The Doctor woke with a start, raising her head from the desk, her heart pounding. At the door of her office stood Nurse Ogawa. "Doctor, we've just exited the anomaly. We thought you would want to know." Dr Crusher stood, shaking the cobwebs from her mind.
"Update me. Any changes?" She asked briskly, annoyed at herself for falling asleep at her desk, though that few hours had been the only sleep
She's gotten in the last two days.
"No, sir," Nurse Ogawa replied. "We've started withdrawing the stasis from the affected crew members, per protocol, and everything is going as expected. Some of the others have tolerated the exit very well and are looing forward to the medication taper. We wanted to wait for you to get started."
"And Troi?" she asked anxiously.
"No change," the nurse replied. "But no worsening of her vital signs. It's probably too soon to see any effect, according to what you presented yesterday."
"Okay. Good." The Doctor began gathering her thoughts and prioritizing her actions and deciding what to delegate.
She assigned a team to manage each of the patients, the ones coming out of stasis and the ones on medication, leaving herself to manage Troi herself. Reviewing the past few hours of data, she took a deep breath. It wasn't horrible. Her heart rate and blood pressure were high but stable. Her core temperature is was also still high but had dampened a little after the medications. They had been out of the anomaly for less than an hour. Temperature drop of 0.2 degrees and Heart rate down from 138 to 135. To small to say if it was a trend but promising. As soon as they saw a clear trend toward normal they could think about withdrawaling some of the medications.
Several hours later she was pleased so see a distinct trend back toward normal. She left Sick Bay leaving her team with specific instructions and headed to her quarters for a quick change of clothes. She rounded a corner in the corridor and almost ran into the Captain.
"Doctor!" He said surprisingly. "I was just coming to see you." He glanced around, making sure the area was private enough. "Anything to update?"
"Yes," she replied excitedly. "Deanna's has a very good response. We're moving slowly towards normal and haven't had any hiccups yet. She's not totally out of danger but we are all optimistic."
The Captain felt a weight off of his shoulders that he didn't know he was carrying. He rarely realizes how often and to what degree he relied on his Counselor. The worry for her was intense. "Excellent. Keep me informed."
Four hours later, pleased with the progress being made, the doctor again wrapped up her work, debriefed with the medical team and hurried out the door of Sick Bay. This time though, she carried a small medkit, and instead of heading to her own quarters, she heading towards Riker's.
Commander Riker responded to the chime, inviting in the doctor.
"Hi Doctor," Riker said cheerfully. What can I help you with?"
"Hi Commander. Thanks for letting me meet you here, instead of in sick bay," Dr Crusher replied, opening the medkit with brisk efficiency. She flipped open a medical tricorder and started scanning the man in front of her. "How are you feeling? Any headaches? Dizziness?"
"No, nothing," Riker replied. "I feel fine."
"Nothing out of the ordinary at all?" The doctor pressed.
"No, not at all," Riker stated again. "What exactly are you looking for? Or hoping for?"
"Hoping for?" Doctor Crusher asked. "I'm hoping for nothing. But I am checking all your neurotransmitter levels. Now that we are past that anomaly, everyone's levels are returning to their baseline. I wanted to check to see if yours also, will return to baseline, whatever that may be." The doctor gave him a knowing look.
"And?" He asked, "what does it show?"
"Everything just as it's expected. Your levels are right where they should be for an ordinary human," the doctor replied.
"Will..." she began. "Would you be willing to complete a few more tests for me? In sick bay. With Deanna? After she recovers, of course." The doctor asked hesitantly.
Commander Riker looked at her with eyes slightly squinted. "Are these medically necessary tests, Beverly? Or tests to satisfy your curiousity?"
A bit sheepish, as if she knew she'd been caught, the doctor replied "Well, they would help me better care for you, and Deanna, and possible future patients, but no. They are not medically required."
"I am not going to be your guinea pig, Beverly!" He stated firmly. Not quite angry but not far from it. "And Deanna? There is no way she'd stand for that and you know it!"
"But Will! You have to understand! This kind of thing has never been documented before. It's technically impossible! For a human to have a telepathic, a TWO WAY telepathic relationship with a person who is not even a telepathic herself? How does it work? How did it happen? We may never know if we don't take this opportunity now. Both you and Deanna are telepathic blank slates, but only for the next few hours! It's our only chance!" Beverly gave him and imploring look.
Riker stood like stone in front of her. "And yet here we are" he said with a note of finality that no one would question. "Unless there are any other medically required tests or interventions, I think we are done here?"
"Yes, of course commander," the doctor replied. She didn't want to push it. She was already on the edge of officer impudence, if not outright impropriety. She put away the medkit quickly and made her way to the door.
"Doctor?" Riker asked quickly, standing up and turning back toward her. He just had a thought that chilled him to the bone. "Beverly?" He started again. "Are you going to send all this in a report to Starfleet? Are we going to have multiple science officers and commanders breathing down our necks requiring explanations and ordering us to undergo experiments to satisfy some deranged quest for knowledge?"
"Are you asking me to falsify medical records, Commander?" She asked prickily, still a little defensive over how her suggestion was received.
