"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in Having New Eyes"

-Marcel Proust-

Chapter Three: When You're Broken…

Year 2373

Deep Space Nine, the Alpha Quadrant

The Infirmary

08:00 Hours

Lenara sat in the infirmary watching Dr. Bashir intently as he studied the data laid out on his tricorder held in one hand while running the hand scanner over her skillfully with the other. Julian's dark eyebrows rose and arched a few times as he nodded his head at a few points. Lenara smiled to herself watching him in his work. He really was thorough .

"Did you find something of interest, Dr. Bashir?" She finally asked, a little nervous, but smiling outwardly to put on a brave face despite it. For the past week and a half she had waking up sick to her stomach and worse for ware the rest of the day because of it. She found that though she was able to push herself well beyond her limits in her work as she always had, that she became exhausted faster than usual.

Lenara had tried to hide it in the beginning, but Dax noticed anyway and suggested that she visit the doctor. The moment she had confessed her symptoms to her lover, she had seen a spark of excitement flare in those blue eyes before they filled with worry and she couldn't help wondering if it was what they both thought it might be.

"Not particularly. Blood pressure and hemoglobin levels are all well within the normal range." Julian mumbled to himself in diagnosis. "But wait a minute," he looked up from his tricorder, smiling at her in that confident way of his. "According to these readings you have two heartbeats. Congratulations, doctor."

Lenara nodded her head albeit shakily. In tandem she released the deep breath she had been holding.

"Would you rather I contact Dax right now?" Julian asked setting the hand scanner down on the tray by his side, "She did say to contact her right away when we finished the exam and this is an event of some significance, wouldn't you agree, Lenara?"

"Yes." Lenara said softly and as she did so her hand unconsciously traveled to her midsection, "but I would rather tell her on my own, a little later perhaps."

Julian raised a well sculpted eyebrow as a knowing smile crept up on his features.

"You see, I arranged to have lunch with her this afternoon and, if this physical turned out the way I thought it might, I had planned to tell her then."

It wouldn't be that big of a surprise. They had been planning and trying for months, after all this was just the first attempt to take. It was scarce knowledge that two joined Trill could conceive children with one another with the bonding of their symbionts in the process of love making. Not a physical joining, but an emotional, mental, and soulful connection which resonated along with the bodies of their hosts as well. It was a hard thing to achieve, but once it culminated it could sometimes conclude with the conception of a child with traits close to that of their parents or a mixture of both equally. Generally, this reaction happened with every joined Trill couple, regardless of their gender. So according to those rules, should Dax and Lenara have a child together, it would most likely be a daughter with a mixture of each of their physical traits and mental capacities just as would any other normal girl. What a child.

"So you're just going to make her wait, are you? So cruel." Julian stood and walked over to enter the data he had accumulated on his tricorder into the station's medial database without missing a beat. "You know how Jadzia will take to that."

"Yes, I know, but she was always a fan of spontaneity. I am sure she can handle it."

Julian allowed himself a good natured laugh, "I have no doubt she can."

The doctor returned his full attention to his console and Lenara's thoughts turned back to the days beforehand. They had talked well into the beginning about possibly starting a family. Having children had never been a top priority in Lenara's life, with her career taking the top slot, but Dax changed things. With Jadzia, waking up next to her every morning, falling asleep beside her every night and just reveling in the simple pleasure of their time together; she had begun to think of things which would have never otherwise crossed her mind.

She began to think of the future not in terms of science, but of fulfillment. Not in the manner of what she wanted for herself, but in what she wanted for them and in how reaching those goals would make them feel. She thought in terms of not herself, but of them. Lenara had come to realize that their life together was all she thought about and it scared her a little. Everything was going so well…too well.

It had for the most part in her life remained stable from the beginning to the point she was at now. Though things had not always been so enjoyable.

The College of Science and Technology was the largest and most renowned on the Trill home world. It is known that eighty percent of all freshmen drum out their first year, but that fact did not deter Lenara from entering the Intermediate Sciences program and aspiring to excel. From a spectator point of view, it didn't seem that far fetched. Lenara's father, Daman Ortner, was one of the heads of the Science Council and her maternal uncle was a scientist who worked on one of Trill's moons so it seemed only natural that Lenara tread her heels in one of the sciences.

