This story alludes to my other story ’Lay me down to sleep’ and I drew from the episode ’Spectrum Strikes Back’ for the solution. It’s one of the few times we see Paul actually relax.
Consciousness came back gently for a change, a slow and unhurried surfacing.
He’d held on until the mission was complete before he dropped, so this time there was no urgency of resumed messages zinging around his brain as connections between synapses resumed. There was no unfinished business, no undercurrent of ‘did we do it?’ that he had to confirm before he could mentally ascribe a full stop to the mission and move on.
He was awake and strangely, he was alone.
That didn’t happen very often at all. In fact, it was something they tried to avoid these days.
After his stint in St Dogwells Farm, he’d found more baggage had been added to his collection. He dreaded waking up alone in Sickbay now; because to wake, you had to have been asleep, and when you were asleep, you were vulnerable, and without fail that was when they came for him. Despite telling himself time and again that this was his Sickbay and it was safe here, every time he picked up those ambient sounds and smells, his instincts screamed DANGER! FIGHT! RUN! and he woke with adrenaline already coursing through him.
Sensing the presence of someone else as he woke – their voice, their smell, the rustle of clothing and the sound of their breathing – someone familiar and safe, defused those combat-honed responses. He’d been protected, there’d been someone watching over him while he’d lain there. He was safe.
His second fatal after Dogwells, Grey had had the watch. He’d stepped out for a moment to answer a call from Green, and the robot nurse monitoring him just about shrieked its processors out when a groggy Scarlet roused alone and had a panic attack.
Fawn had barged in, taken one look at the situation and shut the door behind him. He’d gently talked Paul through a grounding exercise, bringing him out of the memories that still seethed and bubbled like a witch’s cauldron, and back into the present.
Slowly and carefully, Edward had then teased the truth out of him. Paul had a lot of trust in the doctor, but no one readily admitted to fears, so it took some time and effort to get to the core of it. Fawn had listened, pondered, parsed the information given and the information he’d discerned by reading between the lines, and posed a question: the next time he needed to revive in Sickbay, would he give permission for Fawn to try something? Though they tried, he couldn’t guarantee that there would always be someone there with him to ease the transition between unconscious and conscious. Paul had listened and given his permission, trusting that when it happened, the doctor would be nearby, just in case it didn’t work.
Fully awake now, Paul took inventory of himself before sitting up. Legs were still attached, arms too. Full complement of fingers and toes. The nurse ’bot had minimal wires on him this time – a minor blessing as the sticky electrode dots never came off without a fight and a few chest hairs.
Propping himself up in the bed, he looked about himself and smiled. So that was why he hadn’t worried as he woke. What an ingeniously simple solution.
On a table next to the bed was a speaker, softly playing the sounds of wind in the trees, burbling water and birds singing, to cover the noises of Sickbay.