EPI S [Day 03 | 2330hrs.] Lay Your Weary Head To Rest

June 04, 2026, 04:26:16 AM

[Lieutenant Alistair Leavitt Intensive Care Unit | Main Sickbay | Deck 11 | USS Theurgy ] @Ellen Fitz @RyeTanker

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As Alistair moved around the ship, dealing with various tasks, he couldn't help but notice an malaise. Everything had changed, and processing the events of the past few days was proving difficult for many. Some of the more recent members of the crew were cheerful, all smiles, while the older crew were more cautious, uncertain\, as if they were just waiting for everything to go crazy all over again. Alistair, meanwhile, was tired. Just tired. It was a bone deep level of exhaustion. The body was fine, but the spirit was flagging. He just wanted rest, for it all to be done. He'd done enough, right? Couldn't it be enough? Would it ever be enough?

Thus occupied. Alistair was a tad out of it as he entered Sickbay, needing a moment to remember why he was here. A nurse looked at him in askance, but he held up a hand with a polite smile. Right. He remembered now. Alistair walked over to the recovery ward, with many of the beds occupied, most of the lights dimmed to help the patients sleep. Fortunately, the light above one particular bed was still on as the patient, a middle-aged woman with long blonde hair, typed lazily on an LCARS board that wrapped around her. Standing at the threshold of the ward, Alistair hesitated. There was something wrong with that image...something...

A bloodcurdling scream came through the comns, followed by shouting, disagreement, more shouting, more screaming.
"It's Conway! She's been...damn, cover me! Medic! She's lost her-"

Alistair hadn't been there, hadn't had the time to check on Conway. Now, he finally knew what she had lost: much of her right arm. His stomach squirmed. Nevertheless, with a deep breath, he walked up to her, and she clocked him immediately.

"Hi," she said brightly. Too brightly.

"Hi," Alistair said awkwardly, careful to keep his voice low.. "So...uh... "

"You look great?" Yvette said with a grin. "It's alright, boss. You don't need to do the whole rigamorole, you aren't my first boss to check on me. Oh, that, uh, thing earlier-"

"Real," Alistair said with a shrug, "I saw the president myself. I don't know much else, sorry. We're all adjusting to Captain Ives not being here."

Yvette shifted a little, pulling back up. "I guess a lot's been happening, huh? Hey, have you seen Lieutenant Zark yet?"

That threw Alistair off, swiping his hand over his bald scalp. "What? You mean she's here?" At Yvette's nod, Alistair's eyes widened in alarm. "That can't...I saw the casualty reports from Hobus, she wasn't-"

"She was hurt afterwards," Yvettle explained gently. "I don't know when or how bad, but she's in the ICU right now, if you want to check on her."

"Right. Yeah," Alistair said, clearly still processing. He hesitated, feeling a moment of real shock and guilt. Why hadn't he checked? Why hadn't he confirmed-

"Lieutenant Leavitt?" Yvette interrupted quietly with a small smile. "Please get to the ICU before I ask Security to carry you there."

Alistair smiled back, nodded in gratitude, then promptly strode over to the ICU, immediately identifying Zark. Unlike Yvette's biobed, Zark's space was packed with innumerable sensors and other medical equipment, all monitoring the patient. Lying on her back, unconscious or worse, Zark looked smaller, more vulnerable than her usual aggressive charm. Her white hair was a mess, a gown and blanket protecting Zark's (non-existent) modesty. Alistair looked up at the monitors, but struggled to parse them, save that Zark was in bad shape.

He sighed, hating seeing the normally vivacious Andorian like this. It just felt...wrong. Completely wrong.

Re: EPI S [Day 03 | 2330hrs.] Lay Your Weary Head To Rest

Reply #1 – June 13, 2026, 02:44:16 AM

[ Lt. Enyd Isolde Madsen | Intensive Care Unit | Sickbay | Deck 11 | USS Theurgy ] @RyeTanker @Griff

The corridor outside Sickbay had that particular quiet that meant the worst of it was over, and nobody had decided yet what came next. Enyd stood at the entrance a moment longer than she needed to. Her PADD was still in her hand — she'd been reading orders off it in the turbolift and hadn't put it away, which meant she'd been holding it for twenty minutes. She tucked it under her arm.

The nurse at the front station looked up. Enyd held up a hand. The nurse settled back. She moved into the ward slowly. Most of the lights were dimmed for the patients sleeping, which meant she had to read the name tags at the foot of each bed by the low glow of the biobed monitors. She'd already pulled the casualty reports. She knew most of what she'd find here. Knowing and seeing were different operations and she was doing both now, one bed at a time.

Callax. She stopped. Asleep, or close enough. Biobed steady. She stood there for a beat, filed him under alive and in the right place, and made her feet move. She did that four more times. Four more names she knew. By the time she reached the ICU threshold, her jaw ached, which meant she'd been holding it tight.

She saw Alistair before he heard her. The set of his shoulders told her enough. She crossed to him and put her arms around him from behind, pressed her face between his shoulder blades, pressing her face between his shoulder blades and held on. Then she looked up and saw Zark. Her arms tightened.

"She pushed me." Her voice came out wrong — too thin, too careful, the voice she used when she was managing something her face hadn't caught up to yet. "On Donatra's ship. There was a blast and she—" She stopped. The monitors cycled. Something beeped once and went quiet. "I didn't see it coming."

Zark lay on her back, smaller than she had any right to look, the white hair spread wrong against the pillow. Enyd had watched Zark laugh that morning. She was almost certain it had been that morning.

"The infiltration team got to the weapon. Just before Donatra triggered it." Her thumb moved against Alistair's arm without her deciding it would. "Which she did. Trigger it. And then when it didn't fire she—" A short exhale. "Ritual suicide. Rather than deal with losing." She thought about Donatra's face in those last seconds. She thought about the underground leader who had gone the same way. "Both of them. Their own hands." She wasn't sure if she was talking to Alistair or working it out. "I keep thinking about whether there was a version where I—"

She let it go. There wasn't, or if there was, she hadn't found it in time. She pressed her mouth to the base of his neck and stayed there for a moment, breathing. Then she moved to stand beside him, her shoulder against his arm, and looked at Zark's still face.

"How are you holding up?" The question was directed to Alistair, but she had an inner hope that Zark would miraculously wake up in that moment to answer her.