Just Because My Composure Sort Of Slips...

Posted on Wed Feb 6th, 2013 @ 8:56am by Lieutenant Commander William Harding M.D. & Cadet Senior Grade Eli Ziyad & Cadet Senior Grade Chance Conradi

Mission: The Struggle Within
Location: Piper Memorial Medical Center

* * * Piper Medical Center * * *

The transporter left Chance and Eli in an exam room with a bio bed and Eli helped him settle onto it.

“The Doctor will be here in just a second or two. You just relax, okay?” Eli smiled at Chance with far more serenity than he felt.

“Yeah,” Chance nodded. “Hey, how about you relax, too?” He made eye contact with him and smiled slightly.

Eli stopped by the biobed, looking back at Chance. “I’m not so sure I can do that just yet. There’s a lot you don’t remember and I don’t know how much I should tell you and how much I need to let you just remember.” Hopefully.

“Okay, but you’re projecting a bit,” he smiled lopsidedly and pulled Eli closer to him. “I remember some things. Like this,” he kissed Eli slowly.

The kiss caused Eli’s breath to catch and he felt dizzy for a moment. So many times he’d remembered this since Chance died. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to. It’s just that....I...I lost you. And now you’re back.” He fell silent and kissed Chance, soft and slow. “It’s all rather overwhelming.”

“Yeah, it is. I remember dying.” He nodded his head side to side in a bemused way and added, “...being killed, I mean. I was waiting for someone. It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It was my break between sets and you met me in the storeroom. We decided to move across to Jackson’s office to...enjoy ourselves. Someone called me just as we were going in and you went in to wait. When I got there a few minutes later you were...” Eli stopped as the horror scene replayed in his mind and the pain and loss rose in him again. It engulfed him and the room seemed to fade as he saw it all once more.

“Woah! Stop! Eli, c’mon,” Chance held up a hand, horrified by the thoughts and images coming off this kid. This kid whom he loved. “Come back to me here.” He shook Eli gently.

Chance’s urging brought Eli back to the present with a gasp and he threw his arms around Chance. “I didn’t intend for you to see that.”

“I saw it from the other side, too. Why? Why did I die?”, he whispered into Eli’s neck. Then he smelled him and the smell was... divine. He held onto Eli’s jacket with both hands.

“We don’t know yet but we will soon I think. In the beginning, they thought it was aimed at Jackson but something Eric found there led him to believe you were the actual target. That Hazari will reveal it. Now that you’re free of him, they can get what they need out of him.” Eli’s arms tightened still more around Chance. “We’ll figure it out.”

There was a mild current of violence in the way Chance held onto Eli. The current was possessive and consuming. “I don’t recall you, don’t recall being a cadet, but I know I love you. Strange, isn’t it?”

“It will come, I promise you. Somehow.” Eli’s breath slipped out in a whoosh as Chance’s hold grew tighter. “We’ll get things back to normal.”

“You’re an optimist,” he whispered before kissing him again.

“I know.”

Behind them the doors slid open and Will stepped in. Seeing the two in an embrace, he smiled. “Okay break it up, time for that later.” He was obviously joking with them. “I need to run a thorough check on you Chance, to make sure everything’s running as it should. Especially your new heart.”

“New heart?” Chance let go of Eli to face the Doctor.

Eli took a deep breath as Chance’s grip loosened and moved over to sit down as Will reached the bio bed.

“New heart,” Will confirmed. He eased Chance back down to a prone position on the biobed, then raised the arch. Once it had begun running its scans, he continued. “Because of the blood loss, your old one gave out. It was a simple matter of replacing it, and it will be fine. You will, however, have to let me check it every six months without fail.”

That seemed like a huge commitment to Chance: to see Harding every six months? Hell, to see any doctor once every six months was a burden. "Oh," was his only response at the moment. He was as little overwhelmed by everything - having been dead, out of his body, out of his mind... His struggle within the Hazari's mind came back to him. He'd been trying to tell someone - Eli - that he was there, but the Hazari had a strong will and it hadn't been easy. "I thought I was going to be stuck there."

Will looked to Eli, then returned his attention to the scans. “It’s thanks to Eli that we figured out what was going on. That Hazari found him and seemed to grow more and more obsessed.”

“And when he got close enough, I sensed you in there. It wasn’t until I came home to find him in our quarters that we were certain he was the killer. I knew the moment he ki--” Eli stopped right there with that sentence, deciding that it was something Chance didn’t need to worry about. “He attacked me and I managed to get through to security.”

"Oracle's good that way." He paused, his brow furrowed. "Not oracle.... Or-a... hmm." Now he looked frustrated. "I just had her name." Then he brightened: "Oralia! Where is she, anyway?"

“I think she and Gilroy had some things to look into. The Admiral and Commander Hawke are off station, so she and Commander Sakkath are running things right now.” Eli stopped to watch the doctor as he examined the scan readouts.

"Oh. She's... that high up? Wow, there's a lot missing, I think."

“It should come back in time. Your heart’s doing fine and neural functioning is showing normal, aside from a few hiccups that should ease in time. And time is what it is going to take, as Commander Sakkath warned us. I’d like to see you in forty-eight hours to follow up.” Will turned off the arch and it lowered. He then offered his hand to Chance to help him sit up. “For now? I’d suggest going home, relaxing, get used to being back with us. Familiar surroundings are best and we’ll see how it goes.”

"Getting used to being undead," he flashed a jaunty grin at them both. "Take me home, then, James!" This, he said to Eli, playing on an old Terran joke involving a chauffeur. That the joke might fall flat didn't occur to him.

Eli blinked but Will got it and laughed. “See you in two days, Chance.” As the two young men passed, he rested a hand on Eli’s shoulder. “Try not to worry. And I think you both need to see Counselor Swift. A lot’s happened to you two. I’ll let him know to look for you.”

Eli nodded, recalling his last visit there, and hoped Robin was ready for this.

**************

Chance Conradi
Still on a Slippery Slope

Cadet Second Class Eli Ziyad
Offering A Lifeline

Lt. Commander William Harding, MD
The Safety Net