one of the primary lungs full of
blood, as he’d have eventually aspirated the blood from that lung into the other
primary and the redundant one had he not been found and received treatment as
soon as he had.
She tried not to shudder when she recalled
that they’d almost been too late.
“Calista.”
The young doctor jumped and gasped at the
sound of her name, turning with an embarrassed smile to find the Apgar’s first officer, Commander Alora
Danon, standing behind her. The Deltan was, as usual, smiling serenely, even
though she herself was a physician who had also performed a long operation.
Clearing her throat as she returned the
scanner to the top of the tricorder and closed it, Calista nodded. “Commander.”
“Why don’t to go back to your quarters and
get some sleep?” Danon suggested. “You’ve had a very long and trying day, and
you’re exhausted.”
Smiling wryly, she raised one of her gray and
silver eyebrows. “I could say the same for you, ma’am.”
“I was actually about to do just that, but I
wanted to make sure all the search and rescue teams were off duty first. Your
patient is resting comfortably, Doctor, and I’m certain a nurse will alert you
if there is any change. Your life-saving services are, at this time, no longer
required.”
She reached out to pat Calista on the arm.
“Go home. Get some sleep. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”
With a shake of her head and a small sigh,
Calista dropped her tricorder into her pocket. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and the
two women walked together out of the ICU.
<>
The next morning, Calista awoke feeling
refreshed, but in a way still tired. The war was still going on, and from what
few tactical reports hospital ships like the Apgar got, Starfleet Command expected it to continue well into next
year. After a quick breakfast she donned her uniform and lab coat, thrust her
trusty tricorder into the pocket, and headed for the ICU, where she was
scheduled to work this morning.
The sterilization booth had just about
finished its scan when she heard a muted commotion from inside the ward. Urging
the scanner to hurry (not that it would), she all but ran out of the booth and
into ICU 1, where a doctor and three nurses were attempting to restrain an
excited patient.
Her patient—Dominic Murphy.
“Let me go!” she heard him screaming as she
ran down the middle aisle.
“What happened?” she asked as she reached
them, edging between two of nurses.
“He just woke up!” said the Gamma-shift
physician of the watch, who looked down with shock then, as Murphy had suddenly
stilled. Calista looked from the doctor across from her to the man on the
biobed, whose deep, dark brown eyes were transfixed on her face.
“My blue angel,” he said softly, a faint
smile forming on his lips.
“Commander Murphy,” she said sternly,
ignoring the feeling of eyes on her she was getting from the medical staff near
her. “Are you going to remain calm? Or do we need to activate restraints to
keep you in this bed? I’m glad to see you’re awake, but I will sedate you if
necessary.”
“’Blue angel’?” Dr. Goran asked.
Calista’s antennae twitched as she shot him a
sharp look. “The man was delirious when we found him,” she said before turning
her attention back to the patient.
“Well?”
He nodded and relaxed visibly. After a moment
of studying his face, she turned and nodded to the three men and the woman
who’d been holding him down. The three nurses walked slowly away and Goran made
to follow, but she reached out and snagged his sleeve. “What happened?”
“I told you, he just woke up,” Goran replied.
“He woke up and just started wigging out. I tried to shoot him up with a
sedative but he knocked the hypospray out of my hand, and it was really all we
could do to keep him in the bed. Good thing you arrived when you did.”
She regarded Goran for a moment in silence,
then nodded. “Anything else happen with Commander Murphy that I should know
about? Any of the other patients I should keep a particular eye on?”
Goran scratched his head as he stifled a
yawn. “With this one, no. But we’ve a couple joined Trills you need to keep up
on, ‘cause if their isoboromine levels drop below forty percent—”
Calista stopped him by raising her hand. “I
know, we’ll have to remove the symbionts. And naturally there are no other
Trills onboard who can take a symbiont if we end up having to do that—Lt.
Bilarin is already joined.”
Her colleague nodded. “Exactamundo,” he said,
then glanced briefly at the man on the biobed before flashing his eyes back to
the Andorian doctor. “Well, now that our friend here is calm and you’re here to
take over, I’m off to get some much-needed sleep.”
“Thank you, Dr. Goran. Sleep well,” Calista
replied, watching him walk away for a moment before she turned to her patient.
Pulling the tricorder out of her pocket, she
took out the scanning wand and opened it up. She could feel Murphy’s eyes
following her as she performed the routine scan. “Tell me something,” she said
as she moved down toward his legs. “Why did you flip out on Dr. Goran?”
“I was disoriented when I woke up. Where am
I?”
She stopped and glanced up. “Do you remember
what happened to you yesterday, Commander?”
Murphy closed his eyes, and a frown marred
his forehead. “I remember,” he said quietly. “I remember all too well.
Everything up until this great big flash-and-bang in the sensor lab, then I
remember waking up feeling the most God-awful pain and praying to the same God
that the lack of feeling below my waist didn’t mean I was never gonna walk
again.”
His eyes opened and he looked down at her. “I
must’ve blacked out again, because the next thing I remember is you.”
Calista finished the scan, then moved to
stand at his shoulder. She pressed a few keys on the tricorder so it would link
up with the monitor over his head, downloading the data she had just collected,
as she said, “I’m Dr. Calista Nir’ahn, Commander. You’re on the hospital ship Virginia Apgar. Right now we’re on our
way to Starbase One-Three-Three and it will take us three weeks to get there.
That’s where we’ll offload you and everyone else we picked up.”
“How many?” he asked.
She closed her eyes briefly. “Not enough,”
she replied.
A moment of silence fell between them, then
he asked, “Anyone else from my ship? The U.S.S. Sherwood?”
Calista looked down. “I honestly don’t know,
as I was rather busy with you. But I’ll find out for you.”
“I’d appreciate it—Captain Sykes was a good
man,” the hybrid said. “We had a lot of good men and woman on that ship. I had
friends on that ship, good friends.”
“I’m very sorry, Commander.”
His eyes had closed again, and he was
frowning once more. Having completed her scan and entered the data into his
record, she turned to go, to allow him to grieve in peace and to tend the other
patients—especially to have a look at the two Trill.
“How bad was I?”
She turned back slowly. “Six broken ribs, a
punctured lung, broken pelvis, spinal cord compression, and numerous
lacerations and abrasions,” she said, giving it to him straight as she didn’t
believe in sugar-coating when it came to adult patients. “It took me five hours
to repair it all.”
“Am I gonna walk again?” Murphy asked.
“Yes,” she said with a hint of smile.
He returned her smile briefly. “You must be a
brilliant surgeon, Blue Angel,” he told her, closing his eyes again.
<>
Dominic knew he’d fallen asleep by the groggy
feeling he got when he opened his eyes, though he could have sworn he’d only
closed them for a second.
That’s
usually a pretty sure sign, buddy, he thought to himself derisively.
Lifting his head slightly, he looked around.
Given the injuries the doctor had described to him, he was probably in an
intensive care unit—there were about twenty beds in the room, with three people
wearing medical blue visiting with patients and a fourth at the end of the
room, to his right, sitting at a desk doing data entry.
He didn’t see his doctor, the Andorian female
with the most beautiful blue eyes—
Don’t
go there,
he told himself. It’s never gonna happen.
