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Naomi is sick, and Naomi hates it.
Obviously, she hates being sick because it’s annoying . She can’t do any of the things that she wants to do or hang out with any of the people she wants to hang out with.
But also, everything hurts, and it’s taken days for the doctors to be able to tell her why. And one of the reasons why is because her mom is human and her dad is Ktarian, and there isn’t a lot of research on people like her when they get sick, and so for days, she’s had to stay in Sick Bay while the staff did lots of tests on her.
And what Naomi hates more than being sick is being alone.
She’s often alone on Voyager. Mom tells her that she’s special, because there aren’t a lot of other kids on board, and because there are few people in the galaxy who look like her. And most of the time, that makes Naomi feel good. But today, she just feels terrible.
She’d started feeling sick last week, when she had some sniffles and coughs. Mom doesn’t always like for people to get treatment immediately when they’re sick. Something about building up Naomi’s tolerance for sickness when they’re in deep space. So Naomi had just tried to show her mom she was going to bed on time, the way she normally does when she gets sick
But in a few days, it hadn’t cleared up, and so she’d taken the hypospray.
Except the hypospray hadn’t worked, and within a few days, she’d had a fever and her body had hurt all over.
Fevers aren’t a thing that Naomi experiences the same way mom does, but she’d already known that. Ktarians have a different regular body temperature, and so fevers for someone like Naomi mean that she feels hot and cold, and when she’s cold, she’s usually colder than a human could be and stay alive.
But she’s different, and so when she has a fever, she kicks her covers on and off and uses the different heating and cooling things that the Doctor gives her.
But this time, that hadn’t cleared up either. And then she’d fallen asleep and forgotten about it, and woken up on the floor.
And that’s when Mom had looked really scared and she’d had to spend several days in Sick Bay.
Now, she’s just tired. The first few days were the hardest because Mom wasn’t allowed to be in here with her because they hadn’t known if Naomi was contagious. And the Doctor is good for a lot of things, but he doesn’t give hugs. That’s what Naomi had needed the most.
But Naomi now feels almost too tired to cover and uncover herself. There’s climate control within her quarantine forcefield, but Naomi just feels terrible. She sleeps a lot and has these small moments in-between where someone’s always trying to force her to eat, but she doesn’t want to.
After a while, they allow her mom back in after they make her a vaccine, and Naomi just feels weak and small. She does whatever Mom and the Doctor tell her to do because every day has been like this for several days.
She hates feeling this way.
When she wakes up again, Mom’s there, but this time there’s someone new with her.
“Hey, Naomi,” says Mom. “Seven asked if she could hang out with you today. Is that okay with you?”
Naomi loves Seven. Seven is so tall and cool and shiny. Seven is always so strong, and she would never get sick the way Naomi has.
Naomi nods and then pushes her face – hot right now – into her cooler pillow.
When she emerges, Seven is sitting there in front of a bowl of food. She holds a bowl that looks similar.
“I thought we could eat together,” says Seven. “But only if you want to. I am hungry.”
Naomi frowns. “You don’t like to eat.”
Seven shrugs. “Yes, but food helps me to function,” she says, and places a spoonful of soup into her mouth.”
Naomi sits up, and her head spins a little when she does that, but it’s not so bad. She looks at her bowl and takes a single sip from her spoon.
“I wanted to see you for several days, but I did not want to accidentally make you ill,” says Seven. “I can empathize with your situation. Every time I get sick, it turns into a research study, because there aren’t a lot of people like us.”
Naomi hadn’t thought about that before. Sometimes she forgets that Seven is ex-Borg. Not because she ignores it but because she always just thinks of Seven as Seven. But that makes sense. There’s only one Seven. “I feel like I’m never going to get better,” says Naomi.
“That is unfortunate,” says Seven. “Many research studies have been done on illness across species, and one of the things that they have in common is that the individual is most likely to get better if they believe they are going to get better.”
Naomi sighs. She’s never going to get better.
“But it is not just the responsibility of that person to believe that they should get better. Another contributing factor is their friends and family who help them through that.”
Naomi smiles, just a little. It feels weird, almost like giving in, because she’s felt so terrible for so many days. “And that’s what you’re here for?”
“Partially,” says Seven, as she takes another bite. Naomi follows. “I’m also here because I am hungry, and we have not hung out together for many days.”
“I haven’t been able to play games since I’ve been sick,” says Naomi.
“If you finish your food,” says Seven, “maybe we can see if you feel like playing a game.”
Naomi looks beyond Seven, to her mom, who is smiling.
Her mom always thinks that she’s so smart.
And still, even though her mother has obviously asked Seven to be here in order to get Naomi to eat, Naomi can’t find it in her to care too much, because she does remember the last time that Seven got sick. How worried all the adults looked even as they told her everything was going to be okay. How Mom wouldn’t let her see Seven because she was worried about what would happen if Naomi saw Seven that sick.
(Naomi still doesn’t know how sick Seven was at that time, just that she was at least as sick as Naomi was. Naomi doesn’t doubt that Seven knows how she felt.)
“Okay,” says Naomi. She takes another sip of soup and finds that she feels kind of hungry now. It’s her favorite soup, one that’s full of savory and salty flavors. Even a little bit of bitter stuff (but this is made just the way she likes it, with more sour so that she doesn’t pay much attention to the bitter stuff). She peeks at Seven to see if Seven looks like she secretly hates eating this, because Seven doesn’t like much flavor in her food at all.
Seven looks completely and utterly normal.
“I do kind of feel better,” admits Naomi, as she takes another bite and another.
“You’re getting better,” says Seven. “And we’re all here to help you get that way.”
Naomi smiles at Seven, who nods firmly at her.
Behind her, Mom is smiling.