"How are we feeling today, Mya?" Doc asked as she came to sit on the foot of her patient's bed. Mya was a petite girl with shining bright green eyes and skin that, when caught in the right light, shone blue. Doc was looking over her patient sheet as the young girl sat up in her bed. Her eyes looked less bright today.
"I'm doing alright," she said. "I kinda feel a little woozy."
"Well, let's check you out and see what's going on, alright?" Doc started running her normal tests. Blood pressure and composition, heart rate, pupil dilation – the whole works. Every test indicated the progression of the parasites throughout Mya's body. It would only be a few days before it would consume her from the inside out. Doc went over to Mya's IV line and increased the flow of the only medications they could find to slow the spread.
"Doc?" asked Mya, eyes wide with fear. It was the look Doc had seen in so many of her patients in the last few days. "Do you think I could see Ione again?"
It was a question she asked every day, and every day Doc gave the same answer. She smiled.
"Of course," she said. She called for a droid to deliver a hoverchair and helped the young patient out of her bed and into it. Mya had lost the ability to walk two days ago. There was not much she could do for the young woman until the lab results of her treatments ran through the simulator except for giving her these moments.
"Have you ever been in love before, doctor?" asked Mya as they strolled down the hallway. They passed rushing nurses and doctors, grieving family members, and dying patients.
"In love?" asked Doc, slightly amused. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I think I'm in love, but I want to know what it feels like from someone who has been in love before. Then I can know if it's love."
Doc leaned on the hoverchair as they passed into the open atrium in the hospital where Mya and Ione would meet every day. Tall, conical trees sprung around the grasses surrounded by glowing mushrooms. They came to a stop next to a water fountain and Doc took a seat on the edge of the stone.
"Love is complicated," said Doc. "It's knowing something is right for the other individual even when you don't want it to be so. It's accepting that another individual and their flaws."
"But have you been in love? Are you in love?" asked Mya, eyes shining with their full intensity on Doc.
Doc gave her a warm smile. "I have been in love before, yes," she said.
"Tell me what it was like."
"It was wonderful," said Doc, eyes on the small fountain in front of them. The atrium was full of plants and running water that acted as a small escape for the patients and doctors alike. The occasional creature would wander in from the outside, but none had dared enter the facility since it had become a haven for the plagued. "It was like holding your breath for your entire life and then suddenly breathing in the fresh mountain air."
"Mmm, yes," said Mya. "Then it must be love. What were they like, the one you were in love with?"
"Oh, Mya," said Doc, holding her hand. "That was so many years ago now. I was so young - so naive of the world and what would happen. I don't even really remember what his face looked like."
"What ended up happening?"
Doc sighed. "A story for another time, I'm afraid."
"Mya!" a voice called from the opposite side of the garden. Mya's eyes lit up as they came to meet Ione's. Ione was nearly sprinting over to Mya, her long silver hair flowing behind her almost touching the ground.
"I'll leave you two to it," said Doc, giving up her seat next to Mya so that Ione could take its place. "I have some work I need to do. Let me know if you ladies need anything. Mya, you know what my call number is." Doc gripped both girls' hands gently and took her leave. She meandered down the hallways of the building before coming to her and Yonda's shared office. It was small, but it had all the equipment they needed. The aging doctor sat at her desk, nose deep in some medical literature.
"Welcome back," said Yonda, looking up at Doc. "How was your visit with Mya?"
"Troubling," said Doc. "It's getting worse."
"All the more reason for us to hurry up and find a treatment," said Yonda. "Though a cure would be much better."
"Are the test results back yet?"
Yonda shook her head. "Few more hours. Say, Doc, you always spend your breaks with Mya. Why?"
"Are we ever really on a break?" asked Doc, swiveling around aimlessly in her chair. "Mya is a sweet girl. So is Ione. Seeing them happy together brings a little bit of joy to this whole thing."
"I've always warned you about getting too attached to patients," said Yonda.
Doc sat up. "If we never get attached, we'll never learn to care. We're the only people they can be attached to right now. I can deal with my own guilt when it's time."
