Her chest rose. Fell. Rose again with beautiful mechanical regularity.
Alive.
The relief hit so hard I couldn't breathe properly for several seconds. My monitoring equipment shrieked in protest, alarms piercing the relative quiet of medical. Within seconds, Kessa, one of my junior medical officers, appeared at my bedside, her yellow-marked hands already reaching for scanners.
"Chief." Her voice was carefully professional, but I caught the edge of concern. "Try to breathe slowly. Your oxygen levels are still recovering."
I focused on the breathing. In. Out. Controlling the rhythm despite my body's insistence that I'd just survived something impossible and should probably panic about it.
"Bea," I managed. "Status."
"Stable. Unconscious but stable." Kessa adjusted my IV feed, checked readings I couldn't quite focus on. "You've both been out for eighteen hours. Your pod was found drifting in the debris field with less than twenty minutes of life support remaining." She paused, and the professional mask cracking slightly in her expression shifted. "You're very fortunate, Chief."
Twenty minutes. We'd come within twenty minutes of asphyxiation. Of never waking up. Of dying together in that cramped pod after finally admitting what we meant to each other.
My markings flickered involuntarily, distress response I couldn't quite control in my weakened state.
"The others?" I asked. "The rescue mission?"
"Everyone made it back. Three critical patients from your surgery are stable in intensive care. Zero casualties." Kessa's expression softened further. "You did good work out there, Chief. You both did."
The medical bay door opened. Er'dox entered, his bronze-marked frame seeming somehow larger than usual in the sterile space. Behind him came Dana, Jalina trailing slightly, and, to my surprise, Vaxon. The security chief rarely visited medical unless absolutely necessary.
They clustered around my bed, and I registered something I rarely saw on their faces: genuine fear that was only now receding into relief.
"You scared us," Er'dox said without preamble. "Thought we'd lost you both."
"How long did you search?" My voice came out rougher than intended, throat still raw from the pod's failing atmospheric processing.
"Six hours active search pattern through the debris field." Vaxon crossed his arms, his electric-blue markings flickering with what might have been residual stress. "Mothership committed every available scanner and three search teams. Raiders attempted interference twice. We encouraged them to reconsider."
Translation: there had been combat. Resources diverted. Risk taken. All to find two people drifting through wreckage.
"The entire crew was searching," Dana added quietly. Her green eyes held something complicated, understanding, maybe. "When you go missing saving refugees, people notice. People care."
I'd spent five years as Chief Medical Officer. Treated hundreds of crew members, trained dozens of junior medics, built systems that kept Mothership's population healthy. But I'd maintained professional distance. Kept relationships collegial but not personal, involved but not intimate.
Apparently I'd been lying to myself about that distance.
My gaze drifted back to Bea's bed. She still hadn't moved, her pale features relaxed in unconscious vulnerability that she'd never permit while awake. I wanted to go to her. Needed to. The urge was physical, almost painful in its intensity.
"She'll wake soon," Jalina said gently, tracking my stare. "Kessa told us—" She stopped, adjusted her glasses in that nervous gesture I'd learned meant she was choosing words carefully. "Her scans look good. Just exhaustion and oxygen deprivation. Nothing permanent."
Nothing permanent. The phrase should have been reassuring. Instead it just reminded me how close we'd come to very permanent consequences.
"You confessed your feelings while facing death in an escape pod," Dana observed with that blunt human directness that Er'dox apparently found charming. "Very romantic. Terrible timing."
"The timing was necessary." The words came out defensive. "If those were our last moments?—"
"They weren't." Er'dox's tone held absolute certainty. "You're both here. Both recovering. And now you get to figure out what comes next." He paused, and something that might have been amusement flickered across his features. "Welcome to the complicated part."
The complicated part. Right. Because confessing love while dying was apparently the easy part. Living with those confessions, building something real from crisis-induced honesty, that was the challenge.
"I should check her readings," I said, already trying to sit up. My body protested immediately, muscles weak and coordination shot. Kessa's hand on my shoulder gently but firmly pushed me back down.
"You should rest," she corrected. "I'm monitoring both of you. The moment her status changes, you'll be informed."
"I'm the Chief Medical Officer?—"
