Chapter Text
The bed — his bed — is empty when she enters Sickbay. It was the only one with a person still in it, and her stomach drops when she sees it.
For a moment, she just stands there, in the middle of the room, and stares at the newly cleaned sheets, hearing distantly the way her breathing starts to speed up.
Why isn’t he there? What happened? Why wasn’t she there when it—
Phlox catches her by the shoulders and spins her around with a strength and force she wasn’t certain that he possessed.
“Mallory. Breathe.”
His hands are warm and steady on her arms, holding her with a care she didn’t expect, and his eyes are warm. Calm and reassuring in a way they wouldn’t be if…
“Breathe.” He repeats, and doesn’t let go of her shoulders as she sinks down onto one of the closer beds.
“Where is he?”
Phlox joins her, sitting by her side, one hand remaining on the shoulder closest to him. “The Major has been transferred.”
Her head yanks itself up before she knows what it’s doing. “Transferred? You said he wasn’t in a fit state—”
“Yes. Well..” He grimaces, just slightly. “Other doctors disagreed with me.”
“You said—”
“They are probably correct,” he interrupts, calmly, forestalling the protest. “He has been moved to Starfleet Medical, they have technology that was developed more recently, and more staff to watch over him.”
She looks away, across the empty room and presses her lips together.
The hand on her shoulder squeezes pointedly. “Major Hayes is… resilient, but his injuries were extensive.”
Despite their combined efforts, her breathing speeds up again. “Is he—”
“He is stable.” Phlox answers at once. “Sedated. Under excellent care.”
She sucks in a deeper breath, forcing her lungs to cooperate, listens to Phlox counting quietly, matches her breathing to those numbers until the fog of panic begins to clear.
“Starfleet Medical?”
“Yes.” Phlox looks at her for a moment, his eyes searching her face. “Do you have accommodation on Earth?”
“Uh. No?”
“Alright. We’ll need to sort that.” He rises from the bed with a smile and offers her a hand. “Coming?”
Mallory takes the offered hand, lets him direct her out of Sickbay and down the empty corridors to her quarters — almost everyone else has left the ship, gone down to Earth to see friends and family, or just to escape the confined space. Her past few hours had been taken up with directing people around, controlling the number of people trying to get into one shuttlepod and yelling at anyone who tried to go through the transporter with the ‘cargo only’ boxes.
Now, with all those people gone, with no more crisis to focus on, the past month is slowly catching up to her.
Her room is as she left it, although it seems like it’s been a million years since she last set foot in there.
Phlox pulls a bag from one of the cupboards and hands it to her, sitting down on the bed to watch her mechanically pack — clothes, toiletries, her PADD, what else does she need?
Once she’s done, he rises again, directs her out the door and towards the shuttle bay where he stops them in the doorway.
“Lieutenant,” he says mildly. “There is something I should warn you about.”
She looks up into oddly serious eyes and braces herself. “Yes?”
“Starfleet Medical is… less flexible than I am,” he continues, “when it comes to visitors.”
“Meaning?”
“They will only allow next of kin.”
For a moment, the world seems to tilt on its axis. “What?” Her voice comes out thin. “Phlox, I’m not his next of kin.”
She can feel the fog settling back in — the spiral starting, the awful lightheaded sense of slipping — and hates that it’s happening again. That it’s happening now when she needs to be sharp, needs to be strong.
Phlox regards her for a long moment.
Then — unmistakably — he winks.
“I am quite sure,” he says pleasantly, “that you will figure something out.”
And then he leaves her, turning back towards Sickbay to sort out whatever last-minute arrangements he needs to make before he goes back to see his family.
*
“I’m here to see Major Hayes.”
It was almost laughably easy to get this far – the receptionist had handed out his room number without so much as looking up – and she’d almost thought that Phlox might have been wrong, but there’s a barrier before the ward.
A young nurse eyes her carefully. “I can only allow next of kin in. Sorry, honey.”
Phlox’s smile flashes in her mind, briefly. You will figure something out.
“I am his next of kin.”
The nurse eyes Mallory for a moment. “Wait here a sec, OK?”
She nods, because there’s no other way for her to respond, and watches the nurse vanish behind the doors she wants to get through. A security guard – not Starfleet, not MACO – sitting in a chair eyes her as if she’s going to make a break for it.
She waits there.
The nurse returns with an older woman in tow – probably head of the ward from her expression. “Good morning.”
