Dr. Chakwas looked up when Miranda Lawson entered and gave a sigh of relief.
"I came as quickly as I could," Miranda said, walking over to the bed upon which Shepard, now devoid of her armor lay. She accepted the datapad that would bring her up to speed.
Dr. Chakwas happened to know it was easier to pick out spots that weren't heavily bruised, but Shepard was breathing on her own, which was a good sign, and there was no cranial damage. Shepard had a lot of broken or fractured bones, wrenches and muscular damage, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been had the krogan not pushed her out of the way, then dragged her out of the line of fire.
It would have been so much worse without the ploy using Sophie the dog-mech. The Reaper would have just peppered the last known location with heavy fire and then…goodbye, Shepard. Dr. Chakwas shuddered inwardly.
"So you're keeping her asleep?" Miranda asked.
"Yes…for the moment." Dr. Chakwas' inner sense of unease increased. "One of her medical care administrators to another…there's something you should know."
Miranda looked up, arching her eyebrows. "Such as?"
"She was talking about whispers and I quote 'they've stopped calling.'"
Miranda blinked once, twice, but otherwise stood still as stone. "That's why you wanted me," she finally said. "So we can talk to her and…disprove…your concern."
Dr. Chakwas sighed heavily. "Shepard's brain scans have always been…difficult…to decipher. At least, the ones since her first interface with the Prothean Beacon on Eden Prime are. There was a lot of neural scarring. After the Cipher, after the second beacon, after her resuscitation…" she shook her head, shrugging. "She was worried after her encounter with Object Rho. But there was no real way to detect anomalies because practically everything on her scans is anomalous."
And she hadn't wanted to be the one to put Shepard in a padded room on a maybe.
Miranda pursed her lips, her blue eyes drifting over to the puddle of bruises that was Jalissa Shepard. "Wake her up. Let's get through this quickly."
It was Dr. Chakwas' hope that with the Reapers destroyed, the Indoctrinated would simply revert to their pre-Indoctrination selves. It might take time, but that was her hope. Except the really far-gone ones…and there was no knowing how far along Shepard's Indoctrination had proceeded. Not as far as the Illusive Man's clearly, but far enough…perhaps even far enough to have sabotaged the Crucible plan once she reached the Citadel?
The thought that Shepard, who had fought the Reapers so hard from the first day she learned about them only to be turned into a ticking Reaper bomb chilled Dr. Chakwas to her core.
Dr. Chakwas reduced the sedative keeping Shepard asleep, though not the painkillers. Slowly, Shepard came around, blinking sluggishly.
"Who's there?" Shepard asked, her eyes unfocused.
"Me," Miranda answered simply.
Shepard made a low noise, as if Miranda didn't make sense.
"Do you understand me?"
"Yeah." Shepard shook her head, then groaned and stopped. Clearly, it was more than she could handle. "I feel like shit."
"You don't look much better. What's the last thing you remember?"
"I blew it up," Shepard mumbled, tears filling her eyes. "Tell Joker I'm sorry…"
Dr. Chakwas and Miranda exchanged looks of puzzlement. "Go back to Hammer One. You were pushed out of the way, do you remember that?"
"Yeah."
"Do you remember who pushed you?"
"His name is Ghur. Wrex sent him. I can't feel my body am I…" Shepard struggled, then sighed as she made a hand twitch.
"You're under a lot of painkillers and we've kept you asleep for a while." Miranda looked at Dr. Chakwas, who mouthed 'no spinal damage.' "You'll be fine. You're not paralyzed, just knocked around."
"I…got shot by a Reaper…" there was a note of distress in Shepard's sluggish voice.
"No, you took a glancing blow from a Reaper. There's a difference," Miranda corrected, her tone milder before returning to brisk and businesslike. "Tell me what happened to you once you got clipped."
Shepard did so slowly, her gaze fixed on empty space as if seeing the scenes playing out. How she had reached the beam. How Anderson—unbeknownst to her already at Huerta and in good stead—had come up as well, but not in the same place. How they'd traversed the strange underbelly of the Citadel to find the control terminal. How the Illusive Man, more Reaper than man, caught up with them. She recounted the conversation that followed, weeping silently over her belief that her mentor was dead, shot by her own hand but not by her own will. She explained the Intelligence and its explanations, its three choices, how she'd elected to destroy the Reapers and accept the collateral damage on the hope that it had lied to her about how widespread the damages would be.
Miranda and Dr. Chakwas exchanged grim looks.
"Thank you for telling me all this, Shepard," Miranda said gently. "We're going to let you go back to sleep, now."
Shepard's exhale was shaky, eyes over-bright with fresh tears. "I'm so tired, Miranda…"
"You've earned a rest. I'll see you later."
Dr. Chakwas resumed the sedative, watched Shepard slowly drift into unconsciousness. "Well?" Dr. Chakwas asked. She'd come to her own conclusion: it sounded as if this fever dream or whatever it was had been the Reapers' attempt to finish Indoctrinating her. But, because of her injuries, it hadn't mattered. She couldn't rise and obey.
Miranda looked at Shepard with a bleak sort of pity, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. "It sounds like the fact that her brain is so scrambled insulated her from them," Miranda finally said. "But I don't think anyone else should know."
Dr. Chakwas nodded, glad Miranda agreed with her. "We'll just have to keep her under observation, then."
"With the Reapers gone, I'm sure it will be a pointless exercise." Miranda's tone expressed more hope than certainty.