Forcing himself to push thoughts of pretty
blue eyes as far into the back of his mind as he could, Dominic slid his arms
back and tried to raise up on his elbows. A nurse (a doctor?) came over when he
grunted, cursing silently at his weakness.
“Commander, you shouldn’t try to get up,”
said the strange-looking alien with large black eyes and a forked head (forked
was the only word he could think of to describe it). The voice of the medical
officer also had a quality to it that seemed both mechanical and musical at the
same time, however impossible as that was.
“I don’t like lying flat on my back,” Dominic
retorted as the hands on his shoulders tried to push him down gently. “Blue An—Dr.
Nir’ahn said she fixed my spinal injury. I’d like to sit up now that I’m awake
if you don’t mind.”
Keeping a hand on his shoulder, the alien
reached up and pressed a few buttons on the monitor over his head, then looked
down at him. “Your injuries are repaired, that is correct, Mr. Murphy,” his
companion said. “But your body still needs time to heal. You should rest.”
“Look,” Dom said with a light growl, “I won’t
get off the bed, you have my word. I’m not talking about going for a jog here,
but I cannot just lay here flat on my back—I hate doing that when I’m wide
awake. Can’t I at least sit up or something?”
The man (he assumed it was a man, but as he’d
never met a member of the species before, he had no idea) continued to look at
him, then gave a single nod and reached for the control that would raise the
head of the bed. “May as well, since I suspect you’ll just try to do it
anyway,” he said.
Dominic flashed a grin at his victory, though
he had the good grace to say, “Thank you, er…?” as his head and shoulders were
lifted about 45 degrees.
The small mouth of the alien lifted into a
smile. “Dr. Tir’Shaan, Commander. Chief Medical Officer of the Apgar.”
“I got the top doc in the house now?” he
chided. “What did I do to deserve that honor?”
Tir’Shaan’s expression, what Dom could read
of it, grew serious. “You and the eighteen other men and women in this ward
shed blood in defense of the Federation, Commander Murphy. That’s what you
did.”
Dominic looked into the large black eyes,
feeling his facial muscles turn to stone for a very long moment. Then he
blinked and looked around again as if the moment had never happened.
“So where is she? My blue an—I mean, Dr.
Nir’ahn? I haven’t slept the day away, have I?” he asked.
“If only you would,” Tir’Shaan said with a
chuckle. “It would do wonders for your recovery, but I suspect your Klingon
genetics are counteracting the sedative. I think we’ll have to increase the
dosage.”
“I think you’ll do nothing of the sort—I feel
fine,” Dominic growled.
Tir’Shaan laughed again. “You have no
authority here, Commander, so don’t try to pull rank on me,” he said lightly.
“Not that it would work, as per medical regulations I am the one in charge
here. If I say the sedative goes up, it goes up. Understood?
“Now, to answer your question,” he went on,
not even allowing Dominic to reply, “Dr. Nir’ahn is assisting with a surgery.”
You and
the eighteen other men and women… the CMO had said. Dominic glanced up. “One
of the Trill officers?”
Tir’Shaan nodded. “I’m afraid we have no
choice but to remove her symbiont. Her injuries were just too extensive and her
body couldn’t maintain the connection. Terrible tragedy. There’s no other Trill
onboard who could take the symbiont, so it’ll have to go into stasis for three
weeks—and the chances of it surviving that long without being joined are
questionable. We’ve notified the Trill Symbiosis Commission, and they’ve
arranged to have a host candidate waiting at One-Three-Three."
“There’s nowhere closer the Apgar can go to?”
“Unfortunately, no… I’d prefer to take the
both of them to Trill, but we’d cross too many battlezones. One-Three-Three is
the closest starbase in a direct line from Chin’toka,” Tir’Shaan said, then
reached into a pocket of his lab coat.
“Speaking of tragedies,” the doctor said
slowly, handing him a small PADD. “Dr. Nir’ahn told me to give you this if you
awoke before she returned.”
Dominic felt his chest tighten and his
stomach twist as he slowly extended a hand for the PADD. This was, he knew, the
information he had asked her to find out for him—it would tell him who, other
than himself—had survived the Sherwood.
He took the handheld device silently, and
with only a nod Tir’Shaan turned and walked away. The hybrid willed his hand
not to shake as he brought the PADD closer and thumbed it on. He knew that the
list would not be long. The Sherwood
had taken one hell of a beating, and based on the data he’d studied before an
exploding console had flung him across the sensor lab, he knew that the Allies’
victory at Chin’toka would cost them dearly. He had to deal with it—death was a
fact of war.
There were only seventy-five names on the
list of survivors…out of a crew of seven hundred ninety.
After reading and memorizing each one and
making a mental note to speak to each officer and crewman personally in the
next three weeks, Dominic gave in to the urge to throw the PADD and flung it
forcefully into the wall next to his bed. It shattered on impact.
Everyone who was awake turned their heads,
and more than one person gasped in surprise. Tir’Shaan and one of the nurses—another
man—turned and started toward him, but Dominic pinned them both with a hard
stare.
“I don’t need a sedative. Just… leave me
alone.”
Tir’Shaan studied him for a moment, then
wordlessly gestured for the medic to follow him, and they both turned around
and walked back in the opposite direction.
No doubt one or both of them were cursing his
Klingon half for giving him a temper, but Dominic didn’t care. Hell, he often
did that himself, one of the only acknowledgements he ever gave to being
half-Klingon. But he suspected that even had his father been Human, he would
have reacted the same way—who could just sit in silence after learning that
less than one tenth of his entire
crew had survived? Were he not sitting in an intensive care ward, he’d have
indulged in the other acknowledgement he gave to being part Klingon…
…the urge to scream.
As it was, he wished he hadn’t promised he
wouldn’t get out of bed, because right now he wanted to do more of what he’d
just done—break something. Or maybe punch someone (preferably several
someones). He needed to do something
with this sudden influx of adrenaline-fueled fury—sitting still was not his
forte, and since he couldn’t go back out and avenge the deaths of the 715 Sherwood crew who’d perished in glorious battle…
Blinking, Dominic gave himself a hard mental
shake as he shoved a lid on that train of thought. It was getting a little too
Klingon for his taste. And while he had no problem admitting the fact that he
was half-Klingon, he steadfastly refused to act like one.
<>
Dominic Murphy knew two things for certain
when the Naerecan walked into the ICU: One, he was a shrink. Tir’Shaan had likely
been the one to call him down here to deal with the “problem patient with a
temper.” Two, the nurses were afraid he’d throw something else the moment he
knew the guy was here to see him.
He chuckled as he shook his head, lacing his
fingers together behind it. People always assumed the worst whenever they saw
the smallest flash of his temper.
“Good afternoon, Commander,” said the man
calmly as he approached him. “I’m Daaid Ki, Virginia
Apgar’s—”
“Shrink,” Dominic finished for him. “And
given you’re wearing three full gold pins, probably senior shrink—man, they
must be really worried I’m going to hurt somebody. Do you do this for all the
patients you guys see on this ship, or just the ones who have Klingon blood?”
Ki chuckled lightly. “I am still so very
amused that idiom from Earth’s past has endured,” he said as he clasped his
hands behind his back. “And just what is it you think I’m doing?”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re doing it, I know
you are. I could smell the anxiety level rising the moment you walked in the
door,” Dominic countered.