Riker groaned in his head. This took a bad turn quickly.
"Beverly, look, off the record okay? I would never ask you to lie, or be dishonest, either as your commanding officer or your friend. I just ask that you be judicious and perhaps cautious? as you submit all these reports. Honestly, we're only here because of decisions, probably bad decisions, I made years ago. I don't want anyone, especially Deanna, to suffer any more than they already have."
The doctors eyes softened as she looked at the man. Oh, she wanted to know the backstory of her two friends even more than ever. What was his bad decision? To have Whatever they had? To leave her? His wish to NOT have whatever relationship they had? "Of course, Will. I'll be truthful and vague as possible. After all, technically we have no proof of anything other than one strange reading on your initial medical scan that day. It may come back to haunt us, like decisions do, but I won't do any editorializing in the official report." She gave him a small smile.
He nodded his consent. "Let me know as soon as she's up for visitors. We have some things to...discuss," He ended lamely.
"I imagine so," the doctor murmered. "She should be discharged in a day or so. I'll keep you updated."
Back in sick bay, Dr Crusher stood absorbed in her work. Glancing up now and again to watch Troi, who was still lying on the bed with her eyes closed, either sleeping or unconscious. The next time she glanced up, she was surprised to see Deanna's eyes wide open, watching her.
"Deanna! You're awake!" She said, hurrying to the bedside. Deanna's forehead creased and eyes closed as she made an effort to move and sit up, a move which she quickly abandoned.
"Beverly..." Troi said. It was part question, part statement.
Crusher was instantly relieved. Her mind was at least partially intact. "Don't move. Don't try to sit up. Just lie there." The doctor said it with kindness, but with a steely ring to it that no one would question.
"I feel awful," Troi said simply, acquiescing to the order to lie still.
"I'm not surprised," the doctor replied. "Your body's been running the equivalent of a marathon for about 5 days straight now. It's going to need some time to recover." She paused, trying to evaluate the wisdom of pushing further now or waiting. "How much do you remember?"
The small woman on the bed furrowed her brow, creasing her eyes slightly yet again. "Not much. It's all very vague and very unpleasant. It was very, very hot." She paused as she tried to organize what she knew into coherent thought. "I remember being in my quarters, and having a horrible headache and a fever. I remember talking to..." unsure of how much she should share with the doctor, or how much the doctor knew, she paused... "someone, but not after that. I remember wanting someone to help, to stop it, but nothing was working." She paused again. "Then nothing. I don't remember anything after that. I don't remember coming here. How long have I been here?" the woman asked fearfully. She was beginning to panic. She again tried to sit up, to move her body in space, and again she fell back onto the bed, her body not cooperating with the demands of her mind. She gave the doctor a pleading look. "What's happened?"
"Deanna," the doctor replied, placing her hand on her patient's shoulder. "Relax, just wait a moment." You didn't need to be an empath to feel the rising anxiety in the small woman. "Everything is going to be fine. It's all getting better." As Deanna relaxed a bit, closing her eyes with a furrowed brow, the doctor went on "We brought you here three days ago."
"Three days!..." Troi interrupted. Dr Crusher held up her hand gesturing in a wait motion.
"All the interventions we tried while we were in the anomaly...none of them worked, at least not well. As soon as we realized how serious things were getting we had you transferred here for complete sedation and higher doses of medications." She paused a moment, trying to gauge if the Counselor understood the seriousness of the situation. "Very high doses. Deanna...You were very ill. Very, very ill. Your body was shutting down. We did everything we could."
"Beverly, what are you saying?" the Counselor asked, feeling her anxiety spike again.
"I'm say, Dee, you were very sick and we all did all we could, Geordi even modified the shields, but we don't know what the long term effects will be. So far your physiology appears to be recovering very well. I was worried about brain damage given the long-standing fever, but that seems fine. How is your empathy? Can you sense anything?"
Deanna thought about that, a small frown on her face. She focused with her mind. Normally clear senses felt foggy, muddy, like blurry vision of the mind. "It's there, but it's not normal. I can't get a handle on it. Like it slips out of my grasp." She paused, focusing. This time she specifically tried to reach Will. She could tell he was there, but nothing more. She let out a little sigh of effort and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she sought after the doctor's face. She found it, the doctor's blue eyes looking down at her with concern.
"It's okay, Deanna. We have you on medication still. I didn't want to stop all of the telepathy-blocking agents at once until I knew how you were reacting. We've started a taper. Your senses should, if everything goes as planned, come back over the next two days. It's a good sign, Deanna. Everything is looking good, but you, and knowing you, I know what this is going to mean, you are going to need to be patient."
Deanna sighed and closed her eyes. She took in what Beverly said, but wasn't of a mind to process it or argue. Everything hurt, she was nauseous, her head pounded every time she tried to move. She'd just lay here and wait for things to get better. She tried again half heartedly to feel for Will but again got the feeling she was trying to swim through a thick fog with nothing to hold on to or orient herself. She gave us and soon slipped into a light an restless sleep.
The doctor, still concerned, continues to watch her friend, for her own benefit, then stepped away back to her work.