There were many things, many patients, that Veral should have been focused on, but all he could think of was how much his back ached.
His back ached, indirectly, because he was tall. He had always been large. At ten, he had grown so much in three months that his mother had taken him to a doctor to rule out a growth disorder. There was none. By fifteen, he was the tallest person in every room he entered, and that had not changed since.
He was accustomed to it. He had overcome the self-consciousness of towering over the people around him. He had grown used to ducking through doors. Yet today, he was more frustrated with trying to live in a world that was too small for him than he could ever remember being.
Biobeds in particular had become far more of an aggravation than he should have allowed. In theory, they were height adjustable. In practice, Starfleet had not engineered them for someone who was two hundred and one point three centimeters tall, and even at their greatest height, he had to stoop, always, to treat his patients. And so his back ached.
It was a small thing, it was barely worth considering, and yet he could not stop thinking about it.
He maneuvered with the grace of long practice around a Trill female being moved into post-operative recovery and entered the crowded front-line trauma ward where he had worked for the past two years. Now that the treaty had been signed, they were crowded, but no longer overcrowded. It was an improvement, and he should have been gratified. He was not.
He tried to ignore the ache in his back as examined the chart of his newest patient. His name was Hara and he was a Betazoid male, smaller than average for his species and sex, but athletic and strong, and previous to this in good health. He had been sent to the Eian, the medical ship where Veral had served almost since the war had begun, for a problem with his lungs that his small ship did not have the resources to diagnose.
"Did you figure it out yet?" Hara asked. He used his mind to communicate. He was fortunate to be able to. Talking caused severe coughing spells.
Veral responded in kind. "No. I am going to take a sample of your lung tissue."
"That sounds unpleasant." Hara's tawny skin had an ashen undertone and his black eyes were half-closed. His lips were cracked and dry, because drinking also caused him to cough until he wheezed. He was not yet on IV fluids, but would need to be soon. The chart said that he was a ground combat specialist. He looked very small and helpless in his hospital gown, with half of his chest bared so that Veral could biopsy his lung.
Veral loaded a hypospray, did a drug-dose-patient check, and said, "You will feel a great deal of pressure, but only a small amount of pain. If you would prefer, I can render you unconscious for the procedure, but it will take longer and require more drugs. I would prefer to minimize the medication we give you until we understand your condition."
"It's fine," Hara said. He closed his eyes. Veral could feel him casting about for a mental anchor, another mind to connect to during a frightening time. Veral considering lessening his own mental shielding and immediately dismissed the idea. It was unpleasant to have a stranger touch his unshielded mind, especially one scared and in pain. He gave much to his patients, but had a right to keep his mind to himself.
The war had made him calloused.
Veral pressed the hypospray to Hara's side, between the two ribs where he would insert the probe. This ward was a terrible place for a Betazoid. It was not a conducive place to healing for anyone, in fact, though raising that issue with colleagues resulted in either a shrug of the shoulders or a long rant about trying to practice medicine in a converted cargo bay, and raising it with administrators gained one nothing but a lecture on limited resources.
Still, it was worse for some. Vulcans fared poorly with the lack of privacy, Trill always struggled to sleep even with medication, and Betazoids were beset by the suffering minds all around them which left them even more agitated than they would otherwise have been.
Thirty seconds had passed. Veral checked the readings on the biobed, then confirmed them by testing the skin where he had injected the medication, pinching it not gently. Hara did not react. He had felt no pain, but he was very scared. Veral could sense him still casting around for a mental anchor. He wouldn't find one. The other telepaths in the room were too ill to help.
Veral lessened his mental shielding. His right to keep his mind entirely to himself was not greater than his responsibility to his patients. Hara gripped his mind at once, like a Vulcan greatly in need of comfort might grasp the hand of a near friend or relation.
Veral readied the biopsy probe. A passing nurse stilled his hand. He reached across and turned on the sterile field of the biobed, and gave Veral a look that clearly asked if he was trying to give his patient an infection, before running off to help another patient who was vomiting over the edge of her bed. Veral stared after him and then, gathering himself, ran a mental double check of everything that he had done so far. Hara, fortunately, had not been permitted so far as to read his thoughts. He was not aware of the error.
