Hour twenty-three. Or was it twenty-four? Three burn victims. Pulled from the galley of the Piper Alpha after the latest Cylon barrage set off a methane explosion. Flesh charred and falling off of bone. Two of them were dead on the table. Male? Female? In the time Daphne had to look at them, it was hard to say. The third one, a man, they tried to help. They kept the airway clear for a minute or more, but he had inhaled super-heated air - - his lungs were scorched from the inside. She would remember the gold chain around his neck, still hot to the touch.
Hour six. A corporal with shrapnel wounds to his face. One eye punctured. Ten teeth missing. No sign of his right ear. They tried to keep him sedated but he kept trying to speak. Without his teeth, and with his tongue mangled, the only sound that would come was a damp hissing - - like some exotic insect. Later, Daphne would sometimes hear that hissing late at night, in Dee's rack, somewhere underneath the soft regular sound of her breathing.
Hour thirty-nine. Right after two more ephedrine pills came the pilot with no fingers. Finally one they could help. An explosion had seared off most of the flesh below her elbow, but they managed to get two pints of blood into her, and stabilize her vitals. As the pills kicked in, Daphne felt her hands start to shake, just as she guided the surgical saw through the bone above the joint.
Hour zero. Daphne walked into the swirling maelstrom of the Galactica trauma ward and grabbed the arm of the first healthy looking person who walked near her. It belonged to a young woman wearing green scrubs with her hair piled underneath a white plastic cap and a surgical mask hanging slack around her neck. She quickly twisted out of Dana's grip.
"Let go! If you don't have an emergency you're not supposed to be here, now get out of the way!"
Daphne scrambled to stay in front of the woman.
"I'm here to help. I'm a medical doctor. I have triage experience. Just tell me who to talk to."
The woman stopped moving long enough for her eyes to focus on Daphne's face, searching for something. After a second she spun around, scanned the room, and stuck her arm out pointing down the long line of beds against the far wall.
"Ok, fine. Talk to Doc Cottle. He's the one with the cigarette."
Hour nineteen. Cottle had given her a civilian GP to see if she could make him useful. The military medical staff apparently didn't have the patience to deal with him. His name was Fran, or Frank. It felt like he was always in front of her, keeping her from getting where she wanted to go by the shortest route. She started to wonder whether he was doing it on purpose. When his hands were shaking too much to perform the tracheotomy, she had to take the scalpel from him and do it herself. After she made the cut, she pulled him aside.
"Listen, Fran... Frank. Sorry. Frank, listen you're tired. You're not helping here in this condition. You need to rest."
"I know. It's bad. But I can't rest. I can't... I have to do something."
"There's got to be a dispensary, or an non-emergency clinic. Just go out and ask one of the guards. They'll tell you where to go."
"You sure? You don't need me here?" It was impossible for him to hide the dawning sense of relief he was feeling.
"I'm sure. Go. They'll need you help there too."
In a second, he was gone, and Daphne was looking for another scalpel. She never saw Frank again.
Hour thirteen. For eight minutes Daphne had tried to stop the bleeding on the lift driver with the shrapnel wounds in his abdomen. She needed another bag of blood, and kept calling for it.
"I need more A negative over here! Stat!"
Finally, one of the nurses came over with a blood bag, but she looked at the patient and stopped short. She held the bag just out of reach of Daphne's outstretched hand.
"Come on, give it to me!"
"What the hell are you doing? Didn't you see the mark?"
She was pointing to a green ink stain on the patient's forehead.
"I told you an hour ago, green means 'gone'. How many times do I have to tell you?"
It dawned on Daphne that she had been working for eight minutes on a patient who had already been marked for dead.
"Frak! I keep thinking green means 'ok'. Why don't you people use a red mark? Red means stop!"
The nurse's eyes widened, and her lips curled into a shape which was almost a grin.
"Are you serious? Look around. Every frakking thing in here is already red."
Hour forty-six. Now. For Daphne, now was everything. Nothing else existed. No then. No later. Just the patient, the blood, the bags, and the scalpel. The acrid smell of chemical residue and disinfectant. The sounds of heart monitors, breathing machines, and screams. Into this now-familiar rhythm of sounds and sensations there suddenly came the slightly sweet and completely unexpected smell of burning tobacco.
Cottle caught her by the elbow as she was passing. His other hand held a mug of steaming dark liquid. He was offering it to her. He spoke through teeth clenching a cigarette.
"Gods you're here early. You're gonna need this today. Not much left in the fleet, but I make sure our team has priority access to any and all stimulants." He took the cigarette out of his mouth, gave it a sidelong glance, then looked back at Daphne and winked.
Daphne grabbed the mug and immediately took a large swallow. The liquid burned her lips and her tongue, but she didn't care. She needed to wake up, and the pain helped. She blinked and tried to focus on Cottle, and hear what he was saying. It wasn't making sense.
"Is it early?"
"Hah." He paused. He looked at Daphne and realized that she wasn't joking. "How long have you been here today?"
"Today?" How the hell to answer that question? "What's today?"
