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It was approximately 9.45 am on the Gromea system’s moon Delta V when his latest patient was pushed out of the operating room on a hoverbed and Charles allowed himself a breather for the first time that morning. He had been up and working for six hours already and while he had been on Delta V for almost two years by now, the shorter day cycles still messed with his sleep pattern.
His gaze was drawn to the window. It wasn’t the lush blue grass outside that caught his attention mere seconds later though, but a tiny dot in the sky above them, lighting up for a single moment before fading. He quietly cursed under his breath. Unless they had seen the attack coming and had evacuated the ship in time, neither the hospital station on Delta V or any of the emergency shuttles would be able to help this ship’s crew anymore.
For a moment, Charles pondered the “what ifs”. What if there weren’t a war between two of Earth’s closest allies – friends, in fact? What if the tension between the Allea and the Onae had lasted longer than the 320 Earth years it had, but no war would ever have started? What... what if humanity was actually drawn into this messy war in the end, despite both warring parties having pledged to leave them unharmed, permitting them to help both their wounded? ...what if there were no war at all and there was no need for a doctor again?
But he knew that the 320 Earth years long tension were merely very short forty years to the Allea and the Onae and that the tension between both species had always pointed into the direction things would develop. Peace negotiations had been attempted by several allied species but to no avail. And no need for doctors? He briefly closed his eyes when he remembered.
The HealthBox disaster of 2314.
The doctor-replacing boxes, controlled by AIs, had been introduced area-wide after a very long and successful testing phase. They were used for daily check-ups, medicating and even surgeries, when there was a need for it. All that was needed was a HealthBox and its patient. Several weeks in, a network-wide system failure occurred, however, killing several thousand people who were, at that moment, inside the HealthBoxes. Charges were brought against the company that had developed the system, and while the idea of the HealthBox hadn’t been a bad one, per se, the idea was never taken up again, even as technology advanced.
Other species who used similar health systems, such as Earth’s first extraterrestrial ally, the CO2-breathing Elosians, agreed that the decision was a wise one. Humans were considered physiologically far too complex and more vulnerable to damage than other species.
Charles’s attention returned to the operating room as a new hoverbed was pushed into the room by one of the Elosians working on Delta V’s hospital alongside the human staff. The young Allea was Pierce’s next patient however, so Charles decided to check the wall terminal for news. It seemed like they were nearly done for the morning. He almost sighed when a thought occurred to him. So no one aboard the ship above Delta V had made it.
He shook his head to himself and had just returned to his part of the operating room, when the door opened and Hunnicutt walked in.
“Hawk?”
The tall doctor met the chief surgeon’s eyes and gestured toward the hallway with a movement of the head.
“Potter need any help with the young nel in the decontamination room?”
Hunnicutt nodded.
“Kid started bleeding really bad and Potter needs some swift fingers to fix ‘em.”
“Shit.”
Pierce was already running past Charles as Hunnicutt started moving in the opposite direction to fill in for his patient. Charles briefly considered pointing out that he could have taken over the patient, as well, but Pierce and Hunnicutt were PierceandHunnicutt and one better didn’t get in the way of the well-practiced team that they were. It had taken Charles not long to learn that they knew very well what they were doing, communicating without words at times, as much as he would never admit it out loud.
A hum coming from beside him on the bench startled him and made him look down. Pierce’s digipad was still unlocked. He must have checked it only seconds before the new patient had been brought in.
Charles didn’t mean to look; it was something only someone way below his station would do. But he had already seen the message before the lockscreen had turned the digipad’s screen dark. Charles quickly glanced away.
I need to talk to you. I think I’m falling for Chuck.
Now, he could be sorely mistaken. Maybe Pierce knew someone who knew a Charles they and Pierce knew. Maybe a Chuck. But Pierce had never mentioned anyone of this name besides Charles himself, and they had both been stationed on Delta V since the beginning of this war. Also, he kept insisting on calling Charles “Chuck” or “Chuckles”.
His heart... did something funny. He couldn’t put it in words, not exactly, a potentially fatal mistake for a surgeon, but he was distracted and those were in fact his emotions messing with him.
Someone... was falling for him?
But then he considered the nameless sender of the message, someone Pierce had only saved as a knife and a blood drop emoji in his contacts, and he shuddered. Did he actually want to know who that person was, should it really be him they were falling for?
He was still thinking about this while watching Hunnicutt fix up Pierce’s patient when the door to the operating room swung open and in walked Donna Marie Parker. Dubbed “helping angel” by him and many of the staff and – jokingly – “knife Donna” by Pierce, who claimed that it couldn’t be possible to legally collect as many blood donations as her team always managed to supply them with. (“Jealous?” was what she would always ask with a grin when he mentioned it, and ruffle his hair. Pierce’s disgruntled facial expression never failed to make Charles laugh quietly. Once, Donna had bowed after leaving a spluttering Pierce behind and Charles had applauded, feeling a smile spread across his face when their gazes met.)
