Wounds, Book 1 (10 page)

“Listen to me.” She put a hand on his shoulder, and that slight touch made him feel better. “My name is Dr. Kahayn. You’re in a hospital. You were very badly hurt. We had to put in a tube to help you breathe. I kept you sedated because you kept trying to pull the tube out. You’re in restraints. That’s why you can’t move, but I didn’t want you to panic and pull out the tube before I could explain. Your lungs are better now, and that’s why I let the sedative wear off so you’d wake up and I could take out the tube. Do you understand? Nod if you understand.”

He nodded.

“Good.” She gently tugged tape free from his mouth. “This is going to be unpleasant. You’re going to feel like you can’t breathe for a second. But I’m right here. I won’t let anything happen to you, so just relax and then it will be better, I promise.”

It was more than unpleasant. It was awful. A sensation of plastic slithering at the back of his throat, like a long, rigid snake and he gagged, tried to pull away, but then the tube was gone.

“Take it easy,” she said. Turning aside, she flicked a switch and the ventilator wheezed to a halt. “Deep, regular breaths. That’s better. But your throat probably hurts. Would you like some ice chips? You’ll feel better.”

She fed him ice chips on a spoon, one at a time; told him to take it slow and suck the chips not chew them. The melting ice eased the pain in his throat, and he thought he’d never tasted anything more wonderful. When he nodded that he’d had enough, she put aside the cup of chips and then unbuckled the leather restraints tethering his wrists to the bed.

Then she said, “What’s your name?”

It took him a few seconds to get the words out, his throat was that raw; it felt like knives cutting him to pieces in there, and it hurt to talk. “Bashir,” he managed, finally, and he was shocked at how weak he sounded. “Julian…Bashir.” He swallowed to wet his throat. “How…how long…have…”

“Three weeks,” she said, and then as his shock must’ve spread to his face, she added, “You would’ve regained consciousness much sooner, but I had to keep you under sedation because of the tube.”

“Tube…how bad?”

She explained his injuries: parenchymal damage and pulmonary congestion from breathing in smoke and superheated gases; a concussion; a broken nose. “And that cut on your forehead was pretty bad. Went way up into your scalp, like you’d smashed into something.”

“My…” He raised his fingers to his scalp, felt a ridge of stippled flesh jutting from bristles because they’d shaved part of his head to cut at the gash. Then he saw that a tube snaked along his left forearm and was attached to a bag of clear fluid hanging from a metal pole next to his bed. “What…what’s . . ?”

“An intravenous line. You have another one running in under your collarbone on the right, under all those bandages. You keep down fluids today, and I’ll pull the central line tonight. If you’re still doing well tomorrow and can keep down soft foods, I’ll pull the other IV.” She paused. “You lost a lot of blood. You’ve been very sick. You’re lucky you’re not dead. But you’re bound to feel pretty weak and awful for a while, and you’ll be short of breath for a bit because of the damage to your lungs, even though they’re much better. So take it easy and go slow.” She paused. “Your scalp wound was very bad. You’re lucky you didn’t bleed to death.”

His head was whirling.
Intubation…ventilator and intravenous lines…like being in a museum…
Then, another thought, this one much worse, and he felt a sudden clench of dread:
She’s a doctor. I’m in a hospital and she’s a doctor. She saved my life, but that mean’s she examined me; she’s given me replacement fluids and drugs, so she must know…

She cut into his thoughts. “What happened? Do you remember?”

“I…” He paused, as much to gather his thoughts as form the words. “Accident. My vehicle…crashed. A fire. I don’t remember much.” Then he thought of something. “Did you…I was with…a woman. A friend. Did you…?”

“No. You were the only one brought in.”

Elizabeth
. He wasn’t prepared for how he felt: an emptiness in his chest, a feeling of grief. Guilt, too.
My fault; I should’ve listened to her. My fault we were separated…

“Do you know where you are? That is, do you know the name of this hospital?” When Bashir shook his head, she said, “You’re in Rangdron Medical Complex of the Kornak Armed Forces.” She paused as if that should mean something, but he didn’t know what. So he didn’t say anything.

Instead, he studied her face again. That blue skin. Very familiar. Not Andorian, though, or Bolian. But familiar. And there was something wrong with her left eye…

“This is a secured facility,” she said. “There are guards on the perimeter, and you need to have built up enough credits to be let in at the main gate. The underground trams are monitored.”

