Exhausted and craving the sleep she had not gotten for the past few nights, Olivia slid under her covers, ready for the warmth to envelop her and let her fall into a peaceful sleep.

But as she turned off the lights, it felt like her mind turned on.

A thousand thoughts, frustrations, and worries rushed at her at once, demanding to be processed by her conscious mind before she could sleep. They just would not wait until REM sleep to surface.

She tried to lay still, to force herself to focus on sleep, but her mind rebelled and her body followed. She was soon tossing, turning, the dull ache of exhaustion making it impossible to get comfortable but demanding a comfortable position all the same.

It had been years since she'd had this much trouble sleeping for so many nights in a row, she thought. And it had all started that first night T'Lea came aboard. What was it about her, Olivia wondered, that she couldn't get over? That kept reminding her of so many things, so many things from her own past? She had never been drawn quite so strongly to any of her patients, not at such a subcortical level.

Ah, but there was no time to figure that out now. She needed sleep, and badly. Last time she'd gone without any sleep for days, she'd started having seizures again. And, of course, the powers that be at Starfleet Medical clamped down on her and put her on a 6-month probation from doing any surgeries ... something they would certainly do again if she continued on the course she was on.

Of course, this was something both T'Kara and Steve wouldn't hesitate to remind her about if they knew she wasn't sleeping well. And the readings from her neurocortical monitor were readily available to those charged with her "health," both physical and mental. She sometimes wished she didn't have to work with them every day.

And Steve ... What was he thinking today?! What right had he to ask her out like that? He knew she wasn't interested ...

Or was she?

Olivia pushed that thought back to wherever it came from. She wasn't. She was not interested in Steve.

But that he had the gall to turn right around and ask Staci ...

Then again, hadn't she told him, "Maybe you can find someone else to go with you?"

Why did she even care that he asked Staci? That was great, all the better for them both, right?

Olivia sighed forcefully. Thinking about this wasn't helping her get to sleep.

But Steve ...

She growled and threw the covers off. This was ridiculous. There was no way she'd ever get to sleep if she kept going like this. As much as she hated to, she knew it was time to seek medicinal help.

She glanced at the chronometer on her way out the door, hoping it was late enough that no one would be around to see her wandering through the ship in her pajamas. She didn't like people to see her in her pajamas.

She padded her way through the halls to Sickbay unnoticed. Steve's liable to be there, she thought. Maybe I'd better go to the upper level.

Changing course, Olivia headed for the nearest turbolift that would take her up to deck 6, to the small surgical/intensive care suite. She could sneak in there without Steve seeing her ... she hoped.

She entered her access number into the panel by the door and it opened with a swish. Olivia stepped backwards, even though she knew no one in the main part of Sickbay below could hear through the protective transparent aluminum walls.

The replicator prompted her for an access code and patient name. Reluctantly, she typed in her own name. The empty list of known medications and interactions popped up, along with a single medical condition, described as an "abnormality of the thalamo-cortical loop resulting in infrequent non-convulsive generalized seizures."

The description she had written herself, many years ago, before she had really been comfortable telling anyone in Starfleet that she had epilepsy. She chuckled slightly at its verbosity now.

When prompted, she entered the name of the medication and the dose she wanted, and it replicated a small vial filled with the slightly yellow liquid. She found a hypospray in the drawers and snapped the vial into place.

Pressing the tip over her right jugular vein, she pressed the button, and it delivered the contents in a short, mildly painful burst.

She quickly returned the hypospray to its drawer, and put the empty vial back on the replicator to be recycled. She knew from past experience that she had less than ten minutes until it would take effect.

Olivia quietly made her way back to her quarters, where she crawled under the covers, and, after a few minutes finally fell asleep.

Sickbay's doors swished open to reveal the cacophony of five critically ill patients awaiting her attention. She passed from one bed to the next, reading preliminary scan results, taking mental notes. One: ruptured cerebral aneurysm. Still conscious but falling fast. Two: fifty-nine percent burned, third and forth degree. Plasma burns. Degree of airway involvement unknown. Three: just brought in by security. Very agressive and agitated, cause unknown. Consider psychiatric as well as medical causes. Fourth: impaled through lower lobe of left lung. Hemopneumothorax, cyanotic. Close to shock. Fifth: generalized convulsive seizure, unknown cause. Apparently been seizing since before they were brought in four minutes ago. Should be considered status epilepticus.