With Donna came some of her crew, all of them carrying supplies. Her independent help organization was the one who provided them with the most supplies, which was even more impressive when one considered the size of her team. But a team’s success, especially when it came to collecting supplies and donations from others, was only as successful as its leader, and as Potter once had put it: “That woman can convince so efficiently and intuitively, she could start wars and end them. We can count ourselves lucky that she’s dead set on ending this one.”
Charles had only just stood up to offer his help when she was already speaking up, clearly scanning the room for what would have been the equivalent of, some centuries ago, their commanding officer. Thankfully, it wasn’t 1950 anymore, though with the interstellar wars still breaking out every once in a couple of centuries, it did occasionally give off the impression.
“Where is Potter? He’s going to be overjoyed, we got almost twice the donations this time than last time round.”
She was smiling, justifiably proud of her team and herself, and it was as if someone had placed the sun in the middle of the room, she was radiant.
Charles startled when he caught himself thinking about her like that. When had this started?
“He’s in the decontamination room, fixing up a young nel. I wouldn’t expect him back any time before noon.”
She nodded at Hunnicutt, who was just putting away his gloves. “We’ll just leave what we got you guys next to the shelves, along with a list.”
The surgeon nodded and gazed at the hoverbed with the patient he had just fixed up being pushed out of the room.
Charles, meanwhile, was busy looking at Donna curiously. One of the nurses helping with stashing the new supplies away apparently had made a joke that had her laughing, a deep, hearty sound – he could hear it clearly where he sat and he found that a smile was tugging on the corner of his lips.
Hunnicutt turned toward Charles, a light, tired smile on his face himself, glad about one more patient that had made it. Allea or Onae, it didn’t matter to him who was brought into the operating room. He just wished, like all of them, that it would end, and soon.
“We should use the midday calm to hit the mess in a few, don’t you think, Charles?”
Charles startled at the question directed at him. He was just about to agree when Potter’s voice sharply rang through the hospital’s speakers.
“Everyone, gather up the patients and the CO2 supply masks for the Elosians among us and leave the hospital right now. Orbit Control gave us a Code 9 warning – there is a ship coming down and it might just hit us if we don’t move quickly.”
There was some cursing coming from Pierce, who must still have been in the decontamination room with Potter, and then the message ended.
They were trained for emergency evacuation procedures. Some noise broke out as everyone on their own feet started to hurry, knowing that they had mere minutes, but some voices loudly and calmly demanded only necessary communication. It quieted down a little afterwards, but the shuffling of feet on the floor and the cries of worried patients still pulled on everyone’s nerves, the staff’s faces tense as they worked.
Charles helped Hunnicutt and the nurses, pushing patients on their hoverbeds outside, through doors and windows alike. That was the hardest but also the easiest part. The patients were restrained to the hoverbeds by their gravity control system and wouldn’t float away once outside, and the nurses could click several beds’ ends together to pull as many patients at once into safety as possible. Charles could see Donna out of the corner of his eye once. She was helping with the evacuation but also instructed her team to save a good amount of supplies. He wished he could tell her how grateful he was for her thinking this far. Should the hospital be destroyed, they’d be without supplies for at least a week.
They had just evacuated the last of the patients, Hunnicutt already heading for the door to join Pierce, Potter and their patient, whom they had hastily put into one of the bubble hoverbeds they had for contamination emergencies, when another noise became noticeable, much louder than the original jumble of noise after Potter’s announcement.
It grew louder by the second until, for a blinding moment, everything turned white and too loud to make running possible. The next seconds, debris started falling and dust started to rise. Then, the sound of a spaceship, small as it might have been compared to the fleet ships still warring up in space, falling slowly to its side, the outer hull tearing in the process, filled their ears.
Charles couldn’t see anything and there were shouts coming from all directions, several nurses clearly having hurried back to help them. He wanted to speak up so that they could find him, but there was too much dust in his throat. He stumbled forward, one step at a time, and a silent scream escaped him when a hand suddenly touched his nose and cheek.
The “Help” was so quiet he could barely hear it, but it was there. And as the dust started to finally settle a bit, he could make out where he was and that the person behind the fallen parts of wall and roof and shelves and other debris could be none other than Donna.
He hastily began shoving aside what he could move, glad to be mostly unharmed, several nasty gashes aside, and some minutes later the hand was followed by an arm and another hand and Donna began shifting what she could from where she was trapped to help him.
Finally, she was able to free herself and climb through the opening they had created. She stumbled forward toward him, feet catching on the obstacles strewn all across the floor, and he stepped forward, catching her with a hand holding each of her arms.
