Zeva system
Peretal, Zeva V

"I brought you a gift," Dr. Alex Kellogg said, holding out a steaming mug.

"Oooh, more raktajino. Thanks," Dr. Abbey Paris replied, reaching for it. She took a sniff and wrinkled her nose.

"Not quite," Kellogg admitted. "Your twenty-four hours are up."

"And you thought I'd actually need warm milk to help me fall asleep?" she asked, rolling her eyes as she set the mug aside. "Can I sign my patients out to you?"

"Sure," he said, following her to the wall console, currently set to display the bed schematics. She tapped on one of the beds, bringing up the patient information.

"Most of my patients have been fairly simple cases—treat 'em and street 'em type of issues. Those are all gone. Of the ones who are still here, most are stable and shouldn't have any problems for the next four hours while I'm sleeping. The nurses and medics are monitoring them. I only have two that I'll need you to actively check up on. This one is Anuj Saime Peretal, seventeen-year-old Zevian male—that would be thirty-seven dachtel, in case you were wondering. He came in with an abdominal wound and I patched him up and have given him some anesthetics, but he's still complaining of pain every time the drugs wear off. I've checked his bowel for perforations and everything looks good, so I can't figure out where the pain is coming from. Just keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't decompensate for some reason. The other," she said, again tapping the bed diagram to bring up another patient, "is Ensign Andrew Riker."

"Ah, the one who flew his fighter in while actively bleeding into his brain," Kellogg said with a nod.

"Right. He's not bleeding any more, but his intracranial pressure is still elevated. I checked up on him two hours ago and it had gone down from when he regained consciousness, but it was still higher than I would like him to be, so I've given him another four hours of thirty-degree bed rest while awake. He has a medic looking over him to keep him from getting up or falling asleep. He'll need another check in two hours."

"Anything I should look out for, considering his hybrid status?"

She shook her head. "No, not really, but if starts complaining of telepathic or empathic impressions that make no sense, like saying that the Zevians are trying to read his thoughts or asking you why you're happy the Nygleians attacked, that's a pretty ominous sign. I would be considering surgery at that point."

"Let's hope that doesn't happen," Kellogg replied. "I haven't done neurosurgery since med school. Do you want me to wake you if anything happens with any of your patients?"

"No," she said firmly. "If you wake me up, I won't be able to fall back asleep, it's just this weird thing about me. It'll mess up my MOT. Don't worry, I trust you."

"Thanks," he said with a sarcastic smile. "Go get some sleep, I'll try not to kill anybody." She flashed him a tired grin before turning toward the doctor's tent. "Hey, Paris," he added. "I just wanted to say, you've done a good job over the last twenty-four hours. I would never guess that you just graduated from medical school. You really know your stuff."

"Thanks," she said. She gave him another weak smile. "I'll see you in four hours, Kellogg." He gave her a brisk nod before turning toward the patient board, getting himself ready for another eighteen hours of surgery and patient management.

---

Four hours after falling asleep, Dr. Abbey Paris woke to the beeping of the alarm on her tricorder. Instantly awake, she swung her feet to the ground as she reached for the instrument, opening and closing it quickly to stop the sound. She sighed deeply as she rubbed her eyes tiredly; although her MOT testing showed that she could work for twenty-eight hours straight, recover for four hours, and work another twenty-eight, for as long as necessary, she was already feeling drained after only twenty-four hours of work. She knew Dr. Jackson would give her a few more hours of recovery if she asked, but she also knew that now that she was awake, there would be no going back to sleep. Resigning herself to working another twenty-four hour shift, she pulled herself to her feet and made her way to the sonic shower. She knew that it only took a couple of minutes for the sonic pulses to remove the layer of grime she felt from the previous day's work, but after the cycle was complete, she called for a few more minutes, rolling her head forward to let the vibrations pounded into her shoulders, relaxing any remaining tension from her body.

Stepping out of the shower, she shivered slightly as the cooler air hit her skin. She had tossed her uniform into the refresher when she arrived in the tent four hours before, and quickly grabbed it and pulled it on, wishing, not for the first time, that the long-sleeved black thermal undershirt she wore under her teal uniform shirt was thicker and warmer. With the cooler temperatures in Peretal, she wondered briefly it was getting close to winter, before she remembered that the planet only had a slight axial tilt and therefore didn't have seasons; it was always this cool. She shivered again at the thought of permanently living somewhere that didn't even have a true summer. If she had her way, she'd live somewhere that only had summer.

After checking that both of her gold pips were in place over her right collarbone and that her combadge was affixed on the left, she ran a brush through her thick blond hair and quickly braided it, one long plait hanging down her back before she gathered the tail into a bun at the nape of her neck. Finally, she grabbed the field boots from where she placed them at the foot of the bed and pulled them on before tightening the fastenings.

She ordered a mug of hot raktajino from the replicator before stepping out of the tent toward the hospital. She blinked at the bright midday's sun, trying to calculate what time it was. The Zevian day was thirty hours; it had been mid-afternoon when they landed twenty-eight hours before. By her estimation, she had six to seven hours until sunset; it would rise again less than sixteen hours after that, and she would again be leaving the field hospital to get some sleep in the middle of the day the next day.