"Just be careful."
"You sound like my mother now," quipped Doc. She pulled the microscope closer to her and looked through at the small parasite that had been the cause of so much trouble. The only information they had on it was that it originated in the barbos bulls who lived in the mineral waters of the southern part of the planet. She also knew it only affected the colonists of Onglar-4. They were a nomadic people who were ill-equipped to deal with the implications of a pandemic when it first appeared six months ago. The whole planet had been on strict lockdown since to prevent contamination of the other colonies in the neighboring planets and moons.
"Do you have the water sample from the mineral farms and the bull's blood?" asked Doc. Yonda handed her the vials before resuming her reading. Doc placed the vials in her content reader, scanning all the components and cross-referencing. "Say, when you think 'minerals,' what comes to mind?'"
Yonda put down her holo-reader. "Calcite? Quartz? Uh, Iron –"
"Exaclty," said Doc. "Iron. You mentioned even though they found the parasites in the bulls, they never found any from water samples?"
"Right. We assumed there was a predator that would push the parasites to seek out hosts."
"What if it wasn't an organic predator?" asked Doc. "None of the life forces in the Onglar sector contain iron in their systems. They all function with copper instead."
"That would explain why the parasite seems to evade us," said Yonda, standing up. The wheels began to turn in her head. "Let me call up to the air facility and ask for an iron supplement to be sent down. We need to run more tests."
The next few hours consisted of grueling amounts of testing. They found the iron disintegrated the outer membrane of the parasites in mere minutes. Yonda was preparing to tell the other doctors of their findings when Doc stopped her.
"Hold on, we don't know enough about this yet," said Doc.
Yonda seemed baffled. "What do you mean? We need to get as many eyes on this as possible."
"I know, I'm just worried about false hope spreading around. We don't even know how the patients will react to iron treatment. It could be just as deadly for them as it is for the parasite. In our tissue samples, the iron destroyed key membranes of the Onglars."
"We are sitting on the key to this whole thing and you want us to keep our mouths shut?"
"I just want us to proceed with caution," said Doc.
"We will be taking all the precautions we can afford," said Yonda. Doc followed her down the hall to the conference room, just a few steps behind. She glanced past the garden windows to gaze out an Ione and Mya. The decisions made in the next few hours could quite possibly determine their fates. They entered the conference room and met with the five other department heads on staff. Doc took her seat next to Dr. Hamone, a virologist sent straight from the Institute on Coruscant.
She listened as Dr. Yonda presented the information they had uncovered about the use of iron to combat the parasite. Several of the doctors raised the same concerns Doc had.
"It's too soon to begin any clinical trials," argued Dr. Hamone. He was a middle-aged man with gray streaks running throughout his hair. His gray eyes scanned the room for agreement. "We can't just start pumping Onglars full of iron – it could completely destroy their neurological network."
A few murmurs of agreement spread throughout the room.
"We will need to find a way to target the parasite – and only the parasite – with the iron supplements," said one of the medical droids. "Perhaps a ray therapy of some kind?"
"By the time we calibrate a ray for such a delivery, half the population will be dead," argued another doctor.
"The entire population will be dead if we do nothing."
"Doctor, at what point did the iron begin to degrade the membranes of the Onglars?" Dr. Harmone asked, addressing Doc.
"It took prolonged exposure at approximately 400 parts per million," she said. "The parasite additionally needed a ppm of 400, though it took only seconds for the outer membrane to be destroyed."
"Perhaps if we introduced the iron beforehand and something to consume any leftover residue?" offered Dr. Harmone.
"It's possible," said Doc. "I'm wary of introducing further substances into their systems. It is possible many of them wouldn't be able to survive such a chemical change, even if it is conducted at a 'safe' level."
"It may be a risk we need to take," said one of the medical droids. "The risk either way is the loss of life."
