Bloom in the Void Part 2

Posted on Sat Feb 21st, 2026 @ 4:57am by Captain Malcom Llwyedd & Ensign Abigail Gordon & Lieutenant Soto Gantt & Ensign Helle Leed

3,337 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Flashbacks and Side Quests
Location: USS Firebird, Deck 5, Sickbay

[ON]

An hour had passed, and Abigail was made to stay lying down on the bio bed until her readings were normal. She had tried to argue with the staff there, and they would have none of it.

"Look, I need to see to Gantt, just let me check on him," she pleaded.

"No, you need to see to your self-care, and will stay there until we feel you are recovered enough," was the response she was given by Chief Nurse Zenne Beddite

Abi looked over to the nearby bio bed where Gantt was lying.

"Gantt, how are you feeling?"

Gantt let out a low groan, dragging a hand down his face as if it might wipe away the exhaustion clinging to him. “Everything itches and burns at the same time, like my veins are trying to rewire me. How bad does it look?”

Not leaving the bio bed, but Abigail did sit up to get a better view and gave out a gasp.

"Um...we really need to find out what is going on with you." The splotches look rather angry. Abigail decided to get a closer look, since there wasn't any other medical personnel close by.

On closer inspection and running a scan on Gantt, with the medical tricorder she had filched, Abigail's frown deepened.

"Okay, Gantt, I am not seeing any familiar conditions that could explain what this is."

She pondered upon it. "Though it reminds me of poison ivy. But with the application of soothing lotion like chamomile, is it helping at all?"

Abigail looked at her own arms, where she had contact with Gantt, and there didn't seem to be an effect on her skin. If it were poison ivy, she would have splotches as well.

"Not a lot. It's like I can feel it moving under my skin," Gantt said. His fingers spasmed a few times as if grasping for control. "Feels like things are running at different speeds, some slow and some fast. If chamomile can fix this, I'll keep a framed bottle of it in my room."

Her forehead wrinkled as she went into deep thought. She reached over and checked on the readings. "Okay, it looks like that isn't working. I think we're going to need some extra help to solve this mystery. I think that someone from science needs to be brought in. Uh... who can I ask..."

Abigail scrolled through the manifest. "Uh, hmmnn, Ensign Leed, I'll send for her," tapping on her commbadge.

"Hello, Ensign Leed, would you report to medical, please? This is Ensign Gordon. "

---

Helle quickened her pace, scuffing the boots down the corridor as she trotted. No one had summoned her to Medical without warning before, and the tightness in Abigail’s call left no doubt this was more than a routine consult. As the sterile scent and soft beeping of instruments greeted her, she spotted Abigail.

“Ensign Leed ...,” she said, her voice firm until the sight of Gantt struggling ripped her confidence from her. The blotches across his skin were angry, spreading in irregular patterns that made her stomach tighten. Helle pulled her gaze back to Abigail. "Reporting for whatever this is."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Abigail exclaimed. "I really need help on this. Gantt has come into contact with something, and I am having a devil of a time trying to figure out what happened to him." Her eyes were big with worry. "The normal method isn't working, and I don't know what to do. Maybe you can help me figure out just what is happening?"

"I can try. What symptoms has he shown so far? Like, how he acts or talks." Helle stepped closer to the biobed, pulling a tricorder from her belt as she spoke and started scanning Gantt.

"Ooh, the wobbly woman has a prize for me?" said Gantt, trying to grab her tricorder. He missed badly, even though Helle just stood there and watched.

"Okay, that's pretty weird." She stepped back and read the screen. "His cellular energy levels appear to build and drop in waves." She glanced at Abigail, voice steady but edged with urgency. "If he came into contact with something, I think it's burrowed deeper. Something microbial, maybe. Do you have any idea what he might have run into?"

Abigail shook her head vigorously side to side, causing her curls to bounce around.

"I don't know. All I know is that I came across him as I was heading to the turbolift to come here. It was giving Gantt hallucinations, like it is doing now. It seems that things just waver and cause him to see things differently. Almost like he's been in contact with some substance like peyote." Abi said, looking with great concern towards Gantt.

