Part IV: Found
"No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn."
-Hal Borland
Stardate 2260.110
They appeared in a dusky room that smelled of alkaline metal and wet earth. Their human companions laughed and stepped off the designated transporter site, greeting people waiting at the entrance. Voris and Dagny moved out of the way to allow the next group to transport in, but unlike the others, they had no one waiting to receive them. Or so they thought.
"Are you the doctor?"
He turned to see a woman with vivid dark skin and close-cropped hair stepping towards them from the side wall. She offered a full smile, revealing a row of straight white teeth. Her eyes were tired but welcoming and her face carried the stark wrinkles of someone who was more accustomed to surviving life than living it.
"I am. I am Voris."
"I'm Samantha Bergeron," she replied, lifting her right hand in the ta'al. "Live long and prosper."
He returned her gesture. "Yes, live long and prosper. I am told you are the governor of the colony. We are honored to make your acquaintance, Governor Bergeron."
She smiled warmly. "I prefer Sam. Besides, we never formally had any kind of election or anything."
"Very well," he replied, bowing his head.
"And Ann said we were getting a proper medic too," she said, looking over to Dagny. "I don't suppose that's you?"
"Yes, I'm Dagny. Dagny Skjeggestad."
The two women shook hands while Sam looked them over more closely. She noticed the crate in Voris' hands and said, "Is that a cat?"
"It is. I am prepared to look after him and have ensured he has received all the necessary vaccinations."
"Does he hunt?"
"He does. I attempted to break him of the habit, but it appears to be rooted in a powerful instinct."
"Goodness knows Tunnel 2 is swarming with voles every spring. We lost a good chunk of our wheat crop our first year until we got our first Gorn settlers. We never have turned anyone away, so why should we turn away a cat, I suppose?"
"I appreciate your concession. I shall take the necessary precautions to ensure he is not a nuisance."
"I'm sure he'll be fine. I recommend keeping him away from the Gorn kids though. Like your cat, they also have a pretty strong predatory instinct where small mammals are concerned. Tunnel vole or Terran cat, I doubt it would make a difference to the pups. Anyway, welcome, all three of you. I hope you brought warmer clothes than the ones you're wearing. It's still only autumn, but winter is just around the corner."
Voris looked at Dagny and then glanced out the window. A shriek of wind rattled the glass and he could see in the fading light of day the sky was blanketed with ominous clouds. "We shall manage, I'm sure," Voris answered.
"I think you'll find the people here are pretty friendly and happy to help newcomers," Sam explained. "But I wanted to be here to personally thank you for coming. I know we don't have much to offer to a doctor with your kind of training, but whatever you need, just ask and we'll do our best."
"Captain Diels said accommodations were waiting for us," Voris said, just as five more people materialized on the pad behind them.
"Yes, Velara's clinic is still set up and has attached quarters. It's not far from here and I'm happy to show you the way."
"Thank you," Dagny said, her voice soft.
"It's pretty damp outside, so I'll have Mike transport your things directly to the receiving station at the entrance to the tunnels. The transporter is a huge drain on energy so we try not to use it too often, but Jake says you brought a lot of medical equipment and I wouldn't want any of it getting wet."
"Thank you," Voris replied. "We only have these five trunks, but the equipment is quite sensitive."
"Mike!" Sam said, waving at the direction of the large man at the transporter control station. The man didn't react until she was practically standing in front of him. "Those boxes need to go to the clinic."
The man she called Mike gave no indication that he heard her. "The clinic," Sam said more slowly, pointing to the trunks. Mike smiled and gave a slow nod.
"Well, then, if you'll follow me," Sam murmured, turning back to Voris and Dagny. "I wish I had time to give you a proper tour, but I've got a lot on my plate today."
"We are grateful for any measure of hospitality," Voris explained.
"We don't have much here, but we have hospitality in droves," Sam laughed, breezing through the doors of the transporter station.
An icy breeze slapped their faces as they emerged into the fading afternoon. Voris reflexively shivered and saw Dagny cross her arms tightly across her body. There was a main path ahead with an improved surface, but no concrete connecting that walkway to the transporter station. They slogged through cold sludge and it only took several steps for Voris' lightweight shoes to be soaked through and caked with heavy mud. People greeted Sam as they passed and they eyed Voris and Dagny with open curiosity, but Sam moved with such obvious purpose that no one stopped to talk or formally introduce themselves.
"I don't know how much Jake told you," she said, looking over her shoulder as they reached the main path, "But much of the colony is underground. Pretty much all the dwellings are, anyway, aside from the Andorian community. The winters here are too harsh for everyone else but it actually stays pretty temperate year-round in the caves."
"And what are these other extant buildings?" Voris asked, pointing to the standalone hangar-like structures they were passing between.
"Some ore processing and storage, mostly, and a few workshops. The Andorians live down that way," she said, pointing to an unpaved street on the left with dome-shaped buildings a few hundred meters away.
Voris thought he'd been prepared for their new subterranean home, but the reality was much different than he envisioned. The path wound around a tall hill and led down a long set of stairs that took them into a narrow valley with several entrances on both sides.