"The anticipation is not helping," Hara said.
Veral hunched over to perform the procedure and tried to give the man the reassurance that he did not himself feel.
T'Nirin's office was not decorated in a Vulcan style. It was first of all colored in shades of blue and gray, like everything that Starfleet Medical designed. It was also soft, with chairs that offered no proper support. The art work on the wall was what was called watercolor. Many species appeared to find it soothing. Veral found the indistinct shapes and blurred lines difficult to look at for very long.
T'Nirin was seated at her desk. She nodded to the chair across from her.
"What is this about?" Veral asked, seating himself. Asking unnecessary questions was a bad habit he had picked up from his non-Vulcan colleagues. T'Nirin had placed the meeting on his schedule, so logically she would tell him why she had called him in. He was unable to figure out the reason. T'Nirin was a senior counselor, and he had no patients who needed more than usual psychiatric care at the moment.
T'Nirin met his eyes. She was almost as fair skinned as he was and had red-brown hair, but it was her eyes that one noticed. They were dark blue, a rare shade for a Vulcan.
He could sense that her mental shielding was very limited. She had greater training in the mental disciplines than he. Her lack of mental shielding was deliberate. Once one had been through healer's training at Gol and worked in the medical field for a time, one had to make a conscious choice to not shield one's mind.
This was about him. She wanted access to his mind without being so blunt as to ask him for it. He considered, for a moment, not responding as he was expected to. Yet if he passively refused her request, she would simply ask, and likely press him to meld with her. He had no patience for having his mind invaded today.
Veral lessened the many layers of shielding in his mind. T'Nirin, in addition to being more skilled in the mental disciplines than any other Vulcan on the ship, was also at the very high end, for a Vulcan, of the psi-receptive spectrum. It was not as invasive as a meld, but he was still exposed before her.
For a time, neither of them spoke. T'Nirin stared at him, studying him like a specimen. Veral kept his eyes on the stone statue that sat behind her. It was red-gold in color, and an abstract representation of a sharva flock. It was the only thing in the room that was in any way restful to look at.
After several minutes, Veral met her eyes. "Have you found what you are looking for yet?"
He spoke too sharply, and his aggravation would be plain to her.
"I have been informed," T'Nirin said, "that Starfleet is going to begin the process of sending personnel home within three days. In the normal course, the reduction will begin with unskilled enlisted service members whose services are no longer needed." Veral mentally translated this. The people who had joined to fight, been taught little more than how to aim a weapon and fire it, and had no function in a peacetime Starfleet, were being sent home before they could cause trouble.
There had been no Federation-level draft, but a number of planets, including Vulcan, had their own war-time service requirements which they had chosen to enforce, often drafting their people into planetary military or police forces, and then placing those forces temporarily under the command of Starfleet. People who had been coerced into joining did not constitute a population that one wished to see kept at their posts a moment beyond what was necessary. They grew restless and angry at being kept in forced service once the threat had passed. Those few that wished to stay on often had simply grown too accustomed to fighting to remember any other way, and needed to be returned home even more urgently than those who wanted out.
"Skilled civilians who enlisted only for the duration of the war will be sent after them, but it may take time." A number of engineers, scientists, and other skilled professionals had joined or been drafted also. They also would want to be sent home, but there were fewer of them, and their skills were still needed. Starfleet would be slower about discharging them because it could make the case for their continued service. Ships needed to be fixed. People needed to be treated.
"Medical professionals will be among the last to go home," Veral said.
T'Nirin nodded slightly. "Perhaps. It is a political matter, being debated at every level. Federation member planets lent their forces to Starfleet, they did not give them over permanently. They can recall them at any time, and will shortly do so, especially if they think Starfleet is too slow in releasing their people. Service contracts that volunteers signed with Starfleet are going to be contested. They worded the contract badly, and there is a question even now as to whether or not volunteers are required to stay on a moment beyond the signing of the treaty. For now it is said that they are, but if the Federation Council places enough pressure on Starfleet Command, that may change."
