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Immune- Chapter 15

Author - Trinneergirl
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Immune

by Trinneergirl

Disclaimers in Chapter 1


Chapter Fifteen

Jonathan Archer wasn't sure what to expect when he saw Trip Tucker again. His friend had been dead for nearly two days and he more or less assumed that he'd be laid out peacefully on some kind of life-support machine. When he entered the room, therefore, he gasped and then placed his hand over his mouth in shock. Trip was vertical, floating in a glass cylinder that was eight-feet high and full of some kind of reddish transparent fluid. Wires and tubes went into all parts of his body and a net of metal was the only thing on the top of Trip's head. Jon could hardly recognise that this was Trip. The worst thing, for the Captain, was that the cerulean eyes were open and locked in an unblinking stare of death.

"Oh, God! Trip!" he said involuntarily. Captain Dan'een understood.

"I didn't know whether to warn you," he confessed. "The mectara fluid is preventing decomposition and since Human eyelids are waterproof, we had to open his eyes."

"His hair!" Jon cried. "What happened to his hair?"

"One of the side effects of mectara is that it makes the hair fall out. We would have had to shave his head anyway, to put the neural stimulation net on him."

Understanding didn't make the sight any easier for Jon. The fluid was clearly quite buoyant as Trip was floating suspended in it. There was no sign of breathing. The young man was clearly very dead and Jon's Human eyelids didn't feel very waterproof as the tears seeped out and coursed down his cheeks. Trip looked like a sample in a specimen jar, a genetic experiment gone wrong. It was horrific.

"When... will you know?" Jon asked. "If you can revive him?"

"Another twelve hours," Dan'een responded. "We are artificially keeping his systems going and, fortunately, since he was only dead for a short period before he was brought here, very little degradation of his neural pathways had occurred. That has been repaired. But unless he starts making new cells he will be irreversibly dead." Jon nodded, unable to take his eyes off the naked, bald corpse, hanging still, suspended in the fluid of the cylinder. "I'll leave you so you can spend time with your Commander," Dan'een said gently.

"Thank you, Captain," Jon replied. The Dryalian moved away and left the room.

Jon stepped slowly closer to the cylinder. He hoped no one else from the crew would have to see Trip like this. A floating, broken doll. Archer sobbed at the indignity of death that his young friend was going through. Would it be kinder to stop this? Admit Trip was gone and give him some dignity? But Jon couldn't. He wanted more than anything to have his friend back. To make up for the mistakes he'd made.

Crying hard, Jon looked into the locked open, lifeless blue eyes, fixed on nothing. His own hazel eyes ran down to where the bruises on the ribs flared black in the red fluid. Slowly Jon realised that the tubes entering the hanging body were flushing the mectara fluid through Trip's systems. From his mouth to his anus, it was pushing through his digestive tracts, his liver, and kidneys. His lungs were filled with the liquid. And the reason the mectara fluid was red was because it was being pumped through every vein and artery in Trip's body. The dead blood cells had been dislodged and had coloured the water. Trip was not only dead, he'd been embalmed. Jon fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands, his sobs almost choking him in his grief.

"Trip! Oh, God, Trip! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" The words were torn from his searing heart.

When Sau'mara came to see Archer some hours later, he found the Captain seated on a chair, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. The CMO watched from the doorway for a while. Archer was ashen and his hazel eyes were red rimmed. Professor Sau'mara was fascinated by the Human use for crying. Doctor Phlox had explained the chemical composition of tears actually changed whether the person was clearing an obstacle in their eye, or crying with joy, or with grief. As humans cried it assuaged some of their emotions and the tears actually helped to trigger a natural anti-depressant. Several times Sau'mara had witnessed the shedding of tears of grief for Commander Tucker. It seemed he was a man who was very well liked. Archer, Sau'mara noted was alternating from looking down at the floor between his feet and staring up at the body of his friend. Sau'mara entered the room.

"Hello, Captain," he offered softly. Archer jumped to his feet.

"Professor," he replied, his face desperate to know, but afraid the news would be bad.

"We have discovered a way to revive Commander Tucker. He's going to be fine." Archer nearly hugged the Dryalian in his relief.

