Chapter 3 #2
"Good. That's good, Bea. How did it—" He caught himself, shook his head. "Never mind. That's between you and Dr. Senna."
Silence stretched between us, but it was different than before. Less hostile, more uncertain. The kind of quiet that forms when two people are trying to navigate territory neither fully understands.
"It was terrible," I heard myself say, and immediately regretted the admission. "The session. It was terrible. Dr. Senna asked questions I didn't want to answer and made observations I didn't want to hear and by the end I felt like I'd been flayed open and put back together wrong."
"That sounds like effective therapy."
"That sounds like torture."
"Sometimes they're the same thing." His voice carried understanding, like he was speaking from personal experience. "Healing hurts. The setting of bones, the cleaning of infected wounds, the confronting of psychological trauma. It all hurts before it helps."
"I'm aware of basic medical principles."
"Are you? Because you seem determined to ignore them when applied to yourself."
The observation should have angered me. Should have triggered the defensive walls I'd maintained for years. But there was no judgment in his tone, just genuine concern that somehow made it worse.
Because concern implied care. Care implied investment. Investment implied vulnerability. And vulnerability was something I couldn't afford.
"The outbreak," I said, redirecting with the finesse of long practice. "What else do we know about the pathogen?"
Zorn studied me for a moment longer, long enough that I thought he might push, might refuse to let me dodge. Then he pulled up his datapad, accepted the subject change with the grace of someone who knew when to retreat.
"Initial reports suggest waterborne transmission. Veridian Station's water reclamation system showed anomalies three days before the first infections appeared. By the time they identified the correlation, contamination was widespread."
"Waterborne with respiratory involvement?" I frowned, mental gears already turning. "That's unusual."
"Extremely. Standard filtration should have caught bacterial or viral contaminants.
Whatever this is, it's either very small or very resistant to conventional treatment.
" He swiped through data streams, pulled up holographic models of symptom progression.
"First stage: mild respiratory irritation, easily dismissed as environmental allergies.
Second stage: neural inflammation, specifically targeting the limbic system.
Third stage: severe respiratory distress as the pathogen triggers cascade failure of pulmonary function. "
I studied the projections, noted the rapid progression timeline. "Time between stages?"
"Eighteen to twenty-four hours from first exposure to stage three."
"That's aggressive." My mind catalogued treatment approaches, discarded ineffective options, prioritized interventions. "We're going to need to stabilize critical patients immediately while working on pathogen identification. Which means splitting focus between acute care and diagnostics."
"Agreed. I'll handle diagnostics with Dr. Ko'rath. You and Pel'vix manage patient care."
It was a logical division of labor. Zorn's background in xenobiology made him ideal for identifying unknown pathogens. My trauma surgery experience made me better suited for emergency interventions. We'd be working separately for most of the crisis.
The relief I felt at that realization was disproportionate to the situation.
"Works for me," I said, already mentally prepping triage protocols.
"Bea." Zorn's hand found mine where it rested against the seat restraint. Large and warm and impossibly gentle for something that could probably crush my bones without effort. "We're going to fix this. Together."
The word together floated in the air between us, carrying weight beyond professional collaboration.
I should have pulled my hand away. Should have reinforced boundaries, maintained distance, and protected the careful walls I'd built.
But his grip was steady and sure, and for just a moment I let myself feel the comfort of it.
The reminder that I wasn't alone in this fight, even if admitting that scared me more than any pathogen ever could.
"Together," I repeated, and hoped he couldn't hear how the word shook.
Veridian Station looked like hell.
We docked at the medical quarantine bay, the only area they'd managed to seal off from potential contamination.
Through the airlock windows, I could see the chaos inside.
Beings of at least seven different species slumped against walls, curled on makeshift beds, gasping for air that didn't seem to help.
Medical personnel in hazmat suits moved between patients with the exhausted efficiency of those who'd been working without rest for too long.
The station's Chief Medical Officer met us at the airlock, a Thellian woman with blue-green skin and four arms, three of which held datapads displaying patient information while the fourth operated quarantine controls.
