by Ilsa J. Bick
Opposite. Arin was so stunned, he nearly stopped in mid-compression. The tray, she knocked over the tray…“Idit?”
“Not now, Arin! Don’t you stop those compressions, you hear me? Do exactly what you’re doing, you understand? Do exactly what I say!”
Blate and Nerrit were on their feet. Blate banged open the intercom. “Colonel Kahayn, don’t you lose this man, don’t you lose him, or I’ll…!”
A tremendous crash, and then Blate was staggering back against Nerrit as the door into the viewing booth slapped open. A burst of gunfire roared into the air above his head: the distinctive staccato snap-crack of large-caliber rifle fire. Blate ducked as bullets tore a seam into the ceiling. Chunks of tile and plaster rained down on his back and pinged off his arms as he curled up, trying to protect his head. He heard the rifle fire sweep counterclockwise and then hit the glass with a hollow bap-bap-bap! He rolled away from the front of the booth just as there was a solid smack of a boot against the glass and then a thunderous smash as the glass gave way in a jagged shower. The air stank of burnt cordite and hot metal.
“Nobody move!” A woman’s voice. Blate looked up to see a giant of a woman: blond, with a scar arcing across a disfigured left jaw and no nose.
I know her, I know her!
Another bang of doors bursting wide open, and Blate jerked his gaze down to the operating room. Two people barreled through the doors leading to the recovery room: a slim, small woman with dark curls—her skin, so pale, like Bashir—and a broad, muscular man with a shock of long brown hair whom he recognized instantly.
“Kahayn!” Saad screamed. He leveled his rifle. “I’m here to send you to hell!”
“No, Saad, no!” The small woman, by Saad’s side and then, my God, yes, Arin, too.
“Saad, no!” Arin screamed, lunging for Kahayn who stood to his left, by his side. Kahayn was shocked to immobility, the defibrillator paddles still in her hands. “Saad, you don’t understand! Don’t shoot her, don’t shoot!”
But Saad fired.
Chapter
11
The rifle was set to three-round bursts, and when Saad pulled the trigger, the bullets screamed from the barrel. The distance was so scant that Lense heard the crack at the precise instant the bullets hit.
The first hit the woman with the defibrillator paddles. A rose of brown blood blossomed on her surgical gown, and she went down without a sound.
The second hit the man with black spectacles who was screaming at Saad to stop—Arin, that’s got to be Arin—because he’d lunged for the woman to push her aside. Lense saw blood spray erupt from the hump of Arin’s shoulder, and then he crashed to the floor.
The third hit no one because everyone had hit the deck, and smashed into the opposite wall.
“No, Saad, stop!” she cried. “What are…?” But then she saw Julian. She sprinted for the table; her gaze jittered over his body: the endotracheal tube, the IV tubes, and his scalp with purple lines to mark incisions, they’d shaved his head….
She spun around and snagged what must be the anesthetist by the collar. “You, what’s going on?”
“He’s in arrest.” The anesthetist was a pruned, wizened man, and when he spoke, his lips quivered. “Looked like heart block, followed by v-fib; Kahayn was just going to defibrillate!”
“No!” A man’s voice, hitching with pain. Arin, on the floor, on the opposite side of the table and struggling to his knees. He was panting, and his face was gray. “She put something in the dye and she switched out the drugs!”
“What?” cried the anesthetist.
“What?” Saad said.
“On purpose, she did it on purpose! She knocked over the tray; she must’ve rigged the other tray, mislabeled the syringes. That’s why she put him on the cooling blanket, to protect his brain when she stopped his heart!”
“Oh, no,” said Saad. His voice was stricken. “What have I…?”
Of course. Lense’s mind raced. Bring his metabolic rate down; the brain will shut down, but it won’t die; like cold water drowning, he can still be revived even after hours; that must’ve been what she planned….
“I’m a doctor, but you have to help me,” she said to Arin. She threw a frantic, helpless look at all the drugs and machines. “I’m out of my element here; what do I do?”
“Keep calm.” Arin’s face was twisted with pain as he clambered to his feet and blood sheeted over his fingers from his shoulder. “Just do exactly what I say.”
