He turns his eyes to regard the rest of the bridge.
Deanna had been so good with the boy, maternal even, and he wonders now why she cannot be that way with her own child; if it is truly made of her, she should have no real reason to hold herself at arms length, to be cold as she has been so much lately. Maybe Beverly was right to call it violation, maybe the girl does need help more than they can offer her, and maybe he had been right when he'd said a month ago that they should take her somewhere other than here.
Beverly argued for family, for the feeling of being home, but he had seen her in the very house that she had been built by, and home now seems a much more foreign concept, the further those stars drag themselves by. How can they even try to call themselves her family, when all that seems to happen is they get further away too, as she pushes and they do not push back?
Will had almost ruined her, and he says that he loves her, so what hope remains for the rest of them in reaching her, what hope is there for the girl herself?
Ought he be the one to confront her about this - dare he say it - depression? Perhaps that's his job, as Captain, and he's neglected it long enough now that she's had time to make herself into a shell of who he wants her to be. And maybe that is selfish of him.
Suddenly, he has to find her, he has to speak with her, if only to seek her own counsel on the matter as he has done so many times before, only this time he will have to push, he will have to make her squirm as she has made him; he will first have to ask her exactly how to make her see what is happening to her.
He stands abruptly, and the thought collides with him: what if she already has seen it, and doesn't care.
"You have the bridge Mr Data,"
The man stands too from his panel, and the right people move in to change their stations, with others turning to him, curiosity in their eyes.
"I think I'll take an early lunch,"
He clarifies, stepping aside for Data to sit in his chair, then nodding to him and turning up along the ramp to the turbolift, holding composure in all his movements until he too is encased by the turbolift doors shutting around his body.
Then, he takes a deep breath, slumps down a little against the nerves in his stomach.
He has to find her, he has to see her and talk to her and help her see sense.
All of a sudden he has to find her.
"I'm trying very hard to be polite, Ensign, but if you come any closer to me with that scalpel I will be forced to do something very unbecoming of a Ship's Counselor,"
Deanna's voice carries with such strength, that even the doors cannot hold it back - she does not sound scared.
"Deanna?"
He calls to her, and it is tangible how the air holds in suspension to the tune of a low rambling he cannot make out.
"Captain Picard? Do not come any closer, Ensign Tralk is suffering a psychological episode, he is very unstable,"
And still, she does not sound scared.
He doesn't listen to her request though, worry for her safety circling a drain in his mind that ends in the word scalpel - because he will not have anyone hurt her now.
Around the corner, his footsteps have much more impact in the tension, each one loud and ungainly. Deanna is there, backed almost to the wall on the left of the corridor, her arms up in a gesture of submission. Her stomach juts out unprotected in front of her, and it brings a sickness to his own, a dread borne of the sight of a golden ensign on the right hand side.
Tralk is not against the wall, he is out in the middle of the space with a glinting piece of sharpened metal in his hand. There is a searing beam emanating from it, red and hot and causing all the air to become distorted around it.
He is sweating, his jaw swinging, his free hand swiping over the sheen on his face.
Picard finds himself suddenly under the gaze of a manic pair of eyes, but she has yet to acknowledge him.
"You said you wouldn't call anyone, you called him you lied to me! Why is he here why did you call him you said you wouldn't why?"
The man rambles, older than her, his mouth creating sounds like the wine of a child.
Deanna is gently shaking her head.
"Listen to me Rosch, breathe, you know me, you know that I keep my word, and I promised I would not call anybody,"
She takes a moment to regard him at last, however fleeting, he cannot even measure the shade of her eyes.
"Captain Picard was just taking a walk,"
"A walk a walk a walk…"
Tralk echoes her, shifting his feet, and she focuses her attention for only one second on his weapon, then back to where he still looks into the Captains eyes.
"Look at me, please Rosch, he isn't who you are angry at,"
Deanna calls him, feeling how his own attention has started to stretch into a delusion that encompasses Picard now too.
"You know he had no part in what happened,"
He turns back to her with the sorrow of a child.
"You know that - don't you?"
She presses, and he nods shakily, under the influence maybe, of something that cannot be seen.
