Star Trek Voyager: VX

Descent

Stardate 50020.1

Zariel lurched into the bathroom in her quarters a bit after oh two hundred hours, and dropped to her knees in front of the toilet just in time to throw up all of the meager meal she had been able to force down an hour earlier. Streaming eyes clamped shut, she reached up without looking to hit the recycle button. As the nausea receded, a wave of dizziness nearly swept her to the floor. For an endless time, she clung helplessly to the toilet as the universe spun sickeningly around her. It was quite a while before she could lever herself painfully to her feet and make her way back to her bunk, clinging to the walls for support.

She slid painfully onto the bed and curled up into a ball, arms folded around her aching stomach, and lay shivering in the featureless dark. Several days a week, now, she was overwhelmed by the emotions she couldn't escape. It would begin as a gnawing in her stomach that grew until not even water would stay down. The only thing that would ease the nausea at all was sleep.

True restorative sleep, however, had become a thing of memory. She couldn't rest with the constant noise of others' emotions, couldn't get far enough away for her mind to be quiet. A similar gnawing in her brain prevented the rest her body and mind cried out for.

She had long since ceased being able to derive any comfort from her previous habit of sitting in her cubbyhole. Its proximity to the mess hall ensured that there were always people who seemed to be right on top of her, their nearness feeling like they were screaming their feelings into her ears. The streaking stars no longer made her feel any closer to home.

Even the brief respite provided by the music she shared with her colleagues had been hard to come by lately. Schedules didn't mesh, shipboard routine got disrupted by eventful side trips, not to mention Samantha's advancing pregnancy, and playing together necessarily became a lower priority.

Eventually she drifted into a thin sleep that was neither long enough or deep enough to ease the misery that had become her constant companion.

Wally rapped his knuckles on the edge of his console to get Samantha's attention, and when she looked up, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Zariel as she entered Xeno the following morning. Samantha glanced over her shoulder as Zariel eased herself into the chair at her station, and winced at what she saw. Zariel had been looking poorly for some time, but today she seemed much worse. Dark circles under her eyes weren't just incipient but prominent. Her uniform seemed to be several sizes too large. She moved gingerly, as though movement itself was painful. Wally and Samantha met each other's eyes, agreeing that something needed to be done, but without a clue as to what. Samantha was about to rise, about to try and work out something to say, when she saw T'Lin get up.

T'Lin approached Zariel's station and said diffidently, "Lieutenant?"

Zariel turned her chair around to see T'Lin holding a vial of yellowish-orange liquid. She proffered this to Zariel, saying, "Spice tea."

Zariel looked up at her a bit blearily, and said, "Beg your pardon?"

"This is Vulcan spice tea, with a bit of Terran ginger added. It is known to have a soothing effect on the digestive tract, particularly if consumed warm."

Zariel frowned a bit and was about to argue the necessity, when Samantha came to stand beside T'Lin, and Wally knelt beside her chair.

Samantha said, "It can't hurt to try it. It's delicious, actually, T'Lin made it for me when I was pregnant."

Wally said, lightly, "Or you could, you know, go to sickbay. Let the Doctor see what's wrong."

At that, though, Zariel had had enough; the conversation was coming too close to what she wanted them to never find out. She sat up straighter in her chair, and reached to take the vial from T'Lin. "Thank you very much, Ensign, I will definitely try the tea. I'm fine. There's no need for me to bother the Doctor."

All three of them began speaking at the same time.

"You've gotta be kidding me, it's obvious there's something wrong..."

"It is illogical not to avail yourself of medical assistance..."

"Please go see the Doctor, you haven't been feeling well since..."

Zariel interrupted their well-intentioned trio as her console beeped and a block of yellow text appeared on one of the screens behind her. "Y'all, I'll deal with it, it's fine." She turned her chair around and pointed at the text of the briefing, and the others leaned over to read it as well. "One way or the other, it's going to have to wait. Looks like Seska's back."