"Must have been the hell of a party."
Noy made out a shiver of – was it possible? - fire in the air, veiling a low voice, and a chuckle. "You first encounter with Romulan Ale, Ensign?"
"Yes." Words weren't as hard to form as he remembered.
"How much did you have?"
"Not much", he replied. Darkness gave way for a sharper view on angry lights above him, and a humanoid mustering her tricorder.
"Ok, I should rephrase that", Dr Crusher said, "How many did you have?"
"A glass, standard ration."
"Standard ration concerning what? Water? Orange juice?"
"Plain whisky", he defended himself, "About this high", he formed an inverted C with his thumb and forehand, about an inch apart.
"Now, okay, that's standard ration", she admitted apologetically. "Anything else tonight?"
"No."
"Eaten enough, Ensign?"
"Breakfast, and lunch two hours before. Feels like ages ago."
"Your system has taken a pretty bad hit on the Ale", she concluded, closing the tricorder, "I suggest you take it slow, no duty for forty-eight hours and a checkup tomorrow."
"I've just got a hangover, Doctor."
"Yes, and a pretty bad one", she told him in a firm voice, emphasizing whose part it was to judge his condition, "You were unconscious for almost an hour, unresponsive to any voice or pain. Usually an intoxication from this amount of alcohol doesn't push you that close to Nirvana as it did with you. On top of that, your Einstein cells express activity above normal level, so I want to monitor you for side effects."
"You can't have that much data on the cells, Doctor, since you never checked them when I had a hangover. Or a flue. Or any other condition other than a slight ache from training", he pointed out.
"I suggest you hurry to the shuttlebay, Ensign, if you wish to say goodbye to Lo Zhan", she refused to engage in the discussion, "I am sure she's waiting for you. You'll report for a checkup tomorrow, fifteen hundred hours, and notify me if you experience any sign of disorientation, may it be local or personal or both. That's an order."
"Aye, Doc."
So this one's the lab-rat-part Lo told me about, he realized grudgingly.
Though in that very moment he would never have admitted to it, leaping off the tray cost him considerable more strength than any other time, and walking straight demanded an awful lot of concentration.
Crusher watched him leave, perfectly familiar with the stiff, oddly straight walk of someone who does not want to appear drunk at any cost. Just like Wesley acting unusually polite manner, even for his standards, when he had spent a rare night somewhere else than in the lab. She would never comment on that, since she strongly supported him acting like any other teenager, once in a while.
The CMO finished her report on Noy Lewan's condition, including a reminder to check his Einstein cells when he came back. He had been right about that, though: They knew way too little to derive any conclusions from their expression. Equipped with receptors for dissonances in the quantum signature, they posed as a natural detector to any time-space-anomalies, thus reacting wildly at any encounter with such. Up until an encounter with another universe's Worf their activity had gone completely unnoticed, or otherwise explained. Crusher still nagged herself about that blind spot she and LaForge had had in all those years aboard: Only searching for biological and chemical changes in the human body, looking for physical anomalies in the android, but never combining methods. Thus far, a Galorian falling ill aboard had never been viewed in context of the ship's mission, let alone specific encounters.
Eyes dry with tiredness, she put aside the PADD with Lewan's report and background research. A shot glance on the chronometer told her that Dr Sela's shift did not start for another hour, but nurses must be around any minute. They never changed shifts at the same time, as to one shift had to be able to brief the other, since nurses had access to the same information as physicians.
The CMO had once refused to have a replicator in her office, so she would have to rise up for a cup of tea, and questioned that decision for about hundredth times. Frowning, she rose from the admittedly comfortable chair, and made her way through sickbay.
Her senses must have played a trick on her, she later convinced herself.
Back on her way to the office, a familiar, pleasant scent crept up her nose, just in the doorframe. Her heart took a leap, raced, threatening to jump from her thorax. In an endless second, her empty chair turned, as if someone had risen from it quickly to greet her. A rush of glowing warmth swept through her, followed by crushing sorrow, parting her body through a hot tear down her cheek.
She knew that scent. That very perfume had always made her cry, if nothing else, even so many years later.
Judging from her deluded, confused impression, Jack Crusher had just left her office.