A Post-Mortem Examination on a First Impression (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on 24 Jul 2012 @ 5:49pm by Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant JG Brayden White Ph.D.

2,588 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Medical Laboratory
Timeline: MD07 - 1946 hours

Previously in "A Post-Mortem Examination on a First Impression" Part 1...

Andreus Kohl tapped another sequence into the LCARS panel and then looked to Brayden. Kohl bit his lower lip for a moment, as he considered. "How well have you settled into this little ship?" Kohl asked.

"Honestly?" Brayden asked. "Not so well," he laughed a little self-deprecatingly. "I'd gotten used to being auxiliary, part of the crew and yet separate from it. I've never been the only counselor on a ship, so I was always free to bond with the crew however I preferred to, since it rarely affected my ability to care for them in a therapeutic sense. Being alone in the job, even for a few days has been... really quite alienating. I'm glad to see a couple more counselors joining us. It should make Drusilla's transition back into work easier as well. Less of a load to take on." He made more notes, passed on another slide, then paused, quizzically staring at the next slide under the microscope. "What the devil is that?"

And now the conclusion...


[ON]

Kohl started to ask, "Are you saying the crew have been avoidi--" but he was interrupted by Brayden's exclamation. Kohl cast a glance at his LCARS display, ensuring the automated analysis was proceeding, and then he strode over to stand behind Brayden. Tentatively looking over his shoulder, Kohl asked, "What do you see?"

Brayden looked away from the lenses, peering directly at the small red blood smear on the slide, then peering back through the eye-piece again. The cells were hurrying actively over each other, as he watched; each one individually nudging into another as the ones nearest to it were hurtling into others, and as they did so, they engulfed each other and then split again. "It's like the cells are somehow... swarming... and self-replicating." He drew back and checked the code on the slide. "Mrina? New crew member?" He stepped to the side to let Kohl have a look as he pulled up Mrina's file.

"Oh, that's Luca," Kohl said with an obvious air of recognition. It made him grin for a few heartbeats. He stepped forward hurriedly and looked down through the lenses. "Chief Petty Officer Mrina. He's Bireikar. Transferred aboard by way of Starbase 152. I just met him in the mess. His body is constantly, constantly consuming nutrients intravenously. His metabolism is like nothing I've seen..."

"Intravenously?" Brayden inquired, scanning through the file. "Little wonder, with that level of cellular activity." He tutted slightly out of the corner of his mouth, shrugged, made a note in the file, and turned back to Kohl. "Bireikar. Every time I think I've got a handle on things, something new comes along and reminds me I know absolutely nothing," he said with a smile.

Kohl laughed at that briefly, but only because he was familiar with the sentiment. He slowly nodded his agreement, while he stepped back from the microscope. Kohl returned to the LCARS panel to append the computer analysis of the first blood samples to the appropriate medical records, and sending them for review to Doctor Ni Dhuinn. As he did so, he delicately asked, "Before, you were talking about your job fostering a feeling of alienation...?"

"Ah," he shrugged. "It's something that comes along with the job being mandatory. I'm used to a more elective capacity. Something I've noticed is that any time anyone is forced to see a health professional, they resent it. I empathize, disliking being told what to do myself. But it's terribly difficult to be of assistance when the people you're trying to help think you're out to get them," Brayden said thoughtfully, placing the final slide under the microscope and taking a look.

"I've never entirely understood that," Kohl said. "The proto-typical Starfleet officer's reluctance to spend thirty minutes in a room talking to someone. Ask an officer to invent a new kind of warp drive in thirty minutes, or to receive thirty lashes from an electro-whip, and they're jumping at the opportunity. Ask the officer to talk, to just talk..." --He sighed-- "Or maybe it's me, maybe it's my upbringing. My parents were civil servants. They went to counsellors all the time. It's what I've always known."

Kohl's throat closed up suddenly, as soon as he recognized that he was talking about them, about his parents. His face flushed, but only a little bit. "Wait. When were you a counsellor with voluntary patients?" Kohl asked, left-turning the subject of conversation.

"Auxiliary counselor," Brayden explained, noting the sudden change in tone and topic shift. "My whole career with Starfleet basically. I'd be a civilian medical officer, orbiting the sickbay, helping with away teams when I was needed, and the rest of the time I took private clients who didn't want to discuss their problems with the establishment counselors. Now I am one of the establishment counselors." He grinned self-deprecatingly. "Nice to know someone appreciates them. Us."

