Kara woke up groggily in what seemed to be a hospital bed. She looked around the room in confusion. The last thing she remembered was she was about to strangle Helo with the map because he kept insisting that they had been going in the wrong direction for over an hour. She went to sit up and was met with a sharp pain in her side.
Looking down, she realized that she was now dressed in a hospital gown. She pushed it delicately to the side and saw that her aching side was bandaged. The small red circle on the gauze made her mind suddenly recall the blood that had been on her hands. She had been shot by the Cylons.
Her hands slid the gown back in place as the door to her room opened and a man entered.
"Who are you?" she asked immediately. She had never seen the man before.
"I'm the doctor who took the bullet out of your side, Ms. Thrace."
"How do you know my name?"
"Your friends told me when they came looking for me."
"They came looking for you? I don't understand."
"Your friend Anders was very concerned for you. He found me at one of the other resistance bases a few days ago."
She stared at the doctor in confusion. Anders? Why the frak was Anders the one getting her help? Where were Lee and Helo?
"I'm just going to check your vitals," the man said, walking over to the machine.
"So you're a doctor."
"Have been for over fifteen years."
"And you survived the Cylon holocaust."
"Checked my pride and hid like a little child that day."
"And the resistance found you and you offered your services."
"Is there something you want to ask me, Ms. Thrace?"
"Are you a Cylon?"
The man looked at her a moment before laughing loudly. "They told me you would be blunt."
"They?"
"Your friends. We had a small bet. If you didn't ask me if I was a Cylon at some point during our first meeting, I could have won a rather nice car. Don't know what I'd do with such a tank of a car right now, but it would have been nice to have won anyway."
Those bastards used her car as a prize in a bet? She knew she should be pissed, but it actually made her feel a whole lot better. If someone was using something as valuable as her car to win a wager, then it would have to be someone who knew her well enough to know that this bet was a sure thing. Which meant that either Helo or Lee were around somewhere.
She shifted her position a few inches, trying not to wince at the increased pain in her side. The doctor noticed immediately.
"I'm going to inject some more pain killers into your IV. They should knock you out for a few hours."
"No, please don't," Kara said. In her head, she couldn't imagine giving up control of her situation like that. She had just woken up in a hospital where she thought she was in the care of the resistance. But what did she actually know? This man in front of her could be lying through his teeth. She did not want to be unconscious until she was sure that things were safe.
"You'll just pass out from the pain in a little bit anyway. So it will be better if I give you this drug to take the pain away now."
"I just woke up. I don't want to sleep anymore."
"Ms. Thrace, would you please trust me as your doctor to make the right decision here?"
"I didn't choose you to be my fraking doctor so I think that until I do, I should make my own health decisions." She pulled her arm away as he moved to push the needle into the catheter on her hand. "I said no."
"Please don't struggle. You'll rip your stitches."
"Stop trying to give me drugs I don't want, and I'll stop struggling, Doc."
Kara watched in horror as the Doc sat on the bed and pushed her arm down with force. He uncapped the needle with his teeth as she started to thrash and scream, "I said no, mother frakker!"
The door to her room burst open, and Lee came charging in, his hand resting on his gun. "What is going on here?"
"She won't accept pain killers, sir. I tried to tell her that they would only help her but she's too freaked out to listen."
Lee sighed and gestured for the doctor to move. "Maybe that's because she just woke up and you'll already trying to put her back under. Didn't Anders tell you to come find me immediately when she woke up?"
"No, he never mentioned anything of the kind."
Lee let out a frustrated growl as his hand relaxed away from its position near his gun. "Figures. Why don't you just leave me with her for a few minutes, Doctor? I guarantee by the time I leave this room she'll be resting comfortably with plenty of pain killers in her bloodstream."
The doctor gave him a look as if to say it would be a miracle if he could get that girl to take even a small amount of drugs. Holding his hands in the air, the doctor set the needle on the tray by Kara's bedside and left the room.
Lee looked over at Kara. "I'm sorry about him. But there's really not a lot of doctors to pick from on this planet anymore."
Kara stared at him, slightly stunned at everything that had just happened. Her eyes were filling with tears, and she was trying desperately to keep them inside. However, watching Lee stare at her with such concern written all over his face was the last straw, and she felt the tears began to pour down. They hit her hard and fast. She struggled to catch her breath as the sobs started.
"Tell me what's wrong," Lee begged as he sat on the bed beside her. "Tell me what's wrong, Kara, and I'll fix it."
She tried to form the words to tell him, but her crying was still overpowering every one of her senses. All she could do was shake her head at him.
Lee stared, extremely worried that this strong woman could be breaking down so easily and knowing he had no idea how to make things better. He simply lay his hand on top of where hers was on the hospital bed. Eventually, she looked over to meet his eyes. There was a small smile on his face even though she was still struggling to catch her breath. That little shift in the corners of her mouth made a huge weight lift off his shoulders. He smiled at her in return and squeezed her hand gently.