The big woman had made her first mistake: not searching him. Nothing Blate could do to capitalize on that yet. Maybe, though, soon. For now Blate watched, his fury growing with every passing moment: as Arin, that traitor, led the woman—like Bashir, exactly like him—through each step. Switching off the cooling blanket, setting it to warm Bashir’s body as she administered drugs and then sent electric bolts charging through Bashir’s body. Saad roughed the anesthetist back to his feet to monitor Bashir, keep the ventilator going. Five minutes, ten, and then fifteen…
And they brought Bashir back to life, an inch at a time.
First the hesitant, irregular blips from the cardiac monitor and then the blips steadied, picked up speed. He heard the anesthetist sing out a blood pressure, and he saw the woman, the one like Bashir, and her wet cheeks and knew she wept with relief.
But Blate had eyes, and so he saw many things at once: not just Bashir but off to his left, the blond woman; out of his right, Nerrit, who’d edged closer.
“How soon can you move Bashir?” The blond woman. She moved closer to the blown-out window. “Saad, we’ve got to get out of here and—”
She was interrupted by a shout. “My God!” It was Arin, and Blate’s right eye saw Arin crouched over Kahayn. “She’s still alive!”
Saad and the woman with the curls, simultaneously: “What?”
“What?” said the blonde and, out of his left eye, Blate saw her start forward.
That’s when the big woman made her second and last mistake. Because he moved into her blind spot. And he had eyes.
Saad watched Lense revive Bashir, and he held his ground, his rifle up, covering the others. But he felt numb. Kahayn had tried to save Bashir….
Because she couldn’t think of another way, and she didn’t tell Arin, or else he’d have let us know. She must’ve thought I’d never believe her, not after Janel…
So when Arin called out that Kahayn lived, his heart squeezed with a sudden spasm of hope. Yes, maybe there was some atonement for this wretched business, some way of letting Kahayn know that her efforts hadn’t been in vain, and if they could get out Arin, and Kahayn, too…
He glanced up when Mara shouted, and then he saw Blate whip around, a pistol in his right hand.
“Mara!” He swung his rifle, trying to catch Blate before he could fire. “Mara, look out!”
The viewing booth boomed with a roar like thunder.
Blate saw Saad out of his right eye. Saw the big man pivot, that rifle come up. Saad’s bullets were faster. But Blate had a head start, and he was closer. He lunged for the big woman and pulled the trigger two seconds before Saad fired. His pistol jerked, and there was a spurt of yellow-orange muzzle flash. The bullet bored into the woman’s right eye and kept going. Her head exploded in a cloud of fine brown mist and brain and bone.
But Blate was already down, rolling for the door. Something hummed over his head and then there were three sodden whops as the bullets slammed into Nerrit.
Blate didn’t stop. He banged out of the booth, his left hand already dragging out his radio to raise the alarm.
Lense saw Mara’s head blow apart, and then a figure barreled out of the viewing booth. “Saad! He’s getting away!”
“You can’t catch him!” Arin’s teeth were clenched, biting back pain. “Too far from here to the hall! Saad, you’ve got to clear out, you’ve got to go!”
Saad swayed, turned. He swiped his streaming eyes. “Elizabeth,” he said hoarsely, “can you move Bashir?”
; She shook her head. Julian was breathing on his own now but still unconscious. “You’d have to carry him. I could cover you, but I don’t know…”
“No.” Saad was in control again. He flicked his rifle at the nurses and anesthetist, who were still cowering. “You, get out.” When they didn’t move, he said, “I don’t ask twice.” Then, as they scurried out, Saad turned to Arin. “You, too.”
“I’m staying.” Arin started wrapping his shoulder. “I die now, I die later. It’s all the same to Blate. And Kahayn’s still alive. I can’t leave her.”
“We’re not dead yet,” said Saad. He shouldered his rifle. “Elizabeth, help me move Bashir to the floor…easy now,” he said, as they slid Bashir off and eased him down.
