AN: Here we are, another piece to the story.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
"We've got severe lacerations, probable heavy blood loss."
Seven felt overwhelmed—dizzy with the flurry of movement around her—the moment that she materialized. It took a second for her senses to catch up with the change in location. They felt overwhelmed and overloaded. She was no longer in a dark room with Derram. For a brief second, she was practically blinded as her human eye and her ocular implant both struggled to make the adjustment from darkness to bright light. There were voices, and bodies, and movement all around her. The air was thick with the metallic scent of various kinds of blood, the universally sour smell of sweat, the stench of other bodily fluids, and the particularly musky smell of mass panic and anxiety.
It was a triage situation. As strange hands—practically disembodied hands, for all the overwhelm she felt at the moment—touched her and strange voices assessed her, Seven realized they were all being handled according to the level of concern their particular wounds created.
She heard them. She was female. Severe lacerations and contusions. Significant blood loss. Stop the bleeding. Borg. She heard the high pitched, panicked sound of a very young nurse—brand new, probably still studying, not expecting to get her feet wet in what was possibly a river of blood. "I don't know how to treat a Borg."
Seven was alone for a moment—for a whole eternity in sixty seconds—and she felt herself swooning, despite her best efforts to stay alert and aware.
"Raffi…" She managed to get out. She could hear her alarm blaring from her personal device. It was a sound among a sea of other sounds, but she could hear it. The ring was somehow different than the other alarms. The sound was familiar. She heard it echoing back from another location—not echoing. It was coming from another location. She followed the sound. Her vision blurred. She tried to focus her vision with both her eye and her implant. Dr. Crusher and the Doctor had their attention on someone—someone across the room, someone with the personal device making the same sound as Seven's. They'd gotten Raffi, too. Both doctors being with her worried Seven, especially since daring to turn her head even slightly told her that they weren't the only two there who had suffered at the hands of the Nerobians, but the sight of both doctors with her also comforted Seven.
She was alone, but she would adapt. At the very least, she could know that Raffi was being cared for.
Seven felt coolness at her neck. Then, she felt the same again. She felt the cool metallic touch again, this time with a following sting that faded quickly. The alarms—at least two of them—stopped screeching. Seven felt a rush of relief. It wasn't complete relief, but it was relief, and she felt a wave of emotion. She also felt a wave of nausea, but somehow the strong arms wrapped around her from behind anticipated that and leaned her to the side so that, when she emptied the contents of her stomach, at least it wasn't all over herself. She heard the sound of laughter—an almost affectionate amusement.
"You're OK. I've got you. You're going to be OK."
"B'Elanna?" Seven asked.
"Do you have any strength left?" B'Elanna asked in her ear. "Can you help me get you off the floor and onto a table?"
Seven didn't know how much she helped, but she helped as much as she could. She felt like B'Elanna practically lifted her off the floor and onto a nearby table. Her friend closed a curtain around them, shutting out the rest of the chaos with a thin curtain of pretend privacy. Seven tried to help pull off her uniform, when it became clear that B'Elanna was trying to get her out of it, but she felt heavy and tired. B'Elanna didn't seem bothered. She started to cut Seven out of the clothing with a pair of scissors.
"Raffi…"
"Is going to be fine," B'Elanna said. "The Doctor's working on some…repairs…right now. But she's going to be fine. And the only thing she's going to be asking about is Seven. You two are predictable like that. So, let me be able to tell her the same thing."
B'Elanna started scanning Seven with a medical tricorder she'd either been given or had simply taken from someone.
"Nanoprobes," Seven said. "You can reprogram them. She needs them."
"You need them," B'Elanna said.
"Is my baby undamaged?" Seven asked. "I protected her to the best of my abilities."
"I can see that. She seems fine," B'Elanna said quickly. "The tricorder isn't saying anything in particular about the baby. You can relax, Seven."
"If the baby is undamaged, then Raffi needs the nanoprobes more than we do," Seven insisted.
"Can I get a little Borg-friendly help here?" B'Elanna said, leaning and putting her head out of the curtain for a moment. "I also need a portable regenerator."
