Caretaker - L. A. Graf [49]
"There's no point," Kim said when she started tugging at the door handle with both hands. "It's locked." He'd already tested it twice before during one of his other wakeful phases.
She pushed him aside when he tried to move in front of her, and Kim could tell by the bunching of the muscles in her jaw that she had no intention of letting something like a locked door or some strange tumors keep her in confinement. "Hey..." He caught at her wrist as she pounded first her hands, then her elbows and feet against the door with increasing violence. "Hey! What's that going to accomplish?"
She was stronger than he expected, and nearly slammed him to the ground when he suspected all she meant to do was shrug him away.
Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists to shower the door with a thunder of blows. "What are they doing to us?! What are these things growing on us?!"
Kim stayed very still on the ground, a little afraid to confront her.
"Do you want them to sedate you again?" he asked, very reasonably.
To his surprise, she jerked a look at him as though not realizing he was still there. Then anger, embarrassment, and anger again chased each other across her dark face, and she whirled away from the door to pace in time with her growling breaths. "You're right, Starfleet," she admitted in a lower but no less bitter tone. "It's the Klingon half of me. I just can't control it sometimes."
Klingon. That explained both the strength and her exotically darkened features. Kim climbed carefully to his feet to follow her across the infirmary. "What's your name, Maquis?"
She flicked a glare at him as though not sure if she was being made fun of, then seemed to dismiss the thought with a shake of her head. But she answered, "B'Elanna. B'Elanna Torres," in a voice that was almost civil. She stopped to rend a sheet with her hands. "Have they told you anything?"
Kim thought about taking the fabric away from her, decided better the sheet's destruction than his own. "Only that they're called the Ocampa. I can tell you one other thing--their medicine is from the Dark Ages." He boosted himself onto the bed across from her. "The nurse actually tried to bleed me this morning."
That at least wrung a smile from her. Funny the kinds of things Klingons found amusing. He answered her with a friendly grin of his own, and let her savage the bedclothes for a few more minutes in companionable silence.
At first, Kim's subconscious didn't recognize the soft clunk behind him as a sound that should alarm him. He was too used to Starfleet doors that whisked open on a sigh to hear the subtle movement of latches and hinges. Torres, however, stiffened like an animal at the first quiet snickt! She dropped the sheet in a tangle of fraying thread, and Kim jumped down from the bed to grab her elbow when she tensed in readiness to run. Don't! he mouthed, praying that her Klingon half would stop and listen to his human-inspired reason. God knew he couldn't very well stop her if she decided to bolt.
Breathing hard, her teeth clenched, Torres nodded stiffly without taking her eyes off the door. A minor victory, but enough.
Tightening his fingers on her arm in combined encouragement and warning, Kim turned slowly to follow her gaze.
The Ocampa in the doorway stood with his arms folded around a bundle of gray-green fabric, his delicate lips stretched into a warm yet somehow infuriating smile. The doctor, Kim remembered.
Or, at least, the robed attendant whose gentle voice had first reached past Kim's confusion to soothe him with uncertain words and stilted sentences. As though hearing Kim's thoughts across the tense distance, the doctor found the ensign's eyes and nodded warm acknowledgment, relaxing visibly. "I hope you're feeling better," he said aloud, his voice still slow and oddly inflected. "I know how frightening this must be for both of you.
I've brought you some clothes, if you'd care to change." He