Lieutenant James Vega awoke to the clean environment of the Normandy's medbay. His eyes fluttered open, his head felt heavy and he lifted it groggily with considerable effort. He was stripped to the waist, prostrate on the uncomfortable slab that Doctor Chakwas used to treat the wounded—a characteristic that earned him his presence upon the chilly surface. He looked down at his shoulder. The harpoon was gone and the hole it had created was glossed over by a mucus looking substance that was cold and wet to the touch.
"Don't touch that," Doctor Chakwas told him. She stood from the seat behind her desk.
"What the hell is it, Doc?" It felt nothing like medi-gel, which was used as a coagulant for combat trauma. Whatever wounds he'd suffered, the doctor had already treated them.
"It's an enzyme enhancer mixed with a cocktail of stem cells to boost tissue regeneration," Chakwas said airily. The advances in medical technology not only allowed for miracle coagulants like medi-gel to help save lives on the battlefield, but the use of stem cells greatly enhanced doctors abilities to regenerate damaged tissue unbelievably quick.
"Okay, sounds good. I guess," Vega observed. He scratched at the back of his head. It was his first severe wound. He'd had his share of scrapes, but never a harpoon to the shoulder. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind he wondered if it was going to affect his max bench press. Then he remembered the condition of his boarding party. He jerked upright suddenly, with some pain and difficulty. His eyes set on Garrus, who sat with his back facing the human. "Garrus."
Garrus turned his head incrementally to address the Lieutenant. "You're awake? Good." But his voice was sullen. Then Vega saw it. His eyes traced their way down Garrus' shoulder and saw his hand clasping another. Fingers intertwined with a gloved hand that belonged to Tali'Zorah nar Rayya.
The big Marine tried to get off the surgical table, but felt his legs nearly collapse as his boots touched the floor. His weight flung him forward onto a nearby table and he struggled to hold himself upright. Garrus and Doctor Chakwas both rushed to his aid. With some difficulty they were able to heave him back onto the table.
"You're in no condition to move just yet, Lieutenant," Chakwas told him. "The general anesthetic isn't completely out of your system."
Garrus surveyed Vega's condition, cracked a very slight and sad grin and then returned to Tali's side. This time he took up a position on the opposite side of the table so Vega could see Tali.
She lay quietly, seemingly at peace. There was a sealed pressure dressing over the wound on her abdomen. It was wet with her blood. Vega could see an IV drip nearby to facilitate the infusion of what appeared to be quarian blood in a plastic bag hanging overhead.
"What's her status, Doc?" Vega queried worriedly.
The Doctor shook her head. "She's bleeding internally."
"Okay, so what are you doing about it?" Vega demanded a bit too harshly. "Why are we just sitting here while she bleeds to death?"
"Easy big guy," Garrus advised calmly. His hand caressed Tali's gently.
"Because of her immune system we require a more sterile environment," Chakwas said with a sigh. "We're taking care of it now. The crew is preparing a suitable operating room for me to use in Javik's old quarters. Once they've finished sterilizing the room and sealing it appropriately we'll transfer her down there, get her out of her suit and I can operate."
"And then she'll be okay?"
Chakwas' face looked pained. "I hope so. We need to hurry," she motioned to the blood-filled bag. "I'm running out of blood." In fact it was amazing she'd had any to begin with. It was not Alliance standard operating procedure to carry alien blood reserves, but as far back as she could remember Command Shepard had mandated his alien crewmembers to allow the Doctor to draw their blood occasionally in order to stockpile it just in case. Thank God he'd had the foresight. Pumping the blood directly into Tali was all that was keeping her alive now.
The door to the medbay opened and a huffing Gabriella Daniels rushed in. "Okay, Doc, we're ready for her!" Her voice was filled with concern. She'd become very fond of the quarian over the intervening months of working together down in the core. Kenneth Donnely and Engineer Adams were right behind her, along with a medic, Serviceman 1st Class Nik Raja, who was towing a casualty sled levitated over the sleek floor via micro-mass effect fields.
"Let's move it," Chakwas ordered commandingly. She became a tornado of activity, directing the team to get Tali on the sled and prepped for movement. As they eased Tali from the table onto the sled she was double-checking her surgical equipment to ensure she had all the necessary tools. She wasn't altogether very familiar with quarian physiology. In fact she'd never performed surgery on one. The only information she had to go on was the training the Alliance Xenobiological trauma treatment course had bestowed upon her. The course itself was designed in case Alliance doctors ever had to render aid to aliens. And although Chakwas had never found herself in that particular position with a quarian, it didn't matter. If there was one thing she'd learned in her long career it was that she had to make due and trust in her training.