Ki raised his puffy white eyebrows. “Really
now? Commander Murphy, anxiety is an emotion. You cannot smell it.”
Dominic
laughed. “A mhalairt ar fad, mo chara,”
he countered lightly. “Anxiety, like every other emotional response, triggers
the release of hormones, most commonly adrenaline. There are other endorphins
released, depending on the messages the brain sends to the body telling you
what emotion you are feeling at any given moment.
“Now, due to my unfortunate parentage, I have
a heightened sense of smell. Predators can smell the fear of prey, and every
member of the medical staff in this room except for Dr. Tir’Shaan as well as
some of the patients who are awake and coherent became suddenly very anxious
when you walked in. I could smell it. I think they’re afraid I’m gonna get
tweaked because someone—again, I suspect the alien doctor—called you down here
to have a word with me about my temper.”
Ki smiled benignly. “That’s a very
fascinating observation. Tell me, how is it you know so much about hormones?”
“You mean you didn’t read my psych profile
first? I guess you’re one of those who likes to get a feel for the patient
before you read all their horror stories,” said Dominic. “I know so much about
hormones because I’m a biochemist, one of my many talents. I am—or was—the head
squint on the Sherwood.”
The Naerecan raised his eyebrows again.
“Squint?”
“Captain Sykes likes to call us science geeks
squints. Or he did.” Dominic stopped and took a deep breath, pausing when he
suddenly recalled that panicked feeling that had overcome him when he realized
he’d punctured his lung. And then he was back in the Sherwood’s sensor analysis lab, surrounded by smoke and haze,
choking on fumes and blood.
In reality he started to hyperventilate,
choking on blood that wasn’t really there, and the monitors keeping track of
his vital signs began to sound alarms. Dr. Tir’Shaan and a nurse came running
immediately, a hypospray in the physician’s hand. He slipped past Ki and
pressed it against Dominic’s neck. Seconds after the medicine entered his
bloodstream, the hybrid began to settle, and he laid back against the bed with
his eyes falling closed.
“What happened?” Tir’Shaan asked as he
pressed the bed control to lower the backrest.
“He was very amiable at first,” Ki began.
“Said he knew I was a counselor—though that wasn’t the word he used—because he
could smell the rise of anxiety in the air. Made a remark about having a heightened
sense of smell because of unfortunate parentage—I assume he was referring to
his Klingon father. He called himself a squint, and I asked what it meant. He
started to talk about Captain Sykes and the Sherwood,
and then… this.”
The counselor sighed as he regarded the
now-sleeping patient. “This incident, coupled with what you told me about his
reaction earlier to the survivor list, are clear early indicators of Post
Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I think Commander Murphy has a very long, hard road
ahead of him.”
Tir’Shaan glanced around. “They all do,” he
said quietly.
<>
After stepping out of the sterilizer and into
the ICU, Calista found her eyes immediately going to the last bed on the left,
where Dominic Murphy appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
She smiled weakly at Dr. Tir’Shaan when the
Lyafri physician walked up to her. “How are you, my dear?” he asked kindly.
“Worn out. Again,” the Andorian replied. “I
hate losing patients. Hate it, hate it, hate it.”
Tir’Shaan nodded. “None of us like to lose
patients, Calista—it is the worst aspect of being a physician, and sadly, I’m
sure we’ll lose many more before this war is over.”
Calista nodded and sighed. “The symbiont
fared rather well, all things considered, and is comfortably tucked away in a
stasis chamber,” she said. “But you know how tenuous that is—we can’t leave
Helo in there for long, they can’t handle stasis the way bipeds like us can.
If we could have just put the symbiont and the host in there together…”
Her voice trailed off and she found her eyes
straying toward Murphy again. Chastising herself mentally for allowing herself
to be distracted, she blinked rapidly and returned her attention to Dr.
Tir’Shaan, who was saying,
“I’ve been thinking about something. I don’t
know if it will work, but it’s a possibility we may have to try.”
“What’s that?” she asked, curious in spite of
the fact that her attention kept wandering to the end of the room, where she’d
expected Murphy would have been awake again.
“Well, the symbionts’ natural habitat are the
brine pools in the caves of Mak’ala,” Tir’Shaan began. “Even after being
joined, if they’re returned to those pools, they’ll survive. I’ve been
considering the possibility of building a tank for both symbionts in case they
had to be removed.”
“But we don’t have a sample of the fluid on
board, sir,” Calista countered. “It sounds like a great idea, but what would we
do for the brine they swim in?”
“I’ve studied the chemical make-up of the
brine from a record in the database, and I’m going to attempt synthesizing it.
I understand that it might not work, and it’s certainly not the ideal
environment for them, but it will be better for the symbiont than stasis is.”
Calista nodded her agreement, and even
offered her boss a smile. “Well then, Doctor, sounds like you have yourself a
plan. Thank you for sharing it with me. I’m definitely intrigued, and I hope it
works.”
“As do I,” the Lyafri said. “And of course I
would share it with you, considering you are one of the people who have looked
after the two officers, and especially after you had to let one of them go
today.”
She sniffled and drew a ragged breath in,
then let it out slowly. “Thank you, sir, for covering for me so I could help
with the surgery. I know there are many other wards and patients on this ship
who could use you.”
Tir’Shaan nodded. “A few more of which I am
going to visit before the day is through,” he told her, stepping past her and
then turning back. “By the way, you should know that Commander Murphy, while
recovering remarkably well physically, is having more trouble than I think we
anticipated mentally.”
Calista felt her eyes widen as she looked at Apgar’s CMO, and her antennae began to
twitch on the back of her head. “What happened? Is he alright?”
“As you know, he fell asleep shortly after
you saw him this morning. He woke again not long after you went into the
operation on Genara Helo,” Tir’Shaan began. “I gave him the list of Sherwood survivors that you said he had
asked for, and after reading it he threw it against the wall and broke the
PADD.”
Her hand flew to her mouth as she gasped
lightly. “Oh my,” she breathed. “I didn’t think he’d take it well—less than ten
percent of the Sherwood’s crew
survived Chin’toka.”
Tir’Shaan nodded again. “Truthfully, his
reaction was understandable given the circumstances. But I still called
Counselor Ki to come down and speak with him. Ki didn’t get very far, I’m
afraid. He told me the commander was fine at first until he started talking
about the Sherwood, then suddenly he
had a panic attack. Counselor Ki believes it was an early sign of PTSD.”
Calista closed her eyes against the
constriction in her chest and felt her antennae droop with sadness. How
terrible for him to have had to endure the horror he’d suffered even once, but
to relive it? She wondered if the flashbacks would become a problem or if this
was a one-time occurrence.
Drawing a deep breath to steady herself, she
opened her eyes to find Tir’Shaan studying her. “You’re good with him,” the
other doctor began, “which is not to say you’re not good with everyone, of
course. But he responds to you. You have a calming influence on him.”
“Oh, well…” she stammered, feeling a flush
crawl up her neck. “I just happened to be the first face he saw in the midst of
a nightmare. I said we were going to help him, is all. Besides, it could be a
fluke. He might decide he can’t stand me.”
