Lucky
Posted on May 13th, 2015 by Kathryn Harper

Of all the places she had tried to sleep during her Starfleet career, Kate Harper found sickbay to be the most difficult. She lay on her back with wide-open eyes reflecting tiny versions of various displays, one of them the obnoxiously bright wall clock that read 02:57. Her Academy training had included survival and combat scenarios that spanned multiple days, and she had found herself in various uncomfortable sleeping arrangements since, but somehow, sickbay trumped them. Perhaps it was the cold sterility of the place, or the noises from the medical equipment, or even the constant possibility of being awakened by the staff or another patient. Regardless of what precisely made it harder to sleep here than near a battlefield, or while fighting for survival in the wilderness, the reality of her situation was unchanged.

The clock now read 02:59. She was not ungrateful to the doctors and nurses, or angry at her confinement in sickbay, but merely found herself to be excruciatingly bored. It wasn’t even unreasonable to her that they kept her for observation; yes, please go ahead and ensure that I am fine after cutting into my head! The thought didn’t help her sleep, though.

03:02.

In her years of leaving the relative safety of the giant ship Atlantis in favor of the cockpit of a tiny fighter, Kate’s worst injuries had come while sitting at the helm of said giant ship. Her tiny fighter was shot down once, but she was able to eject into space and sustain no serious physical damage from the ordeal. Yet while on the bridge of the Atlantis, she now could now count two major life-threatening injures; one left her with several new internal organs courtesy of Klingon disruptors, and the other necessitated brain surgery. Lucky her.

03:07, the clock said, not caring for her plight. It was undoubtedly better to be here and unable to sleep than dead and permanently asleep, she mused. Lucky me, indeed. That thought managed to give Kate some peace and send her consciousness back into her head, allowing her to tune out the physical reminders of her location, at least a bit. Eventually, Kate managed to fall asleep in spite of herself, and the clock counted its incessant march onward, not requiring her constant attention.