Just tasting Trinh’s name on his lips brought Sulu back to reality—to the staggering understanding that the woman he loved might soon die, or if she lived, might never be the same, might never have the life she envisioned for herself. He swayed backward, and his shoulder blades brushed the side of the lift. Tears streamed down his face. “What was so necessary that I had to be hurt so badly?”
“Sulu,” Kirk said, “nothing I say to you, no answer I give, will seem justification enough for what’s happened.”
Sulu looked down, defeated. Nothing would ever be the same for him either. But he also knew that he couldn’t think about that—not at that moment, and probably not for some time to come. However badly she was hurt, however much help she would need, Sulu had to be there for her.
And I will be.
“I am truly sorry,” said Captain Kirk.
Sulu peered up again. “I don’t care,” he said. “Your sorrow means nothing.” He reached for the activation wand and ordered the turbolift to resume its journey. It moved only a short distance, and then its doors parted. “I’ll be in sickbay, Captain,” he said. He strode forward and out of the lift, leaving Kirk behind.
Sulu did not look back.
Eleven
Trinh awoke slowly, drifting upward from what must have been a dream. She could still see herself walking across the University of Alpha Centauri campus, beneath the canopies of the ancient trees that towered over the main quad. The school library stood in front of her, a glass-fronted, four-story building in which she’d spent many days and not a few nights.
In a backpack she’d slung across one shoulder, Trinh toted something heavy, so she guessed that she hadn’t actually been headed for the library, but probably past it, to the complex of buildings known familiarly around campus as the Age Factory. The university’s galaxy-class archaeology program resided there, with faculty offices, classrooms, labs, a specialty library, and two massive structures that allowed for amazing simulations of digs from around the Federation.
In her dream, Trinh hadn’t been able to recall what she carried with her, and so she’d stopped at a bench in the quad and pulled her backpack from her shoulder. She unsnapped the opening of the main compartment, reached in, and pulled out a miniature, but still heavy, sarcophagus. She held it up with both hands and studied it, trying to read the ideograms marching along its black surfaces. Nothing looked recognizable.
As she’d turned over the relic—or the model of a relic—in her hands, examining it, it started to feel heavier to her. At first, Trinh thought she must be imagining it, but the object’s weight continued to increase. She struggled to hold it aloft, and realized that if she didn’t put it down soon, it would crash to the ground—and if it did so with her hands still around it, she’d be apt to lose a finger.
An odd dream, Trinh thought as she opened her eyes, but already the details of her nighttime apparitions had begun to fade. In the dimly lighted room, she wondered about the time. She gazed upward and saw a ceiling she didn’t recognize, though perhaps she would once she turned on a light.
Except the ceiling’s so big. As she followed the lines of lighting panels—all dark, but she could make them out—she knew she couldn’t be in her small room in the dormitory, or even in the smaller place she’d stayed off campus.
No, she told herself. School was a long time ago.
But even after that, when she’d been away on digs or on research projects, she’d never stayed in such a large space. Not even after she’d met Luke and they’d begun living and traveling together.
Where then? she asked herself. Maybe the Enterprise—
Like a thunderbolt, it all flashed back into existence for her: the dead cities, the rockets, being buried alive, and escaping that terrible fate, only to exchange it for one even worse. Her lips quivered as her tears began. In the days and nights since suffering her injuries, she had wept a lot, usually stopping only when she slept, or when the medications pushed her mind past the point of experiencing reality.
Trinh looked up at the ceiling—at the overhead—and remembered that even the Enterprise now lay in her past. How long ago had her injuries occurred? Ten days? Two weeks? She didn’t remember. She could recall only snatches of the first few days back aboard the ship, though she’d collected some other details along the way. It had taken at least a day after the attacks for Lieutenant Commander Scott and his engineering staff to repair the warp drive, and then a week or more to reach Starbase 25. The ship had arrived there four days earlier, at which time Trinh had been off-loaded to the station’s infirmary.