“The readings are inconsistent, fluctuating all over the place.” Helle adjusted the tricorder’s settings, narrowing its range. She thought about asking Gantt about his movements, but doubted he'd be of any help. "There's something familiar in the readings, but I can't make sense of it now. Have any other patients come in like him?"

"I hadn't checked yet, I will do so now," she was looking at Gantt with a worried expression. She went to the console to check on patients who might be experiencing the same symptoms.

"Okay, it looks like there are some others who are suffering the same way," Abigail said, drawing in a concerned breath.

"Helle, what do you make of this? Seriously, I've not come across anything like this during the academy." She turned toward the scientist.

The tone in Abigail's voice, the tight vowels, took Helle right back to the Academy. She half wanted to run over and hug the nurse, drag her to a lounge to drink floral wine, and complain about heavy-handed instructors with ridiculous demands. Instead, Helle compared the tricorder’s flickering readings against the medical console.

"Computer, map the route Lieutenant Gantt took since 0700 today on the screen. Highlight where he spent the most time and all doors and hatches." Helle scowled at new layers of information for inspiration. "Display ventilation systems. Mark areas of high... Hold up, look there, Abigail. He spent almost an hour where a ventilation duct goes right by a meditation area for the ygin. Was there a medical scan of everything they brought on board?"

"The ygin? I've not heard of them before. I can look to see if there has been anything scanned, though." Abigail brought up the last few days on the Firebird, her eyes going over what had been listed. "Okay, so there have been some incense, ceremonial clothing, and some plants which seem to have very pretty blossoms to it," Abigail said, turning the viewscreen around to show Helle.

"Those blossoms aren't in any of the descriptions we have of their on-board flora,” she said after scanning through the images. "Ok. Some plants are decorative in their native environments. But then move them and, boom! They flower and create pollen. Probably nothing that would bother the aliens."

Gantt let out a soft laugh, his finger twining amid strands floating above him that only he, apparently, could see. “The flowers are whispering. Very rude of them.”

"If Gantt was working near a ventilation pathway, he could have inhaled something that reacts to neural activity.” She studied the bio-scans of the ygin's plants and began a scan for what might produce flowers. Her fingers tapped the table as she waited. "There aren't many types of plants, and only two could become pollinators. They must be triggering Gantt's hallucinations. Can you tell if they're having any serious effects on him?"

"Just from my own observation, Gantt was suffering from hallucinations as you had stated, and definitely having difficulty walking; his temperature was spiking. " Abigail looked back towards Gantt. Her brow furrowed in perplexity. "And you noticed the splotches upon his skin."

She lightly bit her lower lip as she was trying to figure out what could be done. "How about we take blood samples and do some blood work?" He looked back at Helle.

"Great idea. If you can figure out how it's affecting him, I might be able to work backwards," Helle said. She waved off some rambling from Gantt. "Once I know the compounds, then you'll figure out the cure so fast, I bet."

Abigail gave a hopeful nod towards Helle. Retrieving the needed items, she was thankful that instead of utilizing a needle in order to draw the blood, there was instead a hypospray device that was configured to draw the blood. This made it so much easier to do things. Though she had been trained on how to do this in the old-fashioned way.

Shaking her head at her thoughts. Abigail walked over to where Gantt was and gently took a couple of samples of his blood. She was going to have to check for specifically some sort of pollen that might be causing his reactions.

"Um, are you familiar with the plants that could be considered decorative where the ygin were concerned?" Abigail asked as she headed over to the diagnostics area to run the tests.

"A little," Helle said. She leaned closer to Abigail and lowered her voice. "Mostly from one very nervous Bajoran who nearly flooded a greenhouse on DS18." A corner of her mouth twitched from the memory. She adjusted her tricorder again, her voice returning to normal.