The engineering crew along with Raja had Tali onto the sled by the time Chakwas had finished collecting her equipment. They escorted the quarian out of the medbay with careful haste. Doctor Chakwas in their wake.
Garrus followed, but stopped when he heard Vega speak up. "I'm so sorry, man. I—"
Garrus held out an open palm to stop the Lieutenant. "It's… fine. I don't want to talk about it right now." A mighty rift of silence opened between them. It only lasted a few moments, but felt like an eternity. Garrus' arm went limp then and it dropped resignedly to his side. "I'm going to go wait outside the room until there's more word."
Vega nodded. "Okay… yeah…" And then the Marine was alone. Alone with his thoughts. Alone with his doubts. Alone with his anxiety over Tali's condition.
Down on the engineering deck, outside Javik's old quarters, Garrus found himself pacing back and forth incessantly. Concern was bubbling from every pore and an overwhelming urge to go inside and watch how things progressed nagged at him. But such an action would likely kill Tali. Garrus would only contaminate the room which the crew had spent such a long time sterilizing.
He couldn't remember the last time he felt so worried. Doubt crept into his mind. Like the tendrils of some hideous monster it infiltrated his skull and wrapped itself around his brain and squeezed.
"Is she going to be okay?" a woman's voice asked.
Garrus was startled and glanced over to see the new Kodiak pilot, Lieutenant Haley Collins, stepping out of the elevator. "What do you care? You don't even know her."
"Whoa, uh," the pilot paused, hands up in a defensive manner. "Okay, I'll go."
"No," Garrus suddenly pleaded in a softer tone. "I'm… I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that. I'm just frustrated."
Haley's eyes dotted around the companionway for a moment, still unsure on whether she should stay. She'd been aboard the Normandy for a couple of months now, but still didn't feel like a member of the team. They were all so insular, unwilling to accept a new comrade into their ranks. The pain of losing their previous friends was too great. Haley certainly knew the feeling, but it didn't help her loneliness. All she would ever be to them was a replacement.
"I get that. You… want to talk about it?" she asked cautiously. She let a hand rest on the view port sill that allowed for a view of the hangar deck below. There her chariot, the UT-47 Kodiak, sat idly. It didn't have the same speed or punch as the F-61 Trident that had carried her through the majority of the Reaper War, but it had an amiable quality to it.
Garrus sighed. "I'm not sure I have anything to say." He paused for a moment and turned to look down into the hangar. "We keep making mistakes. We keep screwing up out there."
"Mistakes happen. Don't they?" Haley felt uneasy about the topic. Of course mistakes happen, he would know that. Everyone that put their asses on the line knew that. Murphy 's Law always came into play in combat, what can go wrong will go wrong, even the best laid plans don't survive first contact with the enemy—all that jargon. The turian would be well acquainted with these concepts, even if they were human.
"It makes me wonder," Garrus murmured, his eyes still fixated on the deck below. "It makes me think maybe we're not so good after all. Maybe the only reason we were so successful, the only reason we ever got through the mess with Saren and the horror of the Reapers, was because of Shepard." He was shaking his head, as if the argument was an internal struggle of doubt against his own confidence and proficiency. It was something self-contained, born from more than just this last little brush with death.
Haley knew she couldn't say anything inspiring. She wasn't that person. She couldn't conjure up the words some people needed when they were down and out. She couldn't engender renewed levels of dedication or hope. She was no Admiral Hackett. She was no Commander Shepard. She cleared her throat and leaned forward on her left foot. Her own eyes were locked on the Kodiak. Keep it casual. "I don't really know what to say to that," she admitted. "But… I will say this," she glanced over at the turian. "What you guys are doing out here is important. Really important."
Garrus looked over at her and their eyes met for the first time since she'd joined him on the deck. There was an expectant look there, like he wanted to hear what she had to say. "Oh?"
