Captain's Personal Log: I should be relieved, given the latest findings from Sickbay; those of us who suffered from that odd Aldebaran virus two years ago have also proved immune to this latest contagion. Not only will I remain well enough to retain command, but we will also have sufficient healthy crewmembers to provide care to the others, and to maintain ordinary ship operations. Yet the people of Hasolon IV still lack the assistance they so desperately need – and I remain haunted by the ghosts of the past, ones I had thought exorcised long ago.
Jean-Luc managed a smile for young Ini Okenedo as he pressed the hypospray to her arm. "There you go," he said, in what he hoped a small child would consider a reassuring voice. "You should only need one or two more treatments."
She nodded, mute with fright – more of him, he thought, than of her illness or the hypospray. Children aboard the Enterprise tended to have one of two reactions towards the ship's captain: rapt adulation or abject terror. Jean-Luc found the adulation intensely awkward, but the terror he could usually do something about. He patted Ini's shoulder gently, and saw the tiniest smile appear on her face just before her father took her back in his arms.
Ten-Forward had been converted into a sort of tertiary Sickbay, now that both the primary and secondary ones were filled to capacity. Here, Jean-Luc and the other temporary medical officers worked with those patients whose condition remained stable, and who only needed to refresh the genetic-reinforcement procedure. Luckily, this proved to be the majority of those ill.
Jean-Luc worked at one of the tables by the front windows, next to Data, who paused between patients and turned toward him. "Captain, I have been considering the situation on Hasolon IV. Specifically, I believe I may have at least a partial solution to the problem of the quarantined scientists."
Although the Hasolonians had already received the tectonic stabilizers, their difficulties could not be resolved with equipment alone. Adjusting tectonic plates was tricky work even under ideal conditions; with constant earthquakes and increasing volcanic activity, Hasolon IV's situation was far from ideal. The scientists who remained healthy had provided what guidance they could from the Enterprise – but the most vital and delicate work would require split-second adjustments. Precision analysis. The sorts of things that couldn't be taught in a few subspace conversations. Every bit of the specialists' experience and knowledge was required on-site. "What do you propose, Data?"
"We could link my neural networks to the remote-reality simulator previously utilized by Lieutenant Commander LaForge." Data's pale fingers worked at inhuman speed, assigning genetic samples to the respective patients in the room. "As an android, I cannot be infected by the virus, and therefore it is safe for me to leave the ship. If I were to beam down to Hasolon IV, and one of the geologists entered the simulator – "
"—it would be as if the geologist were on the surface of the planet herself," Jean-Luc said, the image coalescing in his mind. "You would literally act as the geologist's eyes and ears on Hasolon IV."
"I would in effect be acting as their entire body," Data said seriously. "No organs would be neglected."
"A figure of speech, Mr. Data." Slowly Jean-Luc began to nod. "You could only act for one specialist at a time, but one is far better than none. As a Vulcan, Commander T'Sara remains healthy, does she not?"
"Yes, sir. We could set up the simulation with the hour." Yet his golden eyes swept over the crowd of patients waiting in Ten-Forward, sitting in every chair and even on the floor. "However, I realize my assistance is also greatly needed here."
"Anyone can handle a hypospray," Jean-Luc said, glancing down at it ruefully. "As you can see. Whereas you and you alone can handle the simulation for Hasolon IV. Make it so."
After Data left to begin preparing the simulator, Jean-Luc gave T'Sara her new orders, tended to a few more patients, then handed his duties off to the next informal nursing "shift" – Ensign Sonia Gomez and Guinan. When he pressed the hypospray into Guinan's hand, her dark eyes met his for a few seconds longer than necessary; as ever, her special perception had picked up on the weight of the inner burdens he carried. Yet if she had seen a way through this complicated snarl of secrets, Guinan did not share it. Her enigmatic smile seemed sadder than usual.
Though that could have been Jean-Luc's mind playing tricks. His paranoia about being seen through – about all those old truths spilling out – it was ridiculous, and he knew it, but that did not make the feeling any easier to shake.
Nicole's receiving treatment, he reminded himself. The best of care. Soon she'll be recovered, and you can rationally decide what should come next.
Except, of course, that he could not. Xia had made the all decisions until now, and surely he was obligated to honor her choices as Nicole's mother. The emotions stirred inside him when he saw the girl for the first time on the transporter pad – those were his to bear alone.
Yet when he had helped settle Nicole on the biobed, he'd looked down at her wan face and recognized the features there –
Let it go, Jean-Luc told himself as he walked down the corridor toward the computer lab where T'Sara and Data would even now be setting up the remote-reality simulator. You cannot resolve this today, if ever. Regain your calm, or you'll wind up explaining the entire damned story to Deanna the next time she lays eyes on you.
