Notes:

Content Warnings: pain, drugs, near death experiences. medical stuff discussed but nothing graphic. Spoilers for ME2.

Other Notes: This was written with a completely successful mission run in mind – no dead crew.

!

It's been a long shift. Karin is glad, and wretched about it.

Crew members have been pouring in for hours with broken bones, burns, sprains, cuts, bruises; and hollow, glazed eyes. She has handed out twice as many anti anxiety meds as painkillers, twice as many sleeping pills as bandages.

She hates seeing them like this. All of them at once – injured and terrified, and counting on her to fix it. She would take it all on for them, if she could.

But as long as she's got patients to treat, she doesn't have to worry about herself. Can't worry about herself. Uninjured. Functional. Job to do. This is what she's here for.

It's been nearly twenty minutes since the last patient walked in, and she's sitting at her desk, running through a list and tiredly trying to figure out if she's seen to everyone yet.

Everyone who was taken. The commander and the others haven't been by; she fully expects to have to chase them down tomorrow. Probably think they're doing her a favor, less work to do, fewer people to worry about. Just try and stop me, she thinks, and puts her head down on her desk.

She is half asleep when she hears footsteps, unsteady, uneven, familiar, and she sits bolt upright and says "Jeff Moreau, I thought I was going to have to send someone to drag you down here!"

Jeff grins at her from the doorway and looks just as tired as she feels. "Listen, I can explain the missing pills..."

"I'm thrilled you even bothered to take them. Sit down."

Her head swims as she stands up. She keeps moving, grabs a scanner from where she knows it is, doesn't need to be able to see it yet.

"Where is the pain worst?" she asks, prepared for Jeff's usual flippancy, annoyed shrugs, just, all of me? can you fix that?

"Legs," he says, voice suddenly horse. "Left knee. Both ankles. I might have cracked some ribs. Definitely bruised them, at least. Applied medigel, um... basically everywhere. Took those painkillers, not... actually sure what more you can do. Nothing feels broken-broken. No open wounds. EDI thinks stress fractures."

"EDI is correct." Karin frowns down at the scanner. "And so are you; your 7th rib is cracked. I can give you something stronger for the pain."

"Thanks. I didn't, uh... I had to be able to fly."

Karin turns away, glad for the excuse of rummaging through the wall cabinet for meds, swallows the lump in her throat. "You walked down here?"

"Was I supposed to make someone carry me?"

"Yes. You've damn well earned it."

When she turns back around, he's smiling at her. It's not a particularly happy smile. She grimaces right back and hands over the pills. "I'll check you over again tomorrow and see if you'd benefit yet from another medigel application. No compound fractures so you should be clear on the infection front, but we'll follow up on that too, just in case."

"That would be my luck."

"For now, I prescribe bed rest. Actual bed rest, not 'but I sit down to fly the ship doctor' bed rest. EDI can handle things for a couple of days."

"Yeah." Jeff sighs but doesn't argue, and Karin is instantly alarmed but too damn tired to know what to do with it. "Yeah, okay. I just... After those couple days, I... need to get back to it. I need to work. Y'know?"

Karin gestures around the med-bay, indicates the scattered equipment, the flung open drawers and cupboards, the half dozen crew members lying sedated on cots. "Believe me, I know."

Jeff looks at it all, looks at her, and says, "C'mere a second, Doc. Closer. C'mon."

Wearily and warily, she steps closer and stands with her arms crossed, staring him down.

He reaches up with one arm, winces only slightly, and pulls her into a hug.

"Jeff-"

"As your pilot, Doctor, I am prescribing you this hug."

"Pilots don't prescribe things."

"Yeah, well, that might possibly be the new painkillers kicking in. Humor me?"

The line between doctor and friend is one Karin likes to think she has learned how to walk. She knows who can handle some bedside banter and who needs the no-nonsense approach; she knows who will be able to take her seriously as a medical adviser after a game of cards and who will think some light conversation in the mess means they can get out of a physical. She knows when to open up and when to avoid it. She has fewer friends than she might like, but it is not her job to be friends with these people; it is her job to keep them alive.

She has been Jeff's friend almost as long as she has been his doctor – almost as long as he has been her pilot.

It is their job to keep each other alive.

"Thank you," she murmurs, returning the hug loosely, mindful of Jeff's ribs but not treating him like broken glass. "You saved the ship. You saved us."

"Couldn't just leave you there, Doc," he says, forced levity muffled against her shoulder. "This place was too big without you."