Taking her into a situation this dangerous, this traumatic, could undo months of progress.
Leaving her behind when her skills could save lives went against everything I believed about medical duty.
The choice paralyzed me for three seconds. Then I made the only decision I could live with. I added her name to the deployment roster with a note flagging her for my direct supervision. I'd keep her close, monitor her condition, pull her out if she showed signs of breakdown.
And pray I wasn't making a catastrophic mistake.
"Medical teams assigned," I reported. "We'll be ready for deployment when we intercept."
"Good. Prepare for full combat readiness." Tor'van's expression was grim. "This is going to be ugly, people. Eight hundred refugees in a dying ship with raiders potentially inbound. We get them out fast, we get them out safe, and nobody dies on my watch. Understood?"
A chorus of affirmatives echoed through the bridge.
I left to prepare medical, my mind already running through supply checklists and personnel deployment and surgical protocols. But underneath the professional focus, anxiety gnawed at me.
I was about to take Bea into the kind of situation that had probably caused her original trauma. Into chaos and death and impossible choices about who lived and who didn't.
She'd volunteered for this. Would volunteer the moment I told her about the mission, because that's who she was, someone who ran toward danger to save others regardless of personal cost.
I just had to trust she was strong enough to handle it.
And be there to catch her if she wasn't.
The medical baytransformed into organization within thirty minutes. Staff assembled with practiced efficiency, gathering equipment and supplies into modular transport containers designed for rapid deployment. I moved through the organized confusion checking preparations, correcting errors, answering questions.
Bea arrived fifteen minutes into prep, already changed into field medical gear, her expression set in that familiar mask of professional competence.
"I heard," she said, moving directly to supply organization without waiting for an assignment. "Over eight hundred potential casualties. We'll need maximum surgical capacity and at least triple our usual trauma supplies."
"Already allocated." I watched her work, noting the steady hands, the focused efficiency, the absence of hesitation. If she was anxious about the mission, she hid it flawlessly. "Bea. You don't have to?—"
"Don't." She didn't look up from securing medical containers. "Don't tell me I don't have to go. Don't suggest I'm not ready. Don't treat me like I'm fragile."
"I was going to say you don't have to prove anything. Not to me, not to anyone."
That made her pause. She finally looked at me, those gray eyes searching my face for something. "I'm not proving anything. I'm doing my job. People need help. I'm a trauma surgeon. This is what I do."
"Just promise me something."
"What?"
"If it becomes too much, if you start to spiral, you tell me. Immediately. No pushing through, no pretending you're fine when you're not."
Her jaw tightened. For a moment I thought she'd refuse, would dig in and reject any suggestion she might need support. Then something in her expression softened microscopically.
"I promise," she said quietly. "But Zorn? I need you to trust that I know my limits. That I'm not the same person who collapsed in your arms three months ago."
"I do trust you. That doesn't stop me from worrying."
"Good. Because I'm worrying about you too." She moved closer, dropped her voice so only I could hear over the organized chaos surrounding us. "Stay safe out there. Come back to me. Because I'm not ready to lose something I just started letting myself want."
The words hit like physical impact. I wanted to pull her close, wanted to kiss her properly instead of that brief morning touch, wanted to promise everything would be fine even though we both knew better than to make promises in dangerous situations.
Instead I touched her hand briefly, a moment of connection, of shared understanding, of everything we couldn't say in a room full of staff preparing for potential combat.
"You too," I said. "Stay safe. Stay smart. And Bea? No unnecessary heroics."
"Says the man who once performed emergency surgery during a hull breach without pressure suit backup."
