Arys glanced up from the PADD she had reread often enough to resent it, and raised the cup of now-cold coffee to her lips. Quence had prepared it for her. She didn’t remember half the description he’d given, only that it had sounded vaguely like a rebuke for usually drinking the replicated coffee like every other medical officer in the history of Starfleet.

At the time, she had thought this was his way of making their arrangement work.
And, apparently, it was. Just not how she had naively imagined.

​She let her gaze wander through Quence’s office, wondering whether he’d have decorated the wall with a baroque self-portrait if the certificates and accreditations hadn’t already taken up all available space. Probably.

She had never been here before. She had never felt a particular urge to be here, either.

But here she was, sipping cold coffee and re-reading the same notes over and over while Quence sat at his desk, reviewing everything else Doctor T’vor had provided.​

“Doctor Quence.” Arys tried again. She had stopped counting.

Quence glanced at her once. Like she was an intruder.

​Which was deeply unfair, considering he had invited her here. Or, rather, he had declined the invitation to her office and the compromise of using one of the general science labs. And when Arys had asked him for a counter suggestion, she’d failed to negotiate.

Big mistake.​

She gave the comparative study on patient outcomes another glance. Whatever else she thought about the device, the results were difficult to dismiss: higher memory retention, more stable affect regulation, reduced PTSD prevalence, and faster recovery.

If she could see the technical specifications, perhaps they could develop something similar…

​“Doctor Quence.”

​This time, he didn’t even look at her.

“Avery,” Arys said.

A calculated step too far. But it got his attention. And the glare she had expected.

“Yes, Doctor Trovek,” he said, managing to turn the honorific into both correction and insult.

​“I would very much like to review the technical specifications,” Arys said. “Otherwise, I can’t determine how safe removal will be, or at what stage of the healing process.”

“I can handle it,” Quence muttered.

“I have no doubt.” Arys straightened in her chair. “But I want to see for myself. The final recommendation will come from me.”

​Quence didn’t respond. At least not immediately. Instead, he held up a hand and finished inputting whatever he was working on into the computer.

Then, in his own time, he turned fully to her.

“The final recommendation?” he asked.

“On the healing process,” Arys added. And, after a brief pause. “Of Captain Corrin.” Another pause. “The patient this is about.”

Quence blinked as if the detail had only just been introduced. Then he waved his hand dismissively.

“Of course. I will gladly defer to your expertise on sickbay matters.”

“Right.” Arys pressed. “And in order to do that, I need to be able to look at the information.” She drew in another breath. “The information provided to me, for this exact purpose.”

Quence seemed to consider this and, eventually, gave a reluctant nod. He made a few adjustments to his screen, then uploaded the data – and only that – onto a PADD which he slid across the desk toward her.

“Go ahead,” he offered lightly, before returning the rest of his attention to his own work.

Arys reached for the PADD and found herself wondering, not for the first time, how often Quence worked with other people. She remembered several complaints from their time aboard the Olympic. Now she wondered if his territorial behaviour had caused them, or resulted from them.

No matter. Best to get this over with.

And once she started reading, the material absorbed her so completely that everything else faded into the background.

Because it was familiar. In the worst way possible.

​

Burkhard waited until the doors to the recovery ward slid shut behind her before she turned to Doctor T’vor. “They will press again.”

“Yes.”​

“Their position is not irrational,” she said.

“It is not.” T’vor inclined his head.

That, Burkhard thought, was technically correct. And entirely unhelpful. “From where they stand, the question is not about recovery alone. They have a closing interval in which to return Captain Corrin without carrying the contamination of foreign medical hardware into their own timeline.”​

“From where I stand, it is not a transport question, it’s a medical one,” T’vor said. “They are asking for a medical intervention to be precluded before the patient is sufficiently recovered to evaluate the consequences.”

​Burkhard’s mouth tightened. Not in disagreement. “If you woke him now, do you consider him capable of informed decision making?”

​“Not with sufficient continuity, no.”​

She nodded once. She had expected the answer. Still, hearing it stated so plainly confirmed just how thin a line she was walking.
“Doctor Trovek appears to believe we intend to keep the device in place against his will,” T’vor said thoughtfully, though his expression remained neutral.

“Appears?”​

“She was hard to read.”

“They all are.” Burkhard gave him a sideways glance. “Could you put her concerns to rest?”

“I don’t believe so.” T’vor shook his head. “It is a regrettable outcome of her visit here, but not unexpected. Neither does it alter the situation meaningfully. We are declining to treat an unstable transport preference as decisive while the injury state remains active.”

“We are.” Burkhard nodded. “The alternative is to permit urgency external to the patient to determine the threshold at which consent becomes valid.” A pause. “They won’t understand. The delay will be read as a threat. They will resent us.”

​T’vor absorbed that in silence. When eventually he spoke, his voice was firm. “Resentment is not a clinically relevant metric.”​

“No.” Burkhard shook her head. “But it is a command-relevant one. They will argue that Captain Corrin didn’t consent to the treatment in the first place.”

​“That does not void honoring it now. He was in neurological collapse.” T’vor said. Not because Burkhard needed to hear it. The repetition was not for information; it was for structure. “Without intervention, there would have been no future consent to consider.”

​Burkhard glanced at the biobed. For a moment, she said nothing. She simply considered.

​“You dislike cases in which everyone is being reasonable, and the outcome still degrades,” T’vor observed.

Burkhard didn’t respond. She didn’t have to.
“How long before you consider Captain Corrin capable of consenting to removal?”

​“Barring regression, I would reassess in forty-eight hours.”

“Very well. I will share this with Captain Valdes. Please keep me updated.”

T’vor folded his arms behind his back. “Of course.”

“He belongs to them,” Burkhard said, almost as if to herself. “The decision to remove the device, however, remains his. And until he can make it, the responsibility stays with us.”

​“Yes.” T’vor nodded. “That’s the structure.”