"Dr. Zorn." Her relief was palpable. "Thank the void you're here. We've got sixty-eight infected now, five more in the last hour. Seventeen are critical. Three died this morning before we could stabilize them."
The news hit like a tornadic wind. Three dead. Three beings we were too late to save. The number burned itself into my consciousness, adding to the tally I'd carried since Earth, since the Liberty disaster, since every patient I'd ever lost.
I shoved the emotion down where it belonged. Later. I could process later. Right now, people needed me functional.
"Show us the critical cases first," Zorn said, already moving through the airlock. His professional mask was perfect, betraying nothing of whatever he felt about the deaths. "We need to stabilize them before anything else."
The medical bay was organized chaos. Someone, probably the CMO, had attempted triage, separating patients by symptom severity. But with limited staff and resources, the organization was barely holding against the tide of deterioration.
I switched into crisis mode.
It was like flipping a switch in my brain. The emotional noise silenced. The physical exhaustion faded. The complicated tangle of feelings about Zorn and therapy and healing became irrelevant background static.
There was only the work.
"Pel'vix, with me." I headed for the critical care section, pulling on exam gloves by muscle memory. "We're going to stabilize respiratory function first, buy time for treatment to work."
The next hours blurred into a continuous stream of interventions.
A Krellian male, second lung collapsed, oxygen saturation at nine percent. I initiated the portable regeneration field, adjusted parameters, monitored until his levels climbed above fifteen. Stable. Next patient.
A human female, God, another human, neural inflammation so severe she was seizing. Anti-inflammatories, neural stabilizers, careful monitoring of brain activity. She quieted. Her breathing evened. Stable. Next patient.
A Vaxxian adolescent, all four lungs involved, cascade failure imminent. This one was bad. This one was critical. I worked faster, hands moving with precision born from decades of emergency medicine, fighting against biology and time and the pathogen that was trying to claim another victim.
"Respiratory function increasing," Pel'vix reported. "Oxygen saturation at eighteen percent."
"Not good enough. Increase cellular acceleration—"
"Bea." Zorn's voice cut through my focus. "He's stable. You need to move on."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to stay until oxygen saturation hit at least twenty-five percent, until I was certain the Vaxxian would survive. But Zorn was right, there were other patients, other beings equally critical, and my time had to be distributed efficiently.
"Keep monitoring him," I told Pel'vix, and forced myself to move to the next bed.
We fell into rhythm. Zorn and Dr. Ko'rath worked on pathogen identification, running tests and analyses while Pel'vix and I stabilized patients.
The CMO coordinated with her staff, managing resources and tracking the expanding infection.
It was brutal, exhausting work with the kind that required absolute focus and left no room for personal complications.
Which meant I could stop thinking about therapy. Stop worrying about emotional exposure. Stop feeling the weight of Zorn's concern pressing against defenses I couldn't quite maintain.
There was only the next patient. The next crisis. The next life to save.
Hours blurred together. My hands ached. My back screamed. Sweat soaked through my uniform under the hazmat suit, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd had water.
"Bea." Pel'vix appeared at my side with a hydration pack. "Drink."
"After this patient—"
"Now." She pressed the pack into my hand with surprising firmness. "Doctor's orders. Zorn says if you don't hydrate, he's pulling you from active duty."
I glanced across the medical bay, found Zorn watching me while running some kind of scan on a tissue sample. Even from this distance, I could read his expression: concern mixed with determination mixed with absolute unwillingness to compromise on this point.
Fine. I drank.
The water tasted like chemicals and exhaustion, but it helped. Energy returned marginally. The tremor in my hands steadied.
"Thank you," I told Pel'vix, and returned to work.
The pattern repeated. Stabilize patients. Move to the next bed. Drink when forced. Eat the nutrition bar that appeared mysteriously beside me. Keep going because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling, and feeling meant falling apart in ways I couldn't afford.
Then Zorn was beside me at a patient's bed, a Thellian child, no more than six standard years, struggling to breathe through lungs that were slowly failing. I'd been working on her for twenty minutes, trying everything I knew, and she wasn't improving.