Off-loaded, she thought. Like a piece of meat.
But that’s all she was now, wasn’t it? And not even fresh meat. Spoiled meat.
Slowly—not out of any sense of caution, but because she could move no faster—Trinh reached up with one hand—the hand at the end of an arm not attached to an uncountable number of machines. She pulled aside the bedclothes. Lifting her head from the pillow, she squinted through the dim light at what remained of her body. She had done so many times already, but she felt powerless to stop herself from examining her wounded form again, foolishly hoping each time she looked that she would find that she had sustained her injuries in a cruel dream, rather than in an even crueler reality.
Covered by a medical gown, Trinh mercifully could not see her flesh above her feet, which stuck out near the end of the bed—feet that actually appeared healthy, but that she would never be able to use again. She had seen what lay beneath the thin fabric covering her from shoulders to ankles, though: from the base of her ribs, down to her waist, and on to her thighs, her skin had become a deep, unhealthy purple color, the shade of rotting apples. It had the texture of paper, and felt as thin. Because of the severity and magnitude of her injuries, the surgeons had been unable to utilize an autosuture to seal her wounds and incisions, and so fine black strands had been used to tie the outer shell of her body back together. She looked like the image she envisioned of the creature Doctor Frankenstein had cobbled together from separate body parts in Mary Shelley’s novel.
Worse than that, though, and something she could make out even covered by her medical gown, her body had withered. Through her terrible injuries, through four surgeries and facing still more, her internal organs had been ruined, her thigh bones splintered, her pelvis crushed. Doctor M’Benga and Doctor McCoy had repaired some of her viscera, had replaced what they could, but her overall physical system had suffered tremendously.
Yeah, my physical system suffered, she thought. But my mental and emotional sides are doing just fine. Her tears continued even through her bitter sarcasm. When she could stand the pain—the physical pain—and the medications didn’t addle her, she could maintain an inner monologue. Speaking remained a terrible chore, though, one that caused her extreme fatigue in just moments.
Hikaru had stayed with her as much as possible. Since her injuries, almost every time she’d awoken—or regained consciousness—he’d been by her bedside. At first, when she couldn’t speak at all, when she could barely move, he just sat with her, sometimes talking to her, sometimes just looking at her with his love still burning in his eyes. He smiled a lot, and never cried in front of her, but she saw the redness in his eyes, the puffiness of his face, and she knew that, alone in his quarters, he shed many, many tears.
Trinh hated him for that. Loved him, and hated him. Loved him, because she would have expected nothing less of this wonderful man than for him to stand by her, for him to do everything he could to make this time as positive as it could possibly be, for him to continue to love her. Hated him, because it was all a lie. Not his love, not his steadfastness, not the beauty of his spirit, but the promise, unspoken at first, that times would one day be better for them, that her health would improve and they would resume joyously spending their lives together.
She knew none of that could ever happen. In the first few days after her injuries, in those few moments here and there when she would float up to consciousness,
and when only members of the Enterprise medical staff had been present, she’d asked—in tortured fragments of speech—and later she’d begged for them to give her a diagnosis and detail her chances for a full recovery. For some reason, the doctors and nurses experienced little difficulty in listing and explaining the state of her massively wounded body. Yet when she questioned them about her condition not in that moment, but in a year hence, or two years, or ten, they hemmed and hawed, hid behind “uncertainties” and “possibilities.” But Trinh had wanted probabilities, and nobody wanted to provide her with those.
Maybe because they know me, Trinh speculated. She dismissed that idea, though, both because Leonard McCoy and Jabilo M’Benga didn’t know her all that well, and because she thought it unlikely that two such accomplished physicians and surgeons would choose even pretty lies over their ethical responsibilities. She suspected, though, that her exceedingly weakened condition, especially in those first days, had prevented the two men from telling her anything that would deprive her of hope and therefore potentially complicate her convalescence.