"Oh thank you!" he replied. "You're sure? Really sure he's going to be okay?"

"Physically, yes," Sau'mara responded. "Your people's help has been incredibly valuable to us. I doubt we would have been able to map the neurons of your Human brains without them. Your cerebral cortex is extremely complex. Far more so than most species." Jon waited, knowing there would be more to come. "But mentally, your Commander has a lot of healing to do. In your culture it isn't natural to die for several days. And the suffering he went through before his passing will have to be addressed. He looked after you and got you safe, Captain, it's time to return the favour." The Captain nodded.

"Trip's incredibly tough," he responded "At times that makes it tricky to look after him. But I will. I owe him very much more than the past few weeks." Sau'mara looked at the starship Captain and saw the suffering in the hazel eyes.

"From what I saw in the video footage, there was some problem between you and your Commander before the Meningitis started?"

Jon Archer nodded and, with a little hesitation, he told Sau'mara about his estrangement from Trip and the causes of it.

"We were supposed to have had a meeting to sort this out, but then T'Pol fell ill and I never did get the chance to explain, to apologise." He turned away from the doctor, more tears welling up inside him.

"You'll get your chance soon, Captain." Sau'mara reassured, his mellifluous voice soothing. Jon glanced at Trip, suspended in the mactara fluid.

"It's gone so far, I don't know if he'll ever be able to forgive me. I could still lose him forever once we return through the Vort Cloud!"

Sau'mara nodded. "Are you sure he's responding?" Jon wanted to know. "He doesn't look any different to me." The Professor smiled.

"He's responding very well, believe me."

"Trip won't wake up like that, will he?" Jon queried. "In the tank of fluid. He'd panic."

"So would I!" Sau'mara replied wryly. "No we must take him out, replace his body fluids and reanimate him." Jon looked at the doctor, his expression torn between hope and fear.

"Can I stay?" he asked. "If something goes wrong... I don't want him to be alone anymore."

"It will be a very disturbing experience for you, Captain," The Dryalian CMO told him. Many hard-bitten doctors have found it difficult to cope with the procedure."

"Please!" Jon begged. "I need to be with Trip!"
"Very well," Sau'mara told him after a long pause. I will allow it. But you must not interfere. You will think we are doing more harm than good at first and, as I say, that will be difficult for you to take." Jon nodded.

"I understand," he responded. "I have to trust you're doing the best for Trip."

Sau'mara went to the door and beckoned in the group of reanimators. They came in looking grim and determined, Jon saw that the Dryalian tiger stripes down either side of their faces stood out starkly they were so pale. Doctor Phlox entered with them. The Denobulan Doctor and the Enterprise Captain greeted each other without words, then stepped back and allowed the reanimators to start work.

In the Dryalian ship's Mess, Ensigns Hoshi Sato and Travis Mayweather, Sub-Commander T'Pol, and Lieutenant Malcolm Reed were picking unenthusiastically at some snack foods.

"How long will it be before we know?" Hoshi asked the Sub-Commander.

"It depends on the patient," the Vulcan officer replied. "The Commander is young and strong, that will be a distinct advantage. On the other hand that strength was depleted with his experiences in the Vort Cloud."

"Does that mean Trip might not make it?" Mayweather questioned.

"There have been failures in the procedure," she acknowledged. Seeing the downcast looks of the humans around her, she realised she had to lift their spirits. She didn't understand it, but morale was partly her job. "But those failures are rare and always have occurred when the patient was elderly and had been dead for some time before they were found and treated. The Dryalians anticipate no such problem with Commander Tucker." She was pleased to see the faces around her lighten with hope. All faces except that of Malcolm Reed.

"I've been through every part of Enterprise with the Dryalian guard," Reed said bitterly. "The mess alone in the bio-labs and Life Support will take months to repair. The Dryalians have given us huge assistance to put together enough to get us back to our side of the Vort Cloud, but the whole of the bio-labs will have to be refitted."

"It almost goes beyond understanding, how Wilkinson did what he did," Mayweather offered, staring down into his coffee cup.

"Are there emotions Human's find difficult to understand?" T'Pol wanted to know. Mayweather looked up, surprised, to see the intent look on the Vulcan Science Officer's face.