"I know that yes, I know I do I know yes, I do I do do I do -"
Tralk mutters on, his bobbing head and swinging jaw directed only at her, and for a moment his head lulls, his eyes droop, and her own have narrowed in imperceptible concentration.
Suddenly, she has to take a deep breath, and he stops his rambling, focuses with more clarity on her face.
"Yes, you you did it to her, you stole her from us and it's your fault all your fault your,"
An anger has flared in his voice, the scalpel blazes more intensely and he moves to take a step towards her, pressing ever closer.
The Captain attempts to say something, anything, but finds himself silenced somehow, the words stolen from his mind.
"Rosch, you know that is not true, Yoleen would have lost your daughter no matter what anybody did, it is not my fault, nor is it yours,"
Deanna tries to push back his advances, her arms coming a little further out at her sides, and it looks as though he has hit a wall, invisible yet impassible.
"But you stole her, you stole my baby daughter!"
The arm holding the scalpel rises hastily to point accusation at her stomach, but she doesn't even flinch for its sake. Picard is horrified in his silence, unable to even move.
Tralk's arm stops abruptly, at that same wall, everybody frozen but her.
"I warned you about that scalpel Ensign, I do not want to have to hurt you, I want to talk,"
Deanna tells him squarely, surely, and Picard's mind does somersaults of disbelief, the scene completely ridiculous, and her threatening a man pointing a flaming scalpel at her, when she is so much smaller and younger than him.
But it is in her voice, and in the purple hue of her eyes, that makes him believe she has control.
"You can't help me you can't, that is my baby I want her back you stole her from me she's mine!"
Tralk seems almost beyond pulling back into reality, something gripping him of psychosis, of grief and burden and terrible self-blame.
A groan, low and almost inaudible, bubbles in Deanna's throat, and it is possible just now to see that there is a vein popping along the side of her neck, stark against the high collar of her uniform tunic. Blood has built in her head, turning her red, and there is something of dreadful concentration to her, of strain that she cannot withstand much longer.
The man's hysteria becomes the whole space, and Picard is wondering why security has not come by, why nobody has heard the shouting or smelt the flaming scalpel. Deanna has begun to wince against the same invisible strain, and slowly he feels able to move just a little more. It is not much.
The look in her eyes, black and purple and terribly disappeared, and he wonders if it is not her who has the hold on him.
He blinks the sight of her - horrible.
"Please, put the scalpel down, think about your daughter, about Yoleen - she cannot lose you too,"
Rosch seems to ponder the thought, an emotion that has been pushed into his mind, but it seems too turbulent within, and the chaos has her reeling.
Deanna grabs her head, driven by his psychosis, and the pain is spectacular, such that she loses grip on his mind long enough to pull her sanity from him, long enough to let him slip away.
"No, you're trying to manipulate me, it's you, you stole my daughter, you're lying to me, you're evil - Captain, she's evil, don't listen to her, she'll get in your head and make you, make you think you're crazy,"
Tralk fumes, his words completely crazed now, directionless, and he is not even looking in Picard's direction to address him, calling out to anybody really who will listen. Still distracted, Deanna's back falls against the wall, dizzy, and he lights up alarmed.
"I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy!"
The bond on him is broken for a moment, and Tralk lunges forwards, catches her in a moment of deep breathing against his own sensation, and swipes outwards with his weaponed hand.
The sound, god the sound, he will be unable to forget it: melting fabric that crackles in the heat and shrinks away, and then the piercing of a wail that is not even so loud to startle him, like an injured animal already hurting, and the smell of skin that burns away.
And still, unfathomably, he is unable to move towards her, to disarm the man, to cover up where her uniform has been scorched away into her bare stomach.
He thinks he may see blood, but is too scared to confirm.
Then, Deanna's mouth is shut over to the sound, and she has sunk to the floor heavily, eyes heavy and downcast, still breathing in the same pattern of meditation and control. A terrible thing happens to Tralk, so suddenly that even he might not know it is happening; the scalpel falls limply from his hands onto the floor, finally shut off, and he reaches for his head desperately. The man howls, in pain, from the mania, from the voice he has now inside his mind which overrides all those others that had been whispering to him.
