Stardate 2260.205

She'd managed to catch him under the armpits before he fell to the floor and smashed his head, but he was heavy beyond belief. She eased him onto his back and discovered his airway was clear but his breathing was rapid and shallow. The skin of his face was a hideous shade of gray.

She bolted for her tricorder and when she returned, his eyelids were fluttering open. "Voris? Voris, can you hear me?"

He turned his head to look at her, licked his lips, and gasped, "Yes."

Then the coughing fit began. It was so violent she worried he was going to vomit and when he was finished, his desperate attempts to breathe broke her heart and terrified her. Adelaide had had similar symptoms, but she'd had cancer, nothing contagious. Or had she? Had there been some other respiratory disease that had compounded her symptoms? Surely, Voris would have noticed something like that.

"Dagny, I need-" His breathing was so labored it seemed like every shuddering breath would be his last.

"You need to shut up and let me get you on some oxygen," she snapped. "Can you stand so we can get you in the biobed?"

His eyes were dark and quiet, quite different than she'd ever seen them before. "Yes."

She pushed her upper body under his shoulder and helped him to the nearest biobed, but actually getting him up onto the thing was surprisingly difficult. His coordination was poor and it was evident he was dizzy. It took him enormous effort to hoist himself up onto the bed, but the moment he was lying down, she snapped the dome over him and activated the homeostatic controls.

"I'm s-s-sor-"

"Don't talk," she ordered.

Within several seconds, high flow oxygen flooded the chamber and his color improved slightly, but he was still in severe respiratory distress. She analyzed his vitals and did her best to keep from panicking. It was instinct really, not to let a patient know just how bad their condition was in order to avoid frightening them. But Voris was Vulcan and probably would have preferred the truth, but at that moment, she had no truth to give him.

He'd been fine when she'd joined him in the clinic that morning, or whatever passed for "fine" for Voris these days. He wasn't eating or sleeping nearly enough and he was working himself to death, but he'd looked generally healthy, at least.

Voris entered another coughing fit and she crossed her arms to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. He was sick, that much was clear, but sick with what? She glanced at the biofilter above the door and shuddered. It was supposed to neutralize 99.1% of all pathogens that came through the clinic door and recirculated the air so that the interior of the clinic was more or less sterile, but that still left almost one percent of pathogens unaccounted for. It was why she wore the mask while in the clinic and it was why they'd installed a second biofilter at the entrance to their quarters.

But Voris was definitely sick and coughing all over her. Had the mask slipped below her nose when she'd helped carry him? She tightened the rubber seal across the bridge of her nose, trying to swallow her terror. Things moved in slow motion for nearly a minute while she contemplated what it all meant. If Voris had gotten her sick, then what was done was done. Whether or not she was on borrowed time, she needed to treat him now.

His brain activity showed he was slipping into a dreamlike state. His elevated heart rate and blood pressure dropped slightly but was still high. Dagny gripped her forehead, trying to figure out what to do.

He needed medication, but to figure out what kind of medication, she needed a diagnosis. She could do that. She could do this. She grabbed her PADD.

"Check symptoms against patient data for diagnosis," she said, dictating into the PADD's microphone. "Vulcan male age fifty Standard years, presenting with rapid onset respiratory distress and coughing."

The PADD scrolled out a list of 2,411 possible causes. She groaned and added, "Eliminate sources of trauma."

The PADD narrowed it down to 891 potential causes, but she wondered if she really could eliminate things like smoke inhalation and dry drowning. What had happened to him up on the surface? What was the air temperature like? How had he managed to walk all the way to the clinic without someone noticing how terrible he looked?

She strongly suspected his symptoms related to some kind of pathogen, but she needed to run a DNA sweep to be sure. Until she was, she couldn't really rule anything out. She leaned forward toward the biobed and shouted, "Voris, can you hear me?"

His heart rate spiked. He opened his eyes and looked at her and only then did she notice how bloodshot they were. He also now had clear fluid running from both nostrils.

"I need to figure out what's going on, Voris," she said, keeping her voice as pleasant and level as she could manage. "I need to take a quick saliva sample, ok?"

"Yes." It was only one syllable, but it seemed to take extraordinary effort for him to get it out.

She raced to the storage cabinet to get a probe and once she was back by his side, she explained, "I'm going to lower the dome now. I'll be quick."

As the dome of the biobed snapped back, Voris' mouth formed a wide O shape as he struggled for air. She slipped the probe into his mouth and swabbed his cheek quickly, pulling it out just as he entered another coughing spell. She returned the dome to its closed position which muffled the sound of Voris coughing.