“My dear, he calls you his ‘blue angel’ from
what I’ve been told,” Tir’Shaan said kindly, and she knew her cheeks were
ablaze. “I daresay that means he likes you.”
Now the Andorian found herself sputtering,
trying to think of something to say and failing miserably. Her boss chuckled
lightly and smiled, and after a friendly pat on the arm, he turned and left ICU
1.
<>
When he awoke for the third time that day,
Dominic saw that the lights were down in the ward. Must mean its nighttime hours, he mused as he lifted his head and
looked around. There was a medic walking quietly through the beds checking
vitals on the other side of the room, and down toward the door he saw…
…her. His blue angel was back.
I
really should stop calling her that, he told himself as he stared, watching her
scratch one of the antennae on the back of her head as she regarded whatever
data she was reading on the screen in front of her. But he liked thinking of
her that way, as a creature that was beautiful not only on the outside but
inside as well, that was pure of heart and soul. Something about her eyes… the
honesty and integrity he saw in them, the look of determination she had first
cast on him in that place of hell…
Stop, he told himself
firmly as he felt his chest begin to tighten again. He had to stay calm, to not
think of the Sherwood or anyone that
had died at Chin’toka—at least not until he could get a grip on himself and not
have a panic attack like he’d had before. Gods it was embarrassing, even though
he knew he didn’t really have anything to be embarrassed about. After all, he’d
been through one hellacious battle in the middle of a war that had been raging
for over a year. Anybody would freak out a little when they thought about how
they’d nearly died, right?
Yeah,
that’s really stopping, pal, he thought, annoyed with himself as he felt the
constriction grip his lungs again. Dominic forced himself to breathe slowly in
and out through his nose, concentrating on nothing for the next minute or two
except stopping the rising panic attack. The one he’d had earlier with Dr. Ki
wasn’t the first—he’d lied to Calista about being disoriented when he woke up
the first time.
Well, sorta lied to her. He had been
disoriented, but not for the reason she’d likely assumed. It wasn’t just that
he was in an unfamiliar environment, it was because he hadn’t been on the Sherwood—he’d been dreaming about those
last minutes before he saw her face for the first time and had woken in the
midst of a panic attack. That made two he’d had, and he’d have another if he
didn’t settle his nerves.
As he lay there, his breathing slowly
returning to normal, he wondered whether or not this was going to be an ongoing
problem. If it was, it was one he couldn’t afford. He wanted to get back out
there, to get back in the fight and honor the memories of the 715 officers and
crew who hadn’t walked, been carried, or transported off the Sherwood. He wanted to stand up for
every man and woman who had thus far died in this war, and if the attacks
continued the counselors he was more than likely going to be required to see
would label him a head case and they wouldn’t let him back on active duty.
Being busted to inactive was not an option.
It was bad enough he’d be off for however long the doctors were recommending he
be off for his injuries—he’d make sure it was the minimum if he had anything to
say about it.
Looking around again, he saw the nurse had
approached Dr. Nir’ahn. She spoke in a low voice and when the Andorian had
nodded, turned and walked out through the exit. He watched Calista sigh, rub a
hand down her face (she did look tired), and then with a yawn she folded her
arms on the desktop and lay her head down on top of them.
What was she doing here this late, anyway? he
wondered. She’d been on duty first thing this morning, so what was she doing
working second—or third—shift as well? These doctors had to have enough to do
without having to work double shifts, unless they, too, were short-staffed. He
knew a lot of the ships in the fleet had been undermanned due to losses already
suffered, and after Chin’toka it was going to be much worse.
When she didn’t raise her head right away,
Dominic decided to be brave. Checking to make sure he was fully clothed
(thankfully he had the usual pajama-like medical scrubs given to patients on),
he carefully lifted the blanket covering him from the chest down and, pushing
himself into a half-sitting position by bracing his other arm on the bed (which
had been lowered again), he carefully tested his ability to move his lower half
on command by sliding his legs down over the side of the bed. His head buzzed a
bit from the change in position but he got used to it quickly, and sat for a
moment flexing his toes, his ankles, and kicking his legs lightly.
Smiling like a fool, he once again mused that
the blue angel really was a brilliant surgeon. He was going to walk again, and
now was as good a time as any to find out how well.
Bracing a hand on each side, he slowly
lowered himself to the floor, easing his weight onto his feet a little bit at a
time. He had to hold onto the bed for several minutes, as his legs did feel a
little weak, but he knew that as soon as he started walking again, he’d get his
strength back. And the sooner he got his strength back, the sooner he could get
back on duty.
With another glance toward Nir’ahn, he took
the first step toward the main aisle, then another. And then there was no more
biobed to hold onto, and he was on his own. He took small steps at first to get
a feel for his legs again, making sure they could hold his weight, and when he
didn’t fall over, he stood a little straighter, feeling more and more confident
the longer he stayed upright. He made his way slowly down the middle aisle
separating the ten beds on the left and ten beds on the right, heading toward
the woman whose antennae had begun to droop—boy she must be really tired.
Dominic was about three quarters of the way
down the aisle when the nurse returned, both of them frozen for a moment as
neither had been prepared to see the other.
“Commander Murphy, what are you—how did you—?”
the nurse sputtered.
Calista Nir’ahn raised her head at the
surprised yelp, blinked, and then widened her eyes at the sight of him standing
there.
“Hi, Blue Angel,” he said with a crooked
smile and a jaunty wave.
She stood and quickly came around the desk.
“Commander, how in the world did you get out of bed?! You shouldn’t be on your
feet, you just had major surgery!”
“I told you that you were a brilliant surgeon,” he
said, gesturing toward his legs. “See, I’m walking already.”
“Ensign Crawley, let’s help the commander
back to his bed,” she said to the nurse, and each of them took an arm and
helped him turn around.
“Aw, come on, ladies,” Dominic protested.
“I’m walking already—that’s a good thing!”
“Yes, Commander, that’s very nice,” the
doctor said, the tone of her voice telling him she was both angry and worried. What
was there to be mad or worried about? he wondered. The fact that he could walk
so soon after such a major operation meant that he could get back to work that
much sooner.
“Commander Murphy,” Calista said as they
guided him back to his bed, helped him get back up on it, and swung his legs
up. She grabbed the blanket from his hand and covered him herself as the nurse
walked away. “You’re not to get out of this bed again without the assistance of
one of the medical staff.”
Dominic cocked his head to the side. “You’re
mad at me.”
“Of course I am!” she said sternly. “You
could have exacerbated your previous injury or caused a new one.”
He chuckled. “Are you doubting your mad
skills?”
She frowned. “No, I’m not. But you’re not
ready to walk no matter how much you think you are.”
“Blue Angel, I feel fine.”
“Maybe you do. But you suffered
life-threatening injuries hardly more than twenty-four hours ago, Commander,”
Calista said with a sigh. “Just because you are feeling good doesn’t mean your
body is fully healed. You need time to recuperate, to get your strength back.”
“How long?”
“Six weeks, minimum.”
He felt his eyes bug out. “Six weeks, are you
serious?!”
A few groans of protest greeted his outburst,
and she looked around for a moment before turning back to him. “Please keep
your voice down,” she said. “And yes, I am serious. I told you that your body
needs time to heal.”
