Training Wreck

Posted on 07 Jul 2012 @ 7:48pm by Commander Andreus Kohl & Ansen Pawlak

2,106 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 2, Mess Hall
Timeline: MD07 - 1843 hours

[ON]

Andreus Kohl entered the Mess Hall on purposeful strides. The nurse had a medical kit strapped to his lower back, not because he expected to need it, but because he was paranoid about not having it when he might need it. He was only a few paces past the entryway when his strides lost all purpose. His gaze caught the chaise lounge, and it stopped him. He smiled, a little bit, to think about the chaise lounge. Kohl looked about him to regain his bearings, and then he made his way to the serving counter.

"I'm Andreus. Andreus Kohl from Sickbay," he announced himself to the man behind the counter. Kohl crossed his arms, and he leaned his elbows against the counter top. He offered up an oddly apologetic smile. "Can I drag you away from the food to talk with you about our emergency procedures aboard Galileo?"

"Emergency procedures?" Ansen asked curiously.

"Emergency procedures, yes," said Kohl. Such things were both ordinary and intriguing to Kohl, since they were ingrained in his every day job, but he loved his every day job. "Under certain emergency situations, situations I haven't entirely learned yet, the mess hall is used as an environmental support shelter." As it occurred to him, Kohl pursed his lips and glanced off to the side momentarily. He blinked hard and regarded Ansen again. "That hasn't... actually... happened yet here, has it?"

Ansen went back to chopping the garlic in front of him into a finely minced pile. "Not that I've heard," he answered. "No one told me I was running a kitchen and an emergency shelter."

"Oh no, you would never been running the emergency shelter. Operations would commandeer the mess hall long before that," Kohl said, his delivery deadpan. He looked off over his right shoulder, and murmured something about really wishing he could remember the types of emergency situations when the mess hall would be used like that. Kohl dismissed the thought and cleared his throat lightly. He returned his attention to Ansen, and his chopping, with an artful smile on his lips. "What I'm hoping is that you will have your own role to fulfill in an emergency..." Kohl said.

The Polish man looked up, absently sweeping the minced garlic to one side of the cutting board. "Yes?"

"Have you ever received first aid training?" Kohl asked. His eyebrows raised as an expectant smile crept along the corners of his lips.

Ansen squinted at him, gesturing with his knife, "I used to cut myself quite often when I first started; I learned how to use those dermal regeneration things. They haven't changed much in the last ten years, have they?"

"The-- uh, the technology works much the same," Kohl said, and he nodded at the point he assumed Ansen was trying to make. Subconsciously, Kohl bobbed backwards by a couple of centimetres every time the knife's edge came in his direction. "But there's more to first aid than the tools. It's about the process. What you can do, and the order you can do it in, to keep a body alive until medical attention arrives."

"To keep a..." Ansen lay down his knife. "Are you saying that because someone designated the mess hall as an emergency area, I'm now somehow responsible for the lives of other people?"

"Responsible?" Kohl asked, as if the notion was a foreign body invading their conversation. The puzzlement in his expression and in his tone was quickly replaced by certainty. Kohl shook his head in the negative. "No, never responsible. I'm offering you a skill set. You provide additional opportunities for the patients aboard-ship, only opportunities. It would always be your own choice. You can choose not to attend to a patient, and you would never be held responsible for the patient's physical state -- as long as you acted in good faith."

"How exactly would anyone know whether I 'acted in good faith' or not?" Ansen inquired, pulling a bottle of bomber from a cabinet and pouring a couple shots, nudging one across the counter to the other man out of courtesy. "Na zdrowie," he added and tossed his own shot back. "I'm all for the well-being of the others on the crew, don't get me wrong," he said as the liquid fire burned a path down his throat. "I simply do it in my own way, co? Blood... it should be from meat, co? Not from people." He poured himself another shot, "What exactly am I supposed to do?"

"That would be at your discretion," Kohl said, his voice softening. He spoke informally, hoping that might mollify the serious tenor of Ansen's questions. "I'm here to offer you some training. Gauge your interest. Your exact responsibilities would depend on your performance in the training evaluation, and on your own comfort levels." Kohl raised the shot glass, sniffed at it briefly, and then he handed it over to Ansen. Kohl mouthed the words, 'I'm on call."

Ansen snorted slightly, a short laugh, and tossed back the shot himself. "Yes. All the time. Aren't we all." He cycled the unnecessary second glass through the sonic washer, thinking, then turned back. He wasn't sure how much help he would be in an emergency situation in any other avenue. He might as well figure out something. "What training?"

"First aid. Clearing airways, encouraging breathing, stopping bleeders," Kohl said, focusing on the basics. He leaned further against the counter, and peeked over to see what the garlic was for. "I can eat when I'm on call..."

Ansen smiled, pouring the garlic and some diced red onions into a pan of oil with some spiced, minced meat. "Now you speak my language," he said, stirring them all together in the pan and then preparing some cabbage leaves while they simmered. "I can stop someone choking. I know that much at least. How would I go about this... Training?"

"Spend a day in the holodeck with me or another member of the medical staff. (Or we could break it down into shorter classes)," Kohl answered. He breathed in deep at the scent of the vegetables and meat in the pan. Such anticipation washed over him that he closed his eyes to imagine what it might taste like. Then he breathed in again, and looked across at Ansen. "There will be some reading, some discussion, and dozens of holographic patients to rescue."

