Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (24 page)

“What?”

“Listen, all the time I was there, I never saw a woman who wouldn’t win best of breed. Even the Tellarite females were, um, not ugly, anyway. And every last one of ‘em’s got a brain—thinkin’ man’s paradise! If I could’ve took the heat and the gravity,
I’d be there yet.”

“Indeed,” T’Pina said flatly. She did not approve of
the turn the conversation had taken.
“If
you will
excuse me, Mr. Deaver—”

“Beau,” he said. “And please, sit back down, Lady
T’Pina. Some kid’ll be screamin’ for attention soon
enough.”

“The children who scream are not always the ones
requiring attention,” she said, walking over to the soft-sided pens near the windows, where toddlers
played in the sunshine. She laid a thermometer patch
on each child’s forehead, checking his tag to deter
mine his normal temperature, for each of these chil
dren was unique. “And if you spent a year on Vulcan,
you should know that it is not proper to address me as
‘lady,’“ she added as Deaver followed and knelt
beside her.

“Ah … not yet. You are younger than I thought,
then,” he said, touching the cheek of a sleeping child
with the back of his hand. “That means you are even
braver than I thought. Why have you volunteered to
work in here, among us pariahs?” Automatically, he
collected toys the children had thrown out and dropped them back into the pens.

“The work needs to be done,” T’Pina explained. “I do not have the experience to be useful in the
laboratories under these emergency conditions.
Therefore—”

“Therefore you doubly risk your life?”

“I am protected.”

“Ziona almost pulled your mask off today.” A little
boy who looked to be mostly Tellarite held out his
arms and pleaded with soft cries. Deaver picked him
up, bounced him a little, laid his cheek against the
child’s, then tickled him into helpless giggles before
he put
him
back down in the pen.

“A thermometer is a much more accurate way to check for fever than touching a child,” T’Pina told
him.

“Not to
my
mum. Three different temperatures,
her, me dad, an’ me—an’ she could always tell when
t’start cookin’ up chicken soup. Plomeek soup to you,
ma’am.”

“I am familiar with the Human dish,” T’Pina told
him. “Like plomeek soup, folk wisdom traditionally
endowed it with great curative powers—and modern
medicine has shown that it is similarly antibiotic and
symptom specific. However—”

“T’Pina!”

Leyne Sweet, called “Sugar” by her Human friends,
was hurrying across the cafeteria, her posture and the
fact that she ignored the children who tried to attract
her attention telling T’Pina that she brought impor
tant news. Like T’Pina, Sugar was a volunteer here
because she didn’t yet have the experience to do the
other work of value in trying to stop the plague. And, like T’Pina, she was willing to do anything she could to preserve her home.

A lock of dark hair had escaped from beneath
Sugar’s protective cap and was falling into her eyes.

Just as she reached them, her hand rose automatically
to tuck the hair back. Both Beau Deaver and T’Pina
exclaimed, “No!” and reached to capture the errant hand just before it touched her bare forehead.

Deaver’s hand closed over T’Pina’s on Sugar’s
wrist. Even through the protective glove, she felt his
alien coolness—and with it an almost electric shock.

They stared at each other for one moment.

Sugar didn’t notice. “Oh, my God,” she whispered,
staring at her hand, spreading her fingers as T’Pina
and Deaver let their hands drop away. “Thank you,”
she said. Then she looked at T’Pina, whom she had
known all her life. They had grown up neighbors. “T’Pina, it’s your mother. She collapsed at her work —they think it’s the first or second strain, not the
third. She has a good chance of recovery, but—”

“I will go to her,” said T’Pina, every other thought gone instantly out of her mind.

The disease was now attacking T’Kar—the only family
T’Pina
had left.

Chapter Twenty-four

Sorel ran his medscanner over T’Kar. She had a
soaring fever, but otherwise her readings were nor
mal. “Do you have pain?” he asked.

“I can control,” she replied.

“We will administer a broad-spectrum antiviral agent, and then I will help you achieve healing trance.”

T’Kar nodded weakly. She was a nurse; she under
stood the dangers of the trance under these condi
tions.

There were no diagnostic beds available; they were
all in use by patients currently in critical condition. If
it turned out T’Kar had contracted Strain B, she
would not be in any danger for three more days, and
her strength would be enhanced if she spent those
days in healing trance.

Without the diagnostic bed, however, there would
be no warning if she went into systemic failure before
the time it was to be expected. AH patients in this wing would be routinely scanned every hour; there were not enough nurses or technicians to do it more
often.

