She'd had a long exhausting day and come home to find him already tucked up and fast asleep, Winston on night watch, ever ready should he be needed through the night. She'd eaten a light meal, showered, then collapsed onto the sofa relieved the day was over.
In truth, she was exhausted. Her work was challenging, demanding, invigorating, but that coupled with Jean-Luc's extended convalescence, left her little time to herself. Not that she resented anything about her new existence. She, they, had waited years for the right moment, now that it was here, she wasn't going to worry about how it was less than ideal circumstances that had brought it about. He was still so sick, she wondered when his fight would come back, hoped to see even a glimpse of it each morning when he woke. So far, that spark lay dormant, exhausted beyond belief.
She put a call in for Deanna aboard the Enterprise. They were light years away but she missed her friend. She knew she would return her message, knew that this kind of communication would have to do until the ship came a little closer, just another quirk of life in Starfleet; you didn't always get to have your friends at the end of a call. She wondered what they were doing. The ship kept to Starfleet HQ time so she figured Deanna would be settling in for a good night's sleep herself just about now. Maybe she would be sitting down to drinks in Ten Forward, watching a late concert with Will… she missed them all deeply.
She crept quietly into the bedroom. Jean-Luc lay sprawled on his back in the middle of their bed, one arm flopped over the edge, and the other way over on her side. He'd spent years sleeping alone... He was fast asleep, breathing deeply, a slight expression of pain wrinkling his brow, jaw set tight. Not a good day then.
She could always tell. Winston had given his daily report. Nothing too extreme but he had been uncomfortable all day according to Banda, agitated, cranky. He never knew what to expect, some days were good, increasingly numerous thankfully. Then there were days that brought him to his knees. Long days where fever, pain, and exhaustion claimed him. Still, more often than not, she would leave him asleep, and return home to find him asleep once again. Some days he would manage to be awake, she would manage to get home at a reasonable hour. Others when they existed in parallel worlds that failed to overlap.
She knew this would pass, knew he would come back to her. She had the patience, she knew how to wait.
It felt like she had only just managed to still her racing mind when something woke her in the night. In seconds, thanks to her vocation, she was wide awake and had the lights up. An unnatural grunting noise had stirred her. When she turned to him, he was seizing, feverish, and had vomited.
She jumped out of bed, grabbed for her medkit and located the hypo she kept on hand. She called out for Winston who came running in to help.
"I'm here Doctor Crusher, what do you need."
"He's seizing, help me get him into position." She called out as she pressed the hypo to his neck.
Jean-Luc's seizure-rapt body writhed. His bladder released involuntarily, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he bit down on his tongue hard before Winston had managed to get a tongue guard into his mouth.
Beverly responded with her years of training, instinctively switching off the part of her who was in love with the man on the bed. She loaded him with medication, everything she could think of to get the seizure under control, take his fever down, and make him feel more comfortable. If you'd asked her, she would tell you that the ninety seconds it took to get control, had felt much more like three hours.
When his body was finally released from the clutches of rictus, Beverly sank back on her heels and dropped her head in her hands.
"We can't keep doing this." She said to herself, to the room at large… she wasn't really sure anymore.
"Doctor Crusher?" queried Winston.
"Buh…" Jean-Luc groaned from between clenched teeth, wincing in the light of the room.
She remembered herself then, rose slowly to sit next to him while Winston busied himself with changing the sheets discreetly. He stared out at her from glassy eyes, fixed on her face, following her every move with a strange intensity. He was in there somewhere…
"I'm here, I'm here… Let's get you feeling more comfortable. Come on, let me take those pants."
He rolled his head away, embarrassed didn't even come close to touching what he felt. He could sense the cool wetness around his groin, under his rear. Every muscle in his body was sore, worn out. He felt like he'd been hit by a phaser stun taken point blank to the head. He'd had more than one of those in his time...
He didn't feel like himself. He couldn't move his arm or leg. He felt like there was a delay between his brain instructing his body to move, and the pitiful jerking half-movement that followed. He was aware of her, could feel the cool air of the room on his bare skin. He could make out what he thought were the sounds of the replicator producing a set of clean sheets. He closed his eyes, willing himself far away from the moment.
