Before
Dr Jude Foy was only thirty years old, but despite this the rigors of war meant that he was already the chief medical officer of a starship, in this instance the USS Kilimanjaro.
Of course the same rigors that had elevated him in rank before his time had also kept the Ambassador Class starship from her date with the Qualor II orbital depository. She was old, but she could still fight, and right now that was all that mattered.
He was a tall man, and had always been on the slim side, but the stresses of spending practically every day patching up phaser and knife wounds had exacerbated this still further, leaving him somewhat emaciated, despite the fact that he ate well: the very embodiment of sinewy. Similarly stress had taken what remained of his hair, although in fairness his baldness had more to do with lineage than the war, he just preferred to blame the Dominion over genetics.
It was fourteen thirty hours, and he was on his way to sickbay to begin his shift. He’d been awake for fifteen minutes, and prior to that had slept for all of three hours. He felt surprisingly awake, those three hours had been the most sleep he’d had in one sitting since the Kilimanjaro had arrived in orbit of Byrne VII, a rough little planet on the edge of the front line, where even now Federation and Klingon troops battled to evict the planet’s Jem’Hadar tenants.
Eviction was not proving easy.
He hadn’t seen a casualty report for 48 hours, suspecting Admiral Cadman was holding the information back because it was that bad, but it didn’t matter, Jude knew things weren’t rosy even without it.
Triage was being done down on the ground, with the wounded being split into three categories. Those who couldn’t be moved, or who were easily treated, stayed with the front line medical teams. Similarly the ones who couldn’t be helped, who were fatally wounded.
He didn’t envy the nurses and field medics assigned to palliative care.
The second group were the badly wounded who could be moved. These went to the Pasteur, the dedicated hospital ship.
That left the third group, the injuries that were too serious to mend down on the planet, but which were still relatively easy to treat. This group came to the Kilimanjaro.
Or the Konveyer-manjaro as he’d heard it put by more than one soldier. It was true; their job was to patch people up enough to get back to the fight…nothing more. He didn’t like it…but war offered little alternative.
The nature of the patients shuttled or transported up to his sickbays meant that they were often fully conscious, and therefore a lot more trouble than their more badly wounded comrades.
The moment the doors opened he heard it. An agonised wail of rage that seemed never ending. He winced as he stepped into chaos. People lay everywhere, as Doctors and nurses worked to save eyes, limbs, and sometimes even just looks.
To his left nurse Reminiyi was working on the badly scarred face of a (far too) young Andorian woman. The girl was weeping softly, while Reminiyi ran a dermal regenerator over her ruined face. It wasn’t working too well. Damn Dominion weapons…
He passed a Vulcan who lay serenely staring at the ceiling as a surgeon used a laser scalpel to remove his left leg.
If the Vulcan was being quiet, the Klingon warrior on the far bio-bed was being anything but, and it was his cry of rage that was echoing around the room, drowning out nearly every other sound.
Except, curiously, the cheerful whistle of Bren Kail as he worked to repair the tendons within the Klingon’s arm.
Despite the fact that the Kliingon’s scream seemed to be drilling into his brain, Jude smiled.
He sometimes thought the gangling Bajoran kept him sane. No matter what was thrown at him he stayed calm. It was like his mind worked on a slightly different frequency to everyone else’s, which meant that sometimes he appeared scatty, disinterested, downright rude- unless you knew him well enough to realise it was just his way, and though forgetful he was a damn fine Doctor, he never forgot anything important.
Jude felt himself blush. He himself had sealed up a tiny micro sensor in an injured troopers hip two weeks previously. Luckily the mistake had been picked up by the transporter sensors as the man beamed down to rejoin his unit.
Bren was also surprisingly well turned out. Sure he looked scruffy, hardly surprising given how tall he was; the man was all arms and legs. Still he made the best of things, he was rarely clean-shaven, but his hair was always neat, and his uniform bereft of creases.
He tried, he cared, and he wasn’t about to let the suffering he saw daily get to him, he thought too much of his patients for that.
‘How’s it going?’ Jude asked now.
Bren stopped whistling. ‘What?’ he said looking up with a grin as the Klingon took a breath and began to howl again.
‘I said. How’s it going!’ Jude shouted.
‘Oh. Fine, just fine.’ He gestured to the Klingon. ‘Colonel Grang here is a model patient.’ He said it without a hint of irony.
