Marie knows how awful it looked when they beamed back onboard the Enterprise, before Christine had sedated her to begin the attempt to save her. She’s not sure she wants to know what it looks like now. It has to look better, she’s pretty sure. But there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to know. She can’t help but try to look, though.

Chris distracts her with his question, and she opens her mouth to answer him even as the doctor shoots him a look, a hundred different answers running through her head.

I’m about to climb out of this bed from the pain.

It feels like my skin was torn off and regrown.

I’m pretty sure I can tell my heartbeat from the throbbing.

Instead she just… winces a little. “Hurts like hell.” But she’s alive to be here with him to feel it. So. It’s worth it. More than worth it. And maybe they were able to learn more from her about the Gorn and their incubation, their biology, on top of that. She hopes so.