"Most of the trade shops are down there," Sam said, tossing her head in the direction of the widest entrance on the right. "And the clinic, school, temporary lodgings, underground greenhouses, and the grocer's market are up this way."
"It seems like a lot of the essential stuff is underground," Dagny noted, staring up at the tall towers of rock on either side of them. "Why is the transporter station on the surface?"
"There's some gallicite in the rock that deflects transporter beams and scanning technology in many places. We're working on establishing a tunnel system to a lot of the above ground sections of the colony, but it's slow going and it's kind of on the back burner. The primary focus is on mining lithium and refining it: that's what's keeping everyone on this colony fed."
"Where are the mines?" Dagny asked.
"That way," Sam said, using her thumb to point to the openings on the left side of the rock. "Everything underground is interconnected and for good reason. Last winter much of the colony was snowed in for nearly a month. But we kept production up and life went on."
"Does the phrase 'snowed in' imply that you were unable to reach the surface due to heavy snows?"
Sam looked back over her shoulder, sporting a grin that spread across her entire face from her coal black eyes to her chin. "You catch on quick."
Voris had expected there would be a certain measure of hardship and adjustment, but he was unsure how to respond to this new bit of information. A slow rain began to fall, spurring them to walk more quickly. He recalled his first year in San Francisco and the enormous discomfort at experiencing rain, cold, and constant humidity, at least relative to his life on Vulcan. The weather on Bergeron colony seemed far more severe and variable than his previous research had demonstrated.
He was beginning to formulate questions about where to obtain more suitable clothing when Sam led them into one of the far tunnels, which immediately descended into a path of long, narrow stairs. The corridor was poorly lit; the only light came from dim lamps overhead every three meters, which left large swaths of the tunnel in near darkness.
Two thirds of the way down, a form emerged from the darkness into the light of one of the lamps. She was Romulan and even in the pale light of the stair tunnel, Voris could see she was one of the most beautiful women he'd ever encountered. Tall and slender with a sheet of icy black hair tumbling freely down her back, she greatly reminded him of a pre-Reformation statue. When her eyes locked onto Voris' she smiled, which he found off-putting, given her Vulcanoid features.
Unlike the others, she stopped and said, "Good evening, Samantha. Who is this?"
Sam turned to the pair of new arrivals. "This is Dr. Voris, and this-"
"A doctor! How wonderful!" the woman interrupted, alighting two stairs to be closer to the group.
Sam sighed and glanced at Dagny. "And this is our paramedic-"
The Romulan woman interrupted again to say directly to Voris, "I'm Vaksur. It's so nice to see another Vulcan face."
Voris was taken aback. Another Vulcan face? Vaksur was a Vulcan name, or more precisely, a Vulcan word—he'd never heard it used as a proper name. It literally meant beauty, and she was. She was also Vulcan.
"It is an honor to make your acquaintance," he said.
"I'm Dagny." Dagny's tone was short and unwelcoming.
Vaksur's eyes darted in Dagny's direction and she offered a thin-lipped smile and nod. "Hello." She turned back to Voris and smiled. "Nice to have you here."
"You are Vulcan?" he asked.
"I am. Velara, my foremother, used to run the clinic."
"We really need to get going," Sam said, taking several steps down the stairwell.
"I understand," Vaksur replied, not taking her eyes from Voris. "It was really nice to meet you. We've been in need of a doctor for some time. I'm sure I'll be seeing you."
Voris nodded and shifted toward the wall to allow her to pass, but the stair tunnel was so narrow that her hip brushed against him as she moved. A subtle scent in her hair filled him with a powerful nostalgic feeling. It was familiar, and though he couldn't identify it, he loosely associated it with T'Sala's meditation candles. Dagny was already following Sam down the stairs and Voris turned to follow. He faintly detected an emotion lingering in Dagny's subconscious, something ugly and powerful. Jealousy.
Jealousy was illogical and he had no cause to understand why she might feel such a distasteful emotion. As he began to ponder this unusual development, he also became aware of the sound of distance voices beginning to echo from the stone walls and the air was growing warmer. They reached the bottom of the stairs at long last and entered a wide tunnel bathed in a rich red-orange light.
There were several dozen people moving throughout the open space, but the tunnel was hardly crowded. He studied the scene, taking note of a series of narrow doors to the left and a wide stall to the right with a Tellarite man selling produce. Some of the vegetables Voris recognized, including gespar and kaasa, and others he did not.
Next to the produce stall were racks of clothing, shelves of boots, and other assorted cloth goods. Sitting in the middle of it all was an elderly human woman, perched on a stool and knitting yarn from a rough spool on the ground. She suddenly fell into a violent fit of coughing, nearly knocking her from her seat, and Voris prepared to ensure she was well when a large mass slammed into his lower legs.
He tripped and twisted, just barely managing to hold his balance before tumbling into the stone floor.
