The sandwich had probably started out as ham and cheese, but Shepard had managed to reduce it to a collection of shredded bits on the plate. Her fingers nervously plucking at the ruined bread, tearing it into smaller and smaller pieces as she watched the blacked out windows of the medbay.
Garrus hadn't spoken again after his outburst in the shower, but his silent, pliant acceptance of the situation bothered Shepard almost worse than his protests.
Wrapping him in a sheet salvaged from her bed, Shepard had expected him to pull away from her, but he limply did exactly as she asked, dead eyes fixed blankly on something only he could see. The connotations of that reaction were not lost on Shepard, and she hated Kuril with a fresh surge of disgust. He hadn't even protested when she pulled his good arm over her shoulder and half walked, half carried him down to the medical level, and Shepard felt a sting of guilt for using his own conditioned responses against him. He offered no response or protest as Shepard propped him as carefully as she could on an exam table, staying exactly as he was placed.
Chakwas had looked as shocked by Garrus' condition as Shepard had been, her lips compressing into an angry thin line as she eased the sheet back from the mangled ruin of his right shoulder. Shepard could see her own heartsick horror mirrored on the Doctor's face as she prepped a syringe of sedative, and Garrus silently extended a thin arm for her; multiple injection sites showing up under the bright examination lights in a macabre pattern.
Once Garrus was down, tormented eyes finally fluttering shut, Chakwas had dismissed Shepard, her face grim and closed. Standing outside the med bay, listening to the door locks engage, Shepard feels like a consummate coward for not insisting she stay. Watching as the bay windows flicker from transparent to opaque gray, she hopes Garrus will understand why she simply cannot be there.
Wracked with guilt and self recrimination Shepard paces from the mess to the med bay door for over an hour. Eventually she accepts a plate of food from a hovering Gardner, forcing herself to sit, hands plucking fitfully at the bread and meat.
When the doors finally slide open, Shepard has to restrain herself from not bounding to her feet and demanding answers; instead she sits stiffly, waiting for to ease herself into a seat. Meeting the Doctor's eyes, Shepard can tell the news isn't going to be good because for once Chakwas looks actually old, old, sick and tired.
"I honestly don't know where to start here commander," Chakwas runs a hand through the disarray of her usually impeccable steel-grey hair. " I'm not even sure how Garrus is even still alive, I've never seen anyone in this condition."
"What are we looking at then," Shepard manages to almost make her voice even. Almost.
"The blast trauma to his face and shoulder is extensive, it may be possible to work with, but..." Chakwas gives a tired sigh. "He's been starved, to the point that his body can't even regulate his own internal temperature, and there are signs of organ failure as well; add that to the fact that his immune system is more or less destroyed..."
Shepard can't even look at the sympathy on the Doctor's face. "His immune system?" she questions dully.
Chakwas doesn't answer for a second, and Shepard watches her hands tighten on the table until her knuckles show starkly white. " That damage is the result of repeated exposure to levo based proteins," at Shepard's confused glance, she clarifies softly, "my guess is that this is from...what looks like weeks of unprotected...abuse."
Shepard lowers her head to rest against her palm, wishing she could simply press her hands over her ears. "He's also been injected multiple times with the street drug 'haze'...its a nerve stimulant popular with batarians. It acts to reduce motor function, while enhancing nerve stimuli to the brain...the biggest problem is that again, it's synthesized for non dextro users." Shepard remembers the crisscross pattern of needle marks on Garrus' arm and feels sick.
"What is your recommendation then," Shepard asks hollowly.
"Honestly?" Chakwas doesn't even wait for Shepard to nod, "he should be transferred to a trauma hospital, as soon as possible."
Shepard tries to imagine Garrus waking up in another strange and unfamiliar place. They would drug him there she realized, probably restrain him when he tried to fight them; he would end up in some psych ward, dosed to complacency and trapped in the horrors of his own mind. "No," Shepard says firmly, "not an option."
"Commander," Shepard can hear the censure in the Doctor's voice, "this is not the place for someone recovering from that kind of physical trauma, that's even not taking the probable mental damage into account."
"I said no." Shepard watches the Doctor stiffen at the coldness in her voice. "What are our other options."
