Do You Like Ham, Miriam?

Posted on 28 Sep 2015 @ 5:23pm by Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Ensign Miriam Kallan
Edited on on 01 Oct 2015 @ 4:33am

1,971 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo - Main Sickbay
Timeline: MD 03 - 1600hrs

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Miriam was loving every moment of this. She was meeting so many new people. This was all a part of the joy of new places! There were few things better and new things and she could never get enough of the new. She was so happy right now, it practically permeated the air as she moved into the Sickbay. Even though she'd felt perfectly awful lately, she was still enjoying her time here. The first person she spotted was a Bolian and she shot a cheerful smile his way and a light wave. She was feeling a bit sluggish at this point due to her inability to keep anything down. Miriam was quite certain she wasn't getting the nutrients she needed to keep going.

Olsam looked up from the monitor when he heard the Sickbay doors opening. Or, half-opening. Something with the hydraulics had gotten damaged during the encounter with the spatial anomaly so they would open...stop...close a little...open some more...lurch...make loud noises...and finally, slowly, open. From Allyndra's office you could easily and quickly see anyone coming into the room, which was helpful in case of hostile boarding parties and/or patients arriving for their appointment. He recalled the woman he saw from reviewing the medical history of her personnel file prior to the scheduled visit.

With the tap of a button, he paused whatever it was he was watching so intently on the monitor, and called out, "Ensign Kallan? You're here for your physical?" He looked her up and down through the cracked glass partition and then shrugged. Without waiting for a response to his initial question, he turned back to the monitor and said, "Eh, you're probably fine."

Miriam moved closer to the partition and tilted her head to one side as the Bolian spoke. His last sentence made her giggle and she shrugged a bit. The same light smile still on her lips. "I'm certain I am, sir," she began, noticing his rank pips, placing him as her superior, "but protocol is protocol." Her voice was very light and friendly as she spoke. "I certainly wouldn't want to get in trouble for not following it, sir, especially after the trouble we just got ourselves into. I should have come earlier, but I was hardly hurt so I thought it best to wait until the more critical cases were taken care of."

"Huh?" Mott asked, pausing the program again. "Critical cases? Oh, right. Right, right. Yeah, the thing... Well. Come in here then, let's see you. Oh, just snag a medical tricorder off the medcart there." He gestured broadly in a sweep of the hand that could have taken in the whole room, and then the Bolian turned back to the monitor. After a moment, he called out, though he could have just been yelling at the monitor, "Have you ever heard of preparing a ham with something sweet? It's so human it's downright absurd!"

Miriam blinked a few times at the Bolians' dismisiveness then gave a light half laugh under her breath. What an intriguing fellow this man was. She glanced around in the room for the tricorder. The Bolian hadn't been too specific on it's location, but she was lucky to eventually spot it and as ordered, she took it into him, tilting her hear slightly at the mention of ham. "Ham? I haven't experienced ham, but I enjoy sweet things sometimes. Wouldn't two delicious things only serve to make one another better?"

Olsam looked at her as if she was from another planet (which, incidentally, she was) and then shook his head. He absent-mindedly took the medical tricorder from her, as if it was a matter of no present relevance, and gestured back at the monitor where an Earth-based cooking show was playing out. The monitor was slightly askew in the wall-mount, likely thrown off as the result of damage to the ship's structural integrity, and it was running at half power or less. As a result, Olsam was practically sitting on top of it and had his head turned slightly to the side to correct for the viewing angle. As the chef explained the ham preparation process his words appeared at the bottom of the screen; the Bolian had evidently activated the closed captioning to help decipher the man's British accent.

Miriam found herself watching the show with some measure of confusion. Why create a recording of someone cooking? Wasn't it better to just learn from the source. However, it wasn't always feasible to meet with a teacher, so, in the end, she guessed it did make sense. She wasn't much of a cook though, so in the end it didn't really matter.

"Sometimes," Olsam explained, opening the medical tricorder, "two delicious things do not yield a more delicious thing. Paradoxical, I know, but trust me." Reluctant as he seemed to be to pull himself away from the cooking program - apparently it was a slow day in Sickbay with all of the injuries having been treated - the Bolian physician finally managed to turn away, fully open the tricorder, and pull up the ensign's medical record for reference during the physical. "Do you like ham, Miriam? Can I call you Miriam? You can call me Dr. Olsam if it makes you feel any better."

Miriam nodded in agreement, "I suppose you're right. Some foods just don't mix well." At his question about calling her by her name she beamed, "Of coarse, please, call me Miriam. I don't mind at all Dr. Olsam." Backtracking to the ham question she merely shrugged, glancing idly at the tricorder, "I have no real opinion about ham. I grew up with Vulcans and well, they don't eat meat, so I have very little experience with foods made from the flesh of animals. Although, I willing to try just about anything once."