"Morning, Paris," Dr. Alex Kellogg said, glancing up from his dermal regeneration of an older, dark blue Zevian. "Or should I say, afternoon."

"Something like that," she replied, taking a sip of the hot Klingon coffee as she studied the patient board. She almost jumped when she glanced toward Ensign Riker's cot and saw it empty. "What happened to Riker?"

"His intracranial pressure was down to seventeen when I check a few hours ago," Kellogg replied. "Still a bit higher than normal, but outside the danger range. He was itching to get out of bed, so I let him up with the promise that he'd tell someone immediately if his head started to hurt. He wandered over to the fighter repair site briefly, but he's mostly been staying around here."

"Okay, good," Paris replied. "What about Saime?"

"Still here, sleeping now. He was again complaining of abdominal pain. I scanned him and couldn't find anything abnormal, so I gave him another dose of the painkillers."

She nodded absently. "I guess I should round on my patients. Thanks again for keeping an eye on them for me."

"Not a problem. You'll be returning the favor in another fourteen hours."

"Lucky me," she said dryly, downloading the patient data from the board to her PADD before beginning rounds. Most of her patients were recovering well, and she ended up discharging many of them, some of which she would have liked to keep an eye on for a few more hours, but space was at a premium, and she knew that they were more likely to get some rest in the quiet of their own homes than the bustle of the emergency field hospital—that is, if they still had homes after the Nygleian attacks.

By the time she made her way back over to where the more critical patients were located, Ensign Andrew Riker was again at his cot, this time sitting up on his own with a wide grin on his face. "You came back to see me," he observed.

"Yes," Paris replied dryly, her good mood from seeing her patients recovering erased by her irritation at the pilot. "It's considered unethical to operate on a patient and then not follow up."

"You didn't follow up a few hours ago," he pointed out.

"It's also unethical to operate for so many hours without a break for sleep. How are you feeling?"

He shrugged. "I've never had brain damage before, so I have nothing to really compare it to, but I feel fine."

"Headaches, blurry vision, nausea, shortness of breath?"

"No, none of those. Just bored."

She snorted. "I don't have a medication to give you for that. I can clear you to get some sleep, though."

"I'm not tired anymore."

"Then I guess you're going to have to be bored. If you don't need anything else, Ensign—"

"Wait," he said as she turned away. "Can't I go back to the ship?"

"I'm not clearing you to fly, and even if I did, you don't have a shuttle, remember? You're going to have to wait for the runabouts, just like the rest of us. The Kirk is outside transporter range, but even if it weren't, there's too much interference in the atmosphere from the Nygleian weapons for a safe beam-out. I'm sorry, Ensign, but you're stuck here with us for the time being." She turned away again, only to have him again stop her.

"I think my head might be hurting a little," he said. "I think you should stay here and run a few more tests and maybe stick around to monitor me."

She rolled her eyes. "I have other patients to see, Ensign."

He gave an exaggerated sigh as he leaned back onto his cot, a mischievous grin on his face. Deciding she didn't want to know what he was thinking, Paris only shook her head slightly and headed over to Anuj Saime Peretal's cot. Like Dr. Kellogg said, he was sleeping, a peaceful look on his dark blue face. She watched him for a moment before glancing at the monitors surrounding his cot, nodding in satisfaction at the readings. His heart rate was a bit fast, but still in the acceptable range.

"Dr. Paris," he said quietly, his purple eyes now open and locked on her. "How am I?"

"I usually ask that first," Paris joked. "Your vital signs are holding steady. How do you feel?"

"I still have pain, but it's not as bad as it was," he said, trying to sound helpful. "I think your painkillers are helping."

"That's what we like to hear," she said with an encouraging smile as she pulled out her tricorder and ran another scan. "Everything looks normal."

He nodded slightly. "I was wondering, Dr. Paris, if you have any news on Savin?"

She checked the patient data on her PADD, then the casualty list. She didn't see Savin Colbee Peretal on either. "I'm sorry, Anuj. We haven't found her yet." On some level, she tried to convince herself that no news was good news, that he could still have hope that she was alive, but she knew that not knowing was worse than knowing, even if that knowledge was that a loved one was dead. When she awoke from her coma four years before, nobody would tell her about Jake, despite her frequent questions. It wasn't until two days later that Joey had finally broken down and told her that her fiancée had died. It killed her to hear that, but at least she knew.

Saime nodded his head and looked away. "I understand."

"We're going to keep looking," Dr. Paris promised. "And I'll let you know as soon as I know anything."

He turned his head back to her and nodded again. "Thank you, Dr. Paris." She continued to watch him with a gnawing feeling of guilt in her chest as he again closed his eyes, his breathing becoming rhythmic as he fell back asleep. She wished she had some news for him, either good or bad, but more than that, she wished he wasn't going through what he was going through. She wished she hadn't gone through it herself.