Traumatic Stress and Bad Dreams (1/2)

Posted on 03 Apr 2013 @ 9:51pm by Lieutenant Kiri Cho & Lieutenant Dawn Meridian
Edited on on 04 Apr 2013 @ 12:15pm

2,417 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo Deck 3, Counsellor's Office
Timeline: MD-1 1135

[ON]

Leaving medical still rather uncomfortable at having to take most of her clothes off Kiri made her way towards the counsellors' offices. She still didn't like the idea of talking about her feelings with yet another stranger but maybe it would be better? Head down in thought her feet made the trip without thinking and before she knew it the young woman was outside. Pressing the chime she fussed with her hair, without a mirror though she wasn't sure how it looked.

Dawn gently set down the PADD she'd been thumbing through and stretched, letting out a little yawn. There was only so much reading she could do before it stopped... sticking. Thankfully, the chime signalled that she had something else to be doing, anyway. She hopped to her feet and moved easily to the door.

The woman - Kiri Cho, if she remembered the notice - was about her age, as far as she could tell, although she was Trill. The turtleneck she wore made her look a bit odd in an adorable kind of way. She didn't look like she'd have a very good few days. "Hey," she said, smiling softly. "I'm Counsellor Dawn Meridian. Take a seat, if you like." She paced inside. "Would you like something to drink?"

This was a ritual that almost everyone trying to put her at ease went through, by now she was used to it. "A small glass of water, if that is okay," When she first came to the ship she would worry hugely about what her answer should be. So far though saying yes hadn't caused a problem. Carefully Kiri took a chair and perched herself on the edge of it, watching the other woman. Other than her hair was more lively she was a similar height, weight, shape, she held herself differently though.

"Sure," Dawn said, giving Kiri a nod. "Water, cold." She wandered over to the replicator to retrieve the glass and gently handed it to Kiri on her way back. She sat down in the chair opposite the science officer, Dawn's grey eyes studying her curiously. She looked... fragile, withdrawn. It made Dawn feel a little bit sad. "Are you... all right?" she asked with a tilt of her head.

"Not really," Kiri shifted her legs, "But better." Bad dreams, new and numerous fears, perceived social problems, Kiri knew most of them by now. Dealing with them seemed to always return to her normal way, work harder and try to ignore it.

A frown tugged at Dawn's lips. 'Trouble sleeping,' Doctor Wilson had said in her referral. That can mean a lot of things. "Better than worse," she said, almost to herself. She paused, taking a breath. "Well, first, if it helps, you can think of me as 'Dawn.' 'Counsellor' can be a bit hard to talk to and kind of intimidating." She nodded to herself. "Is 'Kiri' okay, or would you prefer something else?"

They weren't at that stage of their relationship, "Can you call me Cho please?" Kiri would rather call her Counsellor but if she wanted to be called Dawn she'd cope.

"Sure." That would work well enough. It was much better than "Lieutenant", anyway. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs. "So you were having trouble sleeping?" she asked, her grey eyes wide and inquisitive.

"Yes, I still am." The dreams were different now though, not the same painful ones that made her hurt herself struggling. These ones were the two men dragging her from the science lab again. Everyone around her dying and it was all her fault, forcing her to wake up with a start.

"Bad dreams, right?" Dawn said softly, more a statement then a question. She glanced away quickly. Kiri - er, Ms. Cho - wasn't alone in that. Sometimes, she dreamed that she had woken up and the rest of the crew had vanished without a trace. It was hard not to rush to mess hall after that just to see, just to convince herself that she wasn't alone.

"Yes," Though they were far worse than any bad dreams she'd had before. They were slowly getting better though, they were still horrible. They still made her wake up shaking, sometimes crying, sometimes on the floor with a new bruise. Less so with her new huge bed but that carried its own problems for her.

"Would you mind talking about them?" Some things could be hard to talk about, especially when they were as personal as dreams. While they could seem random, they could reflect concerns carried over from the waking world as well. A lot of the time, talking about them helped. You should take your own advice, she thought wryly.

"I don't know," Kiri didn't want to, they were horrible. She didn't even want to think about them. She was taking a sleeping hypospray and that kept the dreams away. What good would it to talk about something that seemed entirely based around her own pain?

Dawn was pretty sure 'I don't know' meant 'yes,' but she wasn't about to give up that easily. Talking about them would help Kiri - at least, she hoped so. Plus, maybe they had similar kinds of dreams. "It might help," she said quietly. "Some dreams are a way for the brain to express anxieties in your life that you don't really have any other way of dealing with. Even talking about them can make them less potent, sometimes." She wanted to help - Kiri seemed really distraught - but Dawn had a sinking feeling that she was just making her uncomfortable.

"I don't think my dreams have anything to do with my life," It wasn't like she was dreaming of being in school, or in the country, or at home. Something so completely different that even the dream felt wrong, let alone any part of it. Those parts though, just thinking about it send a shiver down her spine.

Something about the way Kiri said that made Dawn frown a bit. They sounded like much more than run-of-the-mill nightmares. They sounded awful. She almost wanted to stop pushing. She hated the thought that she might be causing pain. But... "They don't always take a familiar form," she said, her voice even softer now. Her grey eyes had darkened. "They're strange that way. They're not always mirrors of experiences or anything like that. They can just take fears and problems from your subconscious and express them. Recurring nightmares are usually like that, anyway."

