Santra: A Doctor Comes Visiting...

[Sjet]

Five Years After The Invasion of Bajor (5th year of Occupation...)

“Now just, you know, watch that wrist and do what the doctor told you!”

The advice was, of course, ignored as the young girl bolted for the cloth draped and slipped under it. The woman who had voiced the concern, a woman by dint of experience if not her age by the old measurement, sighed and rubbed her fingers against the ridges of her nose. She walked to the earthen door, pulled aside the cloth hung there for privacy and leaned out into the hand made tunnel: “And stay off the roof!”

She sighed, wondering how long ago it had been her running off to jump into water holes from unsafe heights, and turned back into the make do hospital room. The hard packed dirt and stone of the walls had been draped in plastic where possible, and the few rugs and scraps of carpets were placed on the ground to keep out the worse of the cold. You’d have thought being this far underground the earth would be warmer, but instead the icy hand of winter wormed down from the soil above. There were a pair of bed salvaged from a hostel that had been abounded in a local town during the invasion, but like the medical equipment scattered on crates or makeshift shelves, the beds were threadbare and oft repaired.

“Ok, that's the last of them.” the young woman beamed, watching the back of the young doctor who was currently washing his hands in a bowl of dirty brown water. She picked up a towel, well a scrap of shirt was more truth than lie, and held it out beside him “I can have you in Petura in an hour.”

“Thanks.” said Santra Arron, taking the offered drying cloth and dabbing at his hands. Much like the young woman he seemed young for his own profession, and it had taken him a good deal of time to convince the Elder’s leading this particular Resistance cell to accept his services. Doctors were rare, especially ones trained before the Invasion. Those with skill now either learned through brutal experience patching up Resistance fighters, or were trained in the basic practise of first aid by the Cardassian overseers.

“For what? Four days of doctoring?” she smiled, beaming with genuine warmth as she brushed a lock of dust stained blonde hair over one ear. She gestured to the two empty beds that had held two of their older cell members, both of whom had nearly succumb to infected wounded before the miracle of Santra’s arrival. The fact that one of them had been her father made the next statement no less true: “it’s literally the least I could do.”

Arron smiled, tossing the now soiled rag into a corner where a small mound of such things had grown. It went against the grain of his training to do that but given how they had been storing and repairing bandages, this was a marked improvement: at least all the one on the pile would be throughly burned into of being poorly washed and reused. He must have spent a moment to long looking at the pile of used medical supplies, the fingers of one hand tapping lightly together in thought.

“What's wrong?” the young woman asked.

“I'm worried about your father,” Arron said softly, turning t gently take her hand in his and give it a reassuring squeeze “He's too young for disk troubles, even given his robust occupation. You should make him go to a clinic.”

“One of the camp clinics?” she said, taking a step back, the words dripping from her mouth like rotten fruit pulp. The camps are slowly becoming sores on the landscape as the great cities of Bajor were emptied out, and their displaced populations put into temporary ‘relocation camps’ during the forced migration. Of course no reason was given for this migration, and the work provided to those who were in the camps was less than voluntary. But it was a well established fact that the camps had first rate medical facilities, manned and operated by the Invaders and their sympathisers. The young woman was no doubt wondering how difficult it would be to sneak onto one such camp, and then sneak out again. “What are you thinking?
“Well I'm not thinking anything,” Santra went on to say, turning slowly away from her he began to rearrange some of the supplies they had on hand “but I want to rule out a spinal tumour.”

“So, where'd you learn all this stuff?” she asked, propping herself up on a near by crate as she watched him work.

“I worked in a hospital.” he said, sounding a little distracted as he held up two vials to the meagre glow of a are electric bulb, giving them each a little shake “A research hospital, not a people one. I was the sort of doctor who helped make the cure, not mend bones. But you have to admit I do rather well at that.”

“My friend Braq says he thinks you're on the lam…” she said with a smile and a light laugh, her own ease in this safest of places making her miss out on the subtle delay between her own light hearted laugh and Arrons own.

“Braq thinks that you ‘were’ a doctor and maybe you killed a bunch of people in a hospital.” she said in mock serious tones, leaning in a little closer before giving a girlish shrug “But I don't think so. I don't think you would kill anyone.”


