A Taste of the Local Culture (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on 04 Nov 2012 @ 2:26pm by Commander Andreus Kohl

1,744 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 03 - 1016 hours

Previously in "A Taste of the Local Culture" Part 1...

Maenad tilted her head. He was going to take her blood whether she liked it or not. "Okay," she said. "I think it's fine," Maenad said with a shrug, referring to her anemia. "I haven't fainted recently," she offered. "But I haven't fainted in years, so if that tells you anything..." Her expression sunk as she trailed off, "Mister Kohl, I don't know that you'll be able to find the wine here." She looked up at him with a tone of sympathy, "I do have a bottle in my quarters, though, if you would like to try some."

"I can't ever refuse wine," Kohl emphatically said (to his later embarrassment). He picked up an empty hypospray from the instrument tray and he pressed it to Maenad's arm. Kohl tapped the control to being drawing blood. His mind still on the wine, he said, "I'd really appreciate that."

Maenad felt her cheeks flush a little, but acted liked nothing had happened. She liked this Kohl; he wasn't like any doctor she had ever been to. "Any time. Besides, it would be more fun than drinking it alone," she laughed.

And now, the conclusion...


[ON]

"Oh, agreed entirely," Kohl remarked. "I try to stick to synthehol when I'm on call... which makes it entirely fortunate we have some shore leave coming up." Kohl rounded the biobed to set aside the hypospray and take up his tricorder again. As the tricorder began to warble, Kohl asked, "Do you take any medications or narcotics?"

"No, but I take iron supplements," she said. The sound of the suddenly beeping tricorder worried her. "Is something wrong?"

Kohl smiled mildly. It was probably a character flaw, but the more uncomfortable a person became around him, the more comfortable Kohl felt. He didn't answer right away, except to shake his head slightly. "No," Kohl said softly, "That means its working." --He tapped on the controls a couple of times more-- "The narcotics question is procedure."

Maenad felt her shoulders fall a little, relieved. She didn't say anything and remained still, looking at the floor. She felt a little ridiculous getting worked up like that, feeling that she should have known better than to be alarmed over the sound of a tricorder. It wasn't like she had never heard one before.

Continuing his manipulation of the tricorder, he cycled through each of the sensor modules in the biobed. In systematic pattern, the tricorder received information about Maenad's skeletal system, cardiovascular system, endocrine system, and so on. While the automation took over, Kohl asked her, "Tell me about the sickest you've ever been."

Still looking at the floor, Maenad frowned. She couldn't remember the last time she was really sick. She strained her memory, thinking; it was probably when she was a little girl, she figured. Then she began to smile as the memory came back. Half embarrassed and half surprised that Kohl was interested in her, if only on the surface. Nobody ever wanted to know anything about her, and if they did she didn't know it.

Maenad laughed to herself as she began telling the story. "I remember once when I was little girl, I must have been ten years old, my mom came back from a trip to some planet, don't ask me which, and she'd contracted something a lot like the flu. Anyway, whatever it was, I caught it. I spent a week in bed with a fever of forty, throwing up non-stop, sweating buckets. My face and eyes turned purple from the heaving. I couldn't keep anything down; they were feeding me with hyposprays it was so bad." Maenad looked up at Kohl with widened eyes and a bright smile, then shook her head at remembering how helpless she was. "What was worse than all of that, though, was how guilty my mom felt, and then how badly I felt for getting sick. She kept blaming herself and apologising, you know - she must have felt worse than I did. She loved me very much." Maenad was still holding back the full extent of her laughter.

"Oh, that's awful," Kohl said in reply to everything but her mother's love. He said it with the same degree of mirth that Maenad had expressed, though. "I went skating down the emergency stairwell of the Federation Embassy where I grew up. I don't actually know how many bones I broke that day, but a lot of them were little ones."

Something about the passage of time always made terrible things into 'good' things, Maenad thought. If Kohl had told her that he broke all of his bones yesterday she might have worried about him, and had she caught that same now, something told her that he would have worried about her. It was strange how things worked.

"You lived in a Federation Embassy?" Maenad asked him after a moment.

"Not in it in it," Kohl replied, and only after he said it did he recognise how obtuse that sounded. He glanced down at the tricorder in his hand and he adjusted the settings. "My parents worked for the Federation on Argelius Two. I knew my way around the embassy," he said, not elaborating much more than that.