“Oh, come on. I can’t be out of commission
that long,” Dominic protested. “I’ve gotta get back on duty. Starfleet needs
me, Blue Angel.”
“Starfleet needs you whole, Commander,” she retorted, “and that you are not. By the way,
I really don’t think it’s appropriate for you to call me Blue Angel, sir.”
He cocked his head to the side again, this
time with another lopsided grin. “Why not? You’ve got the loveliest blue skin
I’ve ever seen, and you’re the angel who saved my life.”
Although the lighting was dim, he could tell
she was blushing as she turned her head away to hide a smile. He lifted his
eyebrows and favored her with a knowing look when she turned back to him.
“Commander, it’s just not… appropriate,” she
said. “I appreciate the compliment, sir, but any doctor would have done the
same thing in my place. I just happened to be the one to find you, is all.”
“Forget that ‘sir’ business,” Dominic told
her. “You don’t work for me. You can call me Dominic.”
Nir’ahn shook her head. “I don’t think so,
Commander. It’s against protocol, in more ways than one. Not to mention the
fact that doctors are not allowed to become personally involved with their
patients.”
He blinked. Had she read him so easily? Not
that it would matter if she had, he mused. It could never go farther than a
little harmless flirting anyway.
Clearing his throat, Dominic countered her
statement, saying, “So we can’t even be friends? Friends give each other
nicknames, and anyone who saves my life is my friend. I’m afraid you’re stuck
with ‘Blue Angel’ for the duration.”
Even though she shook her head, Dominic could
see she was fighting another smile. After a moment her expression did sober,
and she looked down at him, saying, “Why are you so eager to get back on duty?
You barely survived your ship being destroyed, Commander. It’s not that Klingon
honor business, is it?”
Killjoy, he thought
bitterly. “I don’t have anything to do with being Klingon, Doctor,” he said,
his voice taking on an edge. “I acknowledge having Klingon DNA, nothing more.”
Blinking, no doubt surprised by his sudden
change in attitude, the Andorian frowned. “Why not?”
His smile this time was one of mild derision.
“If we were going to be real friends, Dr. Nir’ahn, I might be inclined to tell
you. As it is, you’ve declined that privilege, so I’m afraid I have to say it’s
none of your business.
“As for why I want to get back into this war,
it’s like I said before: Starfleet needs me. The Federation needs me. They need
every able-bodied man and woman who can fight, and I aim to do my part in this
war, to make sure the seven hundred fifteen men and women who died on the Sherwood didn’t give up their lives for
nothing.”
His chest had tightened again and he could
feel his diaphragm beginning to heave with the urge to hyperventilate, but he
controlled it as he had before, by breathing deeply in and out through his
nose.
“Don’t worry, I won’t get out of bed again,”
he said sourly, rolling over onto his side and facing the wall. “I’ve got no
reason to.”
<>
After covering two shifts the day before, Dr.
Tir’Shaan had given Calista the next day off. She hadn’t wanted to take the
time, what with all the patients they had to care for, but she relented because
she really did need the time to recharge her internal batteries. Two long
surgeries in the space of 24 hours, losing one of the Trill hosts… plus the
entire damned war…
Like so many of her colleagues, she was
simply worn out.
After a light meal (though she didn’t usually
eat right before going to sleep), Calista had gone to bed and did not wake up
for a full twelve hours. Though she dragged her feet a little when she rose
later that night, she had to admit she did feel better, and dashed off a quick
text message to Dr. Tir’Shaan, thanking him for “ordering” her to rest.
Then she sat on the corner of her sofa, a
blanket tucked around her, and tried to read. Tried, because almost from the
moment she awoke, she’d thought about Dominic Murphy. She’d even dreamed about
him, about those horrible moments when she and her fellow searchers had entered
the sensor lab on the Sherwood and
found him lying there on the floor, broken and bloody. She’d dreamed of the
surgeries she had performed on him, of the seemingly boundless charm he kept
throwing her way…
She thought of his determination to return to
active duty—it had no doubt been the reason he’d gotten out of his bed the
night before. And so she had dreamed of him returning to the war on some other
ship, of being injured once again, and the Apgar
swooping in to pick up the injured.
Only this time, she was too late to save him.
Then there was the cold shoulder he had
turned on her last night after she had asked if his desire to return to the war
was fueled by a Klingon sense of honor. One simple question and he had
completely shut down. Though she didn’t understand why, she’d felt bad about
it, even though she wasn’t really sure what she had done wrong. Was it because
she had turned down his offer of friendship, or was it because she’d asked
about his Klingon honor—or was it a combination of both? She wondered then if
Dominic even cared about being half-Klingon. Perhaps he was one of those people
of mixed-species parentage who despised one side or the other. But then she was
curious as to why—what had happened to him in his life that he would hate being
Klingon so much?
Well, sitting on her duff wasn’t going to get
her any answers to her questions. She rose and donned a simple blouse and
trousers, since she was still off duty for another ten or so hours, and headed
down to ICU 1. She intended to speak to Dominic, to apologize for whatever
wrong she had done him, and to ask him if he would tell her exactly what that
was.
When she arrived at the ICU ward, she was
surprised to see a patient walking down the hall toward her.
“Excuse me, can I help you?” she asked. “I’m
a doctor on the Virginia Apgar—Dr.
Nir’ahn.”
The Tellarite nodded. “Lt. Arkhet djan
Zabrak, Chief Engineer of the U.S.S. Sherwood.
I was looking for one of my shipmates that I heard was in ICU—most of the rest of
us are in the non-critical wards.”
“You’re looking for Commander Murphy, then?”
she asked, her eyebrows rising in further surprise.
Zabrak nodded. “Yeah, Dom Murphy. He’s—or he
was—our head squint. That’s what Captain Sykes liked to call the science officers.”
Calista watched with sadness as Zabrak looked
away from her, furiously blinking his long-lashed eyelids so that he wouldn’t
shed the tears that had pooled in his eyes. She pretended not to see, knowing
how proud Tellarites were.
“I’m so very sorry for your loss,
Lieutenant,” she said softly. “I can’t begin to imagine what you and your
shipmates must be going through.”
“No. You can’t, can you?” he said, though
not harshly, like he could have. Instead, Zabrak just seemed really sad—an
unusual thing for one of his species.
She couldn’t say she blamed him, though.
“I mean, you’re a doctor on a hospital ship,”
he went on. “You guys never see battle, what it does to people.”
She shook her head. “On the contrary, Mr.
Zabrak. Hospital ships may so rarely see battle as to never have seen it at
all, but we do see what war does to people here. We see the suffering—both
physical and psychological. We see the carnage, the broken bones and the blood,
we see the toll it takes on the body and on the mind…”
Calista stopped when she noticed Zabrak had
begun to shake, and took a tentative step closer. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t
have said that.”
He shook his head, drawing a breath to settle
himself. “No, no you’re right,” he told her. “I should apologize to you,
Doctor, for forgetting that you guys do see, oftentimes more than we do.”
Zabrak raised his arms and placed his hands
on his hips, shaking his head as he laughed mirthlessly. “We’ve been at this
for over a year. I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever see the end.”