"Raffi needs the help," Seven insisted. She could see, however, that B'Elanna was ignoring her for the moment. She'd seen the woman employ the same tactic with her children. She could practically shut down her hearing to the point that you doubted whether or not she'd honestly lost the ability—and, then, she could turn it back on again when she found it convenient.
Crusher came with the regenerator and, presumably, the Borg-friendly assistance.
"I don't know how to use this," Crusher admitted, holding the portable regenerator out toward B'Elanna. She moved and, using a dermal regenerator, she started to try to make repairs to the lacerations that Seven was starting to feel comprised more of her body than actual intact dermal and epidermal tissue. As each wound was closed and its bleeding stopped, Seven could almost swear that she felt her strength building.
"We used to attach the portable generators differently," B'Elanna said. "But—I've helped to adjust the connections for these. Seven developed these connection ports along her spine when she connected to a cube to control it. I adapted all the connection cables on the portable generators to those ports."
"Raffi needs your assistance," Seven said, ignoring the fact that B'Elanna connected her to the portable regenerator via the port at the base of her spine.
"You need my assistance," Crusher said, her tone soft, despite the situation. "Has anyone scanned her, yet? I need a report of what we know and what's been done already."
"I've done what I know to do, and that's amateur emergency knowledge at best. I gave her the hormones she was missing to shut off the alarms. I gave her a plasma and hemoglobin stimulant coded for humans to try to stimulate the rebuilding of her blood supply. I gave her a mild analgesic and a mild sedative to help until someone could come."
"You've done well," Crusher said. "You've covered all the major bases. We'll be able to easily get a handle on things from here, once we figure out exactly what she needs."
"Your less-than-stellar helpers diagnosed her mostly with being Borg and left her to bleed on the floor," B'Elanna said, not trying to hide her tone of dislike for anyone who might have passed by Seven without offering assistance.
"As soon as everything settles," Crusher said, "we'll be having a discussion about this. We have a lot of amateur help, and that's no excuse, but a lot of them have a lot of room for growth. We're seeing that with our first, and hopefully last, emergency. They came here to learn, and that's exactly what they need to do."
"I'm no professional, but I can diagnose lacerations, contusions, shock," B'Elanna ticked off. "Considerable blood loss. I scanned her with a tricorder. There is nothing alarming that I saw about the baby. Considering Seven's injuries, either the Nerobian missed every single organ, or…"
"The nanoprobes will heal me," Seven interrupted, with some irritation. "I will…"
"Adapt," B'Elanna interrupted. "Seven—you're still in shock. You're going to be fine, but you do need some treatment."
"Raffi needs my nanoprobes," Seven said, this time addressing Crusher as the woman worked to heal the wounds that Seven considered minor as long as she wasn't sure about Raffi's condition. "Take some of them. Please. B'Elanna can reprogram them to help Raffi—to help anyone."
Crusher looked at B'Elanna with question.
"It isn't difficult," B'Elanna ceded. "I've done it before. The Doctor can do it, too."
Crusher looked at Seven. She looked uncomfortable when she addressed B'Elanna.
"It doesn't cause…" she said, hesitating to continue.
"Reprogrammed," Seven said, "the nanoprobes will not cause assimilation. They—do what they're told to do."
"We program them for suicide missions, essentially," B'Elanna explained. "Repair and self-destruct. They're filtered out of the body as waste after they die. Seven's already lost a lot of blood, though. Even with the plasma and hemoglobin stimulant..."
"I am fine. I will heal," Seven said. "You do not require many nanoprobes to do the job, and I am producing them in excess thanks to my pregnancy."
She could see the conversation that took place between the two women—an exchange made only with their eyes—and felt frustrated that her judgment wasn't being trusted at the moment. Crusher scanned her without a word.
"The baby is completely stable," Crusher said. "She's showing no signs of fetal distress. There are no major injuries now that the bleeding has stopped. Blood volume is low, but not critical."