Once she'd finished changing his underwear and pyjamas, she smoothed his brow, allowed the lover in her to take over and let the medic rest for a second. She could see the tension in his face, his eyes tightly shut, the muscles across his chest and down his arms, tense. She pressed an analgesic to his arm, a further dose of anti-seizure meds, then kissed his chest tenderly. She could feel the tension still, even as his breathing evened out and he fell into a fitful sleep. She knew then that they would be visiting Medical in the morning. This had gone on too long, taken too much from him. He would hate it of course, more prodding and poking, but she wasn't prepared to sit and wait any longer for him to recover naturally. There had to be something more, something she'd missed.
After two further seizures in the night, he woke to find himself suddenly in the midst of a transporter beam. The sensation startling him out of a semi-conscious state so he was aware of materialising on a biobed at Medical. His mind was still, numb somehow to what was happening around him, couldn't make out what was being said, what he'd done to land himself back here. A flurry of med techs were scanning him with tricorders. He could hear the various beeps and bings alerting them to his various medical faults. He closed his eyes, felt his consciousness fade out, his edges turning fuzzy.
"Doctor, his stats are dropping, blood oxygen falling precipitously, tonic contractions."
"Let's get this man better. Hook him up to oxygen, hydrate, pain killers… we need to act fast."
In the corner, Beverly watched as the situation unfolded around her. The second they'd arrived via emergency medical transport, she'd been guided to a nearby stool, prevented from treating him. She couldn't even get near enough to hold his hand. She placed her hands over her face, trying to block out the overwhelming visuals, let her brain think through this latest progression of symptoms. He had been improving, getting more mobile, she could see that he had more mental energy, could hold longer conversations, wasn't sleeping quite so much.
Then Robert… then another day lost to sleep… then she'd woken in the night and things had suddenly flipped back to the first stages of his illness.
"There has to be another implant…" she said accidentally aloud. Then she turned her mind back to his file, scanned what she had committed to memory over the years. The ears, heart, his zygomatic Borg remnant… there had to be something else, something they'd missed. Something microcellular perhaps. Something had to be incubating somewhere inside him. This thing just wasn't behaving the way the science suggested.
"Doctor Crusher?"
She shook her head, stood from the stool and looked toward the commotion, "There has to be another implant somewhere… something microcellular, completely tiny. We've missed something. What are our scanning options?"
Within the hour, they had him stabilised and sedated. He'd been moved to an observation ward where they could keep a close eye on him. For now, he was resting comfortably, his face peaceful. His hands were crossed over his belly and the rictus tension had finally relaxed. She sat next to him, eyes glued to a padd, hunting through her notes on his post-assimilation assessments. There had to be something there, something her scanners had been unable to pick up on.
"Doctor Crusher?"
She lifted her head, snapping her attention to the young medic hovering in the doorway, "Yes?"
"We have some options to discuss, if you would please, come with me."
She rose to stand, pausing briefly to squeeze his hand, leaned down to whisper in his ear, "I'll be back Jean, sleep well."
In the end, it had all come down to a simple relapse. There was no cause, seemingly just the jagged progression of the original Arkonar poison as its pathogens reactivated time, and time again in varying ways. Even in the twenty-fourth century there were still idiopathic cases: no known cause, no known solution. She had been patient, so patient. She'd fought hard against her own instincts... nothing in her career at the cutting edge had prepared her for the drudgery of watching helplessly as the man she loved made a painfully slow recovery from a malicious illness.
They'd scanned him at the atomic level, a brand new process for which he'd had to be sedated. She'd watched from an observation lounge, seen a whole new series of nannites specially programmed to carry out a seek and destroy mission for any remaining pathogens. She'd watched carefully for the extraction of those same nannites, wanting to make sure there was nothing more that could go wrong. The magnification of the procedure appeared on a huge screen in the surgical suite and was mirrored in the observation lounge too. The image had taken on the look of an eerie landscape, the plains and cavities of his body became a mountainous alien planet full of peaks and troughs, and it was beautiful to her.
