Narrative Devices

Posted on 28 Aug 2017 @ 5:52pm by Commander Marisa Wyatt & Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant

2,306 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Earth - Starfleet Medical Centre, Conference Centre 613
Timeline: MD 25 - 1945 hours

ON:

"I could feel my body rising from my seat on the bridge," she said. She closed her eyes --shut out any new sensory input-- to dredge the recollection to the surface of her thoughts. Dressed in a uniform of the medical hue, she was a Starfleet officer sitting on a chair in a relatively featureless conference room. You wouldn’t know it just to look at her, but she was a counselor. She was speaking to a gathering of a dozen medical officers, and her chair was one of many chairs in a circle, facing inwards. "It felt like I was watching myself from a great distance, but I was also looking through my own eyes. The inside of my mouth tasted like rosemary. I lurched towards the Operations station on wobbly legs. The duty officer was one of my patients. He comes to see me twice weekly."

She stopped. She brushed her bangs out of her face. She opened her eyes. She set her jaw. "He used to come see me twice weekly," she said, correcting herself. Returning to the narrative of her rock bottom experience, she said, "I stepped up behind him and the non-corporeal life form controlling my body ran my fingers through his hair. I didn't say a word. I caressed his scalp. I felt the texture of each thick strand of hair."

From three chairs to her left, the only Romulan clad in a medical uniform interrupted her story by drumming his hands on his thighs. Impatiently, Lake ir-Llantrisant interjected further by saying, "Nancy?" His arched eyebrows popped further up his forehead. "Nancy, if I can ask a clarifying question, if I may? When you say non-corporeal life form, do you mean a form of life that was categorized by your ship's science officer? Or when you say non-corporeal life form, are you describing a narrative device you use to represent your repressed desires?"

At that, Aloysius sat forward in his chair. As a transparent-skulled Gallamite, everyone tended to take notice when he did so. "You know our social norms, Lee," he said. Aloysius was speaking to Lake, but he used a pseudonym, as was common among this anonymous peer support-group. "You've been joining us for long enough. We come here to discuss Nancy's experiences. Twisting her experiences into your own definitions of reality isn't especially validating now, is it?"

Lake breathed out through his nose. He said, "Sorry, Nancy," as if by rote.

Marisa was dressed in a pair of soft Vulcan pants and tunic. She was still on probation and had no desire to wear her uniform until she was allowed back on duty. Still, she was having a very hard time not speaking out. Didn't these people know better? Talking out problems was one thing, allowing someone to indulge themselves was another. Nancy didn't want help, she wanted attention. "Do you feel violated by this entity, or do you feel this was more the entity acting out your inner thoughts?"

"You can't ask that!" Lorelei hissed. "We're just supposed to talk, not analyze."

"But are we not here to work through our problems?" Marisa T'ala asked.

Lorelei looked indignant, but said nothing.

As a titter of conversation returned to the group, the talk was kept small from the start. After Aloysius’ course correction, another counselor told her recovery story, as did another, in a space that was meant to be safe, because they were all of the same profession. They all knew the realities of the work and how they varied so greatly from the perceptions of the work. Eventually, Aloysius encouraged Lake to speak again.

"I used to be married," Lake said. It was a statement. It was a matter of fact. He recited his rock bottom story as if it was from a history book. "A few years ago, I used to be married. I used to have my own life, apart from Starfleet. We sang in the choir on the starbase. We had applied to adopt a child. Everything changed after one shore leave. Everything changed on that shuttlecraft. I was piloting us back to the starbase from Risa. I can't remember why we started to argue. Maybe it was about the faith we were going to raise our child. Maybe it was because he was treating me like I was on probation for a perceived wrong-doing. Maybe it was about what we would eat for dinner.

"I can’t remember," Lake said, "I literally can’t remember because I flew the shuttlecraft directly into a navigational marker buoy."

There was a greater sense of urgency in his voice, when Lake clarified with, "He didn't die. Neither of us died, but our marriage was probably dead at the root on that day. Even now I still can't remember how I did it, or why I did it. I don't recall any suicidal ideation. I don't know for sure if it was intention or neglect. To my mind, in one heartbeat I was touching the impulse controls, and in the next heartbeat I woke up in the starbase hospital. No matter how many times I tell this story, or how many times I decide I don't want to die, there's no guarantee I will never behave in that way again.

"The agony of free will," Lake said, his voice thick with cynicism. "Nothing I can do today can guarantee I can control my behaviour of tomorrow. My desires of tomorrow. Nothing."

Lake looked around the circle and he affirmed, "The bloody Borg have it easy."

"If you can call losing your humanity easy," T'ala said. "I do not. But then, we all knew that Starfleet would not be easy."

Tilting his head to the right, Lake sighed before his eyes locked on T'ala. "Thank you, T'ala, you truly demonstrate great skill in parsing the literal meanings of words," he said. Because it came more naturally than literally talking about how he nearly killed his ex-husband, Lake said, "My intention, though, was to use hyperbole to communicate otherwise non-verbal emotional content. I wouldn't literally give up my agency to avoid facing difficult choices. Not literally. Most of us don't live in an absolute morality, such as the legacy Surak left for you. Living within with a fluid and evolving morality inherently creates challenges in decision-making and communication."

"Surak was a wise man, but not many people can eschew emotion and embrace logic," T'ala said in rebuttal. "For myself, I find that speaking with clarity can go a long way towards eliminating obfuscation, whether in ones personal life, or in counseling others." Marisa was deliberately acting more Vulcan. It gave her a layer of anonymity as many would see her ears and assume that as a Vulcan she would of course be logical.