Despite her depleted state, though, Trinh had apparently improved, since Doctor Rellan had not hesitated to discuss her prognosis with her. Or maybe it’s because she’s Vulcan, Trinh thought, though she doubted that the stoicism of Starbase 25’s chief medical officer had anything to do with it. When Trinh had been transferred from the Enterprise sickbay to the starbase’s infirmary, Trinh had asked Doctor Rellan about what she could expect, medically, in the future, and the doctor had promised to review her records and examine her readings to make a determination.
Trinh learned that she had no future. Or not much of one. She would never walk again, though it seemed at least possible that she could be fitted into an automated wheelchair at some point. She would always require significant doses of numerous medicines, including those to combat chronic pain, which would only work completely when they robbed her of full consciousness. No longer could she easily perform the most basic of bodily functions, but would need the use of various devices. Doctors and nurses and medications and machines would occupy her entire existence.
Existence, Trinh thought. Not life. I’ll exist, but I won’t live.
And she wouldn’t even exist for long. Doctor Rellan estimated her maximum life expectancy at three years, although she believed one year a more likely scenario. For Trinh’s physical condition would likely not improve much more than it already had, but even maintaining that level of severely compromised health would require intensive means that simply could not be sustained. Medical science could only delay for a short time the deterioration of her mangled body.
Trinh wanted none of that. All she wanted was to die.
• • •
When Sulu walked into the infirmary on Starbase 25, he saw both Doctor Rellan and Nurse Garcia on duty, the former seated at a workstation in the main compartment to the left, the latter studying a remote diagnostic panel and making some notes on a data slate in the ward to the right. The lieutenant headed into the ward and over to the nurse, pleased to be able to consult with him rather than the doctor about Trinh. Sulu trusted Rellan’s medical abilities completely, but he thought he could more readily get what he wanted from Garcia.
“Good morning, Sean,” Sulu said, working to keep his tone upbeat and conversational.
“Hikaru,” the nurse said, offering him a welcoming smile. “How are you?”
“I’m all right,” Sulu said, forcing a smile onto his face even though he hadn’t felt all right in days. Ensign Garcia surely must have understood that, but the two always exchanged pleasantries anyway. Enterprise had been at the starbase for four days, and as much time as Sulu had spent in its infirmary, he couldn’t have helped but become friendly with the medical staff. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Garcia said. He nodded toward a door panel at the end of the ward that stood halfway open. “Ensign Trinh is awake.”
“Good,” Sulu said, and then he dropped his voice to a more serious tone. “How is she today?” This was the question he’d wanted to ask the nurse, rather than the doctor. Rellan would have provided him with perfectly accurate information about Trinh’s condition, of course, but she would not have given him the answer he needed.
“Physically, about the same,” Garcia said. “Mentally and emotionally, though, I think this may be her best day here, at least so far.” Sulu smiled again, his expression actually genuine. “She was crying earlier,” Garcia said cautiously, as though it pained him to say so, “but not as much as the past few days, and she’s been more talkative too.”
“That’s great,” Sulu said.
“She asked about you, of course,” the nurse said.
Sulu shook his head. “I meant to be here before she woke up, but I was . . . checking on some things I needed to do for Starfleet,” he said. He didn’t want to reveal to Garcia or anybody else the decision he’d made before he spoke to Trinh. “Is she awake now?” Since suffering her injuries, Trinh spent a majority of her days either asleep or unconscious, depending on the timing of her surgeries. Sulu knew that rest would play a major role in her recuperation, and so he never wanted to rouse her.
“She was awake just a couple of minutes ago,” Garcia said. “Let me check.” The nurse set his data slate down on a nearby shelf, then crossed the ward to the half-open door. He peered inside, then turned back toward Sulu and nodded.
As Sulu walked over to the room Trinh occupied—he did not wish to think of a compartment in a sickbay or in an infirmary as “Trinh’s room”—the nurse reached up and touched a control mounted on the bulkhead. The door quietly slid open the rest of the way, and Garcia entered.
