I Am Climbing Jacob's Ladder

Posted on 10 Jun 2018 @ 9:32pm by Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant & Lieutenant JG Rizil Chaya

2,040 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Avondale Shipyards - Medical Complex
Timeline: MD 103 - 0800 hours

ON:

Despite Chaya's chronic tardiness and overall lack of structure and organization, this was one appointment she wasn't late or disheveled for. She arrived ten minutes early, in a freshly ironed uniform, with her sleeves rolled all the way down, in fact. At first she sat silently and politely, twiddling her thumbs and leafing through whatever passed for 24th century Reader's Digest. But eventually she migrated to the reception area to trade quips with the nursing staff, leaning against the desk with one elbow while casually trying to make them laugh.

Meanwhile, Galileo's incipient Chief Counselor was, in fact, running late for this appointment. Atypically, Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant jogged into the reception station from the corridor, rather than from his office. The doors were only halfway open for him when he was saying, "Nurse, cancel my--" but he only got that far, for the sake of scanning the compartment visually as he crossed the threshold. He allowed his words to trail off as soon as his dark eyes landed on the very appointment he was about to cancel for the sake of a longer tea break.

"Ahhh," Lake said. When he started that single syllable, he sounded nakedly disappointed, but he managed to feign excitement before he finished the vocalization. "You must be Lieutenant Rizil, hullo!" he said, blandly enthused. He hardly slowed his pace as he continued his stride towards one of the single-paneled doors. "My temporary office is through here; if you'll follow me...?"

Chaya stared at him, openly stunned, for several seconds. Before her face broke out into a grin and she snorted from laughing, covering her mouth with her hand. "Sounds like you want to be here just as much as I do," she said as she fell into step beside him. "Am I interrupting anything? I can always take my psychotherapy with an extra dose of rock-climbing. Open-heart surgery?" She was, clearly, trying to guess what had occupied his attention so fully moments before. "Banana split? Cucumber sandwiches? I'm just going to keep naming food."

Striding into his office, Lake's eyes darted from side to side like a hunted animal. He cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed by his faux pas. He tried to mask his feelings by replying wryly, "I'm cutting back drastically on my banana splits during open heart surgery. It's a bitch to clean ice cream out of the chest cavity..." Spinning 'round to face Chaya, Lake affirmed, "This hour is dedicated to you, though. Why don't you tell me where you would rather be?"

"Iiiiiiiiiiiii...." she cleared her throat, now she was the one looking to recover. Counseling appointments came few and far between for Chaya, so mostly she was used to directing conversations herself, which largely accounted for her interpersonal confidence. When things reflected back on her, the cogs in her head stalled momentarily. "Well, as you know," oh for fuck's sake, be more formal, try again. "I mean, I'm sorry," she laughed lightly. "I didn't intend to imply that your time isn't valuable. Just a joke. Sir."

While Chaya was struggling to compose herself, Lake was accessing the library computer through the interface panel set into one of the bulkheads. He swiped and tapped on symbols to acknowledge that he had begun his appointment and he activated a couple of default settings as he went. The nearest PADD in the office blanked and prepared for recording whatever notes came to Lake's mind. Tilting his head back to consider Chaya, over his shoulder, Lake responded with a, "Hmm?" He shook his head.

Crossing the compartment towards a stack of PADDs in the corner, Lake looked Chaya in the eyes as he went. "I'm afraid I don't follow?" he said. "I never heard a value judgment about my time in anything you said. Not really. If anything, everything you said was about you, and a deflection from Starfleet's counseling requirements. However, please tell me if I'm hearing you wrongly."

She shot him a finger-gun, apparently deciding then-and-there to just own herself instead of shying away. "Got it in one. That's why they call me Queen of Deflection." She inhaled slowly, offering yet another smile, but this time it was less fake, as she met Lake's eyes. "Truthfully, and I'll just level with you, counseling appointments make me nervous. I don't have a problem with it. It's just, this is my career, and usually it takes one look at my file, before people make the assumption that I'm unstable or unfit."

This wasn't the first time Lake had heard such fears. His first response came from a place of defensiveness for his profession, rather than from a place of bedside manner. Dryly, he said, "Historical records offer a poor indicator of current mental health." Lake waved that thought aside, and then he asked Chaya, "Are you unstable?"

"No," she replied without hesitation. "Not at all."

Lake frowned at that. It was a questioning expression and it spread across his entire face. "Really?" he asked, his intonation plainly dubious. "Not at all, huh?" Stiffening his posture, Lake tilted his head to one side. "I've been promoted into a new position, onto a brand new ship, filled with a semi-new crew... I'd say I'm four kinds of unstable this morning. And you're, what? Unflappable?"

Chaya grinned. "Comes with the job description. Stress doesn't really get to me the way it gets to other people. I'm not knocking it," she raised her hands palm-up. "I guess I just think about it like, y'know, okay. Guy I like is cute and I'm facing an inquiry at work? All right, well, that's not the worst thing that could happen."

"Tell me more about that then," Lake said, nodding to Chaya. "What does a stressful day look like for you?"

