Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Trails of red leave stains of bronze on flushed yellow fabric. Your hands pump as fast and hard as they can against your patient's chest, but he isn't responding and your arms wear out way too fast. It's been only seconds and you lash out at the nurse that relieves you. Though she doesn't say anything, her posture tenses and you know you need to take a break and try to calm down. A minute pass before she swaps out and someone else takes her place.
The nurse barely has a chance to nod before you take another shift. It's a lost cause, your patient's heart won't pump again. When significantly inferior hands finally wrench you away again, you swear.
"Time of death…" you say, but the rest of it swims in your ears. You can't focus. You've announced this kind of thing plenty before, but now you can't. When the nurse prompts you to finish the recording, you instead have her redo it in her own voice.
When you report casualties at the end of the month, Ezri takes you aside. She asks how you're doing and you can tell her you're coping. She makes a point of noting the unusually high number of fatalities and you spare her a scathing look. She notes that somewhere in her analytical mind and you want to shout, to hit something. All you see is red and before you realize what's happening, her arms wrap themselves around you.
You tell her again. Your most recent patient was a passing acquaintance, and the first one in the infirmary since you can't remember when that wasn't injured some way in due part to the war. He was an ensign, barely out of his adolescence, and if you had some way of knowing him beforehand, you know you could have prevented his suicide.
For all the advances humanity has made, you think there should be some way to prevent this sort of thing, but in the end you suppose that for all your talents, there are some things you'll never be able to change.
Ezri listens, having long since stopped trying to psychoanalyze and never disputes or argues or even verify what you say. When you stop talking and there's a moment when it all kind of sinks in, Ezri's face relaxes into a soft smile, softer than the plastered one from before. Now it's genuine and full of a dozen kinds of sorrow. Her eyes sparkle just a little and her back arches as she leans in and assures you one more time that you never could have known.
You've been over this and you know that's not what really bothers you, what really hurts. Of course it wasn't your fault. You tried everything, you're used to trying everything and then they die on you anyway. But you give up trying to explain to her, because she won't ever be able to understand. You don't want her to understand, not this kind of self-hate.