Captain Xavier Vance sat on the edge of the biobed, stripped down to his shorts and undershirt, his uniform draped across the bed beside him. He resisted the urge to cover himself up. To hide the scars, he showed no one. And to add insult to injury, goosebumps rippled across his dark flesh as Valhalla’s environmental system pumped cold air through the medical bay.
Christ, I thought Vulcans liked it hot.
Dr. T’lar had his left arm pinned between her arm and body as she ran her tricorder over the transition between his natural flesh and the prosthetic arm, the scanner giving off that melodic whir.
His mind drifted to his ex-wife. He had no idea why the thought wormed its way into his consciousness. Perhaps it had been over a year since he had allowed himself to be this close to a woman. To feel her warmth. Her scent.
He sighed, and T’lar raised an eyebrow.
He was approaching his twentieth divorce anniversary. That was kind of depressing, now that he thought about it. But he wasn’t marriage material. The center seat always took precedence.
Then there were the kids. Another lost moment because of his—
Fuck.
“Any pain, Captain?”
Vance blinked, pulled from his thoughts, and glanced at his Chief Medical Officer. He shot her a sideways grin that usually disarmed people.
“Always.”
Again, the Vulcan raised an eyebrow.
God, Vulcans can be so judgmental.
She released his arm, and he let it fall to his side.
“I believe you humans prefer a one-to-ten pain scale?”
“Depends.” He lifted both shoulders in a shrug and looked away.
“On?”
“The day.” Vance took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling as he slowly let it out. “I’d say today is a bad one. Eight, maybe nine.”
T’lar strode over to the diagnostic table, slotted her tricorder into the console, and entered a series of commands. Her fingers moved deftly over the touchscreen, each tap eliciting a soft chirp in response. Then she paused to read the results.
And she frowned.
“What? Am I dying, Doc?” Vance let out a nervous chortle.
“There is a twenty-three percent nerve degradation since my last scan. That is the source of the pain and why you are experiencing dexterity issues this morning. Any trouble walking?”
He thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. More pain, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“A limp?”
He shook his head and pressed his lips into a thin line. “I push through the pain. I can usually tolerate a six or seven unless I’m tired.”
T’lar looked up from the console. There was that eyebrow again.
“Fascinating.”
Vance let out a low, guttural growl from the back of his throat. “Not how I would describe it.”
“Indeed. You appear to have a much higher pain tolerance than most humans. I’m afraid I do not yet know the cause of the nerve loss. This is not something that should be happening. However, these prosthetics were installed twenty-eight years, one month, twenty days, and two hours ago. There are no listed design limits for this model.”
She paused, scrolled through the computer, and cocked her head. “However, there is a twelve-percent failure rate after twenty years.”
Vance smirked. “Here I go again, beating the odds.”
“There was a study published by Johns Hopkins last year. They found that veterans who survived Houdini blasts have a sixty-eight-point-four percent likelihood of complications with prosthetics, including rejection and neurological involvement.”
“Now you tell me.” Vance grumbled, his fist clenching as a tight smirk crossed his face. “Twenty-eight goddamned years I’ve been in pain, and you and every doctor before you called it fu— called it psychosomatic.”
T’lar nodded. “I cannot diagnose something we do not know about or for which no standard of care exists.”
“Yeah, well…” He was already pulling on his uniform jacket. “So now what?”
“They should be replaced, but I cannot perform the procedure aboard Valhalla.”
“So?”
T’lar stepped around the console, a hypospray in hand. “Starbase Bravo or Starfleet Medical on Earth. This should ease the pain until we can complete the procedure.”
She reached out to press the device against his shoulder, but he moved aside and gently blocked her hand.
“I can’t.”
T’lar raised an eyebrow. Now that was getting annoying.
“I have been sober for twenty-seven years. I will not go down that road again.”
“You live in pain every day without taking any pain medication?”
He nodded as he slid off the biobed with a grunt. He snatched up his trousers and pulled them on. He studied the Vulcan doctor. He masked his pain, and they masked their emotions. It didn’t mean either didn’t exist.
The comm beeped, and Commander Kyle’s voice reverberated off the medical bay’s walls. “Bridge to Captain.”
He glanced at T’lar before tapping his combadge. “Vance here.”
“Captain, we are being ordered to assist the Stardust.”
With a heavy sigh, he stepped into his boots, adjusting his pant legs, and started for the exit. “On my way. Vance out.”
“Captain, we need to schedule your procedure.”
“Doctor,” Vance said over his shoulder as the doors parted for him with a pneumatic hiss. “We’ll have to discuss this on another day.”
“But—”
Whatever the doctor was about to say was lost as the doors slid shut.
Pain lanced up his left leg, and he flashed a young ensign a smile. She returned one of her own, revealing a row of perfectly straight white teeth and warm brown eyes beneath a shock of barely restrained tawny hair.
They just keep getting younger, he thought as he stepped into the turbolift.
