The Wrong Button
By Laura Schiller
Based on Star Trek: Voyager
Copyright: Paramount
He knew instantly that this was no ordinary sickbay visit. Lieutenant Torres was striding into his office with a face that could melt duranium, leading a subordinate by the back of her uniform collar. The crewman, a light-skinned, black-haired Bajoran woman, was red in the face and unsteady on her feet. They reminded him of Charlene, dragging Jeffrey home from that Klingon nightclub in the small hours of the morning, almost as furious with her favorite child (for once) as his father.
A pang went through him as he thought of his wife and son; the last time he had seen them was at his daughter's deathbed. Though he did not regret taking Lieutenant Paris' advice and continuing the program, he could not think of that moment without pain.
Resolutely, he forced them from his mind and looked up from his reports. "What seems to be the problem?" he asked.
"Celes here has something to say to you," Torres snarled, pushing the crewman forward. "Go on."
Celes swallowed hard, braced herself against the Doctor's desk, and looked down at him with wide eyes swollen from crying.
"I'm … sorry," she sobbed. "I … I didn't mean to … "
"Didn't mean to do what, Crewman?" asked the Doctor, moving his stack of padds away from her falling tears. He spared a moment of regret that Kes had already retired for the night; the gentle Ocampa was much more suited to cases like this.
"It was an accident … I was clearing out the memory files on, on the holodeck and … I must've pushed the wrong button somehow, I don't know … I didn't mean to, I swear by the Prophets, it just … "
Celes swiped at her streaming eyes and nose with both hands, unable to speak, her breath coming in short, desperate bursts.
"You're hyperventilating," the Doctor noted clinically. "Take slow, deep breaths and try to calm down."
"Kahlesste kaase, Crewman, would you stop that?" Torres threw up her hands, marched out of the glass-fronted room into the larger sickbay, and came back with a replicated box of tissues.
"What the girl is trying to say," the engineer added, shoving Celes into a chair and the tissue box into her hands, "Is that she deleted Doctor's Family Program Beta Rho."
The Doctor glanced up sharply, not believing what he had heard.
"She – what?"
"I'm so sorry," Celes whispered, half hidden behind a tissue.
"I spent most of my shift trying to restore the program," Torres added more softly, "But it's gone, Doctor. They're gone."
She rubbed her forehead ridges and looked down at him with an awkward sort of sympathy, lost for words now that her anger had run its course. Celes blew her nose, the sound exploding into a silence so charged that she jumped with guilt at having broken it. Her hairstyle was coming apart in damp little wisps. The Doctor's sensory subroutines registered all this at a distance, as if from lightyears away. He was numb.
Were his emotional subroutines malfunctioning? Shouldn't he feel something?
He could not bring himself to care.
It's gone, Doctor. They're gone.
His wedding anniversary was coming up in two weeks. He had already bribed Mr. Paris with replicator rations to help design a beautiful five-star restaurant for Charlene; he was hoping it might lift her spirits a little after what they had gone through. And he still needed to make peace with Jeffrey, to apologize for trying to dictate his friendships, but also to remind him that healing a wound could be just as honorable (if not more so) than inflicting one.
And Belle … oh God, Belle. He had meant to go to her funeral.
They're gone.
"They can't be … "
He did not realize he had said this out loud until he saw Celes' head hang even further, and felt Torres lightly touch his shoulder.
"I, uh … I could help you recreate the program if you want," the engineer offered. "It wouldn't be exactly the same, but … "
This was the first thing to break through his numbness, unmercifully jolting him back to reality. He could feel again – and wished that he could not.
"Replace my family?" He slapped her hand away. "Absolutely not!"
Torres' bobbed brown hair swung forward in a respectful nod.
The Doctor grabbed his medical tricorder, jumped to his feet, and began to prowl in a circle around Crewman Celes. She watched him scanning her with infuriating meekness, putting down another tissue on his desk. Somehow, while he had been … distracted, she had used up several more of them. Those crumpled balls of paper, soaked with tears and mucus, piling up on his perfectly clean desk, suddenly filled him with disgust.
"What's the matter with you, Crewman?" he demanded. "How does a - " He shot a glance on her collar and found a pip instead of a bar, which made him even angrier. " – a fully trained Starfleet officer make such an elementary mistake? Are you ill? Posessed by an alien? Mentally deficient?"
"So I've been told," Celes replied, with a crooked little smile more pitiful than her tears.
"According to this," he snapped his tricorder shut, "You seem to be suffering from nothing but sleep deprivation. Do you mean to tell me that this unpardonable lapse was caused by a late night playing pool?"
Celes flushed an even deeper shade of red. For the first time, something like pride or self-defense flashed in her gray eyes.
"It's my friend Billy," she said. "Crewman William Telfer. He's the one who can't sleep. He hears the Macrovirus buzzing outside his quarters. Reading Akorem's Epics over the comm is the only thing that calms him down. He saved me from failing my exams at the Academy. It's the least I can do."