There really were no other acceptable opportunities. Even her older brother, Nejan, was off working with a research team on the Deja II colony, but a prestigious name wasn't enough to garner success. You had to uphold that name. Still, someone with Lenara's family background was expected to try and therein lay the point. Thankfully, for the young Trillian woman, that she loved science.

There were many formalities to separate the worthy from the unqualified when it came to the admission College's admission process. Being accepted by the merit of one's application wasn't enough. You also had to pass a series of entrance exams in various subjects. These were known as Competency Exams and they weeded out the "best and brightest" from simply the "ordinary" (though it was rumored that some students who scored a ninety or better average on all of their entrance exams were still turned away).

It came closer and closer to the day when Lenara would have to take her own exams and to tell the truth, she was frazzled with nerves. She studied day and night and slept sparingly. Neither one of her parents disturbed her much, each knowing the supreme importance of studying for these tests and the weight they would hold over their only daughter's future career. They had assigned it to be Bajal's job to bring dinner up to his sister in her room, even though she barely touched it, she was so engrossed in her work, but Bajal too was stubborn. He would sit on the edge of her desk and bemoan her until she finally relented and took a break to eat. Younger brothers were always good for that much.

It was on one of these strenuous days when she when the first known turning point in her life began. When a moment of true clarity had allowed her to notice more about herself or her future than anything else had since.

Lenara closed her eyes and momentarily removed herself from the room. She was no longer in the infirmary. She was far away, in another place, another time.

A knock came briefly at her bedroom door, but Lenara did not look up from her desk.

"Enter."

"Are you still taking notes?" Bajal complained as he walked in carrying a tray of soup and rolls in and setting it on the side of the desk. "You know, there is such a thing as too much studying."

Lenara allowed herself a brief smile, but only for a moment, "Not for these exams."

"You know, you say that, but Gaia Versan made it into the College of Science and Technology and I can remember seeing her out with Tan and Verve almost every night." Bajal interjected, wanting to be right, but not to make his sister angry at him. He and Lenara were almost always on good terms and he preferred to keep it that way for as long as possible if he could.

"For good reason too." Lenara finally looked up at him, her eyes a light silvery green-blue in the afternoon light, "Gaia's grandfather is the Dean."

Bajal began massaging the back of his neck with his hand, a relaxing gesture he had picked up from their older brother which became more of a distraction to him than a comfort in times of pure nervousness. "I forgot about that. You really should take a break though. I like cramming as much as any student, but what you are doing at the present is not healthy."

"So you say, little brother, but you don't know the caliber of these tests." Lenara emphasized her point by strengthening her voice when she stated the words, "These exams are important. They determine what I am to do with my life and if I can garner the career I need to have."

Bajal lowered his eyes to one of the bronze paper weights on the black enamel desktop. When he spoke his tone was quiet, defeated, belittling his words. "You don't need it."

"Bajal." Lenara reprimanded her brother lightly, knowing that on this one subject he couldn't be humored, "You know as well as I do that's not the truth. This is one matter that you and I have very little choice in."

"Yes, but our careers, no matter how much we may wish to make them seem as such are not our lives, Lenara. You must be able to separate yourself from your work or else none of it matters. The last thing I would want to do would be to look back on my life and be disappointed."

Lenara released a long drawn out breath in one exasperated sigh. She was divided. On one side she knew what her brother knew. She understood what they all wanted to feel, that they really did have a choice in their lives, but the other side of her was more practical. The other side knew from both experience and knowledge of the history of their people that this was not the case.

Trill was a world founded on the nature of science and only the most prestigious families who ranked highly in their society, and had been on the top for many generations, were scientists; but still others aspired to be. If ever there was a social climber who wanted to be at the top, all they need do would be to set their goals aloft, but the reality of it all was that so often their goals were too high even for the hands who put them there to grab hold of again. It meant a lot to be the best, to be counted in the top.

Bejal just couldn't understand, he was too young still yet.

"You just don't understand, Bajal." Lenara said sitting back.

"What is there to understand? I know that society confines, but physically we still have the right to choose. Don't we?" Bajal added the last bit as a hopeful whisper as if he knew better, but was still hoping for the best anyway.

Lenara shook her head, "Please, Bajal. I'm tired and there is still a lot I have to get done before dinner tonight."