Cottle's eyes narrowed, he suddenly reached out and roughly took a hold of Daphne's chin, tilting her head to the light. He looked closely, and exhaled smoke into her face.
"Holy shit. You never left did you? You've been here since Monday. Nobody told you to leave?"
Daphne didn't have an answer, and Cottle didn't wait for one. Things started happening fast, the rhythm and focus of the moment had been interrupted, and Daphne's brain seemed to be trying to shut down her body's systems as quickly as possible. Sight and sound started to blur. She fought to stay alert, but without the pressing crisis of
another patient, there was nothing to latch on to.
She was aware that she was being pulled. The trauma ward spun away, the ICU loomed, then she found herself leaning against a high table. She found she had to grip the table edge hard to prevent her body from sliding backwards, along its length. Cottle had a hold of one sleeve of her scrubs and was doing his part to keep her from melting onto the floor. He was speaking sharply to a hunted looking woman in an enlisted uniform, balancing two binders on her hip, and making entries into a terminal on the table top.
"I told you to limit shifts to no more than eighteen hours. This one's been here for three days."
"She's not one of ours! How am I supposed to know who's in here if you don't tell me?"
"Well, if you expect me to keep track of who's in here, we're all frakked."
Four days earlier, the first deep rumblings rattled the windows of Daphne's apartment just as she was sitting down to breakfast. An earthquake, she thought. One more entry in the Gods' list of natural disasters to plague humanity. She knew the drill. Another two or three days of twenty hour shifts in the ER if it was bad enough. Or just a stress-filled fire drill for one morning if it turned out to be a false alarm. Either way, it was a welcome distraction. She would go to the hospital even though she wasn't on call, because people there would be glad to see her, because of what she could do for them. She found herself looking forward to the coming chaos of the next few days, since she wouldn't have time to think about her empty apartment, or the reasons why it was empty. Hell, if things got stressful enough, she might even end up feeling something.
By the time she was in her car headed to the hospital, not five minutes later, she knew something was seriously wrong. No one on the radio knew what was happening. The rumbles and vibrations were still going on, lasting a bit longer and coming more frequently. Signs of panic were beginning to show in the streets, as more people poured out of buildings onto sidewalks, and cars started passing her dangerously. Daphne started to feel her growing uncertainty merge into fear as she slowed for a red signal, but the SUV behind her gunned its engine and whipped around her and through the intersection. A car in the cross traffic locked its brakes, its tires making a piercing squeal, but it still made glancing contact with the back fender of the speeding SUV, sending shattered plastic and glass tinkling across the intersection. The SUV never slowed down.
It was while she was combing the hospital parking lot for a space that Daphne first heard someone on the radio say the word "Cylon". It sounded to her like a strange archaic turn of phrase. Like something her grandparents would talk about. But she knew it meant something more than that. After hearing the word, she gave up looking for a space, and simply stopped the car where it was in the middle of an aisle. She got out, and left the keys in the ignition, and walked into the hospital.
On Galactica, without the rhythm, things were breaking down. The center wasn't holding. Daphne was walking, but she wasn't sure where or why. She knew she needed food. She knew she needed sleep. She didn't know how to get either. The corridors were bare metal and sharp edges, with people constantly running in all directions. There was nowhere to sit down and rest, which was probably for the best, because if she did sit down she wasn't sure she would be able to get back up. It was already hard to keep a straight line. People kept running into her, or it might have been the other way round. Each time she rebounded from the impact, she was shocked slightly back to alertness. Enough to register the expression on the face of human obstacle, always a strange mix of terror and revulsion. There was something wrong with her, but she didn't have the energy to wonder what exactly it was. Thirst finally stopped her. A hatch to her right opened and closed as she walked by, and the air that washed over her tasted of clear cold water.
First she needed water, she thought. She hadn't been drinking enough. After that food or sleep or whatever, but the first priority was water. She had to brace herself on the bulkhead in order to work the crank. Her arms seemed to be barely under her control. When the hatch finally gave way, she barely managed not to fall in a heap over the raised threshold. She stood there for a moment trying to gather the strength to step over. She wasn't sure how long she hung there, half in and half out, but it must have been a while, because when she finally started to become aware of here surroundings, it was because someone was shouting at her.
"Hey! Red! I said: in or out! You're letting out the heat!"
It was a woman shouting. She was young, dark-skinned, and casually naked above the waist, making no attempt to cover herself despite the presence of other people in the wash room. She was facing away from Daphne, but looking at her in the mirror above the row of sinks where she and several other women and men were standing. Exposed flesh was everywhere in front of Daphne, but unlike the trauma center, there was no blood or gore. Just toned muscle and curves. So different from the cold, mangled limbs she had been seeing for the last few days. Daphne met the woman's eyes in the mirror and saw the now familiar look of shock and fear enter her expression. What is wrong with me? She thought. Daphne broke off the eye-contact, her gaze resting on for a moment on the woman's naked back. She felt a quick surge of embarrassment, and turned back to try to close the hatch. In this casual non-medical setting she was having trouble maintaining her sense of clinical detachment. As she struggled with the heavy hatch Daphne felt more eyes turning toward her. The feeling of being singled out was growing. She was an alien here.