Torres cursed under her breath at the mention of the Macrovirus, and the Doctor was tempted to do the same. Two months ago, an infestation of pathogens capable of growing to the size of small horses had nearly wiped out the crew. Thinking of the creatures' slimy brown skin, grasping tentacles and stabbing stingers would give him nightmares if he were capable of sleeping. He imagined Billy Telfer waking up in a cold sweat, reaching blindly for his commbadge, holding on to Celes' soft Bajoran voice as his lifeline in the dark.
Soothing a man's nightmares like that was something Belle might have done, if she had lived to grow up.
I love you, Daddy … even if you did make a mess of things.
Seeing Tal Celes in that light made it impossible to remain angry. This, after all, was what Paris had meant by the idea that sharing their pain had made Voyager's crew into a family.
"Ah yes," he said. "Mr. Telfer. One of my most frequent visitors. Has it never occurred to him to come to Lieutenant Tuvok or Commander Chakotay for counselling?"
"He's a very private person," said Celes, bristling in Telfer's defense. "He doesn't want to expose his pagh to the senior officers, and who can blame him?"
"I can," the Doctor retorted, rolling his eyes. Torres, standing behind Celes' chair with folded arms, rolled hers in silent agreement. "Especially when his rampant hypochondria injures the health of another crewmember. Tell him from me that if he must have nightmares, he might as well come to me to get scanned for whatever disease he imagines, and a sedative to boot. I don't get tired. And I, unlike you, have the programming to handle people like him. There can be too much of a good thing, Ms. Celes, believe it or not. Including compassion."
Celes' face lit up at the implied praise, as well as with relief for the sake of her friend. Red nose, tearstains and all, she was beautiful when she smiled.
"So if you have any sympathy for your shipmates," Torres added, with a touch of morbid humor, "You'll keep your comms with Telfer to a reasonable limit, get as much sleep as you can, and pay attention to which buttons you push. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Lieutenant. Absolutely." Celes' nod to Torres was so deep as to be almost a bow.
"Oh, and Doctor … "
Torres reached into the pocket of her lab coat and took out a shiny green chip, the sort used to store a holoprogram. She placed it on his desk with careful fingers
"It's a - a memorial service," she said. "Tom helped us program it."
"The prayer arch was my idea," Celes added shyly. "I know it's not a human custom, but … "
The Doctor picked up the chip and turned it over in his hands. Such a small thing to carry so much, and such a strange gesture from the woman who had once paused his family in mid-conversation because they weren't "real" enough for her. Not to mention the woman who had killed them with a push of the wrong button.
"You do realize that, by normal Starfleet standards, the two of you are being absurd," he said bitterly. "A memorial service for three holo-characters?"
Celes reached out a trembling hand across his desk. Her touch on his arm was light as a moth's wing, and her voice when she spoke was, once again, close to tears.
"You saved Billy from the Macrovirus," she said. "You saved his life, Doctor, and everyone else on this ship as well. And … and you love your family. If they're real to you, they're real to us."
"Logic isn't her strong suit, as you can see." Torres patted her subordinate's shoulder. "But she's right. Don't … don't ignore this, Doctor. Don't just push it away. While you're busy taking care of other people's problems, don't forget to take care of your own."
Celes, who had done exactly that, nodded ruefully.
"Better clean this up, Crewman." Torres gestured to the pile of tissues on the desk. "I think we should leave the Doctor some privacy."
"Yes, Lieutenant."
The Bajoran wiped her eyes one last time, gathered the tissues, and stood up to carry them back to the replicator for recycling.
As she left the office, Torres leaned over and told the Doctor, sotto voce: "I think I'll talk to Chakotay about getting her transferred. To Astrometrics, maybe? Somewhere she can't do as much damage."
"That may not be a bad idea."
As the tissues vanished in a blue glow of energy, Torres moved to follow Celes out of Sickbay. Halfway to the door, the Bajoran turned to glance over her shoulder.
The doors slid open and closed again. He did not look up from the memorial program in his hands.
He never felt more like a hologram than at times like this. There should be something more to mourning for the people he'd created; the living embodiments of all his hopes and dreams, who had become so much more human to him than even he had expected. Charlene, dark-eyed and golden-haired, fiercely loving and loyal, and yet never afraid to call him out when he was wrong. Jeffrey, with his hair teased up into that ridiculous bush, searching for honor and courage in all the wrong places, finally finding it at his little sister's hospital bed. And Belle, her blue eyes looking up at him with such innocence and trust, facing her own death as bravely as any warrior.
Lost to a sports injury, a randomized behavior algorithm, a clumsy, sleep-deprived crewman's push of the wrong button. There should be something physical involved.
He should be in pain, the sensation of heartbreak he had heard about in operas and ship's gossip. He should be in tears, like Celes. He pulled a tissue out of the box, remembering the time he had programmed himself with a cold in order to empathize with his patients. There was no burning in his eyes now, no catch in his throat and nose.
Nothing.
He would run the program later, when he had the mind to appreciate his crewmates' thoughtfulness as he should. Right now, nothingness welcomed him.
"Computer," he said. "Deactivate EMH."