"Just make sure you eat dinner tonight." Bajal scolded lightheartedly, moving away from the touché subject they had been discussing, "I don't want to come back tonight and see that you've wasted away to nothing."

Lenara smiled, relieved at the new air of levity which had settled between them, "I will."

She heard the electronic door close on its own behind him and then she was left to reconcile with the silence.

Lenara's thumb abstractly stroked over her abdomen through the satin of her dress. She remembered the afternoon after she had finished the test, the emptiness she had felt leaving the college grounds and realizing that there was almost nothing that she particularly wanted to do. She had been preparing for weeks for these exams. With them gone she had no immediate goals to work towards and no ambition to do anything, but too much left over adrenaline in her system to be able to just step back, take a deep breath and relax. She had wandered the gardens behind the Merkt Building, taking aesthetic pleasure in the classic architecture and flawlessly sculptures of figures from the Scientific Revolution on Trill. All of it was a far cry back to a different time. A time that those on the council thought was more esteemed than the present. Quite an impression to be giving to the upcoming generation, that they would never be as good as those who came before them.

Lenara had decided to take a walk on the paths leading through the main square. The bronze buildings and sleek silver sculptures gleamed in the beams of sunlight coming down from above, creating a rainbow prism effect right from the onset when eyes first took in their first sight of the place. Statues of various council members from all centuries were strewn about the lush green landscape. There were a few unforgettable ones.

Verad Kereve, the man who first introduced standard replicator technology to the Trill system, was an aged silver figure clad in a style of council robes long ago discarded. The statue of the famed Phariain Roscar was equally glorified and adorned with the same embellished decorative marks of age. Each and every stationary figure had their facial expressions set in the same stern, contemplative matter and their bodies were all of the same build. Even then, Lenara doubted that every single man whom the statues modeled looked exactly as they were presented with heavy brows and muscular arms despite their intellectual merit. They were presented as the ideal form of what they were envisioned as, not of what they themselves had been. They were what they were without her so Lenara walked on.

She came to the center fountain, flanked loosely in a protective ring by landscaped arrangements of planted flowers in various shades of vivid blues, purples, reds, burgundies and golds. There were a few rocks situated meaningfully on within the pockets of plants to give a somewhat ambiguous barrier between the frivolously flowing colors and the green which sprang up from the shadows below.

It was such a serene place in such an old and, at times, traditionally severe city. The perfect sort of place to offset the melancholy which had over taken her.

The surface of one of the rocks was scrolled with a bunch of letters, but the rock face was turned away from her at an angle so she couldn't read it clearly through the glare from the sun. Lenara began taking a few steps to the side so she could read the inscription, but then she caught sight of another in the garden and stopped dead in her tracks. She was used to being the only person when she came to gardens like this to be alone and think about things in her life. It made her feel somewhat self conscious to have someone else there even though the area was large enough to spaciously hold fifty such people without one of those people having to be more than a bench's length closer to her.

The other was also a girl who looked about her age and just as shy. Dark auburn hair which shone with a reddish sheen to it in the afternoon sunlight was tied back into a loose pony tail with a trademark red ribbon. Her skin was slightly sun-kissed from days spent playing out in the summer sun, a stark contrast to Lenara's own light pallor. The girl had only just emerged from the grove of Gionnacca trees when she was joined in the clearing with another two children. One another girl, was older and seemed more refined for her age. The second was a boy, who was younger than both of his sisters and whom shared the same dark hair.

The boy had a sonic boomerang and with practiced grace, he threw the electronic contraption into the air and it sang as it flew away from him. He raced after it and stopped near the trunk of a large tree where he caught it skillfully and then turned with a smug smile to his older sisters. The eldest of the two shook her head while the younger reflected her brother's smirk, but she soon took on a bashful flush to her cheeks as her older sister turned towards her.

"Azel you know better." The older girl turned back to the boy, holding a silken shawl firmly to her bare shoulders to shield her lighter skin from the brazen summer heat. "Father wouldn't like it if you were hurt and mother, can you believe how angry she would be if we had to come home and tell her that you had injured yourself playing with that hazardous thing?"

Azel waved away his older sister's comments as one would swat at a fly buzzing tediously around their head.

The elder's eyes narrowed and she sighed in frustration, her scrunching up to show her evident anger at her younger sibling. "I hope that thing veers backwards and smacks you in the head, hard! Maybe then you'll learn not to argue with my superior wisdom."