He observed the figures of six Gorn pups, skittering on all fours toward the stairs, snarling and snapping at each other as they moved. He saw Dagny lunge out of the corner of his eye and caught her shoulder just as a much larger Gorn blazed past in pursuit of the children. Their mother, most likely. Judging from the roar she uttered at the base of the stairs, she was quite angry with her brood.
"Don't mind the Apras family," Sam said darkly. "Gorn kids are little monsters, but I'm told they grow up to be decent members of society.
Dagny pushed off of Voris, smoothing out her rumpled shirt and taking a deep breath. A strange gurgling sound bubbled in her throat and she covered her mouth.
"Are you well?"
Dagny closed her eyes, nodded, and took a deep breath through her nose. "I'll be ok."
They followed Sam another hundred meters into the cave system. She fanned her hands out and twirled to face them. "This is Tunnel 3: we passed 1 and 2 outside in the central valley. Tunnels 5 through 10 are devoted to mining, and each of the tunnels are connected by a large outer loop. Some of the side passages can get confusing, but most of the tunnels are clearly marked with arrows that should set you back on the main system if you get lost and all the main ones converge on the central auditorium."
"Does the colony have a central computing system?" Dagny asked.
"It does," Sam replied, glancing over her shoulder. "And there is a computer in the clinic, along with a hardwired subspace radio and one of the few replicators we have in the colony."
"Does the colony have any special policies about computer and replicator use?" Dagny inquired.
Sam smiled. "The replicators are a huge drain on energy, so I ask that you use it for medical emergencies only. I know many planets have made the switch to replicating the majority of their food, but we just don't have organic matter to spare to feed all our people that way. The greenhouses are at the far end of this tunnel and we have a ration system. And while we do have people dedicated to growing our crops, we do ask people to volunteer when they can. Of course, I imagine you two are going to have your hands full most of the time. As of this morning, we have 1,101 people living on this colony, but I guess you two make it 1,103."
"Are there any other laws, rules, or regulations we should be made aware of?" Voris asked, just as Sam stopped before a wide gray door.
She put her hands on her hips and gazed at the ground. "This colony started with only about seventy people: none of us ever imagined it would grow into this. We tried coming up with a charter a few times, but people worried that would just complicate things. We don't feel like we should have to tell people not to steal or kill or hurt others. We live by an unwritten social code here. The main thing we ask is that people contribute however they can. Don't be wasteful with resources. Be kind. Help your neighbors. Accept this colony for the weird melting pot that it is and try to bridge the gaps in cultural differences. Try to… I'm rambling. It happens from time to time. Anyway, this is the clinic."
Voris looked from Sam's worry-worn face to the gray door that led to the clinic. The lights came on automatically when Sam stepped into the room, and what they revealed was startling. It was in a sorry state of disrepair and so poorly equipped that Voris believed it wouldn't have been out of place in a hospital from five centuries earlier, with the exception of a few anachronistic pieces of equipment.
The five trunks they'd brought with them, along with the supplies they'd picked up on Nausicaa, already sat in the middle of the room next to a central island workbench. There was a decrepit biobed near the door and four simple cots stacked along the left wall by three supply cabinets. On the right side of the room was a single surgical suite and another door, which Voris had presumed must be a laboratory but turned out to be a supply closet with a single mop and a broom. He ran his hand along the cracked counters of the workbench by the closet, noting they were badly worn, but clean. He sniffed the air, detecting a faint antiseptic smell. For all its faults and everything it lacked, it was clean.
"I know it isn't much, but it's what we've got," Sam said, her eyes darting around the room.
"It's good enough," Dagny announced, giving her a reassuring smile. "We're good at making do."
Voris thought she was being politely optimistic. He studied the room more closely, believing it wouldn't pass even the most liberal of regulatory standards on either Earth or New Vulcan. There were chipped and cracked tiles in the floor, no drainage, no designated chemical and biohazard disposal, no emergency safety equipment. On a relative timescale, the technological sophistication of this clinic would have been closer to the Dark Ages than the modern age.
"Oh, and let me show you to your quarters. They're up this way."
She gestured to a dark passage nestled between two of the supply cabinets, but halfway across the room, a communications device on her belt chirped. She sighed, flipped it open, and said, "Sam here."
"It's Jake. Any chance I could get you to come up here? We're almost done unloading the supplies, but some of the Klingons are upset."
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. "Sure thing. "I'm in the clinic now but I can get back up to the surface. Give me about five minutes."
She snapped the communicator shut and took a slow breath. "I'm sorry to have to race off like this. I hope you can find your way around. I imagine there might be more things you need. Get with Hadrian: he handles all the requisitions for the colony."
"I am not familiar with Hadrian," Voris admitted.
She closed her eyes and nodded. "Hadrian Moore. I'll be sure he stops by to see you. He's familiar with the clinic because he's one of the few people here with any formal medical training. Used to be a Starfleet medic or some such. But I've got to go. I'll try to check in in the next couple of days and make sure you both are settling in. For now, good luck, and welcome."