The probe was tinged green. She swallowed hard and slipped it into the receptacle of her tricorder for analysis, and after she synced the biobed with her handheld tricorder, words scrawled across the glass dome. "Initializing… analyzing…"

The machine started digesting the sample and separating out all the separate DNA she'd collected on the swab. "Primary genome detected… double-stranded DNA of Vulcan origin."

Dagny selected the button indicating that that DNA belonged to her patient and then it began the process of analyzing the nucleic acids of everything else in the sample. The average human mouth contained between one and two hundred separate species of commensal bacteria, plus a few dozen harmless viruses at any given time. She had no idea what normal Vulcan oral flora looked like, but the biobed would tell her soon enough.

Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. A minute. Segments of DNA, RNA, and proteins flashed across the screen. None of it made sense to her, but the biobed's computer had already identified eighteen species of harmless bacteria. She checked Voris' vitals again, noting he'd once again entered a trance-like state. His blood oxygen levels were trailing downward in a gentle slope—the increased oxygen atmosphere of the enclosed biobed wasn't going to cut it for much longer. She guessed if things continued on as they were, he would need mechanical ventilation within the hour.

Dagny activated the speakers and amplified the internal sounds of the biobed. There was definite wheezing and a rattling and creaking sound indicating pleurisy. She trotted around to the other side of the biobed and activated the bioscanner, which sent a beam of light trailing across the upper half of Voris' body. The resulting image was upsetting but not particularly shocking, given his current state. His lungs were filling with fluid.

She whimpered and raced back to the other side of the biobed where the genetic analysis was still working to determine the pathogen that might be responsible for Voris' sudden illness. Thirty-seven separate organisms identified so far, but all of them harmless.

How could this be happening? He had been fine. He had said goodbye to her less than three hours ago when he'd left for Adelaide's funeral. She had given him the carved wooden box to place in her grave and he'd promised her he would. He had seemed perfectly healthy, except for being a bit fatigued.

Dagny closed her eyes and shuddered as a strong ringing sound filled her ears. What if he died? What if he'd gotten her sick and she died too? She glanced up at the biofilter by the doorway, noting the red light was still blinking. She checked the position of her mask again and tried to remain calm.

Voris' brain activity was ebbing into coma territory. She vaguely remembered the Battle of Vulcan and Dr. Sevek explaining to her that Vulcans were capable of controlling many of their physical processes through intensive meditation. They could raise or lower their body temperature, regulate their breathing and heart rate, and even modulate their immune functions to promote healing. Her eyes darted back to his vital signs, noting they weren't improving. The data was suggesting that he wasn't going to think his way out of this, no matter how hard he tried.

What was she supposed to do? What would Voris tell her to do? Probably calm down and think logically. But how was she supposed to do that when he was practically laying in a coma in a biobed when he'd walked out of the clinic looking fit as a fiddle that afternoon?

The fiftieth organism identified by the biobed's DNA analyzer flashed green, indicating it was another known species of commensal, perfectly harmless oral bacteria. She brought her thumb up to her mouth to chew the nail, but upon jabbing it into her mask, she pulled her hand away and shook it out.

Her heart was racing. Was that a symptom of whatever Voris had? Was she also getting sick? She grabbed her tricorder from the computer desk and took her own vitals and upon discovering they were normal, suddenly felt very foolish. She felt healthy, and the idea that Voris would stumble through the door, get her sick, and that she could turn around and start showing symptoms twenty minutes later was pretty ridiculous. The universe was full of highly pathogenic bugs, but very few were known to science that were quite that efficient.

But that still didn't really mean much. He could have been sick for days—perhaps he was only just now showing symptoms. But if that were true, she would have expected a lot more affected people coming through the clinic door, but there had been nothing like this. She watched the analyzer pick through the genetic elements from Voris' saliva sample and clenched her jaw. How could the thing be so slow?

She strode over to the clinic's computer and tapped the screen. "Computer, pull all logs from the last week—correction, two weeks—and search for any patients with acute respiratory problems."

Almost immediately, it returned two results. Adelaide, who despite her underlying cancer had been admitted to the clinic with acute respiratory problems prior to her official diagnosis, and Aisla's ten-month-old niece, Lula, who had come in with a mild cough and runny nose five days earlier.

She remembered now—she'd been installing updates on the tricorders and hadn't been able to run a scan for potential pathogens—but Aisla and her mother hadn't been all that worried and neither had Voris, plus the baby's symptoms were so mild, so she'd sent Lula and her family home with a decongestant and hadn't heard from them since. She gazed back at Voris in the biobed and shook her head.