She looked up at him curiously, her usual smile still steady on her lips, if a bit force through her exhausted state, "Is it especially tasty?"

The shock was so overwhelming that Olsam dropped the sensor wand from the medical tricorder. It rolled along the deck and collided with a fallen support beam that had, at some point during the rough ride, come crashing down through the Sickbay ceiling. After stammering for a minute, he reached down to pick it up and then openly stared at her.

"Is it... Is it tasty?" he asked. Shock eventually gave way to sympathy and pity as he took her elbow and guided her to the chair across the chief medical officer's desk. With the desk itself taking the bulk of his weight, he leaned over and gently patted her shoulder as if he was counseling a bereaved patient. "I know it must have been hard growing up with Vulcans. I just... I can't imagine, really. I'm so sorry. All they eat is broth."

Miriam blinked several times. She wasn't entirely certain how to react to all of this. Was ham really so great? He seemed so...what was a good word... obsessive? Maybe? She'd tried a bit of bacon in the academy, that was supposed to be from the same animal, but she wasn't sure if it was the same thing as ham. She was a bit curious, but after his reaction to her not having much experience with meat, she was afraid to ask.

So instead she just looked at him with confusion and interest, "It wasn't so bad. It was a bit boring sometimes but they took care of me." Miriam explained. The fact that he seemed to sincerely think they ate nothing but broth made her feel like she needed to explain. "They eat vegetables and fruits too," she told him, "Just, no meat."

She bit her lip and gave him a light smile, "So, I should definitely add ham to my list of foods to try?"

"Don't worry about that, I'll make up a list for you," Olsam said, sounding for all the world as if this was a part of the medical examination. After a moment's work on the medical tricorder, he reset the device for more than the ordinary scans included in a physical examination. "I'm going to have to conduct a more thorough examination to determine if you're suffering from any nutritional deficiencies. As a Bolian and a physician concerned about the crew's health, I just absolutely cannot fathom someone other than a Vulcan following a Vulcan diet."

Miriam just gave a light laugh, "Of coarse, I look forward to trying it Doctor." As he explained about more thorough scans Miriam's brows knitted together. She wondered briefly if she should mention how uncomfortable she'd been feeling lately. She'd been doing alright surviving with her uncomfortable state, and she wasn't sure if it was just her nerves or a real medical problem. She didn't want to go making something out of nothing if it was just nerves.

"Are you feeling all right, Miriam?" Olsam asked almost immediately. He'd dropped the hand holding both the tricorder and sensor wand and seemed somehow much more alert and mentally sharp. His eyes roved all over her face, checking in particular her eyes and the state of her skin. After the brief visual inspection, he looked directly into her eyes. "Have you been experiencing any discomfort? Nausea, fatigue, headaches?"

Miriam looked slightly shocked at his words and offered a nervous smile and a half laugh, "Well, now that you mention it..." she bit her lip, looking a bit like a guilty child, "I thought it was just my nerves from being in a new place, but, ever since the accident, I've been feeling a bit off. Nausea, I haven't really been able to keep my food down, so I'm tired from that, I suppose. Headaches, yes and I've been exceptionally anxious and have just been having..." She shook her head, "No, it's silly. Forget that."

"You've just been having a what? An urge to join a clown school? Is that why it's silly? They're not half as silly as you think. It's actually quite serious."

Miriam couldn't help but laugh at that and shook her head. "No. Nothing like that. It's just, I've felt like something's off. I can't really explain it. I don't know. Maybe it's just nerves form being in a new place."

Olsam nodded, smiling. "Feeling like something's off? About your body? Or your mind? Not that you're crazy." He checked briefly on the PADD containing her personnel file to determine that she did, indeed, have a clear mental health history, and then nodded with satisfaction. "Right, not crazy. I just thought maybe you were feeling...off. In the head. In a sense not related to mental illness."

Miriam just gave a weak laugh and shook her head, "No, I'm not crazy. It's more like, when you feel like something bad's about to happen." Her eyes narrowed in thought as she tried to think or a better way to explain it. "Just... a sense of anxiety, like, when something's wrong and you just can't place your finger on it." She laughed at herself again, "I don't know, it doesn't make much sense. Sorry."

"Hmm," Olsam said, narrowing his eyes in scrutiny. "You're not the first one to report those symptoms, but nothing comes up on the preliminary scans." His lips drew together tightly and then swayed from side to side, accompanied by thoughtful noises. "Let's run some more in-depth neurological scans just to eliminate a few things. You're in perfect health otherwise, but we don't want anything to slip past us. Besides, it'll give you a chance to tell me some Vulcan food horror stories...."


[OFF]

Ensign Miriam Kallan
Xenobiologist
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Olsam Mott
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

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