When the door slid shut behind her, Voris and Dagny slowly turned to look at each other. Beads of moisture glistened on her forehead and her complexion remained an atypical shade. It was evening, and she tended toward sickness in the evenings. He was about to recommend that she lie down when she said, "Let's get to work."
"Are you certain you are well enough?"
She scoffed and swallowed hard. "I don't imagine I'm going to feel well enough for a long time, but look around. This place desperately needs an overhaul. Why don't we start by putting our personal stuff in our rooms and we can take it from there?"
He was about to protest, but she narrowed her eyes and put her hands on her hips. "If I dwell on being sick, I'm just going to feel sicker. I need something to do."
He sorted through the trunks, and after locating the one with their personal effects, hauled it into the passage between the supply cabinets. He found more stairs that snaked upward to a second level directly above the clinic. There were no rooms, per se, only a single square room with a small stove and food preserver by the door and a water closet in the corner. Opposite that was a single metal frame bed with a sagging mattress.
When Dagny reached the top of the stairs with Harold's cat carrier, she glanced around. Her initial look was one of shock, but her face hardened and she bobbed her head. "This is ok."
The room certainly would have been sufficient for one of them, but sharing this space for the long term would be difficult. They had cohabitated in the cramped cabin aboard the Oglethorpe, but Dagny was often sick or sleeping and he'd preferred to wander the ship so as to avoid disturbing her. They had spent some time together, but it had never seemed like they'd truly lived together.
"We'll just have to find another bed," she said, nodding vigorously to herself.
Voris looked over what could only be called the kitchen that spanned the wall by the door. He opened the food preservation unit. "We shall also have to procure food."
No sooner had he uttered the words than a melodic voice called up to them from the base of the stairs. "Hello?"
He followed Dagny down the stairs where they discovered an Orion woman with wavy black hair holding a large wicker basket full of assorted linens. She grinned and rushed forward. "I'm Aisla. I heard we finally got a real doctor. Welcome!"
Dagny shot Voris a hopeful look and strode forward to meet their guest. "I'm Dagny. I'm actually a paramedic. Voris is the doctor."
"I'm so happy to meet you!" she said, throwing her arms around Dagny. "And Voris, can I give you a hug or are you… you know? That kind of Vulcan?"
He stared at the Orion woman, unsure what specific kind of Vulcan she referred to. He thought of Vaksur and her lovely smile, realizing that she was almost certainly V'tosh ka'tur, or a Vulcan who did not follow logic. Perhaps that was what she meant. "I am not accustomed to making physical contact with newly formed acquaintances."
"Oh, then in that case, how does it go?" She lifted her left hand and tried splitting her fingers apart in the ta'al to no avail.
"I appreciate your efforts to honor my custom, but it is unnecessary. I am honored to make your acquaintance."
Aisla flashed a vivid smile and turned back to Dagny. "I heard from Deepak who heard from Zernon that you arrived on the quarterly transport and he said you didn't have warm enough clothes. And look at you: you must be freezing! So, I came to offer up some of my old things. We're about the same size, I think."
She held up the basket draped over her arms and started leafing through several thick sweaters. "This blue would go well with your eyes. You have such pretty eyes."
Dagny's jaw dropped. "These are really nice clothes, but I don't have anything to offer in return."
"Hush!" Aisla barked. "Just being here is more than enough. I've been this colony's unofficial nurse ever since Velara passed. I know a lot about Orion bodies, but I barely know what to do with anyone else and don't even get me started on making medication."
Her eyes volleyed between Dagny and Voris, prompting him to say to her like he'd said to many others aboard the Oglethorpe, "We are here to serve."
"And I'm here to make sure you don't freeze to death this winter," Aisla said, gently gripping Dagny's wrist to slip the basket into her hands. She paused and sniffed the air around Dagny's hair. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were pregnant."
Dagny started to sputter and blush. "I uh- well, yeah. How did you know?"
"A superior sense of smell. It's in the hormones."
There was a knock at the door and the Tellarite grocer's head peeked in through the cracked opening. "I saw you in the tunnel with Samantha and decided you would probably be hungry."
He pushed his way through the door and deposited a box of fruits and vegetables on the center workbench. He had a slight limp. He wagged his eyebrows at Voris and peered around the room in a manner suggestive of derision. Voris mentally prepared himself. Tellarites were a proud race and were notorious for beginning relationships with a series of loud complaints and insults. He had personally introduced himself to very few Tellarites in his life and had no talent for deliberately attempting to offend someone. Thankfully, Dagny seemed to know what to do.
"You offer us this?" she sneered, trying to twist her face into an expression of scorn. "I had assumed this produce was meant for the matter reclaimator."
The Tellarite man's eyes lit up and he stroked his chest with his furry hands. "If you like Tellarite debate, I think we'll get along famously. Tell me human, what are you called?"
"I'm Dagny."
"And I am Zernon."
"Ah yes, Zernon," Aisla said, playfully rolling her eyes. "Our professional grump."