Azel's expression scrunched up in turn and he stuck out his tongue in stubborn defiance while his other sister smiled indulgently at the all too common argument igniting between the two. Even though she had remained completely silent throughout the whole ordeal, Lenara noticed the quiet sister and paid more attention to her behavior despite her shyness. Perhaps it was something in the clarity of those blue eyes. Something which made her want to get to know the other a little better.

"You wish, Eilian!" the little boy stuck out his tongue one more time for good measure and then bounded off to a safe distance with his new toy.

Eilian opened her mouth, but no calculated retort followed the empty action and she instead stood there for another moment longer and scowled. Then she reconsidered and marched off, stopping mid-stride to pause and wait for her sister, "Come along, Jadzia."

The two sisters walked around the pathways which stretched in a geometrical diamond space across a wide expanse of the park, their shoe soles scuffing against the pavement lightly as they went. They were both vaguely aware of their brother and his toy buzzing around him, Eilian more than Jadzia as her more mother-like status in the group perpetuated her more vigilant demeanor in these situations.

Azel ran as fast as his stringy long legs would steadily carry him, his arms outstretched in their usual wingspan as he imitated the advanced toy as it soared in mid-flight. The boy appeared happy, but he only knew the shadow of happiness. The reflection of the feeling most people spend their entire lives searching for. Being a child, the actual sensation which created the reflection was closer to him then than it was to most adults in their prime. He knew what it felt like to have the wind caress his face as his arms floated freely through the air, he knew the experience which was attainable to him, but he would never know what it meant to soar through the clouds above him. Would never know the wisps of white as they caressed the baby fuzz still on his boyish cheeks. Still, half and experience and better than none at all. The dream of actual flight was still there nonetheless and the unknown is what spurred the existence of an experience.

Jadzia smiled as she saw her brother close his eyes as he leapt up and caught the boomerang in his hand and hopped down.

"He seems happy." She commented quietly.

"More so than usual." Eilian observed with a critical eye.

"Suspicious of him are you?" Jadzia quipped seeing her sister's obviously disapproving expression.

"No, just observant." Eilian stated watching as the boomerang flew into the tree line and after a suspenseful pause rebounded back out of the obscure green canopy, narrowly missing his shoulder. "Azel, be more careful!"

"He's just a boy. How careful were you the first time we snuck out of our house after dark and forded the Abureck Woods pretending we were explorers?" Jadzia asked leaning closer to her.

Eilian turned on her, "That was long before Azel was even born."

"Exactly."

Eilian shook her head dismissively, "That makes no sense."

"Why do you do that?" Jadzia asked quietly.

"What?" Eilian was entirely obtuse.

"Why do you always dismiss everything I say?" Jadzia asked quietly, subtly hurt.

"What are you talking about, Jadzia?" Eilian questioned becoming frustrated right away.

"Why is everything you say always right and everything I say always wrong?"

Eilian snorted and turned away from her sister to regard a ring of burgundy flowers encircling one of the fruit bearing trees., "This is the type of thing I would expect coming from Azel not you. Seriously, you need to stop your whining and act your age, Jadzia."

"Jadzia?"

She was slightly miffed when she did not receive a response and turned around only to find her sister gone. "Jadzia? Well where could she have disappeared to?" Her attention shifted just then from her lost sister to her brother when she caught sight of him almost stumble into the trunk of a tree struggling to capture the boomerang again, "Azel! What were you thinking? Azel!"

Lenara encircled the fountain again, observing the colorful flower arrangements adorning the landscaped perimeter. She had decided a few moments ago that it was not her place to observe others as though she was spying. Their business, though as interesting as it was to her, was none of hers to know. She knew better (as she was constantly repeating in her mind as her eyes darted and yearned for just one more look). Besides, it was only proper to take note of the surroundings, not of the surrounding people. She came to settle beside the rock with its scrawled inscription.

Nimbly, Lenara knelt down beside the stone and brushed aside the leaves of a fern hiding the first few words of the quote from view.

From left to right it read:

Three-quarters of the sicknesses of intelligent people come from their intelligence. They need at least a doctor who can understand this sickness.

Lenara leaned back on her arm, a small smile playing on her lips. "Whomever wrote that struck upon a real cord within our society."