So maybe she wasn't staring down the barrel of a colony-wide outbreak. He could be sick with a pathogen that only affected Vulcans, or maybe one that wasn't particularly contagious. She was halfway back to the biobed from the computer desk when the door to the clinic burst open. "Dr. Voris? Oh no—where's the doctor?"

Dagny wheeled around to find Jacob Diels standing in the threshold and wringing his hands. "Please, help me!"

It was hard to rip her mind away from her own worries, but the evident fear and desperation in his eyes was hard to ignore too. "Captain Diels, what's wrong?"

"The baby. Khel. They're both sick. Khel can hardly breathe. She's coughing. There's blood. I would have brought her straight here, but she's barely conscious and I can't carry them both."

A chill rippled across her consciousness, settling into the pit of her stomach as a heavy knot. She turned and looked back at Voris and without making eye contact with Jacob ordered, "I need you to bring them here. Now. I can't leave the clinic, but it's very important that you get them here as fast as you can. Get someone to help you carry them."

He was already out the door before she finished speaking. Dagny fought valiantly to remain calm, but she was all too aware of a painful fact without even consciously thinking about it. Voris was Vulcan, Khel was Romulan, and her baby Christopher was half-Romulan. Maybe she had been on the right track with her theory that whatever Voris had only affected Vulcans or more generally, Vulcanoid species.

Almost as if on cue, the biobed emitted a series of three angry beeps. The genetic analysis had found a potentially harmful organism in Voris' saliva. She couldn't make it out from where she stood, but it was easy to spot the red highlighting of the word mixed in with the other green-coded, harmless organisms.

Rather than take the time to dwell on it, she marched over to the biobed. There were only three little words that read Orion Respiratory Virus. She'd never heard of it, but there were so many pathogens throughout the Federation and beyond she'd never heard of. She trotted back to the computer and blurted, "Computer, show all information relating to Orion Respiratory Virus."

There were millions of search results that were quickly compiled into a quick dossier. The very first sentence nearly made her heart stop.

"Orion Respiratory Virus (ORV) is a highly contagious single-stranded RNA virus indigenous to Orion and its outlying moons and is the causative agent of a disease commonly referred to as Orion lungworm…"

Voris stood outside the library in Gol, staring up at the third window from the left on the seventh floor. The distorted images in his periphery indicated this was a dream of sorts, woven into a memory to create a fantasy. There were loud, disembodied voices in the distance. He was dying, or his body was, and evidently his mind had decided to spend its final hours of life reminiscing over this period of contentment from his days of early adulthood.

He had a sense that when he entered the library and climbed the stairs to the seventh floor, he would find his first home with T'Sala and likely T'Sala herself, but how could he possibly face her, after everything that had happened?

He wanted to go to her but he was afraid. In his current state, controlling his emotions felt virtually impossible. Nostalgia and love and loss rolled over him like waves and he inhaled deeply, but could not remember the exact smell of this place. How could he have forgotten what it smelled like? There had been a bakery nearby, hadn't there? Suddenly his nostrils were full of the smell of warm bread.

The traffic moved quickly around him and the sun was low on the horizon, indicating it was very early morning. How dearly he had missed this place, and how greatly it shocked him to admit it. It was Vulcan, and it was his home.

"Will you come in?"

He shifted his eyes to the right and nearly gasped. T'Sala stood beside him, glancing up at him with patient and inviting eyes, just the way she always did, or the way she always had done. She was exactly as he remembered her—slender and petite with glossy black hair and fair skin. This vision was based on his memories, so even if the small details were wrong because his memory was imperfect, how would he ever know?

He looked straightforward once again to the steps of the library. He asked, "What will I find if I do go inside?"

There was no answer. "What will I find?" he insisted.

When he dared himself to look to his right again, he discovered she was gone. He missed her already and very nearly took off at a sprint toward the library, but he remained glued to the sidewalk. He wanted to go to her, but then he would have to tell her everything, about agreeing to marry T'Rya but instead consummating his pon farr with an innocent human woman who was now carrying his child. There was so much shame he could hardly bear it.

Voris managed to take a step forward and then another and after what felt like an eternity, he found himself standing outside his former apartment. Should he ring the bell? It was his home, or at the very least, it was his memory of his home, but he did not feel welcome there. He could barely breathe. Just as he raised his hand to activate the bell, the door sprung open to reveal T'Sala in her nightdress.

