Chapter Text
Part Two
Starfleet Medical Academy, San Francisco
Stardate 45459.8
“Sunek…?”
Natasha pulled the laser scalpel away from the site of the incision in shock, staring at the entirely incongruous form of the Vulcan’s face on the Bzzit Khaht’s body.
It all came flooding back in an instant. The hotel suite. Salus Hadren. Ensign T’Vess. The Bounty. The plant thorn. In an instant, she realised where she really was, and where she really wasn’t.
While she wrestled with that sudden flood of information, Doctor Rahman behaved as if there was nothing out of the ordinary happening. Apparently none the wiser about the sudden change in their patient, he acted as he had done at the time in his role as surgical support and simply cleaned away the sticky brown-green blood that oozed from the fresh incision.
“Continue with the procedure please, Cadet.”
But Natasha wasn’t listening. Her focus was entirely on Sunek, now she knew where she was. “The scan?” she whispered, “What happened?”
The Bounty’s pilot did his best to ignore the seeping wound in his new holographic body, and the fact that he now appeared to be some sort of brownish amphibian, and returned his attention to the woman standing over him, holding a laser scalpel.
“Oh, good, you remember,” he nodded, “So, good news: You’re still in a coma, we ran the scan on the hippocampus, but it didn’t bring back anything conclusive. And we’re on our way to intercept some Son’a ship to see if they’ll help us out.”
He paused for thought.
“Yeah, just gonna start calling it ‘news’, I think…”
Natasha processed this fresh flurry of information as best she could, not really liking the sound of any of it. “The Son’a?” she managed.
“Any port in a crazy coma, doc.”
Sunek tried a cheeky grin, but it didn’t fill her with any comfort. To her side, she heard the still oblivious Doctor Rahman cough slightly.
“Cadet, please continue. Unless there is a problem?”
She didn’t have any idea how she would start to articulate what the actual problem was, especially to a memory of a man in her own mind. So, instead, she did as instructed. And she returned to the operation, finishing off the incision in the Bzzit Khaht.
“Um,” Sunek managed, “What are you—?”
“It’ll help me concentrate. So…why are you back here?”
At this, Sunek’s grin slipped. He wasn’t a fan of delivering serious information at the best of times, but he also recognised that this particular situation very much called for it. “Cos your lifesigns are fading. A lot. Whatever’s inside of you is spreading, fast. And the toxicological scan didn’t give the computer enough to go on to suggest a treatment, even if we get to the Son’a in time.”
She suppressed a shudder at the Vulcan’s report, as she reached for a more delicate exoscalpel and widened the cavity with Doctor Rahman’s assistance. Seeing the three distinct hearts inside, she sized up her task. Both the one in front of her on the operating table, and the one that was unfolding back on the Bounty. Back in reality.
For a second time, she set about diagnosing herself.
“Do you remember anything about the brain scans?” she pressed, “Anything significant? Anything at all?”
Sunek reluctantly engaged his Vulcan intellect, quickly sifting through his own memories, even as he remained a part of hers. “So, there was—” he looked down at his holographic chest, as Natasha delicately began to work on the first heart, “Is this really necessary?”
“Like I said, it’s helping me.”
“It’s really not helping me.”
She ignored his complaints, and kept her focus on her work, getting the medical cogs of her brain fully turning. After a moment, Sunek sighed and continued.
“Ok, so the scan showed spikes in activity around your hippocampus, but also through the limbic system as a whole, and around the prefrontal cortex. The tox scan definitely suggested there’s some sort of foreign body in there, but it can’t get a complete scan. And without that, we got nothing.”
Natasha couldn’t help but look up at him as he delivered his surprisingly dispassionate and thoroughly extensive report.
“What?” he asked in confusion.
“Nothing,” she said, mustering a flicker of a smile, “Just…I guess, sometimes I forget how Vulcan you can be.”
“Was that racist? That sounded racist.”
Seeing the return of normal Sunek-ian operations, she returned to the operation.
“Besides,” he continued, “I’ve always been very clear that I’ve got all my regular Vulcan qualities in place. I’ve just improved on perfection, is all.”
She shook her head as she finished up the first bypass, focusing back on Sunek’s report, and once again feeling a nagging sense that she was missing something. Something important. “We’ve got to get more on the toxin,” she sighed as she moved on to the second heart, “But if you can’t get anything from my brain, then…”
She tailed off as she reached for the auto-suture kit to her right to deal with a bleed on the second heart’s main valve and earned a satisfied nod from Doctor Rahman for her troubles.
“This was supposed to be my final exam,” she muttered regarding the memory they were in.
“Supposed to be?” Sunek asked with a raised eyebrow.
She checked that the bleed was under control, and recalled what had happened back in San Francisco when this whole scene had actually played out.
“I failed it,” she explained as she continued to work, “I got as far as the third and final bypass, and then I nicked the main arterial connection. Nothing else I could do but watch him bleed out on the table. Holographically speaking.”
“Huh,” Sunek offered, idly wondering what that was all going to feel like from his perspective.
Natasha felt her heart pumping faster, just as it had all those years ago. A bead of perspiration formed on her brow, despite the climate controlled conditions of the holodeck.
And she still felt like she was missing something, somehow.