“Hello.”
“Naomi tells me you’re Major Hayes’ next of kin?”
It is too late to back out now. “That’s right.”
“And your relationship to him is…?”
Mallory’s brain flicks through the available options in the time it takes to blink.
Can’t say sister. That’s visibly not true.
Can’t say friend. Can’t say girlfriend. Neither of those get chairs by the bed.
“Oh,” she says, steady, already committing. “I’m his wife.”
The two nurses exchange a glance and Mallory keeps her gaze steady; the same instincts she uses on the bridge, the ones that let her ignore her hammering heart and make command decisions without flinching.
There is nothing to do now but commit.
“There’s no spouse listed,” the nurse says, frowning at the PADD.
The rest of the lie spills out of her mouth easily, as easy as if it were the truth. “I know, we were married on the ship. By the Captain, it was… there was a war going on and we just didn’t file the paperwork and then…” she trails off and waves a defeated hand at the doors they’re still not letting her through.
She hates hospitals. Hates medical staff. But she remembers being a child trying to see her mother, she remembers how they hate lies that sound rehearsed, unemotional, and she blinks like she’s trying not to cry.
“Alright,” the nurse says, “I’ll need to check a couple things, can you sit in the waiting room for me?”
Her mouth opens and she looks at the doors again. “Yeah.” the voice that comes out isn’t hers. It belongs to eight-year-old Mallory. “I can wait.”
“Thank you.”
She’s directed — by the security guard, who seems to be the only one unmoved by her story — to a chair in the waiting room and given a paper cup of cold water. The original nurse, Naomi, her name was apparently, hangs around long enough to offer a few concerned glances and a whispered conversation with the guard, and then — mercifully — Mallory is left alone.
The adrenaline drains out of her all at once.
What the hell do you think you’re doing?
The question loops, useless. There are a dozen better ways she could have handled it. There always are, in retrospect. She could still stand up, walk up to the security guard and correct herself. Say she misspoke. Say she’s a friend.
And then he’d escort her out, and she’d know nothing about Hayes until they discharged him.
What are you doing?
“Hi, honey.”
Mallory looks up. It’s the same nurse as before, crouching slightly in front of her now, voice soft in that practiced way meant to land somewhere between reassurance and normality.
“Hi.”
“I’m sorry we kept you waiting so long,” the nurse continues, “but I spoke to your doctor and he confirmed what you said, so I can let you in, OK?”
Her stomach flips. “Phlox?”
“Yeah.” The nurse smiles, sympathetic, already ushering her to her feet. “Obviously, you’ll need to file the paperwork at some point, and if he gets transferred again I won’t be able to help, but as long as he’s here I’ll add a note so everyone knows you’re allowed in.”
Allowed in.
For a moment, the victory doesn’t quite register, but the nurse has a hand on her elbow and is leading her back towards the doors as though Mallory is liable to stumble at any point.
“Thank you.” She says, because that’s the only part she’s sure of.
The nurse pushes open the doors, holds them to let Mallory through, and retakes her arm with a gentle, conspiratorial squeeze. “He’s lucky to have you.”
She doesn’t trust her voice enough to reply.
Hayes looks the same as he did in Sickbay — pale, drawn, eyes shut, and a breathing device blocking off most of his face.
She approaches the bed slowly, pushes back some of his newly-grown hair from his forehead, and thinks that someone needs to give him a haircut.
“Mrs Hayes?”
It takes longer than it should for her to realise the nurse is speaking to her. “Oh. Yes?”
“Did you need anything? Coffee? Tea?”
“Um,” she looks back at the figure on the bed, at the heart monitor that reassures her he’s still alive, “a coffee would be great, if that’s alright.”
There are things to do — there are always things to do — and with the non-stop insanity of the past few weeks, Mallory is desperately behind on her reports. Her inbox is full of automated reminders, punctuated by a message from Archer quietly requesting that she catch up on them whenever possible, and one from Command requesting the same thing, just louder.
And that’s how she settles into spending her days at his bedside.
It’s quiet there, broken only by the steady sound of his heartbeat and the machines they have him hooked up to — beeping at intervals, delivering medication through his IV line, watching him in ways she can’t.
The sound of knuckles against wood pulls her out of remembering the truly horrible weeks that have passed — weeks that somehow still feel ongoing, and also like they happened centuries ago, to someone else entirely.