"Good morning," she said. "Come inside. I have been waiting for you."

"You have?"

She tilted her chin and offered the two forefingers of her right hand. "I have always been waiting."

He stared at her fingers, desperate to feel any connection to her but unable to bring himself to actually do it. What if nothing happened? This was just a memory, or a fantasy, after all.

"You have been away a long time," she continued. "Why do you refuse me?"

"Because you're dead."

His admission elicited no outward response in T'Sala. It suddenly occurred to him that he might not be experiencing some fleeting vision. Vulcans did not believe in the idea of an afterlife, but it would be illogical to claim an afterlife couldn't exist, simply because it had never been observed. But then suddenly, almost as if she knew his mind better than he did, she said, "You are not dead."

"Then why am I here?"

"I had supposed you might tell me."

He closed his eyes and thought he could hear the whisper of voices in the distance. Why had he come to this distant corner of his mind? He couldn't remember.

"Would you like first meal?"

He did not feel hungry but he slowly nodded, trying to remind himself that this wasn't reality. But the plomeek soup tasted real enough, hitting his stomach and sending a cascade of longing through him. T'Sala sat down across from him, her nightdress on the verge of slipping off her left shoulder. She was so beautiful and he wanted her so badly.

"Is it to your liking?"

"Yes," he said, unable to mask the desperation in his voice and unsure whether he was referring to the soup or the mere sight of her.

He watched her eat with almost ravenous delight, drinking in the lovely angles of her face and body. When she was nearly done, she looked up and said, "You are not eating. Why?"

"This isn't real. None of this is real. The soup, the apartment, you…"

"I'm as real as you want me to be."

"That doesn't mean anything. You're a figment of my imagination."

"Then why do you stay?"

"I don't know how to leave," he growled.

"You are angry."

"I cannot control my emotions in this place," he said, rising from the table with such force the soup in his bowl sloshed onto the table.

"Then do not try to."

Voris rubbed his forehead and wandered toward the window. He closed his eyes, suddenly noticing he could smell the spice in the soup and the fragrant scent of his mate's skin. The voices in the distance grew quieter. When she ran her hands over his shoulders, he jumped in surprise.

"Will you bond with me?" she asked.

"I cannot."

"Why?"

"Because you are not real." A tear slipped down his cheek, then another.

"Or is it because you share your heart with someone else now?"

"No."

"You lie."

"Lying is illogical."

"There is no logic in this place."

Voris turned and glared at her, but his anger melted into sorrow. He hadn't shared his heart with Dagny, but he'd certainly shared his body with her. "I have acted most regrettably."

"Bond with me," she repeated, reaching her hands toward his face.

He clutched her wrists, stopping her before she could make contact with him. Undeterred, T'Sala pulled her wrists away and slid her fingers over Voris'. The effect bordered on magical. She drew close to him, rubbing her slight body along his frame.

"I have missed you," he whispered, fighting the sensation of physical arousal.

"I know," she replied. "I have always known."

They stood together, quietly marking the time only by the sounds of their breaths. T'Sala shrugged the nightdress from her shoulders and allowed it to fall to the floor, and as much as he wanted to observe his mate's body, he forced himself to look away.

"You may have me, if you want me."

"It is not a matter of wanting," he insisted, moving toward the kitchen.

"It is logical to conclude you have taken a new mate."

"It is not as simple as that."

"I have always known that you would take a new mate one day," she called after him. "It is simply a necessity of your biology."

"I did not choose her."

"You did not choose me, either. Our parents chose us for each other."

"My father urged me to nullify our marriage. I chose you then."

"Yes, and you also chose to continue living after I was gone. I am glad for this."

"You are glad I have taken another mate?"

"A sentient being's optimal chance at maximizing utility is a long and prosperous life. I am glad you are alive and not alone. Do you care for her?"

"Not as I cared for you."

"Do you dislike her?"

"No."

Voris whirled around and stared at T'Sala, who was now fully dressed in casual attire and sitting on the bed in the corner. There was no hint of bitterness or jealousy in her but there never had been, not only because she was Vulcan and would have never expressed such things, but also because her personality lacked the ability to produce such sentiments. Or maybe his memories of her were tainted. She patted the quilt.

When he sat down beside her, she shifted her weight and turned to face him. "What has happened to you, adun?"

He fought the urge to cry again as the story of the past two and a half years poured out. He told her everything in a jumbled and incoherent narrative, explaining in no specific order the falling out with his father, the events aboard the Sekla, Mrs. DePaulo and Harold, Dagny and Vaksur, Cestus III and life on New Vulcan. When he began babbling about his impending fatherhood, she took his fingers in ozh'esta. He held his breath for longer than should have been possible.