‘Have you given him anything for the pain?’
Bren shook his head. ‘He isn’t screaming because of the pain, the medics dragged him away from battle and he wants to get back as soon as possible.’
Jude winced again as Colonel Grang’s cry went up a decibel. ‘Have you thought of sedating him while you finish?’
Bren laughed. ‘If I sedate him he won’t get back planet side for five hours. If I don’t he’ll be fighting again inside of two. He’s already pissed off at me, if I deprive him of three hour’s worth of battle he might kill me.’
Jude shook his head. ‘Ok, you’re the boss.’
Bren frowned. ‘I thought you were?’
‘Just a joke, Kail. Just a joke.’
‘Oh, right.’ Bren looked back down, then back up again. ‘Was there anything else?’
‘No,’ said Jude. ‘Just make sure you finish your shift the moment the Colonel is back on his feet.’
‘Oh I will,’ said Bren. ‘My husband’s calling later this afternoon, I won’t miss that.’ And he grinned.
Jude chuckled. Outside of medicine the only thing Bren was never forgetful about was communications from home, from his husband on Earth.
Jude bade him farewell and started towards where a new clutch of patients was being wheeled in. No rest for the wicked, he thought. I wonder if Elan knows how lucky he is, he thought. On every level…
* * *
Colonel Grang had leapt from the bio bed the moment Bren told him he was fit for duty, the grizzled old Klingon grabbing his bat’leth up from the floor- still coated in something pale that Bren assumed- hoped- was ketracel white. He almost decapitated nurse Hedges on the way out of sickbay, but suddenly all was quiet…or at least quieter.
Ten seconds later the doors opened again and a stretcher was wheeled in upon which a screaming human lay. The man had no arms, no legs.
* * *
For some walking away from your shift when there were still patients to treat was a guilt-inducing trauma, guaranteed to make you work another hour or two…or six…
Bren was too rational for that. People always took him for disorganised, but he could be quite logical. He knew that he’d done his bit, done his shift. He also knew exactly how tiredness would affect his abilities. In his mind’s eye he could see a graph detailing how error prone he would become, each extra minute reflected in a point a touch higher than the last.
That extra hour or two (or six) was ultimately self-defeating.
So, despite the pain he left behind, Bren was still whistling as he walked home to his quarters.
No, not home. Not really. Home was on Earth, a luxurious little apartment in Cadiz that looked out onto the Atlantic. The apartment he shared with his husband, Elan Solan. The apartment he hadn’t seen for three months, the husband he hadn’t seen for two (and all that that had been was a hastily planned two night stay at the K’Leth hotel on Yull that had morphed into a one night stay when Elan was called back to Starfleet Headquarters.)
Bren consoled himself that one way or another the war would eventually end, and even if the Federation lost…Well, so they’d live under a draconian rule, he didn’t mind. So long as he had Elan he’d live anywhere, suffer any hardship.
Back in his quarters he neatly folded his uniform and changed into a pair of jeans and a baggy t-shirt that he’d stolen from Elan a year ago and which, despite repeated washing, somehow still seemed to carry a hint of his lover’s scent.
Bren knew it was an olfactory illusion, but he didn’t care. He always felt closer to his husband when wearing it.
He sat down in front of the computer with a cup of mint tea and waited. Aboard ship it was 15:04, on Earth, in Cadiz, it would be early evening.
At 15:10 he began to smile. Any second now…
By 15:11 he knew Elan wasn’t going to call, the man was the most punctual person Bren had ever known.
He was disappointed, but this wasn’t the first time. Elan’s work was of vital importance to the war effort, he knew that, so he’d accept the odd missed call because he knew Elan was likely in a meeting, or delivering a briefing to the top brass.
He called up a recording of that last shore leave, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching his lover cavort around the pool on Yull.
‘My Viking,’ he whispered to the image of the well-built Blonde on screen.
He wasn’t actually a Viking, wasn’t even human- he was Trill- but he looked like a warrior of old, the kind if man who’d pillage a town and carry off a hapless virgin for later.
Bren smiled. They’d played that game more than once.
He was still smiling when he went to sleep at 18:00 hours.
Day
After all I’ve seen, all I’ve done. This is going to be the hardest thing, thought Jude Foy as he strode up to Bren’s door.
