Cathedral by Michael Mangels (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

brought Nog and his severed leg to the medical bay, seemed to be taking this in stride.

“What happened?”

“Nog’s body has apparently rejected it,” Bashir said, then allowed his words to sink in for a moment. Vaughn’s raised eyebrow made it plain that he, too, understood that bodily rejection was emerging as a common theme here. “And that’s not the end of it, either.”

“Son,” Vaughn said, handing the leg back to Nog. “What did you mean when you said that you ‘might not be needing it again’?”

Nog grinned as he lifted the coverlet that had been draped across his lap and slowly unwound the dressing from the stump of his left leg. As the bandages fell neatly away, Bashir looked at both Vaughn and Shar to gauge their reactions. Shar’s eyes widened slightly, his antennae probing unsubtly forward. Vaughn’s jaw fell like a nickel-iron meteor.

Bashir quickly examined the tiny, perfectly formed leg sprouting from Nog’s stump. It had grown by several centimeters during just the last hour.

Bashir wasn’t certain how much time had passed before the nonplussed Vaughn finally found his words. “Can you…explain this, Doctor?”

“At the moment, I’m simply at a loss,” Bashir said, shaking his head. “Even his burned femoral motor nerves are regenerating.”

“I’d be sorely tempted to call this a miracle,” Vaughn said, his gaze locking firmly with Bashir’s. “And wherever we find one miracle, we might do well to keep searching for others.” He was clearly talking about Ezri.

“I wish I could afford to believe in miracles, Captain,” Bashir said, biting his words off. “Unfortunately, I have to make do with the real world.”

The medical bay doors hissed open again. Merimark and Leishman entered, using antigravs to carry a meter-wide, half-meter-deep oblong container. The pair set the object down gently beside Ezri’s biobed.

“One medical transport pod suitable for a Trill symbiont,” Merimark said as she glanced uneasily at the unconscious Ezri. “Ready for activation when you give the order.” Bashir recalled that Kaitlin Merimark had become one of Ezri’s closest friends among the Defiant’ s current crew complement. It couldn’t be easy for her to see Ezri in her current condition.

“Thank you, Ensign,” Bashir said, then turned to Vaughn. “I’ll make a thorough investigation into Nog’s condition as soon as possible. But at the moment I’m afraid I’ve more pressing matters to attend to.”

Vaughn looked grave. “I take it you’ve come to a decision.” About Ezri went unsaid, though the words hung in the air like smoke over the Gettysburg battlefield.

“Yes. The only decision possible.”

“I understand,” Vaughn said. “Come on, Shar. Let’s get back to work.” Shar, his facial muscles suddenly unusually tense, nodded silently. Bashir wondered how much Shar knew about Ezri’s condition. He wished he had time to brief everyone beforehand about what was about to happen, and to allow Ezri to say her own farewells to one and all. But he no longer had that kind of time. He’d squandered that time with his repeated, fruitless attempts to save Ezri and the symbiont both.

Feeling miserable, Bashir watched Vaughn and Shar exit the medical bay.

He told himself that Ezri wouldn’t have wanted any maudlin good-byes. She’d have another life soon, once they returned Dax to the Trill homeworld after the conclusion of the Gamma Quadrant mission. She’d have plenty of time then to catch up with auld acquaintances, he thought.

“‘ ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world,’” Bashir said quietly to no one. Then he noticed Nog’s quizzical stare.

“What’s going on, Doc?”

Bashir realized that he had been protecting Nog from the truth about Ezri. He sighed, collected his thoughts, and said, “Nog, you deserve to know what’s really about to happen to Ezri.”

The only decision possible.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Bashir really, truly wished he were dead. “Ensign Richter,” he said. “Please prepare Ezri for surgery.” Then he turned back to Nog and started to explain, as gently as possible, that Ezri was going to die very soon.

The woman I love is going to die.

In preparation for the procedure, Ezri was moved back into the small surgical bay, where she slowly drifted back to consciousness. Her eyes opened and she smiled. Despite her pallor and fever, the smile made her as radiant as Bashir had ever seen her.

And it’s the last time. The last time I will ever see that smile.

His heart pounded, auricles and ventricles transformed to hammers and anvils. Doing his best to manage his roiling emotions, Bashir explained to her what was about to happen. She listened attentively and took the news with considerably more grace than Nog had. Or Merimark. Or even Krissten, for that matter.

But Ezri’s equanimity rattled him at first. He had to remind himself that Dax had already experienced host death eight times before.

“I understand, Julian. I love you. And I trust you to do whatever you have to do…to save Dax.”

Once again, he heard Jadzia’s voice, echoing up from a well six years deep: Don’t blame yourself, Julian. You did all you could.

He desperately wished he could believe those words.

“Julian.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to be conscious when you…cut the cord. Not like Curzon. That was different.”

Bashir knew that Curzon’s symbiont had been surgically removed as well. But that had been done at the end of a very long, very satisfying life.

“I understand,” Bashir whispered, his words catching in his throat.

“I don’t want to be…emptied, like the time Verad took the symbiont…” She trailed off. Bashir noticed for the first time that her face was wet.

Julian, Jadzia confessed in the back corridors of his mind. I’m scared.

“I understand,” he repeated. He felt a single fat tear roll down his cheek. Another one jostled for position behind it. He squeezed her hand gently. She squeezed back, hard. He bent down and brushed his lips against hers, then straightened and released her hand.

“I’m ready, Julian,” she said at length.

Blinking away his tears, he donned his surgical mask and lifted an exoscalpel from the tray beside the operating table. At his nod, Krissten carefully attached the delta