How he wanted to kiss her, to mate with her, to have her in every conceivable way and to give himself to her in return. They laid down on the bed together and T'Sala nestled her forehead onto his chest. It was entirely right and entirely wrong. The moment her fingers brushed his, all he could think of was Dagny.

"I should go," he said softly.

"Then go."

Voris swallowed and stared up at the ceiling. It was becoming harder to breathe and the voices in the distance were becoming fainter. He rolled onto his left side to face T'Sala, who brushed the hair from his eyes.

"But I do not want to go," he finally said.

"Then stay."

He closed his eyes, allowing the idea to settle into his mind. It was incredibly tempting. He was very nearly asleep when he heard another voice from somewhere even deeper within himself.

"Please come back to me. I need you. I love you."

The last four hours had been utter hell. Khel and the Romulan boys, Rh'aen and Rh'ael, were conscious but still struggling to breathe and Voris remained comatose, no worse but also no better. Christopher Diels was sick but his symptoms were relatively mild, which she hoped was the result of his hybrid physiology, but the disease could shift so quickly that there was no telling what might happen, so she asked Jake to keep him in the clinic, not that he had any immediate plans to leave anyway.

She'd sent an emergency subspace message to Drs. Govorski and Sevek on New Vulcan, asking for any guidance they had for handling an outbreak of Orion lungworm, but it was the middle of the night in that region of New Vulcan. At present, Samantha Bergeron was sitting at the clinic's computer desk, reading the dossier on Orion lungworm.

"Give it to me straight—how bad is this disease?" Sam asked, turning away from the biobeds to face Dagny.

"It depends," she admitted, wondering if Sam had read the information or just wanted Dagny to confirm it. "To Vulcans, Romulans, and Rigelians, it's devastating. Orions generally don't get all that sick—they've spent millennia coevolving with the virus. Just about everyone else on the colony is probably going to be ok, but they can still transmit it. I sent a subspace message to some doctors I know on New Vulcan, but until they reply back, I think we need to go ahead with the quarantine of all Vulcanoid colonists in their homes."

"How did this happen?" Sam asked, slumping down on the stool by the computer.

"It seems some of the new Orion colonists brought it with them from their previous colony. The biofilters on the ship's transporters might have filtered it out, but Captain Diels says they were brought to the surface via shuttle because they needed all the power they could get to transport up another shipment of bulk ore. And there actually have been documented cases of the virus slipping through transporter biofilters, so it could have happened either way."

At the mention of his name, Samantha Bergeron glanced in the direction of Jacob Diels, who was clutching his son to his chest and sitting by his wife's side as she lay encased in a biobed. Khel had also been forced to resort to a biobed to breathe and in the last hour, two Romulan teenagers had arrived with their parents, complaining of shortness of breath and sore throats. The parents were fine, but the boys were rapidly deteriorating.

"At last count, we had two Vulcans, twelve Rigelians, and thirty-three Romulans on this colony," Sam sighed, biting her lip.

"I know, but many of them were vaccinated as children, which might provide some protection, depending on how long ago it was. The Vulcans and Rigelians stopped routinely vaccinating against the disease twenty years ago after they went twenty years with no cases, but the Romulans tell me that they still vaccinate for it," she explained, nodding in the direction of the Romulan family in the corner of the clinic. "The Romulan kiddos over there didn't get the vaccines because they grew up in a forced labor camp and only escaped with their parents two years ago. Getting routine shots wasn't high on the list of priorities."

"But wasn't Dr. Voris was giving inoculations to the miners?"

"To the miners, yes, and as far as I can tell, every Orion and Vulcanoid working in the secondary tunnels on Alpha and Gamma shift got a vaccine for Orion lungworm within the last five days, but it can take up to two weeks for that vaccine to be fully effective. They might be partially protected, along with anyone who got a vaccine as a child, but then again, both Voris and Khel were vaccinated as children and they're both sick."

"And it's really as contagious as you say?"

"It's among the most contagious diseases known to medical science," Dagny explained, almost feeling annoyed that she was being asked to confirm everything Sam had just read. "I almost don't know how effective a quarantine will be if this virus has been on the colony for the last five days, but it's better than nothing. At a bare minimum, we need to tell people to watch for symptoms and I need to get the clinic ready to receive at least fifty patients in the event of a worst-case scenario, and I don't have the space, equipment, or staff to do that. And that doesn't even address the other medical needs of the rest of the colony."