"I'm sorry..." Daphne tried to say, but her voice was weak. She managed to get the hatch shut and she turned and saw an empty sink a few paces down the line away from her, past the woman who had spoken to her, and who was still staring at her, even more intensely now. In fact, everyone in the room was staring, and the place had grown very quiet. Daphne kept her eyes down and tried to concentrate on her balance as she walked toward the sink, thinking how she just needed some water. Drink some water, and then worry about the strange reception she was getting from the people here. Drink the water first. Don't stumble. Act normal.
"I just need to get some water, I'm a little dehydrated..."
She had reached the empty sink at last. She could smell the water in the air. Her throat was aching for it. As she reached out to the tap to turn it on, she allowed herself to look straight into the mirror, figuring that she wouldn't have to meet anyone's eyes but her own. The image that confronted her stopped her hand halfway to the tap. Her body was frozen as her mind tried to process what she saw. Ah, she thought. That's why they are staring.
Blood. Every part of her clothes from the chest down was covered in gore. Dried, crusted remnants of human flesh. She suddenly realized that she looked just like all the victims that had been lying in front of her in the triage unit over these last unknown number of days. Their bodies wrecked, having given up their precious liquids, staining everything they came into contact with. The sheets, the floor, the beds... her. She couldn't leave them behind even to find food or sleep. The only difference between them and her was that she was still breathing. For now. As these thoughts moved through her mind, Daphne found her last grip on the conscious world slipping. The sink was traveling away from her. The mirror was traveling away. Light was traveling away. She was vaguely aware of not hitting the floor, instead landing in someone's arms. Arms that were strong, full of blood and muscle. That was Daphne's last thought before the darkness was complete: these arms are alive.
That morning, four days ago, the hospital felt different. There was a strange new scent. Part sweat, part blood, and something else maybe. Normally, in the hospital, scents were aggressively attacked, brought to heel under the assault of chemical disinfectants. But this morning, no one was cleaning anything. After a few minutes, Daphne decided it wasn't really a scent that she was picking up, but an emotion. Fear. Of course, fear was usually present in the building, but on a normal day there was a comforting blanket of schedules, routines and competency thrown over it. The fear of life and death was smothered under a layer of people who felt only boredom, fatigue, and annoyance. But this morning, the blanket had been shredded. The people who were supposed to be bored and aloof were afraid. Sweating, agitated, upset, and afraid. Daphne realized that she wasn't the only one who could smell it. She realized that the scent was coming from her too.
The ER staff were not at all surprised to see her on her day off. Victims were coming in from all over the city - - from places that they never came from before. Within an hour, it was clear that it wasn't an isolated attack. The newsnet was spotty, as if constantly rerouting around missing servers and links. But the information that was coming through was clear: what was happening was happening all over Caprica. The hospital was short-staffed. Some of the doctors scheduled to work the day weren't there. By ten o'clock, no one assumed that they were ever going to show up. Very quickly they were running out of meds. With all the burn victims they soon started running short on bandages. When they ran out of beds they started laying people out on blankets spread on the floors in the ICU. Then they ran out of blankets.
There was nothing to do for Daphne but to keep working. There was no time to reflect that she was fighting a losing battle. No time to reflect that stabilizing a patient only meant that they could live for another 24 hours until the generators powering the hospital ran out of fuel. No time to think about the coming radiation fallout and its effects. There was no where to go anyway. Daphne hadn't heard about any evacuation plans. Where could they evacuate to? What was left on the planet or any of the Colonies? No, it was all right. Daphne figured this was where she was supposed to be at the end. Working. This was where she belonged - - among the victims.
Which was why she was so surprised by the person calling her by name and grabbing her arm. This person wasn't a victim, and wasn't a doctor. It was a dark haired woman a few inches taller than Daphne with sharp, angular features. She looked completely out of place in the chaos of the hospital, dressed in a dark jacket and tailored black slacks.
"You're Daphne?"
"How do you know my name?"
"How many red-haired female doctors are in this ER?"
"OK, fair enough... what do you want?"
"Listen... My name is Catherine. I work with Paul. He asked me to find you."
Hearing his name opened something in Daphne that she had being trying to keep closed all day. The questions arrived in her mind, urgent and breathless. Was he alive? Was he on Caprica? Would she see him again? She felt as if she were suddenly at the edge of panic. So many months, she thought, but she still couldn't let go. She started to wonder if she truly cared about the answers to the questions, or whether instead, now, at the end, all she really wanted was to believe that there was someone out there whose fate she truly cared about.
"You spoke to Paul?" she asked, "Today?"
"Yes, he contacted me on the Bureau's sub-space network before it went down. He's on Gemenon, they're under attack too. He asked me to find you before I leave."
"Leave? How can you leave?"
"There's a Bureau ship leaving soon, I have two seats waiting. We don't have much time."
"You came all the way here to find me? With a ship waiting to leave? Just because Paul asked you to?" Daphne was incredulous.
The woman started to speak but stopped. Daphne found herself answering her own question. All day she she had been living with fear, but now she suddenly recognized a new emotion building within her. Anger.