"Well," Kiri really didn't want to talk about it but it was starting to seem that she didn't have much choice. "Okay," Biting back on her lip she looked down hard at her knees, "They were normally the same. I would be alone, floating in a dark nothing. Then it started to rain all around me, and through me. Then it starts changing colours, red then more. Then," This was the part that made her want to cry, "Everything. I could taste all sorts of things that got worse, blood, raw meat, metal, and smells, touching things all over my body, flashes, and then it would hurt and get worse and worse until I woke up." She was almost sobbing now, "I'd been thrashing around so hard I'd get bad bruises and cuts, fall out of bed and be on the floor sometimes. I was always so scared." That was it, she just wanted to curl up into a ball. She was so weak and powerless, why did she had to go through this again?

"It's okay," Dawn said after a time. Her voice was little more than a whisper. The beginning sounded familiar to her, at least... she'd had nightmares about emptiness and cold rain before. She'd wake up cold and shivering. The rest sounded... worse. Much worse. A cold chill twisted down her spine. Kiri didn't just have nightmares. She had night terrors.

She let out an audible breath. She'd been right. Night terrors in adults almost always had a psychological aspect to them. She just hadn't known just how much Kiri was suffering. Dreams like those would make trying to get to sleep impossible without medication. She wanted to give Kiri a hug, to tell her everything would be okay.

"Thanks," she said at last. "I'm sorry to bring them up. I can't imagine how terrible they must be." She paused. "You've helped a lot, though. I have a better of what's happening now, I think." She grimaced. "There's good news and bad news, though."

Kiri slumped her shoulders at the answer, looking very hard at her own knees. She knew there would never be an easy answer, right now though she didn't want to say anything at all though. What she wanted was to have her mother cuddle her and say it was okay, or Sellen to talk to or even Trisha. She wanted to cry, she wanted someone to pity her but she could never allow herself to do it.

Dawn felt even worse now. She was starting to feel like she was bullying the poor girl, even though she was trying to do the opposite. "Don't worry. I'm here to help, remember?" She tilted her head and managed a smile. "The nightmares may be scary, but once they're gone, they're going to stay gone, and sleeping won't be so horrible anymore. A peaceful, restful kind of sleep that you can't get with medication." She held out her hand. "It doesn't have to be so bad if you share the burden."

Kiri looked uncomfortably up at her, "How can I share them?" The dreams weren't the only reason she hated sleeping lately. That bed was cold, if she wasn't at the point of passing out already she had to lay awake and that gave her mind time to wander. When it did that she started feeling sad and wanting to cry. Dreams were in her head and she had done everything she could to explain them right? So what more was there to share?

"Like you are right now," Dawn said. Her words had seemed to help a little bit, at least. "Things can be a lot worse when you're handling them alone. If you talk about the dreams - or even just how they make you feel - it can take away some of their power." She nodded as if agreeing with herself. "Although it's really hard to do at first. Some things can be... hard to share." She knew that really well. There were still things she didn't want to even think about, let alone share. Maybe I'm asking too much, then...

"I see," Kiri took a deep breath, "There are lots of things that are hard to talk about." She had tried talking about some them since joining the ship with limited success. From the relationship she had with her parents, her stupid childhood and how that had in her eyes lead to her lack of social skills. How lonely she was, how hard she found talking to people in general.

"I know." Dawn pressed the back of her head against the chair. "I do. And the things that are hardest to talk about are usually the most helpful to share. They are to me, anyway." And she kept a lot of that hidden away, when she could. It wasn't just that it was easier not to talk about it - other people were usually more concerned with their own problems, and she liked it that way. "There's no rush, though. Thinking about too much at once is... too much."

"Okay," Kiri was starting to feel a little guilty. Clearly she wasn't the only one with problems even though she was the patient. A long pause settle as she thought about and finally she gave in. Talking about something would at least distract the both of them, "I'm having problems going into rooms with strangers."

"Like this room?" Dawn's lips hinted at a smile, but the question was a serious one. "What kind of thoughts go through your head? Is it anxiety, or...?" It was a pretty understandable problem. New people brought with them a lot of subtle social pressures that put a lot of people on edge. Her curiosity was usually enough that she didn't get stressed out or worried by them.

Dawn was the same size as she was, she was a woman didn't look very strong. While she was somewhat of a stranger she held a rank didn't really intimidate Kiri, "I don't, it is mostly men and open areas, like the science labs. I get anxiety first then start to worry and panic." The last word forced a deep breath out of her, it didn't feel like she should talk about it.

The grey-eyed woman nodded twice. She wore the slightest of frowns. "Because of something that happened," she ventured. Dawn didn't probe any further than that. She knew something had happened - some kind of security breach - but she didn't know any details. "That would make it hard to work in the labs. At least it's a small crew. Should give you some breathing room." Failing that, medical would always be safe. The only man she'd seen was Varek, and he was a Vulcan. And the hologram, she added to herself.

"Yes, it's not terrible, just hard," Kiri shifted slightly in her seat, squinting her eyes. "I take care not to spend too much time there and things seem to be getting better slowly."

"That's probably the best the way to deal with it," Dawn said. "Once nothing's happened there for a while, it shouldn't be much of a problem anymore. It's good to hear that it's getting better." She let out a little breath, just short of being a sigh. "If it gets bad, can you ask someone to work with you? It should be a bit better if you're with someone you trust."

There was only one person she could sort of trust in the department and she could hardly ask Maenad to work with her when there was so much to do. Realising how stupid it sounded Kiri braced herself, "I don't really have anyone like that."

To be continued...

[OFF]
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Lieutenant (JG) Kiri Cho
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Dawn Meridian
Counsellor
USS Galileo

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