Eye of the Needle--Part II

[dark_sinestra]

Garak

The Infirmary

Physical Therapy Room

 

It had been two days since the incident, and with a different medication in his system, Garak hadn't experienced the problem again, although he insisted on testing it alone. He didn't want a repeat of the unbearable arousal that kept him awake the entire night and had him rubbing himself raw against Julian's backside to no avail. It didn't matter that Julian had been understanding. It was humiliating. He had a sneaking suspicion that the Bajoran nurse had known somehow what that medication would do to him, even though she wasn't the one to prescribe it. Of course, he had no way to prove it, and no power in the known universe would persuade him to confront her about it.

 

He eyed her with veiled resentment when she joined him in the room, looking at his chart. “Your medication has been changed,” she said, glancing up at him.

 

“By Doctor Bashir,” he said pointedly, daring her with a look to question that.

 

“Yes, I can read,” she said and set the chart aside. “Any unusual pain? Side effects?”

 

“Not with the new medication,” he answered.

 

Nodding, she clapped her hands together. “All right, then, let's get started.”

 

She was as hard on him as she had been the first time. Only his pride prevented him from asking her to spare him, and they weren't even halfway through the session. Every exercise, no matter what part of his chest, arms, or abdomen that it worked, seemed designed specifically to invoke agony and exhaustion. All the while she was there, either before him or beside him, waiting for him to break or beg, possibly waiting for him to quit. You'll be waiting a long time, he thought dourly.

 

When she allowed him to lie back, she said, “I don't think you're giving everything you have, Mr. Garak. Not that what I think matters. You're only hurting yourself if you don't push.”

 

“With all due respect,” he said, “you don't know what you're talking about.”

 

“Don't I?” She shrugged and unfastened his tunic to place the neural stimulator pad. “Most of my patients are in tears by the end of their sessions.”

 

“Perhaps I'm made of sterner stuff,” he said, beginning to relax as soon as she turned on the machine.

 

She laughed. “That's rich. Tell yourself that if you like, but answer me this. If your very life depended on it,” her face loomed into view as she met his gaze, “would you say that what you did today was your true limit? Think about it.” She patted his shoulder and left the room.

 

At first he rejected the question outright. However, the more thought he gave to it, the more he wondered. Was he lying to himself? Could he really put more into the efforts? He was still thinking about it when she returned and released him for the day.

 

Nearly three weeks passed with him going through a variety of medications to treat the pain spasms she had promised him, drinking no kanar, performing his morning and night exercises religiously, and truly wringing himself out during the therapy sessions. At times he did come to tears, and at times he roared his pain, cursed her cruelty, and demanded relief. She alternately berated him and mocked him but never gave him quarter. He came to hate her, at the same time respecting her more deeply than he had ever allowed himself to respect any other Bajoran. She was his equal in cruelty and will, a mirror that reflected his own imperfections a little too perfectly.

 

He thought he'd never see results or improvements until the morning he threaded a needle. He dashed from his shop like a madman with it clutched in his fingers, darting around startled Promenade strollers and security officers alike to the infirmary. “Where is Nurse Decla?” he asked the first orderly he saw.

 

“It's her day off,” the man said.

 

“Garak?” Julian stuck his head around his office door and called down the hallway. “Is something wrong?”

 

“Where does she live?” he asked the doctor.

 

“Habitat Level H-2, chamber 703,” he said, “but I don't think she'd appreciate your barging in on her on her day off. If you need something, I can get it for you.”

 

Garak was already on his way out before Julian finished speaking. He didn't care. He just had to tell her. He didn't think to ask himself why. As the turbolift started upward, he rolled the needle between his finger and thumb. The thread danced and twisted, part of it clinging to the thick material of his pants. When the lift came to a stop, he stepped out briskly without resuming his run. He had no intention of arriving at her door out of breath like an eager child. He eyed each designation and slowed when he drew close, finally stopping and pressing the chime.

 

“Who's there?” her voice came through the comm.

 

“It's Garak,” he replied.

 

Several seconds passed before she answered, sounding much warier. “You'll have to wait a few moments, Mr. Garak. I'm not dressed for company. Are you aware how early it is? Never mind. Just wait.”

 

He did so, only now thinking about what he was doing, what it would look like to her. How many clients for physical therapy did she have? How many of them progressed exactly as she expected them to do so? How could he be sure this progress amounted to much in the larger scheme of things? If she did view him as she would an eager child, he'd have no one to blame but himself. She would be just as likely to use this against him at their next session.

 

She opened the door, eyed him up and down, and silently stepped aside to admit him. He had never seen her out of uniform or with her hair down. She almost looked like an entirely different person, and unlike most Bajorans he had seen, she knew how to dress. He stepped inside and turned to face her as the door closed, holding up the threaded needle. He intended an offhanded quip, but for some reason his voice failed him.

