Fletcher knew it, of course. "I'll do the prescribing, Ms. Yeager. And that means following orders. No core-crawling for the next couple of weeks. No deck-mopping. No bending work. No lifting. That's an order. I'm writing it on your record."
After which Fletcher shot her first in the shoulder, then in three excruciatingly painful spots in the back, and told her, while she was close to throwing up, that she was going to check her into sickbay for forty-eight hours.
God!
"I got duty—"
"You've got a strained back, is what you've got, Ms. Yeager, not mentioning the bruises."
"Ma'am, I've got orders, I can sit station. The department's short, we've got new transfers—"
Fletcher turned her back-and searched the drug cabinet again.
God, maybe she wasin with Fitch.
"Dr. Fletcher, I swear to you, I don't need any sickbay.—Look, look, I'll sit. Won't walk around at all."
Fletcher unwrapped a packet and started making notes of some kind. "All right, I'll make a deal with you. None of the things I named. No using the arms. Sit and watch, period, or I'll put you in here and I'll trank you down and see you rest."
"Yes'm," she said.
Documentation, hell. God, Bernie, what did you do to me?
But, shit, any damn thing could go on if I get stuck in sickbay, NG's back there alone with those guys, and in quarters, all it takes is somebody distracting Musa, Musa turning his head, NG just getting out of sight half a minute, near Hughes or his friends—
Showers or somewhere—
"Your drug test was negative," Fletcher said, handing her two different pills and a cup of water. And after she had swallowed them: "It won't be now. Hear me?"
She stared at Fletcher a moment, replaying that, trying to figure out what Fletcher was telling her, whether it was a setup or a rescue—
No way in hell they could get a valid drug test now—in case there was any reason to try againc
"You steady enough?"
"Yes'm." She hauled herself off the table, determined not to flinch, and started pulling her clothes on, fast, because the jolt started a sweat, and she was afraid Fletcher was going to take that for an excuse to hold her after all.
Just get me the hell out of here—
Scan. Reading the scan. Hypos. Pills. The longer this took, the longer Musa was standing out there in the hall.
And the longer Bernie and NG had no help.
Fletcher gave her a paper and two packs of pills. "You stay out of trouble," Fletcher said. "Follow directions. You've got a written order there, exempts you from certain duties. Carry it. Call me if the pain gets worse. And don't ignore it, dammit."
"Yes'm."
"One of those pill-packs is NG's. Fool didn't pick up his refill. Make sure he stays on it. Hear?"
Fletcher was one of the friendlies, she suddenly knew that. She suddenly knew what Fletcher was doing with her papers and her shots and her pills and she suddenly knew why NG might not have been a useful target in any trumped-up drug-search.
"Yes, ma'am," she said.
Fletcher didn't say anything, Fletcher just dismissed her with a back-handed wave of the hand and kept writing.
Go. Be smart. Keep your head down.
Damn right, she thought, and she went, light-headed with relief, out into the corridor to pick up Musa and Freeman.
Notjust Musa and Freeman.
Liu was out there.
Bet stopped cold, off-balance and thinking, Oh, Godc
"All right?" Musa asked her.
"Gave me some pills," she said, clutching the packets and the paper Fletcher had given her, while the corridor went tilted and her head floated. Liu, senior mainday, gave her a head-to-foot sidelong stare and said to Musa, finishing something or another: "Much as we can, anyway."
Secrets. The whole corridor drifted and steadied on Liu's sullen face, before Musa took her by the arm and steered her down-rim toward the galley-section.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"It's all right," Musa said, and let her go at the step-up, where the deck narrowed.
Through the galley-cylinder to rec, in among others, not fast, just walking.
Liu was behind them until then, Liu dropped off at the galley counter and Freeman stayed with her a second, then caught them up again.
Place smelled of beer, the quarters had that same damned vid playing again, she could lip-synch the words. It could have been alterday rec, you could expect McKenzie and Gypsy and the rest to be here, but they were all the wrong faces, the faces that arrived in the morning and left in the evening, they were the bodies that just filled the beds during alterday, and they were standing, watching, conversation fallen off in this uncanny quiet.
Maybe it was just Fletcher's damned pill that made things seem so unnatural and so dangerous. Maybe it was the shots that still hurt and made her a little sick and shocked.
Maybe everybody waslooking at her and her company, and the rumor had gotten to mainday that there was the fool that had taken on Fitch and made all the trouble.
She wasn't navigating well when she got to Engineering. She did a fast scan to find out NG was there and safe, and that war didn't seem to have broken out—mumbled, "I got to sit, sir," when Bernstein asked what Fletcher had said, and then things were fairly fuzzed after that, except voices kept coming and going and things echoed.
"Think I'm sick," she said, not quite mad, not quite scared, she couldn't get that far, but she was sure now that she'd been dosed, and that she wasn't in pain anymore, and the back didn't hurt, and she could have worked, could have done most anything including float around the section, except Bernie came over, the skuz, and got her attention with a hand on the shoulder and asked if she wanted lunch—
—meaning the cup of tea and the little Keis-rolls Services brought you, the stuff that was about as appetizing as a glue-stick. Usually she skipped it, but Bernie said it was a good idea she eat it, and she couldn't find where she'd misplaced her objections to pushy people who wanted her to do things: so she did it
Just absolutely zee'd, no question. She sat there with the padded seat tilted a little back, watching and listening in complete placidity, heard people talking around her.
And finally, a while after lunch, the voices started coming clear and the boards in front of her came into a little clearer focus.
She had to go to the head. She was aware of being spaced, she sat there as long as she could stand it, until the discomfort was more or less overcoming the fuzziness, and finally she got up and walked.
Somebody grabbed her. It was NG. She blinked at him and said, "I got a prescription for you, the doc give it to mec"
She felt damned embarrassed by mid-afternoon, cold sober again and realizing, with a sudden snap to clarity, that she was sitting in Engineering at station three, and that people were talking near her seat, one of them being Freeman, one being Musa, and one being Bernstein.
"Awake?" Bernstein stopped to ask her.
"Yessir." She reached after the arm of her seat and got up, still wobbly and trying to remember how she had gotten there. The whole day was a blank. Just gone. And Bernstein hadn't thrown her out, just let her sleep it off in her chair.
"Damn," she muttered, "I hope to hell I didn't insult anybody."
Bernstein quirked an eyebrow at her and gave her a smile, in a good mood, for God's sake, after all she had told him, after everything that had happened. She leaned on the seat-back and looked at everybody, at Walden, Slovak and Keane, with their heads together—and NG over at station one, unscathed.