He hits the floor with a much heavier thud than she had, a few feet from her, in the middle of the corridor, in a puddle of a broken man. And Deanna's hands have not even moved to cover where she is injured, her face has not yet registered the pain but for her one scream, and instead, her concentration is elsewhere.
"Captain,"
The man whimpers, eyes squeezed tight shut, and the voice does not seem to be his.
"Call… Security,"
He forces out, but it is not really him at all.
There is no moment of hesitation to Picard then, and like a switch has been pulled, he is suddenly mobile and reaching to the wall panel for the panic button, hitting it harder than needs be, until klaxons are blaring loudly in the space.
Through the flashing lights, he watches something change in Tralk, another pulled switch, and his eyes open slowly, timidly, his hands removed now from where they had tugged at his hair.
Deanna's own eyes open, tiredly and finally, and she is slumped against the wall, her head dropping back to rest on it as though she is defeated, breathing in less even ways, less deeply.
"Oh gods what did I do?"
Rosch asks himself, seeing her there, but there is grace even for him.
"Nothing,"
Her voice is clean and soft.
"You did nothing, I did,"
There is something of self-loathing to her, and neither has the patience to work it out. Tralk is shuffling towards her, his hand reaching to touch the scorched skin of her stomach.
"You're hurt, I hurt you didn't I, that was me?"
He asks, but there is nothing of his rambling self anymore, just a man who notices now how he has made mistakes. Fingers come so close to her, but she shifts, and he is frozen.
"I am fine, just don't - please don't touch me,"
She takes a deep breath now, and looks up and to the right, straight into the Captain's eyes. He can understand her message.
"Picard to O'brien, I need a -"
Deanna shakes her head at him, and he is frozen around the comm badge.
"I can walk, please,"
She pleads.
"Sir?"
O'briens voice crackles through. Security start to round the corner, phasers in hand. Too much has started to happen.
"Never mind Lieutenant, disregard that last, Picard out,"
The line cuts, and two more golden men approach, holstering their weapons when they see what has unfolded. From the floor, Deanna speaks out to them, bypassing whatever he had wanted to order about the brig, or a court martial. She is an infinitely more forgiving person than he.
"Gentlemen, could you please escort Ensign Tralk to Counselor Moore's office, they'll know why he's there - just stay with them until they tell you everything is under control,"
She is concise enough for her injury, and they do not question her before helping Rosch off the floor and taking him arm in arm to help how he stumbles slightly, looking back over his shoulder to see as the Captain finally can move closer towards Deanna, concern evident in all his movement.
"Deanna, you're bleeding!"
He exclaims, crouching in front of her to inspect what has been done.
"You should have let me send him to the brig,"
She shakes her head, hands now coming to ghost past the burnt skin, not looking or touching but simply feeling the heat of the air there.
"He is a grieving man with a rare form of schizophrenia, Captain, he does not need the brig, he needs to talk, and to have his treatment reviewed - he is Moore's patient and not mine,"
Her voice has started to become slightly strained, and now that she is back inside the confines of her own mind, the pain has begun to let itself known. She is sweating at her temples, her face pale in creeping shock.
"Okay, well we'll talk about it later, but now you need to get to Beverly,"
Picard tells her, shaking his head, evaluating her whole person, measuring whether she will need to be lifted or not, sure that is a task he will be able to accomplish with his Command in-tact.
"Do you think you can walk?"
He asks her, and she is already lifting her arms up to ask for his assistance in standing, her back terribly cramped now from slumping, her stomach starting to send pains shooting through the nerves in the surface of her skin.
The smell of her own burnt flesh is filling their nostrils.
Picard grasps her hands firmly, and tries not to pull too hard on her body, hauling her up under steam that seems to have come from nowhere. Immediately, she is dizzy.
Deanna's legs are not holding her completely upright, and instead, she is tipping forward, a hand on her head and the other atop her thigh, trying not to hit the floor once her support has gone. She inhales deeply through her nostrils, and then slowly out through her mouth, a sudden nausea made of her, swaying.
Command is not enough reason for him to keep his hands off her now.
"You feel sick?"
He asks of her, dipping down to accept her right arm around his neck, and looping his own around her waist, careful not to let his fingers extend too far into charred flesh. She is much smaller than he is, even in those heeled uniform boots, and he finds himself slowly guiding her down the corridor with his knees bent in accommodation, paces short and measured.