"Yeah. You know during the war, up until the attack on the beacon, I was with the 5th Fleet flying Tridents off the SSV Cherenkov," she paused for a moment remembering the desperate battles trying to stave off hordes of the Reaper Oculus vessels that served as fighter proxies. The madness in those heated clouds of violence had taken the lives of more than a handful of her friends and left others broken mentally or emotionally. "Every time we engaged the Reapers it was a losing fight. We'd swarm their ships lobbing disruptors into their hulls and hoping for a lucky shot. But nothing. Never. Instead the battles became about delaying tactics. 'Keep them busy while the civvies escape' were the orders." She paused again, a sad grin on her face. "Loud and clear, skipper, loud and clear. So that's what we did. Buzzed around the angry monsters while they swatted us out of existence one by one.
"There was a certain lack of hope after a while. Resentment started to build toward all the civilians that needed rescuing. We were being fed into the meat grinder so they could escape and after a while a lot of people were asking how much more important are their lives over ours? We all had families… wives and husbands… children. It was a lot harder to march off to sacrifice than we thought. The reality of war, as it turns out, is nothing like those extranet vids," she said solemnly. She turned her attention back to the hangar deck, but Garrus kept watching her. Her eyes glazed over with sadness.
"Then we started hearing about Shepard from the ANN reports. Forging alliances between turians and the krogan, taking down a Reaper on Tuchanka and then another one on Rannoch. His actions had us thinking we could win. Like we could hang on long enough to do something… anything… that would lead to victory. He became the perfect symbol of hope. He reminded us why we all put the uniform on every day. We stopped feeling sorry for ourselves. We got out there and did our damn job," her voice stiffened. She looked back at Garrus. "So if he's still alive then it's only right he get the honors a hero like that truly deserves… and… if he's not… well then he deserves a burial with full military honors."
There was silence then as Garrus regarded her words with a nodding head. She wasn't sure if they were the right words, or even if they needed to be said. But maybe understanding just how important Shepard was to everyone, to the rank and file, to the men and women on the frontlines… maybe, just maybe it would redouble Garrus' efforts and help to solidify his wavering confidence.
"And all of you were right there with him the entire way," she added suddenly. "That has to count for something."
The turian glanced down at his boots and nodded once again, more to himself than to Haley. "Yeah," he mumbled. Then he glanced back up at her. His face was still pained and riddled with doubt, but there was a spark gleaming in the depths of his eyes and Haley felt a sudden wave of happiness. Like she might have just made a difference in a clutch moment. Doing something like that out of the cockpit was exceedingly rare for her. "Thanks, Collins."
The turian offered his hand. Collins shook it. Felt the strength of the former C-Sec officer's grip and smiled. "Anytime," she replied. She paused for a moment. Her eyes noticed a dark blue, viscous fluid staining the turian's shirt. "Are you bleeding?"
He glanced down at the site. It was where the krogan had stabbed him before Garrus decapitated him with a shotgun blast. "Yeah," he confirmed. He lifted the shirt and examined the pressure dressing that Doctor Chakwas had applied. "Med-bay doesn't have any of that fancy goop they put on Lieutenant Vega. Humans only. So I have to settle for the old fashioned way. Medigel reapplication and some sutures. This is normal for field-expedient trauma care. I'll be okay."
"You sure?"
"I've had worse. Trust me."
"If you say so. Look, I'm going to go grab some coffee before I head back down to the hangar deck to PM my sweetheart," she explained, her head motioned toward the Kodiak below. "You want me to bring you a cup?"
Garrus chuckled lightly. "Only if you want to poison me," he said with levity.
Haley's face was blank with confusion.
"I don't drink coffee. I can't drink coffee… digestion issues," Garrus told her, patting his stomach.
Haley realized her mistake and shook her head abashedly. "I'm sorry. I've never worked with an alien. Or, I mean, a turian. I just… yeah. I don't know."
"Don't worry about it," Garrus assured her. "It's fine. You humans forget all the time. Or maybe I'm just not that popular around here."
"Yeah well," Haley muttered, scratching her face, which suddenly felt hot and itchy. "I'm going to head out then before I put my foot any further into my mouth."
Garrus understood most human expressions but not that one. So he cranked up a brow. "Okay," he said hesitantly.
"Later," Haley gave a wave and retreated toward the elevator. The doors couldn't open soon enough. She felt Garrus' eyes on her and felt an urge of giddiness. C'mon you stupid elevator! Why did he have that confused look on his face? She had surely made an ass out of herself. She sighed just as the elevator arrived. Before she stepped inside Garrus called out to her.
"Thanks again."
A sound very near a nervous laugh escaped her lips and she offered another wave. "Sure thing, man." Then she was in the elevator pressing the button for the crew deck. Man? Good job, Collins. Really impressive.