"Ok, we can send for more supplies from Aldebaran and pushing the Oglethorpe, we might have them here in three weeks."

"This disease has a three to seven day incubation period, but once symptoms start, it gets ugly fast. I saw Voris this morning and he was fine, but three hours later, he could barely breathe. Even with aggressive medical intervention, this disease has a mortality rate of between fifteen and twenty percent. And we only have the resources to treat about eight people with aggressive medical intervention. In three weeks, there's a good chance most of the Vulcanoid population of this colony will be dead."

Sam leapt off the stool and swore under her breath.

"What if we asked the colony on the northern continent for help?" Dagny suggested. "If they can send supplies, that'd be something."

"There are forty-three graves on the surface of this colony," Sam said darkly, pointing upward. "If the Federation colony were willing to help us, that graveyard wouldn't exist."

"They would let around fifty people die to prove a point? That doesn't sound very Federation-like."

"Our split from the main colony wasn't… well, it wasn't very popular with the people who stayed behind. The Federation wasn't happy about the Klingons and actually considers it a crime to associate with Romulans, but because we're not technically in Federation territory, there wasn't much they could do. They worry that associating with us could get their colony status revoked, so they've largely refused to communicate with us."

"Ok, well, what if we reached out to their medical staff directly? They still have a duty-"

"I don't think you realize what's really at stake here, Dagny," Sam said, lowering her voice. "Captain Diels and the Oglethorpe were held in New Vulcan's orbit and not allowed to transport down to the planet just at the mere mention of the disease."

The corners of Dagny's mouth twitched. She didn't like where the conversation was going. "Yes, I remember."

"And according to the report you gave me, at least a dozen species have been shown transmit the virus without getting sick, including humans. If word gets out that there's Orion lungworm here, not only will all the Vulcans and Romulans and Rigelians die, this colony will die. We'll be turned away from pretty much every port. No one will trade with us. I don't know if you realize this, but our greenhouses don't produce nearly enough food to feed everyone. Our economy runs on lithium and dilithium and it's worth a lot of money, but we can't eat it."

"I grew up on a salvage ship," Dagny shot back. "There's always a demand for dilithium and even the squeaky-clean Federation has done some shocking things to get it when there's been a shortage. They negotiated with the organized crime syndicate in the Corvan system, they-"

"What I'm saying is," Sam interrupted slowly, "I think for now, we're on our own."

"I already sent messages to doctors on New Vulcan detailing the problem here," Dagny responded, her hands shaking once again, this time in anger. "This isn't going to stay a secret."

"You gave the message to the ops station, and they contacted me. I told them to hold off on sending them until I spoke with you."

Dagny fought a fleeting, wild impulse to attack the colony's leader. "You're seriously going to try and cover up an outbreak because it would be bad economics?"

The loved ones of the sick people in the clinic turned to look at her. "Lower your voice," Sam urged.

"No, I will not lower my voice. What you're implying is dangerous, irresponsible and probably even criminal. You said yourself you understand that other species can still transmit the virus even if they don't get sick. If you send people out there to keep trading, lungworm is almost guaranteed to make its way back to Rigel and New Vulcan eventually and they wouldn't even see it coming! They stopped vaccinating for this disease because they assumed it had been eradicated, but if they knew it wasn't, they would at least have time to protect their populations!"

By the end of her rant, Dagny was shouting and everyone in the clinic was staring at them, or at least, everyone who was conscious. Sam glowered and replied, "I only wanted to have all the facts before I took any action. Help me to help you. What ideas do you have for getting through this with as few casualties as possible? And that includes casualties from starving to death when we run out of food to feed the colonists."

"Yeah, well, what about the casualties that would come from reintroducing a long-eradicated disease back into vulnerable populations? Do you really want to go down in history books as being the deciding factor that finally pushed the Vulcan species to extinction?"

The buzzer to the clinic sounded and Dagny hit the switch to open the door. Aisla walked in with a basketful of food and surveyed the scene. There were tears forming in her eyes. "Thought I might help, lovey."

Dagny was about to reply, "Please, we need all the help we can get," when Rhaev, Rh'aen and Rh'eal's father, barked, "What is she doing here?"

Aisla's green face blanched into an odd shade of beige. "I work here part time and-"

"You are the reason my sons are going to die. You and Orion filth like you."

"Rhaev, what's done is done," Sam said with a cold tone of finality. "And Aisla has been on this colony since it was founded."