"I will be fine,"
Deanna turns her nose upwards to the smell, swallowing over the nausea and the pride of accepting his help, her hair just now falling free of it's ties and sticking to the cold sweat on her face.
The turbolift doors open into a mercifully empty space.
"How badly do you think he hurt you?"
The Captain asks her, leaning himself on the wall for further support, after they have started to move upwards, his command not verbally required when they are only one deck away.
"It is just the flesh,"
She tells him, still not having looked down or touched the injury, the pain that she is incapable of taking away from herself overriding whatever sensibility she might desire to practice. A braver man, Picard cranes to look down at exposed skin, and it is raw, drawing in shades of deeper red the closer to the centre of where the scalpel had hit it gets, the whole thing no less than an inch and a half in diameter, and bordered by hardened and black melted uniform.
"No I think the scalpel went deeper than that,"
The doors fly open, and he has no more chance to scrutinise. Again, he is propping her up, and they are maneuvering along another empty corridor.
"I am fine, Jean please,"
She startles him by using his name, and he thinks maybe it has something to do with how close they are touching, how there are points where their skin is touching a shared warmth and it is impossible to want to call her anything but her own self.
"We'll just let Crusher be the judge of that then Deanna, you're too stubborn for your own good,"
Picard jests lightly, wanting to maybe dig her in the ribs to mirror the glint in his eye, but he refrains, knowing it will not end well. She smiles, knowing his intention was to make her do so, and continues on a walk that becomes increasingly hard to force from her legs, where they have started to tremble more seriously beneath her.
The Captain can see this in her, and adjusts his speed again to slow to her snail pace, looking up ahead of them to where the sickbay doors tease their presence, so close but still a little too far to walk.
He listens to her breathing become laboured, and can feel even how her chest rises unevenly to take in only shallow breaths beside him; he counts the steps that remain before them.
Deanna's free hand has reached beneath her stomach to support the weight, and she holds on with white knuckles, the two of them a terrible sight.
"Doctor Crusher, some help please!"
Picard is yelling into the opening doors, the second they are close enough and only two steps remain before they cross the threshold to where the place is humming with activity. Thankfully, she is not busy, and hears his voice like it is the one thing she was born to do.
Beverly meets them at a jog, seeing how he has brought Deanna clinging into his side.
"My God, Deanna?"
Suddenly, in a rush of sweeping blue fabric, she is at Deanna's other side, tall and stooping over the site of injury; her fingers dance around the sticky fabric.
"Come on, there's a free bed over here,"
The Doctor directs them, straightening out and taking Deanna's arm from where she cradles her stomach, looping it around her own shoulder so that the woman is suspended between them both. She lets out a huff of air as her body pulls upwards slightly, her lungs expanding involuntarily, and a low oomph sound leaves her as she is hustled, jostled further into Sickbay.
She cannot explain to herself how only a few minutes ago she was completely fine, and now, can barely stand.
"What happened?"
Beverly asks them both, and they find themselves moving slowly towards the empty suite against the back wall.
Picards answer is damningly concise.
"High energy laser scalpel, a few minutes ago,"
Deanna hums again, not a response, but maybe more of an aversion to how he is starting to build the memory in his mind.
She shakes her head - dizzy.
"It was just… an accident."
Beverly raises her eyebrows, but they have reached the bed and she has no more walking space to press them with questions on what has happened. They round the space to face outwards from it, and she begins to push upwards on the arm around her shoulder.
"Here, sit."
And Picard catches on fast, lifting her slightly by the other arm, back and up onto the raised biobed surface, though Deanna has said nothing more through further shallow breaths.
"Deanna?"
He tries to get her attention, then turns to where Crusher has left them to collect a trolley.
"Doctor, she looks pale?"
Picard tries to keep the alarm from his voice, turns again back to face his Counselor, asks the same question as before.
"You feel sick?"
One of her dainty hands has begun to struggle at covering her mouth, and the other has a white knuckled grip on the fabric edge of the bed beneath her. He prides himself on the speed of his reaction, with no idea how he knew where a basin would be but somehow finding one in his hands in a split second, holding it up beneath her chin.