"It will not take much," Seven said. "After you program the nanoprobes that you need for Raffi, you can use whatever is left where it's most needed. I will—obey. Please. Whatever you tell me to do, I will do it. Please—help Raffi."
Crusher held Seven's eyes, and then she nodded and returned with a hypodermic that would allow her to collect an appropriate sample. Seven was happy to give her whatever she needed—whatever she would take. B'Elanna gave instructions of how much was necessary, guessing at the number of nanoprobes she would likely get in the sample. Then, B'Elanna left Crusher to take the sample and, moving to the sickbay lab, to reprogram the available nanoprobes as quickly as possible.
Crusher healed the puncture wound left behind by large gauge required to collect the sample. Then, she used the dermal regenerator to continue her work of healing Seven's more minor lacerations. She touched her fingers over Seven's face as she healed some of the scratches there.
"There are people who need your assistance," Seven said. "The nanoprobes will heal me. I am not badly damaged."
"Not anymore, you're not," Crusher agreed. "I think the shock is better, too. You're calming down. I'll stay here for a few more minutes, though. Nearly everyone is stable now."
"Raffi…"
"Is going to be fine," Crusher said. "Especially now, probably. You know—everyone's lucky you were there."
"Lucky?" Seven asked.
Crusher smiled softly, continuing her work. She hummed.
"Your call was the only one that came through. It took a few minutes to unscramble your message, but the concern was immediate. Everyone sensed that something wasn't right, even before they knew what you'd said. When they couldn't get back to you, or reach anyone else, they raised yellow alert and started to try to figure out how to get a lock on anyone. Whatever was keeping them from beaming you out was also keeping anyone from beaming in. Then, your alarm went off."
"My alarm?" Seven asked.
Crusher hummed and nodded.
"It's directly connected here, too, so that the Doctor and I can monitor your needs," Crusher said. "As part of the research project, the Doctor agreed to monitor you closely. When the alarm went off, we realized that whatever scrambled our initial communication connection, didn't scramble the connection between the chip and the alarms. They used it to get a lock on you, and they used the same frequency, with some adjustments, to get our transporter signal through. They were able to beam everyone out at once. They wouldn't have been able to do that if it hadn't been for you and your thirsty nanoprobes."
Seven recognized the doctor's teasing. She felt heavy, and she leaned on her hand, her elbow locked to keep her upright.
"You're tired. You're coming down, now," Crusher said. "And that's normal. Very human," she said, winking at Seven. "The regenerator will help with some of it, at least from what I am beginning to understand about your physiology, but you'll need some sleep." She disappeared for what seemed like only half a second—outside of the curtain that B'Elanna had pulled around the table to give the illusion of privacy—and she returned with a teal gown. She offered it to Seven. "If you want it for modesty. It's open in the back, so it won't disturb the regenerator."
"I need to see Raffi," Seven said.
"And you will," Crusher told her. "The minute that the Doctor's done. I tell you what—if you'll just do me a favor and relax, I'll go and tell her, right now, that you're OK. That'll put her mind at ease."
"Is she awake?" Seven asked.
"She wasn't," Crusher said. "But—I believe it will still put her mind at ease. I'll tell her that you're OK. The baby's OK. I'll tell her you're ready to see her as soon as she's awake. It'll help her just to hear it."
Seven wasn't sure if it would help or not, but part of her thought that just knowing Raffi was OK would make her feel better, so she thought it wouldn't hurt to offer Raffi any possible comfort. She thanked Crusher, and let her go without any delay. B'Elanna stepped back inside the curtain a moment after Crusher was gone.
"Feeling better?" She asked, checking the regenerator and the connection. She brought her PADD with her, and she used it to connect with Seven. Seven closed her eyes, feeling the probing sensation of B'Elanna's diagnostic scan.
"I will feel better when I can see Raffi," Seven said, opening her eyes. From B'Elanna's expression, she could tell that she wasn't immediately troubled by anything the rapid scan picked up on. For a few moments, B'Elanna simply read the screen—code running by that she read with the same simplicity that some people employed to read children's books, especially thanks to the familiarity she'd gained with Seven's Borg systems over the past few years—and watched for anything she found worrisome. Nothing seemed to be catching her attention.
