The pain woke me. Every breath shot like fire away from my middle. I smelled the odd mix of antiseptics and bad food that told me I was in a hospital, as if the bland paint job and medical equipment weren't a dead giveaway. The tasteful Patrol logo on the sheets was depressing. It meant I was still in the Patrol. I expected Lowell to show up sooner rather than later. People talked outside the door, muffled and distorted.
I breathed through another burst of pain. What was my last conscious memory?
Sunlight and clouds, birds soaring into multicolored rainbows breaking into silver light.
No, that couldn't be right. That had to have been induced by drugs. I had the grandfather of all pain patch hangovers.
"You're finally awake, Admiral," a cheerful voice called from the door. "How are you feeling?" An incredibly happy medic loomed over me. He was big, all muscles and teeth. "Admiral?"
I closed my eyes. Still in the Patrol or they wouldn't be calling me Admiral.
I'd enlisted as an admiral. Lowell hadn't given me a choice. I had to go back to Trythia to rescue Tayvis. Only he'd died. Lowell hadn't let me resign afterwards. He'd ordered me to Tivor.
The medic bustled around the room, checking monitors and wires. He loomed over me again as the bed rumbled into a more upright position.
"Thirsty?"
He didn't wait for my answer. He jammed a straw between my lips. I pulled in a mouthful of thick fluid before I could think not to. It was a protein replenishment drink that the Patrol concocted as a supplement for injured personnel. The taste was sweet and tart and cloying all at once. I gagged down the single mouthful then spit the straw out.
The medic smiled his cardboard smile. "You'll feel better if you can get it down."
"No, I won't."
Opening my mouth was a mistake. He got the straw in before I could clamp it closed. It hurt too much to try to fight him. I gave in and swallowed the nasty stuff.
As I suspected, it was drugged. My whole body went limp. My mind drifted away into fuzzy places. I was vaguely aware of the medic pulling the sheet back and checking my side. The pain was there, bright and hot and stabbing, but I couldn't do anything about it.
I dozed for while.
The light was different when I woke again, the reddish glow of sunset painted a stripe across my wall. The sounds in the hall told me dinner hour was well underway.
The medic came back and fussed around me for a while before forcing more of the sticky drink down my throat.
I dreamed of a great bird, with fire for wings, that flew in front of me through space. I reached to catch it, calling desperately for it to wait. But the bird never heard. It kept flying, faster and faster, until it was a blur in the distance, a burning light that became a blinking indicator on the equipment next to my head.
I blinked, drowsy and muzzy and restless. It was the middle of the night. The halls were dark. I heard only quiet murmurs, blurred by distance and walls.
Machines beeped on both sides of the bed. I shifted, wincing at the pain shooting from my side. A thick layer of bandaging covered me from my ribs to my hipbone. It hurt just to brush across my side. I didn't try to peel it up to see why. I wasn't that stupid.
My door swung open. A medic, a woman this time, let herself in the room when she saw me awake. She shut the door behind herself.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, with none of the toothy smiles the other medic had used on me.
"Lousy."
"That's to be expected. According to your charts," she bent over me, checking the monitors on the equipment, "you had a bad reaction to the medgel they used. And to the regen unit you were plugged into." She made notes on a hand pad then tucked it into her pocket. "They kept switching you back and forth, in the medunit until you started reacting, then in a regen unit until you reacted there, then back into the medunit. You spent a day or so in a bed every few days, letting the drugs wear off. I've never seen anything quite like it. You had half the staff coming by for updates several times a day. Good teaching experience for the ones aiming to be xeno medics. Your profile showed human, but I'm beginning to wonder."
"So I'm a freakshow for the Patrol?" It was like waking up naked in the middle of a crowded room with people staring at you, not that I've ever done that.
Her smile faded around the edges. She messed with one of the machines next to me. "No, your situation was unique, at least as far as our records show. Sorry about invading your privacy, Admiral, but watching you may have saved lives in the future."
She reached for the bandage on my side. I flinched away.
"You want more pain meds?"
"No." If they pushed any more drugs into my system, I was going to have a headache for the next year.
"You're obviously in pain. There are no medals for being stupid."
"Which is why I don't want more drugs. Half the pain is overload from taking pain meds too long. They aren't going to help me much at this point."
She studied me, her eyebrows knit into a single line. She finally shrugged and started disconnecting wires.
"You don't need these any more." She removed several sticky patches from my arms. She turned machines off and wheeled them away from my bed.
"What time is it?"
"Just past four in the morning." It was completely true, but totally unhelpful.
"Where am I?"
"Room one seventeen, eighth floor."
"What planet?"
She stopped messing with the equipment. "Do you know your name?"
"I know my name."
"Well?"
"Dace. Happy?"
"Are you?"
"Are you some kind of psych tech here to see if I'm completely nuts?"
"Are you?"
I exercised my extensive vocabulary of profanity. Her eyebrows crept up her forehead.
She suddenly laughed. "They said you were different. Nobody warned me just how different. I haven't heard that kind of language since we had the head engineer in here from the Endeavour. Some cadet left the engine drive unit hot while he was checking it. He spent a week regrowing skin over burns."
"Was his name Sandover?"
"You know him?" She started on the other bank of equipment. The tension in the room dropped dramatically.
"I was on that flight. I wasn't the cadet who left the drive unit on."
"That was only seven years back," she said, watching me as she unplugged equipment. "Were you his assistant?"
"Engineering Cadet."
"How did you make Admiral in less than seven years? The Patrol, unlike some branches of the government, does not sell commissions."
"It's a long story." I had no idea how much of it was classified. I wondered what she'd say if she knew I'd enlisted at that rank.
"You want to try walking around?" she asked when the room was clear.
"Just to the bathroom," I told her.
"Then let's go."
It took me half an hour to make it the eight feet to the bathroom and back to the bed. My legs wouldn't work right. My coordination was nonexistent. I was weak and trembling long before she helped me back into bed. I'd been a lot sicker than I thought.
"So what planet am I on?" I asked while she pulled the sheet back over me, straightening edges.
"Besht. I heard about the stasis unit they brought you in. Must have been some action."
"I was on Tivor." My eyes were already starting to close. If I lay perfectly still, the pain was bearable. "I think someone shot me."
"Point blank. It's a wonder you're alive."
I didn't answer. Her last words echoed in my head as I slid into sleep.