I refuse to believe Gaila died.
It's late at night, halfway through the shift, and the evening only seems longer if anything. Licia turns away from checking the readings on the last regen monitor only to jump slightly at the unheard stranger who's standing right behind her.
His face is drawn like he's so tired he's about to fall down, his blond hair hangs limply, and his eyes are dull. They flare with just a hint of a spark as he stares at her, before they die down again. The quick flash of playfulness in his eyes is quickly replaced, with a world-weariness, like he the person his could be is crushed by the duty and memory of what he actually is.
She thinks recognises him, but instead of the name she expects he gives her a different one. "Hi, I'm Sam." He says the words a bit too practiced like he's thought about this a million times before he says it.
She's about to call him on what's she's suspects is a lie, but he's already looking past her trying to see past partitions and staring in the distance like he's searching for someone. He seems nervous now, and shifts slightly before asking quietly. "Listen, uh...Is a woman called Gaila here? She's Orion, with really vivid red hair...somebody said she survived."
He says that last line like he's asking for too much and begging just this one time to get it.
Licia remembers an Orion being brought in with one of the shuttle loads of survivors that had been transported back from the wreckage of the doomed fleet vessels. But the Orion is just one face among many. She can't remember if the woman is one of the bodies lying in stasis chamber or if she's been shipped out to another facility, or if she's in one of the rooms somewhere in the facility. And it really isn't her place to find out either.
"I'm sorry, unless you're related to her we really don't give out that sort of information. It's a patient privacy issue if she is here."
His voices is seconds away from desperate and pleading and for a moment she thinks he's going to say something crazy like he is related to her. He has that look about him as if he could spill a outright lie with a straight enough face that almost anybody could believe him. Instead he surprises her with the truth. 'I'm Captain James T. Kirk and she's gotta be here..."
For some reason it doesn't' even occur to her to ask to see ID, she takes his word at face value, just like she accepted his lie without question. Now that she knows for sure that she's facing a legend walking in the flesh and not just the errant day dream of a bored nightshift nurse, she shifts uncertainly before smiling hesitantly. "Well, Sir...I-I mean captain, I really can't ..."
He reaches out grasping her wrists and stilling her words and his eyes meet hers. 'Please I need to see her."
He holds her gaze a moment longer and then releases her wrist an Licia pulls back her heart quickening at the memory of something in his eyes. She knows without him even needing to say it that this visit isn't just about a senior officer checking up on a subordinate, it's something much more.
Something makes her draw a breath and then her finger tap across the computer screens calling up records. It take a minute of search and then she has the answer. "She's in room 345 A, this building actually...I'll show you."
"Thanks." Kirk s gives her the hint of a smile and as she turns around she can hear his footsteps following behind.
They arrive at a room that's empty except for a walls of equipment and monitors and a biobed with one still women lying in the centre. Licia recognises the woman now. She remembers now. The Orion woman was brought in badly burned, and barely alive. Even now the woman isn't do so well, but the doctors think she'll pull through. She tells Kirk as much and he gives a brief nod, this time giving her a genuine although weary smile as thanks before he steps into the room.
She knows she should just leave and let him visit in peace but there's something about him that makes her curous. Kirk's a legend around campus even before he saved Earth from Nero. He's an enigma and she feels a desperate need to see how this Orion Girl fits into the puzzle. Is she a past fling, a friend, a colleague...she feels that somehow all her guesses are wrong.
There's a cubby just to the side of the room allowing a full view inside, it's meant to serve as an observation port for clinical staff without disturbing patients, but Licia has another use for it. She feels like a voyeur as she watches Kirk stand at the bio bed and then just stare down at the woman lying inert there.
Abruptly he moves reaching out and running a hand down the side of the Orion's cheek, its just the ghost of a touch as gentle as a lover's caress. His hand trails down until it rests on her palm, and as she watches he whispers something. Once...twice...three times..."I'm sorry." She can't hear the words but the movements of his mouth are obvious. His shoulders shake with what she imagines are unshed tears as he takes her in. The burns on her face still slowly regenerating and perhaps never to be healed, the bio-leg attached to her own where her original limb was too damaged to be salvaged and the scars crisscrossing her arms where she worked to pull others from the wreckage of a burning engineering room before being almost trapped under metal herself. And finally the injuries she sustained surviving with the other crew before Starfleet rescued them. She's read the carefully worded reports and knows that part will be hushed up. She's Orion and her doses of pheromone suppressors were found to be low, her fault...that's what written in the cold clinical language by some fleet doctor for which she is just a nameless face.
Kirk stands there his hand resting on hers and his shoulders shaking in what Licia is sure would be tears if she could just see his face. After what seems like hours he leans closer and kisses her first on the forehead and then on the lips. He remains leaning over her like he's taking in her scent .
There's a memory tickling at the back of her mind and it finally comes to her...it's the Orion woman, Gaila's last words before she succumbed to unconsciousness. She had been asking about someone...asking about the man now straightening up and leaving her room.
Licia barely breaths as she stays in the shadows but it makes no difference. Somehow he seems to know she's there. "Can I ask you a favour?" He's staring directly at her and so she steps out feeling a bit foolish at being caught.
"Sure." The words come out a little too quickly from her mouth but he doesn't seem to notice.
"Don't tell her I was here."
"Why?" The question spills from her mouth before she an stop it...But he doesn't seem angry at the question. Instead the look on his face is like he's walking away from everything. She follows up stammering in the face of the harsh tired expression he gives her. "She calls out your name sometimes , it might help her to know someone she cares about came to see her."
Kirk starts to walk away and then he stops and turns back. His voice is hoarse. "She cares about me...but I don't know how to care about her..." He swallows and she sees one of his hands tighten into a fist. "She was supposed to be assigned to the Enterprise not the Farragut...if it wasn't for me she wouldn't have been on that ship...She didn't deserve to be used and I don't deserve her."
Then he's gone and Licia stares after him.
She turns back to the Orion woman...she doesn't know all the details but she does know one thing.
She'll keep her word.
Because to do anything else seems like it would just hurt them both more.
Thanks for reading!