The Children of Hamlin - Carmen Carter [68]
“Very good,” laughed the intern. “Now it’s my turn again.” The game continued back and forth until they were both drenched. She refilled the glass and offered Moses the straw, but this time slipped her hands up to his mouth before he could spew out the water. Her thumbs sealed his lips and an index finger pressing in on each cheek forced the water down the boy’s throat.
He didn’t laugh, but before he could cry Iovino offered him a chance to play the same trick on her. She swallowed a mouthful of liquid when his clumsy fingers poked at her face. “Wasn’t that fun?”
Moses evidently agreed, because he sucked from the straw and puffed out his cheeks but didn’t spit out the contents. Instead, he waited for the doctor to play her part in this new game.
Dr. Crusher read parts of Iovino’s report aloud to the captain, but out of deference to the intern’s dignity she refrained from showing him the visual record. The sight of the boy gleefully squirting water into Lisa’s face had provided the chief medical officer with some much needed comic relief, but the scene would remain private.
“A resourceful approach,” agreed Picard. He smiled at the doctor’s description of the water fight, but he was disturbed by the drawn quality of Beverly Crusher’s face. Fatigue accentuated her high cheekbones and washed the color from her fair skin.
“She’s one of my best doctors,” said Crusher proudly, unaware of Picard’s scrutiny. “The boy is making good progress under her care. He may be walking by the time we reach Starbase Ten. Of course, it helps that he’s so young. Children have an amazing ability to adapt to new environments.”
Fifteen years ago the translator had gone through the same rehabilitation. Picard tried to calculate the time difference, but her present age was difficult to determine. “How old was Ruthe when she was rescued?”
“The results of her initial medical exam indicated she was about ten, but that estimate could be off by several years. There’s practically no information on the effects of the Choraii environment on early physical development.”
“Ten years old,” said Picard thoughtfully. “Imagine learning to breathe air, to walk and talk, to drink water, all for the first time at that age.”
“Worse yet,” said Crusher, “imagine that effort at over fifty years of age.” Her expectations for Jason’s rehabilitation were more modest: to keep him alive. The holodeck project had seemed promising at first, however Yar’s recall was limited and Data was increasingly guarded about the chances of designing a convincing simulation.
“Beverly, you’re limping,” said Picard sharply as he watched the doctor cross the room to her desk.
“I hadn’t noticed.” Now that he brought it to her attention, Crusher felt a dull throb in her right leg. The realization didn’t trouble her. She had experienced intermittent pain since injuring the leg two weeks before.
“I thought the wound had healed.” The laceration had been deep and the resultant loss of blood very nearly proved fatal. In fact Picard had never really admitted to himself how close Beverly Crusher had come to dying on the planet Minos.
“It has healed. I’ve just been on my feet for too long.”
“Aren’t you the one who warned me about feeling invincible?”
Crusher laughed wanly. “I feel more like a squashed bug.”
“Then get some sleep, like the rest of us.” He refrained from telling her how tired she looked.
Dr. Crusher was too preoccupied to listen to the advice. She turned to him and for a moment her professional composure dropped away, as if she were lowering a piece of armor that had grown too heavy to hold in place. “Jean-Luc, if we don’t succeed in creating the Choraii ship holo, I don’t know what else I can do for Jason.”
Her voice betrayed a quality of fear Picard had never heard before, not even when her own life had been in danger in the caverns of Minos. Then, as now, he had no answers.
The simulation released Yar from its hold. She had learned to anticipate the fall now