She leaned forward in her chair. Her hands were laced together and rested on her desk. "Whether we are here for six weeks or six months is hard to say. The politics and logistics are complex."
Was this what she had brought him here to tell him? He did not expect to leave simply because the war was over, not when they still had so many patients to care for.
She continued, "Some of us, however, need to return home, and cannot wait for the politicians and bureaucrats. I want you to apply for a compassionate early leave. I will see that it is approved."
"That is unnecessary," Veral said. T'Nirin's eyebrow flickered slightly as she sensed him close off his mind to her, but she said nothing. "There is no reason for me to leave while my colleagues remain."
T'Nirin had partially closed off her mind as well, but he could still sense her disappointment. She had hoped this would go another way. Did she think he would eagerly grasp the chance to abandon his duty?
"You are not well," T'Nirin said.
"This conversation is a waste of your time and mine. I have patients to attend to." Hara's biopsy had come back and revealed a never before seen prion destroying his lung tissue. Veral had only begun to formulate a treatment plan.
"You are growing incapable of caring for them properly," T'Nirin said. Her face had become closed off, and her eyes were hard, but she had not completely walled off her mind. Her disappointment in him seemed like condescension. Who was she to judge him in this way?
Veral did not speak until he had mastered his anger. "You are questioning my competency as a doctor."
"No. I am questioning your ability to continue to do your work at this time." She paused, but not long enough for him to reply. "Yesterday, you would have performed a biopsy without a sterile field in place if not for the intervention of a nurse. Two days before that, you very nearly gave a Terran cyanide to treat his headache." Veral pressed his lips together. He had gotten confused for a moment and mistaken his Terran patient for a Bolian two beds over. Another doctor had caught the error before he had administered the drug, but it had been a near thing.
"There have been smaller mistakes, less dangerous, prior to this. It is a pattern of increasing inattentiveness and it is going to kill someone." Her face softened. "You are an excellent doctor, but you are exhausted, and it is showing in your work."
She paused, and when he said nothing, continued, "You struggle with your control."
"We all struggle with our control. This place taxes it." The emotional races would not have noticed, but there was not a Vulcan on the ship who had not been seen to have their control slip at least once.
"Yes. We make allowances for each other. But I think you are struggling more than the others. Your behavior remains appropriate, but if you are using a large portion of your mental energy simply to keep your emotions from overwhelming you, how much do you have left for your patients?"
He did not reply, and stared again at the statue behind her, studying the contrast between rough and smooth stone, the sweep of the lines.
"How long have you suffered from nightmares?"
His eyes went to her in surprise. Was that a logical guess, or did she somehow know? Perhaps his roommate had said something? Was he crying out in his sleep?
Veral closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and forced himself to look at her. "Six months, perhaps. I do not recall precisely when they started."
"How much do you sleep in a week?"
"Perhaps twenty five hours, on average. Sometimes as much as thirty."
"That is too little."
"It is enough for a Vulcan to function."
"For six or eight weeks. So little sleep, consistently over a long period of time, do you think it adequate? And if that sleep is often interrupted by nightmares, does that not make it even more a matter of concern?"
Perhaps it was the difficulty of the conversation, or having how little he really slept presented to him in no uncertain terms, but he found himself very tired. It was all he could do not to lean back in his chair.
When he did not reply, T'Nirin said, "Your wife suffered severe chemical burns one point four years ago."
"She is on Vulcan, recovering." She had been released from the hospital four months ago, but she still suffered from attacks of severe pain.
"It is nevertheless a stressor, and must have been a very great one shortly after it happened."
He acknowledged this with a nod. He recalled the day he had found out. He had known for hours that something was wrong, but at such a distance as had then been between T'Lin and himself, the bond was a faint thing. It was not until the real-time subspace call from Vulcan that he had found out the extent of it. It remained the only time in his entire two years on the Eian that he had not worked his full scheduled shift. The doctor in charge of the ward had sent him back to his quarters, and he had not objected.