She reclined on her haunches comfortably in the short grass. It really was a beautiful day. The wide blue expanse floating in a sea of Endless Skies above their heads was as clear as the reflection off of any ocean. The sun was equally as bright, having emerged well into the late afternoon without any clouds to hinder it from its natural path.

The day was calm and silent-

"Ow!"

Well, practically silent. What on all of Trill was that? Lenara openly wondered as she sat up a little straighter and listened more carefully.

"Ouch! Aw, it figures."

Lenara stood and followed the disgruntled voice just around the bend until she was on the other side of the fountain. The blue eyed girl she had seen across the yard earlier was sitting in one of the squares of flowers uneasily and from Lenara's personal guess, she must have fallen there. The knee of her pants which matched the same hue as her dark purple tunic was ripped and a jagged line of red was beginning to form under the broken material. The girl sighed disheartened one more time before she straightened out her injured leg, shifted all of her weight to the other and leapt into a crouching position from which she would be able to stand up easier. But the movement was too swift and the world in front of her eyes began to spin for a moment, before she fell back into her previous sitting position.

Jadzia was more than willing to try it again when she was pushed gently back down by two hands on her shoulders.

"Perhaps it would be wise to wait before trying something like that again."

Jadzia looked up into a pair of vibrant bluish-green, almost teal eyes. The same pair she would spend the rest of her life getting lost in, though at the moment neither one of them really could have known.

"I wouldn't try that again so quickly." Lenara comforted the younger girl. "Take a moment to regather your strength and then we can try it again."

"We?"

Lenara knelt comfortably down next to the other, her attention focused completely on Jadzia's injured knee. She looked up with a joking smile on her face, "What did you do to yourself?"

Jadzia returned the humor. "Who do you think you are my sister?"

Lenara's expression became more serious, but still held the shadow of its former smile. "What really did happen?"

"I was walking through here and I turned my ankle on that rock and cut it on the one across from it." Jadzia easily explained.

"Looks like you might need stitches." Lenara thought out loud as she examined the deep cut.

"Surely its not all that bad, Doctor?" Jadzia kidded with a confidence she rarely felt and a mellow sense of humor she seldom indulged. For some reason, this girl was different than her schoolmates who criticized her or the rowdy children who populated her neighborhood, she was easier to confide to. Never before had Jadzia felt truly herself in another's presence.

Lenara chewed her bottom lip in calculated thought, "Perhaps not, but you should still have it checked out by a physician…did you just call me Doctor?"

Jadzia smiled easily. "Isn't that what you are?"

Lenara's expression warmed at the hidden laughter and mirth she could see in those calm blue eyes, "not yet."

Jadzia cleared her throat and held out her hand which Lenara accepted without much thought, "Let me introduce myself. I am -"

"Jadzia! Where have you been?" Eilian appeared suddenly behind Lenara, pushing her gently aside as she approached her younger sibling worriedly after catching sight of the wound, "what did you do to your knee?"

"It's nothing." Jadzia tried to wave it off even though it was beginning to twinge a bit. When her sister gave her a stern look which showed that she was not convinced, Jadzia continued again, "really."

As if to emphasize her point, Jadzia attempted to stand and almost landed back on the ground, but was steadied with Lenara on one side of her and her sister on the other. Jadzia turned just enough to meet her sister's serious eyes and also recognized the same shadow of concern in the eyes of the stranger who had helped her.

"I'm fine." Jadzia restated, "I just got up too fast, that's all."

Eilian looked unconvinced and turned to Lenara as if realizing her presence for the first time. "Who are you dear?"

Lenara opened her mouth, but no words came out. Just as she was quickly putting together a meek response, Jadzia interceded on her behalf.

"She's a friend from school." Jadzia lied, knowing her sister's over protectiveness when it came to her siblings and was trying to shield Lenara from it, "who just happened to be in the park on the very same day. After I separated from you, I found her and we have been talking ever since. I was just clumsy enough to disregard my surroundings enough to trip and cut myself on a few stones that's all."

Eilian didn't look like she believed the little lie, but the determination to shield the stranger in Jadzia's eyes told her that now was not the time and place to discuss it.

"Oh, well thank you, Miss." Eilian said, "but I can take care of my sister from here. Come along, Jadzia."

