A complaint

Posted on 21 Sep 2014 @ 5:47pm by Commander Scarlet Blake & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant Olsam Mott
Edited on on 21 Sep 2014 @ 5:48pm

2,983 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 1, Ready Room
Timeline: MD10 - 0830 hrs

ON:

Allyndra waited outside the Ready Room looking at her reflection. She had made sure she looked stract and had made sure Mott was the same. She had even had him change sizes of uniform so that it was not quite so tight.

Her mind was still in turmoil. She had come to think of the Commodore as being a friend though they had only had a few passing encounters. She could still picture the homey cabin and decorations when she had visited her. The simple dress, the homemade meal and it made for a contrast to the demon that was in sickbay. She knew that Orions were very emotional creatures but it had been something else and she could not help but wonder if her manipulation of her pheromones had caused a side effect. None the less, Allyndra decided, this had to be done and she had requested a formal meeting with the Captain and Executive Officer over the incident.

Allyndra turned to Mott and raised an eyebrow, "Ready?"

"Yes," Olsam replied simply. In truth, he was more than ready. He was balancing three different PADDs of data in his hand - one each for the captain, commander and himself - that highlighted his main points, contained sensor data from the incident, audiovisual material gleaned from the ship's internal sensors, and named names of those involved in the incident. Some might call it lengthy, unnecessary and extraneous; Olsam called it evidence.

Nodding Allyndra tugged her uniform and then pressed the chime.

Scarlet glanced to Holliday with mild surprise at the interruption. But then, so much had been going on recently that everyone had been pretty much everywhere. She sat back from the desk where she'd been talking to him, to indicate that she didn't mind the disturbance in what she'd been talking about.

John took another look at his XO before eventually reaching down to his desk and clipping his thumb against the door release panel, choosing instead not to say a word but simply open the office manually.

Olsam barged through the door like a big blue wrecking ball, taking up plenty of space with just his bulky frame but even more with all his huffing, puffing and bluster. He opened his mouth to say something but then caught Allyndra's movement out of the corner of his eye and clamped it shut again. She should probably be the first one to speak. He'd timed his remarks out at 47 minutes during rehearsal in his quarters, so it only seemed fair to save that for last and allow his superior to go first.

Allyndra looked over at Mott and then back to the Captain and Executive Officer. "I do appreciate the time sirs. I asked for this meeting because there is something that occurred that I simply can not let slide. Doctor Mott if you please," she waved a delicate hand toward the PaDDs.

Olsam sprang into action, handing a PADD each to Captain Holliday and Commander Blake. The contents were incredibly well-organized considering who'd put them together, beginning with a sort of executive summary of the incident and an outline of the medical staff's objections to the Commodore's disruption. By and large, they seemed to center a great deal on the drawn weapon and an unqualified crewmember - flag officer or no - directing a medical intervention in a triage environment.

After handing out the PADDs, he kept one for himself and stepped back from the desk. He shifted a little bit from one foot to the other, almost dancing in place, wondering when he was going to get to sit down. Standing up always made him so nervous, like everyone was about to try to run out of the room or something.

After taking a glance over the PADD, enough to skim the contents at least, Scarlet arched an eyebrow and looked back to them, clearing her throat to interrupt. She'd seen enough to know what this was about. And she'd heard all about it....it was her job as First Officer to know everything that was going on with the ship and crew. "You do know that the Captain was actually present during the incident you're talking about, yes?" she checked, to make sure they realised he already knew all about it.

"Yes," Allyndra replied. She looked to Holliday and asked, "I am sure you can confirm the Commodore pulled a weapon on a member of the medical staff."

John wanted to admit he was really more distracted by the pain in his ribs than anything else - the pain meds he had been given had not kicked in until just after the incident and as such his recollection was a little fuzzy - but one thing was certain, he had definitely seen his former CO act irrationally.

"That is my recollection yes, the Commodore did retrieve her sidearm during a heated discussion."

Allyndra waited respectfully and gave a small signal to Mott to keep his peace.

Olsam shifted once, twice, three times; eventually he was just fidgeting in place. He was horrible at keeping his mouth shut, much less keeping his peace. In fact, keeping his opinions to himself at the moment seemed to be creating a pressure cooker situation - his skin was slowly darkening to a deeper blue, and he was almost visibly wobbling in place.

"Mine as well, and Doctor Mott you will attest to the Commodore's actions?"