"I see. Well that must have been difficult, to find out you hadn't fully replaced me after all. Well, don't worry. When you see him you can tell him that it was too little, too late. In fact, when you see him..."
Daphne was cut off as Catherine suddenly reached out grabbed Daphne by her upper arm and yanked her off-balance. With Daphne struggling to maintain her footing, Catherine caught her by the back of the neck, violently pulled her in close, and started speaking quickly in a low tone a few inches from Daphne's ear.
"Listen to me! There's no time for this shit! You may not realize it, but this planet is being overrun. The military is already retreating to orbit, and soon they are going to break orbit. Any sub-light vessel heading off-planet has zero chance of escape. Most of the jump-capable ships are already gone. The remaining jump-capable ships are designated for evacuation of government officials and their families. There's no room for anyone else! These are the frakking Cylons attacking - - everybody left on the planet is going to be dead within ten hours! Now I have two seats waiting for me on a Bureau clipper which is going to leave in exactly forty-three minutes from Cap-A. I'm going to be on it. I came here to give you a chance to be on it, because I owe this to Paul. I personally don't care if you come or not, but you have to decide one way or the other. Right now."
"Let me go. You're hurting me."
Catherine loosened her grip, and stepped back. Daphne looked at the chaos swirling around her. She looked at the other doctors and nurses who were still working to save the mangled and burned people coming in the front door of the ER.
"These people..."
"Can't come. There isn't room."
It wasn't right. Daphne knew she wasn't going to go. She was going to stay in the hospital, working with these people until the end came. She didn't need Paul, or this woman Catherine to save her life. How arrogant they were, to think that she would run from this place. She decided to tell Catherine to go frak herself. But when she opened her mouth to speak, she heard herself say, "Let's go."
Daphne swam. There were lights above her, somewhere. She struggled towards them. She was naked, cold, wet. Dark liquid was all around her. If she could reach the surface, she thought, she could figure out where she was. She kept struggling, but her arms and legs were weighted down. With an effort of concentrated will, she managed to kick one leg-and she awoke. She realized that she really was naked, cold, and wet. Someone was shaking her.
"Ok, Daphne, can you hear me?" the dark skinned woman asked. "Drink this."
She was holding a cup to Daphne's lips. Daphne fumbled for it, the woman kept holding it, and together they tipped it back to allow Daphne to drink. It was cold water, and Daphne found herself draining the entire cup, then gasping for air. She was sitting on the tile floor of the bathroom, leaning against the wall. The tile felt freezing against her skin but she was too tired to move. The dark-skinned woman was crouching next to her, supporting her with an arm. The woman had put on a tank top, making Daphne even more conscious of her own nudity. The woman's arm felt so warm against her back. She found she was shivering.
"Its so cold." she managed.
"Yeah, you're clothes were ruined. We threw them in the incinerator. C'mon, can you get up? Lets get you to a shower."
"How did you know my name?"
The woman grinned, "You had a note pinned to your clothes. Doc Cottle wrote it. Said you were a triage doctor and whoever found you should give you food, water, and a rack. Guess he didn't trust you to find the way yourself."
"I can see why. I can barely keep my eyes open."
"So I noticed. I'm Dee."
Daphne was walking now with the woman's help. She felt foolish as she leaned against her, but she was too tired to move away and walk on her own. She tried to concentrate on maintaining her balance, but it was impossible. She sagged against Dee's shoulder as they shuffled across the room. They reached a tile wall that separated the sink area from the shower stalls. Dee left Daphne leaning against the cold tile while she quickly stepped into the nearest stall and turned on the taps. Then she came back to where she had left Daphne, dipped her shoulder and wrapped Daphne's arm around her neck, and pulled her away from the wall to a standing position. Dee's arm supported Daphne around her rib cage as she maneuvered her over to the rushing spray of the shower. Exhaustion was making it hard for Daphne to remained focused on her surroundings. The water was blessedly, deliciously warm. Her mind kept searching, lighting on trivial details, and moving on. The pattern of octagonal tiles on the floor. The flickering of the florescent light above the stall. The feeling of her Dee's arms pressed against her ribs. She couldn't help thinking how long it had been since another person had touched her naked skin.
"Ok, do you think you can stand?" Dee asked. "Alright, I guess not. Here, just hold onto the towel hook. This soap is supposed to be disinfecting."
Dee started to wash the dried blood and sweat from Daphne's body. It took all the strength Daphne could muster to simply stand under the rushing waters, holding onto the hook set in the wall while Dee's hands moved over her skin. Dee was quick and efficient - - if she was embarrassed by the task of washing Daphne, she didn't show it. For her part Daphne was past the point of embarrassment. Thought and emotions were fleeting. At this stage of exhaustion the only part of her mind that was still aware of its surroundings was some primal nub, which simply relished the feeling of warmth from the water rushing over her skin. When she was done, Dee pulled Daphne away from where she was leaning against the wall and helped her lower herself to the floor of the shower. She propped Daphne in a sitting position against the wall, and pointed the shower spray on her.