"I'm not certain I could spare a whole day. If I stop cooking, someone might decide they don't mind replicator food for all their meals after all." Ansen smirked self-deprecatingly. "But short classes... I could do that. Between mealtimes." he stirred the contents of the pan, then moved back to the steaming cabbage leaves and pulled them out to cool and dry on the counter.

"If you can't step away from the kitchen for a day, I won't ask you to step away for a day," Kohl said with effortless acquiescence. He took on a tauntingly conspiratorial manner to ask, "Do you really think anyone would give up on freshly prepared food? It feels like every Human I've met fills their quarters with non-replicated food and drink and clothes."

Ansen considered the statement. It was true for the most part, but the ensign Cho had broken his generally unflappable spirit a bit. "Humans, maybe," he agreed. "Others, maybe not." He shrugged. "My brother's on board in Security; I have to make sure I'm as useful as he is to stick with him. Co?" Saying it aloud reminded him of Kohl's purpose, "If you can work it out, bring on the holographic patients. The more I know the better, co?"

"Exactly! Yes, exactly," Kohl said, as if it were a moment of inspiration. A questioning expression came on his face afterwards, and Kohl encouragingly asked, "Is that why you came aboard a Starfleet starship? To stay near your family?"

"Yes," Ansen answered without pause. Not that there'd ever been much thought about it. The idea of choosing any other life, any life that would take him away from his brother's side, was completely foreign. He turned the burner off and began filling cabbage leaves with the meat and vegetable combination from the pan, expertly tucking the leaves tightly so that they would hold. "He's all I have," he added plating two of the golabki and nudging the plate towards Andreus. "Why did you?"

"I think... in the very beginning..." Kohl trailed off and he squinted at Ansen. The distance in Kohl's sapphire eyes belied that he wasn't studying the other man. Rather, he was scouring through the haze of memory, distorted by the disruptions of time and re-tellings. And Kohl sighed. It was a heavy thing. It wasn't a sigh of annoyance or sarcasm; it was emotional release. "I think I wanted to be my parents, but better," Kohl said. He winced a lopsided smile at how awful that sounded. Kohl lifted a golabki absently and he bit into it. "My mother is a civil servant and my father is a-- was a diplomat. He was a diplomat."

"With Starfleet?" Ansen asked, trying to follow the story.

"Yea-- Well, no," Kohl said, and he shook his head for making it unnecessarily complicated. He took another couple of hungry bites into the golabki and chewed it quickly. "For the Federation. He was a diplomat for the Federation. I didn't literally want to do what they did. Not exactly the same." --He finished off the golabki in a couple of distraught bites, and after he swallowed, he continued-- "In fact, consciously, I think I thought I was taking a unique career flight-path. But, really, I wanted to serve and I wanted to be a peace-keeper."

Ansen listened as he wrapped more golabki. "You lost him," he said quietly. "Your father. Yes?" He leaned a hip back against the counter, watching the nurse. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Kohl stared at Ansen for a minute, stared at him as if the man himself was an inescapable turbolift car plummeting to crush him. "Today," Kohl breathed out softly. His expression crumpled into something lost and hopeless. "I lost him today. I don't-- I don't have the words yet."

"You were close," Ansen murmured, hands stilling on the cabbage leaves. He'd never known who his father was, let alone been able to miss him. And his mother... well. That was an entirely different story, but still an uncomfortable one. "I am sorry." It was all he could say, really. He dried his hands on his apron. "Maybe not words for grief, but for remembrance?"

"No, uhm, I think I would need a drink for words of remembrance," Kohl said, wielding the classic defense mechanism of mild humour and mild flirting. He wasn't entirely convincing though, not convincing by half. His voice quavered and his eyes were red around the edges. Kohl grabbed up his second golabki and took a bite without feeling the least bit hungry.

"Always here if you need it," Ansen answered. It wasn't entirely clear if he was talking about himself, the food, or the bottle of bimber he'd offered before. It could easily have been all of the above. He began to prepare another pan of golabki filling. "How is that?" he asked, nodding towards Kohl's emptied plate. "Want seconds?"

"Yeah," Kohl said automatically, despite his mouth being full of food. He chewed quickly then, and he swallowed, before he said, "Yes, please." Kohl's rephrasing wasn't for the sake of politeness, but rather for emphasis of how much he wanted more. Kohl asked, "Wrap 'em up? I've got to bring one back for Doctor Ni Dhuinn." Despite his best efforts, Kohl wasn't able to hide the lingering distress and disorientation from his expression. He reached across the counter, and squeezed Ansen on the shoulder. For just a second, he was holding on tight enough as if Kohl needed to be steadied during a swoon, but then he was gently clapping Ansen on the shoulder. "Thank you, Ansen."

Ansen glanced up with a quick nod, meeting Kohl's gaze. "You're welcome." He smiled quickly and set aside a few golabki to be wrapped, placing a lid over the pan. "You'll let me know when you need me for this training, co? A couple hours notice should be enough."

"I'll be in touch about that training," Kohl said, and he offered a nod. "And about that drink."


[OFF]


--

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Nurse
USS Galileo

Ansen Pawlak (played by Master Warrant Officer Lilou Peers)
Chef
USS Galileo

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