Social Symptoms

Posted on 09 Dec 2014 @ 1:36pm by Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant Prudence Devin Ph.D.

1,685 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: Starbase 84 - Deck 22, Office 11
Timeline: MD 10 - 0856 hours

[ON]

Leaning against the bulkhead, Andreus Kohl was stood in the corridor with a tall tumbler in his hand. He was staring off into the middle distance, sipping at a fizzy iced tea through a straw. Kohl took little notice of the other people passing by. His thoughts, and the tea, were enough to entertain him. Having languidly planted himself outside the office for some time now, Kohl had sipped away more than half of the tea. It was a fact he only noticed just then, and it elicited a frown. Kohl straightened himself out and asked the computer for the time. The answer was close enough to his appointment time that Kohl tapped the door chime, and hoped he wasn't interrupting.

"Come on in," Prudence said, standing smoothly as the man entered. She had already put the pot of green tea on the table, alongside two small cups. She had also watered her plant, which was an improvement to her day already. She wore her hair up today, controlled as always.

Entering the office on assured strides, Kohl said, "Hullo. I'm called Andreus." He moved to approach Prudence, but he stopped himself before he closed the distance between them. By his reading, her body language wasn't the hug-me type. He made his way to one of the chairs, instead, and sat himself in it. After he set his tumbler aside, Kohl said, "I'm pleased you have appointments available, despite our shore leave."

"I've been on the starbase for a bit now. If I took shoreleave, I would go quite mad," she admitted and gave him a small nod. "I am Prudence Devin. Would you like some tea?"

Kohl tilted his head to the left, and he said, "Please." He wrapped both hands around the small tea cup on the table between them, and he nudged it closer to the pot. "Now tell me," Kohl said in his tongue-in-cheek manner, "Is quite mad a different diagnosis than terribly mad? I forget."

She arched an eyebrow at his question, a small smile on her lips. "Very different diagnosis, both medicated with wine or scotch," she poured the tea before taking a seat. "Now how can I help you, Andreus?"

"I've, uhm..." When Kohl trailed off, he clicked his teeth together. Although he chewed on his lower lip as he found he words, he continued to stare right at Prudence. "There's been an uneasiness in my chest of late. It hasn't abated. If anything, the circumstances of shore leave have only made it worse."

She watched him for a long moment before nodding gently, reaching for her own cup. "And I take that it is not a medical condition, as you have sought me out and not sickbay," she said lightly.

"The symptom," said Kohl, and he had to narrow his eyes and consider his words, "is an emotion. Or a spectrum of emotions, perhaps. ...I wouldn't say there's any physical sensation per se. Which is what brings me to you, rather than Sickbay."

She nodded, holding his eyes for a moment before sipping her tea. "And can you pinpoint what emotions are troubling you?" she asked, gently.

"i'm feeling like..." Kohl started to say. He spoke very slowly, because he didn't know where his statement was heading when he started it. After his words trailed off, Kohl gripped the armrests of his chair, and then he managed to continue. "I'm feeling disconnected? From most everyone on the ship. There are a couple of people I like, a couple of people who have shown kindness to me. But I still, I'm still feeling disconnected from them all."

Prudence watched him, taking in the words. "Often, disconnection happens after a traumatic experience...or under severe stress. Perhaps...you can start by telling me what you believe triggered it?"

Prudence's assertion made Kohl straighten his back and blink at her. "No. No, I don't think that's it," he said. Although there was nothing in his intonation to question Prudence's authority on the matter, Kohl expressed a certainty that that truth didn't apply in his case. He shook his head and he took a sip of the tea. "I've been feeling it for weeks now. Maybe I didn't notice it as much, but it's been gradually building for ages now. This mission to Lyshan Three, it certainly had its stresses. I was learning a new role; my life was endangered in the mines, but that wasn't..." --He shook his head again. His eyes lost their focus, as his attention internalized, and he began to speak to himself-- "No, it's been going on longer than that. Since before I became a Science Officer. I've been feeling it since... Since, at least... Oh."

