A Night in Sickbay

Posted on Thu Jul 10th, 2025 @ 7:30pm by Lieutenant JG Kate Kono

3,629 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Wounds From the Mirror
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Shortly after Kate's arrival with Ben and Elsyn

The first thing she noticed was the light. It saturated everything—her eyelids, the inside of her skull, even the sound of her own ragged exhale. She squinted but the whiteness persisted, so she rolled her head on the stiff pillow, and the second thing she noticed was that the room was all right angles. No windows. No doors. The kind of place designed to keep secrets in.

Kate was still dressed. The black and grey Starfleet Intelligence uniform hugged her ribs and hips, each stitch perfectly aligned. The left breast still had the faint burn mark from a close call deck two. She ran her fingertips over it, slow, tactile, half-expecting the skin underneath to be split open. It wasn’t. At least, not here.

She sat up. The bed was bolted to the floor, with an expanse of blank floor tiles between her and the only other figure in the room. He was perched on the edge of a matching bed, knees together, fingers laced with a surgeon’s precision. Starfleet Intelligence uniform, fresh from the replicator, the pips on his collar were ironically set to a commanders rank. Young, youthful Q had the kind of face that, if you were being charitable, you’d call eager. Slender, slightly pinched, with short brown hair cropped so close to the scalp you could see the trajectory of every follicle.

"Morning, Kate," he said, not looking up. His accent was standard, perfectly neutral, almost old-Earth TV anchor. He made a performance of studying his shoes—black, regulation, unscuffed—before adding, "Or whatever passes for morning in… wherever this is."

Kate dragged her feet over the edge of the bed. Her boots thunked against the floor, which made a satisfying, real sound. A pang of pressure in her lower back told her that, whatever simulation this was, it hadn’t spared the details. She exhaled, bracing for the ache, and let her muscles unspool.
She walked. The movement was fluid, her legs rubbery but functional. Her shadow pooled under her feet. The light overhead was sourceless, but she could feel its heat. At three steps, she stopped, planting herself exactly perpendicular to him.

"You’ve been shot twice now," he said, finally meeting her gaze. "That’s some kind of record."

"Not my fault," Kate exclaimed in a sudden burst of energy while pointing her finger at Q with vigor. It was as if Kate knew this topic would come up; right here, right now. "People like shooting at me. I’m their favorite target, and there’s nothing I can do about it."

He shrugged, one-shouldered, as if conceding the point. "Blue Moth of a captain drags you into peril and somehow you always take the brunt. I’d call that loyalty, but maybe it’s just—"

"Bad luck," Kate interrupted. "You ever seen good luck in action, Q?"

He pursed his lips. "Can’t say I have. Not on our side, at least."

For a moment, silence took over. Kate studied his face, trying to map each micro-expression onto the catalog of people she’d trusted in her life. The tally was short.

She swept her hand in a broad gesture. "So, are you going to tell me what this is? The white room, the… afterlife motif?" The little Asian girl planted her hands on her small hips as if making a point that she wasn’t impressed.
He patted the bed next to him, an invitation. She ignored it. "You’ve got questions," he said. "I get that. First off: you’re not dead."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Is that the Q line, or your own professional assessment?"

"Neither," he said. "It’s just true. You’re somewhere between."

She chewed on that. Between was a comforting lie, but lies were sometimes the only medicine she got. "How’s Ben?" she asked.

The young by Q blinked. "Ben? You mean—"

"Don’t play dumb. Ben. My boyfriend. You’ve watched my life!"
He smiled, but it was careful, constructed. "Ben’s fine. Last I checked, he was arguing with an EMH about triage protocols. He asked after you."

A clock ticked somewhere. There was no clock in sight, but Kate heard it anyway. She paced the length of the room, arms folded, boot soles clicking. She stopped in front of a seam in the wall, traced it with her fingernail. The wall yielded nothing, not even a texture change.

"You ever wonder what it’s like?" she said. "Being the person who gets shot, over and over? You build up a tolerance, but that doesn’t mean it stops hurting." Kate twisted around and gave Q a look of accusable strife in a way. Her way of telling him that, Omnipotent or not, he might not know everything about what it’s like to constantly be the victim.

He shook his head, eyes narrowing. "No, I can’t say I have. I was always the analyst. Not much phaser fire in Subsection Q."

"Figures," she said. "You’re the one that gave me the aptitude for Intel. They just told me, ‘You have the personality for it, Kate. You know how to keep secrets.’"

He looked up, his gaze suddenly hungry. "Do you?"