He knew he should be grateful at least that it was the woman beside him who would have to deliver the news.
Captain Helga Lindstrom was barely forty years old, but already her hay coloured hair was turning to grey, like straw coated with snow.
He didn’t envy her, but the fact that this weighed more on her shoulders didn’t make him feel a jot better.
‘Captain. Jude.’ Bren opened the door wearing a dressing gown and a broad grin. ‘I’m not in trouble am I?’
Jude couldn’t help it, he smiled. ‘No, Kail. You’re not in any trouble.’ And then he couldn’t fight it anymore, sorrow overcame him and he began to cry.
Bren’s smile faded. As out of phase as he could sometimes be, on this occasion he understood implicitly.
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No.’ It was less a word, more a plea.
* * *
‘It was the Breen,’ said Captain Lindstrom as the three of them sat stiffly on two sofas. ‘Nobody expected them to enter the war on the Dominion side, let alone launch a sneak attack on Starfleet headquarters. We were well and truly caught with our pants down.’
Bren was staring rigidly ahead, starting at the wall. ‘How many dead?’
‘Too many,’ said the Captain.
‘And Elan. They’re sure, really sure?’ and finally he looked at his Captain.
She nodded. ‘They’re sure.’
Jude silently prayed that Bren wouldn’t probe further. Later he would need to know how little of his husband had survived the attack, barely enough genetic material to fill a test tube. For now though it was enough that the man was dead.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lindstrom. The words sounded hollow, Jude knew she’d had to say them too many times. ‘Take as long as you need.’
Liar! The work screamed inside of his skull. Bren couldn’t take as long as he needed. The crew were stretched too thin; the battle down on Byrne VII was too bloody. Bren would need to be back at work, if not tomorrow then the day after at least.
As they finally left him, Jude hesitated in the doorway, looking back at the younger man who still stared at the wall.
‘If there’s anything I can do…’ he let the sentence hang. His words, he knew, were as hollow as Lindstom’s.
After
Jude’s shoulders ached. Two hours sleep could never be enough at the best of times, and right now wasn’t the best of times.
The stims he’d taken upon waking- against regulations but many a blind eye was shown in wartime- hadn’t begun to kick in yet. If they didn’t start to take effect in the next half an hour he had already decided to take two more.
Two things caught him by surprise as the doors to sickbay opened.
The first was how quiet it was. Well, quieter. There were still groans of pain, and one person in particular was crying out in agony.
But it was calmer than he’d seen it in weeks. Hell a couple of his nurses were actually managing to have a sit down and a conversation in the far corner.
The second thing that surprised him was that Bren Kail was at work.
‘Kail, what’s going on?’ he asked, having to raise his voice a little over the sobbing of the young human woman laid on the bio-bed before him. Bren was currently running a bone knitter over her left arm.
Bren looked up. ‘Ensign Leith fell and broke her arm when that Jem’Hadar fighter strafed us an hour ago.’
We were attacked? Thought Jude, and I never even noticed.
‘Anyway,’ Bren continued. ‘Turns out the ensign is pregnant, and the father is Bizallian.’ He shrugged ‘So I can’t use painkillers.’
Jude shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean about the Ensign, I meant what’s going on with you, here? You know we can live without you, for a day or two at least.’
Bren’s gaze dropped back to his task. ‘If I sit in my quarters I’ll go mad. I need this, need to be working.’ He looked up and forced a smile. ‘Business as usual.’
Except it wasn’t, Jude could see that. Oh the change was subtle, a crease in his uniform jacket, a few tufts of hair out of place, but the change was there.
And there was something else. Something his brain- addled by drugs and lack of sleep- couldn’t quite focus on, something missing but what…
‘I am ok, being here I mean. You don’t mind?’
Jude smiled, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. ‘It’s fine,’ he said, wishing he could order Bren back to his quarters with a sedative to help him sleep, wishing he could schedule multiple sessions with the ship’s counsellor (ha! As if they actually had one).
Of course he wished he could go back to bed, wished this bloody war had never started.
How did the phrase go, if wishes were horses beggars would ride.
He clasped Bren on the shoulder. ‘It’s fine. Just take it easy.’
And then he turned away and walked towards his office.
He’d gotten perhaps a half dozen steps when it hit him what was missing about Dr Bren Kail.
The young ensign was still crying out in pain.
But Bren wasn’t whistling.
