Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I just play here.

Summary: A reunion. P/C

A/N: English is not my native language. This is not betaed.

Reviews: certainly. I am especially interested in your thoughts about the portrayal of the characters – where they in character, believable? Any other comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated, too.

Ready Now

by

soavezefiretto

1.

Beverly was staring at the monitor in front of her, but she couldn't keep her eyes open, couldn't focus her thoughts. She knew she was doing nothing useful here, wasting precious time they didn't have. She should be eating something, then catching a few hours of sleep. Keep herself healthy and alert, like she constantly preached to her aids. A sleepwalking doctor is not of much use to her patients.

But she couldn't help it, it felt so good. Just sitting there, staring blankly at the monitor, doing nothing, thinking nothing, being nothing. She decided this was meditation. She would continue staring at this monitor, past this monitor, until she reached another state of consciousness, a state of perfect clarity in which the decomposing molecules floating around on the screen would rearrange themselves into a simple and beautiful organisation once again, and she would see the cure, right there in front of her, the missing detail that was keeping her from understanding the obvious. Developing a serum would be child's play after that, in a matter of days, no, hours, these horrible weeks would be forgotten, and everyone would be safe, everything would be alright...

---

"Doctor? Doctor?"

"Yes? Yes, what is it? Another mutation?"

Her head jerked up, and for a second, Beverly was convinced her neck was going to snap. "OW!" Sleeping slumped on a desk never had been a good idea, especially not for her, not with her back. But wait a minute, she wasn't sleeping, she was meditating, she was...

"We just received a message from the Enterprise, Doctor."

Ensign Lopez was looking down on her with an undecipherable expression on his face. Was it pity, was it reproach? Anger, fear? Why would there be fear in Lopez' eyes? What could be so fearsome about a message from the Enterprise?

"Are they alright? Did anything happen to them?"

"Well, I don't know, Doctor. They are not very specific in the details." He handed her a PADD, at the same moment as she was saying: "Put it through to this office."

"No video or audio, just this coded transmission", Lopez said. Beverly had no trouble identifying his expression and tone now. He was pissed. Majorly.

She tried to keep her expression neutral as she glanced at the code, then punched in the standard decode sequence.

"Enterprise arrival delayed. Unable to calculate length of delay. USS Pushkin diverted, now on priority mission to Telvan III. Contact them for details. Apologies."

Beverly looked up, and Lopez answered her mute question. "The Pushkin is in the Delvara system. At warp 8, they will be here in another week. They are already en route."

"A week?"

"Commander, with all due respect, the Pushkin is a fine ship, but they don't have the resources to handle something like this. Their sickbay is about half of the Enterprise's, they don't have enough guest quarters to set up any kind of decent quarantine, and their labs are standard issue. We already have standard issue here, we need a lot more than that! – Commander?"

Beverly stood up, busied herself with tying her hair in a ponytail, straightening her clothes, shuffling together some PADDs that were strewn across the table. As soon as she could speak again, she turned to the ensign, praying her face wore a friendly, controlled expression.

"I'm sure the crew of the Pushkin will do everything in their power and more to help us." She thought of a reassuring smile, but knew she wouldn't be able to pull that off convincingly, so she stuck to firm and friendly.

"Yes, Commander, I'm sure they will, but it just won't be enough!"

Lopez was beginning to panic, his ice-blue eyes were darting this way and that, like little wild animals trying to escape their cage. Beverly put her hand on his shoulder and forced him to look at her.

"Listen, Lopez, it will be alright. We can do this. We have already found one serum to deal with most of the symptoms. And that has bought us time enough to find the definitive cure. I'm sure you have already sent the Pushkin all the data…" Lopez nodded once, it looked more as if is head was about to fall off. "…so they are already working on it at this very moment. It's not a matter of resources, it's a matter of approach. We've been here for almost two months now, surrounded by sick people, roughing it, barely eating and sleeping. We're not thinking clear. But the people on the Pushkin are. Chances are, when they arrive here, they'll already have the cure, and if they don't have it, they'll be far enough for us to jump in and wrap it up for them."

By God, she was good at this. She was almost convincing herself. Lopez straightened up. There were dark rings under his eyes, his mouth was drooping, and Beverly was sure he wanted to throw her off the Garakali Cliffs for all her fancy talking, but she knew he was going to hold up. He nodded again, in a more natural way this time, and turned to leave. He stopped before reaching the door and turned to face her once more.

"I still don't get it. The Enterprise knows what we're dealing with out here. Whatever it is that's 'delaying' them, it can't be more important, can it?"

"Believe me, ensign, if Jean-Luc Picard says he's delayed, then he's delayed, and that's that."

Lopez hesitated, then said: "You should get some sleep, Doctor."

"I will. I'll be fine, Darren. We'll all be fine."

As soon as Lopez closed the door behind him, Beverly felt the irresistible urge to fall in a heap on the floor and cry for a couple of hours. She wanted to kick her feet against the floor and scream at the top of her voice: "Get me out of here! Get me out of here! No more, no more!" No more vomit, no more blood, no more pustules, no more pleading eyes, dirty hands reaching for her, weak voices calling out…

She took the PADD Lopez had brought in and read the message again, then hurled it against the wall with all her might. "Fuck you, Jean-Luc Picard, fuck you over twice!"