She pondered that. "Being in physical danger. Being deprived of resources," she counted off on her fingers. A brief flash of Screwdriver lit up the back of her mind. "Xenophoba. All the fun stuff, really."

"Are you able to manage the stress you feel in the same manner?" Lake asked, following Chaya's logic from one step to the next. He took a step towards her and folded his hands behind his back. "Maybe you're starving, but at least you're not dehydrated? Maybe you're dodging phaser fire, but at least you're not in a black hole?"

"Bingo," she laughed. "I try to focus on the positive. You know, well, as positive as the bonus of not being in a black hole makes a situation."

As much as he tried to stop himself from talking with his hands, Lake extrapolated further. His hands made that point with progressive gesticulation. "And if you feel pain in your foot, you think about how good your hands feel until the pain goes away?" he asked, testing his hypothesis.

She shrugged. "It depends on how severe it is. I'm not going to ignore something that's obviously detrimental, but I can certainly handle it if it's not." She thought about that momentarily. "I'd guess my tolerance for pain isn't really ordinary, anyway."

"How do you make that decision?" Lake asked, a little mystified. He squinted at Chaya, as if that might somehow help him to see her more clearly. He asked, "How do you decide what pain is detrimental enough to need treatment, rather than tolerable enough and therefore worthy of ignoring?"

She shrugged. "I guess, ah... I guess whether or not it impedes my ability to function?" It was almost a question. Evidently Chaya wasn't used to thinking this way. "Or if it seems badly infected."

He looked back at her clear-eyed. "Would it surprise you," Lake wondered aloud, "if I told you that stress can have the same sort of impediment on your cognitive functions, and even on your physical health, if it's ignored rather than treated or managed?"

The Bajoran smiled, and gave him a nod. "I definitely understand that, and it makes sense to me." She studied the room momentarily, giving herself time to collect her thoughts, which was not something she often did. Chaya, for all intents and purposes, seemed very much allergic to silence. "When things do happen, I can process them healthily. No one's perfect, I don't claim to be, but I've done well for myself over the years. I've learned how to cope."

Nodding at her words, Lake drank in everything she was saying. He watched her intently, when he asked of her, "What are your most trusted coping mechanisms when things get hard?"

"Well," Chaya's brows bounced playfully. "Nothing beats a good work-out. Otherwise, usually I just talk it out in my logs, do research, try to come up with an action plan if it's applicable. Try to transform what's going on into a meaningful experience as opposed to being victim of a random circumstance."

Shrugging lightly, Lake said, "Those all sound like healthy approaches to me," as he made note of them on his PADD with a few taps of his fingertips. Setting the PADD aside, he asked Chaya, "Coming aboard a brand new ship like Galileo, what do you want to experience?"

"Anything and everything," Chaya laughed. "I'm not a scientific mind, so it'll definitely be an interesting challenge to integrate amongst a crew who are. With such a long term assignment, I'm certain the experience will be invaluable."

Nodding at her choice of works, Lake said, "It's a noble goal to aim for unity among a crew," to acknowledge what he heard from her. Leaning against an empty build-in shelving unit, Lake asked, "What does integration mean to you?"

Chaya pondered that, peering at Lake thoughtfully. "I guess, it means familiarity. Friendship. Loyalty. Camaraderie. Efficiency."

Bobbing his head back, Lake said, "That's a lot of goals to reach for in the hunt for integration among a new crew. Admiral qualities, the lot of them, and it's certainly a lot." -- He rubbed his thumb across his chin-- "Which one of those would you say is the most important one to you?"

"At this point, I'd say familiarity. That's the stepping stone for everything else, in my opinion. Camaraderie is a natural product of familiarity, and the stone just rolls downhill from there." She smiled.

"Yes," Lake said in response; "Yes, I suppose familiarity would make a starting point for any of those. How do you go about it? How do you seek out familiarity with a hundred new people?"

"Well, you just talk to them," Chaya shrugged. "Show an interest in them, keep track of their absurdist art collection or their obsession with desert succulents or whatever. I mean, for us it'll probably be a little weird at first, given this whole thing, but we'll find our groove too."

Shaking his head and throwing his arms in the air in a bit of a dramatic shrug, Lake asked, "What's weird about us?" He frowned, but his eyes remained smiling. "Are you saying you wouldn't get me a drink in the mess hall?"

"Oh, I would, but it'll be a weird drink, buddy," Chaya smirked.

Lake cut his eyes to the left. "Aren't those," he asked, "the best kind of drinks?"

"I'm going to interpret that as your favorite kind of drink is liquefied targ," Chaya hummed innocently.

In one hand, Lake mimed that he was holding a drinking tumbler and with his other hand, he mimed stirring the drink. He smiled at Chaya knowingly. "Only if it's seasoned with the tears of the Klingon child who lost her pet targ," Lake replied easily. "...Why do you think I was trying to cancel your session?"

"Uh, huh?" Chaya blinked, caught off guard by the question.

"You had asked me," Lake said, "when you got here," he elaborated, "if you were interrupting anything." Lake shrugged. "I suppose you were. Two words. Weird drink."

"Only one way to find out," Chaya grinned.

[OFF]

Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Rizil Chaya
Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

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