Dr Jude Foy was only thirty years old, but despite this the rigors of war meant that he was already the chief medical officer of a starship, in this instance the USS Kilimanjaro.
Of course the same rigors that had elevated him in rank before his time had also kept the Ambassador Class starship from her date with the Qualor II orbital depository. She was old, but she could still fight, and right now that was all that mattered.
He was a tall man, and had always been on the slim side, but the stresses of spending practically every day patching up phaser and knife wounds had exacerbated this still further, leaving him somewhat emaciated, despite the fact that he ate well: the very embodiment of sinewy. Similarly stress had taken what remained of his hair, although in fairness his baldness had more to do with lineage than the war, he just preferred to blame the Dominion over genetics.
It was fourteen thirty hours, and he was on his way to sickbay to begin his shift. He’d been awake for fifteen minutes, and prior to that had slept for all of three hours. He felt surprisingly awake, those three hours had been the most sleep he’d had in one sitting since the Kilimanjaro had arrived in orbit of Byrne VII, a rough little planet on the edge of the front line, where even now Federation and Klingon troops battled to evict the planet’s Jem’Hadar tenants.
Eviction was not proving easy.
He hadn’t seen a casualty report for 48 hours, suspecting Admiral Cadman was holding the information back because it was that bad, but it didn’t matter, Jude knew things weren’t rosy even without it.
Triage was being done down on the ground, with the wounded being split into three categories. Those who couldn’t be moved, or who were easily treated, stayed with the front line medical teams. Similarly the ones who couldn’t be helped, who were fatally wounded.
He didn’t envy the nurses and field medics assigned to palliative care.
The second group were the badly wounded who could be moved. These went to the Pasteur, the dedicated hospital ship.
That left the third group, the injuries that were too serious to mend down on the planet, but which were still relatively easy to treat. This group came to the Kilimanjaro.
Or the Konveyer-manjaro as he’d heard it put by more than one soldier. It was true; their job was to patch people up enough to get back to the fight…nothing more. He didn’t like it…but war offered little alternative.
The nature of the patients shuttled or transported up to his sickbays meant that they were often fully conscious, and therefore a lot more trouble than their more badly wounded comrades.
The moment the doors opened he heard it. An agonised wail of rage that seemed never ending. He winced as he stepped into chaos. People lay everywhere, as Doctors and nurses worked to save eyes, limbs, and sometimes even just looks.
To his left nurse Reminiyi was working on the badly scarred face of a (far too) young Andorian woman. The girl was weeping softly, while Reminiyi ran a dermal regenerator over her ruined face. It wasn’t working too well. Damn Dominion weapons…
He passed a Vulcan who lay serenely staring at the ceiling as a surgeon used a laser scalpel to remove his left leg.
If the Vulcan was being quiet, the Klingon warrior on the far bio-bed was being anything but, and it was his cry of rage that was echoing around the room, drowning out nearly every other sound.
Except, curiously, the cheerful whistle of Bren Kail as he worked to repair the tendons within the Klingon’s arm.
Despite the fact that the Kliingon’s scream seemed to be drilling into his brain, Jude smiled.
He sometimes thought the gangling Bajoran kept him sane. No matter what was thrown at him he stayed calm. It was like his mind worked on a slightly different frequency to everyone else’s, which meant that sometimes he appeared scatty, disinterested, downright rude- unless you knew him well enough to realise it was just his way, and though forgetful he was a damn fine Doctor, he never forgot anything important.
Jude felt himself blush. He himself had sealed up a tiny micro sensor in an injured troopers hip two weeks previously. Luckily the mistake had been picked up by the transporter sensors as the man beamed down to rejoin his unit.
Bren was also surprisingly well turned out. Sure he looked scruffy, hardly surprising given how tall he was; the man was all arms and legs. Still he made the best of things, he was rarely clean-shaven, but his hair was always neat, and his uniform bereft of creases.
He tried, he cared, and he wasn’t about to let the suffering he saw daily get to him, he thought too much of his patients for that.
‘How’s it going?’ Jude asked now.
Bren stopped whistling. ‘What?’ he said looking up with a grin as the Klingon took a breath and began to howl again.
‘I said. How’s it going!’ Jude shouted.
‘Oh. Fine, just fine.’ He gestured to the Klingon. ‘Colonel Grang here is a model patient.’ He said it without a hint of irony.