As she slung her arm over her sister's shoulder and leaned her weight partially on her, Jadzia looked back and her eyes connected with Lenara's, "You'll make a fine doctor some day."

Lenara was speechless as Jadzia and her siblings vacated the park and that was the first time she had ever laid eyes on Jadzia Dax.

Lenara took a deep breath and held out her free arm to brace herself so she would lean upon it for added support. It was a fateful meeting, much as it had been for Dax and Kahn when their previous hosts met at the society party all of those years ago.

She knew they could never be the same as Torias and Nilani. They were different people now, but they equally knew that a new future awaited them here and this baby was the proof of that. How they had gotten to this point in their lives didn't matter so much. What they were, what they had been…it was a thing a much younger version of herself would be concerned with, but it was unimportant.

A child. A representation of everything. Of their love and of their life together on the station. Of moments, the shortest, rarest, most unrecalled times of everyday which makes up the years of their lives. Of what was to come or…of what might not. The unknown, it was life to be lived.

Suddenly, the room shook violently as the station shuddered on it's axis. The electricity cut, sparks flew from unseen sources. Lenara screamed and everything was cast into blackness.

------

08:30 Hours

The Turbolift

The power had gone down and the turbolift was black. It had locked itself into the shaft automatically so there was no real risk of them plummeting down to the bottom. The real challenge was trying to get it moving again. The two medics had ushered all the wounded they could fit from Ops into the tiny shaft. The number of people in the shaft included the two medics, Major Kira holding her side, an ensign with a nasty burn to his shoulder, and Lt. Commander Dax laid out on the anti-gravity lift.

It was getting cold. The internal thermal regulators were off line and so the temperature, not just in the shaft, but every where on the station was dropping. Dax, though unconscious, shivered once as her sweat coated skin felt the approaching chill. Had she been awake, the medic watching over her was sure that the commanding science officer would have probably been quite grateful for her wool uniform. They had managed to put a pressure bandage on the wound and though the blood flow had been slowed, they could not stop the bleeding nor could they immediately do anything about the spinal fracture. The grim facts worried Nelson, the medic who was even currently monitoring her vital signs with a tricorder.

His sandy blond brow furrowed in the darkness, the only light coming from the tricorder's screen. "Her blood pressure is dropping and her isoboramine levels are only at fifty-five percent and falling."

"Damn." The other medic tending to the burned ensign in the corner cursed to himself, "we'll never get out of here before it drops to forty."

Kira smiled bitterly to herself in the gloom, dealing simultaneously with the lightheadedness stemming from loss of blood. "Don't be such an optimist, medic."

The other medic moved over to her adjusting the pressure bandage Kira was holding there. It had tempered the blood flow, but not stopped it entirely. "This is no time for jokes, Major. If you lose anymore blood you'll lose consciousness soon."

Kira grunted and adjusted her grip on the gauze patch quickly becoming slippery in her grasp, "I've been through worse. You Starfleet doctors are too textbook."

The Major smiled to put both her own and the young man's worried mind at ease, but the gesture had little of the desired affect on either parties as she reeled back and grimaced, feeling herself growing weaker by the minute. Her grip loosened on her side and the last thing she saw before the total darkness took over was the medic reaching out for her.

"Major!" Mitsuo Sulu called as he shook her shoulder and then once more in a fevered attempt to try and wake her. Resolute that he could not revive her safely without another 5 CCs of Hyprozine from the Infirmary, he turned to Nelson, "she's out cold."

Nelson moved his hand to the tranquil Trill's forehead as she shivered again against the cold. "Her fever is getting worse. We better pray the people in Ops can get the power up and running soon or else we might not be able to save them. Their conditions are too severe…" He let out a heavy breath as he opened his tricorder and checked the Science officer's stats again, "I don't know what else we can do for them if something doesn't happen soon. We don't have the adequate supplies here to help them."

Sulu pressed his hands to Kira's side in an effort to reinforce the pressure bandage. "If only we had a thermal regenerator, then we could take care of these wounds in no time."

Nelson shifted his attention from his tricorder to the wounded ensign in the corner as he heard him groan, "So much for 'the marvels of modern medicine being at our disposal at all times'."

"This is no time for your jokes, Edmund." Sulu refastened the straps firmly on the pressure bandage and sighed in relief as the falling bands on his tricorder screen told him the bleeding at Kira's side had largely subsided. "This is serious."

