Alien Patient (Mothership #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

BEA

The Krellian's second lung was collapsing.

I adjusted the regeneration field parameters while monitoring the patient's oxygen saturation levels on the holographic display floating above the medical bed.

Sixteen percent. Not critical yet, but trending wrong.

The mining accident had punctured his thoracic cavity in three places, and despite Zandovian medical technology that looked like something out of a fever dream, basic physiology still applied.

Lungs needed to exchange gases. Damaged tissue needed time to regenerate.

Time we might not have.

"Increase the cellular acceleration by point-three," I told Nurse Pel'vix, who stood across from me monitoring the Krellian's neural activity. She was a Zandovian woman with pale lavender skin and those unsettling vertical pupils they all had. Competent. Quick. Didn't ask stupid questions.

She adjusted the settings without comment.

The regeneration field hummed higher, its blue-white glow intensifying around the patient's torso.

Zandovian medical technology was extraordinary as microscopic machines that literally rebuilt damaged tissue at the cellular level, guided by holographic mapping systems and powered by energy fields I still didn't entirely understand.

Six months working under Zorn's supervision, and I was learning fast, but there were gaps. Always gaps.

The Krellian's oxygen saturation climbed. Eighteen percent. Twenty. Stabilizing.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

From somewhere down the corridor, music drifted through the medical bay's open doors.

The celebration for Jalina and Zor'go's bonding ceremony.

Traditional Zandovian harmonics mixed with something that sounded suspiciously like Earth jazz.

Laughter followed, warm and genuine. The kind of joy people felt when they watched two beings find each other in the vastness of space.

I should be there. Dana had asked me personally. Jalina had practically begged. Even Elena, who avoided social situations almost as religiously as I did, had promised to attend.

But someone needed to monitor the mining accident victims. All three were stable but required constant observation for the next six hours. Medical protocol. Non-negotiable.

And if I was being honest with myself, which I tried not to be, because honesty made things complicated, I was grateful for the excuse.

Watching people in love made my chest ache in ways I couldn't afford to acknowledge.

"Oxygen saturation holding at twenty-four percent," Pel'vix reported.

Her tone was professionally neutral. The Zandovians were good at that.

Emotions existed beneath their calm exteriors, but they kept them buried deep.

I appreciated the restraint. "Neural activity normal.

He should remain stable for the duration of his shift. "

"Good." I checked the regeneration progress on the holographic display.

Forty percent tissue repair. At this rate, the Krellian would be fully healed in another eight hours.

"Keep the cellular acceleration at current levels.

If oxygen drops below twenty percent, increase by another point-two and page me immediately. "

"Understood, Doctor Santos."

Doctor Santos. Two months, and they still called me that. Not Bea. Not even Santos like my colleagues back on Earth used to snarl when I'd been on shift for thirty-six hours straight and started getting sloppy with paperwork. Always the formal title. Always that careful distance.

I moved to the second patient,a Zandovian engineer who'd taken debris to the face when a support beam collapsed.

Fractured skull, internal bleeding, massive trauma to his optical nerve.

Zorn had stabilized him six hours ago, but head injuries were tricky across any species.

I checked his cranial pressure, monitored the healing progress of his shattered orbital socket, adjusted his pain management protocol.

All stable. All progressing according to projected timelines.

All desperately boring.

No. Not boring. That was the exhaustion talking. The work wasn't boring. The work was never boring. Every patient was a puzzle, every injury a problem to solve. That's what kept me functional. The puzzles. The problems. The satisfaction of seeing someone stabilize under my care.

It was everything else that felt empty.

More laughter from the corridor. Closer now. Someone was coming this way.

I didn't look up from the medical display.

"Bea."

Zorn's voice, warm as summer rain, patient as stone.

The Chief Medical Officer of Mothership stood in the doorway, his eight-foot frame making the entrance look smaller than it was.

Deep forest-green skin, gold healing markings that traced his major muscle groups, golden-brown eyes that saw entirely too much.

