Chapter 2: Remainder

Ten Years Ago

He liked flowers.

She'd hurt him once, because of flowers. One of the frequent misunderstandings they had, she didn't see how dead flowers were anything positive, and he had gotten upset, offended by what she had said.

They had gotten through that, and so many other misunderstandings like it.

He gave her things she liked after that - old medical equipment to display, skeleton models - and she began working on a wall-sized display of replicated flower petals arranged by the Fibonacci sequence.

The first time he had tried to propose to her, she wasn't expecting it, anything like it, and was totally unprepared. She had said she would have to consider it. She wasn't really one to make big life decisions on the fly like that.

And so she had hurt him again. She didn't mean to, she never did, not him.

But they got through that, too. He never gave up on her.

Three weeks after the first attempt, he proposed again, and she accepted.

Then came the Tholians, the war.

He left to fight, and she stayed, aboard a medical ship. She reattached and restored functionality to severed limbs, innervated prosthetics, fixed and replaced intervertebral discs, attempted to repair damaged spinal cords, to fix badly damaged brains. During surgery she wore the ring on the necklace he gave her before he left. A necessity for a surgeon, he had said. She didn't want to ever take it off.

Then, one day, she received a message, saying he and several of his team had been taken captive.

The war went on, several of his comrades were rescued, but he did not return.

Some of her colleagues tried to suggest to her that he might not ever return.

But she had made him flowers. Flower petals. A wall-sized display of them. Roses, because that was romantic.

He had to return.

And he did return. After the war was over, a part of a prisoner exchange.

Bruised and broken, starved and scarred, he returned to her.

She sat with him for hours every day. She helped him sit, walk, to rebuild muscles wasted away. She tried to feed him when he wouldn't eat. She tried to hold him when he needed comfort. She cared for him. She loved him.

But he was pushing her away.

Their head counselor worked with her, tried to explain, to teach her how to help him heal.

But all the things he had once done for her, all the things he had once asked, were gone. She wore the ring he had given her, but he treated her like a stranger.

As his physical recovery continued, she demanded an answer.

He said he was not half the man he once was. He was broken, defective. She deserved better. He told her that they should break their engagement. He would be nothing but a burden to her the rest of her life. He wished to free her of himself.

How could she give up on him, when he hadn't given up on her so many times before?

But he was giving up now. Giving up on her, on everything.

All those times before, all those things they had been through together, didn't count for anything.

She tried to win him back. So she brought him to her quarters, to show him what she had created for him, what had been waiting for him for months.

Because he liked flowers.

But he didn't like her flowers.

He insulted her gift, insulted her, and left, leaving her standing there wondering what might have gone wrong this time.

She destroyed the flower-thing. She destroyed months of work, shattering glass everywhere, until her floor was a minefield of shards too scattered to pick up. Then she kicked and threw things and tore apart the room, destroying everything in sight until she had no energy left.

Then she withdrew. From life, from everything, from everyone. She reported for duty like she was required, but she refused to speak to anyone and she avoided anyone who might try to speak to her.

He didn't try to bring her back. He didn't try to talk things out. He didn't even tell her what she had done wrong. None of the things he used to do, he did anymore.

The automatic cleaning system helped her pick up all the little pieces of glass, and she began to wonder if maybe this could be solved if she apologized. In the thousand times she had replayed the situation in her mind, she could not find anything she'd done wrong.

But maybe she had missed something.

Because all she really wanted was for things to be right again.

Walking down the hall.

Doors open.

His quarters. Something off, something wrong. Panic setting in.

His things, cast around the room. Disarray.

She smelled blood. Something wrong ... her stomach flipped. Something ... wrong ...

There was blood. Too much blood. Too much ... His eyes ... glazed, empty.

A scream caught in her throat. She couldn't move. She can't move.

Part of her there, part of her watching.

Blood.

Labored breathing, slow, irregular.

Yellow shirts entering the room.

Pushing forward, falling forward, on her knees. Blood on her hands.

Blue shirts, arms pulling her back. No more breathing. No more sound.

Too much noise.

Cardiac stimulator.

No ... she couldn't lose him ...

Ventricular fibrillation ...

Hold on ... just hold on ...

Asystole.

As the pieces of her life shattered, she began to scream.

She awoke in dim light, the cold comfort of her office surrounding her. She wiped sweat from her neck, tears from her eyes.

Breathe in ... breathe out. Deep breaths to calm her racing heart. She spun the ring around her finger, let out a sigh. She wouldn't get back to sleep for a while now. She never could after she'd had the dream.

Olivia paced through the empty Sickbay. Steve was in his office, working. She didn't want him to know.

She wandered between the counters in the lab.

There was a sudden noise, and she gasped, turning around to see what was behind her.

It was just Steve, coming out from his office. She exhaled slowly.

"Olivia," he called across the empty room, "are you okay?"

"It's nothing you need to know," she mumbled back.

"Olivia?"

She walked over to him, slowly.

"You had the dream again, didn't you?" He knew her too well.

"I ... how ..."

"I heard you scream."

"Oh. It ... doesn't matter."

"If you need to talk about it, Olivia, you know I'm here."

"I don't want to talk about it. Nothing's wrong."

"Olivia, I heard you scream. This isn't the first time. I just don't think that nothing is wrong."

"Dr. Mackenzie, I don't care what you think, but I said I don't want to talk about it."