Zernon emitted a low growl and narrowed his eyes at Aisla. Dagny appeared to be struggling to formulate some new insult, but Zernon slapped her on the shoulder and roared with laughter. "You're a credit to your species, small one, that you can't think of a single combative thing to say. I appreciate the effort."
Dagny breathed a sigh of relief. "The vegetables really do look very good."
"Of course they're good! I grew them!"
"We are grateful for this," Voris said, stepping forward.
"Ah yes, the Vulcan," Zernon said, patting his chest and tilting his head back to observe him.
"I am Dr. Voris. Would you accept payment for the food?"
Zernon uttered a shocked gasp that came out more like a squeal. "I most certainly would not."
"It was not my intention to offend you," Voris explained, folding his hands behind his back.
"Then we'll speak no more of it," Zernon said, scowling. "Though perhaps you could be so kind as to look at my foot."
"Certainly." He glanced around the room, considering all the changes he would prefer to make before seeing patients, but Zernon was kind enough to bring them food when they had none and besides, he was a doctor. He pulled one of the cots from alongside the wall and directed him to sit while he sifted through the trunks for a tricorder to sterilize his hands and begin an examination.
He noticed Aisla take Dagny aside and wondered what they were talking about, but he put it out of his mind as he watched Zernon remove his foot from his boot with much grunting and squealing. He was not well-versed in Tellarite medicine, but the man clearly had a severe infection in his claw. He had a deep abscess above the horn that was swollen and warm to the touch.
"How long has it been like this?" he asked, consulting a medical database on his PADD for special considerations before lancing the abscess and clearing away the infected tissue.
"Several weeks," Zernon admitted, swearing under his breath as Voris palpated the tendons in his leg to see how far the infection had spread.
A third person knocked at the door, and moments later a heavily pregnant Romulan woman entered, wringing her hands. "Are you Dr. Voris?"
"I am."
"My name is Khel. Jake, my husband, said you were here. I was hoping you could tell me my baby is healthy." Her face was both hopeful and desperate.
"Why don't you let me have a quick look first while he tends to Mr. Zernon?" Dagny offered.
Khel nodded and followed Dagny to the other side of the room. As Voris administered a topical analgesic to Zernon's infected claw prior to cleaning out the sore, he watched Dagny in his peripheral vision. She created a privacy divider by hanging a blanket from the ceiling using a length of nylon cord and then enlisted Aisla's assistance in sliding the biobed behind it. She was remarkably resourceful, as was Aisla, who stayed behind with Khel's consent to learn more about Romulan maternity care.
More people came. They trickled in at first, then became a steady stream until the room was packed and they started to line up outside in the tunnel. Almost all of them came with some kind of offering: food, clothing, ration credits, offers to clean and even potted plants. Ann arrived with her youngest son Jørn, who had broken his arm last winter and had had the limb set improperly, which had led to slight deformity.
Dagny began triaging people as they came in, trying to schedule appointments for the less critical cases to come back at a later date and offering basic prescriptions for conditions that ran the gamut of mild bodily discomfort: headaches, toothaches, ear aches, heartburn, constipation, congestion, and upset stomachs, to name a few. She had transformed into a different person among the sea of anxious people who had been too long without basic medical care. There were times she would duck into the lavatory by the surgical suite and emerge a few minutes later, sweaty and pale, but she never once complained. Any time Voris would approach her to recommend she should lie down or eat something, she would automatically shake her head and insist she was fine.
It was approaching 0100 hours when the last patient finally left, which gave them a brief respite before more patients were scheduled to come back six hours later. There were instruments to clean and the clinic still needed drastic reorganization to make it more functional. They had eaten through most of their stocks of basic medications and would need to synthesize more, but he would need time to devise a plan of the most efficient way to do that, as well as decide how much to make and what to keep in regular stock. They had picked up two biobeds on Nausicaa that still needed to be assembled and calibrated and the surgical suite still needed to be set up. The patients were gone, but there was still so much to do.
"At the current count, we have thirty-six coming in tomorrow with urgent concerns," Dagny said, tracing her finger along the computer screen at the desk in the corner of the room. "I tried to group types of appointments on certain days to make things easier. Tomorrow will be vision and neurological patients, the day after will be primarily orthopedic cases, but a lot of people have multiple problems and no matter how I tried to manage it, we're still scheduled to see between thirty and forty patients every day for the next week. Plus whoever else walks in."
"You have performed admirably."
"Me? What about you?"
Voris looked around the room. The boxes of medical trunks lay open and equipment was strewn everywhere. Boxes of food, blankets, clothes, trinkets, and other supplies people had dropped off lined the floors by the supply cabinets. The colonists' kindness and acceptance did nothing to alleviate the tired ache in his bones, but somehow, he found he didn't mind it as much as he surveyed the bounty they had delivered. It was generosity beyond measure.
"You should eat and then rest," he replied. "And did you take your evening medication?"
She scowled. "I did. You should eat and rest too."
He pulled an apple from the crate that Zernon had delivered and bit into the sweet flesh. Dagny gave him a strange look, which quickly faded as a smile broke across her face. "I can't believe you're touching food with your hands."