"Ok, just sit here a minute. I'm gonna find you something to wear."
Daphne waited under the warm water, in an odd mental state somewhere between lucidity and oblivion, watching the shimmer of the light as it refracted through the shower spray, completely unconcerned when this moment would end and the next would begin.
The whole way up on the transport from Caprica, Daphne remained silent, staring out the window at the unfolding holocaust. The awesome sight of the planet curving away beneath her as the ship gained altitude was spiked with unfamiliar lights and flashes, some far away, some uncomfortably close. It was only after the brief, sickening, dislocation of the first jump, when the last view of the dying planet disappeared that she turned toward Catherine sitting beside her and finally spoke.
"Where, exactly, is this ship heading?"
Catherine looked at Daphne with some irritation and said, "I have no idea."
"No idea? Didn't the Bureau give you a destination?" Daphne was trying to keep her voice low and level. Every single seat on the ship was taken, yet the cabin was eerily silent. No one was speaking above a whisper. Daphne half expected someone to start screaming-and if someone did, she thought that everyone else would immediately join them.
"The plan was to rendezvous with a military escort and head to one of the emergency rally points beyond the Olympus perimeter," Catherine replied quietly. "But since I don't see any other ships outside that window, I'm guessing that plan is being modified."
Catherine turned away from her and began studying her hands clasped in her lap. Daphne stared at her and waited. When she realized no more information was forthcoming, she was surprised to feel a rising sense of annoyance rather than panic.
"You haven't said two sentences to me since we left the hospital."
"I told you, I don't know where we are going."
"I don't give a frak where we are going!" Daphne hissed.
Catherine looked up from her lap and met Daphne's eyes.
"Ok," she said. "What do you give a frak about?"
"Let's start with Paul. Where is he?"
Catherine looked away. "I don't know where he is."
"But you must have spoken with him? He told you to come get me, didn't he?"
"He sent me a few messages early this morning through jump-relay text. Apparently, Gemenon got... it happened a few hours earlier there. He was warning me... and he asked me to find you."
"But why?" Daphne asked, her voice rising in volume and tempo despite her efforts to keep it level. "If he cared so Gods-damned much about my well-being..."
Catherine turned back to Daphne and cut her off, "Enough! Daphne I'm sorry. I just don't have the answers you want. I'm just as much in the dark as you."
Now it was Daphne who looked away, staring into the endless field of stars outside the window, wondering whether Paul was alive, and whether she would ever speak to him again. There's still a chance, she thought to herself, to get her questions answered. But then again, maybe she'll never know. Which would be worse?
Daphne lay awake, staring through the dim light at the ceiling of the narrow rack, only three feet above her. It was covered with pictures, postcards, and drawings from another woman's life. People she had never seen before smiled and beamed joyfully at Daphne through the gloom. She amused herself by giving them names inside her head, inventing their stories and their relationships. That one, the wiry kid with the wild hair was a boyfriend. The heavy set one at the bar-b-que with the tongs was a big brother. The mother was unmistakable. The Dad, well, he was only in the older pictures. But he wasn't dead, Daphne thought. No, the parents had split up after the kids were out of the house. He was living on his own, maybe with a new girlfriend? It was sad how people couldn't hold it together after accomplishing the thing that they had worked so hard for for so many years. But still, not as sad as if he had passed away. Daphne liked thinking he was retired to Scorpius. She didn't bother thinking about the fact that on Scorpius there was no one left alive.
The woman whose life to which the pictures belonged was sleeping soundly beside her. Dee had slipped into the rack quietly six hours ago at the end of her shift. Daphne had pretended to be sleeping and Dee hadn't said anything at all - - just pushed Daphne gently but firmly toward the inner wall to make some room, then turned on her side and was out within two minutes. Complete exhaustion. Daphne was familiar with the feeling. But it was different now. She had been lying in this rack for the last twenty-four hours. Soon, she knew, she would have to leave the warm darkness of the cocoon she had found and face the cold darkness outside.
Dee had decided to put Daphne in her own rack when it turned out that the only open rack in the pod was missing its sleep curtain.
"Its ok Red, I'm going on duty in fifteen minutes anyway. We're pulling huge shifts... so you'll have plenty of time with the rack to yourself."
Dee brought Daphne food twice during the day, taking ten minutes out of her mess time on each occasion. Daphne didn't have to pretend to be asleep during those visits, she was out cold. But when she did wake she was glad to find the plates waiting for her. So other than two quick trips to the bathroom, Daphne hadn't moved from her spot for the last day. It was like a long, endless dream, she thought, one where you knew that eventually your alarm would wake you, and call you out to face a day you were dreading. She knew the alarm was coming soon, but she didn't think about what would happen when it came. Her mind stayed with the people on the ceiling, and their unchanging joyful faces.
The first few moments after disembarking onto the Galactica flight deck were a confusing blur of activity and questions. Pointed, personal questions delivered with military precision and characteristic directness from the female sergeant that was handling the stream of women refugees.
"Name."
"Daphne Mullaney."
"Occupation."
"Medical doctor."