It was only then that Lense realized Bashir was totally naked beneath the sheets. He was starting to shiver now as his body fought off the hypothermia. She swaddled him in sheets and drapes. Then she clutched his chilled hands in hers and put her mouth to his ear. “I’m here, Julian; it’s Elizabeth. Don’t worry; it’s going to be all right.” She clamped down on tears. “I’m going to get you out of here.” She didn’t know if he heard. She didn’t know if it were even true.
Saad jerked a metal gurney onto its side, swinging it around between them and the door that led to pre-op. Then he kicked the brakes on the operating room table and clattered it to the operating room doors. Bending at the knees, he wrapped his arms around the single, off-center pedestal, wedged his right shoulder under the table and heaved. The table was blocky and very heavy, but it toppled with a loud, metallic bang. Saad braced it against the door, then scuttled back and began overturning instrument trays and maneuvering the ventilator to make a barrier.
“I can hold them off for a bit,” he said. “Elizabeth, can you help Kahayn?”
Lense bent over the woman. Kahayn was on her back. Her neck veins bulged. Lense ripped open Kahayn’s gown, using the surgical scissors again to split the gown in front and then slit her scrubs in two. The wound was centered directly over the lower part of her thick, armorlike sternum: a round ugly hole punched into her flesh. But there was no exit wound.
Suddenly, there was a squall of static and then a frantic voice coming over the radio on Saad’s left shoulder. The sound was so loud and so unexpected that Lense’s heart nearly jumped out of her mouth. Saad listened, then shouted, “Say again?”
“Soldiers!” A voice scratchy with static. Cracks of gunfire. “There are too many, we can’t hold them off, we can’t—”
“Doren!” Saad keyed his radio again. Got nothing but static. “Doren, do you read me?” More static.
Lense went cold. Soldiers on the way. They’ll kill Arin but not Saad. They need Saad, and they’ll probably keep Bashir and me alive so they can—
“Pericardial tamponade,” said Arin.
“What?” Lense looked at Arin. “What did you say?”
“Her neck veins, the entry wound. She’s got pericardial tamponade; must’ve hit the heart!” Still clutching his wrapped shoulder, he shuffled closer on his knees. “If you can decompress the pericardial sac, maybe we can fish out the bullet and repair the tear.”
“Here? Now?”
“There’s no time,” said Saad.
“I haven’t got anything better to do,” said Arin. He looked at Lense. “Bashir is stable. Please.”
She took a deep breath, nodded. She helped Arin struggle into a right glove, and then snapped on a pair of her own.
“Go for a subxiphoid approach,” said Arin. “Just make a window with a scalpel.”
“This won’t even be close to sterile.” Lense felt for the notch at the junction of Kahayn’s ribs and drew a scalpel in short vertical. Blood welled up and Arin sponged it away with his good hand. She cut again, and this time she was through skin and into skeletal muscle.
“Easy,” said Arin.
She cut again. There was the staccato sputter of gunfire not far now, just down the corridor from the operating room.
“Hurry.” Saad, by her side, his body angled, trying to shield her.
“Do what it takes,” said Arin. “Don’t hurry. We’re not going anywhere.”
“There’s no time!” Saad scuttled closer. “I want you out of here, Elizabeth! Leave Bashir. You and Arin just get out.”
“And go where?” asked Lense. She didn’t look up. She was through muscle now. Under the smashed xiphoid, she saw the pulse of the bluish-brown pericardial sac, streaked with fat. The sac ballooned with blood being forced out with every beat. She rooted in a clutch of instruments. “I can’t stop now, and I won’t leave Julian. So we just take our chances.”
“Elizabeth.” She heard the anguish in his voice. “Don’t you understand? I can’t let them take you, or Bashir. Or me.”
“I know that. So, don’t shoot me until I’m done.” And now she did look at him. “Deal?”
He looked at her for a long moment, then kissed her hard. “I love you.” His voice was ragged. “Hold that in your heart, Elizabeth, and remember.”
The pock-pock of sniper fire was so close it made her jump. So she said everything she could with her eyes before turning back to her work—because there was more to do and very little time left.