"Soon," B'Elanna said. "I saw her. She's looking so much better."
"You were not harmed by the Nerobians?" Seven asked.
"Janeway and I never knew what was happening," she said. "We were just having a meeting with the Alpha. We were talking about history and…the Federation. There was never any indication that everyone else wasn't having the same kind of civilized conversation. The next thing I knew, we were transported directly here, and then there was bloody chaos. Janeway is on the bridge, now, with Chakotay and Picard. I have no idea what's going to happen."
"The attack was in the nature of the Nerobians," Seven said.
"It doesn't mean we'll take it lying down," B'Elanna said.
"Was anyone killed?" Seven asked.
"Cadet Wran," B'Elanna said. "He was just a student. He was interested in helping with mapping."
"I remember him," Seven said. "He was Berevian."
B'Elanna nodded. She disconnected the diagnostic cable. Her expression told Seven everything she needed to know—there was no real concern.
"We're not going to want some kind of war," B'Elanna said, "but I also imagine that Starfleet is going to be angry about this—and Janeway is going to contact them. We're not out here alone. It isn't like it was when we were lost out here on Voyager."
"Seven!"
Seven jumped. She hadn't expected to hear Elnor's voice, and she certainly hadn't expected to hear it quite so loudly. B'Elanna stuck her head out of the curtain to catch his attention, and he must have seen her immediately. He burst through the curtain, into the space they pretended was private, and wrapped his arms around Seven—either oblivious to or uncaring of the fact that she was wearing nothing more than a teal medical gown. She didn't care. She wrapped her arms around him, in return, and rested her head against his shoulder.
"You're alive," Elnor said.
"I am not damaged," Seven assured him. She smiled to herself. As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt Elnor's hug grow stronger as he squeezed, soothed by the fact that he wasn't going to aggravate injuries.
"She'll heal," B'Elanna said. "But you can convince her to rest a little, if you want to speed up her full recovery."
Elnor didn't let go of Seven or pull away. She made no effort, either, to pull away from him.
"Raffi…" Elnor said.
"Will be fine," B'Elanna said. "They were doing some repairs from a few injuries, but she should be fine. We reprogrammed some of Seven's nanoprobes to help in the healing process."
"And they're working," Crusher said, slipping back into the now-quite-cramped space. Her awareness of their conversation proved just how false their sense of privacy was in the small curtained-off area. Elnor released Seven, finally, and stepped back to give her as much room as he could without backing out of the curtained area entirely.
"She is well?" Seven asked.
"She is getting better by the minute," Crusher said. "I think she heard what I said to her. Her vitals improved immediately. The doctor was able to repair the more serious damage. Her lacerations have been healed. The nanoprobes seem to be cleaning up the rest with pretty impressive efficiency."
"Is she awake?" Seven asked.
"And hoping for an escort to your quarters to rest," Crusher said. "You both need to rest, Seven, but I don't see why you'd have to stay here. I am sure that Admiral Janeway will want to meet with both of you, but there's no reason that she can't find you in your quarters as easily as she can find you here. We can replicate some clothing for both of you, if you can get some help to your quarters."
"I do not require assistance," Seven assured her.
"Take it anyway," Crusher said, clearly swallowing back amusement.
"I'll help her," B'Elanna said. "Elnor? Can you get…your other mother?"
"It will be my pleasure," Elnor assured her.
"We'll meet you both back at their quarters," B'Elanna said. "As soon as Seven's dressed."
Elnor kissed the side of Seven's face before following Crusher out of the curtained area, presumably to help Raffi dress and return to their quarters.
"I need to see Raffi," Seven said, starting off the table.
"You will," B'Elanna said, catching her shoulders. "In your quarters—where there's a lot more space and room to breathe. Do you have enough energy, now, to help me get you dressed?"
"If it will help to facilitate my reunion with Raffi," Seven said, "I can help you do anything you require."