The doctor examined his datapadd, trying to find some clue of- what? Illness? Alien intruders? The hologram heaved a deep sigh. He had wracked his databases and had come up with little medical information on Fairies. What he had found had told him that on the Fairie home world, there was no more disease. They had built up a natural immunity to all of their diseases, and many of Earth's diseases as well. When they encountered a new illness, they reacted violently to it, often going into convulsions. Their much more resilient immune system allowed them to fight off the disease much fast than a human, however, as long as the high fever didn't kill them. But as far as the doctor could tell, they reacted to most diseases in much the same way: convulsions and a high fever. This gave him a wide, wide range of diseases to choose from, and made it difficult to study the illness should it be classified as a new one.
When the Fairie had gone into convulsions a second time, the doctor had withered and given her a tranquilizer. It had calmed her almost immediately, but her fever had shot up and was still rising. She slept peacefully, but beads of sweat stood out on her forehead and dripped down her face. Kes was standing nearby, conducting research while keeping an eye on the sleeping patient. She paused her work several times to adjust the temperature of the incubator on the bed. She knew as well as the doctor that it was better to try to find a way to combat the disease than to spend every moment hovering over the Fairie.
Danni muttered restlessly in her sleep and Kes looked up. She walked over to look at the Fairie's temperature, and noticed that it had not gone up since the last time she had checked. It was hovering in the same place.
"Doctor, her temperature has stopped rising," Kes called to the hologram. The doctor stepped out of his office and came to stand beside the bed. He peered closely at the monitor.
"Strange," he said. "Just when I thought we were going to loose her to the high fever, it stops rising." He tapped on his padd to enter this new information. "Keep watching her," he informed Kes. "If her temperature rises or drops, I want to know."
"Yes sir," Kes replied. The doctor returned to try to find something more about Fairies, and Kes stayed near to the screen to watch. She brought over her own padd and sat down on a chair nearby.
When she next looked over, she saw that the Fairie's temperature had dropped almost three degrees. She gasped and quickly turned the cooling agent off in the incubator, trying not to let Danni's temperature drop too fast. Danni's temperature stabilized and slowly came down to the regular warmth. Kes called in the doctor.
"I think her temperature is back to normal," She said, touching the Fairie's cooling forehead.
The Doctor looked at he temperature. "Ah yes, 99 degrees Fahrenheit. Slightly above the average human's temperature, but perfectly fine for the average Fairie. At least, that's what the databanks are telling me." He entered the information into his datapad and nodded slowly. "Well!" He exclaimed. "I suppose I should tell the Captain about this. Will you bring her back around, please? I'd rather if she was awake when the Captain comes back in."
"Yes, of course Doctor," Kes ran to find the injector. The Doctor headed back to his office to call the Captain.
"Captain, this is the Emergency Medical Hologram," The Doctor said. "I would like to see you in sickbay at the earliest oppertunity."
"Yes Doctor, I'll be down right away," the Captain's voice replied.
A few minutes later, Captain Janeway, Harry Kim and Commander Chakotay entered the sickbay. Harry immediately looked toward the bed, and couldn't help but let out a small sigh of relief when he saw Danni looking about with wondering eyes.
The Doctor turned to see them, "ah, thank you for responding to my call so quickly. As you can see, the patient is better."
"I see, doctor," the Captain tapped her lips with a finger. "Can you explain?"
"I'm afraid not, Captain," the Doctor said slowly. "I didn't even treat her. All I did was give her a tranquilizer and try to keep her temperature down."
"I can offer an explanation for that, Captain, although I'm not sure how encouraging it may be," Danni spoke up from the bed. Everyone turned to look at her.
"What kind of explanation, Danni?" Chakotay asked in his deep, gentle voice.
"Simply this: Fairies have unique immune systems that rarely need medicines to help them. They have grown and gotten stronger over the years until now we fight off almost any disease with extremely high fevers and often convulsions. But the disease blows over quickly, most of the time in a matter of hours. However, the symptoms for humans are usually quite different. For instance, if one of us were to get the ancient earth's disease Malaria, we would likely fight it off in much the same way I just fought off the disease I just had in a similar time frame. Humans, however, would likely experience vomiting, a deep chilling, in addition to a high fever and the disease would run it's course over several days." Danni took a deep breath, then bit her lip. "That makes it hard for doctors to figure out what disease we have, because we have pretty much the same symptoms every time."
The other five looked at each other. This meant that they would have no way to tell if the disease was potentially dangerous to the crew, or it's level of contagiousness. The Captain was the first to speak.
"Danni, I want you to stay in sickbay while the Doctor runs some further tests so we can try to figure out what kind of isease just afflicted you. In the meantime, we're pursuing the alien who kidnapped you. he may have some explanation. In fact, I'm betting on it."
"Do you think there may have been something in the tranqulizer he gave me?" Danni ventured to wonder.
"My thoughts exactly, Wix," the Captain gave a quick nod. "Doctor, I want you to try to trace the tranquilizer through Danni's blood stream. Find out what exactly was in it if at all possible."
"Yes, Captain, however, I must inform you that this will be difficult since I have pumped her full of my own tranquilizer. Mine may have already overpowered what ever he gave her."
"Nevertheless, that is the only lead we have to go on," the Captain said. "I need you to run the tests."
The Doctor sighed. "Of course, Captain."
"Meanwhile, the rest of us need to be keeping an eye on each other," Janeway said, putting a hand on her hip and taking a few steps about the room. "If any one of you sees another exhibiting symptoms, or what you would consider symptoms, of anything, them report it. It's too late for us five- Chakotay, Wix, Kim, Kes and I- to quarantine ourselves. If this thing is contagious, it's likely that we've already carried it throughout the ship. We'll have to be on our guard."
"Yes ma'am," Kim nodded soundly. Chakotay, Danni, and Kes followed his lead.
"Very well, then," the Captain said. "We must return to our duty stations."
"Captain, I request permission to say here," Chakotay spoke up. "As long as we are simply pursuing the alien who took Danni on board, I would like to wait here to report any unusual findings to you."
"No, Commander, I need you on the bridge," Janeway said regretfully. "Mr. Kim will remain behind and report anything out of the ordinary."
Harry bit his lip, but nodded willingly. He wanted to be where he was needed, and investigating a strange disease seemed to be the duty that demanded the most. The Captain and Chakotay departed for the bridge and left the doctor, Kes, and Harry to solve the mystery.