“Knock knock?”
Mallory blinks up at the man in the doorway. His head is shaved, he’s got a nose ring and a wonky smile, but he’s wearing hospital blues.
“Uh— come in?”
He does, smile unchanged. “Hi. I’m Tom. I’m the resident physiotherapist.”
“I don’t think he’s up to much physio at the moment.”
She hadn’t been joking, but Tom laughs anyway, easy and unbothered.
“Oh, I know. For now I’ll mostly just be moving the muscles — keeping them from locking up or wasting away while he’s not doing the work himself.”
“Right.”
If he notices the uncertainty in her voice, or the way she hovers as he approaches the bed, he doesn’t comment on it.
“Good morning, Major,” he says to the still body. “I just went over this with your wife, but I’m Tom. I’ll be helping keep things working while you’re in the coma.”
Mallory watches his profile as he snaps on gloves. “Can he hear you?”
“Possibly.” Then, to Hayes again, calm and precise: “I’m going to start with your legs, alright?”
He does exactly that — beginning at the ankles, rolling the joints, flexing carefully before moving up to the knees.
“Some people,” he continues, apparently unconcerned by the way Mallory jumps when he starts talking again, “remember things that were said to them while they were out. Others don’t remember specifics, but they remember voices. They know who was there.”
He moves to the calves, then the thighs, working methodically, narrating each movement as he goes.
“Should I… talk to him?”
The question feels foolish the instant it leaves her mouth, but Tom just glances over at her.
“It might help him to know you’re here.”
She watches him for another long moment. “What do I say?”
“Whatever you want.” He nods toward the PADD loose in her hands. “Tell him what you’re working on. Or what you’ve got planned for when he wakes up.”
“We’re going to dinner.”
She doesn’t know why she tells him — this stranger — except that his hands are gentle on bruised skin, and he speaks to Hayes like the man is still listening. Like he’s still here.
“He owes me dinner.”
Tom hums. “You got a place picked out?”
“No.”
“Well,” he says easily, moving to Hayes’ arm, “you could start thinking about it. Alright, Major — I’m going to work on your lower arm on this side. I’m not touching the damaged area until you’re awake. Just to be safe.”
“Those muscles are new,” Mallory says suddenly, eager for a way back into the conversation. “Phlox grew them. In petri dishes.”
“I heard.” Tom bends each finger carefully, one at a time. “Risky stuff. Hasn’t exactly cleared the ethics committees yet.”
“He would have died.”
Tom looks up at her properly for the first time.
“I guess medical ethics aren’t your top priority in space,” he says mildly.
After he leaves, she settles back into the chair and looks at the bandages hiding his shoulder and part of his torso.
The wounds had been too close to essential organs — missing his heart by scant centimetres, puncturing his lung. Part of that, Phlox had regrown as well.
“I’m writing a report on Hoshi’s rescue,” she tells him quietly.
She had intended to say more, but the blur of memories is overwhelming — punctuated by painful loss and the unexpected moments of being truly alone on a ship filled with people.
The chair is already close to the bed, but she shuffles it nearer until she can rest her chin on the mattress, watching the way his fingers twitch slightly in response to her breath ghosting across them.
“I missed you.”
The words are barely audible, and if he hears them, his body gives no sign.
That’s how Tom finds her the next morning, when he returns to repeat the movements from the day before.
“Have you been home?”
“They kicked us all off the ship while they do repairs.” She sits up to answer him, feeling the crick in her neck from sleeping in an awkward position and trying not to let it show.
“But you’ve got somewhere to stay, right?”
“Yeah. Temporary quarters.”
He looks at her for a long moment, but “You can’t stay here twenty-four seven,” is the only thing he says on the subject, already turning his attention back to the bed as he snaps on gloves, his voice brightening as he begins to narrate his actions again.
When he wakes the first time, she’s notified by the heart monitor suddenly spiking. He’s moving, hands trying to go to his throat, panicked by the tube, and all she can do is yell for help.
One of the younger nurses pulls her away from the bed as the others crowd around him, blocking him almost from her view. She can hear their yells for sedation, to remove the tube, for other things that she doesn’t register, more interested in trying to meet his eyes for the first time in a month.
And she does — just briefly, just before he succumbs to the drugs once again. Grey eyes, unfocused but searching, catch on hers for half a second — long enough that she knows he knows she’s there.