The sound is harrowing, and behind him he can hear Beverly begin to react herself.
"She's probably in shock, just let her get it out,"
Her instruction is just what he would have imagined, and she continues to leave him to his own devices - a Captain and not a Doctor.
With a second awkward hand, Picard starts to pull the sweaty tendrils of hair from away from her face, smoothing them back over her crown so that they are not in her way, then he travels down to close into a fist that rubs knuckles over her back, a circle he remembers from his youth.
Deanna groans, and he thinks he can hear I'm sorry reverberating in the metal dish, but it is much too worrisome for him to care, and Beverly is coming back to them with a laden trolley of equipment he does not want to know the uses of. She takes the bowl from his hand in her own steadier two, leaving him free to rub one of the girls shoulders, anything to distract her from how painful this retching sounds.
Mercifully, it does not last for very much longer, and with both hands now he is able to smooth all along the length of Deanna's back, feeling how there is so much tension, so many knots that she likely has nobody to knead away for her.
Will, sitting on someone else's bridge, another solar system away, a smile of self satisfaction on his face, flashes through his mind.
"Finished?"
Beverly questions her when it has been silent for a few moments, and Deanna nods just once before the dish is taken from under her chin, and swiftly deposited in the waste disposal beneath the bed. She is paler still, if that is possible, and has started to shake as though she is cold.
"Help her lie back for me?"
Picard is asked, and he blinks taking his hands away from her as he watches the Doctor reach down for her tricorder at last. There are a series of tricky manoeuvres as he eases down onto his feet, then tries to work out the best way to help Deanna's slow and jutting movements, where she has begun to try to sweep her legs up at the same time as she shifts further back and along the bed. He settles for taking a slight dip in front of her, replacing where Beverly had been standing and letting her rest her delicate hands on top of his shoulders to push herself back and away from him.
A frown registers on his face as he realises she has not really exerted much pressure onto him, and he is barely moved at all by the force of her moving away, her arms and legs shaking the effort of pulling herself to now lie along the length of the bed, twisting to sit against the raised back.
He is swept unceremoniously out of the way by Beverly, who has finally sorted out the things she needs, and is waving the wand of a tricorder very specifically over Deanna's stomach, her concerns for the child.
Deanna seemed to have had no concerns at all.
She shuts her eyes, and Picard finds himself rounding the bed once again to stand out of the way, at her head with his back against the wall, fiddling the fingers of his idle hands.
He ends up looking away when he sees that Beverly has begun to try to peel away Deanna's uniform tunic to expose the wound, but his ears find themselves unable to ignore how she tries to breathe through the pain of tugging flesh. Somehow, he is surprised that she does not reach for his hand, for some kind of support, and this fierce independence in the wake of Will's clumsy romance is going to hurt her more in the end.
"God this is a mess!"
Beverly exclaims, moreso to herself as she continues to try to extract bits of melted cloth from an open wound, everything becoming one mass of raw nerves and things she is nervous to pull at. Her voice makes him look over at last, to see that Deanna's stomach has been exposed up to where it rounds beneath her ribs, and the doctor is fussing with the towelling she has tucked into the top of her uniform pants.
He would blush at how suddenly she has been exposed, but he's too busy breathing through the feeling of heat in the pit of his stomach at what has been exposed.
"Would you pull the curtain round?"
The instruction is enough for him to pull his eyes away, and busy himself on the task. There is colour enough left in his face to fix the crewmen who have begun to stare with a stern glance, before dragging a blue and rarely used curtain around the whole bay, sealing them off from all those prying eyes.
Picard turns back to them, and she has begun to start again with an extraction beam, trying to isolate all those pieces of melted cloth without having yet considered how Deanna's face is screwing up, and perhaps that gleam halfway down her cheek is a tear that she had allowed to fall silently.
"Thanks, you can go if you need to,"
Crusher adds, throwing the words over her shoulder, focused intensely on this one single patch of skin. He hears a suppressed squeal when the tool lights up more harshly, and decides then to stay, if only to advocate.
"Doctor - the pain?"
Picard admonishes, returning to the head of the bed and regarding the pinched expression on Deanna's face, pointing even a little to demonstrate that her silence is no sign of her well-being. Beverly seems uncharacteristically unphased.
