They left me, pressed a device to my neck and gave me a pained look. There had been a shout of unintelligible words, and they had rushed out of sight. They left me. Alone and bloodied. 

With rehearsed excellence that would make a prima ballerina jealous, the medical team’s feet mindlessly followed the barely perceptible grooves in the room’s carpeted floor. A spiderweb of faint unpaved avenues where the deep twill carpet had taken a turn from blue to less blue, charting the most efficient paths between beds and equipment.

Desire paths, some might call them.

Or paths of least resistance.

But Simmons caught a glimpse of their truth as he hovered at the designated triage bay next to the door, tricorder clutched in his sweaty hands.

Paths of desperation, of urgency. A record of choices made, where seconds made the difference.

Simmons threw a glance at the wide set of doors nearby, waiting with a tense breath for the next casualty to come through them on a stretcher or foot. As the knot in his stomach grew larger and more twisted with each passing second, blessed relief never came. The doors remained shut. A patient, at least, would be a break from the eternal waiting at the edge of things. His colleagues worked furiously across the long, arcing reserve sickbay, setting bones and stemming bleeds, easing pain and relieving agony. Whilst he stood and waited.

They were, without hyperbole, glorious, he thought. Effortless angels of mercy and knowledge that swept across the room, dispensing aid and compassion in equal measure. Doctor Ashra in particular drew his eye, her signature floral headscarf visible against the white jackets and smocks of the emergency team. A beacon of colour amongst the sterile white ghosts. She seemed to be everywhere at once, her blessed hand alighting on patients, coupled with a kind smile.

Simmons, however, was tied to his spot at the bed, and he cursed the triage protocols for restricting him so. He wished to be out there amongst these angels. He wished to contribute.

There is a shape nearby, and I reach out with all I have left. It feels like my arm is already petrified to stone, each extension of my weak muscles eliciting a crack as if  I’m kindling for the fire. I want to tell him what’s wrong. I want to tell him they made a mistake. I won’t die here. But as he comes over to me, I see he is more a boy than a man. A worried young boy with fear in his eyes. 

“Please.”

A croaking whisper caused Simmons to turn from his post towards a nearby biobed where the prone form of an older Andorian man pawed at the air with pale fingers.

“Please,” he croaked again.

Atop his biobed, a white rimmed circle flashed with resigned slowness. A cyclopean eye to witness his final moments. Too far, too injured, it chanted over and over. Beyond our help.

Simmons felt his feet move before he had even made the choice, finding himself drawn towards the bedside. He took the man’s proffered hand in his own and grasped it gently.

“I’m here, what can I do?” Simmons whispered.

“Where have the doctors gone?” The man sputtered with shallow breaths.

A pang of guilt jabbed at Simmons’ chest. In all the confusion and madness, the wounded man had been left unattended in his last moments. He glanced across the bay where Ashra worked diligently on a young crewman at the central biobed.

“They’ve just had to step away.” A lie steeped in kindness slipped from the young medic’s lips.

“I might be dying.” The Andorian coughed, as thick, blue blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

Simmons looked up at the monitor set into the bulkhead. The auxiliary sickbay was kitted for emergency response rather than day-to-day service, and the screen was almost cruel in its simple diagnosis.

Massive internal trauma. Complete failure of multiple organs. Imminent failure of neural apparatus.

“I’m sure they’ll be back in a moment.” Another lie.

The man tilted his head back, attempting to follow Simmons’s gaze to the screen, but barely moved a few degrees before a cough clutched at his chest.

“Stay still. I’ll get you some pain relief.” Simmons reached back towards a nearby equipment trolley, but found his hand locked in a vice-like grip.

“No, there isn’t any pain.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

The man coughed again, his shattered chest giving it a bone-crunching quality.

“Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before,” Simmons said softly, desperate to fill the silence.

“Kazrakan.” The man muttered.

“Lieutenant Kazrakan. My name is Tommas,” Simmons smiled weakly, noting the two golden pips at the man’s neck. “I’m glad to meet you.”

“Likewise.” His grip tightened as his face winced painfully as he struggled to draw breath.

“Where do you work, Kazrakan?”

“EPS management, deck 13.”

“That must be intense.”

The man laughs dryly through his spittle-filled mouth.

“Not usually.” Kazrakan joked through gritted teeth.

“It sounds like a very important job.”

“Only when it hits the fan.”

I see it now, reflected in his eyes. The inescapable full stop. The boy needs to work on his bedside manner. 

“Well, we’ll have you back at your station in no time.” A third lie, perhaps a slightly cruel one in retrospect, Simmons thought.

“You should tell your face that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise, it’s my life that’s on the cards.”

“I’m sorry.” Another apology fell through Simmons’s pursed lips.

“Don’t apologise. We all serve, we all know the risks.”

“But still…”

“But still.” Kazrakan agreed, the unspoken frustration hanging between the pair. Life on a starship came with risks, though it seemed the lot of those below to suffer at the choices of those above and beyond their small worlds.

“Is there anything I can do?” Simmons asked, his big eyes turning doe-like.

“Is there?” Kazrakan looked across at the young man with an equally pleading look, hopeful he might suddenly become a boy wonder and perform an as-yet unknown medical miracle.

Simmons shook his head slightly before offering a frustrated sigh.

“I didn’t think so. But still…”

“But still,” Kazrakan whispered.

I always thought the final moment would be filled with panic or pity. That I would rail or rage, that it would be a final fight. But I see now, it’s just going to stop. Unfinished. 

“I think I’d like to go now,” Kazrakan muttered with a weak breath.

“If you’re okay with that?” Simmons clutched his hand gently, rubbing its bruised back slowly with his fingers.

“It’s not the word I’d use.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Would you make sure Tamnira keeps the flow steady?” The older man turned towards Simmons urgently, a strange worry filling his eyes. “If she doesn’t, the grid might overheat.”

“Of course, I’ll tell her myself.”

“You promise?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” His panic abated, Kazrakan turned back and let his body fall into the soft body sculpting material of the bio-bed.

With a long, shallow breath, like spilt water fleeing from the cup, the wounded officer let out a long sigh.

“And tell the Captain I was happy to serve.”

“I’m sure she knows.”

“But still…”

“But still.”

There is silence.

“Kazrakan? Are you still there?” Simmons whispers. A rhetorical question, if there ever was one.

Long, unending silence falls from the old man’s lips.

Simmons slips his hand from the final grasp of still fingers and lays the slender blue hand across his quiet chest.

He is finished now.

But still…