She barked a laugh, dry and hollow. "Not from myself."

Kate finally walked over and flopped next to Q on the bed.

They sat in the white. He didn’t move, didn’t blink, just held her in his peripheral vision, as though he expected her to combust at any moment.

"Can I ask you something?" he said, softer than before.

"Sure. Not like I’m busy." Kate swung her legs back and forth over the bed in a kiddish like manner.

"If you had to do it all again—the last mission—would you?"

She stared at him, wondering if this was some elaborate psychological evaluation or just boredom. "The mission was a mess. I got two people hurt, one of them, I love. We failed to rget to where we were planning to go. We destroyed half a deck of Starfleet infrastructure in the process. But would I do it again?" She paused, tasting the truth. "Yeah. I would. Because the alternative was worse."

He nodded, like he’d expected nothing less.

"Okay," she said, "my turn. Am I going to die?"

His head tilted, as if he were listening to a frequency just beyond her range.

"Not quite yet."

She waited, expecting the punchline, the twist, the reveal. But there was nothing. Just the white, and the sound of both their breathing, and a small, dumb hope that things on the outside would be less bright, less sterile, less inescapable.

Q stood up with his impostor Intelligence outfit, smoothing the wrinkles from his uniform. "I just wanted to check in," he said, his tone almost apologetic. "See if you needed anything. Company, a distraction, whatever."

"Yeah," Kate said, voice threading itself through the silence. "Company’s fine."

He walked to the door that hadn’t been there before, and opened it with a flick of his wrist. A sliver of darkness poured in, sharp and familiar, like the memory of an old bruise. He stepped out, leaving the door ajar.
Kate stood, stretching until the vertebrae in her spine popped one by one. She walked to the threshold, peered out into the absence of light, and decided that whatever was next had to be better than this.
She followed him out, shutting the door behind her with a soft click, and was gone.

There were no walls, at first. Just darkness and the memory of footsteps behind her, echoing into a hollow so deep it might have been the rest of her life. Then—suddenly—there was road. Red clay, rut-pocked, hemmed by bare pine and splintered fencepost. Heat rose in squiggling lines from the tarmac, and somewhere, a bird shrilled.

Kate blinked, and the world inched into focus. She was standing at the edge of a convenience store parking lot, asphalt buckled and mottled with old motor oil. At her feet, a discarded styrofoam cup sweated the last of its Mountain Dew. She looked down: her uniform was gone. In its place, she wore a cheap red polo with a cartoon slice of pizza above the breast pocket. The fabric was thin enough to show the curve of her Starfleet-issue bra underneath.

She craned her neck. There, standing beside her and already grinning like a maniac, was young Q. He wore an immaculate version of the same polo, khakis ironed, white tennis shoes glowing like a dentist's dream. “Welcome back to the 21st century, Special Agent,” he said, spreading his arms in benediction. “Not exactly what you’re used to, but I thought you’d appreciate a blast from the primordial past.”

Kate scowled. “You couldn’t have put me somewhere with, I don’t know, breathable air? Some place I actually didn’t remember?”

“Oh, the air’s fine,” Q said, breathing deeply and then coughing with theatrical violence. “Well, you get used to it. Your kind always did.” He took her by the arm—she jerked away—and guided her across the lot.

They passed a battered pickup, duct tape holding the tailgate together. The store was a time capsule: flickering neon sign, sun-faded banner reading “NC STATE LOTTO SOLD HERE,” a plastic trash can filled with crumpled receipts and two used scratchers. Inside, the light was less white and more fluorescent misery. The floor tiles were beige, scuffed to a polish, and the air reeked of cheap coffee, synthetic cheese, and old cigarette filters.

A teenage girl was behind the register, scrolling on her phone, thumbs a blur. She wore the same red polo, but on her, it looked more like a yoke than a uniform. A second clerk, about forty and with the restless irritation of someone who’d survived three management changes, was stocking the refrigerated cases. Kate recognized her immediately—same cheekbones, same nervous energy in the way she flinched at the hiss of a sliding glass door.

“Really, Q?” Kate said, but there was no force behind it.

He gave her a sideways glance. “Just wanted to show you what you were missing, dear Kate.”

They walked up and down the aisles. The shelves bowed under the weight of corn syrup and preservatives, jerky packets and off-brand trail mix. Each step pulled Kate deeper into a memory that might have been hers, or might have belonged to the poor sap stuck behind that counter. Q grabbed a bag of pork rinds and a can of orange soda, tossed them with perfect aim into her hands.

“At ease,” he said. “No one's going to court-martial you for snacking.”