“Hi there, Ensign Trinh,” he said. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Sulu reached the doorway and looked in at the woman he loved. He watched her turn her head toward him, her movements slow and careful. She didn’t smile when she saw him, but she nodded almost imperceptibly. Sulu didn’t even know if she could smile, at least without discomfort, considering the length of pale tubing that reached from the corner of her mouth and disappeared into a glut of devices crowded around the head of her bed.
When Sulu stepped inside the room, Nurse Garcia moved away from the bed to let him pass, then started back toward the door. “I’ll be right outside,” he said. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Sean,” Sulu said.
Once the nurse had left, Sulu moved in close to the bed and peered down at Trinh. Her face still had no color, her eyes no depth, and the form of her body beneath the bedclothes appeared unnaturally gaunt, as though even the mildest current of air could carry her away. Of course she looks unnaturally gaunt, Sulu thought. All of this—all of her pain and suffering—didn’t happen naturally, and needn’t have happened at all. The vitriol he felt for Captain Kirk burned like a fire within him.
Sulu showed none of that hard emotion to Trinh, though. Instead, he fit another smile onto his face. “Good morning,” he said. “I hope you slept well.” He did not ask whether she had, because if she hadn’t, he didn’t want her to have to wallow in anything negative, no matter how minor. He reached over and smoothed her dark hair, then leaned in and gently touched his lips to her cheek. “I love you.”
As Sulu pulled back, Trinh’s eyes followed him. She blinked at him, slowly and deliberately, and he understood the meaning she intended her gesture to carry: I love you too. She could speak, he knew, but she still found it painful and exhausting to do so.
“So,” he said, actually excited about the news he’d brought with him that morning, “the doctors tell me that it will be a few more weeks before they’ll allow you to travel. Well, I just found out that, by that time, a Starfleet vessel, the Algonquin, will be here, and when it departs, it’s headed back to Earth.”
Trinh stared at him for a moment, and then the slightest crease drew down between her eyebrows. Sulu recognized her look of confusion.
“Yes, Earth,” he said. “I recei
ved a message from your mother overnight.”
Trinh shifted her head on her pillow, and Sulu saw her brow knit once more.
“When all this happened,” Sulu said, rushing through even the brief reference to her injuries, “Starfleet of course contacted her. I decided to do so too, and I found her reply when I woke up this morning.” Sulu had considered loading Nguyen Thi Yeh’s message onto a data slate and bringing it with him, but he didn’t know what sort of impact seeing her mother’s anguish would have on Trinh. “She’s upset about what happened, but she sends you her love and says she’s looking forward to seeing you again.”
Trinh’s eyes went wide. “What?” she croaked in her weak, dry voice.
“You don’t have to speak, Trinh,” Sulu said. “It’s all right.” The simple declaration stuck in his throat, because of course nothing was all right. He reconsidered, then recast his sentiment from the grueling present to the improved future: “Everything will be all right.”
Trinh rolled her head gradually to the left on her pillow, then back over to the right, her eyes darting about. “Are you looking for something?” Sulu asked. “Do you want your data slate?”
Trinh laboriously moved her head back to the center of the pillow, then, instead of nodding, closed and opened her eyelids: Yes.
Sulu looked over at the rolling cart that had been set up beside the bed. He saw a number of personal objects he’d brought her: a few brightly colored slabs that contained some recent vids Trinh had wanted to see, a copy of an ancient medallion she’d found at an archaeological dig on Berengaria VII, a photograph of the two of them at the top of the climbing wall at the starbase, and a number of other small items. Among them sat Trinh’s data slate. Though she found it hard to speak, and even harder to move almost any part of her body, she could use her left hand enough to write. He picked the slate up, activated it, and confirmed its current function. He started to remove the stylus from its place, but then recalled that Trinh preferred simply to use her finger.
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