"I know it is, but my sarcasm is better than the urge I feel at the moment to snap at someone, mainly you." Nelson said holding the tricorder steady over Dax again, " her isoboramine levels have dropped to fifty. It's getting dangerous."

"That's not all." Sulu's voice sounded far away.

Edmund slammed his tricorder shut and turned around. In the bleakness of the tin box-like arena they inhabited, he could see Sulu standing facing the wall, his body stretched thin against the metal as one hand felt over the still vent a hair's breath below the ceiling.

"What are you doing?"

Sulu dropped down and relaxed his posture even though he felt anything but relaxed, "there is no air going through the vent. The ventilation shaft must be blocked with debris."

Nelson slammed his fist into an invisible target in the air and kicked a small piece of Plexiglas across the floor beneath the anti-gravity lift, "Well, that's that! We're all done for now."

"Why do you have to be such an optimist?" Sulu sank to the floor into a sitting position beside Kira, relaxing his posture as he did so. "We might as well relax. We'll waste more air our patients could be using if we continue overreacting."

Nelson's nostrils flared and his eyes blazed with fire like that which would spark at the end of a cannon, bespeaking the air of a man who was of more use in a command position than sitting behind a desk and analyzing blood samples.

"Overreacting?!" He shouted, his stout voice echoing in the small space. "We're libel to suffocate at any given moment within the next few hours and these patients are all going to die. I feel like a helpless bystander instead of the medic I am!"

Nelson let out an exasperated sigh and fell back heavily against the wall, sliding down the floor across from Sulu. Mitsuo studied Nelson's defeated posture as the other slumped against the opposite wall. He replayed the events of the previous hour through his mind. Nelson had reacted well under pressure and smartly with all of the trademarks of a good surgeon, but his demeanor was that in stature of a command officer. Briefly, Sulu wondered what had possessed Edmund Nelson to become a Starfleet medic instead of a captain or engineer.

"Just out of curiosity, what on Earth possessed you to enter Starfleet Medical instead of a command position?" Mitsuo asked raising one eyebrow.

Nelson smiled bitterly, "My father the brilliant physician."

"Ah." Sulu nodded his head, "I know a little about family pressure myself. I come from a long line of Starfleet officers, but I asked to join Starfleet, I wasn't forced."

"Lucky you." Edmund's smile disappeared. "My family originally held high status in the Navy with a legacy of good Admirals, but then came my great-grandfather the doctor and since then every man in my family has lead an exemplary career as a doctor in Starfleet. I was expected to follow suite."

"It is a noble pursuit." The young Sulu tried to reassure him, "the pursuit of medicine."

"I suppose so." Nelson leaned back, closing his eyes. He was trying to relax his body enough so as to not use up much more of the precious air in the tiny shaft, "it leaves precious little in the way of personal choice." The dark haired young man chuckled, the bitter laughter rumbling deeply in his chest. "You know one of my great ancestors was an Admiral in the Royal Navy. He was a great hero who stood tall and proud through cannon fire and here I am sitting in defeat in a dank and murky turbolift. Hardly the life of adventure I dreamed of when I was a boy."

"Not true." Sulu commented with a bitter smile. "You're that much closer to death."

Edmund laughed out loud this time at the morbid joke. It was the most humor either one of them could muster in the grim situation they had found themselves in. Strange, just this morning they had both been on their separate decks preparing for duty in their separate medical stations and though they had met at orientation; neither man could pretend to know the other all that well before this encounter.

Sulu chuckled to himself, "nice to know first impressions mean something."

Jadzia groaned and both medics shot bolt upright. Edmund hovered over her with his tricorder. The Trill science officer glowed with streams of perspiration and her breathing had become more labored.

Nelson's expression set in a calculated frown, "Her isoboramine levels have dropped again. They've fallen to 45 percent now. If only she could hold out until we can find a way to get the power up and running again."

Sulu stood, "What about going up the shaft and through one of the Jeffrey's tubes? Most of the doors open manually so I think I could do it without much trouble."

"No, don't be a fool. If you hurt yourself, I might not be able to get to you in time to help you." Edmund unbuttoned the coat of his uniform and slid the long sleeve wool jacket which would only hinder him further, off of his shoulders. "I'll go. We can't both go and she's my patient. If I can make it to the infirmary maybe I can get back here with some more supplies or something."

