Star Wars_ MedStar 02_ Jedi Healer - Michael Reaves [52]
Nevertheless, she could not do it.
Since experiencing that searing, that “cosmic” connection, Barriss had been afraid to reach out to the Force again. Though there was no logical reason to fear it, still she found herself paralyzed every time she attempted a link.
She was aware that this was not a good situation, especially given her position here on this war-ravaged world. Though the last few days had been light on casualties, Rimsoo Seven could be inundated again at any time, and when that happened her abilities would be needed to save lives. She couldn’t afford to remain helpless.
Her mind knew all this. Her heart, however, still shied away from the bond that had been a part of her life for so long.
That couldn’t be any more wrong.
She told the FX-7 droid on duty to put the clone back in short-term cryosupport. She’d be doing him no favors trying to modulate his BRMs now, given the uncertain state she was in. She needed to get out, to clear her head. Perhaps a game of sabacc was indicated…
Alone in her kiosk, Barriss sat and stared at the wall. She had sought out company, but being in the presence of her friends hadn’t helped to resolve matters. The power of her experience—and she was sure it had been real, not a hallucination—still thrummed in her, though it was now but a faint echo of what it had been; the drip of a single raindrop after the roar of a storm.
Even so, playing cards in the cantina and exchanging small talk with the doctors and nurses hadn’t helped her do anything other than put off dealing with it. She couldn’t talk to any of her colleagues—what was she going to say? Hey, Jos, I just became one with the entire galaxy… and how’s that case of Ortolan rhinorrhea you’ve been dealing with?
None of them could help her, and there was nobody else she knew of who had experienced it—certainly not anyone at hand.
If anyone else ever had experienced it…
Barriss knew she wasn’t the smartest Jedi who had ever lived, but she wasn’t anywhere close to the stupidest, either. She knew what had happened. She had taken a therapeutic, if accidental, dose of the bota extract. There was no doubt in her mind that the unintentional injection and her sudden, overpowering connection to the Force had been cause and effect. She didn’t know the why or the how, but she was certain that the panaceatic chemical concoction had produced yet another miracle, this time by intensifiying her connection to the Force by an order of magnitude she couldn’t even begin to tally.
When, as a youngling, she had first learned to use the Force, it seemed to her as if she had been living in a dark cave, and had finally been given a lamp to light her way. She could, of a moment, see, whereas before she had been feeling her way in the murk. It had been a most intense and profound revelation.
Compared to that, the experience she’d had after the accident in the ward had been like trading in that lamp for her own personal sun—a difference comparable to being able to see a vast plain, all the way to the horizon, in every minute detail, as opposed to the corner of a single small room. It was as if she were a hawk-bat, capable of spotting a rock shrew the size of her thumb from a thousand meters away, as opposed to being a blind granite slug, grubbing myopically at the few millimeters directly before her.
What did it mean?
Her first reaction had been to comm her Master. Luminara Unduli would know, or she would have access to somebody with knowledge. In any event, there was certainly no reason to try to puzzle