Each inquiry was delivered as a statement, with no rising intonation. Nothing that even hinted that not to answer was a possible course of action.
"Number of family members in your party."
"Ah, family? Just me. One."
"No children, then."
"Right, just me."
"Time since your last menstrual cycle."
"Excuse me?"
"Is there any possibility that you may be pregnant?"
"Uh, I see. No. It isn't possible."
"Are you sure?"
Daphne started to find herself annoyed.
"I'm a doctor. I understand the process. Yes, I'm sure."
The sergeant looked up from her clipboard and briefly met Daphne's gaze.
"These are routine questions, ma'am. They happen to be necessary."
Daphne took a deep breath to calm herself.
"Yes, I understand Sergeant. Its fine."
"Have you ever been a member or associated with a member of the Society for Machine Personality?"
"I've never even heard of that."
The sergeant again looked up at Daphne and met her eyes. This time she held her gaze for a few seconds, before looking back at her clipboard and starting to write again.
"You're a medical Doctor?"
"That's right."
"Are you experienced in emergency medicine or triage?"
"Actually, yes. I've worked in the ER for the last five years."
More writing on the pad in front of her followed. Then she ripped off the bottom part of the sheet of paper that she was writing on and handed it to Daphne.
"Show this to the soldier manning the checkpoint. We could use your help in the trauma ward."
"Of course."
Daphne took the paper and started to move in the direction that the sergeant had indicated. But before heading to the checkpoint she turned and scanned the queues. She was somewhat surprised to find herself looking for Catherine. Why am I bothering, she thought. Then she reminded herself that without Catherine's help, she would have died at the hospital, along with everyone else on Caprica. But there was something else too. Paul had made Catherine responsible for her. While this rankled Daphne, it perversely made her feel obligated to look out for Catherine's safety. This was a woman that Paul trusted and cared about, and as much as Daphne didn't like to admit it, that fact mattered to her.
Catherine was at the head of the line two tables to Daphne's left. She was finishing her conversation with the official there. She grabbed her paper, looked around through the milling throng of people and found Daphne looking at her. She came over to Daphne at a brisk clip.
"What did they tell you?"
"They need help in the trauma ward. I guess I'm going there now."
"That's good! It means you're being accepted as part of the crew. I'm being shunted off to one of the refugee camps. Its in one of the big cargo holds. Look, I don't know when I'll be able to see you..."
"I understand. Listen, I'll try to find you when I get some time to myself. Try to stay safe. And... thanks."
"It's ok."
"I'll make it up to you."
"Just stay alive."
And then Daphne was being shoved along toward the checkpoint by two burly deckhands who were trying to make space for more refugees to be processed. Catherine was being pulled in a different direction, toward a different checkpoint. Daphne faced forward, being careful not to trip on the exposed grating of the deck, and when she was able to glance back, Catherine was gone. Lost to Daphne's sight behind the swimming crowd of refugees, who all seemed to wear the same expression on their faces. An expression that managed to combine relief, exhaustion, and fear all at once.
Daphne entered the head attached to Barracks Twenty-seven with some trepidation, unsure what reaction she might encounter now that she was mostly conscious and alert. She hadn't seen Dee since the morning, over sixteen hours ago, and she wasn't sure whether she was welcome to another night of sharing a rack. But after a day in the triage ward, she was in desperate need of a shower, and she didn't know where else to get one. This time, she thankfully had clothes to change into, having procured some standard issue enlisted-person clothes from the purser. Two pairs of everything... they hadn't even asked her for identification, although the medical scrubs that she still wore acted as all the identification that she seemed to need on Galactica. When crew members saw a doctor or nurse coming, they made a hole.
Having clothes was a blessing, but Daphne was conscious now that both men and women were sharing the showers in the head, an aspect of military life that she found somewhat disconcerting. As a doctor she knew that people quickly became accustomed to nudity when it was a routine aspect of their daily life, but she still found herself embarrassed to be naked in the presence of so many strangers. She was thankful that the man in the shower stall next to her didn't even glance at her as she took her place in front of the nozzle. From farther down the line however she heard an unfamiliar male voice.
"Hey its Sleeping Beauty! We were wondering if you were ever gonna leave Dee's rack!"
Daphne looked down the line of stalls to her right. There was a skinny naked man leaning against the stall divider a few stalls down. His shoulders and upper chest were covered with a large tattoo of some kind of snake or serpent. The man in the stall next to her looked over for the first time, but he was looking past Daphne down the row of showers.
"Shut the frak up Pullman. She's a medic. She might be sewing your ugly face back together some day."
Daphne didn't know what to say, so she said nothing and busied herself with the soap, trying to finish as soon as possible.
"Is it getting better?" the man asked. Daphne quickly glanced around, saw no one and concluded he was speaking to her.
"Better?"
"Triage. Not as much blood on your scrubs today."
"Oh. Yes. The casualties have stopped coming yes. Today I was mostly giving meds. I didn't have any surgeries, so, you know, no blood."
"Well, that's a blessing. I saw you come in the other day. Looked like the Cylons had turned you inside out. Some of us thought you were gonna die right there on the floor, before we realized it wasn't your blood."