She set the food down on an endcap. “Is this the part where you lecture me? ‘Look what you could have been, if not for my intervention?’”
Q smiled, slow and reptilian. “Not a lecture, just an observation. You were a brilliant underachiever, Kate. Before I intervened, your grandest aspiration was to manage a shift at a place like this, or, on a good day, not fail out of community college.”

“Everyone has a past,” she said, glancing at the clerk behind the counter. The girl—no, the woman—caught her eye and quickly looked away.

“But not everyone has a future,” Q countered. “I gave you one. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Kate ran her tongue along the back of her teeth, stalling for time. “You could have just left me alone.”

He shrugged. “I could have. But where’s the fun in that?”

They wandered, Q narrating the names on chip bags and soda cans with increasing delight, like a kid on a field trip to a history museum. Kate found herself drifting toward the back of the store, where a small glass office overlooked the floor. She could see the other version of herself through the plexiglass, hunched over paperwork, jaw clenched, eyes darting to a silent television showing endless weather reports. The resemblance was uncanny—down to the very feint half-moon scar above her eyebrow, the same as the one she’d gotten falling off her bike in the fifth grade.

“Is that really her? Me?” Kate asked, voice smaller than intended.
Q sidled up beside her, his reflection perfect in the glass. “It’s one possible her. One path. Infinite outcomes, yadda yadda. You know the drill.”

Inside the office, the alternate Kate was scratching out numbers on a paper, frustration blooming red across her face. The manager, a man with three chins and a tobacco-stained mustache, poked his head in, said something, laughed, and left. The other Kate closed her eyes for a full five seconds before reopening them, staring at the wall as if she might tunnel through by force of will alone.

“She looks happy,” Kate said.

Q made a sympathetic sound. “She’s not unhappy. She’s numb. A chemical difference, but an important one. You, on the other hand, chose to feel things. To hurt. To risk.”

Kate’s eyes stung, but she wouldn’t let Q have the satisfaction. “Is this supposed to make me grateful? Am I supposed to thank you for dragging me into twenty-fourth century misery?” Kate stopped and smiled a little, “I have nothing against you, Q. You know that. You’re kinda cute, too but I’m taken. But really, why are you showing me this? I knew this was going to be my life if you didn’t intervene. So, why are you showing me what I’m already grateful for?”

He wagged his finger, clucking his tongue. “Perspective, Agent. That’s all I’m offering.”

She pivoted, planting her feet. “Fine. I get it. My life sucks at the moment, and I made mistakes, but it could suck worse. I could be stuck here, folding receipts and pretending to care about lotto numbers.”

He beamed. “Now you’re catching on.”

Kate squared her shoulders, then walked briskly down the nearest aisle, running her fingers along the cold bottles in the drinks case. The condensation left stripes of water on her skin. Q kept pace, hands in his pockets, whistling a tune she almost recognized.

At the counter, the alternate Kate looked up again. For a moment, their eyes met through the flickering halogen and the whine of an ancient AC unit. It was like seeing herself in a funhouse mirror, the reflection warped by gravity and cheap fluorescent tubes. Her alternate self’s expression was flat, defensive, and Kate knew, with a sharpness that hurt, that the woman saw her as just another customer—a stranger. No hint of recognition. No kinship. Just the routine of one more body to be moved along the line.

Kate cleared her throat, turned to Q. “Get me out of here.”

He smirked, as if this was the answer he’d wanted all along. “Very well,” he said, and snapped his fingers.

The world stuttered, light and sound collapsing inward. In the final moment before the store dissolved, Kate looked back one more time at the alternate version of herself. She wasn’t smiling, but there was a glimmer of something behind the eyes—a tiny, stubborn refusal to quit.

Then everything went black, and Kate was gone.

The next sensation was motion—a faint but distinct lurch, as if the entire universe had hiccupped and resumed with only a quarter second of lag.

Kate’s eyes fluttered, adjusted, and then she was walking.

She knew the hum of Starfleet warp engines in her bones. The subtle vibration through the deck, the whisper of air exchangers, the cool blue light embedded in the corridor floor at twenty-meter intervals. The U.S.S. Washington: For a moment, Kate thought she was actually back—sweat in her boots, ache between her shoulder blades, migraine softening her field of vision.

But Q was there, of course. Still in the red polo, but now wearing a Starfleet commbadge as if it were a "Hello, My Name Is" sticker. He strode at her side, hands clasped behind his back, projecting authority with every step.
Kate said nothing, letting the corridor do its thing, until finally Q broke the silence. “Feeling better?”