“Thank you, Chuck.” It was quiet, her voice clearly as affected by the dust as his, but he could hear her without effort, anyway.
Her eyes met his, and for a moment, all the noise around them seemed to have faded away.
“Of course,” he managed to croak and neither of them was looking away and–
“Charles! Donna!”
The noise came crashing back in.
“They’re here, Pierce!”
Margaret, the hospital’s head nurse, became visible and Pierce soon after, as well. Charles and Donna found themselves ushered out of the nearest door while Pierce quickly began explaining.
“We need to hurry, there are still patients aboard the ship and a mechanic among our patients gave us an estimate of–”
He automatically looked for his digipad and realized that, as it had been in the operating room at the time of impact, it was probably lost for good. Margaret checked hers as they kept moving toward the ship as fast as they could.
“We have about twenty minutes left before this ship’s core goes up. And it likely will go up, with a crash like this.”
They left the hospital and ran toward the nearest port the other staff had been able to find. The ship’s engines might have been heavily damaged, but some systems aboard were still running. The noise outside was nearly unbearable. For a moment, Charles wondered if space would also constantly be this loud, would the vacuum of space carry sound.
Hoverbed after hoverbed of Allean wounded was being pushed out of the ship. The four of them joined the already assembled staff and helped move the patients as fast and safely as possible. It was more strenuous now that they were outside, however. The Elosian staff had to constantly wear CO2-masks, and even though they all were wearing gravity controlling boots that kept them from gently floating with every step they took, moving felt slower. Margaret kept giving them updates on the time every minute and after seven minutes, at last, the last of the fifty patients had been saved. On Potter’s instructions, the staff began to hurry through the blue meadow, hoping to gain as much distance from the ship as possible. Charles and Donna found themselves in the rear of their procession, pushing the last chain of hoverbeds together with some of the nurses.
There were approximately eleven and a half minutes left, when Donna suddenly stopped walking. Charles startled and, after indicating to the nurses to keep walking, stepped closer.
“What is the matter?”
Donna looked at him earnestly and he knew that something was very wrong.
“Nobody looked for the pilots in all this mess.”
She was already running back toward the ship as fast as she could and he hurried along.
“They are most likely going to be dead, but we still need to try to save them, yes.” He held his side as they kept running, the talking and an atmospheric oxygen pressure lower than that of Earth’s making it hard for him to breathe properly.
“Don’t you understand?” Donna looked over her shoulder briefly. “If they die – or are dead already – and the ship explodes, leaving us without a clue of what exactly happened?” She halted to pick up a long piece of metal lying on the ground near the ship. “This whole incident will most likely end up being misused as war propaganda.”
Charles blanched when the realization hit him. “You’re right.”
Donna handed him another long piece of metal, likely planning for it to be used as a lever should they need it.
Then, they entered the ship.
They had left with the patients only some two minutes ago, but now there were already noticeable differences. For one, it was hotter inside than before – the core was close to overloading. They would have to get the pilots and themselves out of there, and quickly. The noise level, too, had increased over the course of the past few minutes.
“C’mon, Chuck, it’s not far to the bridge from here.” Donna’s voice was shaky, but her gaze was determined, and Charles knew that he would have followed her anywhere. He trusted Donna with his life – and if that wasn’t a realization requiring some thinking over. But he shook his head lightly and followed her deeper into the ship.
There were close to no lights on anymore the further they went, and the walls were occasionally bent from the impact, blocking parts of the hallways they wove their way through. It felt like they were taking forever when really, only two minutes had passed when Donna shouted, “There! I can see the door to the bridge at the end of the hallway!”
Charles was climbing over something that blocked the hallway to catch up, but just when he wanted to agree, a piece of ceiling paneling came loose and hit the back of his leg. Donna came running the second he yelled in pain and helped him back onto his feet. He looked up to give her a grateful smile and thank her, but the words died on his lips. Because for the first time, he saw her looking worried, scared even. And then she was turning away again already and he isn’t sure if he imagined the murmured, “Shouldn’t have let him come along.”
Charles wasn’t able to make up his mind on what to make of her utterance, so he pushed the questions aside for the moment. He evaded further dangers from here on, loose cables and other wall fragments, trying to ignore the pain in his leg as he followed Donna onto the bridge.
The pilots, much to their surprise and relief, were still alive. They were badly hurt and unconscious, trapped between their chairs and flight consoles, but once they’d have them out of there, they would be able to treat them.
The way back, once they had freed the pilots from their traps with the help of their makeshift levers, felt like it took them twice as long as the way in, but Donna had her digipad’s countdown set on speaker, informing them of the time they have left every minute. They had four minutes left by the time they made it out of the ship’s port, a pilot each slung over their backs.