"I don't want her near my sons," Rhaev insisted. His wife peeked over his shoulder, fear and anger in her eyes.

"I have a feeling things are going to get worse before they get better," Sam continued. "And we're going to need all hands on deck."

A shouting match ensued between Rhaev and Sam about who deserved the blame for the current situation and Dagny tried to keep Aisla from retreating through the clinic door. Jacob Diels joined in when Nhael, Rhaev's wife, suggested it was his fault for bringing Orion lungworm back to the colony in the first place and soon Christopher's screaming was added to the mix.

Dagny pulled herself onto a nearby table and screamed, "Everyone shut up!"

The din faded, aside from the crying infant in Jake's arms, and soon five angry and shocked faces were staring at her. She hadn't actually expected them to quiet down and listen, and so she didn't know what to say.

"L-listen, Sam's right. She's right. Things are bad and they're probably going to get worse. Everyone shares some blame here. The Orions didn't screen people leaving their colony to make sure they were healthy and had all the necessary vaccinations, Jake didn't screen people boarding his ship, the colony had no policy to screen new people and so Voris and I didn't screen anyone or make sure they were up to date on their vaccines, and even the parents didn't bother to make sure their kids were vaccinated. There's plenty of blame to go around, but what's the point? It's not going to improve anyone's chances."

"I don't want her treating my sons," Rhaev snarled, pointing at Aisla.

"And I don't feel like dealing with your racism right now, so fine," Dagny growled back. "If you want to limit the care your sons can receive, that's on you, but I'm only one person and I can't be everywhere at once."

He puffed his chest out to reply but Nhael put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head. Jake helped Dagny off the table and she furiously rubbed her temples. Her face mask was itchy and she wanted to rip it off and stomp on it, but even though neither she nor the baby were at risk of contracting Orion lungworm—the virus was unable to cross the placenta—there could still be other pathogens present in the clinic.

How badly she wanted Voris' guidance and advice. She should check on him, she thought. She should check on Khel and the boys. She should start working on a colony-wide notice about Orion lungworm symptoms, assuming Sam still wanted to go ahead with the quarantine. She sighed heavily and glanced at the colony's leader, who looked just as afraid and desperate as Dagny felt. The two women stared at each other, almost as if waiting to see who would take charge first.

Sam looked away and said, "I'll send out an advisory and see if there is anyone who can get us medical supplies."

"Thank you."

She left the clinic and Dagny wandered over to her patients. The boys were on nasal cannulas and high flow oxygen and though their blood oxygen was dangerously close to dipping below an acceptable threshold, it had remained stable for the last hour, probably due in part to the throxinidizine she'd administered to stave off the development of excess fluid in their lungs. Throxinidizine had some unpleasant side effects, chiefly that it worked to keep fluid out of the lungs by dehydrating the body, and so it could lead to other lung complications or even renal failure.

She was just on her way to examine Voris when the light on the end of his biobed flashed red and began to beep. He had stopped breathing but he had a weak pulse.

"No!" she shrieked, flipping back the biobed dome and gripping his cheeks.

He was lifeless and his skin was cool to the touch. She raced to the surgical suite, knocking over the small table they used to hold instruments, and grabbed the primary ventilator. She had never actually intubated anyone. She'd done simulations and worked on dummies in her paramedic training and had watched Voris do it several times, but despite many advances in modern medicine, many things could still go wrong.

She took a deep breath, pried his mouth open, slid the laryngoscope blade into position to the right of the tongue, and begged her hands to stop shaking.

"Do you need help, lovey?"

"No," Dagny snapped, feeling dizzy.

She was moving on instinct, the steps of the procedure hazy and jumbled in the back of her mind. She lifted his jaw upward to move it into better position, applied cricoid pressure, and had a clear view of is larynx. This seemed so textbook. She fumbled for an appropriate size tube on the side of the ventilator and just as she was about to insert it, she heard another insistent beeping sound from the biobed next to her.

"No!" Jake yelled. "I think Khel stopped breathing! Please, please no!"

Dagny had pretty much stopped breathing too. She froze and without looking up said, "Aisla, can you provide manual ventilation until I can get over there?"

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and wondered why the beeping sound wasn't stopping. Then she realized the monitor on her abdomen was alerting her to a dangerous increase in her body temperature. All she wanted was a small break, but sensing she wasn't going to get one for a long time, she closed her eyes, took a few slow breaths, and slid the tube into Voris' mouth and watched the tube enter the trachea. She secured the tube and checked to ensure it was actually in the trachea and not the esophagus and after a minute when she realized she had done everything correctly— Voris' chest was rising and falling and his blood oxygen levels were ticking back up again—she nearly laughed, at least until she remembered Khel had stopped breathing and she needed to do it all over again.