‘Have you given him anything for the pain?’
Bren shook his head. ‘He isn’t screaming because of the pain, the medics dragged him away from battle and he wants to get back as soon as possible.’
Jude winced again as Colonel Grang’s cry went up a decibel. ‘Have you thought of sedating him while you finish?’
Bren laughed. ‘If I sedate him he won’t get back planet side for five hours. If I don’t he’ll be fighting again inside of two. He’s already pissed off at me, if I deprive him of three hour’s worth of battle he might kill me.’
Jude shook his head. ‘Ok, you’re the boss.’
Bren frowned. ‘I thought you were?’
‘Just a joke, Kail. Just a joke.’
‘Oh, right.’ Bren looked back down, then back up again. ‘Was there anything else?’
‘No,’ said Jude. ‘Just make sure you finish your shift the moment the Colonel is back on his feet.’
‘Oh I will,’ said Bren. ‘My husband’s calling later this afternoon, I won’t miss that.’ And he grinned.
Jude chuckled. Outside of medicine the only thing Bren was never forgetful about was communications from home, from his husband on Earth.
Jude bade him farewell and started towards where a new clutch of patients was being wheeled in. No rest for the wicked, he thought. I wonder if Elan knows how lucky he is, he thought. On every level…
* * *
Colonel Grang had leapt from the bio bed the moment Bren told him he was fit for duty, the grizzled old Klingon grabbing his bat’leth up from the floor- still coated in something pale that Bren assumed- hoped- was ketracel white. He almost decapitated nurse Hedges on the way out of sickbay, but suddenly all was quiet…or at least quieter.
Ten seconds later the doors opened again and a stretcher was wheeled in upon which a screaming human lay. The man had no arms, no legs.
* * *
For some walking away from your shift when there were still patients to treat was a guilt-inducing trauma, guaranteed to make you work another hour or two…or six…
Bren was too rational for that. People always took him for disorganised, but he could be quite logical. He knew that he’d done his bit, done his shift. He also knew exactly how tiredness would affect his abilities. In his mind’s eye he could see a graph detailing how error prone he would become, each extra minute reflected in a point a touch higher than the last.
That extra hour or two (or six) was ultimately self-defeating.
So, despite the pain he left behind, Bren was still whistling as he walked home to his quarters.
No, not home. Not really. Home was on Earth, a luxurious little apartment in Cadiz that looked out onto the Atlantic. The apartment he shared with his husband, Elan Solan. The apartment he hadn’t seen for three months, the husband he hadn’t seen for two (and all that that had been was a hastily planned two night stay at the K’Leth hotel on Yull that had morphed into a one night stay when Elan was called back to Starfleet Headquarters.)
Bren consoled himself that one way or another the war would eventually end, and even if the Federation lost…Well, so they’d live under a draconian rule, he didn’t mind. So long as he had Elan he’d live anywhere, suffer any hardship.
Back in his quarters he neatly folded his uniform and changed into a pair of jeans and a baggy t-shirt that he’d stolen from Elan a year ago and which, despite repeated washing, somehow still seemed to carry a hint of his lover’s scent.
Bren knew it was an olfactory illusion, but he didn’t care. He always felt closer to his husband when wearing it.
He sat down in front of the computer with a cup of mint tea and waited. Aboard ship it was 15:04, on Earth, in Cadiz, it would be early evening.
At 15:10 he began to smile. Any second now…
By 15:11 he knew Elan wasn’t going to call, the man was the most punctual person Bren had ever known.
He was disappointed, but this wasn’t the first time. Elan’s work was of vital importance to the war effort, he knew that, so he’d accept the odd missed call because he knew Elan was likely in a meeting, or delivering a briefing to the top brass.
He called up a recording of that last shore leave, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching his lover cavort around the pool on Yull.
‘My Viking,’ he whispered to the image of the well-built Blonde on screen.
He wasn’t actually a Viking, wasn’t even human- he was Trill- but he looked like a warrior of old, the kind if man who’d pillage a town and carry off a hapless virgin for later.
Bren smiled. They’d played that game more than once.
He was still smiling when he went to sleep at 18:00 hours.
Day
After all I’ve seen, all I’ve done. This is going to be the hardest thing, thought Jude Foy as he strode up to Bren’s door.