"Decorative plants are often the worst offenders. They evolve to be noticed. These scans could be off, though. It's almost like as Gantt's body reacts, the compounds react back,"

Abigail looked at the samples of Gantt's blood, racing the invaders as she called them. "I remember coming across a medical record where someone had been suffering from headaches, and many tests were being run. Then, someone took a look closely at the hair and found that some seeds that were rather fine in nature had taken root through the follicles and were the cause of the headaches; in some way, they had become somewhat possibly parasitic. As you had mentioned, Gantt's body may be trying fight it off like a disease or even the body trying to come up with antihistamines. Now, just to figure out what genus of decorative plant that had been brought onboard, would you have on file what sort of plants the visiting dignitaries may have brought with them?"

Abigail straightened her back to work out the kinks.

As Abigail talked about seeds rooting in follicles, Helle's hands slowly curled inward. "Biology is so cool, isn't it?" she said, absently rubbing the knuckles of one hand against her scalp. “Computer, flag the Science database for full botanical manifest and cross-reference it with markers that indicate species-adaptive pollinators."

As they waited for the results, Helle rocked her foot back and forth. "If we're right, then this is not a toxin problem; it is an interaction problem. What a great idea. Gantt's lucky he bumped into you."

"I'm glad that I bumped into him as well. I would have been stuck in the turbolift by myself. That wouldn't have been fun, imagine me trying to figure out how to get out of the lift?" Abigail grimaced.

"I probably should say this, but I worry about being stuck in the turbolift." Feeling embarrassed, Helle tried to explain. "Like, the computer won't recognize me, and I'll have to wait there until someone else opens the lift. Then having to explain what I'm just sitting in the turbolift. Ugh. So, I'm glad you weren't stuck!"

"Oh, yikes, that is awful that happened." Abi's eyes grew rather wide. Her gaze drifted back over to Gantt, worried. "Well, I really hope that the computer will come up with some answers. I hate seeing Gantt suffering like he is."

"Thanks for not thinking I'm a crazy person," Helle said, laughing a little at herself. Just then, the computer spat out a list of ygin fauna, not all of it declared. She traced a block of compounds with a finger. "One of the xenoflora samples produces a compound that behaves like an inhibitor. It can alter how a body's reacting cells respond."

She glanced over at Gantt, then back to Abigail, doubt flickering across her face. "The problem is, it was cataloged as effective on baseline humanoid biochemistry. Gantt isn’t baseline. His Bajoran DNA means his neurochemical balance doesn’t play by these rules. This might not be the problem."

"Or it actually can be the problem. At times, when something is introduced to a different physiology, it can go into a mutation, in order to affect said person. I am a bit worried about this, but we need to find a counteragent." There was a niggling in the back of her mind, what if... someone decided to bring this onboard in order to find out what effects this would have.

She mentally shook her head. If this is going into the ventilation, others could be affected, too. Those who were Bajoran.

"Okay its going to take both of us to find the 'cure' as it were. And we need to do this since there are other Bajorans that are serving on the ship." She gazed at the information."Helle, see if there are known plant species in the database that Bajorans are allergic to, and then we can cross-reference what they use to stop an allergy attack. See if there is a common factor; we may end up creating something that will combat this, and even help other races."

"That’s... such a good angle,” Helle said, as if the idea had only clicked into place mid-sentence. "Cross-linking the xenobotanical registry with Bajoran medical archives, and... Bajorans have a pretty weird plant allergen." Helle lost her train of thought until a gentle cough from Abigail. "Oh. What’s interesting is how their treatments work. Many don’t turn down the immune system's reaction; they retrain it to act differently. Sounds like we don't want a counter agent but a helper agent, maybe."

"That is a great idea!" Abigail had to stifle her excited squeal. Though it did come out in a slight squeak, grinning ear to ear.

"Okay, time to do some weird science/medical," Abigail said, turning to Helle. And they set to work.

Abigail paused to check on Gantt and his vitals, then went back to work with Helle. She was also ignoring some of the looks that the other medical staff were giving her. She was supposed ot be taking it easy, but she wasn't going to do that. They had to save Gantt.

Slowly, their work began to build a lattice that gave some vision of a solution. Beneath it were dozens of failed ideas, but Helle no longer worried. She found it easy to work with Abigail in physical space and on their project. A few times, when Helle only had half an idea, she discovered the other half already conjectured by the nurse.