"I'm sorry about that," she said with a laugh. "It's just I woke up and you weren't here. And I didn't know if that guy was a Cylon feeding me a pack of half-truths. He told me that Anders was the one that found him and I was scared of why he didn't mention you or Helo. Because I knew that if you were okay, then you would be the one finding me some help. And then he tried to stick a needle in me even though I told him no."
"Pretty traumatic. I think you had every right to cry."
She rolled her eyes. "That wasn't why I was crying, Lee."
"It wasn't?"
She bit her lip and turned her eyes away from him. It suddenly hit him that the great Starbuck was blushing.
"I was glad to see you," she said quietly.
"Well, I was glad to see you too," Lee said. "I was worried your luck was going to run out with this one. We almost couldn't find a doctor in time."
"Was Anders really the one that found him?"
"Well, yeah. He is the one that's familiar with the resistance. I couldn't have found you a doctor on this planet if I had a week. So I let him do all the work and I just waited by your side until Doctor Chetnam got here."
"What if Anders didn't find the doctor?"
"Then I would have done my best to remember the classes we had to take on field medicine in Academy and I would have dug that bullet out myself." He let out a small laugh, and she could see his eyes return to the familiar gleam they always had. He must have decided she really was going to be all right. "Do you actually think I would have sat back and let you die, Kara?"
She shook her head and smiled. The small movement put some strain on her abdomen, and she immediately tensed up in pain. She pushed the hospital gown to the side again to stare at the gauze patch taped on to her stomach. "How bad is it?"
"You're going to have one nice scar and an equally nice war story to go with it," he replied.
"Could you pull off the patch? I want to see it."
Lee hesitated a moment before nodding. She felt his fingers gently push and pull at the tape holding the patch in place. He was being so hesitant that she couldn't even feel the adhesive pulling at her skin, let alone feel any sort of stress placed on her battle wound.
With a small tug, the whole patch fell off and Kara looked down. The wound was rather small, not even two inches in length. The stitches looked strong, but she could already see bruising around where they had entered her skin. It appears like when you're on a planet that's been devastated by evil machines, you don't have ready access to the new kinds of stitching, only the thread and needle variety. No wonder she didn't wake up from the pain sooner.
She felt Lee's fingers dance across where her stitches were. He was staring at her abdomen intently and tracing the outline of the stitches lightly. Almost without warning, Kara watched as he leaned down and kissed the wound lightly. He pulled back but continued to focus his attention on her wound. "Such a little wound for how much I worried," he whispered.
Kara reached out to nudge Lee's chin up until his eyes met hers. "What happened to me?"
"I'm not really sure how you got shot. All I know is I turned around to see if you were behind me and you were still standing beside your car with blood on your hands. I yelled your name but you collapsed before you could respond."
"I heard you," she said with a big smile.
"I fired my way back to where you were and picked you up into my arms."
Kara's face erupted in concern. "But you couldn't have kept firing at the Cylons with me unconscious in your arms."
"Well, no, I couldn't. But I didn't even think about that at the time. All I knew was that I had to get you away from there. The Cylons were moving in, and I think they meant business."
"Some job I did of keeping you safe. I can't even keep myself from being shot."
"I don't need you to protect me, Kara."
"Obviously," she said with a small snort.
"But I appreciate the effort nonetheless."
Her breath caught in her throat as he turned his attention back to her wound, which still lay open to the air. His fingers began tracing a path along her stomach.
"I don't think the wound's going to change, Lee, no matter how much you will it to," Kara said with a laugh.
"Your skin's really soft," he said, smiling up at her brightly for a moment. "I didn't realize."
"I am a woman," she pointed out.
"Trust me. I've never forgotten that for a second." He leaned his head against her stomach and placed another kiss near the wound. This time Kara found her hands moving to run through his hair as he continued to trace a line of kisses all the way across her stomach. It definitely felt a lot better than the pain she was in before.
"Hmm," she said with a slight moan.
"What?" he asked, pulling back from her so that he could meet her eyes.
"Turns out that kissing does make things feel better.
Lee shook his head and stood up off the bed. "Well, if you're feeling better, then I should probably give you this drug before the pain kicks back in."
She nodded and held her right hand out for him. Now that it was Lee with the needle, she wasn't worried at all. Silently, he tested the needle for air pockets and then inserted it into the IV catheter. The medication started going to her head immediately.
"The doctor said that you should be fine enough to move in a few days. I figured I could help you hobble along to whatever transportation we could fine."
"I resent having to lean on you," she whispered.
"Then you shouldn't have let yourself get shot, Thrace."
Lee moved to step out of the room and give her some peace, but her hand jumped up to latch onto his arm rather tightly. "Is something the matter? Are you in pain? Is something wrong?"
She shook her head. "Don't go. Please."
Lee nodded and sat down on the bed again. He took her hand in his and kissed the top of it gently as her eyes started to drop. Movement outside the window made him turn away from her for a moment.
Almost as if she knew, she muttered in a sleepy voice, "You won't leave me, will you, Lee?"
"No," he said, even though he was pretty sure there was something happening outside that he should probably be a part of. However, making sure Kara wasn't alone when she woke up again was more important than anything else at the moment. "I won't leave you."
"Okay," she said, her body relaxing completely as sleep took hold.