"Yeah, that was a bad few days."
"Well at least we aren't jumping now. I hear we've lost the Cylons. You said there weren't any new casualties today?"
"Uh, right. No pilots or marines anyway. There was a construction accident, some broken bones, but overall, it felt... kind of normal. Sounds crazy I know."
The man gave a short laugh.
"Ha. Yeah, the new normal."
It gradually dawned on Daphne that she was grinning. She was appalled. Was it really so easy to fall back into familiar patterns? It was as if her mind refused to believe that ten billion people had lost their lives in the last week. But what else could she do? If she truly accepted reality, how should she behave?
"I guess the new normal is having to sleep in half a rack." It was a different voice. Daphne turned and saw Dee looking at her. "I see you met Carson... what is it?"
She had tailed off noticing the look of confusion on Daphne's face.
"I'm sorry," Daphne said, "Its just that you're smiling."
Dee shrugged. "Yeah, I guess you haven't seen that in a while huh? I don't know, I guess I'm just glad you came back. It occurred to me after I left this morning, that you might just disappear somewhere, and I'd never know what happened. After finding you the way we did, I guess I just wanted to know that you were ok."
Now Daphne was smiling. "I'm ok. As ok as can be expected. Thank you Dee. And I'm sure I can find an empty rack to sleep in..."
"Forget it, Red!" Dee interrupted. "Its no bother... I was just joking. Its nice to have company once in a while. Don't get me wrong... I'll kick you out eventually. But there's no sense in frakking around the next few days looking for an empty rack. The officers have enough to worry about right now."
Daphne passed through the checkpoint at the refugee processing center with her papers and was disgorged into a sprawling maze of chaos. The narrow iron corridors of the aging warship were choked with people running in all directions. She tried to make her way according to the directions given to her by the staff sergeant, but soon realized she was hopelessly lost. Then it occurred to her that she could simply follow the wounded and maimed, since there was a seemingly never-ending stream of them. Eventually they would reach a triage station, and that was where Daphne could make herself useful.
But even with such a clear goal, Daphne found it hard going. She was tired and unsteady on her feet, and was constantly being jostled by groups of soldiers charging past her. People seemed to keep coming at her from the direction she wasn't looking.
Suddenly from behind her Daphne heard someone scream, "Make a hole!"
She was a second too slow in diving to the bulkhead on her right and was sent sprawling to the ground by a dull heavy impact directly behind her shoulder. Her collision with the floor jarred her wrists, and just as the pain was starting to register she heard the sharp slap of flesh hitting the ground just behind her, followed immediately by a guttural exclamation.
"Frak! Oh frak me! Gods damn-it, why can't you get out of the way?"
Daphne rolled quickly onto her side trying to distance herself from the figure writhing on the ground next to her. It was a long, thin blonde woman with a close-cropped military hair style wearing a blood splattered flight jacket, in obvious pain, clutching her left arm.
"Oh for fraks sake, you're killing me!"
Daphne instincts took over. She was on her knees quickly, with her hands on the woman's shoulders, trying to keep her still long enough to evaluate her injuries.
"Get the frak off of me Gods damn it!" the woman screamed, while her right arm flailed wildly. Her hand caught Daphne flush in the temple, but it was a glancing blow and only shocked her for a moment.
"Hold still! I'm a doctor! I'm trying to help you!"
"Some help! You think tackling me is helping?"
"Sorry, but you ran into me... remember?" From the way the woman was holding her left arm, Daphne was reasonably sure that the shoulder was separated. She needed to examine the area with her hands to be sure.
"Well, you were too frakking slow... FRAK! What the frak are you doing?"
"Try to relax. You've got a separated shoulder. Did this just happen now?"
"No, its been frakked-up since I landed."
"Not a smooth landing I take it? What else hurts?"
"Oh, are you a flight instructor too? Everything hurts."
"Any sharp pain? Any nausea? Is this tender?" Daphne was worried about internal injuries, and was using one hand to probe the woman's abdomen.
"No, it isn't tender, but that frakking hurts anyway."
"Ok, good, but this is going to hurt more." And with that Daphne put both thumbs to the protruding mass of the end of the woman's humerus and pushed. After a second of pressure the end of the bone slipped back into the shoulder joint with an audible pop, accompanied by the loudest expression of pain from the woman yet.
"Holy mother of shit!" But that was quickly followed by several deep strong breaths of relief as the woman flexed the joint back and forth.
"Oh Gods. Ok, yes, I think you got it. Gods that hurt."
"Yeah, well, it will still hurt. But it should be better. You should get on a strong course of anti-inflammatories. And try to take it easy, or its likely to pop back out."
"Take it easy?", the woman asked as Daphne was helping her back to her feet. "That's not likely, Doc. For either of us. But thanks, I owe you one. What's your name?"
"Daphne. Don't mention it."
"Easy enough, I won't mention it. I'm Kara. Now try to stay out of the way."
And with that, she strode purposefully away along the corridor in the direction she had been headed when she had collided with Daphne moments earlier. Daphne started walking in the same direction, unconsciously smoothing the front of her shirt. It was then that she realized that the front of her shirt was smeared with blood. She knew there would be more.