"I have to clean the wound before it starts to seal,"
She explains, intent in her work.
"And she's already maxed out on her daily limit, I can't give her anymore pain meds without risking liver damage,"
Picard frowns, running an absent minded hand over his counselors forehead, where she is cold and clammy.
"But you haven't given her anythi-"
Beverly's quick look up into his eyes silences his words, and he might be more confused than before, if it weren't for the memory of their meeting the other day, of the replication approval he had to sign off on for Sickbay, the use of controlled substances in just one patients care.
"It does not hurt,"
Deanna pipes, her voice low. Dr Crusher hits on a nerve just then, and she gasps, her eyes opening wide with pupils unfixed.
"Well I know that's a lie,"
He tells her fondly, smoothing her hair back again, watching the uneven rise and fall of her chest. She yelps again, her body jolts a little, and he has to tighten his other hand into a fist, just to remain by her side.
"I'm sorry Dee, just a few more,"
Beverly's voice is soothing, but her actions continue in much the same way, and Deanna has begun to shiver.
"This is ridiculous!"
Picard groans, fist tight.
"What possessed you to pick a fight with an armed madman?"
He is angry, but she knows it is not directed at her.
A rattling breath leaves her.
"I did not… pick a fight,"
Deanna gets out through a tightening jaw, her eyelids swinging over pinched pupils, head rested up on the bulkhead wall.
"Ensign Tralk… came… to me,"
She jumps along with another whimper as Beverly continues her work, only half listening. Her eyes start to track the room, as though it is moving and only she can tell.
"His daughter had… a condition… she was stillborn… same time as -"
Deanna swallows, wafts down at her stomach with a worryingly limp wristed hand.
" - this,"
He runs his hand now down to her shoulder, and she truly is trembling down to her feet, where they rest at the end of the bed; on his way back up her body, he lands again at her stomach, his own sinking in despair.
She is bruised in light, spidery patterns, though shockingly her skin remains porcelain white as a backdrop, with no stretch marks to indicate the speed of growth, only the certain impact zones, where thin skin has turned purple in small and concentrated ovals.
Even he could shudder at the thought.
"It is not -"
Deanna continues on, but stops to pull in a breath that is rattling into her body more loudly, if that is possible, than her voice can carry out.
" -his fault,"
He looks down to Beverly, whose hands appear to have stopped, and he is still frowning over Deanna's words, with no possible response when he knows that she is right, as she most often is. The tool lights up brightly again, and this time her cry is much more harrowing to hear, and if it weren't so childish of him, he would simply cover over his ears in ignorance.
"Beverly it burns,"
Deanna groans, and this is the first moment she has taken to admit, even in roundabout ways, that she is not fine, that she is feeling pain. He cannot stand it, and unclasps his fist to take her hand more softly, that maybe her grace will ground him.
"She's freezing,"
Picard tells her, and Crusher stands straight again, the precision extractor disengaged and rolling now in her palm.
"Here, here, it's the shock,"
She repeats, pushing a folded foil blanket onto the bed as she digs with her other hand for something in the trolley, and he takes it quickly to shake out and tuck around Deanna's body, leaving her side for a few seconds. With care, and consideration perhaps the Doctor did not even have, he finds himself removing her boots and dropping them to the floor, delighted for a brief and fluttering moment to see that she wears odd socks in highly non-regulation shades of pink. A smile takes him for a second before they are covered up by the blanket, and he continues to move around her to tuck her securely up, only leaving exposed the one side where Beverly continues to work on her wound, having finally turned back to them with a metallic tube, and a dermal regenerator.
Deanna gasps as he returns to her head, because cold fingers have begun spreading a salve across the raw skin that at least is now free of melted fabric, but continues to burn raw with edges that now are yellowed slightly, the whole sight overwhelming to see of her stomach especially.
She is all the colours of an awful dream.
Picard holds on to her hand like it is both a clasped vice that traps him, and a flower whose petals have begun to wilt.
Better than the comfort of himself, he unclasps and tucks the flower, the frozen metal vice back under the blanket with the rest of her trembling body.