"I can try to surgically repair the worst of the damage here," Chakwas sounds resigned, "I can tell you right now its going to require extensive cybernetic grafting; I'll require Dr. Solus to scrub in on this as well."
"Do it," Shepard pushes herself back from the table, willing her knees to keep her steady.
"Very well commander," rises to join her, moving forward to rest a sympathetic hand against Shepard's shoulder, "I'll do everything I can for Garrus, but you have to understand he's very weak, he may not even survive this.
Garrus had been in surgery for close to seven hours, when Miranda had interrupted Shepard's pacing ritual with an urgent mission brief. Or so Shepard had thought. The 'urgent' mission had turned out to be a small, well established eclipse base on a backwater planet; but Shepard supposed that it could be considered a priority to prevent the distribution of illegal vid reproductions. The distraction was as blatant as it could possibly be, but in a way Shepard was glad of it. This she could do: point and shoot.
Thankfully, the eclipse mercenaries had decided to defend their counterfeiting business with typical enthusiasm; the resulting firefight had cleared Shepard's head for the duration, and resulted in, as Zaeed happily announced, 'the best goddamn afternoon in weeks.'
Now, out of her armour, skin still tingling from a quick shower, Shepard stares at the green-lit icon on the med bay door, and wonders how a door can be so much more intimidating than a mercenary squad. With a deep breath, she presses her hand to the access panel, stomach going cold and still.
Chakwas is sitting at her desk when the door opens, her chin resting on her hand; and as she turns tired eyes toward the door, Shepard feels a sick cold weight settle in her gut. "Shepard," the Doctor smiles wearily up at the her, "I thought I might be seeing you as soon as you got back." Chakwas tilts her head at a screened off area at the rear of the clinic, "go on then."
Garrus is so buried under medical apparatus and bandaging , Shepard wonders briefly if there is even a turian in there anywhere. "Hey," she says softly, tentatively reaching out to brush her fingertips over his brow ridge, relieved he was warm to the touch. "I see Chakwas has you all toasty warm again."
"I'm afraid I cant take credit for that one, Dr. Solus rigged up heating pads" Dr. Chakwas taps at some of the medical jargon scrolling past on one of the monitoring screens."They'll keep his core temperature at a normal level until his own thermal regulation kicks back in again."
Shepard looks down at Garrus, eyes skimming over the grafting and pressure bandages on his face, "he's going to be alright though?"
"I really can't say yet commander," Chakwas sighs, and Shepard is struck by how exhausted she looks. "He came through the basic trauma surgery surprisingly well, I'm confident the cybernetics we implanted will restore auditory and muscular control through his face and shoulder, although it will take him some time to adapt. Its the immune damage I'm most worried about. Dr. Solus is working on an enhanced kind of immune-booster to hopefully clear the infection agents from his system; until then its touch and go."
"Why is that the worst issue?" Shepard questions , "I mean, I remember that time Joker dared Garrus to eat one of Kaidan's meals...other than the fact that he said it was the foulest thing he's ever swallowed, he didn't seem bothered by it."
"No, a healthy adult wouldn't have much of a reaction to limited contact" Chakwas smiles a little at the memory, "although I do recall you reprimanded them both for errant stupidity anyway. This is comparable to, say, getting a splinter in your hand. If left alone, it will work itself out without issue, but imagine if everyday more splinters were driven in...eventually your body would rebel. Its not that the splinters themselves were toxic, its that your body simply couldn't handle a large amount of them." Reaching up to adjust the flow rate on an IV cannula, the Doctor shakes her head, "for Garrus, he was already injured when...when he was brought into repeated contact with levo DNA, the ongoing contact saturated his system with unfamiliar protein, causing his immune system to attack his own body.
"How long did Mordin say he would need to find a treatment for this?" Shepard hooks a toe around a nearby stool, dragging it close enough to sit by Garrus.
"Knowing , I imagine he will have found a treatment shortly," Shepard raises an eyebrow at the doctor's curt tone, "honestly commander, that man is exhausting. If you are planning to stay, I wouldn't mind getting some rest myself?"
"Go ahead," Shepard smiles as the harried doctor takes her leave. Reaching over, she carefully clasps Garrus' thin, limp hand in her own, "I'm not going anywhere."