“Yes,” he wheezed. He didn’t know what else to say.
That left eye. Not tracking as well with the right. No blood vessels. That eye’s artificial, some kind of prosthetic…

“You’re quite different,” she said. “For a Kornak, I mean. You don’t have any prosthetics.”

“Been…been lucky.” It was the only thing he could think to say.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. You’re not from around here.”

Even whispering hurt. “No, you’re right. I’m from…from very far away. North.” He tried to remember what Elizabeth had said about the planet. Was there one northern continent, or two? He risked it. “From the northern continent. This is the first time I’ve…I’ve been here.”

But she gave a regretful shake of her head. “That’s not true and that’s not what I meant. You know that. Now,
I
know that you’re not Kornak, or Jabari, or any of the Outlier tribes. You’re…
different
. Then there’s the matter of your suit. And that uniform you were wearing.”

“My…?” he began, then stopped. She meant his environmental suit. He tried thinking of something that would explain the suit away and his uniform but couldn’t. So he said nothing.

She waited for a moment, maybe to give him time to think of some new lie. Then she nodded as if confirming something for herself. “Right. Thanks for not insulting my intelligence.” She paused. “You’re not…
from
here.”

He was silent.

“At first, I thought maybe you were a mutant. But I discarded that. See, by definition, most mutants don’t work well. Like a machine where the blueprints get all mixed up, so that what you finally build doesn’t work very well. But you work. You’re injured, and it’s pretty serious. But your body’s healing. Everything in your body, from your organs to your chemistries…they all work efficiently, neatly. And your brain’s even better than that. So
you
work.”

He said nothing.

“Right,” she said. “And then there’s the not-so-little matter of your anatomy. Your skin color, your heart, that left lung of yours. Your blood, like you’re used to and require a lot more oxygen.” She touched the ventilator by his bed, and there was a tiny click and a whirr because, he saw now, her left hand was artificial, too. “More carbon dioxide as a respiratory trigger, too. That threw me. You were having trouble one day and I hyperventilated you, blew down your carbon dioxide level and you flat-out quit breathing. That gave me another big scare.”

“Another?” he whispered.

“Yah. You tried dying in my emergency room, and very actively I might add. Then I realized that your central respiratory system needs a higher set point of carbon dioxide to initiate breathing. Anytime I tried going for what’s normal—what’s normal for me and everyone else here—your body tried to die. So you’re different, Julian Bashir. You are very different.”

He said nothing.

“That’s right.” She inhaled, let the breath go. “Like I said. Different. Not one of us. So, I think we need to talk about this, Julian Bashir.” She cocked her head to one side. “Don’t you?”

TO BE CONTINUED…

About the Author

ILSA J. BICK
is a child, adolescent, and forensic psychiatrist, and a latecomer to fiction. Still, she’s done okay. Her other
Star Trek
work includes “A Ribbon for Rosie” in
Strange New Worlds II
, “Shadows, in the Dark” in
Strange New Worlds IV
, “Alice, on the Edge of Night” in
New Frontier: No Limits
, the
Lost Era
novel
Well of Souls
, focusing on Captain Rachel Garrett and the
U.S.S. Enterprise
-C, and the previous
S.C.E.
eBook
Lost Time
. Her short fiction has also been published in
Writers of the Future
Volume XVI, SCIFICTION on SciFi.com,
Challenging Destiny
,
Talebones
, and
Beyond the Last Star
, and she has written novels and short stories in the
MechWarrior
universe. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two children, three cats, and other assorted vermin.

Coming Next Month:
Star Trek™: S.C.E. #56

Wounds
Book 2
by Ilsa J. Bick

Trapped on a strange world, Dr. Elizabeth Lense finds herself aiding the Jabari freedom fighters as their new medic, working with equipment she finds primitive on people wounded in their fight against the Kornak. All the while she hopes that her crewmates on the
da Vinci
might rescue her—and not blame her for the death of Julian Bashir….

Unknown to her, though, Bashir is alive, recovering in a Kornak military facility, where he becomes the focus of a power struggle between the medical and military personnel in the hospital. When the Jabari attack the hospital, Lense and Bashir find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that can only end in tragedy….

BONUS FEATURE:
Wounds
Book 2 will also feature an updated
Star Trek: S.C.E.
time line!

COMING IN SEPTEMBER
2005

FROM POCKET BOOKS!