T'Nirin placed a PADD on the desk in front of him. "You have not slept properly in years. Your wife was badly injured. You suffer from nightmares. You are compassionate to everyone except yourself. You think that you are failing if you hold anything back from your patients, and so you have been working as hard as you can since you arrived. You have used all of your resources, mental and physical. Now you are becoming a danger to your patients and doing harm to yourself by remaining here."
She fell quiet, and they sat in silence for several minutes more. Veral turned her words over and over in his mind, trying to see an error in her reasoning. There was none.
He forced himself to speak. "Your argument is well presented. I will take your suggestion under advisement."
She was correct. She was incorrect about him leaving-he could not possibly leave when so much work remained-but she was correct that he was over-working himself and making mistakes. He would be more careful. He would fill out the request to please T'Nirin, and then he would allow himself more time to rest, and perhaps try to find some way to reduce his caseload, and this idea would be dismissed and he would be able to continue at his duties.
"I have patients to see," he said.
"You do not. I have placed you on leave. There is a Vulcan transport ship scheduled to pass nearby in two days. It will stop here to pick you up. You will see no more patients."
The weight of what she was saying settled on him slowly, but with great force. The request to Starfleet, it was merely cover to save him the humiliation of being sent home in disgrace. Whether he filled out the form or not, he was being removed from his post. Somehow, he could not be grateful to her for allowing him to leave with some dignity intact.
He was cold. He had been cold since he arrived on the Eian, but it struck him with force as he sat under the unwavering gaze of T'Nirin.
Hara had a communicable prion disease transmitted by contact with infected tissue. Without the sterile field, he could have done worse than give the man an infection. He might have exposed others to the disease.
If his error hadn't been caught in time, he could have killed his Terran patient. The amount of cyanide that acted as a mild analgesic for a Bolian would be so toxic to a Terran that even if the mistake had been realized immediately, an antidote might not have been effective.
T'Nirin touched the PADD. "There is no shame in this. You have served well. You have brought honor to your clan and your house. Now you must go home and heal yourself."
That was a lie. She should have done him the dignity of not telling him the sort of reassuring platitudes that she used for the emotional races, but he found he did not have the energy to say so. Veral picked up the PADD. "Am I to tell Starfleet all that we have discussed?" The thought of having his failure filed away on a Starfleet computer was not appealing.
"You may, if you like," T'Nirin said. "Or you could simply tell them about your wife."
Veral shook his head. "T'Lin is in the care of her family. She has a number of physicians who are attending to her case. She has no need of me."
"Starfleet hardly knows that. They will not question the request, especially not if I sign my name to it."
Veral forced himself to his feet and left without a word. He found himself back in his quarters hardly aware of having walked there. The room was empty when he arrived. He sat on the too-small bottom bunk that had been his bed since he arrived, having to stoop so that he did not hit his head on the bottom of the top bunk, and stared at the floor between his feet.
Sarlah nash-veh dvin-tor. I come to serve.
He had failed to serve. He had nearly killed one patient. He had put another at risk for infection-had put any one else who could have come in contact with the infected tissue at risk. He committed an unknown number of other errors without noticing them, and he had not even had the sense to see how much of a danger he was becoming.
He took the PADD and began to fill out the form. It was a weakness to lie to protect himself. It would have been a fitting punishment for his shame to be known. Yet, he did as T'Nirin had suggested, and wrote only of his wife in his request. Was he a coward as well, to hide behind T'Lin? It seemed he was. When he was done, he sent it to T'Nirin without reading it over.
Where was he to go? To T'Lin? She was with her family, just recently having regained some measure of health. Her disgraced husband was a weight on her that she did not need or deserve. His parents? His sense of what was due to them was too great to allow him to return to their door in his present state, with only failure to show for all their many efforts and sacrifices to raise him.
To Gol, then. He was a healer-adept, and having completed his training gave him the right to return to the monastery at any time.
He lay down on the bed. His exhaustion was so great that he was asleep in minutes. He dreamed of returning home to Vulcan, to the home of Selesh, his closest friend. The private sitting area was covered in blood. Selesh and his family were lying dead, and Veral knew, with the certainty of dream knowledge, that he might have saved them if he had tried harder.