The Children of Hamlin - Carmen Carter [27]
“I’m okay,” he protested, but she laid a hand against his forehead anyway.
“No fever,” she said. “So why do you look as if you’ve lost your best friend?”
“Because I have.”
The doctor dropped her hand from his face and gave him a quick hug. Wesley didn’t even squirm away.
“Dnnys knows there’s something strange going on and he wants to know what. It’s not just curiosity, he’s worried for his family’s sake. And I can’t tell him anything because of the security restriction on talking about Hamlin.”
His mother sighed. A fever would be easier to deal with than this problem. “Wesley, if you’re serious about a Starfleet career,”- she waved down his automatic protest-“then you’ll have to find a balance between the demands of duty and the demands of your personal life. They can’t always be reconciled.”
In just the few months they had spent aboard the Enterprise, Dr. Crusher had seen her son mature in mind and body, yet he was still too young to fully understand how painful the conflict of those two commitments would be. He wouldn’t appreciate hearing that from his mother, though, so she kept silent.
“I took an oath,” said Wesley with great seriousness. “I have to stand by it, no matter what.”
People often remarked that Wesley favored her in looks, but at this moment Crusher saw how much he resembled his father. The comparison brought equal measures of pride and fear. Her husband’s devotion to Starfleet had been too great a part of his character to be regretted, but she did regret his early death.
She reached a hand out to ruffle Wesley’s hair, but this time he ducked away from the caress, which meant he was feeling better already. Glancing through the glass partition behind his back, the doctor saw Andrew Deelor entering sickbay.
“Speaking of oaths,” she sighed as the ambassador approached, “it’s time for me to concentrate on the Hippocratic. I’ve got an appointment scheduled, so get out of here, Ensign Crusher, on the double, or I’ll run a few tests on you, too.” She was relieved to see her son grin as he raced away. Wesley was too even-tempered to brood for long.
Pushing aside the concerns of her personal life, the doctor turned all attention to her patient. Deelor had been released from sickbay a few days before, but the severity of his phaser wound warranted daily inspection.
“Excellent. The burn is nearly healed,” noted Dr. Crusher as Deelor stripped off his uniform, revealing the synthetic skin covering his wound. The artificial material was almost wholly absorbed by new cell growth. She lifted the top of the med scanner and motioned him onto the table. The instrument results confirmed her first prognosis.
“Your body has remarkable recuperative powers.” Peering more closely at the scanner readout, she focused on a ghostly image below the epidermal layer. A touch to the probe controls magnified the area. “Which is quite fortunate considering the number of injuries you seem to have sustained in the past. Deep-tissue scars near the heart and liver”- she moved the scope again-“closed puncture wound to the left lung, and numerous break lines on the ribs.”
Her scan at an end, she swung the hinged panel up off the man’s chest. “I had no idea the diplomatic service was so dangerous.”
“I’m accident prone,” was Deelor’s only reply as he rolled off the bed.
“Like falling in front of a stray phaser blast?”
Deelor eased his way back into his clothes. He was beyond the stage at which dressing was painful, but some stiffness remained.
Dr. Crusher spoke again. “Why aren’t those old injuries listed on your medical profile?”
“Aren’t they?” he asked with raised eyebrows. The feigned surprise was ordinarily very convincing, but this doctor was on her guard.
“Perhaps you’re absentminded as well as clumsy. I’m missing current medical records on the Hamlin survivors.”
“All in due time, Dr. Crusher.” He closed the front seam of the uniform as if sealing in a secret. “All in due time.”
Artificial gravity and inertia dampers maintained the illusion of level flight for the thousand people