Triage, her head told her, but, save for the third, they all needed her equally. It was chaos.

At the first bed, she read the results of the latest scan. Blood was flowing into the subarachnoid space, and her patient had just lost consciousness. Elevated blood pressure and some cardiac arrhythmias. She was showing signs of nuchal rigidity, suggesting initial onset of subarachnoid hemorrhage at six hours prior ...

As she set the curved vascular regenerator on the patient's forehead, Olivia grabbed the patient's thumbnail and squeezed. She opened her eyes and pulled her hand away. Good, Olivia thought. No abnormal posturing. Still comatose, though, GCS 2-1-4.

Making sure the vascular regenerator was doing its job, she turned around to face her next patient.

"Doctor - " he called out in a raspy voice.

She scanned him. Minor respiratory involvement due to breathing super-heated air. Rapid, shallow respiratons, tachycardia, hypotension, narrowing pulse pressure. Hypovolemic shock.

A dermal regenerator would do no good for him, as there was little dermis left to regenerate.

Olivia turned suddenly. There was someone there, in the shadows, someone lurking, up to no good. She suppressed a shudder and continued on.

Another doctor came up behind her and began treating the burn patient, so she moved along to the fourth. The third behind her shouted incoherently at the security personnell beside him.

It looked like she had been impaled with a pipe or conduit, perhaps related to the the same incident as her second patient was involved in? Her breathing was very shallow, fast, labored, and she was displaying the signs of the first stages of shock. Every breath was agony. She was very pale, and her lips and nail beds were already very blue.

Olivia walked to the other side of her patient's bed to see the exit wound. She was lucky, the pipe had missed her spinal canal by more than an inch, but the destruction of her left lung was severe, and she had several fractured ribs. Judging by her emotional state, though, her brain was starting to suffer from lack of oxygen.

Just out of sight, that shadowy figure moved closer. What did he want with her, she wondered, with her patients? No one else seemed to pay him any mind.

Olivia scanned her patient. There was no known damage to the aorta or other major blood vessels. Of all her patients, she perhaps had the best chance.

Olivia noted that her fifth patient was still seizing. Damn, she thought. It's been too long ...

The fourth patient started to cough ... coughing up blood. Agony, Olivia thought, and the word repeated itself in her mind. She grabbed a hypospray with bloody hands and realized she wasn't wearing gloves.

Somewhere in the room, a metal object clattered to the floor. Olivia jumped and turned to look, and found the shadowy figure much closer than before. She quickly administered the spray to her patient, then began on the fifth.

Scans on the fifth indicated no infectious diseases, no brain tumors, no traumatic injury, no swelling of the brain, no infarctions, no bleeding, no drug use or abuse ...

What else? she thought. What else can be causing this? She ran another scan, and all blood sugar, electrolyte, and other chemical levels were well within normal range for someone who had been seizing for the past ten minutes. Damn.

She grabbed another hypospray, noted her hands were still bloody, and shot it into his neck. She waited. No response.

Two beds over, her third patient suddenly vomited blood. She cocked her head and ran through a list of possibilities as she administered another dose to her status patient.

The shadow was right behind her, less than a foot. She could hear him breathing.

No response to medication from patient number five. Refractory status epilepticus. Damn, damn, damn ...

Olivia felt something at her neck. She started to whirl around to face the shadow, but suddenly felt very faint, and fell to her knees.

As she stared into her bloodied hands, the rest of the room faded around her, and she was struck with the realization that none of her patients would be saved.

Slowly, she fell backwards towards the floor ...

Olivia found herself awake, staring wide-eyed at the darkness around her. Her heartrate was slightly elevated, but not pounding. She looked around, disquieted, uneasy. She felt like there should be someone waiting, lurking in the shadows. Had what she just experienced been a dream, or reality? Had he brought her here to her quarters before she regained consciousness?

No, she thought. I went to Sickbay earlier, took 5 cc's of dylamazine, came back here ...

One of the side effects of this medication was unusually vivid, strange dreams. And the more nights she had gone without substantial sleep, the more unsettling her dreams naturally were.

"Damn," she said aloud. I wanted to know what was wrong with the third.

Looking around the darkest corners of the room again, she got the distinct feeling that she wasn't looking for just any shady figure, but for a very specific one. Solkan.

Why him? she wondered. He's never tried to keep me from saving anyone. He never even comes in to Sickbay! So why do I think he's the shadow guy?

Forget it. Time to go to sleep


(continued) .........