“I want him over there, I want the blue-vest here, and I want thirty CC’s of nanite solution twelve in my hand, stat!” A gloved hand lifted, fingers parting, opening just enough to receive a syringe the instant it was slapped against the smooth nanotex of the covered palm. Strong, sure fingers went to work immediately, administered the dose, tossed the empty syringe sideways into a nearby bin. “Same, stat.” Another syringe, another dose, this time into the veins of another patient. The doctor shifted sideways immediately, long white coat swishing as she moved. Fingers snapped wetly, pointed at the burnt and butchered flesh of an unconscious technician’s forehead. “Greypatch, here, now.” Eyes lifted, glanced up just enough to capture an instant’s image of the doorway, just enough to make her sigh. “Can somebody get some of these non-critical patients on the floor!? We’ve got wounded out the door and forming a line from here to Proxima, people!”
Ten paces outside the doorway to medical, Izzy blinked, glanced at Tessa just long enough to get elbowed and shoved out of the way by a pair of technicians. For an instant, her lips curled back in anger, and then she saw the bleeding and blackened body slung between them, uniform scorched and tattered, face unrecognizable. She took a step backward as they rushed into the bay, swallowed softly.
“Okay, whadda we got here?” A nurse asked, working quick, absently jotting notes, glancing once at Mac and Phoebe. “Where were they? Working consoles?” He pointed a pen at Phoebe. “She’s conscious– can she stand?”
“I-uh.” Izzy managed. The nurse’s eyes flicked to hers, already darkening with impatience. Tessa swallowed, raised a hand, caught his gaze.
“They were both in the simulator, something went wrong– they’re both way out of it.”
“Shock?” He shot back.
“Yeah.”
The nurse nodded once, jotted another note, then gestured loosely toward the bay. “Open berth at the end to the left.” He ran a thumb along the notepad, detached a pair of silicon tabs from the base, handed them to Tessa. “34-8 is for her, 34-9 is for him.” In the time it took Tessa to open her mouth in an attempt to thank him, he was gone, eyes searching, moving from case to case, making mental calls, trying to sort those who could wait from those who could not.
“Come on.” Izzy urged softly.
Fifteen minutes later, the two women were sitting together a handful of paces further beyond the bay, Tessa’s face buried in her hands. Izzy’s eyes wandered unattached, absently taking in the rush, the running white coats as they darted from patient to patient, discarding nanotex gloves so regularly that even the bay’s recyclers were having trouble keeping up. Wallace class battlecruisers were massive starships, they required a lot of support crew, and most of those technicians worked in places where the network was always on, always hot and painfully close to the men and women who had to work on and around it. But it was all supposed to be safe, all supposed to be secure.
“It’s... not supposed to do this.” Izzy breathed, glancing away from the scene as tears began to burn in the corners of her eyes. “There are safeties in place... it’s not...”
“Izzy.” Tessa managed, sucking in a shaky breath from within the muffling walls of her own hands. For a moment, there was silence, a strained, painful silence that excluded all the noise, all the shouting, the frantic running and rushing of the medical bay. Izzy closed her eyes, wiped viciously at the wetness there.
“Izandra?”
Glancing up, Izzy’s eyes caught on a gaze the color of dark amber, caught and lingered, stuck for a moment in a place beyond words. “Hey... Dimitrov.” She opened her mouth to say something more, but the words wouldn’t come, stopped in her throat as he touched her shoulder, gently squeezed. “How’re you holding up?” He asked. She swallowed reflexively.
“Fine, uh.” Her eyes darted, skittered away from even meeting Tessa’s reddened, now mildly curious eyes. “This is uh” She swallowed again, gestured at Tessa. “This is my... LC.” She glanced at Tessa, tried to hide the unease in her eyes– but this close her lover could feel and see everything as clearly as if the whole moment had been laid bare before her. “Tessa Eisenherz, meet Ben Dimitrov.”
“Pleasure.” Dimitrov grinned, offered his hand and shook Tessa’s in turn. “I think we’ve already met though. We ran into each other last night, I think, though I can’t say for certain it was you.” His grin widened, turned almost wry. “You certainly look different in your skivvies.”
“I’m sure you would too.” She managed a weak smile in return. “Look different in my skivvies, I mean.” Izzy’s face colored instantly, eyes uncertain of where to go, absently darting to feign a wary look back at Medical.
“I should...” She tried, looked back, gestured. “I’m just gonna go check on Phoebe...”
Stay. Came the sudden burst of thought, blasting through all the barriers, muffling the crushing sensation of the hand that had secretly seized hers in the narrow space between them. Acting as if she were totally oblivious to it all, Tessa smiled at her, asked: “Ah c’mon, Iz. Don’t tell me our jokes are too crude for a firecracker like you.”
“N-no.” Izzy managed, every wall, every defense crushed and fallen. She stared silently, sadly into Tessa’s eyes for a moment, uncertain, her chest smoldering with a pain she couldn’t describe. You’re hurting me. Among the sudden spike of it’s multiple meanings, something registered in Tessa’s eyes, made her grip loosen. “No, it’s okay.” She breathed. “I’m sure they’re okay.”
I’m sure they’re okay.
“You have friends in the bay?” Dimitrov asked, casting an absent look back at medical.
“Yeah.” Tessa managed, tearing her eyes away from Izzy’s, forcing them to meet Dimitrov’s again.
“Yeah.”
