Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
ZORN
Bea's hands were shaking.
Not much, just a fine tremor in her fingers as she adjusted the quarantine field around Patient Seventeen. But I'd spent three days watching her work, cataloging every micro-expression, every tell. I knew her baseline. Knew that rock-steady control she maintained like armor.
The tremor meant she was close to breaking.
Forty-two hours. That's how long we'd been on Veridian Station, fighting an outbreak that should have killed every colonist within the first twenty-four.
Waterborne pathogen, airborne transmission potential, symptoms that escalated from respiratory distress to neural inflammation to organ failure in a matter of hours.
We'd isolated the source. Implemented treatment protocols. Stabilized the critical cases.
And through it all, Bea Santos had worked without stopping.
No sleep. Minimal food. Water only when I physically placed it in her hands and waited until she drank. She moved through the makeshift medical ward like a ghost, pale face, hollow eyes, that severe bun pulling her blonde hair back so tight it must hurt.
But her hands never shook. Not when she intubated a dying Veridian child. Not when she performed emergency surgery on a colonist whose organs were liquefying. Not when three patients crashed simultaneously and she triaged with brutal efficiency, deciding who lived and who waited.
Until now.
Patient Seventeen's vitals stabilized. Bea stepped back from the bed, and I saw her sway, just slightly, barely perceptible, before she caught herself against the medical cart.
Forty-two hours. The human body could survive seventy-two without sleep, longer with stimulants. But effectiveness degraded long before collapse. Reaction time suffered. Decision-making became compromised. Fine motor control deteriorated.
She was a liability now. To herself and her patients.
I moved through the medical ward, really just the colony's converted storage facility, filled with makeshift beds and portable equipment we'd transported from Mothership. The outbreak had overwhelmed Veridian's small medical center within hours. We'd had to expand.
Most of the medical team had cycled through rest periods. I'd mandated it after the first day, when Pel'vix nearly collapsed mid-treatment. Everyone needed sleep. Everyone complied.
Except Bea.
She'd ignored every suggestion, deflected every direct order, found excuses to stay working. Just one more patient. Just one more check. Just finishing this treatment protocol.
The last critical patient had stabilized an hour ago. All sixty-three colonists were now in recovery, danger passed. The team was celebrating in the other room, exhausted relief, the kind of bone-deep satisfaction that came from cheating death.
Bea was inventorying medical supplies.
I stopped beside her, watched her scan items into the datapad with mechanical precision. She didn't acknowledge my presence, but her shoulders tensed. She knew I was there.
"The team's standing down," I said quietly. "You should join them."
"Just finishing inventory." Her voice was flat. Professionally detached. "We used significant resources. Command needs accurate supply reports for—"
"Bea."
"—resupply requisitions, and the sterilization protocols require documentation—"
"Stop."
She continued working, fingers moving over the datapad. Scan. Record. Scan. Record. The rhythm of work, the familiar patterns that kept chaos at bay.
I reached out, gently took the datapad from her hands.
She looked up at me then, and I saw the exhaustion in her gray-blue eyes. The kind of tired that went beyond physical, burrowed into bone and soul. But underneath that—panic. Fear that if she stopped moving, stopped working, something terrible would catch up.
"I need to finish—"
"No." I held the datapad out of reach when she tried to take it back. "You need to rest. Now."
"The supplies—"
"Can wait. Your health can't."
Her jaw clenched. That stubborn set to her features that I'd come to recognize as her default response to anything that felt like concern. "I'm fine."
"You're swaying on your feet. Your hands are trembling. Your reaction time has degraded by approximately thirty percent." I kept my voice gentle despite the clinical assessment. "You're in no condition to work."
"I'm perfectly capable—"
"When did you last sleep?"
The question always hung between us. I watched her calculate, saw her try to remember. The fact that it took effort told me everything I needed to know.
"I slept on the transport," she said finally.
"Two hours. Forty-one hours ago."
"I've functioned on less."
"I don't doubt it. But you don't need to anymore." I set the datapad on the supply cabinet, out of her reach. "The crisis is over. All patients are stable. You saved sixty-three lives in three days. You're allowed to stop now."