Which he probably would anyway. But he wanted to choose the moment, rather than being immediately pounced upon by his all-too-insightful ship's counselor.
His communicator chirped. "Doctor Crusher to Captain Picard."
Jean-Luc took a deep breath. "Picard here."
"Captain, I'm afraid Sun Xia's daughter Nicole isn't responding well to treatment. Her condition is worsening, more rapidly than any of my other patients."
His gut tightened. "Why her, and no one else?"
"Because she's one of the only people on board for whom I have no intact genetic sample." Beverly sounded angry – at herself, Jean-Luc realized. "I should have made every visitor on board give a sample as soon as I realized we were dealing with a serious infectious agent."
"The true nature of the virus only revealed itself later, Doctor. And you had to deal with a great many patients in short order. Don't blame yourself." The reassurance was sincere, and yet empty, because Jean-Luc could hardly think about the words he was saying. No one but Nicole seemed to matter.
"Jean-Luc – " The hesitation in Beverly's voice would have been enough to tell him where this conversation was headed, if he hadn't suspected it already. "Sun Xia remains uninfected, so I tried working from her genetic sample to fill in the necessary DNA 'blanks' for her daughter. But … I need more."
You could bury the dead, but not secrets. Secrets clawed their way up from the grave. They demanded to be seen. They found the light.
"What is Nicole's current condition?" Jean-Luc asked.
"I've managed to stabilize her, more or less. But I'd be surprised if that lasts longer than a few hours."
He said, "Your shift ends at nineteen hundred hours, correct?" Less than two hours away.
"Yes – "
"Then I'll meet you in your quarters at the end of your shift, Doctor. Picard out."
He resumed walking toward the computer lab with renewed purpose. Data and T'Sara had to be nearly ready to begin by now, which meant Jean-Luc could once again act as a ship's captain. For the next two hours, at least, he would work on a problem that had a concrete solution. His team could stop the coming earthquakes before they even began.
Beverly spent the final hour of her shift balancing on the wire between sympathetic and angry.
Jean-Luc knows what I need to help Nicole, she thought as she re-checked the girl's vital signs. If he weren't her father, and he couldn't help her, he would have said so as soon as I made the situation clear. So why is he being so coy about this?
Maybe "coy" wasn't the word. Diminishing his feelings wouldn't help her understand, nor help her to reach him. Jean-Luc Picard had chosen to sacrifice marriage and children for his career in Starfleet, and that sacrifice had cost him more than he often acknowledged. Learning that he had a daughter, one he hadn't even known until now – it must have been like having a bandage ripped off prematurely, reopening the wound.
Nor was Nicole's situation yet so dire that two hours would make a significant difference; she was getting no better, but, at least for the moment, not much worse.
And yet Beverly had expected more from Jean-Luc. He was a courageous man on every level, forthright, strong. She would've thought his response to her information about Nicole would have been to come straight to Sickbay, offering his DNA or whatever else it took to make his daughter well. If he didn't yet want to discuss his past with Xia, or the tumult of feelings about discovering his fatherhood, then they simply wouldn't have spoken about it. Surely Jean-Luc trusted her enough to realize she wouldn't force him into such an intensely intimate conversation. Yet he had insisted on waiting, and wanted to talk in her quarters before taking any action. Beverly could sympathize with his reluctance without condoning it.
"You're sure you're on top of everything?" she asked the latest temporary "nurse" on duty – namely Wes, whose past bout of Aldebaran flu had rendered him immune.
"Absolutely," Wesley promised. He had been working with the genetic samples so efficiently this afternoon that she'd remembered her old dreams of his following in her footsteps and becoming a doctor. Children had to choose their own paths – she knew that – but seeing him so at home at Sickbay made her wistful. He continued, "Anything Doctor Selar needs, I can help with. Well, almost anything. And I know who to page for the rest."
"Okay." Beverly put her hands on her son's shoulders – slightly higher than her own, now. He got his height from Jack. "Love you."
Wesley had finally reached the age where those words no longer embarrassed him. "Love you too, Mom."
She returned to her quarters, shucking her medical jacket. "Peppermint tea, hot." The steaming cup of tea solidified as she stretched her shoulders. Every muscle ached, and she longed to sleep. Yet she had to wait for Jean-Luc.