 

She curved a faint smile and tilted her head. “As I've told you before, hard work pays off. Did you doubt me?”

 

“I doubted...myself,” he admitted, dropping his hand back to his side. He suddenly felt foolish. Surely he could have waited until the next therapy session for this? He had nothing left to tell her.

 

“I didn't,” she said, the smile widening but remaining closed lipped. Turning toward her replicator, she stepped toward it. “What sort of tea would you like? Red leaf?”

 

“How did you...” he started to ask, suspicion instantly raised. Had she been spying on him in some way?

 

“It's popular with Cardassians,” she said over her shoulder, ordering two of them and turning to hand him one. “It was that, fish juice, or rokassa juice, and I have no intention of stinking up my quarters with either of the latter.”

 

“Thank you,” he said, inclining his head and accepting the mug. She returned the gesture, and he found that perhaps they had something to discuss after all. As he glanced around her Spartan quarters, he formulated how he wanted to ask about a suspicion that had been growing for some time. “You seem...very familiar with Cardassians.”

 

She lifted her mug and regarded him over the rim. “Mr. Garak, you could probably say that to almost any Bajoran over the age of twelve.” She took a careful sip of the hot tea, her eyes never leaving his.

 

“Perhaps,” he conceded, “but with you, there's more to it than that.”

 

“Really?” she rolled a bare shoulder in a shrug, the draped red sleeve of her gown split to reveal most of her upper arm.

 

“Yes, really,” he replied, amused that even now when they weren't engaged in a session, she seemed determined to make things difficult for him. She waited him out with patience he thought worthy of an inquisitor. “Your mannerisms and gestures, the way that you handle me during our sessions. You sometimes remind me of a Cardassian altogether.”

 

“I considered you rather more civil than that, coming to my quarters uninvited to insult me,” she said. The humor in her eyes belied the words.

 

“It's no insult from my point of view,” he said lightly, speaking to that look.

 

“No, you Cardassians think much of yourselves, you even more than most from what I've seen.” She took another sip of her tea and set it aside, trailing her hand down the tabletop as she walked toward her sofa and took a seat. The light material of her gown flared and settled about her gracefully. She gestured to the chair opposite her.

 

He circled around and sat, making himself comfortable. “Shall I assume you intend to indulge my curiosity?” he asked. He tucked the needle into the hem of his tunic, careful to position it so that he wouldn't prick himself with it accidentally.

 

“Assumptions are dangerous,” she responded with another of her careful smiles. “Still, you had the audacity to seek me out on my day off at a wholly barbaric time of day. I'm willing to entertain at least some of your questions.”

 

“How did you gain such familiarity?” he asked.

 

“You go straight for the jugular, don't you?” she said. “I'm impressed. I don't doubt that you're at least entertaining the possibility that I was a comfort woman. I can see it in your eyes, and yet you asked that anyway without even blinking.

 

“It wasn't quite like that, though. I had a Cardassian lover. I was probably close to our doctor's age, and he was close to yours. You remind me of him in some ways, too stiff necked by half and full of defenses. I met him when I was a field medic. He became our prisoner for some time. We kept the affair quiet for reasons I am certain you can understand.”

 

He nodded and sipped the tea. “You must have been close. How long were you together?”

 

“Long enough,” she said vaguely. “I married a few years after that.” Her gaze grew distant, as though she was no longer seeing him, but someone else, or some-when. “Not him, of course.”

 

“Of course,” he said. Cardassians didn't marry outside their species, and her lover almost certainly had a wife and children at home, particularly if he were close to Garak's age at the time. “Did he die or leave?”

 

“He left. I helped him to escape and made it look as though I had an unfortunate accident with an overloaded phaser. I could tell that he was chafing under the confinement. I even knew that if he made it back to his comrades, he could be the end of all of us.” She snorted softly. “I was so in love I didn't care. I suppose I was lucky that he was in love, too. No one ever came for us in the night after he left.”

 

“You were fortunate,” he agreed.

 

“I've indulged your questions. Will you indulge some of mine?” she asked archly.

 

“Ask,” he said with a gesture.

 

“Oh, you conceded far too easily to that. You're just going to lie,” she said, curving a full smile.

 

“Not with you smiling at me like that,” he said. He tried to imagine her Julian's age and simply couldn't. She was too self-possessed and too polished. He may have been too hasty in coming to engage her in her lair.

 

That earned him a low laugh. “You really are too much. Is our doctor fortunate?”

 

The question took him off guard. “And you accused me of going for the jugular?” he asked, laughing.

