Equinox - Diane Carey [22]
"My Angel of Mercy!" Lessing greeted.
"I came to check on your damage," she said emotion-lessly. "It's less than I expected."
"Your doctor's something of a miracle worker-" Just as he said it, his left leg folded and he stumbled. He'd have fallen if The Doctor hadn't been holding him.
"That's enough for now," The Doctor said. "Seven?"
She stepped in and took Lessing's other side. She was far more firm and solid than the hologram, strangely.
"I had to rebuild the lower spine and both femurs," The Doctor went on. "With some rest and physical therapy, he'll be good as new."
Lessing resisted an urge to comment on how different The Doctor's attitude was than the same program on Equinox. Their ship's surgeon had died in the first week after they'd been hurled out of the Alpha Quadrant. They'd been treated by a notably cold hologram ever since. The counterpart on Voyager seemed happier, even satisfied that his treatments worked, and troubled when they didn't. He'd
suffered over Lessing's pelvis and legs almost as much as Lessing had.
Has he let himself be steered back to the nearest biobed and found it a distinct delight to be able to sit instead of lying down. He gazed in mute appreciation at Seven and surveyed the landscape. The Doctor pressed a hypospray into Lessing's arm, distracting him for a moment, and when he turned again Seven was on her way out.
"Seven!" he called. "I didn't hear a Red Alert... where are you going so fast?"
Seven looked at The Doctor, who said, "You may stay for a few minutes." To Lessing, he added, "Then, rest."
Good. He was leaving them alone.
Lessing could think of plenty worse fates than being alone with an artist's dream like this.
"Beautiful ship you've got here," he said.
Oh ... what an opening line.
"It is sufficiently pleasing," she responded, perplexed. Seemed like she'd never looked at the ship that way.
She would if she'd spent the past five years on Equinox.
"After a week in the Jefferies tube," Lessing commented, "it's paradise. Did you know there are five thousand two hundred and eighteen plasma welds in a standard section of bulkhead?"
He thought he was making a sad joke, but Seven bluntly said, "Yes."
A laugh felt good. Lessing was the type who smiled
easily, and everybody always said he had a nice smile, so he never held back. Lately the smiles had been few, and it felt great to grin freely and mean it, not just make a hollow reassurance of something impossible to a desperate shipmate who needed a lift. He didn't have to do that here. He could laugh and smile, and mean it.
"I guess you would know," he chuckled. "The Borg are pretty thorough."
"And humans are ... resilient," she replied.
He couldn't tell if she meant that as a compliment or not
"Nothing to it," he joked. "Count a few plasma welds, calculate pi to a hundred places in my head... and imagine I was someplace else. Imagine I was home."
"Earth," she said. Was that reverie in her eyes? Or mystery?
"With Mom and Dad... all my sisters ... Just talking about everything and nothing ... being together with them again."
Briefly he left her, left the sickbay behind in his thoughts, wandered home again. When he'd first seen Seven's face over him, heard her voice and Harry Kim's telling him he was going to live after all, that he still had his legs and a chance to survive, and that they were Starfleet-he'd wallowed briefly in the idea of having been rescued. Really rescued. Somebody had come from the Alpha Quadrant to take them all the way home.
Then reeling in, finding out that the Voyager was
trapped here too, digesting the idea that they were alive, but not exactly on their way home ... oh, well, small blessings. He'd learned to live with microscopic ones. He could live with this.
"Your method was successful," Seven congratulated. "You survived. Impressive, considering the circumstances."
Her sculpted face and body