"Hm," Maenad found all of this very interesting, her face becoming a pensive frown. "Are you from Argelius?"

"I am Argelian. I grew up there," Kohl replied and he nodded at Maenad's query. His experience had been unique --not one-of-a-kind, but not overly common-- in being born on his homework, being Argelian down to his bones, but having been raised behind the walls and transparent aluminum of the Federation. "My parents aren't Argelian. They had me educated in Federation facilities for the administrators and their families."

"Ah," Maenad slowly drew her head backward. "What was that like, being from a planet of hedonists?" She made a sarcastic grin; her humour was usually a failure.

That question --something about that that question-- it left Andreus Kohl with a moment of sudden clarity. The moment was brief, but shone bright. "I make fun of it sometimes to gauge a person's reactions," Kohl said honestly, his tone impassive. He looked at Maenad when he paused, but then his eyes darted away diffidently. "But a hedonist culture is what I'm comfortable with; it's my baseline. Living out here, in the rest of the universe... That's what frightens me."

Yes, she thought that her humour had failed. Not sure what to say, seeing that she had gone somewhere she hadn't meant to, not out of disinterest but sudden discomfort, feeling senseless, she went blank. The universe was a scary place, she agreed, but now was not the time to talk about it. She then felt awful for being so insensitive. "I'm scared of what your tricorder is telling you," she tried to change the subject, her voice quiet.

And then, that was all it took. Kohl's mind switched tracks, and the colour and the smile returned to his face. The minutia of the day returned to keep him from thinking too hard about any one thing or another. He tilted his head down, staring at the tricorder as if it were some piece of unintelligible futuristic technology. He blinked. Looking up again, Kohl glanced at the readings on the biofunction monitor to confirm what the tricorder was saying. "Don't be," Kohl said surely. He shook his head slightly. "You're in fine health."

Maenad pressed her lips, not sure how true that was. She still felt guilty for dampening Kohl's morning. She sighed. "Well, that's a relief."

"As I mentioned, I'll need Doctor Ni Dhuinn to review the results," Kohl said, "but I don't see anything terribly different from your last physical examination." He silenced his tricorder and set it aside on the instrument tray beside the blood sample. "I may have to check again, though," he said, "if we trawl through every wine bar on Vega Colony."

Maenad's face lit up, her lips forming a restrained smile. "You would like that?" she asked. Seconds ago she had ruined whatever friendship might have been, and now he was suggesting that he wanted to see her again. Idiot, she scolded herself.

"I would do," Kohl said, and even he sounded a little surprised by it. He gestured to the floor, indicating that Panne was free to flee the biobed. "I haven't made many friends on Galileo yet," Kohl said matter-of-factly, "and the ones that I have... well, I'm not sure how many of them could keep up with my hedonist ways. I have this odd suspicion that you would do."

Maenad didn't know what to say; she was entirely thrilled to hear that. Not being much of a partier was true for her; she rarely went out, and when she did it wasn't for long or much. But she could hold her own, she knew it was still in there - thinking back to her much wilder self from the academy. Kohl's idea excited her, and she liked that feeling. "Certainly," she said with a mischievous voice.

"Well then," Kohl said sounding pleased, and he took a step back. "Prepare to enjoy your shore leave thoroughly. For now, though, you're free to go."

Maenad pushed herself over the side of the biobed onto her feet, suddenly feeling a little light-headed from the blood Kohl had taken. She tried not to show it, uncertain how successful she was. "You tell me I am fine, you're not just saying that?" She asked. "Saving the bad news for the doctor?"

"Oh, no. If the doctor gives you bad news," Kohl deadpanned, "It's because I'm incompetent."

"Let's hope that you aren't," Maenad replied. "Don't forget to stop by some time, too," she said, straightening her uniform while avoiding his eyes. "I mean to try that wine," she quickly added. With Maenad, she felt awkward asking someone to her quarters with no real purpose - even if there was no purpose. Perhaps out of some normally inconsequential fear of rejection, she did not stay to hear Kohl's, response. With one confirming glance of her eyes she left him at the biobed, made long strides toward the door, and was gone.


[OFF]

Lieutenant JG Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Nurse
USS Galileo

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