"It's just the shock, she'll be fine,"
Crusher reiterates, seeing how he fusses, continuing her own ministrations with just the three fingers of one hand, consciously gentle at last.
"I am… so sorry… for this,"
The girl grinds out through chattering teeth, clear now that she clings on very loosely to her waking and alert self.
"I don't… know why-"
"Stop, Troi, it's just the physical reaction to being burnt so badly, you can't help it so just let us help you,"
Beverly seems now to be at least in some kind of stride, acknowledging both her work and her patient with equal measures of attention. Deanna nods, but there is an alarm rising all of a sudden around her; her head is lulling with less intent than they think.
"Hey, Deanna?!"
Picard looks back at the girl along with Beverly's attention, and there is a panel lighting up on the wall the Counselor slumps against.
"Christ it's her heart rate!"
The Doctor might be cursing under her breath, but there is not quiet enough to hear as she rushes over to Deanna's other side, wiping her fingers off on her coat before gripping either side of the girls face.
She pushes her fingers up under Deanna's chin, the fastest way to feel for herself how the pulse is weak, her breathing shallow.
"Breathe Deanna - deeply, c'mon,"
Crusher instructs her, and then moves her hand to pull back Deanna's eyelids, the almost imperceptible pupils swelling to absorb her whole eye - wide and saucer-like.
He does not know what to do with himself, and slowly has found himself with his back up to the curtain, watching on in awe as Beverly demonstrates deep breathing while holding Troi's face in solid hands, to make her focus on at least one point.
This goes on for close to a minute, and it feels like too many lifetimes before anybody speaks again, the urgency still not lost.
"Could you get her talking, Jean-Luc, I need to check on the baby,"
He gulps the intimacy, thinks mierde, because he had forgotten for a moment that it was a child in there, and not a parasite wasting her away. So he steps back into action, back to the head of the bed so that he is almost on eye level with Deanna, looking only slightly down into those deepened and wandering eyes.
He brushes past her forehead with the back of his hand as Beverly kneels at the trolley again, and she is struggling still to puff the air around them.
"Why - why don't you tell me about… the nursery, then?"
He improvises, thinking it's something she will want to talk about.
"I - I have not thought… about it,"
Deanna tells him, eyelids wide and alarmed for a second, but the sentiment leaves very soon.
"Well then did you have anything in mind?"
He presses.
Deanna swallows and screws up her eyes, Beverly has opened out the blanket again, and is placing down the dermal regenerator over her angered skin. The sensation is more than unpleasant, though the past informs her it will be over soon.
"Research suggests… infants respond… to contrast,"
She says at last, and he finds a bead of frustration like sweat on his forehead, that she is talking like a clinician, like a woman who is not pregnant, or at least, will not be a mother. Picard wonders if this is how she truly feels, if she has detached herself and he hasn't noticed.
"Yes, but what would you like to do?"
Deanna hums, breathes one deep breath in a sea of shallow ones, and she turns her eyes on him terrifyingly - he worries for a moment that she will tell him exactly what she would like.
"Decoration… is not so much… the problem… as assembling the furniture,"
She responds less frankly, but still with the honestly she prides herself in, and so he hops on the balls of his feet, hopes maybe he can find a solution for this somehow. Beverly takes a glance up from where she is hunched over, and her eyes have grown in sadness at the sincerity of it, thinking of how she'd had to cobble together the replicated parts of a crib, one of the too many nights that Jack had been away.
She looks back down, finally having set the regenerator, and turns to search for some other piece of equipment, noting how Deanna's trembling is slowly beginning to subside.
"I thought Mr Data was helping you out in that respect?"
Picard asks at last, noting similar things, and the way her jaw is not so tightly clenched anymore.
"I do not like to ask,"
Finally, she is able to form a full sentence without having to huff, or unclasp her jaw, and he smiles back despite himself, because the shock seems gratefully to be easing its hold on her.
"He's eager to help Counselor, you shouldn't think you're putting him out of his way,"
He chides her, and she is taking one deep and concentrated breath when her eyes meet his, telling him this is perhaps not the best topic to ease her slowed heart rate.
Beverly reemerges once again, this time with an aluminum Pinard Horn in her hand, and he eyes it warily, confused.
"That's a little old-fashioned isn't it Doctor?"
