"You're barely standing. There's a difference." Zorn set down the datapad, and his expression shifted from professional concern to something more personal. More vulnerable. "I need to talk to you. Not as your supervisor. As someone who cares about your wellbeing beyond your medical utility."
"Don't."
"Don't what? Don't acknowledge that watching you destroy yourself is painful? Don't admit that I've spent two months trying to figure out how to help someone who won't accept help?" His voice remained gentle, but intensity burned underneath. "Don't tell you that when you collapsed at Veridian Station, my first thought wasn't about patient care or medical protocols. It was terror that I might lose you before you gave me a chance to know you?"
The words flowed as honest and raw and everything I'd been trying to avoid acknowledging.
"Zorn—"
"Let me finish." He moved closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. "You're brilliant. You're dedicated. You're possibly the most talented emergency physician I've ever worked with, and I've worked with dozens of species across multiple systems. But you're also hurting, and you're using work to avoid processing trauma that's eating you alive from the inside."
"I don't need?—"
"Therapy. I know. You've made that clear." His jaw tightened, the only sign of frustration in an otherwise calm demeanor. "But this isn't a request anymore. It's a medical order. Either you attend regular sessions with Dr. Senna, or I remove you from active duty. Those are your options."
Anger flared, hot and defensive. "You can't force me?—"
"I can if I determine you're medically unfit for duty due to untreated psychological trauma. And Bea, you are." He gestured at the datapad with my scans. "Your stress levels are dangerous. Your sleep patterns are catastrophic. You're heading for complete collapse, and when that happens, you won't just hurt yourself. You'll hurt patients who depend on you."
The threat to my patients cut deeper than any concern for my own wellbeing. Because he was right, if I collapsed mid-surgery, mid-crisis, mid-anything, people would suffer. Would die. Would become more names in the tally I couldn't escape.
"This isn't fair," I whispered.
"No. It's not." His voice softened. "But life rarely is. And healing isn't about fairness. It's about making the choice to stop running and face what's chasing you."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to fight back, to defend my carefully constructed walls, to maintain the control that had kept me functional since the Liberty disaster. But standing in front of Zorn, solid and patient and absolutely unwilling to let me self-destruct, something inside me cracked.
"I can't," I said, and hated how small my voice sounded. "If I stop working, if I let myself think about everything we lost, everyone I couldn't save?—"
"It will hurt." Zorn's hand lifted, hesitated, then gently touched my shoulder. The contact was warm, careful, asking permission even as it offered comfort. "I know. But pain is how we heal. Avoiding it just makes the wound deeper."
Tears burned behind my eyes. I forced them back through sheer willpower, maintaining the control that had become my only identity.
"First session is this afternoon at 1400 hours," Zorn continued. "Dr. Senna's office, deck nine. After the commendation ceremony. I'll escort you personally if needed."
"I don't need an escort. I'm not a child."
"No. You're a woman who's carried impossible weight for too long and needs someone to help share the burden." His hand squeezed my shoulder gently. "Let me help, Bea. Please."
The please did it. Cracked something fundamental in the armor I'd built so carefully.
"One session," I agreed, the words feeling like surrender. "But if it doesn't help?—"
"Then we'll find something that does. But you have to try." Zorn's golden-brown eyes held mine, steady and unwavering. "I'm not giving up on you. Even if you've given up on yourself."
He left me alone with that statement and my thoughts.
I stood in the medical bay for a long time after he was gone, staring at the datapad with my declining health metrics, thinking about trauma and healing and the terrifying prospect of actually addressing the wreckage inside my head instead of just running from it.
Eventually, I pulled up Dr. Senna's profile. Human psychologist, mid-forties, specializing in displacement trauma and survivor's guilt. One of the Liberty survivors who'd been on a different escape ship, rescued by Mothership four monthsago. Someone who understood what it meant to lose everything and have to rebuild from nothing.
Maybe that would help. Maybe it wouldn't.
But Zorn was right about one thing, I was heading for collapse. And when that happened, I'd become useless to the patients who needed me.
I couldn't let that happen.
My comm unit chimed. Reminder notification: Commendation ceremony, main conference hall, 1330 hours.
