The Odd Couple (Mott Family Saga, Part 2)

Posted on 20 Dec 2014 @ 1:02am by Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Lieutenant Tuula Voutilainen M.D. & EMH Mark X-C "Shirley"

2,142 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 3, Sickbay
Timeline: MD09: 1300 hrs

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Olsam rushed into Sickbay in a panic, breathless and looking for all the world like he was being chased by a pack of wild, ravenous targs. He'd managed to break away from his mother for only just a few minutes, coming up with some excuse about needing to check on a patient, but she was on her way for the "tour" of Sickbay he'd promised her. He had - he glanced at the chronometer - about nine minutes to convince Tuula.

"Dr. Voutilainen! Tuula!" Olsam shouted, a high-pitched squeak of desperation. He stared at her, taking big gulps of air from the exertion of running down the corridor. "Will you to marry me?"

"Dr. Mott!" exclaimed Tuula, looking up from her work. She was performing what would hopefully be Abbey's last surgery under the watchful supervision of the EMH, and was just finishing closing up the incision when Mott suddenly busted in. The Bolian looked sweaty and desperate as he pleaded with her with his eyes. He was known to misinterpret social cues from time to time, but Tuula thought this to be strange. Even for the doctor. "Look, doctor, I know I said you were charming and supportive and wonderful the other day, but... a date was not what I had in mind, much less marriage!"

"What?" Olsam said, face scrunched up in confusion. When did she say those things? He couldn't even remember. "No, no! Not really marry me. Just fake marry me. Uhhhh!" He groaned in frustration and glanced at the chronometer, feeling the weight and pressure of time. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and struggled to focus. "Listen...uh.... I may have lied to my family and told them I'm married. No, wait, wait! They just wouldn't shut up about it. You don't know what it's like! They just go on and on and on and on. I'm the oldest, and I'm unmarried. It's like a cardinal sin in Bolian society, and I just couldn't take it anymore! So I lied. I told them I'd married a colleague." His eyes suddenly turned shifty, bouncing his vision from side to side. "I, uh, may have mentioned your name."

"You told your family I was your wife?!" exclaimed Tuula, incredulously, through her surgical mask. Mott was known to somewhat crazy things from time to time, but this took the cake. "I'm sorry, doctor, but pretending to be your wife to cover for your lies about being married? This is insane! You should have just told them the truth about your bachelor status!"

Olsam scoffed, like telling the truth was the worst idea he'd ever heard in his life. "Oh, you don't know my family. I've been trying to tell them the truth for the past 20 years, but they can't be reasoned with! There are 47 of them here right now, all asking about my relationship status. When am I getting married? Isn't it about time to settle down? When am I going to start having children? Am I just ashamed to admit to homosexuality? What possible conceivable reason could I have for delaying marriage this long? Why do I keep avoiding them and avoiding the question? Forty. Seven. Bolians. It's all I hear about from the moment I wake up to the moment I sedate myself to sleep, and I just can't take it any more! I'm going to snap and go crazy and bludgeon one of them to death!"

The Bolian physician did seem a little more wide-eyed and harried than normal. The sweating and heavy breathing from the jog to Sickbay probably didn't help, either.

"Doctor Mott, listen to what you're asking. You're asking me to pretend to be your wife!"

"Please?" Olsam pleaded, eyes darting to the chronometer. "It's only for a couple of days, and it doesn't have to be official. And, uh, also...my mom will be here any minute to meet you, so it'll be kinda awkward if you're not playing along."

Tuula sighed and stared into Olsam's eyes. It was truly a crazy idea, but seeing how desperate her mentor was, she couldn't say no and leave him at the hands of forty-seven Bolians. Not to mention how difficult it would be for her to tell Olsam's mother that his son lied to her. "Fine. But you owe me a bottle of Bolian rum. And it better be the good stuff, none of that crap from Alnat province!"

Whilst the EMH had been out of earshot running lab tests, her access to the ship's internal sensors had been more than sufficient to pick up on the discussion between Tuula and her previous form's arch-nemesis, The Bolian. Storing the file away in it's secure memory, the hologram made a note to add this to the psychological analysis she was performing on Dr Mott for her own research. With a giggle, she put down the petri dish she had been examining and moved through into the main Sickbay.

"Did my audio receptors correctly decipher your communications? Has our beloved Doctor Mott caught himself in his own web?"

"No, he's not caught yet," replied Tuula in a confident tone as she removed her mask and gloves, now more determined than before to support her colleague, even in such a crazy situation.

Olsam wrinkled his nose immediately. "Who turned that thing on? What's Shirley doing here? She's about the last person I'd ever want to know about-"

To his recollection, the Sickbay doors had never opened loudly. It was almost like the hydraulic mechanisms controlling their movement had malfunctioned, leaving the doors to make a grinding metal-on-metal sound as they pried themselves apart. Of course, that as all in Olsam's head. There wasn't really anything wrong with the doors, but the very presence of his mother entering any room - much less his workplace to meet his fake wife - had an unfortunate effect on him.

"Mom!" Olsam squeaked, turning around to face the door. His eyes flicked to the chronometer - two minutes early - then back to the older Bolian woman shambling into the room with the aid of a cane. She completely bypassed her son, almost like he wasn't there, and made directly for the petite Emergency Medical Hologram.

