Wounds - Book 2 (11 page)

“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

W
ell, 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?”

“Kahayn? I don’t know. I’d like to think so. She wasn’t evil, just desperate, and I think there was much more to her story than I’ll ever know. She was very sad, a little haunted. I think she struggled to make things right.”

“In the end, she chose for you. She might still be alive.”
If Saad didn’t kill them all, and himself.

“Perhaps. If she isn’t, someone else will pick up her work. The Kornaks are willing to sacrifice a lot to survive. Loss of soul. Loss of self.”

“Just like the Borg.” The words were out of her mouth before she knew it. “Do you think—?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. This alien device may have slipped us sideways into a parallel timeline. Into the past, the future, or maybe the same moment somewhere else…Who knows? For that matter, maybe we got a good look at a past that’s happened in
this
timeline on a planet we’ve never known. Before they
were
the Borg, the Borg were something else. There’s got to be a Borg homeworld somewhere. We just haven’t found it yet.”

“Or maybe we did.”

“Maybe.” He was silent. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Saad.” Saying his name hurt. Her eyes burned. “I hope he died. I don’t want to think of him, hooked up…” She cleared her throat. “I just hope he died.”

She was surprised when Julian reached out and thumbed away her tears. But she didn’t pull away, and he didn’t either. “It hurts.”

She nodded then bunched a fist over her heart. Mouthed the words because she couldn’t speak:
Right here.
Then she released a breath, closed her eyes. This was okay. She cupped his hand with both of hers. Yes, this was all right.

They stood like that for a long time. Then Julian said, “You know, I wonder who won the Bentman. My God, it seems ages, centuries ago that we were boxing around that. I can’t imagine either of us won—and something extraordinary: I don’t care.”

She realized suddenly that she didn’t either. “I think the rules say you have to be present to win.”

“Well, then we bollixed that up. I don’t think the judges’ll countenance alien widgets and time-space anomalies. Can you see us explaining? Uh, yes, well, we got sucked into this anomaly and then our runabout disintegrated and then we thought we were both
dead
…well, that is, each of us thought the
other’d
kicked it, only we were mistaken and then…”

She had to laugh. “God, stop. That’s so sick.”

“I know; that’s the beauty of it. You know something? I want to save this for next time I need an excuse. Do you know that time-space distortions could be blamed for, oh, scads? Like doing your homework, you go to your professor, all hail-fellow-well-met.” He dropped his voice an octave and frowned. “Sorry, old boy, can’t turn that in. Got sideswiped by a time-space continuum thing, bugger it all. Bloody inconvenience; so sorry, but you understand, don’t you, old chap? There’s a good fellow.”

They laughed until her sides hurt. She knew the joke wasn’t
that
funny, but laughter was medicine, too. They finally trailed off; they held hands and looked at each other. It was comfortable. That was all it had to be.

“Your scar,” she said, suddenly, “are you going to keep it?”

“What?” Frowning, he fingered the ridge of flesh. “Do you know I forgot it until just now? Like it’s a part of me somehow.”

She traced his scar with the tip of a forefinger. “I can take that off. I’ve had practice,” and then at his expression, she laughed. “God, no, not with a scalpel.”

“Well, thank heaven.” He captured her fingers, folded them over his own. “Who could refuse such an offer from a woman…I’m sorry, a
colleague?
And let me return the favor. You don’t look well, Elizabeth.”

She shrugged it off. “Just tired.”

“Mmmm. Mind a more professional, unbiased opinion? Or are you one of those doctors who make horrible patients?”

“Which do you think?”

“Mmmm. Right. A positive horror.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Shall we?”

“Lead on, Macduff.”

“Ouch.
Didn’t Macbeth kill him? Lop off his head or something?”

“Relax, Julian. I’m just getting rid of your scar. Anyway, it’s Macduff who kills Macbeth. But the witches were still there at the end. So, the evil wasn’t gone. Macduff just couldn’t see it, was all.”

“Well, then, it seems that things didn’t end for the best after all, did they? At least, not for Macduff.”

Security Director Blate stood, goggle-eyes whirring as his gaze ticked down the length of scarred metal. The metal was hollowed out and spanned the height of a full-grown man and had a core of honeycombed material he couldn’t fathom. The metal was scorched with soot that was sticky, a little oily. Like Bashir’s suit…He looked back at the soldier. “Is this all?”

“No.” The soldier shook his head with the audible click and whirr of a gyro. “There’s wreckage strewn over a wide area. Mostly pieces like this, and one big chunk. Some sort of control mechanism.”

“Very well, I want a team out there. Bring it all back, and I want it secreted here, in this wing. You are dismissed.”

Well, well.
Blate walked a corridor of the research wing. The slap of his boots cracked like pistol shots. He entered a room that was the only one occupied for the moment—but only for the moment.
All is not lost, and more gained than I supposed. Pity about Janel, though. I underestimated Kahayn’s resourcefulness.

The room was very noisy: the tick-tick-ticking of IV pumps; the atonal blip of cardiac monitors; and the whoosh and sigh of ventilators. The nurse on duty, a major, stepped smartly to attention and reported that all three patients were doing well.

He ran his fingers along each patient’s scalp. Saad’s scar was old and firm. But Kahayn’s and Arin’s were new, the sutures not yet removed, and Arin’s new left arm was a wonder: jointed with a thick pincer instead of a hand. None of them dreamed; they were too heavily sedated for that. But he wondered if, when Saad awoke, they would share dreams, too. He knew for sure, though: the man Saad would cease to exist because Blate would break him.

So we’re not done for yet. In fact, we’ve just begun.
His lips curled into a smile.
Because no door ever closed that another didn’t open.

“Oh, my God,” said Lense. She sat on a biobed in her own sickbay, absolutely stunned. “Julian, that can’t be right.”

“But it is,” said Bashir. The overhead light turned the smooth skin of his forehead a warm bronze. “I can run it again but,” he put a hand to her neck, “there’s no mistake, Elizabeth.”

“But…” She hooked her hand onto Julian’s arm and just hung on. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

“Well, you could give happiness a whirl. Maybe this is good.”

“Or maybe it’s bad.”

“Possibly.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she said again.

“Elizabeth,” said Bashir, and he touched his forehead to hers with easy intimacy. “Don’t do anything, my dear.”

“Do
nothing?”

“Do nothing. You have time. Give it thought. But above all,” he pulled back until their eyes locked,
“be…happy.
Because this is rare, and very precious. It’s like something out of the ashes. Maybe you won’t want it in the end. But maybe you will, because it’s a gift of things past and a possible future. It’s a gift.”

“You think?” And then she said it, out loud, to make it real and because she thought that, maybe, this was a gift she should keep.

“I’m going to have a baby, Julian,” she said. “I’m going to have a child.”