The colour drained from Kohl's face and his firm posture softened. "...Ohhh," he said.

Prudence watched him work through it, her eyes gentle. She reached to refill her cup, giving him a moment before looking at him. "What did you just...find?" she asked, moving her hand to tap her own head. "In there."

There was a sheepishness in Kohl's timbre. Self-deprecating humour to distance himself from the emotion. Kohl said, "I was... paralyzed in a, uh, fight with a borg drone... I would consider that a trauma, I think. I just-- I never connected the two." --Kohl started to blink more, and he abandoned his tea cup on the table when his arms felt weak-- "I was happy before I was paralyzed. I was just telling someone the other-- I had friends on Galileo, I was being promoted for the first time in years, and I was courting a beautiful, caring man."

"And then I woke up in an alternate universe," Kohl said. His timbre had grown stark. "My friends had transferred away, I had grown distant from the man, and even the Galileo herself went through a major refit."

She nodded gently, watching him for a moment before taking a deeper breath. "Your world changed. You changed too, with it. But now that you are aware of it, we can work through it. Get you connected to yourself again, your emotions...and the rest of the universe."

"Yes, yes, you're right," Kohl said. There was an edge of panic in his tone, rising up within him now that he was properly thinking about it. "I don't feel entirely like myself if I'm not relating to the people around me. It's always fed into how I perceive my environment, how I communicate, how I make my decisions. I don't feel like me without it..."

She watched him, her eyes softening at the words. "Andreus," she said, her voice firming a bit. "Take a deep breath and exhale. You will find yourself again. We will work on it. Now that you know your catalyst, you can figure out why you feel the way you do."

Kohl narrowed his eyes on Prudence, but only for a moment. He took her advice, and he breathed deep, and then he sipped from his tea cup again. His tone took on a dubious edge, when he asked, "What might that sort of work look like and smell like?"

"By interacting more with people," she said, her voice steady and gentle at the same time. "By doing more sessions, examining your emotions and come to terms with what happened to you."

"That," Kohl started to say, and then he shifted in his chair again, and he nodded, and then he cautiously said, "That certainly sounds... reasonable. Achievable. Productive." He winced at Prudence, when he asked, "Do you think I haven't come to terms with it? With my injury?" And now Kohl was asking her that question. Asking her about his own emotions. Her insight had impressed him, and as much as he thought he was relatively aware about his own emotions, Prudence had pointed out a rather large blindspot right there.

"I think that you might not have come to terms with how it changed you," she said, honest, not wanting to mess him around either. "And the emotions connected to it. Being a reasonable, logical man, you might be at terms with the details of your injuries, how you got them, ect. But not with the actual emotional backlash and psychological trauma. Does that make sense?"

He didn't really notice he was holding his breath, until Kohl let out a lungful of air between his lips. That act appeared to deflate his whole posture, his whole body. Kohl shrank in his chair. "Yeah..." Kohl said, and he sounded raw about it. "Yes, it does. I think mysteries inside my own hair scare me a hell of a lot more than all the myriad things I don't understand about the universe."

She met his eyes for a long moment before lowering her eyes. "It's something most people find, actually. Self-reflection is the most frightening thing we do. Or self indulgent, all depending." She met his eyes again and gave a small, reassuring smile.

Taking her smile as it was intended, Kohl offered a small smile in return. "Do you..." Kohl started to ask, and then his smile twisted into a self-conscious expression. "This sounds wrong, but do you do dreams?" Kohl asked.

Prudence smiled gently, tilting her head as she considered it. "Dream analysis? No...no, I do not do them professionally. But I find them so important, to how we process things. If you want, I can find you some literature on it, or we can see if another counsellor here does them?"

"Yes," Kohl said. He sounded uncertain at first, but then he nodded, and repeated himself. "Yes, I think I'd like that. There have been dreams. Seemingly random, brain-processing dreams, and they too tie back to my injury. Well, that will be something we can talk about next time. I think-- uh, I think I have a lot of thinking to do before my next session..."


[OFF]

Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl
Chief Research Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Prudence Devin Ph.D.
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo

RSS Feed