"Oh, I'll attest to it all right. I saw the whole thing with my own eyes!" Olsam said, obviously about to burst at the seams to get his side of the story out. "The entire thing was absolutely absurd. Dr. Voutilainen was just doing her job in repairing the wounds of Petty Officer Hex, and in a triage situation you just don't have the luxury of sitting around doing a bunch of detailed analyses of the situation and developing a careful approach to treatment. You have to act! Act, and act quickly! Otherwise people die. And then here comes the Commodore, guns blazing, practically shoving Dr. Voutilainen out of the way. Then Dr. Wylde comes, then Nurse Pixis, then Ensign Rice, then-"

Allyndra then interrupted Mott's rather detailed description but she realized the normally infallible Bollian was angry. "I think we have enough to lodge a formal complaint that the Commodore's actions were out of hand. I do not know the Commodore that well but it would seem to be out of the ordinary even for an Orion."

Allyndra knew her next statement would take Mott by surprise but she wanted to be fair. "Now in the Commodore's defense, she did acquiesce to an experiment I devised to manipulate her pheromones to attract tribbles, thus considering the rather intimate connection in the Orion brain between emotional and olfactory I will allow that perhaps this might be a side effect. However, given that, I think perhaps being approached by the Command staff over the incident is still in order."

Olsam looked like he'd been caught in an ambush. What experiment? She hadn't said anything about an experiment. Without realizing it, he let out a little huff before crossing his arms like a petulant child. If he'd known there had been some sort of experiment and the Commodore might have been suffering from the side effects then he would have just sedated her before the whole incident had evolved and gotten out of hand.

"Okay," Scarlet lifted a hand slightly before they got too far ahead, shifting in her seat to get more comfortable as she watched them. "So you are making a formal complaint to us, the formal complaint being that the Commodore brandished a weapon without just cause," she looked between the two medics. "Yes?"

Olsam snorted, as if that was the least of it. "Not to mention her flagrant abuse of authority! She marched into an emergency medical situation, distracted doctors and nurses from a very delicate triage operation and started barking demands like she was the Chief Medical Officer. She's a former intelligence officer, not a medical professional. She is in no way qualified - flag officer or not - to question the medical competency of one of our doctors, least of all in a situation like that. During surgery! Surgery! While the second officer of her own damn flagship lays sprawled out on the deck and the captain's stumbling around with injuries of his own...not a word of concern about him, her or any of the other dozen casualties. By the depths, she was screaming for a privacy screen! A privacy screen! We were just lucky there weren't more serious cases, otherwise a nurse being dragged away from a patient to fetch a damn privacy screen of all the stupid irrelevant nonsensical shit that a person could ask for while people are lying around bleeding could have meant the difference between life or death and-"

The increasingly violet looking Bolian cut himself off and took a deep breath. He shrank a little in his chair and returned to a bluer color, although it was hard to tell if it was from embarrassment or just calming down. He certainly wanted to carry on, mentioning Lirha overriding a physician's security request to have a disruptive individual removed from a volatile situation (one who'd already drawn a weapon once); continually shouting directives that should have been issued only from a ranking doctor or one of Tuula's direct superiors; allowing her personal feelings to cloud her command judgement; so on and so forth. But for now, it seemed best to remain quiet. He'd probably done enough damage with his mouth, and he was more than a little ashamed about the use of language that never passed his lips.

"Sorry."

A slight frown flittered across Blake's features at the idea of a privacy screen being unreasonable request. On the contrary, it was the very basic right that a patient had and was key to upholding the legal requirement every doctor had to maintaining doctor/patient confidentiality. It was the very least, when vulnerable and unable to defend their own privacy, that should be provided, and it would have taken only a moment for a nurse to provide one, even in a triage situation. It was a small but vital piece of information that confirmed to Scarlet that there was a big scene that needed looking at, not just presented, isolated details. It was the basic building block of any investigation anyway, to look, independently, at the entire picture and not just what was presented, but it certainly made her adamant that she needed to.

"And that is the full scope of your complaint?" Scarlet double checked, not wanting to miss anything, tapping the PADD lightly against her hand. "Just so we're all on the same page....there is no other action and no other person you wish to include in your complaint?"

Olsam cut his eyes over to Allyndra, not willing to risk another outburst by speaking first. He had plenty to say on the matter of Ensign Rice who, together with the Commodore, had defied the expressed request of the ship's Chief Medical Officer to clear out of Sickbay, citing the need to "provide a security presence" for Petty Officer Hex to "ensure her safety" as if she were under some direct and immediate threat from people sworn to do no harm. She'd even gone so far as to summon Warrant Officer Mormont and order him to specifically defy Allyndra's request for the Commodore to vacate the area. It was audacious enough for a mere security officer to countermand the senior-most physician on the ship in the middle of Sickbay about a medical matter but - adding insult to injury - to do so to someone a full three ranks Rice's superior and who was easily one of the most level-headed officers on the ship, a person whose command authority and medical expertise should have been beyond reproach given the situation.