 

“I learned a thing or two from my Gul,” she said smoothly. “Well, is he?”

 

“I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the question.”

 

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you are. Are you really going to make me spell it out for you? Don't you consider that a little gauche?”

 

“I care for him,” he said, rolling his mug slowly back and forth between his palms. “I don't think that I would call that fortunate from any perspective. He disagrees, of course.”

 

“Did you really come all this way to show me a threaded needle?” she asked, leaning back and crossing her legs.

 

“I'm not sure,” he said, shaking his head. “I am sure I should be going, though.” He stood and offered her the mug. “Your hospitality and candor were most appreciated.”

 

She stood and took it from him. “I'm amazed,” she said, “a Cardassian with a sense of loyalty to his partner. I thought that having one on the side was a cultural requirement of your males, or is he your one on the side?”

 

“I'm not married,” he said without elaborating. “I'll see you tomorrow then?”

 

“You will,” she said. “Don't think I'm going to go easier on you because of our conversation.”

 

“As long as you don't go harder on me because I didn't accept your offer.”

 

She laughed at him as she guided him out the door. “You haven't yet accepted the offer, Mr. Garak. I'm a patient woman. I'll leave that door open for a little while, at least.”

 

He puffed his cheeks with his exhale after the door shut behind him. That conversation was anything but expected. He could no longer cling to the illusion that he hated her, and as he walked and reflected, he realized that on some level he had known he found her alluring from the start. He and Julian had never discussed anything like this. He had, perhaps shortsightedly, assumed he would have no reason for such a discussion to come up as the lone Cardassian on a Bajoran space station. Julian's attraction was never expected, and since then there had been no one else who showed the remotest interest. Was fidelity by default of any value whatsoever?

 

Stepping into the turbo lift, he realized something else. He did miss being with a woman. He had never had a strong preference for either sex, appreciating both for their varied appeals. Just as he reminded her of her long lost Gul, she reminded him in some ways of Palandine, with her fearlessness and self-possession, in the ways she challenged him, and in the way she boldly made her interest known without being, as she had said, gauche. He couldn't use the excuse that it wouldn't be professional, given that he was involved with his own doctor. Did he want to discuss this with Julian? He still hadn't decided that by lunchtime when the two of them were scheduled to meet in the Replimat.

 

“You're extremely distracted,” the doctor accused. “You've been acting strange all morning. I hope you didn't harass that poor woman in her quarters. She's very private.”

 

“Harass her?” Garak barked a laugh. “Do you think I could do anything to your nurse that she didn't want? She didn't have to let me in.”

 

“What did you want with her?”

 

“Aren't you always invoking doctor patient privilege when I question you about any number of people?” he asked.

 

“Technically, you're still my patient,” Julian said.

 

“Ah, but you are not in charge of my physical therapy,” he said, giving him a smile meant to end that line of questioning.

 

“Fine. We'll talk about something else, then. You must be very excited.”

 

“About what?” he asked cautiously.

 

The man smiled and shook his head. “Pretend you don't know if you like. I know better. About the Cardassian scientists who are coming to the station to help set up a subspace communications relay in the Gamma Quadrant.”

 

“Mm, yes,” he said without enthusiasm. It was news to him. “I can think of nothing more delightful than spending an evening listening to a scientist drone on and on about her work.”

 

Julian laughed. “I can't believe you,” he said. “You'll have the chance to socialize with some of your own people who aren't hear for political purposes. I would think you would jump at the chance.”

 

“Doctor, you apparently have some very odd notions about Cardassian social interactions,” he said. “First of all, you ought to know well enough by now that when it comes to my people, everything is political. Secondly,” he paused for emphasis, “my people's scientists aren't known for scintillating social skills. I think I'll pass.”

 

“Well, I for one intend to get to know them,” he said, smiling. “It's exciting to see the treaty in action.” A shadow passed across the surface of his expressive eyes, his smile losing some of its enthusiasm.

 

Garak reached across the table and squeezed his hand in a rare public display. “What happened isn't your fault.” He knew it preyed on the young man. He often saw it in his unguarded moments, as he saw it now. Losing Bareil took something away from Julian that he hadn't recovered.

 

“I know,” he said, waving it away and digging into his food.

 

Do you? Garak wondered. He decided he would keep his thoughts about the disturbing Nurse Decla to himself, at least for the time being. To his knowledge, neither he nor she would be going anywhere any time soon, nor did he wish to rush into anything. With Julian still hurting from losing his patient and his added worry about Garak's health, it wasn't a good time to give him yet another blow to his sense of security. He smiled his most disarming smile and changed the subject to lighter matters of little consequence. He could be accommodating when he wanted to be.