"I have done many things today that I am not in the habit of doing," he replied. She started to laugh, and soon tears were streaming down her face.
"What is the source of your amusement?"
She coughed and struggled to catch her breath. "I guess I've always had this idea of you being a certain kind of person, but you're full of surprises, Voris."
"Explain."
She shook her head. "I don't think I know how to. Just… thank you. Thank you for being you."
She grabbed a box with towels and a hand-sewn quilt a kind human woman with an eye infection had dropped off and made her way up the stairs without another word. He finished his apple and set to work installing the pharmaceutical synthesizer and chemical analyzer on the far workbench in the corner of the clinic while Dagny carried the colonists' donations upstairs. He felt compelled to assist her, but every time he made eye contact, she would give him a knowing look and shake her head.
After he had set up most of the equipment he'd brought with him from New Vulcan, he began sorting through the supplies they'd picked up on Nausicaa. It would take hours to properly assemble and calibrate both biobeds, but he would prefer to have at least one acceptable place to put a critical patient prior to beginning work tomorrow. Rather than build one of the new biobeds, he set to work trying to repair the older Andorian model that had come with the clinic.
He wasn't sure what happened next, but he jumped when he felt a soft hand on his shoulder. His chin was wet: he'd been drooling. And his forehead ached. He rubbed it and discovered lines in his skin from where he'd rested his face against the biobed's control panel.
He blinked and saw Dagny standing over him sporting a kind smile. "Hello, sleepyhead."
It had been an evening of pure and utter chaos and though they hadn't been able to help everyone, they had still done a lot of good. She felt good. She was still nauseated and exhausted, but she felt better than she had in months. This newfound purpose had gone a long way to restoring her soul.
She looked around their little apartment and grinned. It had been so rundown a few hours ago, but now it almost looked like a proper home, thanks to the generosity of strangers. It reminded her of the camaraderie and cooperation of the Albret, and it brought tears to her eyes.
She had stitched up a bad wound in a man's hand a few hours earlier and to say thanks, he'd dropped off a second metal frame bed and tightened the springs on the other bed so it didn't sag to the floor anymore. She couldn't remember who had donated the mattress for it, but now she and Voris had their own beds covered in beautiful handmade quilts, plus a lovely embroidered curtain that hung between them to give them some privacy. Ann had been so kind and thoughtful to let Harold out of his crate, feed him, and put many of the perishable food donations in the food preserver.
Jørn would be coming back the day after tomorrow for a consult to do surgery on his arm. She couldn't believe how much he'd grown. He was already nine years old; it seemed like he had been a baby just yesterday. She had found a fast friend in the Orion nurse, Aisla, who had stuck around for most of the evening to learn and help however she could. There were so many other names and faces she couldn't remember, but she almost felt at home again.
She'd spent the last hour unpacking their belongings and trying to find places for all the food and supplies people had dropped off. Most of the stuff was pretty practical, but some of it was on the more exotic side. In addition to brand new boots and mitten, dishes and silverware, they had also been given an antique Andorian tea set, a rack of foul-smelling spices, and even a box that contained live insects that loosely resembled cockroaches. It had taken everything in her power not to scream and curse the person who had done this, but she quickly figured out they were probably food for the carnivorous plant, not that it made it any better. She set them to the side and decided Voris could handle that later.
It was 0215 hours. She was so tired but there was so much more to do. Her stomach grumbled, sending a wave of nausea in its wake. She looked in the preserver and found a number of Vulcan root vegetables sitting toward the front. She smiled and started collecting ingredients for a casserole. She was forced to substitute a Terran onion for a Vulcan one and skip several classic Vulcan spices, but thirty minutes later, thanks to T'Mir's tutelage and the colonists' generosity, she had a hot dish cooling on the stove.
She portioned it into two bowls and went downstairs to find Voris sitting in a chair, his face pressed sideways against the biobed. The awkward position clearly constricted his airway because he was snoring and it took a lot of effort not to laugh. He was so sweet and he worked so hard. She walked over to him and gently placed her hand on his shoulder, startling him awake.
Logic was clearly one of those higher order brain functions, because his faced shuffled through surprise, confusion, and embarrassment before settling on its usual smooth and placid state. He had lines on his forehead and cheek from the buttons on the control panel. "Hello, sleepyhead."
He cleared his throat and stood. "I was just making repairs to the biobed."
She looked it over and raised her eyebrows. The power source was still disconnected. "Yes, I see. I thought you might be hungry."
They took a seat opposite one another on two of the cots and ate in relative silence. Her cooking was not as good as T'Mir's but it had still turned out better than she'd expected.
"Thank you," Voris said as he set his empty bowl on the cot beside him.
"You're welcome. And thank you," she replied, nibbling at a carrot-like vegetable.
"Why do you thank me?"
"Because you deserve it. You did a lot of really good work today. You helped a lot of people and I learned a lot just by watching you."
"There were many we did not help, and they will return in several hours."
"True," she nodded. "So why don't we get a little bit of sleep?"