And Charles felt like sobbing with relief because Pierce and Potter were there, having returned to the ship with hoverbeds and worry etched on their faces.
“One minute later and we would have left!” Pierce shakily commented as he took Charles’s charge off him and heaved her onto the hoverbed.
“Off we go, kids!” Potter commanded, taking a last look at the ship, the humming now growing louder.
And they ran.
They ran until breathing hurt and they couldn’t run anymore, but kept running anyway. Then, Pierce and Potter pulled the hoverbeds down as near to the ground as possible and they all lay down, covering the pilots and their heads as well as they could.
The next twenty seconds were some of the loudest any of them had ever experienced.
The ship exploded. They held their breath.
And then the debris started to hit the ground.
They were far enough away to be out of immediate danger, but the heavy thuds of ship parts hitting the ground made them flinch as much as the original explosion had done.
As they finally scrambled to their feet, they saw that the majority of the hospital had gone alongside the spaceship.
“Holy moly.”
They could only nod in agreement with Potter’s silent exclamation.
“Let’s hope they’ll send shuttles to fight the fire soon. For now, we need to find the rest of the gang and try to help these two, posthaste.”
Potter and Pierce took over pushing the hoverbeds again, Potter not allowing Charles to help since he had very well noticed his limp, as well as the blood staining parts of his pants leg.
That was how Charles found himself slowly trudging down the field alongside Donna. He kept trying to think of conversation starters, desperately wanting to say something, but came up with nothing every time round.
Her hand brushed against his after some minutes and he turned his head to look at her, ash in her hair and on her face, looking tired but... relieved.
She didn’t meet his gaze right away when she spoke up.
“Thank you, Chuck. For–” She looked up then, and Charles’s breath caught. “For trusting in me and coming along. I mean–”
And now that all the adrenaline was abating, she let out a slightly hysterical laugh.
“I mean – we could have died, Charles!”
And he looked at her blankly, because yes, he had come to the same conclusion much earlier already and he had followed her lead despite the impending danger.
“Chuck–” And she was looking at him with big eyes and he didn’t understand why she was looking so sorry for what had been a remarkably rational decision and – she pulled him into a hug that was so tight that it took his breath away.
“Donna,” he coughed. “Donna, dear, you’re asphyxiating me.”
And she let go as if stung by a bee, yet didn’t move away. Her breath was warm on his cheeks – alive – and below the dirt on her face she was blushing. And Charles thought that maybe, maybe he could be bold about his feelings for once, maybe say or do something silly, such as taking her hand in his, but then Potter’s voice cut through the air and interrupted the moment they were having.
As they continued walking, still a good hundred meters behind Potter and Pierce, it hit Charles. “You are the knife and blood drop emojis in Pierce’s contacts.” The words were out before he could hold it back. She turned her head towards him and gave him a funny look, surprise mixed with disbelief. Charles would have laughed if he weren’t so embarrassed to have taken so long to figure it all out.
“I am?” she asked, and he realized that she didn’t know, but he was one hundred percent sure somehow all of a sudden and he was grinning like a fool.
He stopped in his tracks and she instinctively did, as well.
“What is it, Chuck?”
He shook his head for a moment, wondering how it had taken him so long to realize that in this whole damn war, the best thing that had happened to him? Was meeting her. And he had been a fool for not letting her know how much he had grown to like her before.
There were dirt and ash and blood all over their faces and clothes and his hands were shaking as he took hers into his. But it was okay, it was okay now. They had saved everyone and likely had prevented a war turning worse than it already was in the process. They had time now.
And Charles’s thoughts were a jumbled mess as he watched her looking down at his hands holding hers gently and then back up at him. A smile blossomed on her face as their gazes met. She lightly squeezed his hands and rubbed her thumbs over them, waiting for him to form the next words.
And he wished he had more to offer than a meal at the canteen on the next moon they were going to be stationed on, but maybe, when the current situation was over and dealt with, they could both take some time off, just a few days and–
“Would you care to go out to dinner with me?”
And it was silent for a moment, as silent as it could be on Delta V with a huge fire burning nearby and the sound of shuttles approaching to put out said fire. If Charles weren’t so sure by now that she was returning his feelings, he might have excused himself and left as quickly as he could with his newly acquired limp. But she liked him. She had told Pierce that she was falling for Charles, in fact. And the looks and conversations they had exchanged over the course of the past two years... he had been so blind.
Before he could even start worrying after all, however, she took a step closer and nodded.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” Donna answered with a tremble in her voice and the beginning of a smile on her lips.
“Splendid,” Charles replied with an equally shaking voice and placed a hand on her check, brushing some of the dirt away.
“Absolutely stellar, in fact.”