Then she'd waited patiently as they removed the cortical callipers that were keeping him asleep, and then allowed him to wake of his own accord. And then he would be back where he started since his release from Medical the first time. Knocked flat by post-viral fatigue, waiting for the next episode. She was grateful of course, but she was kicking herself for not seeing this one in advance, because here he was. Again.
And then she'd waited longer as he'd been brought to a recovery suite, allowed to come to in his own time. She'd stayed by his side, holding his hand, and watched as his eyes fluttered open, landed on her face. He smiled.
"Hey there, how are you feeling?"
He frowned, she could almost see the cogs whirring, he was confused. He pushed himself up, his eyes darting about the room, and she helped him get upright into a more comfortable position.
"I'm afraid I have no idea how I've come to be here." He whispered huskily. An honest answer, and her heart broke for him.
"You had a series of seizures in the night. We transported here. How do you feel?" she replied, eyes flicking to the readout at the head of his bed. His numbers looked good, almost completely normal.
"Seizures?" he paused, taking in his surroundings, already tiring from this exertion. "I feel… well I feel very tired." He smiled, apologetically, "So, normal then."
"Well, that's good. I think I can arrange for you to be liberated, get you back to the house."
"I'd like that. I've seen enough of this place…" he paused again, thoughtful. "Seizures Beverly?"
"Hmmm, yes. I'm afraid things got a little complicated there for a while. Another bout of the Jendoken infection reared its head… you had a series of seizures through the night."
She could see a shudder run through him, noticed his eyes widen and the tension in his body rise at the mention of another bout of infection, another brush with death. "I am okay now?" he whispered.
"You will be… your white blood cells have had a little extra assistance, again. How do you feel?"
He closed his eyes for a moment, she thought he was about to drift off again, his voice sounded small, weak, "I just thought…" his eyes closed again. He looked worn out, grey. It had been a long twenty-four hours, even though he wasn't aware of any of it. He shook his head, he didn't really have the words.
"You, my love, have had the latest in medical technological atomic scanning from head to toe. You should see the images, truly amazing. You mister, are entirely pathogen-free as of this afternoon."
"Sounds like I've had a busy day."
She laughed, glad to see he had recovered to his new normal. He looked exhausted and she knew he'd be in for another epic period of sleep, but he was coming back to her. She hugged him, kissed him, and stared at him for a moment too long.
"What?" he asked, suddenly worried.
"Nothing," she put her hand on his chest, felt him breathe in and out, felt the warmth of his skin beneath her hand. "I love you."
Later on, back at the house, he dozed with his head on her lap. She stared into the dying embers of the fire in the grate. It had been an exhausting couple of days, she'd managed to grab a few minutes of sleep here and there. She sipped thoughtfully at a glass of wine and could feel him breathing, deeply, evenly. His face was so peaceful, he looked so content. She knew she should move him to the bedroom, let him settle for the night. Knew she could do with an early night herself. But somehow, here in the peace of the little beach house, in front of the toasty fire, the events of the last few days seemed to drift away, settle into the past.
Winston's voice broke her reverie, "Doctor Crusher?"
"Oh, hey, Winston." She said, trying to get herself into a more dignified position despite the slumbering man entangling her.
"I wondered if you might need a hand? I can take the Admiral up to the bedroom?"
"Yes, I think I might just need some help tonight – I don't think he's going to wake."
Together, they managed to stir him enough to get him at least upright. She could tell he was still asleep, his limbs were a dead weight and without their support, he would have keeled over and happily spent the night right there.
"Shall I activate the transport?"
She nodded, "Probably a good idea. I'll go ahead and find his pyjamas."
Once Winston and Jean-Luc materialised in the bedroom, she helped Winston settle him into bed. Except for a few muttered incoherent words, he slept through the entire process of changing him and brushing his teeth.
"Well goodnight then Doctor Crusher."
"Goodnight Winston."
"Are you going to get some sleep yourself?"
"You bet. I could probably give him a run for his money right now…" she'd meant it as a throwaway comment but in truth, it really wasn't far from the mark.
She took a shower, let the warm water relax her muscles. Then once she'd changed, she slid into bed next to him, watched him breathing for a few moments. She kissed his chest and he groaned, turning toward her in his sleep. She kissed his forehead and he pulled her to him.
"Love… you…" he mumbled.