"Sorry for caring," he mumbled, but was cut off by a sudden beeping. He sighed and checked the source. "It's T'Lea, she's having another seizure! That's two ... in less than eight hours!"

He headed for the door, grabbing a medkit from the shelves. Olivia bolted past him, down the corridor. This couldn't be good.

The door was locked, so they waited outside for an answer, hoping Kareb would be there. They hoped he was awake, hoped he knew what was going on ...

Finally, he emerged, slowly. He looked ... pained, for a Vulcan.

"Kareb?" Steve asked.

"Yes. I apologize for making you wait, but I had to make sure she would not injure herself." He stopped, searching their faces, perhaps trying to gauge if they saw his distress. "I assume that is why you came, because of the seizure."

Olivia nodded.

"I understand your concern." He paused. "However, it has been nearly forty years, that she's had these seizures, and ..."

"Wait, forty years?" Olivia inturrupted.

"Yes."

"That - that's ... What happened?" She stepped closer to him, he turned and stared at the light on the floor.

"Thirty-seven years ago ...

Thirty-seven years ago, T'Lea and Kareb were attending a conference on interplanetary trade, held at a hotel on the planet Xitene. They had two seven year old daughters staying at home with family, while they brought their newborn son along with them. It was only the first day of the conference and they had just broken for lunch, when they heard screams. Something had gone horribly wrong.

A local but powerful xenophopic group had established a base for themselves in the hotel, and, having waited for a break, kidnapped as many people as they could from the conference. They separated their hostages by race: all their own were still held against their will, but treated fairly, and all others were, well, not treated so fairly.

T'Lea and Kareb were placed in a room with a young Andorian kid, who was quiet, kept to himself most of the time. That evening, he barely picked at his dinner, some meat dish which neither T'Lea nor Kareb touched. Kareb wrapped their son tightly and was putting him to sleep, when the Andorian made his move.

Every stretch of hall was watched over by two guards, one at each end. Their room was near the middle, slightly closer to one side than the other. Kareb hadn't really seen what happened, all he knew was that the Andorian tried to escape, the guard from the near end of the hall ran after him, raised his weapon to shoot, and was dropped unconscious to the floor by a neck pinch from T'Lea.

The guard from the other end of the hall, a big muscular guy with a short temper and a solid metal club, came running. Finding his comrade lying on the floor, dead for all he knew, he attacked. Kareb watched from behind the open door, forced to choose between saving his wife and protecting his child, as the guard struck her on the head.

With the first hit, she stumbled back, falling against the wall for support. He struck again, this time she fell to her knees. Through their bond, Kareb could feel her pain, could feel her starting to slip into unconsciousness. Then, another hit, this one crushing the back of her skull, smashing her face into the floor. There was no more pain. The guard, satisfied that she didn't respond to a hard kick in the stomach, dragged her into the room. Kareb stepped back, arms raised in a gesture that he hoped would convey he was unarmed, but anger threatened to overtake him. The guard advanced, now holding a syringe of clear liquid, backing Kareb into a corner. There was only one way to escape: the balcony, a route that meant sure death for him, his wife, and his son, if it was not sure already. If he chose to fight, he knew other guards would only come and finish them off, he knew he would be unable to fight them all.

He only hoped whatever the vial contained would not be lethal.

Two days later, he awoke to find a young Xitene girl rocking his wailing infant. She told him how she had been sent the night before to shut up the starving baby, how she'd been encouraged to just toss him over the balcony's rails, how she found T'Lea face down on the floor, conscious but unable to move, struggling to breathe through her own vomit. She told him how she'd tried to lift her up, but couldn't, and turned her on her side. She told him about the violent convulsions early that morning, and how, when she finally woke up, she was able to move again.

T'Lea was asleep on the bed. Kareb fought hard to keep back the tears. Blood oozed from her ears, her nose, and the large gash on her forehead. It had filled in her orbits, giving her dark bruises beneath her eyes. He gently caressed her face, but she did not respond.

"For the first week, she couldn't speak. She couldn't see, that last strike damaged her occipital lobe. She still remembers nothing of the first two weeks after she was attacked. At that point, she still didn't have many seizures." He took a slow, deep breath, then continued. "She got meningitis, just when we thought she was beginning to recover. Then, the seizures increased, she began having five, seven a day ... Finally, after about three months, she was starting to do better, she was slowly getting her sight back, she was able to get up and walk around, to take care of our son. But she was still having seizures. I told her, when we got home, I was sure there was something they could do for her. Six months after the injury, we were still there. We were not able to escape until it had been two years. Everyone else who tried before then was shot on sight." He paused again, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "When we returned to Vulcan and were able to seek medical help, we learned that there was nothing anyone could do for her. Had we had access to care even six months after the injury, they would have been able to help. But due to the regrowth of healthy neurons into the damaged areas over time ..."

"I saw that," Olivia said suddenly. "It's inoperable, at least by any conventional means."

"Right. Now, the only thing that can help her is drug therapy. With anticonvulsants, instead of 3-5 seizures every day, she only has about four a week."

"Only?"

Kareb suddenly looked back at the closed door behind him. "She's regained consciousness. I must go."

"Thank you," Steve said, "We appreciate you taking the time to tell us all this."

Awkwardly, Olivia offered, "I'm a neurosurgeon ... If, uh, if she wouldn't mind, I'd like to talk to her."

Kareb simply turned and went back into his room.