“Well I haven't yet,” Arron smiled at her, poring the two vials into a beaker and giving a little shake to combine the two fluids thoroughly. He the placed it onto a haphazard metal stand above a small oil burning flame, adjusting the wick underneath to increase the temperature. He then gestured around the earthen cave he had been using as a make shift clinic “But if I keep treating people without proper training or tools I probably will. So who's Braq?”

“He's my—“ the young woman caught herself, and hurried rephrased her statement “A friend.”

“Is he from the city? Petura? Calden City?” Arron asked.

No, he's from the Capitol. You know when I was living out here in the valleys as a kid, I thought that Capitol was really cool, the place that was the centre of the universe you know? When I was old enough I left home, ran away to find my life there…” she sighed at remembered youth, her young face souring “But it's a dump. Sort of members only, ya know?”

“Well, what do you expect from a place that is the centre of the universe?” Arron said with a smile.

“Huh?”

“You know, Centre of the Universe, the point furthers from that which is steady? Gentle currents…” Arron said, trailing off as he realised that perhaps classical Bajoran philipkshy was perhaps a touch to high brow for the survivors of a farming community “Er…didn’t you ever make fun of it when you were a kid?”
“No.” she said slowly, shaking her said to allow a easy grin to return as she continued on her quest fro truth “So, are you on the lam?”

“So where'd you people get all these anti-infectives anyway?” Arron asked by way of ignoring her, opening one of the upturned crates to reveal a hodgepodge of store native produce and pilfered Cardassian medical supplies. There were indeed a great many drugs and chemical solutions available here, much more than a simple resistance cell would need: what were they going to do with seventy jars of anti fungal cream? Rash the enemy to death?

“Grey market for the basics, black market for the hard to find items.” she said quickly, before hopping off the crate and trying to causally sandwich herself between the open crate Arron was investigating, and Arron himself. She then asked her question: “Soooooo…do you have a girlfriend?”
“Maybe I killed her…” Arron said with a touch of darkness to his words, turning away from her and returning to the now bubbling beaker of chemicals. He then looked over his shoulder and smiled “You know, when I killed all those people in the hospital?

“Don't make fun of me, I'm not stupid.” she said a little huffily, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I don't have a girlfriend. Or a wife anymore,” he said a little heavily, whilst carefully taking the beaker from its burner stand and pouring its contents into a pair of reasonably clean vials “I never really did.”

“Ooooh, touchy subject?” she said, suddenly all tact and kindness when youthful hormones weren’t in the driving seat.

“So, what comes next?” he asked, trying to get her back on course.

“I drop you off at the outskirts of Junqua, thats the village we caught you in.” she said with a easy smile from long experience at this sort of thing “And this truck driver my dad knows will take you to Petura. There’s a bi weekly convoy that the Invader’s let us run, mostly busy work to keep the grey market afloat and let us all think we’re getting one up on them. we move a lot more than just low nd luxury goods though. Moving a doctor will be a big boon to the Petura city cell group thats for sure.”

“Thanks Isabelle,” he said, speaking her name for the first time and smiling with both his mouth and eyes as he turned slowly around to look at her as he held onto the two now full vials “You're a good assistant.”

“So, you going to tell me why you're on the lam?” she said, that girlish need for gossip and one-upmanship over her fellow members of the sisterhood all to clear. Arron let out a short trickle of laughter, before shrugging.

“Fell in love with a woman who was right for all the wrong reasons.” he said with a wistful smile.

“That sounds romantic.” she said with a dreamy smile.

“Not really. Her parents weren’t to thrilled that she’d married a doctor instead of a professor of theological studies.” he said, a slight bitter tone entering his voice.

“The slut!” Isabella joked, only to redden when Arrons far to cold eyes washed over her with a scowl that soften immediately.

“It would have probably have been the right choice.” Arron said with a sigh, as memories of bittersweet happiness and the bond of mutual hardship rose up within him. She would not approve of his actions now, nor those taken before: but she wasn’t here anymore. He had to manual calibrate his moral compass by hand these days, and he was more aware than anyone that his hands were beginning to shake in that regard.

