On a ship like Atlantis, Sickbay didn’t just define a single space. It could mean the entire medical complex in the heart of the ship, capable of responding to a multitude of disasters with various operating theatres, isolation rooms, recovery wards and triage centres. It could, for a large number of people, refer to the secondary sickbay near engineering, where Doctor Pisani had reigned supreme and warded off most visitors with post-modern acid punk rock played at deleterious levels.

But for most, it simply meant the primary sickbay – the one part of the medical complex that was always staffed, always open and set up to respond to the majority of problems a starship’s crew would encounter in their day-to-day. Headaches, sore muscles, indigestion, pulled joints and on rare occasions broken bones.

“Another hour,” Nurse Webb said as he inspected the results of his latest scan. “It’s knitting just fine, but the doc won’t let you out until the regenerator runs its course and he can’t see the break on a scan.”

Stirling nodded in understanding as Webb smiled at him and then stepped away, off to attend to the two engineers who had walked in just a few minutes ago complaining about stomach pains. He’d raised the head of the bed so he wasn’t staring at the ceiling while his right arm sat in the osteo-regenerator at his side, strapped down to hold it precisely within the machine’s two coils and the blue light between them.

“I’m so sorry about this,” W’a’le’ki said her sibilant extension of the letter ‘s’ barely noticeable now. She smiled apologetically at him from the seat beside his biobed, the smile touching all facets of her face. “I should have just gotten the antigrav lifts like I was going to.”

Stirling shook his head, briefly. “There’s nothing to be sorry about W’a, these things happen.” They’d been off-duty, just enjoying each other’s company when W’a’le’ki had mentioned wanting to rearrange her quarters, including the rather heavy bookcase she’d somehow gotten aboard ship. He had, in his typical fashion, insisted on getting a job done as soon as possible, so had led the charge.

And somewhere in all of that, with piles of books on the floor, and furniture in all the wrong places to make way for things, like bookcases, one empty and rather empty bookcase had toppled. And while no damage had been done to the bookcase, it was likely the floor under the carpets in W’a quarters told a different tale. As did his arm.

“Broken in two places,” Terax had growled after a five-second scan nearly two hours ago. “How did you of all people break your arm?” the Edosian doctor had demanded. Terax’s indignation had only grown worse when he and W’a had told the rather boring story. “Interrupted a good medical journal for a broken arm,” Terax had complained before setting Stirling down with the osteo-regenerator, forbidding him to move and tasking W’a with bringing some entertainment since he wasn’t going anywhere for a few hours and he loathed bored lieutenants asking questions.

“No, they don’t.” W’a’le’ki’s insistence on taking the blame for a random act won out. He didn’t need to start a disagreement over something so minor, especially not in sickbay. “Does it hurt?”

“It did. But now it just feels weird.” He looked at her for a moment, studying her. “You’ve never broken a bone?”

“Goodness no,” she replied. “Never. Have you? Before today that is.”

“Twice before. The joys of siblings and a rock-climbing accident at the academy.” Both times had been like this one – innocent activity, random chance, his arm being in the wrong. Something inevitably had to give and that something had been Stirling’s own bones. “Same arm,” he said, tapping just below his elbow and just outside of the osteo-regenerator, “and left leg. Landed on them both funny.”

“You must have been far more reckless in your youth,” W’a said. She reached out, taking his free hand in hers and just holding it for now.

“No more than any other kid,” he answered. “The broken arm was caused by –“ He stopped as the alert light panel in sickbay came to life with a steady, rhythmic pulsing of yellow. No alarms blared in sickbay, likely Terax having ordered at least the yellow alert verbal notification turned off. Others had noticed as well, a few of the nurses immediately falling into training as they changed their tasks from cleaning and tidying to preparing for anything that could come their way.

“Padd please?” he asked W’a, using his head to indicate the padd on the side table, closer to her than him. It didn’t take long once he had the device to find out what was going on. “We’ve raised shields.”

“Which has triggered the yellow alert?” W’a’s rhetorical question getting a slight nod anyway. “Why though? Aren’t we just attending to a maintenance issue on some relay station?”

“Yes,” he answered, pulling up the ship’s system logs for a quick review. There he saw the transporter logs, the names of those who had gone over to the station. The loss of communication with his friends. “I need to get to the bridge.”

“No, you don’t,” came the rough grumble of Terax at the end of the biobed. His right and left arms crossed, the middle hand resting on his left shoulder and a glower on his face that could, if he’d been near a window, be utilised as a ship-to-ship weapon. “You are going to stay right there and let that machine finish working.”

There was no doubt in his mind that Terax had learnt his predictive abilities much like he had – by being a student of how people reacted. Which as a yeoman was a sought-after trait. As for how the three-legged doctor had approached without being heard, the only solution he had to mind was Terax had saved his disapproving grumbling for when he had announced his intentions and wanted to make a point.

“I need to get to my station,” he replied, pitting his will against the doctor’s.

“We’re not being shot at.” Terax’s statement of fact was firm with its subtext. No, you don’t. “And as of right now, you have a medical exemption.” And with that, Terax smirked. A doctor winning out over a patient intent on leaving before treatment was complete.

“The captain sent Silver Team over to the station.” He looked away from Terax to W’a’le’ki. “Commander Gantzmann went in my stead.”

“Oh,” W’a merely said in response.

“Humpf,” Terax huffed. “Then I pity the fools who gets in her way.”

He turned back to Terax, then calmly sat forward to present the padd he’d been looking at to the doctor. A few select pieces of information had been highlighted – the cutting off of comms, the apparent strength of the station’s shields. It only took Terax a second to parse this new information.

“You’re worried about the captain,” Terax stated as he sat the padd down. “Don’t be. She knew what she was getting into.”

“He has a point, Stirling.” W’a had once more reached out, taking his free hand in hers. That worried smile once more touched her eyes. “I know you want to help, but what could you do?”

“Offer a differing perspective,” he answered.

“Captain Theodoras has a bridge load of senior officers at her beck and call,” Terax said. “Including a senior doctor who thinks it best a pesky yeoman stays right where he is for another hour before galivanting around the ship redecorating compartments.” His middle hand lifted from his shoulder, a finger jabbed in the direction of the osteo-regenerator. “One hour. Am I understood?”

“Yes sir,” Stirling found himself saying. Magic words which managed to dispel Terax after another glare for good measure.

He sat back, slumping against the biobed in defeat. “I should be on the bridge.”

“And you will,” W’a replied. “Just not right now.” She squeezed his hand. “Doesn’t Terax hate singing? We could always torture Terax by practising that new duet?”

“A new duet?” one of the nearby nurses asked, wincing after speaking, the illusion of not-listening ruined and faltering for another not much further away. It was after all difficult to not hear chit-chat in a nearly vacant sickbay. “Sorry, couldn’t help but overhear.”

He could feel himself blushing just slightly. How he’d let himself be dragged onto the stage that first time by W’a’le’ki he’d never rightly figured out. Or the popularity the two of them found amongst the crew afterwards either.

“Oh yes!” W’a answered. “Ever heard of a song called Don’t Go Breaking My Heart?”