He wore his dark green hair tied back, standard medical protocols, but a few strands had escaped. Made him look almost approachable.

Almost.

"Zorn." I kept my tone professionally neutral. "You're needed at the bonding ceremony. I have the bay covered."

"I know you do." He moved into the room with that careful precision all Zandovians seemed to possess, economy of motion, nothing wasted. "I came to relieve you."

"That's not necessary. All three patients are stable. Pel'vix is more than capable of handling monitoring duties."

"I'm aware." He stopped beside me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.

Close enough that I could smell whatever the Zandovians used for soap, something clean and faintly medicinal.

"You've been on shift for sixteen hours, Bea.

That's four hours past your scheduled rotation. "

"The patients needed—"

"The patients are stable, as you just said." His tone remained gentle, but something underneath it had gone immovable. "You need rest."

"I'm fine."

"You're exhausted."

"I said I'm fine."

The Krellian's monitor beeped, oxygen saturation dropping again. I turned back to the display, already adjusting parameters, but Zorn's large hand settled over mine on the holographic controls. Not restraining. Just... stopping me.

"Let Pel'vix handle it," he said quietly. "That's why she's here."

I wanted to argue. Wanted to snap that I was perfectly capable of managing my own patient load, that I didn't need him hovering over me like I was some fragile thing about to shatter.

But Pel'vix was already moving to the Krellian's bedside, already making the adjustments I would have made, and the truth was my hands were shaking.

When had they started shaking?

I pulled away from Zorn's touch, tucked my hands behind my back where he couldn't see the tremor.

"You're dismissed for the evening," Zorn said. Not unkindly. Never unkindly. That was almost worse than if he'd been harsh. "Go to the ceremony. Jalina would be happy to see you."

"Jalina has three hundred guests celebrating with her. She won't miss me."

"Your friends will."

The words landed heavier than they should have. Friends. Plural. As if I had multiple people who cared whether I showed up to things. Dana, maybe. Jalina, certainly. Elena if you counted someone who shared quarters with you but barely spoke beyond logistics.

Three people. Out of an entire ship of thousands. Out of the seventeen human survivors who'd been rescued from that burning hell-planet nine months ago.

Three people, and I was avoiding all of them.

"I'll see them tomorrow," I said. "Right now—"

"Right now you're going to your quarters.

" Zorn's tone shifted into something I recognized, the voice he used when he was giving medical orders rather than suggestions.

"You're going to eat an actual meal. You're going to sleep for a minimum of eight hours.

And tomorrow, if you continue refusing to take proper care of yourself, we're going to have a much longer conversation about burnout and medical fitness for duty. "

The threat hung in the air between us.

I'd been threatened before. Department heads who thought I worked too many shifts. Colleagues who said I was burning myself out. My ex-fiancé who claimed I loved my job more than I loved him.

They'd all been right. And I'd ignored every single one of them.

But Zorn wasn't making empty threats. He was Chief Medical Officer.

He had the authority to ground me, to mandate rest, to remove me from active duty if he deemed me unfit.

And the worst part was he'd be justified.

Sixteen-hour shifts multiple days running.

Skipped meals. Four hours of sleep if I was lucky, usually less.

I was running on fumes and medical-grade stimulants, and he knew it.

"Fine," I said. The word tasted like defeat. "I'll go."

"Thank you." He stepped back, giving me space to move past him. "And Bea? For what it's worth—you're an exceptional physician. But exceptional physicians are no use to anyone if they collapse from exhaustion."

I didn't respond. Just stripped off my medical gloves, disposed of them in the proper receptacle, and headed for the door.

The corridor outside the medical bay was busier than usual.

Crew members heading to or from the celebration, dressed in their formal uniforms or cultural garments.

Zandovians in their geometric-patterned dress tunics.

A group of Litheans with their bioluminescent skin patterns lit up in celebration colors.

Even a few Krellians, apparently not all of them, collapsed with lung injuries.

They moved around me like I was a stone in a stream. Present but not really seen.