As Brayden spoke, Kohl removed sample slides from the analyser, and he returned them to an empty tray for cold storage. He nodded at Brayden's words. "You're on my team. Your problems are my problems," Kohl said with absolute certainty. He stopped what he was doing to make eye-contact with Brayden. "Whatever you need... I could give your patients truly exhaustive physical exams immediately before your counselling sessions, to make your sessions easy by comparison. Or if you want to drunkenly rant about roommates, I can do that too."

"Oh, you're having a misunderstanding with your roommate. You'll work it out, one way or another. I bet mine has you beat," he answered, carefully sidestepping the mention of alcohol. "He snores like a bear making love to a lion in a thunderstorm."

"That sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me," Kohl said, his timbre sardonic. He turned away to insert the last of the sample slides into empty slots on the blood analyser. Over his shoulder, Kohl asked, "Were your quarters assigned by a particularly counsellor-phobic Operations officer?"

Brayden glanced up at Kohl curiously. The man had been on board less than a day. How did he know about Remington? Unless... Had they spoken? Had Remington mentioned something? The last thing the counseling office needed was the Operations officer fanning the distrust other officers already seemed to have for them. "What do you mean?" he asked carefully.

"Parsing a joke is the fastest way to drain the hour right out of it," Kohl remarked. He swatted his hand through the air dismissively, oblivious to how close his thoughtless joke had mirrored real life. To Brayden, Kohl was more heartfelt in saying, "I was inarticulately offering to be a friend. Medicos united. That sort of thing."

"Ah," Brayden smiled, relieved. "Medicos united," he agreed and struck a hand out. "Put it there. And if you ever need a safe harbor, you're welcome to come and visit my bunk. See the lion-bear yourself."

"Careful now," Kohl said, and he squeezed Brayden's hand between both of his own in an approximation of a Human handshake. "I may take you up on that offer sooner than you think."

"Maybe you'll have an idea about how to silence the beast," Brayden added with a grin, but he held on to Kohl's hands, searching the Argelian's face. "I know we've just now agreed to friendship, but as such... you should know that whatever it is that's hurting you, you can talk about it. And whenever you feel like talking about it, I'm here. Okay?"

There was that artfully crafted smile on Kohl's face. It was a diplomat's smile. It was so well practiced, that smile, it beamed well past his lips. It spread out across his cheeks, his eyes, his whole demeanour. At Brayden's words, the smile crumpled; Kohl's smile collapsed. He stared at Brayed in shocked silence for a dozen rapid heart beats. He stared right at him, as if Brayden were a menacing Security officer. "Okay," was all Kohl could say at first. He sounded caught-out and defeated. He swallowed hard before he could continue, and he felt like the sound of that had filled the entire laboratory. "Okay... Yeah, I'll tell you all about it." --Awkwardly, Kohl dropped Brayden's hand-- "Once I can find the words for it. ...So, uhm, I can finish up here."

"You don't have to. Just, you know, if you need." He patted Andreus' shoulder companionably, "We medicos have to look out for each other, right?" He turned back to the last slide, double checked it, and passed it on. "Ever surfed?" he asked as he picked up PADD and went to cross check his notes against the analyzer's readings.

"Cloud surfing," Kohl said, his manner diffident but not closed-off. He took the last slide, and he slotted it into the analyser. "On the holodeck. If that counts?"

"Cloud surfing," Brayden repeated thoughtfully. "Never even thought of that. It probably does count, at that. I've always been partial to the water sort myself, but... I guess it's a bit like hover boarding, isn't it? Except much, much farther from the ground."

"There is no ground in the holodeck program. Nothing but blue sky. Cloud surfing was popular for a few semesters when I was at the Academy," Kohl said. He clung to fact and recollection, his voice tinged with lingering awkwardness from his reluctance to open up to Brayden. "What's it like in the water?"

"You never tried it?" the Australian asked, grinning. "Now there's something we have to rectify. I was on the circuit for a couple years. It's visceral. You're part of the planet, skimming it's most powerful living energy. Spray of salt in your face, wind in your hair, sun in your eyes, and nothing but your own balance to fight the unstoppable power of the wave beneath you."

"Next ocean we see, you can teach me. That sounds like something I should have been doing all my life," Kohl said. He smiled weakly, his manner was still guarded, if cautiously friendly. "I can finish up in here, tidy up the rest. I shouldn't be dropping my work on you on my first day."