Such an intensely private man. His confidences were rare, and more valuable because of it. Certainly they'd never discussed his love life in any depth—for which she'd mostly been grateful. Although she remained content to leave their relationship as it stood, hearing about Jean-Luc with other women …
Jealousy? You should be more mature than that by now. She sighed at her own contrariness. Tonight, she would have to brace herself; if Jean-Luc finally opened up about his long-ago love for Sun Xia, she intended to listen. As his friend, she owed him that much.
How long would Jean-Luc take to come to her? Beverly gave him twenty minutes before she'd page him –
-but at that moment, her door chimed.
"Enter," she said as she took the tea in her hands.
Jean-Luc walked in, every step measured. She had expected some initial evasiveness from him, and yet his eyes met hers immediately. He looked even more stricken than she would have thought. Sympathy once again overtook disappointment, and she gestured to her sofa as she sat, inviting him next to her.
"How is Nicole?" he asked, without preamble.
"Still stable, for now." Beverly took a sip of her tea, then set it on the clear table in front of them. "But what I said before remains true. If I'm going to cure her, I have to put together a more complete genetic map than I can get from her mother alone. I need – Nicole needs her father."
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was like watching a man readying himself for a field amputation, something Beverly had seen once on Arvada III and hoped never to see again. This was even more terrible for him than she had realized.
She reached for his hand at the moment he reached for hers. When their fingers intertwined, Jean-Luc sighed. "Beverly – "
"Just say it. I swear, you'll feel so much better once you've finally admitted it someone, or just to yourself."
"No, I won't." His dark eyes sought hers, searching for something she didn't understand.
She whispered, "Jean-Luc, please, talk to me."
"I am not Nicole's father." Jean-Luc's hand tightened around hers. "Jack is."
The words didn't make sense at first. It was as if the universal translator had stopped working at the moment Jean-Luc decided to start speaking Romulan, or Ferengi. Her mind refused to ascribe meaning to the syllables, instead turning them over like a cryptographer seeking the code within. "Jack," she repeated flatly.
Jean-Luc nodded.
She went numb – literally, as if her body no longer fully existed. Shock, supplied the doctor side of her brain, the only part still functioning normally. "I don't – no. That can't be right."
"I'm afraid it's true."
"Xia lied to you. Of course. Maybe she wanted to convince you that you weren't Nicole's father, so you wouldn't try to establish a relationship – "
"I have never been romantically involved with Sun Xia." His words were clear and precise, even as his thumb rubbed gently along her wrist. "But she and Jack were – having an affair at the time of his death."
"You only have her word for that." Why was Xia lying? How could she be so cruel, making up lies when her daughter was sick? Beverly's mind tried to find an answer, so she could believe something, anything, other than the words now coming out of Jean-Luc's mouth.
"No. Jack told me about his relationship with Xia when it first began."
"… he told you?" Why would Jack say such a thing? Why would Jack lie too? By now she realized how absurd her thoughts sounded, but she felt as if she had been yanked into a parallel universe, one that looked like her reality turned inside out. Her thoughts made sense in the world where she belonged. In this one, she understood nothing. She was confused, ridiculous, behind.
Jean-Luc kept his voice low and even, like someone trying to approach a wounded animal. "I know how difficult this must be for you to hear."
"You don't know. You don't." Beverly pushed herself up from the couch and paced away from him. She didn't look out the window, or at Jean-Luc, or at anything really. In her mind she could only see Jack on that final, brief shore leave two months before he'd died. Always, she had treasured those memories – the last dinner at Rodolfo's with pasta and sweet white wine, the last time Jack had tucked Wesley into bed, the last night they'd spent making love. And yet … the visit hadn't seemed perfect at the time. She'd told herself then it was no more than warp lag and the inevitable temporary disconnect between people who'd been far apart for a while; never had it occurred to her to doubt Jack. To wonder if his mind and heart were with someone else. The thought had never even crossed her mind.
Even now, she couldn't fully believe. Something inside her stubbornly insisted, no.
"Listen to me," Jean-Luc said from behind her, and his tone was firmer now. "The genetic material you need to save Nicole's life – might Wesley be able to provide that?"
For some reason, this fact snapped Beverly from shock into anguish. She clasped her hand to her mouth. "Oh, God. They have the same father. They share genetic information because they have the same father."
"It's worth trying, surely." By now Jean-Luc stood next to her, making no move. Waiting.
"Jack had a child with another woman. He had an affair." If she spoke the words, heard them in her own voice, maybe she could accept it. "You knew about it even then. You've always known."
"I've always known about him and Sun Xia, yes. But before yesterday, I never had any idea that Nicole existed."