The clinic only had two ventilators, though theoretically, the units they had could provide oxygen to four patients. She grabbed a smaller set of equipment and headed for Khel, whose airway was being manually maintained by Aisla with a mask and a bag. Her temperature monitor continued to beep and her hands were shaking once again. It was so hot in the clinic.

Just as she leaned down to attempt her second ever intubation, a sharp pain cut through the lower part of her belly. She gasped and dropped the laryngoscope blade, which clanged to the floor.

"Dagny, are you-"

"I'm fine," she winced, trying to keep from doubling over in pain and terror. "I'm fine."

The next several hours saw her intubate not only Khel, but also Rh'aen. It never seemed to stop. Every time Dagny managed to get one life-threatening crisis under control, another one would pop up somewhere else. She kept lowering the temperature in the clinic only to have her temperature monitor go off again a short time later, and though the pain in her belly went away, its cause remained unknown, and that only added to her worry.

In between it all, she enlisted the help of the others in the clinic to help set up the unfinished convalescent ward in the event that they received any more patients. They transferred Voris, Khel, and Rh'aen out of the biobeds and onto regular cots to free up space for triage, but just as she was preparing to administer IV solutions and catheters, Rh'ael stopped breathing and she had to stop what she was doing and intubate him as well.

All four of her patients had woken up healthy and now less than twenty-four hours later, they were on life support. She had another ventilator that could handle four more severe Orion lungworm cases, but that was it. It was like being back on the Albret again—too many patients and not enough equipment or training to handle it. How could she have been so lucky for so long to have not had to deal with something as bad as this? Even at the Battle of Vulcan, she'd had other physicians with far more experience to rely on. Now all she had was Aisla, and though she dearly appreciated her help, Dagny wasn't ready to be in charge of a major outbreak.

Her temperature monitor went off again and without skipping a beat, she lowered the internal temperature of the clinic to eighteen degrees Celsius.

"It's getting a little cold in here, don't you think?" Rhaev asked, looking up from Rh'ael's bedside.

"Put on a jacket if you're cold," Dagny grumbled. She went upstairs, fetched some blankets, and she and Aisla started covering the patients to keep them warm.

She took extra care tucking the edges around Voris' feet, watching his vitals on the secondary monitor she'd hooked up to the foot of the cot. He was alive, but for how much longer?

"Why don't you have a bite to eat and put your feet up for a few minutes?" Aisla said from behind her.

"There's too much to do," Dagny replied, thinking she should administer another round of throxinidizine to her patients and make sure the clinic was ready to receive any more patients.

"You're going to work yourself to death and then where will we all be?" Aisla stepped forward, holding a bowl of fruit salad. "Eat. I'll keep an eye on things for a little while and won't hesitate to come get you if I need anything."

The scene in the convalescent ward was pretty subdued. Dagny looked around and saw Jake sitting next to Khel. Christopher was fast asleep in his arms and he was gently stroking his wife's hand. Rhaev and Nhael were sitting between their boys, backs to each other but touching so that they were still close and both of their boys had someone with them.

Dagny took the bowl and gazed at the cantaloupe and strawberries, which made her think of Adelaide and of the dead woman's hard life. She had survived several famines and now that Orion lungworm had come to Bergeron colony, maybe they were all standing at the threshold of starvation too, assuming Sam's worst case scenario came true. Aisla pulled a chair from the clinic's waiting room over to Voris' bedside and motioned for her to sit, which she did.

She set the fruit salad on her thighs. She was hungry, but she would have to go upstairs and eat on account of the mask. She allowed her eyes to rest on her swollen belly and started mulling over all the events that had led her to this moment, but stopped when she realized it was going to drive her crazy. The only thing that had kept her from going crazy during this whole mess had been her ability to stay busy. Aisla was right: physically, she needed rest, but mentally, rest was probably the worst possible thing, because it gave her time to think. She was in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy and her baby's father was lying in a coma next to her on life support. It didn't matter how it had all come to this, because they were here now, and she was so incredibly afraid.

She took several slow breaths, trying to keep control of herself. Some ingrained instinct made her reach for Voris' hand, but the moment her skin made contact with his, she felt the last of her emotional strength crumble. She leaned forward, rested her head on his arm, and whispered, "Please come back to me. I need you. I love you."