He knew he should be grateful at least that it was the woman beside him who would have to deliver the news.
Captain Helga Lindstrom was barely forty years old, but already her hay coloured hair was turning to grey, like straw coated with snow.
He didn’t envy her, but the fact that this weighed more on her shoulders didn’t make him feel a jot better.
‘Captain. Jude.’ Bren opened the door wearing a dressing gown and a broad grin. ‘I’m not in trouble am I?’
Jude couldn’t help it, he smiled. ‘No, Kail. You’re not in any trouble.’ And then he couldn’t fight it anymore, sorrow overcame him and he began to cry.
Bren’s smile faded. As out of phase as he could sometimes be, on this occasion he understood implicitly.
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No.’ It was less a word, more a plea.
* * *
‘It was the Breen,’ said Captain Lindstrom as the three of them sat stiffly on two sofas. ‘Nobody expected them to enter the war on the Dominion side, let alone launch a sneak attack on Starfleet headquarters. We were well and truly caught with our pants down.’
Bren was staring rigidly ahead, starting at the wall. ‘How many dead?’
‘Too many,’ said the Captain.
‘And Elan. They’re sure, really sure?’ and finally he looked at his Captain.
She nodded. ‘They’re sure.’
Jude silently prayed that Bren wouldn’t probe further. Later he would need to know how little of his husband had survived the attack, barely enough genetic material to fill a test tube. For now though it was enough that the man was dead.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lindstrom. The words sounded hollow, Jude knew she’d had to say them too many times. ‘Take as long as you need.’
Liar! The work screamed inside of his skull. Bren couldn’t take as long as he needed. The crew were stretched too thin; the battle down on Byrne VII was too bloody. Bren would need to be back at work, if not tomorrow then the day after at least.
As they finally left him, Jude hesitated in the doorway, looking back at the younger man who still stared at the wall.
‘If there’s anything I can do…’ he let the sentence hang. His words, he knew, were as hollow as Lindstom’s.
After
Jude’s shoulders ached. Two hours sleep could never be enough at the best of times, and right now wasn’t the best of times.
The stims he’d taken upon waking- against regulations but many a blind eye was shown in wartime- hadn’t begun to kick in yet. If they didn’t start to take effect in the next half an hour he had already decided to take two more.
Two things caught him by surprise as the doors to sickbay opened.
The first was how quiet it was. Well, quieter. There were still groans of pain, and one person in particular was crying out in agony.
But it was calmer than he’d seen it in weeks. Hell a couple of his nurses were actually managing to have a sit down and a conversation in the far corner.
The second thing that surprised him was that Bren Kail was at work.
‘Kail, what’s going on?’ he asked, having to raise his voice a little over the sobbing of the young human woman laid on the bio-bed before him. Bren was currently running a bone knitter over her left arm.
Bren looked up. ‘Ensign Leith fell and broke her arm when that Jem’Hadar fighter strafed us an hour ago.’
We were attacked? Thought Jude, and I never even noticed.
‘Anyway,’ Bren continued. ‘Turns out the ensign is pregnant, and the father is Bizallian.’ He shrugged ‘So I can’t use painkillers.’
Jude shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean about the Ensign, I meant what’s going on with you, here? You know we can live without you, for a day or two at least.’
Bren’s gaze dropped back to his task. ‘If I sit in my quarters I’ll go mad. I need this, need to be working.’ He looked up and forced a smile. ‘Business as usual.’
Except it wasn’t, Jude could see that. Oh the change was subtle, a crease in his uniform jacket, a few tufts of hair out of place, but the change was there.
And there was something else. Something his brain- addled by drugs and lack of sleep- couldn’t quite focus on, something missing but what…
‘I am ok, being here I mean. You don’t mind?’
Jude smiled, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. ‘It’s fine,’ he said, wishing he could order Bren back to his quarters with a sedative to help him sleep, wishing he could schedule multiple sessions with the ship’s counsellor (ha! As if they actually had one).
Of course he wished he could go back to bed, wished this bloody war had never started.
How did the phrase go, if wishes were horses beggars would ride.
He clasped Bren on the shoulder. ‘It’s fine. Just take it easy.’
And then he turned away and walked towards his office.
He’d gotten perhaps a half dozen steps when it hit him what was missing about Dr Bren Kail.
The young ensign was still crying out in pain.
But Bren wasn’t whistling.
