"I know."
"Do you? Because everything about your behavior suggests otherwise. You work yourself to exhaustion because you think you don't deserve rest. You avoid connection because you think you don't deserve joy. You push everyone away because you think you don't deserve care." His golden-brown eyes held mine, unwavering. "But you do. You deserve all of it. Not because of what you provide, but because you exist. Because you're a person worthy of care for her own sake."
The words should have bounced off the walls I'd built. Should have been dismissed as therapeutic platitudes, well-meaning but ultimately meaningless.
But they didn't bounce. They sank in, settling somewhere deep in my chest where truth tends to live whether I want it to or not.
"I don't know how to accept that," I admitted.
"That's what therapy is for. That's what—" He hesitated, and something shifted in his expression. Became more vulnerable, more personal. "That's what I'm here for. If you'll let me."
The implications hung in the air between us, heavy with meaning I wasn't sure I was ready to unpack.
"We should get back," I said.
"In eight more minutes. You need the full fifteen."
"I'm fine."
"No." His voice was gentle but immovable. "You're healing. And healing requires rest, requires care, requires accepting help from people who want to provide it. So sit here for eight more minutes, finish your terrible food, and let yourself have this moment. The patients will still be there. The work willstill be there. But you need to be functional, actually functional, not just barely upright, to help them."
He was right. I hated that he was right. Hated that he could see through my defenses, could identify the pathology I'd been living with for months, could push back against the self-destructive patterns I'd refined into an art form.
But I also, and this was the terrifying part, appreciated it. Appreciated that someone gave enough of a damn to call me on my bullshit. Appreciated that Zorn cared enough to be the villain if it meant keeping me healthy. Appreciated the stubborn refusal to let me destroy myself in the name of service.
"Eight more minutes," I agreed.
We sat in silence, eating terrible food and drinking worse coffee. And somehow, despite the circumstances, despite the crisis, despite the exhaustion, despite the emotional minefield we'd stumbled into, it felt almost peaceful.
Then Pel'vix burst through the door, her lavender skin flushed dark with urgency.
"We've got a problem," she said. "Three more patients just crashed simultaneously. And the pathogen is mutating."
Chapter
Four
ZORN
Bea's hands were shaking.
Not much, just a fine tremor in her fingers as she adjusted the quarantine field around Patient Seventeen. But I'd spent three days watching her work, cataloging every micro-expression, every tell. I knew her baseline. Knew that rock-steady control she maintained like armor.
The tremor meant she was close to breaking.
Forty-two hours. That's how long we'd been on Veridian Station, fighting an outbreak that should have killed every colonist within the first twenty-four. Waterborne pathogen, airborne transmission potential, symptoms that escalated from respiratory distress to neural inflammation to organ failure in a matter of hours.
We'd isolated the source. Implemented treatment protocols. Stabilized the critical cases.
And through it all, Bea Santos had worked without stopping.
No sleep. Minimal food. Water only when I physically placed it in her hands and waited until she drank. She moved through the makeshift medical ward like a ghost, pale face, hollow eyes, that severe bun pulling her blonde hair back so tight it must hurt.
But her hands never shook. Not when she intubated a dying Veridian child. Not when she performed emergency surgery on a colonist whose organs were liquefying. Not when three patients crashed simultaneously and she triaged with brutal efficiency, deciding who lived and who waited.
Until now.
Patient Seventeen's vitals stabilized. Bea stepped back from the bed, and I saw her sway, just slightly, barely perceptible, before she caught herself against the medical cart.