“Prophets Above, if I turned down a doctor who wanted to marry me, my mom would strangle me.” the young woman said with full knowledge of what she spoke of.

“I'm not a doctor!” Arron said with a chuckle, before shrugging “Well not a real people doctor, just the sort with more paper to his name than not.”

“So, why are you going to Petura? Its a city still mostly under civilian rule, not much call for doctors there unless your jumping off to one of the lower continents in the south?” Isabella enquired.

“Someone I knew once lived there, and if their still among the living after the Invasion I’d like to reconnect with them. They know something about my line of work, before everything change.” he smiles a little sadly “We were like family, really.”

“My family is the last thing I want to know more about.” she laughed. It was the same small town mentality that she had been displaying for the last half week. It had been charming up to a point, but towards the end now…Arron ws enough of a gentleman to hide his growing loss of patience for it.

“Yeah, well, I'm from Calden City originally: my whole family was living there when the Invader’s dropped that comet fragment on it.” he said as levelly and calmly as he could. Isabella merely let out a meep of shock, covering her mouth with a hand: turns out that even the countryside communities had gotten the word about the one big example given to the rest of Bajor concerning continued resistance on a large scale. When Calden had been reduced to a glass lined crater by the orbital bombardment, the national army of Bajor had laid down their arms without question. There was fighting a war, and then there was giving the occupation forces an excuse to wipe them out in job lots.

“Oh, geez, I-I'm sorry.”

“It's ok. Well, it's not ok, but it can't be fixed, so... I'm fixing what I can.” Arron said truthfully, his hand squeezing around the left most vial as though to steel himself to act. His face brightened a little “I found something out this week.”

“What's that?” Isabella asked, cocking her head to one side.

“This smells like calu berries doesn’t it?” he said, offering her the vial from his left hand. She took it and frowned, but he continued “I’ve been trying to find a way to make some of the more olfactory medicines you have here taste and smell a little more appealing, it might make it easier to get the children to take the supplements they need. Living underground might shield you from sensors, but vitamin D is an important part of the bodies daily nutrient intake. So that chemical additive should change the taste and smell, without diluting or altering the needed effect of the boosters. Give it a smell, see if I got it right before I leave?”

She took a delicate sniff of the vial, began to open her mouth to voice an opinion on the scent…and then her body went boneless and dropped to the floor in a heap. Arron carefully reached out as she went down and plucked the vial from her hands, careful not to spill any of the fluid on his hands or excite the glass vial further. He waited a moment to study her, watching her chest slowly rising and falling in time with her breathing which to his ears was not laboured. The bonding agent he’d used in the formula had been a roll of the dice, but so far no allergic reaction to note.

He opened the cloth curtain into the small medical clinic, leaned out and looked down one corridor and then down the other way. The stone corridor was short, but then again the nest of tunnels the Resistance Cell was using was small and cramped. He tossed the first vial down one way, and the second soon went the other. The tinkle of breaking glass was soon replaced by a sudden chemical hissing sound as the very excited liquid began to react with the dust and stone of the floor. Billowing white clouds of sweet smelling vapour exploded from the puddles, and soon thuds of collapsing bodies and the shouts of shocked exclamations joined them as the home brewed sleeping agent did its work.

Santra Arron turned back into the small clinic and quickly found the air bottle and breathing mask he’d put aside for this occasion. He’d inoculated himself against this particular agent, but given the home made nature of this batch he wasn't prepared to take a chance on it. He slipped the bottle into a belt ring at his waist, freeing his hands to lift the now sleeping Isabella onto the ramshackle bed frame.

“You’d never have believed me if I told you this before my dear, but your going to help me save a lot of lives. A lot more than this piddly little resistance cell ever could.” Arron’s muffled voice echoed in the breathing masks confines. He’d wait until the gas had done its work, and then double check to make sure everyone was out for the duration and secured in some fashion. Only after that would he then call in the Cardassians to pick up comatose guerrilla fighters.

usually he’d waited for them, eager to return to a fully functional laboratory where his real work could begin. But instead he was going to follow Isabella’s instructions and catch a ride into Petura city.

He had a old friend to find.