The First Cut [BACKPOST]

Posted on 13 Jun 2014 @ 1:50am by Commander Andreus Kohl
Edited on 15 Jun 2014 @ 7:57pm

1,507 words; about a 8 minute read

Previously on Trigger . . .

I suppose that's why Starfleet had landed on Bactricia in the first place. Every few decades, the Tzenkethi would invade the planet for a time, and then they would be expelled. The last time, the Bactricians negotiated protectorate status from the Federation. My father was involved in those negotiations, if I remember correctly. This time, when the Tzenkethi came to occupy Bactricia again, Starfleet set up base camps to facilitate the expulsion of the Tzenkethi again. I was assigned to Starfleet Medical's team on Bactricia, providing feeding and vaccination programs to the natives, and patching up the Starfleet officers who were injured in the conflicts.

Doctor Sefton approached me while I stared at my left hand curiously. I told her there was no pain, but that the back of my left hand felt numb, and my thumb was weak. She studied my hand, asking me about my range of motion. I described what I was managing now, but then I swallowed hard. I confessed to her that I hadn't been physically able to thumb the trigger on my phaser. My left thumb was practically immobilized. I tried to press the trigger, but my hand wouldn't move. I'm sure I sounded distraught, but I couldn't work out if I was more ashamed of failing in my duty as an officer, or ashamed of my decision to blast a beam of destructive force through a living being.

Doctor Sefton focused on the science. She looked up from her tricorder, and she diagnosed me with radial nerve dysfunction. That's why my thumb wouldn't work. She told me about how, when I was unconscious, she removed shards of polyduranide sheeting from the left side of my torso and from my left arm. She told me the shards looked like they came from a ruptured EPS conduit. The trauma had caused mononeuropathy, but she could treat it fully.

And now, the continuation . . .


Timeline: Circa 2389 (Three months before Andreus Kohl's transfer to USS Galileo)
Location: Bactricia - Starfleet Medical Base Camp


[ON]

Ensign Andreus Kohl's Personal Log, supplemental entry:

I cornered that medical technician today, while he was unloading the hypospray cartridges. That one I mentioned before? The Trill. Darzyn. I opened the conversation casually, but it didn't take me long to delve into his intentions. While I carried over one of the cases, I asked him if he wanted to be a nurse some day. I offered to help him research his options for academia. Darzyn sucked on his teeth and he narrows his eyes on me. He shook his head, and all he said was, "Nope".

I was probably too forward with him, or at least too familiar. There was a hint of confused derision in my voice, when I asked him, "Do you even want to be a medical technician right now?"

He said he didn't. Darzyn shook his head again, and he laughed. He must be a little older than me, but that laugh transformed him into a teenager. Easily, he confessed, "I reckon I'm between ambitions this year."

I stared at him. My body kept still, but there was all manner of appraisal in my eyes. Dryly, I said to him, "Utterly depressed and lacking in any sort of direction to your life. Are you trying to arouse me?"

There was a scream. The sound of it was both shrill and chillingly guttural. It came from outside the viewport, and I moved to look. When I looked back at Darzyn, he was looking right at me. After another look, we both launched into a sprint. We ran for the doors, and as I started to pump my arms, there was a blossom of pain in my left forearm.

The double doors parted for me, and as I ran into the corridor, Darzyn was looking at me, rather than looking where we were going. His face was etched with surprise and curiosity. He wasn't staring at my body, or my aching arm; Darzyn was studying my face. The very same way I had been studying him.

There must have been a grimace of pain on my face, but I really couldn't feel anything but the throbbing in my arm. We raced out the exit, and Darzyn asked me what was wrong. I started to tell him it was my arm, but there was another scream from ahead of us. The scream drowned out my words.

"It's what?" Darzyn asked me.

I lied. I told him it was the heat. It gets so damn hot in the early evening. I masked my lie in the truth.

End Log

* * *

Ensign Andreus Kohl's Personal Log, supplemental entry:

All right, Computer, you can stop clicking and beeping at me in that judgemental tone. I told her today. I told Doctor Sefton about my arm. About the pain in my arm. And just like I told you would happen, it didn't do me any good.

"I wasn't going to say anything," is how I started. I'm clever like that, you know. I said, "I thought it could wait until after my shift." I licked my lower lip and I looked away. I waited, as if she might intuit the problem on her own. Finally, I admitted, "It's my forearm. I don't know if there was more damage to my nervous system than you thought, but it still hurts."

At first, Doctor Sefton only nodded. The dark pools of her eyes looked me over with what I could only see as skepticism. She is a proud woman, and I was questioning her good work. She gestured to a biobed, and she said, "Have a seat. I'll look you over." While I sat myself on the bed, she removed the handheld scanner from her tricorder and waved it over my left forearm. She was slow and thorough in her examination, and she didn't say anything. The warbling of the tricorder was the only sound that passed between us. She stared at the readout until her right eye began to twitch. Doctor Sefton set the tricorder aside, and she asked me, "Can you show me precisely where the pain is?"

I folded up the hem of my uniform sleeve, pulled it all the way up to my elbow. I placed my right palm against the underside of my left forearm. Even to my own eyes, the skin looked healthy and unblemished. You wouldn't be able to guess there had been shards of crystal polymer protruding from my flesh weeks earlier.

Doctor Sefton grimaced at me. She asked, "It hurts where you were injured before?" As she did so, her fingers probed the flesh of my forearm. All the while, her eyes examined my face for any signs of pain. Her ministrations made no difference to the dull ache in my arm. I told her, "Yes, ma'am. Same place I took the shrapnel. The pain doesn't feel the same, but it's there. There's pain."

She took hold of my hand, and began to gently bend and twist my wrist. At one point, she pushed the joint past my comfortable range of motion, but I didn't give her the satisfaction of a groan, nor a grimace. Doctor Sefton asked, "Have you felt the pain ever since I treated you, or was the onset more recent?"

I started to say something, but the staggeringly simple question hit me harder than the physical examination. I was stumped. I couldn't... remember. I could only shrug helplessly at first, and then I said, "I don't know. It comes and goes like the tide."

Doctor Sefton sat on the biobed next to mine. She looked down at her knees and she sighed. When she looked at me again, her expression had softened. She almost looked at me with fondness. Almost. "Andreus," she said, "I can find no trace of your injury. I know what to look for, because I performed the treatment myself, and there's absolutely nothing wrong. If you would like, I can perform a thorough examination, but I can tell you with confidence, I'm not going to find anything more physical if I couldn't find it now." She also asked, "Can you tell me when have you noticed the pain?"

I glared at my forearm, as if my own flesh had betrayed me. She said it. No physical reason for the pain. I pulled the folds of my sleeve down over my arm, and I smoothed out the black fabric. I hid my shameful arm away. In the moment, my face felt hot and my thoughts were drown out by the sound of blood rushing through my ears, in my mind. "It comes. And it goes," I said flatly. "I don't remember."

And I didn't. At least not then.

Doctor Sefton told me to think about it, and to make note of when it happens again.

Computer...

It's happening now.

End Log

[OFF]

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