Garibaldi’s suspicions, his insinuations, infuriated Stephen. He’d thought he and the chief of security were friends, but now it seemed that all along Garibaldi had been looking for an excuse to stab him in the back. So he’d lost his temper, so what? Everyone was strung a little tight at present. Just because he was the chief of medicine didn’t make him somehow immune!

He was stressed, overworked, and doing the best that he could with insufficient personnel and resources. That was enough to make anyone snap occasionally, but when Garibaldi looked at him, Stephen could see the suspicion in the other man’s eyes, like he WANTED to find a problem with the way Stephen was doing his job.

The rest of his medical team were no better, not listening to him, countermanding his orders, making mistakes, and then trying to blame their errors on him, saying he told them nine psi when he knew he’d said thirteen, dammit! If they’d been paying proper attention, they wouldn’t have almost lost the patient. They needed their hearing checked if they couldn’t even differentiate between the words nine and thirteen!

And now, now Garibaldi was fishing for access to Stephen’s blood test results for the last few months, looking for proof of his inability to carry out his job! Well, he wasn’t going to find it. In fact, Stephen was so sure of that, he’d just check the test results himself. Then he could rub Garibaldi’s nose in the fact that he was completely wrong! Ex-addicts saw other addicts everywhere they looked, wanting other people to be just as weak and fallible as they were, so they could convince themselves their own weaknesses were acceptable.

Well, he wasn’t addicted to stims, and his blood test results would prove that. Maybe then he could get Garibaldi off his back. He shouldn’t have to prove anything, he already had more than enough on his plate, but if this was what it took to set the record straight…

Only it didn’t.

Looking at the results, Stephen wanted to deny what he was seeing, but he couldn’t. It was all there, clear as day: proof of his addiction. The level of stims in his blood was well above what was considered safe, and the worst part was, Stephen had no idea how it had happened. When had he become so dependent on drugs? Garibaldi was right.


The End