“I believe it was one of Earth’s great
philosophers who said, ‘Only the dead have seen the end of war,’ Lieutenant,”
the Andorian said sadly.
He smiled at her then. It was a small, sad
smile, but it was genuine, and she returned it. “It was one of theirs,” Zabrak
said. “Plato said that a very long time ago.”
“And still his words hold meaning,” Calista
said, then with a sigh, gestured toward the door labeled ICU 1. “Commander Murphy
is in here, Lieutenant. I’ll take you in to him—you are out of your bed with
permission from your ward supervisor, I hope?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “And I’m sorry if
that’s against the rules, but I couldn’t sit cooped up in that place anymore. I
had to do something.”
She raised her eyebrow again. “So you left
one hospital room to come to another, huh?” she asked with a chuckle. “Come
on.”
Gesturing again toward the door, she then
moved to precede him through it. The Gamma Shift doctor was sitting at the desk
when she stepped through the sterilizer booth and into the ward.
“Dr. Nir’ahn,” said the portly Bolian. “What
brings you here at this late hour? Dr. Tir’Shaan said you were off for the
day.”
She turned as Lt. Zabrak was coming through
the sterilizer booth. “I went for a walk, and I ran into this fellow, a patient
from one of our non-critical units. Will you look up what unit Lt. Arkhet djan
Zabrak is assigned to and let them know he hasn’t just wandered off? I’ll
escort him back in a bit, after he’s seen his shipmate.”
The other doctor nodded. “Certainly,” she
replied, turning to key the information into the computer.
Calista looked at Zabrak, then pointed to Murphy’s
bed. “He’s down there, on the end.”
Zabrak nodded silently, having already
located Dominic with his eyes. He walked down the middle aisle and was about
six feet away when the commander rolled over in his bed, his eyes open—apparently
he wasn’t asleep like she’d thought. His eyes fell on Zabrak and, without a
word, he got up from the bed and walked toward him as if he’d never been at risk
of losing the ability. Zabrak met him at half the distance and the two men
threw their arms around one another. Calista knew that even had they not known
each other well before, they were brothers now, in a way true brothers often
never knew.
<>
Arkhet djan Zabrak stayed for an hour,
telling him all about the conditions of the crewmates he shared a ward with and
promising to see to the others the next day, before his continuous yawning
prompted Dominic to tell him to go back to his bed and get some sleep. The two
men embraced again, then Zabrak headed toward the two doctors and the ward
nurse.
“I’ll escort him back to his unit, Doctors,”
the nurse said when he reached them, and Nir’ahn nodded. Dominic saw her glance
toward him as the Tellarite was being led out, some emotion or other flitting
through her eyes, before she, too, turned to go.
“Dr. Nir’ahn, could I talk to you for a
moment?” he called out.
She stopped, turning around slowly and
walking toward him at the same pace. She stopped at the foot of his bed. “Yes,
Commander?”
“Well, first I want to thank you… for that.
For bringing Arkhet in here. I’ve been wanting to go see my shipmates since I
read the list, but I’m not allowed to go anywhere for another day or two,
according to Dr. Goran,” he said.
She nodded. “That sounds about right. If you
continue to improve physically, we’ll likely move you to one of the
non-critical wards by the end of the week,” she said. “And there’s no need to
thank me for Lt. Zabrak. He was sneaking down here to see you already.”
Dominic grinned. “I’m glad he did, I don’t
mind saying,” he told her, then gave a small sigh. “I also wanted to apologize
for yesterday. Hardly decent of me to offer you friendship then behave like an
ass.”
He watched her swallow and take a breath.
“I’m sure you had your reasons, sir,” she said carefully.
Chancing a smile, he said, “Hey, what did I
tell you about that ‘sir’ stuff? We’re not crewmates, it’s okay to call me
Dominic. I’ll still call you Blue Angel—that is, if you’re not still mad at me.”
At last, he got a smile out of her, albeit a
small one. “I thought you were upset with me, actually,” she confessed. “In
fact, I came down here intending to ask you what I had done wrong, so that we
could make peace, but I wasn’t sure you would be of a mind to speak to me after
seeing the lieutenant.”
“Nah, I can’t sleep anyway,” he said neutrally,
though his mind added More like I don’t
want to. “And you didn’t do anything wrong. Like I said, I was being a
jerk. I don’t… Well let’s just say I don’t care for all things Klingon.”
“May I ask why… Dominic?”
His eyes widened with surprise, and his mouth
split into a grin. She’d used his name for the first time, and since she had
given him that much, he supposed he owed it to her to concede something in
return.
Sighing, he said, “The thing is, Blue Angel,
my biological father abandoned me before I was an hour old, even though he’d
sworn to my dying mother he would love me as she would have loved me. I wasn’t
born with the sagittal crest, forehead ridges, whatever you want to call it. So
he had me tested—probably to make sure I was even his, even though he should
have known damn well my mother never would have cheated on him. That’s when he
found out that not only was I a carrier of the dreaded Augment Virus, but the
virus was the reason I didn’t look like a Klingon.”
Disgusted, he snorted derisively. “Instead of
doing as he’d promised, he handed me to my mother’s brother, and I never saw
him again. Hell, I don’t remember seeing him even then. I only know what the
man looks like because I have a few old pictures my mother had given to Marcus.”
He watched as she absorbed what he’d told
her, her emotions flickering through her eyes faster than he could follow.
Finally she settled on a neutral expression, and said, “Marcus is your uncle?”
Dominic nodded. “Uncle, best friend, and more
a father to me than my own has ever been. I call him Dad.”
“As well you should,” she agreed with a nod.
“So… your father’s abandonment of you is the reason you despise being part
Klingon?”
He scoffed. “Oh, that’s a large part of it—probably
even most of it. But that’s not the whole of it,” he said. “Not only did my old
man abandon me, but his entire family disavowed any knowledge of me. Not one of
them came to see me or tried to claim me. I’d always known I was half-Klingon,
Angel, but when Uncle Marcus confessed the whole truth to me when I was about 10
years old, that’s when I decided I wanted nothing to do with being Klingon. If
the entire race won’t even acknowledge me because I’m an embarrassing reminder
of the failures of their own past, then why the hell should I give a damn about
being one of them?”
For a long moment, she was silent. “What
happened to your mother?” she asked finally.
He looked down at his hands, folded together
in his lap. “She died shortly after my birth. Some complication or other caused
hemorrhaging the doctors couldn’t stop.”
“I’m sorry, Dominic.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said. “My mother, at
least, I would have liked to know.”
Dominic cleared his throat. “So anyway, now
you know why I’m so touchy about Klingons. I freely acknowledge being one, and
probably more often than is really necessary blame my father for my temper—heck,
I’ve even got Klingon friends. Few, mind you, but still… Other than that, I
just don’t care.”
I'm not
ashamed of
being Klingon, he added silently. I'm just ashamed of the Klingons.
Calista nodded. “I guess I can understand
why. I won’t bring it up again.”
“Good,” he said with sudden joviality. “I’d
much rather talk about us.”
Her eyebrows winged up. “There’s an ‘us’?”
she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
She stared at him for a moment longer, then
broke into a smile. “Do I have any choice in the matter?”
