Jenn Morrison heard the car dealer, Benno Kal, squeak. She turned to find a figure shambling into the car lot from the backways. She looked like an escaped inmate of an infectious disease quarantine unit or some kind of walking corpse. Her movements were stiff and each step seemed an act of will.

"What the hell?" Sean demanded, stepping around her. He would know if it was an infectious disease escapee—he worked at Huerta Memorial, after all. "Are you okay?" the words cut out firmly, despite it being pretty obvious that this person wasn't.

The woman shuffled forward a few more steps, little droplets of blood falling like poison tears.

"Relax," the corpse said firmly, in the tone of someone used to giving orders. "I'm Captain Shepard, and I just took a little tumble. My second should be here shortly."

By now she seemed to be panting for breath, and it was clear that something wasn't…right. She leaned heavily on the nearest vehicle—to the stifled groan of the volus car dealer. It was an expensive car, sure, but blood came off, right?

"Captain?" Sean moved forward cautiously.

"I'm okay…" Shepard answered softly. Then, to Jenn's horror, the woman collapsed, sliding off the vehicle to land heavily on the ground.

Sean was there in a minute, hesitating before straightening the woman's limbs and feeling her head. "If this place has a medkit, go get it. Jenn, call C-Sec. this looks pretty bad…" Then, when the volus hesitated, "Move!"

"My name is Jenn Morrison, I'm at Cision Motors…" Jenn said slowly, watching as Sean snatched the medkit away from the volus and hastily opened it. He cleaned the blood from his hands, then put gloves on. "Captain Shepard just staggered in…she looks pretty bad."

"Hey! I need space!" Sean snarled as more patrons and associates began to come see what the fuss was about.

"The peanut gallery stays ten feet back!" a new voice snapped so firmly that people responded before ascertaining who was speaking.

Dressed in Alliance fatigues and carrying a medic's bag, the soldier took a knee beside Shepard and pulled gloves on.

"Captain Shepard?"" the operator asked. "Hold one moment."

"This is Commander Bailey. You say you have Captain Shepard?" A new voice, grizzled-sounding asked.

"Yes. My-my husband Sean is…he's a nurse at Huerta, he's seeing to her now…and we've got an Alliance responder, too."

"Put him on. The Alliance guy, not yours."

"Um, ex-excuse me?" Jenn called diffidently.

The Alliance soldier looked up and she had the vague notion that she'd seen him somewhere before.

"Commander Bailey wants to talk to you."

The soldier leaned close enough for the uplink to catch his voice. "Bailey, it's Alenko. My hands are busy. Get a car down here."

That explained why he looked familiar.

"Good. Look, tell him to stay put. It'll take…ten minutes. And I'm setting a speed record." With that, Bailey hung up.

Jenn moved to crouch beside Sean. "Commander Bailey says ten minutes…is…will she…?"

"She's been hurt worse," Alenko observed dryly as he continued smearing medigel on the worst of the various rents on Shepard's skin. "If we've got the worst of the bleeding stopped, we should get her out of sight."

"No kidding," Sean agreed. "Oi! You've got an office for signing deals, right?" he demanded of the volus who'd been trying to sell them a car when Shepard staggered onto the lot.

Alenko flared blue-purple, the cloud wrapping itself around Shepard. The biotic field obviously took her weight because he immediately lifted her as if she weighed less than a feather.

A nasty patch of smeared blood marked where Shepard had lain on the ground.

When Jenn shook herself out of her shocked stupor, she found Sean relegated to the position of observer while Alenko frowned at Shepard. She still seemed a bit…disoriented…but she was conscious again and sitting up.

"—the stupid fish tank," Shepard slurred in what was as close to anger as she could probably muster. "Who the hell blows up a fish tank as part of plan?"

Jenn glanced to Sean, who shrugged.

"Good thing you're off the line—this is going to slow you up for a while," Alenko announced.

Shepard groaned. "I keep telling people…vacations are bad voodoo…"

"Well it'll make Hackett happy that you're going to be taking it slow for a week or so," Alenko answered as he continued wrapping her left wrist.

Shepard shook her head, apparently disgusted with the idea.

When Jenn glanced to Sean again, she found him studying Shepard with a grim expression. It was the same expression he wore when he was worried about a particular patient.

"I think your man is right, Captain—a couple weeks off the line are probably best," Sean observed.

Shepard twitched, as if flinching away from the idea. "I'm okay—just a little knocked around." And to prove it she tried to push herself into a position from which she could stand up.

Jenn covered her mouth. There was something awful in watching the soldier, battered and torn as she was, trying so hard to get back on her feet. The lack of progress in the endeavor frustrated Shepard until the soldier finally let herself fall back to her seated position, slumping over labored breaths of exertion.

"Look at this," Alenko said firmly, holding up Shepard's hand so the woman could see the shakes wracking it. "We're not in a warzone. Dial back."

Shepard looked away from him as if deeply troubled—so deeply troubled that she didn't see the equally troubled look etching her comrade's face.

The increasingly uncomfortable scenario was broken up by the arrival of C-Sec.

Jenn gritted her teeth together as she and Sean were ushered out of the office. Her eyes instinctively found the blood on the ground and smeared across the car Shepard had leaned against.

She had never imagined that Captain Shepard might exist in a world where there was no such place as 'not a battlefield.'