"Hello, you must be Olsam's new wife," Olba Mott said, giving a sweet smile that stood in direct opposition to her ordinary caustic personality. She held out a hand to the hologram for an introductory shake. "It's so nice to meet you, Tuula. Olsam has told me so much about you."

Tuula's jaw dropped, and she let out a slight feminine grunt at the indignity of having a hologram mistaken for her.

The EMH giggled for a moment before regaining her composure and clearing her throat. It seems that the insanity that her program had found from dealings with Dr Mott were genetic after all.

"Actually - I am this vessel's Emergency Medical Hologram - Doctor Tuula Voutilainen is just over there."

Having removed her blood-stained gloves and surgical mask, Tuula turned and approached Olba. She took off her skull-print surgical cap and tossed it aside, letting down a few strands of black and blue hair on either side of her face. "I'm Tuula, and you must be Mrs. Mott," she said as she approached the older Bolian woman. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I must say, your son is quite the charming gentleman."

Olba stood in place near the EMH and stared openly. She looked from the skull-print surgical cap to the bloody gloves to the wheelchair to the wild hair to the wheelchair to the EMH and finally back to Tuula. She took one uncertain step forward, clearly looking like a woman who was never at a loss for words and taken aback by her inability to come up with anything to break the silence.

"Uh, I-I'm so sorry, doctor," Olba began, stuttering, as if she'd only now just realized not only the embarrassment of being mistaken for someone else but being mistaken for a hologram, too. She took another more confident step toward her new Finnish daughter-in-law and managed a crooked smile. "Um, sorry, yes, he was raised to be a proper gentleman. I'm glad he's impressed you, and you've impressed him, likewise. You're certain to bring a great deal of...color...into his life."

The Mott matron turned to look over her shoulder back at the EMH one last time. There was something wistful in her movement, like the hologram - even if it was a hologram - looked somehow much more like what she'd always expected to have for a daughter-in-law. Then she turned back to look at Tuula and seemed jarred all over again.

"Thank you!" exclaimed Tuula, not sure if that was a compliment or not. More than likely, she reasoned, she wasn't exactly what the doctor's mother had in mind. It wasn't the first time she elicited this sort of reaction; for some reason she had never gotten along well with the parents of her boyfriends, going all the way back to Karl Lilja in high school. They were polite enough that one time they met, sure, but never quite comfortable around her. For some reason they just couldn't get past her skull pendant or the purple highlights in her otherwise jet-black hair.

But now, the proverbial shoe was on the other foot. Tuula didn't have to impress the elder Mott or get her approval; all she had to do was keep up the deception for a few days. And there was no reason that she couldn't have a little fun with it while she did so. "He's just so wonderful and unique. We met during surgery, and when his hands brushed up against mine in the patient's chest cavity, I just knew he was the one. The way he handled that laser scalpel, slicing into the patient so deftly, and how he so delicately pulled the pieces of shrapnel out..." Tuula paused, letting out an affectionate sigh in Olsam's direction. "There was blood everywhere; it was so romantic."

Olba took on an ashen pallor with a blueish hue. She had never been comfortable with blood. In fact, she'd never been comfortable with her son's choice of profession. Being a doctor might have been all well and good on other worlds but on Bolarus it was just so... So.... Medical. And of course it was a complete rejection of the family's long involvement in finance, manufacturing, law and science, a grave and unforgivable offense to be sure.

"Yes, I see," Olba managed, feeling her stomach lurch into her throat at the thought of her son and this...woman...touching hands inside the chest cavity of a patient. "That certainly sounds like an unorthodox idea of romance, young la-"

"Well! Now that we've-" Olsam practically shouted, trying to cut off anything further.

"Oh shut up, Olsam," Olba interjected, suddenly lucid again and mercilessly turning her ire on her son. She turned back to Tuula and stared at her for a long time, as if looking at her was going to make her any more comfortable with the idea of their marriage. At the very least, she was willing to make an effort to get to know her better, as long as they could keep the conversation away from blood and gore and its bizarre connection with their romance. "Tuula, would you care to join me for tea? I'm sure Olsam would be happy to cover the rest of your shift for you, wouldn't you, dear?"

"I'd love to," replied Tuula. "And I'm sure he wouldn't mind; I know how he feels about covering for each other," she added, flashing Mott a smile as if to remind him that he owes her big time for this one. She turned back to Olba, pondering for a moment what she might like. "I thought I saw a Bajoran place on the station we could try," she offered, reasoning that with good teas, spicy dishes, and their famed jumbo shrimp, Bajoran cuisine would be a safe bet for Bolian appetites.

Olsam watched them go, frowning. He wasn't sure what he was more upset about - missing the Bajoran food or seeing Tuula and his mother walk off together, knowing the trouble it was likely to cause for him. He sighed and turned around to set about his duties only to come face-to-face with the EMH. He couldn't be sure, but he thought she had a very smug look on her photonic face.

"Keep your comments to yourself, Shirley!"

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Lieutenant (J.G.) Tuula Voutilainen, M.D.
Medical Officer
USS Galileo

EMH Mk X-b
Emergency Medical Hologam
USS Galileo
[pNPC Holliday]

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

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