"Some," he replied. "We don't learn to conceal our emotions, but we do learn to control them some. We can't fly off the handle and just trash a computer, for example, just because it won't do what we want. We feel the anger and frustration, but we don't act on it."

"Right now just about everyone from Enterprise wants to go to Kurt Wilkinson and kick the... life out of him for what he did to Trip," Reed told her. "Even the Captain. But none of us will. Because that would make us no better than him."

"You suppress you emotions," Hoshi chipped in. "While we have codes of behaviour, morality if you like, to help us cope with ours."

"It doesn't always work," Mayweather continued. "But it does pretty well. But Wilkinson, he's clinically insane! When you think of the damage he caused, to Trip, to Enterprise... His stunt with the Dryalian Meningitis nearly killed us all. He was prepared to end the lives of over eighty humans, a Vulcan, and a Denobulan, just to make one guy look bad! When someone has a fracture in their psyche like that, Sub-Commander, yes it's difficult for the rest of us to understand the emotion, the hatred he felt."

"I wonder what it's going to do to Trip, once he's recovered," Hoshi said quietly. "I know it would scare the hell out of me! Knowing that someone hated me that much!" She shivered. They all sat in silence as they remembered the contrast between the handsome, athletic, charming, always positive Trip and the torn, pale, emaciated wreck that had died on the bridge of Enterprise.

Just then Captain Archer came into the Dryalian Mess. He was as white as a sheet with shock and seemed half-numb and confused. Hoshi and Mayweather both stood, the diminutive Asian Hoshi to help the Captain into a chair and the tall, dark-skinned helmsman to stride away to the Dryalian replicators. Archer rubbed his hands across his face to bring life back into the ashen cheeks.

"Commander Tucker?" Sub-Commander T'Pol asked.

"He's going to be fine," Archer replied his voice hoarse and as strained as his expression.
"He's asleep, resting. I can't leave him for long..." Mayweather returned holding a small glass containing a dark brown liquid.

"Here, Captain, get this inside you," the Helmsman said as he placed the glass on the table. "It's the Dryalian version of a stiff drink, sir, and you look as if you could use one!" Jonathan Archer picked up the glass in an unsteady hand and tossed the liquid down in one. "Er, I think I should have warned you to sip it!" Mayweather apologised.

Archer's hazel eyes went wide and teared. He placed the back of his hand, still holding the empty glass, against his mouth for a couple of seconds as the liquid warmed him through with a stunning burst of fire followed by a slow smolder. He coughed once, then took a deep inward breath.

"Phew!" he exclaimed in surprise. "That's one helluva drink!" Mayweather and Reed, who'd not been able to do more than sip the stuff and Hoshi and T'Pol, who after one sniff, hadn't even tried, just blinked at the Captain.

"You say the procedure went well?" T'Pol changed the subject back to their primary concern. Archer nodded.

"I didn't want him to be alone," he confessed. "So I stayed for the procedure for reanimation." His eyes closed and he shivered. "They warn you, but when you see it...!" He trailed off, lost in the memories of seeing Trip treated like a side of meat. The horror of reanimation. The tearful relief of seeing the heart beating again, seeing colour returning into the thin cheeks as blood was pumped in. Waiting anxiously for confirmation that Trip's own systems had kicked in and that he was replacing his own cells again. And the magical, wonderful moment when Jon had seen Trip start to breathe again for himself. The tears in Jon's eyes weren't all for the drink as he stood again.

"Tell Trip we all miss him when he wakes, sir, please!" Malcolm asked.

"I will," Archer replied, smiling at his Armoury Officer. "Though you'll be able to tell him yourself, very shortly." Malcolm smiled in response, the relief palpable.

Captain Archer walked away, anxious to get back to Trip before he woke. The others began to eat again, their appetites returning now they knew Trip was going to be okay. In the back of all their minds was the idea that, maybe they would still lose the Commander when they returned back across the Vort Cloud. But the way the Captain was behaving, it looked like Trip would remain a part of the Enterprise crew, even if Archer had to physically confine him to the Brig every time Enterprise got to a planet. Even T'Pol considered that to be a price worth paying to keep Trip with them.



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