She gave him the flattest look she could manage. “I’d prefer not to play tourist in my own brain, thanks.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s the problem with you mortals. No curiosity.
No sense of the possible.” He gestured at a passing junior officer—an ensign with a data PADD clamped to his chest. The ensign saw Q, then saw Kate, then turned so sharply into a side corridor he nearly rebounded off the bulkhead.

“People don’t like it when you meddle,” Kate said, watching the ensign flee.

“It’s bad form.”

Q pursed his lips. “You say that as if I ever cared about form.”

They reached a viewport, the stars streaming by in the mathematically precise blur of warp speed. Kate pressed her hand to the plexi, feeling its chill. She turned to Q. “Why all this? The white room. The gas station. The deep-dive into my personal traumas?”

Q leaned in, conspiratorial. “Consider it an exit interview. I wanted to see what you’d do if given the chance.”

“Chance at what?” Kate asked.

He shrugged. “Anything. Everything. The other you—pizza delivery Kate—she was miserable. You, on the other hand, have potential. You make people better, or at least you try. You care, which is rare and deeply annoying. But you also kill people.” He tilted his head. “Why do you keep coming back?”

Kate exhaled. “Because there’s nothing else. If I quit, it all falls apart. No one else is going to look after my people.”

Q looked almost wistful. “You have someone now. A partner. Ben.”

She flinched. “So?”

He smiled, the edge of it softened with something like respect. “He’s good for you. He grounds you, even when you’re busy trying to act like you don’t need anyone.”

Kate looked away. “He’s… he’s funny and sometimes doesn’t get me, but he’s a good one. He makes me laugh. He actually listens. And he never says ‘I told you so’—even when he should. Because, sometimes, I’m an idiot that doesn’t get him, too.”

They walked on. The ship’s computer beeped and the feint sound of red alert from the recent debacle repeated in a low distant tone. Kate watched
Q’s face, looking for the tell: the shift from jest to intent, the microsecond when the trickster let the mask slip.

He stopped at the next intersection, folding his arms. “I hope you realize how lucky you are, Kate.”

She snorted. “You think I don’t? I work for Starfleet Intelligence. ‘Lucky’ isn’t even in my vocabulary.”

“Maybe,” Q said, “but it could be. If you want it.”

Kate bit back the next retort, feeling an unfamiliar tightness in her chest. She tried to force it away, but the words tumbled out anyway. “Why are you doing this?”

Q’s expression sobered. “Because sometimes, out of the billions of souls I encounter, one or two actually matter. You matter, Kate. And I’d hate to see you end up bored behind a counter, wasting away.”

She blinked, unsure whether to laugh or punch him. “You’re a real piece of
work, Q.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

They stood there, traffic in the corridor flowing around them like a river parting for two stones. For a moment, neither spoke.

Q looked at her, really looked, as if taking stock of the whole inventory of her flaws and virtues. “I’ll check in from time to time,” he said, a little softer.

“Just to see how you’re doing.”

Kate nodded. “You could try knocking first.”

He made a grand, mocking bow. “As you wish.”

The ship’s alarm sounded— a little louder now in her ears.

She was alone again, surrounded by the familiar hum and the barely perceptible warp of the universe. This time, though, she wasn’t afraid of what might come next.

Sickbay was a study in calm, even after the recent shootout, every surface designed to absorb anxiety. Overhead, the lights dimmed themselves in sync with the ship’s circadian algorithm. Monitors flickered along the periphery, their soft beeps and blips a kind of lullaby.

Kate lay in a biobed, perfectly still except for the slow rise and fall of her chest. She was cocooned in a Starfleet-issue blanket. Above her, a display traced her vitals: heart rate, neural activity, blood oxygen, each line dancing in orderly rhythm.

No one lingered at her side. That was how she liked it. The EMH had checked her hours before.

If you looked closely, you’d see it: the hint of a smile tugging at the left corner of Kate’s mouth, an upward twitch that resisted even in sleep. Her hands rested easy above the blanket, fingers curled loose, a far cry from the white-knuckle grip she’d worn for most of her waking life.

Inside her skull, there might have been dreams—starfields and corridors, old friends and impossible choices. But out here, in the real world, she was quiet, composed, almost at peace.

Through it all, Kate slept. Not the restless, defensive sleep of someone fearing what waited in the dark, but the deep, restorative kind. The kind that rewrote endings, or at least made the next day a little easier.
She didn’t stir, even as the nurse peeked in to check her numbers. The smile, faint but insistent, lingered on.

That was enough.

 

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