There were other patients to see to (there always were these days) while Doctor Cottle took care of the commander, but when she went to give a patient a shot and her hands were shaking so badly she almost stabbed herself with the needle, she decided she needed a bit of a break.
It wasn't so much that she'd been forced to do a doctor's job that was hard to handle. The Fleet trained its medics to be prepared for anything, knowing that in battle they might be a soldier's last chance for survival. There was a difference between training for something and actually doing it, and few medics of her generation had expected to be in a real battle situation, but at least she had always known in some corner of her mind that the day might come when she would have to go far beyond her skill level.
What she had never imagined was that the old man might be shot. The commander of a battlestar was meant to be the last to go, perishing in a dramatic fireball as his ship was destroyed, or being gunned down by the enemy only when all his crew had died protecting him. He wasn't supposed to be shot point blank by a member of his crew, surrounded by people who should have been able to help him.
If the commander, of all people, could be nearly fatally wounded in the middle of the CIC, then none of them were safe. Of course she'd known that since finding out that the Cylons could look human, even since hearing that the Colonies had been destroyed, but now the proof was right in front of her. It was in the spatters of blood on the clothes she hadn't had a chance to change and in the shaking of the hands that had been around the commander's heart, and she couldn't put it out of her mind like she had before.
The commander's all right now, she told herself. He'll make it. We all will. But her hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists to stop their shaking, and she wasn't sure she could believe that anymore.