Maybe This Time

Posted on 28 Apr 2013 @ 2:14pm by Commander Andreus Kohl
Edited on 28 Apr 2013 @ 4:24pm

569 words; about a 3 minute read

Andreus Kohl's personal log, supplemental:

Maybe this is going to work.

Maybe.

...If you're an historian listening to this in the 26th century, and after today, I went and completely cocked up my career, please don't call me a hypocrite or fool. I'm not stepping into this blind. But, maybe, just maybe this is going to work.

Accepting the position of Assistant Chief Medical Officer felt like a mistake about five minutes after I committed my acceptance to the PADD. Pola and I can barely work together as it is, and now we're supposed to be leadership partners? Huh? What was I thinking? Don't get me wrong, though. I like her. I really do. I'm going to make her come dancing every week. Tomorrow, I'm going to get her stupid-drunk until she stops blushing long enough to tell me every depraved thing she's done with that chiseled slab of masculine perfection she calls a boyfriend. Details, I'm telling you, I want enough details until I can imagine it myself.

But, uh, working with her? Working with her turns us both into screeching, weepy messes. Mind you, some of that was the mission. The stress of being hunted by renegade Klingons really cracked us, and the effects of traveling through sienna did worse. It made me dread working with her again. I had locked myself away in my quarters to study for my exams the whole ride back to the starbase. My whole time there and aboard Venture, I wondered if it was worth putting myself through that all of that just to go back to working with Pola.

And then there's my life, the whole other rest of my life. I came to Galileo to be a nurse aboard a sleepy research vessel. I came to slow down my career and untangle my mess of heartstrings. I came to build family -- not take a leadership position. I wasn't supposed to be scribbling duty schedules or writing performance improvement plans. Plus, I mean, there's the doctor matter. That's always going to be a social impairment, a career impairment. I'm an Assistant Chief in Medical, but I can't perform surgery. I can't cure an unrecognizable illness. It's not... strictly in the job description, I suppose. Technically, my being an officer makes me capable of everything an Assistant Department Head is required to do. But... come on. We're out here on the ragged edge of charted space. We may go days with nothing to do but prepare inventory and run diagnostics on our equipment. But the next thing you know, we're under attack ,or there's a space plague aboard that our biofilters were never designed to detect.

And yet... Pola has been so hopeful since I came back. So sure. We're both going to try not to shout at one another so much. The way I'm looking at it today, If she's so confident in my abilities to be her Assistant Chief, then, I can be more confident in my abilities too. She must be seeing something there. Something untapped, but something that's there. In me. Not only that, Pola has experienced a rapid promotion schedule herself, out here in the field. I can learn from that. She can navigate me around her mistakes. With Pola to guide me, this is going to work.

This is going to work just peachy.

End log.

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