Daphne lay awake again in the sheltering darkness of the rack. The lights in the barracks were on their lowest setting, and the heavy curtain across the rack opening only allowed a faint glow to penetrate. In the relative quiet of fourth shift, every sound she could make out had a regular rhythm-the soft metallic rattle of the ventilation duct, the regular whispering exhalation of breath from her bunkmate, and deepest and slowest of all, the low, endless, incomparably heavy throbbing of Galactica's engines. At night, in the darkness, Daphne was grateful for that sound. She learned early on that if she weren't careful, and didn't keep a close rein on her thoughts, her mind would start to imagine the vast emptiness that surrounded her. The rack inside the barracks, inside the foc'sle, inside the ship, itself a microscopic hunk of metal and plastic hanging in the incomprehensible void. She felt like a fraction of a fraction of a ratio that was too small to even define. But somehow, the sound of the engines gave her mind something to settle on-a basis on which to build a perception of a world. If she didn't think too hard, the sound could keep the void outside at bay. The void inside was another matter.
The half-glow that seeped around the edge of the curtain allowed Daphne to just make out the images on the glossiest of the photo prints taped to the ceiling of the rack. Now her finger reached out to touch the face of a striking, dark-skinned woman of late middle-aged years. The photo showed her in profile, straight-backed, her head thrown back in abandoned laughter. Her cheekbones and forehead were high and proud, while her hair was gray, close-cropped and uncovered. Dee's mother. She was so proud when Dee joined the Colonial Fleet. Right now she's looking forward to Dee's next mail message, which comes every week like clockwork. She can't stop telling her friends all about Dee's latest commendation.
"You always come back to her..." Dee was awake, and was watching Daphne in the dim light.
"Oh, I'm sorry... I didn't know you were awake" Daphne felt ashamed to be caught so deeply involved in someone else's memories.
"No, it's ok. I just notice that you seem to like her picture. Its almost like you recognize her."
"No, it isn't that. Of course, I don't know her. It's just that I've been looking at her every night now for a week. I feel like somehow I'm learning her story."
Now Dee shifted onto her side, so she could look at Daphne directly. The two of them were both lying on top of the sheets, due to the warmth of the barracks. A thin sheen of perspiration made Dee's skin shine faintly in the gloom.
"Really? What story is that?"
Daphne was feeling increasingly self-conscious, but she somehow felt that she owed Dee an explanation. After all, these people were her family.
"I'm not sure. I guess that as I get to know you, I feel like I can work backwards and figure some things out about your family. You know, what your parents were like, how they treated you... that sort of thing. I mean, right now, they're the only photos I have to look at, so I want to know more about them."
Daphne glanced shyly in Dee's direction, not meeting her eyes, trying to quickly gauge her reaction. To Daphne's relief, Dee was grinning at her.
"Ok, sure. So what have you learned about her so far?"
"Well, let's see... she' kind... generous. She tried to take care of others before seeing to herself. She takes in all the neighborhood strays..."
Dee chuckled softly.
"Well you must have got it from somewhere," Daphne said, "Why not your Mom? You probably had stray dogs sleeping in your bed all the time as a girl."
"Oh no. No animals in the house I grew up in. And that isn't my Mother either."
"It isn't? Who is she?" Daphne felt as if something was shifting beneath her.
"My Aunt Ellie. My parents died when I was young. My brother and I grew up in her house. You want to know the funny thing about that picture? I almost never saw her laugh. I have no idea what was happening when that was taken, but she sure thought it was funny."
"She was strict?"
Dee snorted. "Yeah, you could say that. It wasn't possible to please her. She rode me and my brother every day. We didn't study enough, but then we studied too much. We were too quiet, we were too loud... it was always something. But you know, I get it."
"Get what?"
"She didn't want us. We ruined her life. She lost her sister and picked up two anchors in the same car accident. It wasn't too hard to figure out. She didn't exactly make a secret of how she felt."
"But you still keep her picture there?"
Dee looked at Daphne in the dim light, "Who else do I have? Who else will I ever have?"
It was a question with no answer. Daphne reached out and touched Dee's face. She stroked her cheek for a moment, feeling the damp residue of tears. Dee caught Daphne's hand by the wrist. She seemed about to speak, but instead she just pulled Daphne close to her across the narrow space between them. Suddenly pressed against her friend's body Daphne became acutely conscious of the thin fleet-issued tee shirts covering them, and the electric sensation where their bare skin came into contact. She reached around and encircled Dee with her right arm, her hand resting on the small of her back. She kissed Dee's face, slowly, savoring the salty flavor of tears and sweat, moving closer and closer to her mouth.
"Please...", Dee whispered, as she reached around Daphne and her fingers found the back of her neck. Then their lips found each other, and they didn't need any more words.
Two forms pressed tightly against one another in the middle of the tiny rack, in the center of the great ship, suspended in the vast incalculable void of space. For Daphne, amid the caresses and kisses and sighs, the void was filled, for a time.