She fished out a slim pair of surgical scissors. “When I cut through, there’s bound to be a clot and a lot of blood, Arin. Better hope it’s through and through so I can close. You’ve got to plug the hole, then tell me which suture to use.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Arin. “I’m ready.”
Hollow thuds, then bangs against the door. Muffled curses and then a grate of metal as whoever was on the other side tried, unsuccessfully, to push open the door.
“They’ll come around to the scrub room, or blow that door,” said Saad. “You’re almost out of time, Elizabeth.”
One chance. Lense made first one, then two, then three cuts. A dark brown clot spilled out along with fresh blood, and then Arin had his thumb over the tear in Kahayn’s still-beating heart.
“That’s got it there.” Arin squirmed his index finger around back, searching for another tear. “Got it. Bullet can’t be in the heart. Okay, you need suture for—”
But that was the last thing Arin said that Lense ever heard.
Because then, suddenly, she felt a tingling along her skin, one that raised the hackles on her neck. She gasped but knew this was no dream.
The combadge in my pocket; the transporter; they found us; only seconds left!
“No!” she screamed as the air broke apart. Kahayn’s blood was warm, but her hand was cold because, in another instant, Lense knew she wouldn’t be there at all. “No, please, let me finish!”
“Elizabeth!” Saad, spinning around, stopping dead, the glow of the transporter reflecting off his skin, turning it white as bone. “Elizabeth!”
She saw them all in that last crystalline second and knew she’d never reach or save them all: not Julian and Saad and Arin. And even Kahayn.
One chance. One choice.
She took it.
Epilogue
Well, at least the stars were right again. But so many questions with no answers. A sense of things left undone.
Ship’s night now. She prowled the corridors of the da Vinci. She was listless, no appetite. She slid into inky shadows splashed in the well of a bulkhead and let the sturdy metal brace her up.
Gomez and her people had rescued them, doping out some kind of alien device that had access to other universes. She didn’t understand half of it—and from the sounds of it, neither did anyone else, though Tev seemed to think he did—and when they got through and detected gunfire and Bashir’s vitals in such poor shape, they beamed them out quickly. Standard procedure.
She hadn’t wanted company. After Gold debriefed her, no one pressed. She gathered a lot had happened—phrases like Empok Nor, Rec Station Hidalgo, Artemis IX, Avril Station, and more flew by her ears.
Oddly, it had only been two weeks since they left Deep Space 9, despite how much time
they’d spent on that planet. She didn’t care. She stayed in sickbay or her quarters, alone. Falcão and Wetzel let her be in the former, and Corsi’s shifts kept her out of the cabin for the latter. Often, she asked the replicator for a glass of ice water and then ordered lights out. Then she’d sit in the dark and smell the wet and try conjuring visions of green forests. But imagination failed, and the water tasted sterile.
And then there was Julian. The whole time the da Vinci was on its way to rendezvous with the Defiant to drop him off, she hadn’t been able to face him. All the awful, hurtful, cutting things she’d said and wished she could take back. Once spoken, forever done: That’s what they said.
The night before they were to meet the Defiant, Bashir came to see her in sickbay. “Julian.” Her voice was barely able to say his name.
He came closer. She noticed that his scar was still there, a seam centered on his forehead. For some reason, the EMH never removed it when treating him. “I…I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine,” she lied. She forced herself not to look away. “On the runabout, I—”
“It’s all right.”
“No, I have to say this. Apologizing doesn’t feel like enough, but it’s all I’ve got. I was wrong, Julian. Wrong to hold you responsible; wrong to hate you. Just…wrong.”
“Selden was a bad situation.”
“But the Seldens of the universe are to blame, not you. You were right, too. All the people we’ve lost on the da Vinci this year, and on the Lexington during the war. A patient I cared about that I couldn’t cure. I got mad. Probably my way of not getting depressed. But anger doesn’t change anything, and I can get pretty hard to take.”
“Yes,” he said. “Several hours in a runabout and I was ready to transport you to deep space. Except I’m insufferably polite. But I fail at many things, and I hurt,” he said, and bunched his fist over his left breast. “Right here.”
She felt like crying. “Do you think she made it?”