"Because there is much to do to prepare. We still lack a functioning biobed and have no suitable place to perform any but the most basic surgeries."
"I used to feel overwhelmed caring for 141 people aboard the Albret. There are almost eight times as many people here and I can tell you from experience, it never stops. There's only so much you can do. You do the best you can with what you have, but you have to take care of yourself to take care of them."
They locked eyes and Dagny started to feel awkward. She could fill whole libraries with all the things she didn't know about medicine, whereas he had thirty years of experience. She was a lamb lecturing a lion. "What I mean to say-"
"You are wise," he interrupted. "You claim to have learned much simply by observing me, but I believe there is much I can learn from you. I have never worked in a setting quite like this."
Dagny swallowed, feeling a slight flush come over her cheeks. She grabbed his empty bowl and said, "Let's go to bed."
He followed her up the stairs, but no sooner did they walk through the doors of their quarters than a scream echoed from downstairs. They hurried back to the clinic to find two people on the floor and two more materializing next to them. They were bloody, broken, and covered in powdery dust.
"Ops station to clinic!" cracked a voice over the internal hardwired radio system.
They quickly learned a claw drill had hit a pocket of natural gas and there had been an explosion, killing one and badly injuring seven others. They were transported in two at a time using the subterranean transporters, almost all of them worse off than the last. Two had been pinned under the drill and had catastrophic crush injuries, and though they didn't have a sterile surgical suite, Voris quickly set to work in a last-ditch effort to save their lives while Dagny tended to the others.
They were all human and had burns of varying severity, along with broken bones and hypoxia. All but one of them were fading in and out of consciousness and the one who was awake was demonstrating signs of confusion, whether from oxygen deprivation or a concussion, she couldn't say. One of them, an older man, had a piece of metal shrapnel embedded in his ribcage. A penetrating chest wound. She worked first to clear their airways and restore a sufficient level of respiration for each of them, sealing the one chest wound with an occlusive dressing and putting all of them on high flow oxygen.
"Are they going to be ok?" someone muttered from the doorway.
Dagny looked up to see two women and a man standing just beyond the threshold, covered in white dust and clutching safety helmets. "It's too early to tell for some of them."
"Can we do anything?" one of the women asked. Dagny surveyed their clothes and dirty work boots, and then looked at the deep, wet burns covering her five patients' bodies. The clinic was far from sterile, but the last thing any of them needed was more dirt and debris floating into their charred flesh.
"What kind of gas was it?" she asked, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand as she went from patient to patient, administering powerful, general purpose antibiotics.
"The scanners say methane," the man replied.
"That's good," she explained, shuffling to the computer to search for the best compound to counteract methane poisoning.
The other woman inched her way into the clinic, tears forming rivers in the dust that caked her face. "I just want to hold his hand. He's my husband."
Dagny gave her a resolute nod. "I understand. Listen, right now your husband is very vulnerable. Any dirt, any contamination that gets in his burns could make him very sick. The best thing you can do is go home, get as clean as you can, and come back. He'll want someone holding his hand when he wakes up, I'm sure."
The woman's features softened into relief at being given a task. She turned to leave, but Dagny called after her, "See if you can round up the family members of the others!"
After learning the most effective treatment for methane poisoning was the administration of oxygen, which she had already done, she turned her focus to treating the broken bones and burns. It would take hours of dermal regeneration to restore the layers of skin for each patient and every minute that passed was one more minute they were susceptible to infection.
Her Aunt Birgitte had once shown her how to sterilize plastic packing material to use as a temporary dressing—it reduced pain, wound contamination, and fluid loss and was nontoxic and transparent, which allowed for monitoring of the wound without removing the dressing. It was also less expensive but just as effective as biomedically engineered skin, but perhaps most importantly, she had some on hand.
She began to pull of long sheets of plastic from the supply box, sterilize it with ultraviolet light, and use it to cover their burns. Two of them were beginning to come to and she kept a close eye on their vitals, which would have been easier if they were in biobeds that could monitor their condition in real time, but she made do with what she had. Several people stopped by the clinic looking for their loved ones and now that their burns were primarily covered, she felt better about allowing people inside.
She hated having to tell a woman with two young children that her husband was currently in surgery and she didn't know his condition. She began the slow process of mending broken bones with the bone knitter, and when she was done, she started mending their burned flesh with the dermal regenerator, but it would take her at least a full day to treat their partial and full-thickness thermal burns with a handheld unit. Unfortunately, it was all they had.
At 0630 hours, Voris emerged from the surgical suite and was instantly approached by the woman and her children. The woman started to scream and her children started to wail, and involuntary tears ran down Dagny's face. She didn't have to ask: she already knew. She had made a similar sound herself upon receiving similar news not that long ago.
She sniffed and wiped her face before anyone could see. The volume of the clinic seemed to grow louder with the woman's grief as some of the patients and their family members moved to comfort her. Voris approached and quietly asked, "How are these patients?"
"Doing better, but it's going to take time with the dermal regenerator. I have one with a penetrating chest wound that's going to need surgery, but it wasn't as urgent as the other two you were working on. Did they both die?"