Her eyes flicked as raw and wounded before she locked it down. "Someone needs to maintain watch protocols. Recovery phase requires monitoring—"
"Pel'vix is handling it. Along with Ren'val and three other medical specialists who've actually slept in the past day." I moved slightly, blocking her path to the supplies. Not physically restraining her, but making it clear I wasn't backing down. "You're off duty. Medical order."
"You can't order me—"
"I'm Chief Medical Officer. You're under my supervision.
And I'm officially removing you from active duty due to exhaustion-induced impairment.
" The words came out harder than I intended, but sometimes care required force.
"You can walk to the rest quarters voluntarily, or I can carry you. Your choice."
Her face went pale, then flushed. Anger, finally. Better than that hollow exhaustion. "This is completely—"
"Necessary. Yes." I held her gaze, refusing to flinch from the fury there. "You're an exceptional physician, Bea. You saved lives today that would have been lost without your skill. But you're destroying yourself in the process, and I won't watch that happen."
"You don't have the right—"
"I have every right. Your health is my responsibility. And right now, you're a patient whether you admit it or not."
She opened her mouth to argue, then stopped. Blinked. The color drained from her face again, and I saw the exact moment her body decided it was done pretending.
Her knees buckled.
I caught her before she hit the floor, one arm around her waist, the other supporting her shoulders. She weighed almost nothing. Had she lost weight? When had she last eaten a full meal? Her body trembled now, no longer able to maintain control.
"Let go," she said, but there was no strength behind it. "I can walk."
"No, you can't."
I lifted her easily, cradling her against my chest. She was tall for a human woman, five-ten, I'd noted in her file, but still so small compared to my eight-foot frame. Fragile in a way that made something protective flare in my chest, dangerous and unwelcome.
She tried to push away, but her arms had no strength. "Put me down."
"Rest quarters are in this direction." I started walking, ignoring her weak protests. The medical team watched us pass through the main ward, but no one commented. They understood. They'd all seen Bea push herself past every reasonable limit.
The rest quarters were small rooms the colony used for overnight medical observation with basic beds, minimal amenities, but clean and private. I carried Bea into the nearest unoccupied room, felt her body sag further against mine as if proximity to a bed was permission to surrender.
I laid her down carefully, scanned her vitals with my wrist unit while she glared up at me with exhausted defiance.
The readings were worse than I'd feared. Severe dehydration. Blood sugar is dangerously low. Stress hormones elevated to concerning levels. Heart rate elevated but thready. Her body was running on fumes and stubborn will, nothing else.
"I'm starting an IV," I said, already pulling supplies from the wall cabinet. "Don't argue."
"I don't need—"
"Your blood sugar is forty-three. Normal range for humans is seventy to ninety-nine.
You're hypoglycemic." I prepped the IV line with practiced efficiency, and found a vein in her arm on the first try.
She barely flinched when the needle went in.
"Saline with glucose. You'll feel better in thirty minutes. "
She watched the IV bag hang, watched the clear fluid begin dripping into her arm. "This is unnecessary."
"Your body disagrees." I pulled a nutrition bar from my medical pack, I'd started carrying them after the first day, anticipating this moment. "Eat this. Slowly."
She took the bar mechanically, unwrapped it, and took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. The motions automatic, programmed by years of medical training that knew even if the mind resisted, the body needed fuel.
I sat in the chair beside her bed, monitoring the IV drip, watching color slowly return to her face. The room was quiet except for the soft beep of monitoring equipment and her mechanical chewing.
When she'd finished half the nutrition bar, she spoke. "When did you last sleep?"
The deflection was predictable. Classic avoidance, turn concern back on the questioner, make them defend their position instead of accepting care.
"Six hours ago. Four-hour rest cycle during the treatment protocol implementation." I met her gaze steadily. "I'm functional. You're not."
"I was managing."
"You were barely standing."
"I've worked longer shifts on Earth. Seventy-two hours during emergency situations. I know my limits."
"Do you?" I leaned forward slightly, keeping my voice gentle despite the frustration building in my chest. "Because from where I'm sitting, you don't have limits. You just have work. And when the work is done, you find more work to avoid having to stop."
Her jaw clenched. "You don't know anything about me."