Picard asks, his attention turned away from Deanna, whose eyes were not words that could carry any kind of conversation worth having right now. The doctor chuckles despite herself.
"Sometimes there's just no substitute for something that works,"
She tells him, a glint in her eyes that tells of her deep love affair with medicine, and he smiles too, still, watches how she moves with skilled fingers to hold the belled end of the instrument against Deanna's stomach.
The girl hisses.
"Deanna?"
Smile falling away from his face, he turns back to look at her with concern, and already she is shaking her head no, shuffling her shoulders a little beneath the blanket.
"Nothing, I'm fine,"
She hushes his sudden terror, but it is a blatant and bald faced lie that he might have been foolish not to expect from her - whatever she may say about keeping her promises, she never promised not to lie.
"The skin is tender and the horn is cold,"
Beverly says on her behalf, meeting first Deanna's eyes with a crooked eyebrow, and then the Captains, with the exasperation of a good doctor, and a worried friend.
"I'll try to avoid some of the bigger bruises,"
She then tells Deanna, back to her eyes again before finally turning her attention back to the work. Picard's swallow is audible, as he takes an even closer look for just one split second, at the bigger bruises Beverly refers to - it is ghastly, he thinks, and does not look for very much longer.
"So,"
He faces Deanna again, looking to distract them both now; she is still too pale, but her body no longer sweats so coldly.
"What about names - do you have anything in mind?"
And perhaps he has not learnt his lesson, about what he ought leave alone.
"I had not considered -"
Deanna starts, but her own thoughts stop her abruptly; considered what - that at the end of all this there would be a child, requiring a name, a place to sleep and a loving parent? Shock holds her tightly again for a second, for she has none of these things to offer.
"No, not yet,"
She corrects, after a beat that does not pass unmissed, but rather unheaded by Picard, who thinks she maybe just needed the time to breathe again, that her heart is starting to beat like all the other shiny people's.
"Well, might I suggest not going with Jean-luc, the boy will never live it down I'm afraid,"
A laugh accompanies his words, self-deprecating and reminiscent of a schoolyard in rural France, nobody French at all. The Counselor smiles at this, trying to ignore how Beverly searches the globe of her stomach for the best angle to hear the heartbeat, the horn end pushing in against her skin every few seconds, with force enough to distract her.
"I would never dare,"
She jests in return, a shiver running up her spine to cause a tight shudder in her neck, and she reaches out of the blanket to scratch at her temple, feeling a rush of blood to the appendage the second she manages to inspire its movement.
"What about your father?"
Picard ventures, but this is too far; anything of jest is gone from them both too suddenly to be coincidence.
"I had been… hoping to save that… for-"
Though she cannot go on, or tell him what for, the taste of it hangs around them, and he knows anyway, he knows he has tried too hard and pushed too far; he begins to wonder if Will has had this feeling too.
The helplessness.
"Well, a better time,"
Deanna finishes delicately, maybe as if she would have to love the child to give it such a big name, but then maybe the name would force her to love it - she is not sure.
"Aha!"
Beverly's exclamation severs the feeling that has been suspended between them, oblivious, and she replaces her ear at the horn with her own removed comm badge, using it to amplify the sound.
Frantic, frightful and perfectly normal, a heartbeat sounds out for them all, regular and in keeping with a pattern Beverly taps out on the floor with her boot; the woman's smile says it all.
"You've got a strong one in there, Deanna, completely unphased,"
She says, enjoying the simple sound of life for longer than they need to, and Picard finds himself awed, harrowed.
He finds his attention pulled back to Deanna, wonders how many times she's sat in sickbay, under the Doctor's attention since she's been pregnant, and how many times the child has been fine, regardless of whatever trouble she done herself.
The strong one, suspiciously so, continues to show off it's beating heart, but like all hearts, it does not tell lies - the tell tale heart that has been so warningly written of.
Deanna knows it too, knows too much about tell tale hearts, and how her wrists even are bonier than before, how her back struggles against the weight, how her ribs echo her breaths more sharply.
Completely unphased - she has to wonder how long it will be before it isn't, and how much trouble she has to be in to even have it take notice that she has a heart too.
Only hers, famously, tells no such tales at all.