Lake nodded at T'ala's words. He certainly couldn't argue with her sentiment, but he still found something to say in ideological opposition to the Vulcan. "I would agree about the importance of clarity," he said. "Perhaps it's our definition of clarity that differs, rather than our intentions. I don't find Federation Standard has an appropriate vocabulary to describe thoughts and feelings. Rhetorical devices" --He pointed at Nancy briefly-- "such as the personification of abstract concepts within ones own desires" --and he locked eyes with T'ala again-- "hold a greater capability to express clarity on emotional content than the limits of literal language."

"The only way to attain total understanding and clarity is to be able to communicate not in words, but in thoughts, feelings, and concepts. Not even the Betazoids have achieved that, but they have come closer. So, until we find a way to grow beyond ourselves into these perfect beings, we do the best we can," T'ala said. "But is that not where we find out employ? In helping others navigate these waters of misunderstanding. Of ourselves and of others?"

"Yes, exactly," Lake said in agreement. He shifted his weight on his chair, when he added, "That's exactly why I appreciate having a place like this to be a mess, while I weigh it out." The sentiment was mostly genuine, but it was, perhaps, also an apology for his repeated skewering of Nancy.

Marisa appreciated this type of place, but she did not appreciate being sent here. So she just nodded.

"On that note," Aloysius said, "the food has arrived. "We'll take a pause before the food grows cold. Unless there are any urgent thoughts?" There were none. As this meeting was being held on splendiferous Earth, the eponymous food was a buffet spread that could have fed three times as many people as were present. The variety ranged from donuts and coffee, to edible flowers, to sushi, to gristhera.

By the time Lake made his way to the buffet table, he had waved four people in ahead of him. While it may have been appeared as good manners to some, Lake used it as a tactic to land in the queue behind Marisa. "I haven't seen you here before, T'ala," he said to her, in greeting. He pursed his lips in an expression of apology, as he added, "Not that we're ever supposed to recognize one another outside this room." --He smiled wanly-- "Are you newly arrived on Earth?"

"Yes." It was the truth. Sort of. She was newly arrived this time. "And you? You seem to be familiar with others here." Particularly poor Nancy. She observed him out of the corner of her eye as she selected a croissant, fruit, and herb tea.

At first, Lake nodded his answer, but when he noticed she wasn't fully looking at him, he said, "Yes." He added, "I've dropped in from time to time since the accident; sometimes by subspace. I thought it best to care for my own mental health voluntarily, rather than wait for Starfleet to make it mandatory."

"Probably a good idea," Marisa said.

Lake cast his eyes over the food spread out on the table, and it all looked terribly bland at first glance. After a moment's consideration, he spooned a cabbage roll onto his plate, as well as sea urchin sushi. "This time, I've been on Earth for a few weeks," he said. He squinted his eyes in a moment of consideration, adding, "I've probably been coming here too often." As if that was the only reason he had little patience for Nancy.

"How long do they expect you to come here?" she asked. She'd thought a couple of sessions should do it, but if he'd been coming here for a while, it didn't bode well for her.

At her question, Lake turned his eyes on the down. He studied the morsels of food on his plate as if they held the secrets to the universe. It didn't take long for him to look to her, he looked and he looked until he caught her eye. He asked, in return, "When is one's journey towards mental health ever complete?" Despite his best intentions to make a point, Lake couldn't maintain the eye contact for long. His gaze shifted, he looked up at the ceiling. He said, "I nearly killed myself. I nearly killed my husband. Maybe there's no evidence of wrongdoing, or lack of fitness. Maybe I got away with it. Still. Nobody forgets something like that. Nobody forgives."

"No, you don't forget something like that, but you can forgive," Marisa said quietly. She sounded less like T'ala the Vulcan and more like Marisa the counselor. "You have to learn from it and move on."

His eyes moving, as he worked through the emotional math in his head, Lake couldn't bring himself to necessarily agree or disagree. Instead, Lake cleared his throat and he asked of Marisa, "How did you know when you had moved on from whatever put you in this room?"

Marisa wanted to say, When you no longer wish you could go back and kill someone, but that would reveal too much. "When you no longer look back with anger or hatred or whatever negative emotion is keeping you from letting go. Holding on is a cancer. The emotions keep eating at you, changing you. You should never forget, but you should be able to learn from the past and look to the future without the chains dragging you down."

Lake set his plate down on the buffet table and his eyes stayed with Marisa. "And you feel that?" he asked. "Underneath all the logic, deep down beneath the control, there's nothing weighing you down? Compared to before you can feel that release?"

"That is why I am here," Marisa/T'ala admitted. "Because there is one matter I have yet to deal with--to Starfleet's satisfaction, anyway."

Nodding solemnly, Lake supposed, "You'll need to learn to talk about that matter as candidly as someone who has already let it go," as it hadn't escaped his notice how little she had shared of herself, "before Starfleet will be satisfied you're ready to move on. You need to feel ready to share like Nancy does."

"I know. I'm just not sure I'm ready." Partly because she wasn't sure how much she could share, and partly because she was afraid that if she spoke as freely as Nancy, she'd be in far more trouble than she was right now. She needed to find the right balance. But it wouldn't be today.


OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Lake ir-Llantrisant
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Marisa Sandoval
Former Chief Counselor
USS Galileo

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