"No, I managed to stabilize one, but he has lost his legs and most likely will lose his right arm at the shoulder. We lack the resources to regenerate limbs, but I intend to contact the hospitals on Aldebaran and New Vulcan and see if they can offer assistance."
"That's going to take months to arrange that kind of care," Dagny sighed, feeling ready to collapse from mental and emotional exhaustion.
Voris' jaw tightened slightly. "Yes."
She realized he wasn't used to not being able to pull from an available, bottomless bag of medical tricks. It almost seemed like he felt guilty for not being able to do more. "He's alive. We'll get him the help he needs, even if it takes some time."
"The scheduled patients are due to arrive in approximately twenty minutes," Voris said, glancing at the door.
"I'll do what I can and keep looking after them, but the penetrating chest wound needs surgery."
Voris nodded. "Thank you."
It was only two simple words, but his tone conveyed genuine gratitude and for no particular reason, she noticed her heart skip a beat. Neither of them had slept and they were already starting the day behind schedule, but she shuddered to think what would have happened if they had arrived a day later. All seven of these people would have died. She closed her eyes and tried to keep that at the front of her mind instead of the poor woman sobbing uncontrollably in the corner.
She took a deep breath and seized the opportunity to check the vitals on her patients before the routine appointments started to show up. The one on the end was a man, almost more of a boy, really, with sandy blond hair and wide facial features. He had burns on the right side of his body, mainly on his arm and upper torso. He had several cracked ribs and was still unconscious, but his brain activity registered as normal on the tricorder.
No one had come for him. The other four patients had people sitting by their cots, holding their hands or patting their arms, but this one was alone. She wondered why. As if on cue, his eyelids drifted open and he looked at her, cleared his throat, and mumbled in a cracked voice, "Wow, you're pretty."
She laughed in disbelief. "Thanks. Welcome back to the land of the living. How are you feeling?"
He groaned and turned his head on the cot to face her. "Like I got run over by a claw drill."
"From all accounts, that's more or less what happened."
He grunted and tried to sit up, but she motioned for him to remain still. "You're not going to die, but you've got some healing to do yet."
He glanced down at the oozing red burns beneath the clear plastic and recoiled, which prompted her to add, "I know it looks bad, but I've seen worse. We're going to get you patched up, I promise."
"Where am I?"
"The clinic."
He smiled. "And who are you?"
"My name is Dagny. I'm a paramedic. I arrived yesterday with Dr. Voris."
"Lucky for us then. You're an angel."
She reached for the pendant around her neck, suddenly aware that her heart was pounding. Why? Then it hit her. He reminded her so much of Erik. Sure, his hair was blond and not red and his eyes were a muted gray rather than blue, but it was something about his smile and the way he spoke. He was handsome and she suddenly felt guilty for thinking so.
"I'm just doing my job," she muttered, starting to turn away to check on the others.
"I'm Pearson, by the way. Pearson Schoenbein."
She swallowed hard and nodded. "Is there anyone you want me to contact? You know, do you have anyone who would come see you?"
"I'm here alone. Just me."
"Oh."
"I wouldn't mind seeing more of your pretty smile though."
Her breath caught in her throat. She should tell him about Voris, about the baby, about the whole awkward situation, but she couldn't find the words. She was ashamed that she found him so attractive, and as the seconds passed by without either of them speaking, she began to feel complicit in a vague lie, which only served to further paralyze her.
"You're blushing," Pearson said, chewing his lip as he grinned at her.
"I have to go," she said, whipping around.
She noticed Voris watching her from the bedside of the patient she'd recommended for surgery and suddenly felt the presence of an emotion that didn't quite feel right. It didn't take her long to identify it as jealousy. Why should she be jealous? She wasn't jealous; she was embarrassed, flattered, guilty, and anxious, but of all the emotions she could be feeling, jealousy didn't make any sense. It also didn't literally feel right: it almost felt like she was picking up on some kind of out-of-body emotional experience.
Voris noticed her looking at him and when he turned his attention back to his patient, the sensation faded from her consciousness. She became acutely aware of the blood rushing through her ears. Somehow, some way, she knew she had been feeling what Voris was feeling. It wasn't her jealousy: it was his.
That realization only added to her confusion and guilt, but she didn't have time to dwell on it because soon enough, patients started arriving at the clinic for their scheduled appointments. At 0800 hours, she snuck upstairs to give herself her morning dose of lentrazole and for no reason at all, burst into tears.
She and Voris weren't married; they weren't in any kind of relationship, they were just having a baby together. But didn't that count for something? She didn't know. She didn't love him, did she? Maybe she could, but would he ever love her back? She had made Voris feel jealous and she hated herself for it. What did that mean? Why hadn't she told Pearson Schoenbein she wasn't interested? Maybe she was interested, but she didn't really know. Maybe it was just that he reminded her of Erik, and that thought made her hate herself for forgetting about Erik so soon. She sobbed harder. How had her life become so damn complicated?