“Will come on, wake up. Open your eyes for me, that’s it.”
My eyes fluttered open as I heard the sound of Beverly’s voice. I heard the constant long beeping of a machine coming from the side of Deanna’s bed. I tried to clear the fuzzy feeling from my brain and managed to sit up with a groan. Coughing, I cleared my throat.
“What’s going on?”
Beverly was already attending to Deanna on the bed.
“Deanna can you hear me? Open your eyes for me Deanna. Come on. No pain response. No breath sounds and no heartbeat.”
My mind went blank for a moment as everything around me seemed to freeze. My eyes followed Beverly as she rolled a portable machine over to the bed.
“What’s that?”
Beverly looked at me for a second as she turned on the machine. There was a whirring sound.
“A crude version of a cortical stimulator. It’s a Defibrillator and it gets the heart beating again. Clear!”
I swallowed the lump in my throat as I saw Deanna’s still form jump slightly in the bed from the electrical shock. The heart monitor she was hooked up to started beeping again, and the lines on the machine went up and down, registering her heartbeat. I managed to get to my feet and over to Deanna. Sinking down into the chair next to the bed, I reached a hand up to her cheek and rested it there.
“You had us worried there for a second Imzadi. Welcome back.”
The smile disappeared from her face and she turned away from me, rolling up in a fetal position as much as she could and began to cry again. Turning over so that she was facing me, she sat up in the bed and wiped her tears from her face with a tissue.
“Nothing and no one is going to stop me from getting Laura back. Let’s go get her. Coming you two?”
Deanna had managed to get out of bed. I didn’t argue with her. She had every right to be angry.
“Imzadi sweetheart, would you like to change into some clothes first before we go looking for our daughter?”
———————————————————————————————————————
This facility is bigger than I thought. Bigger than we all thought. It was enormous! We’d gone from room to room searching for clues. We hid behind an unlocked door when we heard the voices of two doctors coming down the hallway.
“See if you can figure out what kind of respiratory illness Jessica Riker has. Examine her again, there may be something we missed.”
My breath caught in my throat. Jessica? It couldn’t be… I swallowed the hard lump in my throat and continued forward as the two doctors disappeared down the hallway. Coming to the door they’d come out of, we found that the room was empty, except for several babies in basinets. Beverly pushed the door open and the three of us went inside. All the basinets had names on them. Laura was in the first. Beverly picked her up and placed her into Deanna’s arms. Laura seemed to know right away whom her mother was.
“Hello little one. I’m your mommy.”
Laura seemed content in Deanna’s arms, she let out a rather loud yawn and snuggled closer to her. I looked into the second basinet and looked at the tiny baby lying in it. The eyebrows are mine, the nose, even the mouth. This really is my Jessica. Tears began to form at the corners of my eyes.
“Jessica, sweetheart, what in the world are you doing here?”
I carefully picked her up and a smile spread across her face. She couldn’t have been more than a month old. I’d never held Jessica as a baby before. Just my ‘brother’ Thomas did. He’d been created in a freak transporter accident, resulting in two of me. I shut my eyes and held Jessica close for a few minutes.
“She already has Ryerson Syndrome, and so young…”
A memory passed through my mind as I set her back in the basinet. ‘Catch me daddy!’ A smile spread across my face as I rubbed Jessica’s tiny tummy.
“Daddy did catch you sweetheart.”
I knew that I couldn’t mess with the course her life was taking. It would alter events in the timeline. I couldn’t do that, however painful it was for me. The third basinet held Erica. Her squirming form suggested she was at least 2 or three months older than Jessica, which meant that they were snatched from different time periods. I felt Beverly’s hand on my shoulder and listened as she spoke.
“With the exception of Laura, Will, all four of these little girls are at the mercy of time itself. We already know what happens to each of them. Jessica and Erica are caught in the middle of a Cardassian raid, Megan dies of Congestive Heart Failure, and Hope, well, we know what happened to her. What’s strange though is, why are they here to begin with? There must be some sort of temporal distortion field somewhere around here…”
At least I’d have a little more time with all three of my girls, and maybe right two accidents while working as an intern at Starfleet Medical.
To Be Continued…
[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]