The Children of Hamlin - Carmen Carter [54]
Had the rescue come too late for this man? Would he die like the others?
Dr. Crusher laid a hand on the clear window. Her touch darkened the glass, granting Jason privacy in the confines of the chamber. He would remain unconscious for another few hours, but she stole out of the room as if afraid she might wake him.
In the room next door, a second isolation unit also held a sleeping form, but the child was deep in a natural slumber. His toffee-colored skin and curly black hair were a stark contrast to Jason’s pale complexion.
“He’s finally cried himself out,” said Troi, who was keeping vigil over the boy. She followed Dr. Crusher’s sharp glance at the blood-sugar-level indicator. “He was too upset to eat, but he’ll be hungry when he wakes up. I’m certain I can tempt him with some food later.”
Crusher nodded in automatic agreement, then shook her head. “It’s not going to be that simple, Deanna.” A brief review of the Hamlin medical records had made that much clear. “He’s been raised in a liquid environment. A complete rehabilitation will be necessary to teach him how to function in our world.”
“Which means he’ll need constant supervision,” said Troi. “So how will we explain him to your department?”
“Good question.” Only a few people had seen Crusher whisk the child into the isolation chamber, and Troi had taken over primary responsibility for his care when the doctor had been called away, but his presence could not be shielded for much longer. The unannounced appearance of a two-year-old boy, one unknown to her medical staff, would give rise to a host of questions. “For that matter, how do we explain Jason?”
“Survivors of a shipwreck,” suggested Troi. “It’s unoriginal, but not too far from the truth.”
“Good enough, I suppose,” sighed the doctor. “Only we’d better make sure the rest of the bridge crew gives out the same story. Nothing will draw attention faster than conflicting accounts of how they got here.” She moved toward the room’s door. “I’ll stop by later and we can discuss what to do when he wakes up.”
“Beverly,” called out Troi as the other woman reached the threshold. “We can’t keep calling him ‘the boy’ and ‘the child.’ He needs a name.”
“What about Moses?” suggested Crusher, and stepped out of the room to continue on her rounds.
Striding down the corridor, the chief medical officer shoved aside the distracting demands of the Hamlin captives and focused her attention on her next set of patients. Sickbay was at near capacity, and the heavy caseload meant she would be working through the night.
Captain Picard’s warning announcement before the Enterprise was dragged off course by the Choraii ship had been brief, too brief to prepare every one of the thousand people on board for the sudden acceleration. A few people never heard the crew alert and were hurled through the air without warning. Others were simply a shade too slow in reacting. The extent of their injuries depended on what part of their body connected with the nearest solid object. Those with broken bones and lacerations reached sickbay quickly on float stretchers with paramedics in close attendance or were carried in by fellow crew members. Over the following hour, a gradually increasing stream of people had hobbled in to sickbay on their own, seeking relief for bruises and sprains.
“Duncan is doing very well,” said the supervising nurse in critical care. He called up an encouraging pattern of regenerating nerves on a computer screen. Crusher was relieved to see that the astronomer’s spinal cord had been bruised rather than cut by the telescope that had swung into his lower back.
“What about Butterfield?” The most badly injured of the crew had been a botanist who had crashed headfirst into a potted caudifera. Butterfield would be the first to laugh at the irony of being attacked by one of his own plants, if he ever regained consciousness. Dr. Crusher had mended the scientist’s fractured skull, but only time could tell if his brain would function with its previous brilliance.
Doswell shrugged. “No change.”
Recovery was out of