"Careful. With that type of thinking, you risk crossing ethical lines." Doc thought for a moment. All the eyes seemed to be on her, even Yonda's. "I've heard of microbes that consume iron as their primary source of energy. We would need to test what happens when they run out of iron to consume in a controlled environment, but they may be capable of consuming any leftover minerals from treatment."
"It's settled then. You, Dr. Harmone, and I will begin work on a cure. I want the rest of you on damage control and begin simulations on treatments for those already affected," ordered Yonda. Everyone got up from their seats and began filing out of the conference room. Dr. Harmon, Doc, and Yonda all stayed behind for a moment.
"I think that went well," said Yonda. "Where did you even hear about such microbes?"
"It's a bit of a long story," said Doc, "but they have a supply to study at the Naboo Medical Center. I'll contact the director there and have him send over a few containers worth. They multiply quickly under the right environments, but it will be a few days before they can get here."
"Let's just take care in trying to save them from one plague, we don't cause another," said Dr. Harmone as he took his leave. Yonda and Doc followed him out, each going their separate ways.
The next few days were a blur of chaos. The Naboo Medical Center sent four ships full of microbes, each poised to arrive one day after the other. Everything was being fast-tracked through simulations and experiments. It had been maybe two or three days since Doc had slept last – it was difficult to tell with the way the days seemed to flow into one another into one large endless void.
Mya's conditioned had drastically deteriorated each day. Early in the morning, Doc had gotten the call her heart had begun to fail. She ran into the room, Ione already there in her own hoverchair. Mya was hooked up to a machine that kept her heart steady. Bacta pads covered her whole body in a desperate attempt to stop the parasites from eating her skin.
Doc came over and sat on the other side of her bed and picked up her frail hand as though it would crumble under her touch.
"They said there isn't anything more they can do for her," said Ione as tears dripped down her face. "Is that true?"
"I'm sorry, Ione," said Doc.
"I was gonna ask her to marry me," she said, her hand tightening ever so slightly. "We were going to live in this little cottage by the North Sea where the grasses turn this bright blue in the winter – bluer than anything you've ever seen before. And we would've been happy, dammit."
"I know," said Doc. She had never been great at this part of the job. It never seemed to get easier to lull a family member into believing the one they loved was dying. "And I know Mya would have wanted that, too."
Ione's piercing green eyes looked straight into Doc's. "I know you tried. Thank you."
Doc stayed with Ione until she fell asleep in her chair, hand still gripping tightly onto Mya. Doc sighed. It was moments like these that made her hate the universe.
A thought occurred to her. She placed a hand to Mya's forehead and closed her eyes, trying to feel something – anything. She pushed deep into herself, deep into Mya, deep into the universe. Nothing but the haze of smoke came to her. There was nothing more she could do. Doc got up without another word and left the two alone.
Ione died the next morning, only a few hours after Mya. There were no medical reasons the medical droid could immediately identify, though Doc could only presume it was from a broken heart. That night, she locked herself in her room and tucked her knees to her chest and cried as if it were the only thing she was capable of at that moment. Her breath wheezed hard as she gasped for any sense of reality. She dug the palms of her hands into her eyes as hard as she can, hoping to wake up from the nightmare she had thrown herself into.
The first wave of microbes arrived that same evening, and more tests and research ensued. Within the week, the board unanimously voted to begin distribution. Within days, patients began recovering and testing negative for the parasite. They would begin region and world-wide distribution the following day, even going so far as to set up inoculation stations for the wildlife.
Doc crashed on her bed the day the trials began. Her work was done – the medical droids would be more than capable of distributing any doses of treatment. Dr. Yonda and Dr. Harmone would continue to spearhead the efforts of prevention against future outbreaks, though much of the damage had already been done.
As Doc lay in her bed, she heard the soft pulse of her communicator in her side drawer. She clicked it on and the Mandalorian's image came to life.
"It's the kid," he said, image cutting in and out. She sat up.
"Is he alright?" asked Doc, heart beginning to pound in her chest. She felt like she was going to throw up.
Not him, too.
"He's fine," he said. "There may be a way we can get the hunters off his trail, but I need your help."
"Count me in."