Plastic surgeons would be hard pressed indeed to remove the smile from my face.
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CH. 6
Commodore Ford packed the final bit of his clothing into the suitcase laying on the white blanket atop his bed. Save for the requisite furnishings, he stood in a mostly empty condo. He hadn’t left much of a mess for the room service crew to clean up. After his fiasco of drunk and disorderly, public intox, indecent exposure and discharging a particle weapon in an unguarded zone… He’d decided to keep to himself and not leave the condominium. It had been safer that way.
In the last week he’d dealt with his rising and ebbing demons. He still bore loads of pain. Any man would. And Chevis was not one to seek out therapy. He’d found his own sources of literature on port-traumatic stress. Many works dated back to the Vietnam War Era in Earth’s American history. They had dealt with the psychological fallout of torture and mental stress. He didn’t feel any better for it, but now he could deal with it more instead of just blocking it out of his mind.
Chevy still marveled over the appearance and disappearance of Anya. She’d been beautiful, heart stopping. And she hadn’t existed. There was no trace of her in the public or security records of this planet. No one of her description worked in any establishment on New Providence. Starfleet Security hadn’t even been able to confirm her existence.
A figment of his imagination, then.
Ford lifted the final item he’d packed into the case and examined it. It was his uniform jacket. He always packed at least one no matter where he went. He’d been planning to show it off to Anya before he left for 23. Modeling a uniform for a woman who hadn’t even been real. How low could a man really get?
He dropped the starched jacket and pressed it home. Starfleet service had trained many a man how to successfully pack a lot of stuff into a small piece of luggage. It was a highly developed skill, and probably one of the most used among former Fleet officers. His dog stared back at him from his spot beside the open suitcase, head cocked and tongue waggling in amusement.
Ford was happy and secure in the knowledge that he’d be a Fleet officer for some time to come. Retirement would be as far off as he could keep it. He had a lot to do in his life. That Mexican restaurant would just have to wait…
Ford picked up his case and headed for the front door. His rental car awaited. The commodore was homeward bound. China dropped to the polished floor and clattered after him. Chevy paused at the doorframe and looked back upon the house. He could still smell Anya’s hair…the scent of her skin. Her voice floated atop the busy waters of his mind.
And her words could still be heard there as plainly as when he’d heard them.
“Help yourself. Settle the score.”
“Got a lot of fightin’ to do.” He told China, and the two of them stepped out.
***
Lieutenant Bronstien stared at the far bulkhead in silent anger. His head was still bandaged in old-style white gauss, making his black hair stick up like a spiky dark flame. He wore the white, high collared turtleneck version of his duty tunic. His black trousers hung down from the bandaged stumps of his shorn off legs. He sat unmoving in the basic hover chair.
Doctor Keller moved around the blue desk of her borrowed office she occupied and knelt beside her patient. She looked searchingly up into his eyes. They bore into the pastel blue wall, ignorant of her attempts to reach him. Today he was being released to recover on his own recognizance. But she worried over his mental health. The loss of limbs was detrimental on any psyche, especially a virile young male…
“Leftenant, I wish to assure you that if there had been any other way…” Her attempt was feeble sounding, even to her. She abandoned that line of speech. She had to make him understand that his life was far from over. “Many options lay before us to steer you toward recovery. We have already begun cloning of your lost limbs. The base pairs are splitting at a regulated pace and you will have fully usable limbs within three months—“
“Who the hell told you to cut off my damn legs?”
Finally. Speech. It wasn’t pretty, and it was full of bile, but he was talking. Her heart went out to him even as she balked at the hostility directed full-bore at her. She reached out to touch his wide hand and he jerked it away. He glared into her with obstinate ire. He blamed her.
“There was nothing else that could be done. Your legs were mangled and damaged by severe exposure. It was a miracle that your suit maintained what integrity it did—“
“A miracle? Tell me, Doc, do I really look that damn lucky?”
“You’re alive!”
“I’m f*ckin’ maimed! I lost my legs!” Johnathan struck the ends of his stumps of his destroyed legs for brutal emphasis. His burning, red rimmed eyes glared into her. She knew he would like nothing better than to strike her right in the face for all his suffering and futile rage. His breath came in ragged breaths as he struggled with the emotions within him. “Cloned limbs don’t usually work! I know that! My best bet is a set of god damned cybernetic prosthetics that’ll leave me lurching around like an invalid. That’s all I am now!”
Andrea could feel empathy for the man. But sympathy was not going to help him now. Her face hardened and she leaned in close to his eyes. “You are going to have to accept this for now, Leftenant! You have no alternative. You can either let it beat you, ruin you, or you can master it! You can fight this! Chief Engineer Tolin is synthesizing temporary prosthetics for you even now to get you mobile once your legs mend enough to use them. So make up your mind now, helmsman. Are you going to fight, or curl up and die?”
Sarcasm broke through the anger burning in his eyes as he looked into her eyes.
“Nice speech, Doc. You write that down before you came in here?”
Andrea allowed herself to return the baleful smirk.
“Your choice, Leftenant. I can’t force you. Do what you want.”
Keller stood, smoothing her maroon jacket, and moved for the open office hatch. Bronstien’s face followed her. “You couldn’t stop with the Skipper’s heart, so my legs were next best thing, huh?”
The CMO paused, coming up short as she was about to make the turn to leave. She glanced back over her narrow shoulder. “Who are you angrier with, Johnathan? Me, for taking your legs, or yourself for losing them in the first place?”
The doctor left him there to stew. He continued to stretch his neck to look after her. A roiling turmoil flowed inside of him and begged for release. He had no way to vent this save to break down. Tears flowed down, unwanted, and unbidden as he tried to bury his face in his arms. His frame was racked with growling sobs as he found his release. He was glad to have the privacy of this wing of the infirmary. No one ever came over here save for triage training.
Johnathan was mistaken, however. Boot steps echoed into the room. The pilot fought to contain his raging emotions and to clean his wet face of its embarrassment.
Those boots carried themselves back into the medical office.
“Come back to impart more wisdom, Doc?” He scathed.
“No, Lieutenant,” Came a sterner, masculine voice. It was accented in Russian. “I have not. I have come to guide you back home.”
Bronstien looked up into the steely blue eyes of the chief security officer of his former ship. He scoffed. “Where is home supposed to be?”
“Vith your family of friends, Lieutenant.”
The gunnery officer took control of the handles at the back of the chair and fired up the hover field. Guiding his charge out the office, Daniel guided their way out of the medical section and through the least populated sections of the station. He took Endeavour’s injured son to the habitat module that housed the bulk of their surviving crew. And home.
END
Topic: #11: White Rabbits (Read 18611 times)