Brayden shrugged. "I've got some time to kill." He glanced at Kohl, noting the other man's unease. He'd stepped on toes. Scrubbing a hand through his hair, he wondered if he shouldn't just go, get out of the man's hair, but the idea of going back to his bunk and not being able to contact his family... "It's my daughter's birthday," he said finally. "And we can't get a wave signal out. I just... don't really feel like sitting and thinking about it." Or about the disappointment and sadness in Ensign Cho when she hadn't been able to contact her family when she needed them. How many times, he wondered, had he left his children feeling the same way? How much did his rootless traveling hurt them? He sighed, shaking his head. No reason to take it out on someone else. It was nice to feel needed. Wanted. He wasn't a robot. And the previous few days of aggression had left him more vulnerable than usual to the promise of companionship. But in the end he was here to serve the crew, the whole crew, regardless of his own personal wishes. "Maybe they can use me somewhere else," he said, summoning up a quick reassuring smile before the nurse would need to make excuses to flee.

Watching Brayden prepare himself to leave, after just sharing the separation he felt from his daughter, Kohl said, "No. No, I'm sorry." Something about the look in Brayden's eyes when he spoke about his daughter, that look of certainty, it left Kohl awash with conflicting emotions. Kohl stepped closer, and brushed his fingertips across Brayden's right upper arm, just above the elbow. He grasped on to him to keep Brayden from going. "It's only me and Doctor Ni Dhuinn on duty at this hour," Kohl said. His smile went lopsided, turned fragile. "I'm the only one who needs help."

"Well, she needs a good harassing every now and again," Brayden began, but stopped when he met Andreus' gaze. "There's no need to be sorry. If there's anything... I'd just like to be of use, if I can. However that is. I know I can..." he shook his head, wincing at himself, scrubbing his fingers back through his hair and making a mess of it. "I get into a fixing mode sometimes. I just..." he gestured uselessly, a reaching, grasping motion with his hands. "Try to help too much. Where it's not my business. Stupid. But that's growing up in a house full of neuroscientists and psychologists. Everything's always out on the table. You know? Maybe not. Anyway. Give me a job and shut me up," he finished with a self-deprecating smile.

"My parents weren't Argelian. When I was growing up, they weren't as emotionally demonstrative as most of my people," Kohl said. There was no judgement or regret in his tone; it was matter of fact. As he spoke, Kohl sat on a darkened LCARS control desk and picked up a widescreen PADD between both hands. He tapped the display twice, and he said, "In her shift hand-off, Nurse Lin wrote that our inventory is slightly below optimum levels. We could replicate some drugs?"

It wasn't nosiness, in Brayden's opinion, that made him want to ask about Andreus' family. Nor was it any kind of professional overzealousness. It was plain curiosity. He was interested in people. Where they came from, what they'd been through. That was why he did what he did, not the other way around, but he held his tongue. "Excellent," Brayden agreed, heading over to the sickbay regulation replicator and pressing his thumb to the security scanner. As the light lit green, he turned back over his shoulder. "What are we making today?"

"Hydrocortilene, alkysine, netinaline," Kohl said, reading from the top of the list. He cleared his throat, and looked over at Brayden. He narrowed his eyes at him, studying the man. "Everything we need for a party," Kohl teased.

Brayden's lips twitched slightly. "Some party," he murmured, typing in the required elements and beginning the replication process. "Makes you wonder what they got up to in here before we came on board. Not even two weeks out of dock and they're already running low on those?"

"We may not have been fully stocked to begin with," Kohl said, as he packed away the last of the blood samples and sent the blood analysis logs over to the CMO. "Apparently Galileo never even completed its shakedown cruise before it launched on this mission?"

"Great," Brayden shook his head, "I could have done without that bit of news, you know."

Kohl lifted his left hand up to the LCARS panel above the phoretic analyzer. Using his index finger, he tapped a sequence of contact points on the control panel. The LCARS display near his face flashed red at him -- once, twice, three times.

"You broke the ship," Brayden murmured. "How on-"

Only after the panel continued to flash did Kohl understand what was going on. Red alert. The shrilly distinctive klaxon made sure there was no question about it.

"Ah," Kohl said dryly. "It's that kind of party."

[OFF]
-----

Lt JG (Pr) Brayden White Ph.D.
Counselor
USS Galileo

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Nurse
USS Galileo

RSS Feed