Missions lasted so long. They'd never been stationed together after Wesley's birth; the time apart had been lonely. Maybe Jack had – a moment of weakness. One night when he forgot himself, and her. One hour.
But Jean-Luc had said an affair. He and Jack had discussed this. That sounded like more than a night's mistake.
And now all those small silences and hesitations on Jack's final nights at home – the ones she'd all but forgotten in the years since – welled larger in her memory, blacking out the light, casting shadows large enough to conceal Sun Xia.
Her voice cracked as she asked, "Was he in love with her?"
Jean-Luc's expression provided the silent answer.
Beverly swallowed the tightness in her throat. "The way you reacted when you saw Xia again – I thought – "
"Xia and I did not part on the best of terms. She knew I disapproved of the affair, which had already strained our friendship – "
His friend, Beverly thought, by now near nausea. He's standing here and calling that woman his friend.
"—and she blamed me for Jack's death. Because of that, Xia transferred off the Stargazer almost immediately, before either of us could have known she was expecting Jack's child."
"That's why you assumed I blamed you for Jack's death." She laughed brokenly. "Because she blamed you."
He paused, caught short. "I never considered that before. Perhaps."
Beverly felt as if the deck sloped out from under her and caught herself against the wall. Jean-Luc's hand closed around her upper arm, as if he could support her. She said, "While I was mourning my husband – mourning the years we wouldn't have together, the other children we might have had – she had Jack's baby inside her the whole time. On the day you brought him home to me. Even then."
"I'm so sorry," Jean-Luc repeated. "I hate having to tell you this."
She silenced him with a slap.
The sound of it echoed in her quarters; Jean-Luc stumbled back a step, more out of shock than the force of the blow, she thought. Obviously she hadn't hit him hard enough.
"You kept this secret from me for fifteen years." Beverly's voice rose with each word. Soon she would be screaming. Good. "You lied to me for fifteen years! And even now, you hate having to tell me the truth?"
"I meant … I hate hurting you."
"Then maybe you shouldn't have conspired with my husband and his lover while they screwed around behind my back!"
He held one hand to his reddened cheek, but stood his ground. "When should I have told you, then? At his funeral? When you and Wesley transferred onto the Enterprise?"
"You tried to block me from the position on the Enterprise. Was that so you'd never have to face this?"
"No. Because right or wrong, I would not have told you, ever, unless circumstances made it absolutely necessary. Yet that is where we are." Jean-Luc's temper had begun to spark too, but already he was regaining his constant, damnable calm. Beverly wanted to shake it from him, to break him down as surely as he'd broken her. Instead she felt too weak to move.
As a doctor, she understood the mechanics of fainting; neurally mediated syncope was one of the body's natural reactions to the constricted blood vessels that could accompany severe emotional shock. The appropriate response was to lie down. Instead, Beverly stood there, trembling, on the verge of falling to the floor. She wanted to fall. She wanted Jean-Luc to see he'd hurt her that badly.
He said, "You haven't answered my question about Wesley. Could his genetic material potentially save Nicole?"
"Yes." It was as if someone else had answered him.
"Then you realize what we must do."
I must save the daughter of this woman who betrayed me, she thought. Then it hit her: I must save Jack's daughter.
Whatever else Nicole represented, she was the child of the man Beverly had loved.
It was as if the cry had slashed its way out of her throat. Tears welled in her eyes, spilled down her cheeks. Through the blur she saw Jean-Luc move toward her, but she backed away. "Don't," she managed to gasp through her sobs. "Don't come near me."
Never had she seen Jean-Luc so utterly at a loss as then, when he had no choice but to stand there and watch her weep. Finally he said, "Do you want me to talk to Wesley?"
Of course not. I should be the one to do that. This was what she wanted to tell him, because it was the truth. Learning about Nicole would hurt Wesley as much as it had hurt her, if not more. He needed her support now more than ever.
But she couldn't support Wes. She could hardly support herself on her own two legs. It was the final crushing blow, realizing that she could not respond as a mother should – not in time to react as a doctor should. Failure upon failure, lie upon lie. Beverly felt as if everything she'd ever been or loved lay around her, dashed to wreckage.
Wiping at her cheeks, she said, "Yes. Talk to Wesley. As long as you're finally telling the truth."
Jean-Luc grimaced, as though she'd struck him again. "Beverly – "
"Don't apologize. Don't make excuses. Just get out."
Somehow she held herself upright until he'd walked out. Then she slid down the wall and sank onto the floor, sobbing harder than she had since the day she'd received the communiqué telling her Jack was dead.
That had been Jean-Luc too.