by Wren Elton
90717.2350
After I Call No Way
-=Sickbay; USS Serendipity=-
90717.2350
After I Call No Way
-=Sickbay; USS Serendipity=-
“I’m sorry, Commander. I’m under very strict orders.” the timid young nurse repeated, his way of effectively finishing their conversation before he quietly slipped away.
Lair sighed heavily with frustration as she brought her hand to her head and turned back to the door behind which Rada Dengar was cut off from them all.
She felt like just pushing her way through, but the two security officers posted on either side of the door would likely stop her getting very far and it’d not be much good without a medical officer who could override the lock. Yet they all knew better than to try to make her leave sickbay and so she was staying right here until someone tried to walk in or out that door.
Since she’d returned she felt like she had been through half the staff in sickbay and not gotten any further. They all gave her the same answers depending on how intimidating they found an angry Bajoran; either that they couldn’t or wouldn’t let her through.
On Zanh Liis’ orders, a woman whose good books Kellyn was not even in the same library as at the moment, no one unnecessary but especially no one with a chance in Hell of recreating what Rada had done was to be allowed anywhere near him. Unfortunately Kellyn was all too clearly placed into that category.
If she genuinely thought that he would let something slip about how he was able to do it then maybe she wouldn’t be this insistent on getting in there. The Prophets knew, Kellyn thought, that knowledge of how to build such a destructive weapon was a weight no ethical engineer would want to carry for the rest of their life. Of course if he was really still there, the Rada Dengar she knew would never intentionally let knowledge like that escape from his own mind; he’d want to trap it there and to starve it in prayer that it’d just finally die.
Yet if he was able to tell her how or why he did what he did then it would be the greatest of all possible reliefs because it would tell her there was still some small part of him which remained. Still she found herself shaking her head in disbelief that of all people, a man as gentle as Rada he could have done this most horrifying of things.
As she’d watched the gathering particles lighting up the sky she’d felt a chill through her bones then she heard his name her stomach seemed to sink to depths from which it was still yet to rise. Kellyn was not afraid to face the darkness within herself, and more than anyone else she knew that that same darkness had haunted Rada, yet to attempt to grasp the true destruction as perhaps none of them could and to know that it was within the capacity such a tender man of good heart was something which struck at the very core of decency in every single one of them.
Rapidly stories had begun to flood the halls of the ship about just what state he was in. Those who knew how close they were would stop speaking when she stepped into the room, but there was always some tactless officer or some clueless Ensign who’d happily spread the rumours around.
They say he just froze and shut down, like an engine which seized up when it simply couldn’t face running anymore. Now he could just mumble and sit alone, occasionally stopping to cry, without the mind of a man or the freedom from conscience of an animal he was trapped in a nothingness from which she wasn’t sure he could return.
It was terrifying what she might see. Yet Lair Kellyn was never one to let a sight she didn’t want to face keep her from being there for a friend.
It was infuriating that with all their technology and all her knowledge, she was stopped by a door.
Slowly she ran her eyes along the offending door as if there must be some structural weak point in security she could exploit when she heard a soft voice from behind her.
“Kellyn.”
She turned to see who it was.
“Wren,” Kellyn exclaimed as much as she said, recognising immediately the pale woman in a hospital gown standing in the doorway to a more public area of sickbay.
“I thought I recognised your voice.” Wren quietly explained, her voice still hoarse and a confused expression on her face which showed her head hadn’t fully cleared.
“I didn’t know Dr. Hartcort had allowed you out of bed.” Kellyn commented, though from how weak the woman still looked and the way she offered no response Kellyn wasn’t sure that he had. “How are you feeling?”
Wren smiled weakly, feeling it best not to answer that either. Instead she gestured towards the door and asked hopefully “Can we talk?”
Kellyn nodded that they could, knowing that she wasn’t getting anywhere here and realising that with Rada behind a locked door and Tam not on the ship that Wren may be feeling very lonely right now.
Wren moved slowly around the path to her room, taking small steps with none of her usual grace, and Kellyn stayed behind out of respect. It was a small room, really just a bed with a night stand beside it and a replicator tucked away into the corner, and as soon as Wren arrived she felt the need to steady herself against the wall.
Kellyn moved in to help steady her but Wren just waved her off as she lowered herself down to sit on the bed. “I’m okay.”
She noticed Kellyn’s eye had been caught by a rather large and untouched bowl of soup positioned on the night stand.
“My staff.” Wren explained with a sad smile.
“That was nice of them.” Kellyn replied, in her best and most polite small talk voice. “Very nice.”
Small talk was not something Wren was in the mood for right now.
“Listen, I don’t know you all that well.” Wren admitted awkwardly. “Maybe that’s my fault, when your mind can get all the impressions about someone that a Betazoid does you forget to get to know them. What I do know is just how much Rada respects you. He tells me you’re an honest person.”
Kellyn neither agreed nor objected, it was clear Wren wasn’t looking for verification because if Rada believed it then she would accept it too.
“Tell me honestly,” Wren asked looking up at Kellyn, “what’s happened to him?”
Kellyn suddenly felt very uncomfortable as Wren’s eyes pleaded for answers she wasn’t sure she could give.
“I’m not sure that it’s my place to say.”
“No one seems to think it’s their place.” Wren said with frustration entering her words as she seemed to look from wall to wall, realising just how much empathic noise there was on a vessel this size. “All over the ship, I can feel it. People are frightened. They’re shocked and they’re blaming him for it. Doctors are afraid to even walk by my room for fear that I’ll catch a stray thought and figure something out. I…I just don’t know what.”
She turned her eyes back to Kellyn.
“But you do.” She said with irritation as she folded her arms over her chest as if to try to make herself warmer. “So, I don’t care about decorum or appropriate conversation.”
Wren almost seemed to shake as she stressed, “I can feel his pain.”
Realising it was true, that even now Wren could sense Rada’s every thought and feeling, Kellyn felt so awful for her. Sympathy however was not something Wren wanted.
“You’re worried about him, I can tell that.” Wren swiftly observed, uncrossing her arms and desperately suggesting, “You want to know how he’s coping. You want to know if he’s coping. I can tell you that.”
Kellyn did want to know how Rada was coping but more than that, she knew Wren deserved the truth. There’d been times when Kellyn had not known herself what had happened to someone she loved and Wren needed somehow to understand the great sacrifice Rada had made. Yet as Kellyn tried to speak, she knew no words could quite express what she needed to say.
“What? You don’t believe I’ll tell you?” Wren objected furiously, her own anger overriding her Betazoid intuition. “Fine, I’ll tell you. He’s not coping. He’s slowly slipping away and I don’t know why. As long as I’ve known him there have been these…” she fought for the words as tears started to flood her eyes, “these barriers in place in his mind. They’re breaking down. He’s breaking down. There’s a…like a black hole within him which is still growing ever larger and it’s ripping him apart inside. Yet he can’t really feel it. His every mental defense has broken down and still I can not hear his thoughts. There’s…there’s nothing there to hear.”
She had to stop, she couldn’t go on as she took her head into her hands and desperately tried to stop herself feeling just how lost he’d become.
She shuddered as she tried to breathe, then slowly turned back to Kellyn and pleaded with her.
“Now you know. So tell me, please, what it is he’s done that’s so awful that it’s killing him?”
Horrified by what Wren was saying, Kellyn was feeling sick. She found herself shocked with no idea how she could explain really what he’d done.
Yet as she looked into Wren’s tearful eyes and fought off their sting biting at her own, she knew she had to tell them both.
“What he had to do.”
Wren Elton
Manager, Afterthought Café
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Manager, Afterthought Café
USS Serendipity NCC-2012