"Are you sure, if you get caught up-"

"She's my patient!" Edmund shouted rolling up his sleeves. "I am responsible for what happens to her and I'll be damned if I'll let anything happen to her. A little risk to me is nothing just as long as she survives."

"I'm beginning to understand why you're father wanted you to become a medic." Sulu murmured as he helped his comrade up into the opening through the ceiling above their heads, "it might not just have been for family pride after all."

------

When the first wave receded and the dust began to settle, Lenara whom had been practically jarred from her sitting position on the examination table, began to reorient herself from her place on the floor. Even though the air had cleared some, clouds of grey dust still hung everywhere, making it difficult to breathe. She was able to turn her head enough to see the doctor regaining consciousness while slumped up against the console he had been working on.

Julian Bashir groaned and propped himself up against the slippery touch sensitive glass covering the console. A growing stain of red was growing beneath the sleeves of one of his uniformed arms, but he ignored it and smacked at his combadge.

"Bashir to Ops."

His only reply was empty static. He stumbled over to Lenara, tricorder and hand scanner once again at his disposal and proceeded to quickly check her for injuries. "We've lost communications."

Satisfied that he had found no injuries on her to speak of, Julian pulled Lenara safely up with him when he stood. There was a few wires hanging from the ceiling and fallen scraps of metal in the way of debris laying on the floor which they had to sidestep around to avoid injury. Julian was worried most about the damage on other decks and who might have been mortally or even fatally wounded by the falling debris, but without a way to beam the injured directly to the infirmary and communications down there was just no way he could know how many had been wounded. There was a small medical station, much like a clinic on every level where the E.M.T.s and medical assistants lived and took up their posts. In those areas he knew the people with minor injuries would be well taken care of, but what about the other areas of the station? What about the more seriously wounded?

What about in Ops? What about Kira and Dax and the Captain? Julian shook his head. God forbid anything should happen to Dax at a time like this. The good doctor managed to get them out of harms way, ushering Lenara to sit beneath the examination table as he ran out through the still mildly falling debris. He tried to open the infirmary door using the main controls, but it was jammed so he opened the box and pulled down on the lever inside. The door gave a lurch and opened a fraction, just enough so that his thin body could slip through.

He emerged into an environment filled with clouds of steam, broken plasma conduits, and hazardously falling sparks. The ceiling sizzled above his head and he shrank sideways nearest the wall, drawing his head and shoulders together to minimize damage to himself by anything which could strike him from above. Julian cringed in the freezing corridor. He wasn't going to achieve anything if all he did was going to do was stick close to the wall and stay safe. What about the people in Ops? There could be wounded people bleeding somewhere on this level and others where help couldn't reach them? He had to do something. He couldn't just leave things the way they were without at least trying to help.

Steeling himself, he pushed off from the wall and rushed through the hall just as the ceiling behind him let loose a torrent of deadly debris. He stopped and turned disbelievingly to the destruction left in his wake. Had he not moved that debris would have crushed him where he cowered. Perhaps, every choice and action did come into being for a reason after all.

In the immediately following silence which seemed to engulf the suddenly still area, he heard an abstract sound resonating from beneath the metal plating on the wall. Julian reached out and began feverishly feeling along the wall until one hand grasped a handle. He pulled back on it, but the door did not give. He took a deep breath and tried again, the sound getting fainter. If it was a person, they were getting weaker with every passing moment.

He gave one last mighty pull with all of his weight behind it and the door flew open taking him with it towards the wall. The young doctor barely managed to catch himself when he crawled over to peer into the smoke ridden Jefferey's tube though he was not prepared for the sight before him.

"Nelson?"

Author's Note: Oh, another cliff hanger! What more cruel and unusual punishment will I think up next for my devoted readers…hehehe. I hope you enjoyed it. "Three-quarters of the sicknesses of intelligent people come from their intelligence. They need at least a doctor who can understand this sickness."- is a quote by Marcel Proust as well as the quote at the beginning. He is one of my favorite figures in history of all time. I find his little quotes and anecdotes to be both extremely amusing at times and extremely meaningful. I hope you too enjoy them as I do. I hope you liked this chapter of the story. Any questions? Comments? Praises? Criticisms? Let me know! R & R! Thanks!