"Not entirely," Allyndra added. "I would also lodge a complaint against Ensign Rice as well. I requested that all non-essential personnel be cleared due to the amount of wounded and medical personnel confined in such a small area. She refused to comply. At that point given the situation and volatility that had been displayed I did not argue the point further. However, I must say that when I think it is medically necessary for non-essential people not to be in sickbay that it actually means something. Doctor Mott you can add your ideas as well."

"Uh," Olsam began eloquently, trying to piece together his composure. He had more rants than ideas, so it took him a moment or two to sift through all of it and turn it into something coherent.

"Well. Yes. I think Ensign Rice's behavior was out of line. Dr. Allyndra asked for Sickbay to be cleared, and Ensign Rice explicitly defied that request. Beyond that, she seemed to be implying that someone needed to stay and protect Petty Officer Hex from the very medical staff working to save her life. I'm sure she was acting in what she thought were the best interests of the security staff and the commodore, but the fact remains the commodore didn't ask her to defy Dr. Allyndra. She made that decision on her own.

"If the authority of a lieutenant commander over an ensign, a Chief Medical Officer over a security officer in Sickbay, isn't to be respected, then what's the sense of having a chain of command? I believe she herself chided Dr. Voutilainen, a junior lieutenant, about showing some respect for her superior officers. Or, more to the larger point, why are we even bothering with occupational specialization if we're going to allow a precedent like this to stand, where two entirely unqualified, non-medical personnel are allowed to commandeer Sickbay and begin directing the work of physicians working in the line of duty? Ensign Rice saw fit to instruct her superior both in rank and medical expertise, Dr. Voutilainen, that she should heal Petty Officer Hex 'without any whining or rudeness' or 'go and treat someone else' while Ensign Rice found someone else to 'do the job,' one would assume, to the Ensign's satisfaction. Whatever that might be, given her lack of medical knowledge. That was followed shortly by the second threat to throw Dr. Voutilainen in the brig, though the charges that would precipitate such an action were never entirely clear to me.

"I believe Ensign Rice proved to be not only insubordinate to a senior staff member within her own department but also abuse her authority as a security officer by unduly threatening a member of our medical staff."

Olsam sat back in his chair and folded his arms, looking breathless but also a little pleased that he'd managed to piece something together and articulate it without going off into another heated rant. It was, perhaps, the finest speech of his life. A crowning achievement in the diadem of medicine, a forceful and impassioned defense of a colleague and a denouncement of the forces of tyranny and overzealous security that sought to oppress their right to practice medicine for the good of the people. Or, at least, that's how he'd frame it when his grandchildren heard about it... A little embellishment never hurt anybody.

John was finding it more and more difficult to keep his cool. On one hand he had a strong sense of loyalty to his former Captain who had given him a chance in the big chair, but equally he knew that he would have to follow up this break in protocol - which would almost certainly involve the Admiralty.

"Commander Blake and I will need to discuss this further in private. Your complaints have been registered and have our most complete attention. I will speak to the Commodore myself."

Olsam turned his head to look at Allyndra, seeming confused. He had absolutely no idea how formal complaints worked at this level - he'd never really filed one - so he was half out and half in his chair waiting to do...something. Likely, follow his boss's lead.

"Dismissed," Scarlet said softly, seeing Mott's uncertainty as she eased back in her chair, setting the PADD they'd given her on the desk.

Allyndra made a gesture to Mott. This was at and end. They had indicated that they had viewed what had happened to be a problem and now it was out of their hands. She stood gracefully. "Thank you for hearing us out." She then turned and walked out with the same grace she had learned in her youth hoping Mott would follow without further ado.

"Uh, yes, thank you," Olsam mumbled, still looking a little befuddled as he followed Allyndra toward the door.

Near the door, the Bolian abruptly stopped and turned around to face the Command staff. It just seemed awkward to get up and leave on that note! Everyone was so dour and serious, how could they all stand it? He grabbed the doorframe with one hand, looked over his shoulder at Allyndra and gave them both a very big smile.

"It was really very lovely seeing both of you today. We'll have to do this again," he said, nodding to Blake and Holliday before turning, almost walking into the wall and then side-shuffling to make it through the doorway. He gave a nervous, embarrassed chuckle, then disappeared from view at a speed walking pace, trying to catch up with Allyndra.

[OFF]

--

CAPT Jonathan Holliday
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lt Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo

LT Olsam Mott, M.D.
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

RSS Feed