"I've isolated the part of the bloom's chemistry that causes instability in Bajoran physiology," Helle said. Part of a long polynucleotide chain glowed yellow. "His body should have enough immunoregulatory peptides to teach his body what to do with the plant compounds. Combining his peptide pathways with these resonant compounds could create the mediator, but I can't do that part. I mean, not safely."

Helle was really enjoyable to work with, and Abigail just loved how they were able to effortlessly exchange ideas.

"Okay, now to get them to talk to each other..." Abigail responded as she worked with the components of what Helle had found. After a few attempts, Abigail worried her lower lip and, getting Helle's perceptions and suggestions, Abigail watched as finally the components seemed to correspond,

"Helle I think we did it!" she quietly exclaimed. "Now to give this to Gantt." She put the solution into the hypospray and applied it to his neck.

"Now to wait..." Abigail said anxiously.

"The worst part." Helle stayed close as the hypospray hissed softly. Most of the monitors were hard to understand. Things went up, others went down. Either could be good. She knew where to find the neural activity and hardly breathed as it fluttered, steadied, then fluttered again. "I think the neural pathways are syncing."

She glanced at Gantt when his fingers twitched. “Lieutenant?” she said quietly, giving him a moment. His eyes opened, glanced around, then he suddenly cocked his head and jerked as though hit by a small electrostatic discharge.

"What just happened to me?" Gantt said, dragging his gaze over to Abigail. "I feel very strange."

Reaching out, Abigail gave Gantt's hand a squeeze, relief flooding her whole body.

"You were dealing with something that triggered an allergic reaction, causing your body's natural defenses to battle against a foreign pollen. It was really playing havoc with your physiology. It took both Helle and me together to find out what was going on." Her words tumbled over each other, maybe not making much sense, but that was all that she could muster up to say. Abigail looked earnestly into Gantt's face.

Gantt brought both hands to his face, found the exertion a bit much, and ended up just idly twitching them. "Are you sure? I don't feel like I had a breakdown." He squirmed into a slightly more comfortable position and then stopped, staring at the monitor. "When did I come to sickbay?"

Helle rolled her eyes. Leave it to an engineer to think he had some special internal computer that knew everything. "Yeah, judging from your babbling and biological stressors, you were definitely sick. Unwell. Invalid."

"Well, I think it's been a few hours?" Abigail said, looking at the clock, then over to Helle, then back to Gantt. "I don't remember; time sort of mashed together. Now, though you are on the road to recovery, and I am so glad of that," She gave the patient a happy but tired smile.

She caught sight of a couple of other medical personnel looking towards where she, Helle, and Gantt were.

"I think I may have to go to my quarters. I'm getting the stink eye for not resting up when I came into sickbay with you, Gantt. All of your vitals are going to where they are supposed to be. "

His gaze lingered on the readouts, then back to them. “You pulled me back from somewhere I don't think I could have climbed out of on my own.” He spoke sincerely, no hint of humor. “Thank you.”

Gantt closed his eyes, the hum of the ship settling into something familiar and safe. Helle followed Abigail to the hallway, then threw her a quick arm-around-the-shoulder hug. "We should hang out more often. Thanks for the call." She scampered up the hallway, already writing mental notes for Abigail's feedback. Whatever had crossed the void to infect Gantt had been cut back by two young Ensigns. Carefully, intelligently, and together.

Abigail quietly answered before Helle bounced away. "I would love to do that," gave a chuckle as her new friend was already down the hall and out of sight.

She glanced back towards sickbay, then made her way down the hall, not so full of energy, her body aching from head to toe.

She made it to her quarters, barely able to get a shower, and almost fell asleep in there. Or maybe Abi did, briefly waking up when her head touched the wall of the shower with a slight thump.

Getting dressed in her dark blue pj's Abi crawled into her bed, barely awake, to pull up the covers. Not long afterwards, she was fast asleep.

[OFF]
Ensign Abigail Gordon
Nurse
USS Firebird NCC-88298


Ensign Helle Leed (NPC by Leed)
Biologist
USS Firebird NCC-88298


Lieutenant Soto Gantt (NPC by Leed)
Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
USS Firebird NCC-88298

 

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