If her heart or lungs failed, though, T’Kar would die
in minutes, for no Vulcan could come out of healing
trance by himself. For that reason, healers always put
patients in healing trance into automatic diagnostic
units.

And … what if T’Kar’s illness were not Strain A or
B as it appeared? She had been working for days
among the Nisus residents of mixed heritage—what if
this were some new strain, masking itself in the early
symptoms of less dangerous ones? The pathology laboratory was hopelessly backlogged; it would be hours before any report came on T’Kar’s culture.

Sorel found that logic did not govern his reaction to
T’Kar’s illness. He had come to know her better on the journey here, found her interesting and intelli
gent, seen her handle her daughter’s newfound matu
rity with wisdom and sensitivity. He liked the
daughter, too: well controlled for one so young, yet
neither cold nor distant.

Sorel’s own youth was long past—but as time
healed the wound of T’Zan’s death, he rediscovered
feelings he had once known with his wife. They
focused on T’Kar. She was not an ordinary patient to him; he was as concerned as if she were a member of
his family.

If T’Kar had lived on Vulcan, and if these had been ordinary times rather than the middle of an epidemic,
it would have been entirely logical for Sorel to pursue
his acquaintance with T’Kar. A healer, a nurse; a
widower, a widow; both from Ancient Families; both
with their children grown and educated. It was an
entirely suitable match. In ordinary times, if both had
been residents of Vulcan, their friends and families
would have been arranging every possible means of
bringing them together.

But the times were not ordinary.

More important, T’Kar would stay here where her
work was, where her daughter was, on Nisus. Eventu
ally, Sorel would return to Vulcan.

And
…
he had other patients, and other duties
beyond patient care. He stood, saying, “I will be back
as soon as all your tests have been completed.”

But before he could leave, T’Pina entered, swathed
as Sorel was in protective garb. But so had T’Kar
been.

If it were Strain A or B, chances were she had
caught it while off-duty, indicating that their precau
tions within the hospital were sufficient. But if it were
not—

“Healer,” T’Pina politely acknowledged Sorel, but her attention was on T’Kar. “I am here, Mother.”

“I am pleased thou hast come, child. I am comforted by thy presence,” T’Kar said.

Sorel had been about to leave them to their privacy,
but at T’Kar’s tone and language he turned. The formal phrasing indicated that T’Kar gave great im
portance to the simple words—as if they might be her
last. Something was wrong.

Long years of medical experience told Sorel. Filial
affection told T’Pina; he saw it in her eyes as she looked at him, then back to her mother.

The younger woman put her gloved hand on her mother’s arm. “Healer!” she exclaimed. “Scan her!”

He was already halfway across the room, scanner
out.

T’Kar’s temperature was four degrees below Vulcan
normal and dropping! Her eyes had lost their fever brightness, and their blue seemed to drain away to
gray even as he watched.

“Mother!” T’Pina gasped.

The scanner showed her heart laboring, faltering.

They could see her gasping for breath, growing
weaker—

Sorel hit the Code Blue button on the wall, then
turned to his patient, pushing her onto her side so he
could gain compression, as he had not so much as a
portable stimulator. CPR was much more difficult on
a Vulcan than a Human, for the heart did not lie
conveniently beneath the sternum.

The green flush had died out of T’Kar’s face; it
paled to waxen yellow. She passed out and stopped
breathing.

“No!” T’Pina cried. “Mother! Mother, don’t die!”

With the hospital so overcrowded and equipment limited, patients like T’Kar, who appeared noncriti
cal, were placed in rooms with minimal equipment.
Sorel had routinely taken inventory of the room’s
supplies when he had entered; he already knew there
was no breathing mask. T’Pina wasted no time
searching elsewhere: she tore off her protective mask
and put her mouth to her mother’s, forcing air into
her lungs even as Sorel exclaimed, “T’Pina—no!”

Between breaths, T’Pina raised her head and said,
“I won’t let her die!”

It was too late. T’Pina had exposed herself to this
new strain of the plague. Sorel continued to pump
T’Kar’s heart while T’Pina breathed for her.

The resuscitation team arrived. A Human, a Vul
can, and a Tellarite, they grasped T’Kar with the ease
of long practice, laid her in the unit, and while the Human and the Tellarite attached the controls, the
Vulcan calibrated the instrumentation to Vulcan
norms.