Dominic grinned. “Not really, Blue Angel…
“…not really.”
<>
U.S.S. Virginia Apgar, en route to SB 133
1 hour
until arrival…
“Good afternoon, Commander.”
Dominic nodded as the door to Daaid Ki’s
office closed behind him. He stepped inside the small, comfortable room and sat
in one of the comfortable chairs across from the counselor’s desk.
But he wasn’t comfortable. Oh, physically he
was fine—three weeks had passed since Chin’toka, the battle in which he had
nearly died. He’d been operated on and fixed up, and for the last 18 days had
been undergoing rigorous physical therapy sessions to make sure his body had
fully recovered. Even Dr. Nir’ahn, his Blue Angel, had declared him physically
fit, stating her surprise that he had recovered so remarkably fast. It was one
of the things he could be grateful to his Klingon genetics for, as his sire’s
people were designed by evolution to heal quickly.
Psychologically, on the other hand, he was
not quite up to par. He still had nightmares about his last moments on the Sherwood that woke him up with cold
sweats and hyperventilation. He had a hard time talking to anyone other than
his fellow Sherwood survivors about
the ship or the 715 officers who had died without triggering flashbacks and a
panic attack—and even talking to his shipmates didn’t always prevent the
reactions to that horrific last day on their ship. Counselor Ki had told him
that his reactions were perfectly within the norm for such an experience as he
had lived through, but quite frankly he was beginning to get seriously tweaked
about it. If he couldn’t get this ridiculous “condition” under control, it
would take even longer for him to get another assignment. Dominic could hardly
wait for reassignment. He needed another assignment, not just to honor his
fallen brothers and sisters, but because sitting idle when he was physically
capable of doing something had never been a situation he handled well. He hated
the way not being involved made him feel useless.
“How are you feeling today, Commander?” Ki
asked.
Dominic looked at him. “I feel fine. I feel
great, actually. Dr. Nir’ahn says I’m recovering remarkably well. I think I’m
good to go—no need to wait another three weeks if you ask me.”
“Are you still having the nightmares?”
The hybrid frowned. “So, I have a few bad
dreams, so what? Who isn’t going to have a few nightmares after all this crap?”
he said dismissively.
The Naerecan psychologist braced his elbows
on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers in thought. “And what about
the panic attacks?” he queried after a moment.
Dominic scoffed. “So, I get a little worked up
sometimes,” he said. “I say again, who wouldn’t after what I’ve been through?”
“Indeed, Commander,” Ki conceded with a nod.
“As I’ve said to you before, your reactions are perfectly normal. However,
certainly you are aware that an officer who has such an episode just talking
about an event could very well panic in the middle of another, if he or she is
put into a situation where the events are very similar.”
“What are you saying, you’re afraid I’m gonna
freeze up if I’m on another ship getting ripped apart in a battle?”
“That is one possibility, yes. You could also
‘freeze up,’ as you put it, simply by the vessel engaging in battle, even if
your ship emerges relatively unscathed.”
“You don’t know that’s going to happen,”
Dominic retorted.
“You don’t know that it won’t,” Ki returned
smoothly.
Dominic groaned. “Come on, Counselor. You and
I both know that the only time I have those ‘episodes,’ as you call them, is
when I start talking about the Sherwood.
All I have to do to escape the possibility of having an attack is simply not
talk about it.”
“Are you suggesting that you should forget
about the Sherwood, Commander? That
you should forget about the seven hundred fifteen men and women who perished
aboard her?”
“Of course not!” Dominic fired back angrily.
“I’m just saying that until this damn war is over, I keep my memories to myself so
that I can do my job.”
Ki studied him for another long moment.
“Dominic, do you honestly believe that not talking about your shipmates or the
event that took them from you is going to stop the anxiety attacks from happening?
Even now, when barely we have spoken of them, I can see that you are breathing
heavily.”
He was, Dominic noted sourly, and frowned at
the man across the desk. “If I’m getting worked up it’s because I’m getting
sick of going over the same damn thing every time I come here,” he said
angrily. “Not because we’re talking about the Sherwood.”
“Are you sure about that?” Ki pressed.
“As a matter of fact, I am. If anything is
driving me nuts, Counselor, it’s that you keep harping on the subject. We never
talk about anything else.”
The Naerecan raised an eyebrow. “What else
would you like to talk about?” he asked.
“I don’t know!” Dominic cried, throwing his
hands up in frustration. “Anything other
than the Sherwood and those seven
hundred fifteen officers and crew, because yammering about them constantly
isn’t going to bring them back. They’re dead.”
“And you are alive, Commander.”
“Yes, I am. I’m alive and they’re not. I made
it off the ship because a blue angel came and saved me, and they didn’t get saved.”
Ki lowered his hands and once again
scrutinized him closely. “Commander Murphy,” he began after a moment. “Have you
ever thought about precisely why
you’re having the anxiety attacks? What the trigger is?”
Groaning loudly, the hybrid pushed out of his
chair and stepped behind it where there was room to pace. “God, I say I want to
talk about something else, and we’re right back where we started,” he muttered,
walking back and forth with his hands on his hips. Stopping behind the chair he
had occupied, he turned to face Ki.
“Look, it’s obvious what the trigger is: I
survived a battle that nearly killed me,” he said.
“But you lived, Commander,” Ki reminded him.
“Uh, yeah, or I wouldn’t be standing here
arguing with you about whether or not I’m mentally fit to return to duty.”
Looking up at him, Ki spoke serenely.
“Dominic, has it ever occurred to you that your survival is the reason you have
developed an anxiety disorder?”
Dominic frowned and sputtered as he said,
“Wh-what are you saying? Th-that I have these panic attacks because of some
misguided sense of guilt? That I—that I’m suffering from frakking survivor’s
guilt?”
“It is a possibility, Commander, that you
feel a sense of guilt because you managed to survive when they did not. You
lived to fight another day, while your comrades just died.”
“Listen, buster, they didn’t just die!”
Dominic shouted, stepping up to the desk and leaning across it, pointing a
finger angrily at the counselor. “They died fighting to save the Federation.
They gave their lives trying to save billions—trillions—of complete strangers’
lives. They died with honor, and integrity—they did not die for nothing!”
“Commander, if you really believed that, you
might well not be having the problems you are,” Ki said quietly. “It seems to
me that the root cause of your anxiety is twofold: you are feeling guilty for
not dying along with your shipmates, and you feel like their deaths were
meaningless.”
Dominic straightened. “That’s ridiculous,” he
said. “If I thought their deaths were meaningless, I wouldn’t have just said
they died with honor and integrity.”
“Not necessarily, Mr. Murphy,” Ki said with a
shake of his cone-shaped head. “A lot of our strongest hopes and fears are
hidden deep within our subconscious minds. It is entirely possible that you
have nightmares of the event that took the lives of your crewmates and your
captain, from which you wake sweating, shaking, and hyperventilating; that you
experience anxiety attacks in your waking moments nearly every time you discuss
the event because you feel guilty that your life was spared and theirs were
not. You may even be feeling like you didn’t deserve to live anymore than they
did, and so your subconscious mind struggles with your conscious mind because the
conscious mind either cannot or is unwilling to accept that you feel that way.