“The pressure got too much. It was too complicated a procedure. More complicated than anything I’d ever have to deal with in reality. And I ended up having to resit the entire year, because I picked a course that was too damned hard.”
She finished her work on the second heart and stiffened slightly. One to go.
“Not gonna change any of that now, doc,” Sunek pointed out, “This is just a memory. Maybe focus on the patient you can save?”
She knew which patient he was referring to. The one back in the medical bay on the Bounty. And she also knew she was still missing something. What the hell was it?
“Move on to the final bypass,” Doctor Rahman offered with measured calm, still blissfully unaware of Sunek’s unnerving presence, “Your time is still good, cadet.”
She moved on to the fateful final stage of the operation, wondering if, even though this was all just a memory, she could somehow do it right this time.
“I’m serious,” Sunek continued, “Which, I appreciate, isn’t something you can say about me very often. But unless you’ve got a time machine in your pocket—”
“Yes!” she yelped.
The penny dropped. That was it. That was what she was forgetting.
Doctor Rahman didn’t react. Sunek just looked confused.
“My pocket!” she said quickly, “I saved the thorn, the one that pricked me! I was gonna do some more tests on it, but—It’s in my pocket! Back on the Bounty!”
“Huh,” Sunek the Bzzit Khaht nodded, “So we can—?”
“So you can - carefully - run that through the medical computer. If you can’t find the toxin inside me, then you can find it at the source. Use that to get the computer to synthesise an antidote.”
“Ok. Thorn. Pocket. Computer. Antidote. Badda-bing, badda-boom. Anything else?”
Natasha felt as though she was on a roll. She moved on to the second valve of the third and final heart as her self-referencing treatment plan continued. “If my lifesigns get weaker, check the medical cabinet. There’s a batch of cordrazine onboard I picked up at that Ferengi trading post last month. Give me a hit of that. 10 ccs should be enough to keep me going without pushing things too far.”
“Cordrazine? You sure about that?” Sunek asked with uncharacteristic concern, “This isn’t one of those ‘this’ll probably kill me’-type deals?”
“Trust me,” she replied, “I’m a doctor.”
She felt a wave of relief, as palpable optimism flooded through her. She started to wonder whether she really could cure her own memory. Whether she could actually succeed at the operation that she had failed all those years ago.
She didn’t have to wonder for very long.
A thick stream of Bzzit Khaht blood suddenly spurted out from the opening in the holographic chest of the patient, splattering over the operating table and coating her arms in brown-green flecks.
“Holy crap,” Sunek managed.
“Warning, main arterial connection punctured,” the eerily familiar computer voice rang out, “Patient’s lifesigns have terminated.”
That was the other problem with surgery on a Bzzit Khaht. They didn’t survive long once things started to go wrong.
Natasha looked miserably down at the patient’s chest, which was now rapidly filling with blood, as the memory unfolded just as it had happened at the time. Glancing back up, she saw a familiar disapproving look on Doctor Rahman’s face. The one that had stayed with her for weeks after the actual exam.
“Well,” Sunek offered, “Who am I to question your medical credentials, doc?”
She turned back to the Vulcan, ready to snap something back at him. But she saw that now she was just looking back at the features of the now-deceased holographic Bzzit Khaht.
She returned her attention to Doctor Rahman, just as the grey-haired man opened his mouth.
“This is the bridge,” he said, with the voice of Captain D’Vora, “I repeat: Abandon ship. All hands to the escape pods.”
She blinked, absently wondering when she had started perspiring quite so much. “Wh—What did you say?”
“Very disappointing,” Rahman said in his usual voice, and more in keeping with her memory of the scene.
The sweat pooled on her forehead. She felt the entire scene starting to blur.
* * * * *
USS Navajo, Kesmet Sector, near Cardassian space
Stardate 52749.3
The deck shook wildly beneath her feet as another wave of firepower struck the crippled vessel. She couldn’t help but stumble as the ship lurched around, her head slamming into the cold metal wall to her side.
“No!”
She heard herself scream out, even as she mistakenly took in a full lungful of the smoke-filled air and immediately descended into a rasping coughing fit.
All around her, the USS Navajo groaned and creaked.
Her head was throbbing with pain, though not from the carnage around her. From something else.
She forced herself to remember that this wasn’t real. None of this was real. Just as Doctor Rahman and the Bzzit Khaht hadn’t been real. Just as Salus Hadren and Ensign T’Vess hadn’t been real.
Except it all felt real. Horribly real. The sight, the sound and the smell of death stalked through the corridors of the Navajo as she staggered forwards, even as the deck pitched underneath her again as another volley of Jem’Hadar torpedoes hit home.
She paused as she reached the same corner as before. The one beyond which lay the escape pods. And the ensign in the corridor.
“Warning,” the computer patiently reported, with the same tone it used to confirm the required replication parameters for a bowl of tomato soup, “Structural integrity failure in progress.”
She gripped onto the sharp edges of the corner of the corridor’s wall. But she didn’t walk on. She couldn’t.
The headache increased in intensity, searing pain spreading through her temples. She forced her mind elsewhere.
Behind her, further back down the corridor, a plasma relay exploded.
The scene began to distort. And the Navajo faded from view.