Second Chances: Chapter 45

Stardate 51487
July 2374
Mars Station, Mars

B'Elanna and Izzy had barely been back on Mars for two hours when she received a comm from Commander Winters asking her come in. She was going to activate the holonanny, but Izzy was excited to see her friends at daycare, even for just an hour or however long the meeting would take, so they both headed over the Station.

Commander Winters glanced up from his computer console when Lt. Torres entered his office. "Have you finished your thesis yet?" he asked without preamble.

"I just got back from Qo'noS, sir," she said, exasperated.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Welcome back, Lieutenant. How was Qo'noS?"

"Hot and humid. It was great, sir," she replied.

"Good. Now. Have you finished your thesis yet?"

"I was a little busy, sir," she replied. "You know, teaching a society's engineers about completely new tech."

He rolled his eyes and sighed. "You write a technical manual for an entire ship—a ship filled with technology that nobody in this quadrant has seen—in ten months, and now five months later, we can't get you to complete comparatively minor revisions." He frowned, leaning forward. "What's going on, Torres?"

"I've had the classes at the Tech Academy, and then this trip to Qo'noS, and between the replicator and cloak—"

"This isn't like you, B'Elanna," he interrupted, and she flushed at the insinuation. "I have never heard you make excuses before. If anything is going on—"

"There's nothing going on, sir," she interrupted. "It's just been busy lately. I'm sure I'll have the revisions done soon."

"You said that two months ago," he said with a sigh. He studied her, the moment become increasingly uncomfortable as it became increasing obvious that he was going to ask a personal question. They were engineers; they didn't discuss personal matters unless they absolutely had to. He sighed again. "You were supposed to go to Qo'noS in mid-May, right after the semester at the Tech Academy ended, and asked to delay so you could work on the cloak and train for your marathon."

"I got the cloak to work," she interjected.

"You got the cloak to work," he conceded, "but then haven't included anything about the cloak into the technical manual, despite the fact that you got the cloak to work a month before you left for Qo'noS and wrote very detailed instructions to Chief O'Brien on how to install a Klingon cloaking device on the other Jem'Hadar ship. And I know you weren't working 24 hours—or however many hours Qo'noS has—a day while you were there."

"You're right, sir," she said dryly. "I was also taking care of a preschooler."

He gave her a look. "You were the one who wanted to take Izzy to Qo'noS. And you haven't used being a single parent as an excuse for anything in three years. You've been able to do everything Starfleet has asked of you and more."

She frowned at that. Starfleet had asked a lot of her over the years, and Izzy demanded even more, and she couldn't understand why he didn't get that there was only so much of that that any one person could give, and maybe three years was about her limit. But she didn't say any of that, because she hadn't reached her limit. She wasn't even excessively tired most of the time.

And she was making excuses.

Winters sighed again. "I'm concerned about you," he finally said. "I don't know what's going on, and I can't order you to talk to a counselor—"

"I'm fine, sir," she interrupted.

"Please, B'Elanna."

She sighed. "Yes, sir," she said, not completely sure what she was agreeing to. He nodded his dismissal.

She stepped out into the corridor and sighed again. "Shit," she muttered. She pulled out her PADD and sent a quick message. She was completely unsurprised that she got a prompt reply, and headed down the corridor.

"Hey, Amartey," she greeted as she stuck her head in his office. "I need a lab."

"When?" her fellow project officer asked.

"Now. For about an hour. Probably less."

He tapped a few controls. "Two is free," he said. "It's all yours. How was Qo'noS?"

"Hot. Thanks, Kwasi." She left his office and strode down the corridor without another word.

She tapped the entry code for Hololab 2, and then once inside, activated the holographic communicator. A minute later, Dr. Bayrote appeared in front of her. "Don't you have other patients?" she asked as a greeting. "How are you always available every time I comm?"

"I learned a long time ago that when you say you're ready to talk, I should grab the opportunity while I can," the hybrid psychiatrist replied. "And it's after 2100 here."

She flinched and glanced at her chronometer, even though it wasn't set for Earth time. "Sorry to disturb you after hours."

He waved dismissively. "I'm guessing this about your thesis."

"Why does everybody know all of my business?" she asked, exasperated. She paced the small hololab while the holographic Bayrote watched from his holographic chair. She wondered what he saw in his office; the pacing was hardly unusual, but she had no idea if her hologram was pacing through furniture or not. It being after hours, he could have been at home. For all she knew, she was pacing through his dining room table.

"Your advisor asked for my opinion," he admitted. "I asked if it was an official fitness for duty evaluation. He said no, so I declined to offer one." She smiled at that. It was nice to know that there were still some people on her side. "I've never been consulted about your academics before."

"That's not true," she was quick to point out. "We met because you had to do a fitness for duty after I started a fight in Astrotheory 101."

He laughed at the memory. "That's true," he conceded. "Your temper aside, though, you've never had problems academically."

"I don't think it's an academic problem," she said. "I think it's a concentration problem." She crossed her arms over her chest as she tried to figure out how to say what she was thinking. "Ever since the quantum fissure, I can't stop thinking about Voyager. About Tom," she amended. It had taken him months after Tom disappeared to get her to stop saying Voyager when she meant Tom, to stop talking about Voyager disappearing when she meant Tom disappearing. "I can't get over the feeling that he's alive and out there somewhere, and I can't stop trying to figure out how to find him." She told him the whole story, about the proposal to use the Dominion communication network to find Voyager and talk to them, how they acknowledged receipt and never gave them a determination, how she had been working on it anyway instead of finishing her thesis, how she couldn't bring herself to care about Jem'Hadar technical manuals when there was the possibility that she could speak to her husband again.

"Discipline has never been a problem for you before," Dr. Bayrote said when she finished. "You're probably the most disciplined officer I've ever worked with." She snorted at that idea, and he smiled, probably knowing what she was thinking. But while she still had problems with authority figures and following orders she didn't see the point of, she was disciplined in other ways. Motivation faded, but discipline didn't, and it was her discipline that got her out of bed early in the mornings to go running, that kept her trying to solve problems like integrating that cloaking device into the Jem'Hadar ship, that kept her moving forward when everything seemed to be trying to hold her back. "I want to rule out anything medical before we assume this is entirely psychological," Bayrote continued. "When can you come to San Francisco for an evaluation?"

She groaned. "Can't you just tell the clinic here what scans you need?" she asked.

"And how well has that worked out for you in the past?" he asked in reply, and she groaned again, knowing he was right. They'd tried it a few times, but the clinic managed to mess up the requested scans each time and she still had to back to Starfleet Medical to have them done properly, leaving her annoyed that she had wasted an hour in the clinic for nothing, to still have to go back to Earth to have the scans repeated. "I believe Izzy is a few weeks overdue for her annual exam. For that matter, so are you." She groaned again; she hated the annual physicals, hated having to spend the hours it took for each of the specialists to finish poking and prodding her as if she was some sort of science experiment, and hated that she had to put Izzy through it, although Izzy didn't seem to mind as much. "It's not as if you have anything pressing that has to be done on Mars," he pointed out. He was right; both ships were out on missions and permanently docked at DS9. The few officers and mechanics they still had on UP dedicated to the Jem'Hadar ships had been working off holoprograms and simulators when trying to get the replicators or viewscreens to properly install.

"I can probably get away this weekend," she admitted.

"I'll see you then," he promised. "Until I see you," he added, "more writing. Less daydreaming. Consider it an order, Lieutenant."

She smiled at his attempt to be stern. "Aye, sir," she said before deactivating the holocommunicator. "More writing, less daydreaming," she murmured to herself.

She wasn't sure if that was going to be possible.