The nightmares are your subconscious mind’s way of trying to get you to accept
your feelings, and the attacks during your waking hours are your subconscious
mind’s way of trying to break through during conscious hours.”
Dominic shook his head as he turned and began
pacing again. What Ki was saying was… No. It just wasn’t possible. After all,
why should he feel guilty? Yeah, it certainly sucked that more people hadn’t
survived, and it was only by the slimmest of margins that he had. Had his blue
angel not come along when she had, Dominic knew very well that he’d have died
right along with them.
He couldn’t think about this. It was too much
for his mind to process when all he could think about, all he cared about, was
getting back out there.
With a heavy sigh, he turned to face Ki
again. “You’re not going to sign off on me going back on duty, are you?”
Ki shook his head. “I’m afraid not,
Commander. You may be physically healthy, but you still have a way to go in
regaining your mental balance. Until you can accept what your subconscious mind
is trying to tell you as truth, you won’t be able to truly heal.”
“And I’m afraid I don’t agree with you,”
Dominic shot back. “Which means we have nothing more to talk about.”
Ki’s mouth pressed into a line, but he didn’t
argue. “Very well. You may go.”
Without acknowledging the dismissal, Dominic
turned around and walked out the door. He walked quickly toward the nearest
turbolift and ordered it to take him down to deck 13. There was a lounge there
that the patients who were recovered were welcome to use, and he needed a
drink.
The lift had been descending for only a
minute, during which he guessed that it had passed two decks, when it stopped.
Despite how disturbed he was after his session with Counselor Ki, he could only
smile when he saw his Blue Angel on the other side of the now open door.
“Commander Murphy!” she greeted him brightly
as she stepped into the lift. “It’s so good to see you out and about. Where are
you headed to?”
“The lounge on deck thirteen,” he replied
with a grin. “Care to join me for a drink? Only about half an hour or so before
we get to One-Three-Three and you finally get rid of me, so I have to make the
most of it.”
She quirked one of her gray and white
eyebrows. “You really shouldn’t be drinking, Commander, even if the alcohol is
synthetic.”
“Come on,” he pleaded with a cheeky grin.
“Half an hour from now, I’m walking off this ship—thanks to you—and I’m probably
never going to see you again. I don’t want a lecture on the merits of drinking.
I just want to share a drink with my Blue Angel, to spend my last thirty
minutes in her company just enjoying myself. And your smile—I love your smile.”
He watched her try to hide a blush as she
looked away for a moment, and trying to suppress her smile when she looked back
at him. Clearing her throat she said,
“Alright. But just one drink, okay?”
“I’ll agree to one drink if you agree not to
call me ‘commander’ or ‘sir’ one more time. It’s just Dominic now.”
At last, she let her smile show as she said,
“And I’m Calista.”
He winged his eyebrows up in mock surprise.
“Wow, really? I had no idea.”
She punched him lightly in the arm and he
laughed.
<>
Dominic stood with the strap of a small
duffel case over his shoulder. In it were all the possessions he owned now,
save for the brand-new uniform he had chosen to wear for this moment. Cleared
for duty or not, he had come aboard this ship in uniform and he was determined
to leave in one. The duffel that had been replicated for him held a pair of
off-duty shoes, four pairs of socks, four pairs of boxer shorts, four
tank-style undershirts, four civilian shirts and four pair of civilian
trousers.
That was it. Four days’ worth of clothing
(not including his new uniform) was all he had to his name.
The muscles in his jaw flexed as he watched
one after another of the Sherwood
survivors file past him. As the highest-ranking officer to survive from his
vessel (he and Zabrak, their Chief Engineer, were the only senior officers left),
he had decided he would see them all safely off this ship before he left it.
Dominic nodded at each man and woman as they walked past, saying a word here or
there to those that spoke to him, even though most of them would be on SB 133
with him for the next few weeks waiting to be cleared for duty and reassigned.
He was also waiting—hoping—to see a certain
Andorian doctor again. After they had spent a good twenty minutes together in the
lounge, having a drink and just talking about nothing, she’d had to go to
prepare the Helo symbiont for implantation into its new host. Dr. Tir’Shaan had
built a tank for it (thankfully the other Trill officer had recovered and was
able to continue hosting his symbiont) and synthesized the milky liquid from
their natural habitat in caves deep beneath the planet’s surface on the Trill
homeworld. Despite the brine not being the naturally occurring liquid, the
symbiont had fared well, though its continued survival depended on either being
hosted again or being taken home to the caves in which it had been born.
Because the Symbiosis Commission had feared Helo wouldn’t survive another three
weeks to make the trip, hosting was the option that had been chosen.
He looked around, searching for any sign of
her gray and white hair or blue antennae peeking up over the tops of the heads
of patients walking on their own merit off the hospital ship. The Sherwood survivors were the last group
to go, and now the line was almost ended.
Suddenly Dominic found himself standing alone
at the airlock. He sighed, not wanting to leave without saying goodbye to the
woman who had saved his life—the woman for whom he had developed feelings that
had zero chance of going anywhere, and not just because there was little chance
of seeing her again. He had other reasons for which he would not pursue a
relationship, with her or any other woman, so in truth it was best they were
parting ways.
Didn’t mean he didn’t want to see her one
more time before he left.
After waiting another fifteen minutes,
Dominic sighed heavily, sadly, and turned to walk through the airlock. He was
halfway through the causeway when he heard her calling his name and turned to
find her jogging toward him.
Dominic smiled. “I thought I was going to
have to leave without saying goodbye,” he said when she reached him.
“I thought you would leave before I got the
chance to say goodbye, too,” she replied breathlessly. “I’m glad I made it.”
“So am I.”
They stood looking at one another for a long
moment, and then Dominic leaned down and wrapped his arms around her, drawing
her into a light embrace. “I can’t thank you enough for saving my life,” he
whispered.
Calista wrapped her arms around his waist and
gave him a gentle squeeze. “No need to thank me, Dominic. It’s what I do.”
After another moment in which he allowed
himself to enjoy the feel of her in his arms, he committed the bittersweet
feeling to memory and then reluctantly released her. Dominic stood back and
offered her a small smile. “I know your name is Calista, but I think to me
you’ll always be my Blue Angel.”
She smiled as well. “I can accept that,” she
said softly.
Sighing once more, he looked into her eyes
and said, “Goodbye, Angel.”
Calista nodded. “Goodbye, Dominic.”
Dominic nodded, then he turned around and
walked away.
=/\=
Oh,yes. This has a lot that I liked: the hospital ship setting is fascinating (I almost made my USS Surefoot an ambulance ship); the chemistry between the characters of Dominic and Calista; the slow progress of his recovery with no quick solutions; the little touches such as the brine tank to help the symbionts survive (and I can't help but imagine the Cronenbergian horror of being an unjoined Trill who might find themselves forced to accept being joined to a symbiont to help it survive under the same situation that produced Ezri Dax). I'm hoping I see more of Dominic and Calista.
ReplyDelete"Squints". Heh heh.
I was hoping you would get to this one, it's one of my favorites I've written. And I gave Dom an extended recovery time because I wanted it to be realistic, and I figured that even in the future nothing is truly immediate. There is definitely something between those him and Calista - we shall see if they get to explore it.
Delete