Another Day at the Office

Posted on 03 Apr 2012 @ 9:06pm by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Lieutenant JG Drusilla McCarthy

5,900 words; about a 30 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: Counselor's Office, Deck 3
Timeline: MD02 - 0900

Maybe it had been all the marines, Lilou thought as she gained the turbolift and rode up to Deck 3 and the waiting counselor's office. She certainly couldn't blame the Algonquin's captain for not wanting to mandate counselor check-ins of the crew with those... unpleasant people on board. So, she supposed, it was a good sign that they were all being vetted in the interim between earth and the starbase. Maybe this McCarthy would catch any wayward minds and shuck them to the curb before they wound up being a genuine problem. She'd worn coveralls all morning in the repair bay, so her uniform wasn't as bad as it could have been as she stepped onto Deck 3 and followed her mental map to the prescribed place. As she touched the door panel to signal her arrival, she thought of Willis' taunting. Psychobabble versus technobabble, round 1. She laughed, ducking her head and waited to be admitted.

Dru looked up from the PADD on her desk as she checked the time, afraid she'd forgotten an appointment or something. Seeing noone pencilled in for 0900hours Dru smiled. She loved these appointments where people choose to randomally drop in, it made for an easier atmosphere. As Dru stood she moved over to the door, "Enter."

As a woman walked through the door, Dru took note of the brown dots each side of her face and neck and smiled gently." Counsellor McCarthy at your service. How can I help you today?" Dru winced at the clichd phrase but it seemed to work here.

Lilou glanced around the inside of the office. It was... strangely cozy. Unfortunately so, really. And too quiet; the whirrs and blips were masked somehow in here so she lost the ongoing feeling of being part of the ship. "I heard we were supposed to check in with you before we reached the starbase..." She linked her hands behind her back. "So ask me your questions, make sure I'm sane, and then I'll get out of your way so you can - you know - oust the crazy ones." She paused, glancing at the rank insignia on the counselor's uniform. "Sir."

Dru kept the soft smile on her face but groaned internally. So much for an easy session "Well how about we start by you taking a seat", Dru indicated to the comfy chairs across the room,"and then you can stop calling me Sir. In here I'm Dru and I hope you are ok with me calling you...actually you never did introduce yourself..." Dru headed for her own chair as she allowed Lilou to walk ahead.

Lilou shut her eyes, cheeks staining red. "Right. Right. I'm sorry." She started to salute, remembered she'd been told not to call the woman Sir and made the logical leap that saluting was probably not right either. Which meant she was actually going to have to talk. About herself. To this stranger. 'It's for the greater good', she reminded herself. 'Just suck it up.' "Lilou Catherine Peers. Master Warrant Officer, Engineering." She dropped into her seat, winding her hands together in her lap. "I should have..." She shook her head and shifted in the chair, pushing back until the back of the seat propped her up. Her feet didn't quite touch the floor. She scootched back to the edge and planted them firmly. "It's nice to make your acquaintance, Dru." She glanced to the side, once more peering around the office. "Nice in here, I guess you spend a lot of time just... sitting here talking to people, right? Do you like the quiet?" She squinted, "I guess it's not quiet when you're talking, or they are, but the in between, there's no... you know... noise. Sounds. Ever forget you're on a ship?" She bit her lip. "I guess you're the one who's supposed to be asking the questions, right?"

Dru folded her legs under her as she smiled softly at the woman infront of her."I guess that's what I'm here for. I might not always have the answers but often we can figure them out anyway." Dru paused as she thought over the other questions, realising it might help Lilou feel more at ease, getting to ask questions, instead of being asked them, Dru figured she give Lilou some answers.

"Let's try answer a few of the questions you've just asked. Yes I spend alot of time sitting here talking to people but that's my job, just as your's is looking after this ship, mine is looking after the crew. Do I like the quiet? Hum...I'm not sure. Sometimes yes, it's nice to be able to close your eyes and not hear a noise, there's comfort in it. Do you not like some peace and quiet after a long day of working?"

Lilou's eyes widened in horror. "God, no. Why would I want that? If the sounds stop, that means the ship's stopped. And from there, we're all meat-popsicles waiting to implode." She shuddered. "No, thank you. If I could, I'd sleep in Engineering. Hearing the hum of the warp core's just about as comforting as it gets. Everything works." Her eyes slanted to the side as her brow creased. "But... ah... it's nice... that you do? Like it?" She frowned. "To each their own. Someone said that, I don't know who. Well, I guess a lot of people have said it, but someone started the quote. Or at least claimed it as theirs. It seems like a pretty vague kind of statement, so most likely it was born out of a universal consciousness. Except I know it originated on Earth and it doesn't really seem to apply to their history, so maybe not." She laughed quickly. "Babbling again. Anyway, no. Not so much with the quiet for me. Then again, I was born on a space station. I guess it's probably different for folks raised planet-side. When I was first sent to study on Earth - for the first three or four months - I used to wake up several times a night terrified the engines had stopped and we were all going to die." She paused. "Because it was so quiet." She paused again, searching Dru's face hopefully, as though through wishing she might see the sense of it in the other woman's face. "I got over it. So, is that it, were you born dirtside?"

Dru tried once again to collect all of the questions together. She was finding that even though Lilou was rambling alot, she was able to gather together information to try piece of a picture of the woman herself."I was born dirtside, Earth as a matter of fact. If you've spent very little time on the planet you may not have heard of the country, Ireland." Dru smiled softly over at the women before continuing,"Have you spent all of your life aside from those 4years in space?"

Lilou shook her head. "No, sir. I was sent to Foxcroft Academy in the city Seattle when I was thirteen. There was an incident with a couple phasers and a particle accelerator and my parents - and the commander of the Qin-Harbinger - decided I should be allowed to explore my interests somewhere where I couldn't pierce a hole in the hull. After that, I went to Starfleet. So. Nine years on Earth. Never quite became accustomed to it. And the labs I spent most of my time in had very similar pressure to the space station, so that made it much easier to accustom myself. Ireland is one of the other landmasses on the planet, yes? A smallish one?"
E
Dru found that Lilou had started to relax. Her thoughts had become a little more focus and she wasn't jumping back and forward between topics. "Smallish would be putting it right. It's situated off of the coast of an area called Great Britain or the United Kingdom, whichever you prefer to call it. What do you think is it about space stations that causes you to prefer to be there instead of on a planet?"

"I don't," Lilou shook her head. "I prefer ships. But I guess I-" She shrugged, ducking her head as she tried to come up with an answer. Why did she prefer space to Earth? Besides the isolation she'd felt the whole time she'd been on planet, that sudden aloneness where she'd been without her parents, without any of the people she'd known going up, 'for her own good' when she'd known it was because of what she'd done, suddenly surrounded by so much air and not enough ceilings and dirt everywhere that served no purpose other than to just be there and people who had never once been in the stars and couldn't wrap their heads around what it was like to be in so much potential and energy bundled into a relatively infinitesimal manifestation of matter in the midst of never-ending, perpetually expanding space.... "Is there supposed to be a reason?" she asked, looking up again. It was still so quiet she could hear herself breathe. "Do you prefer being on the planet?" Her own question startled her a bit. She'd always thought that everyone in Starfleet wanted to be out in the inky black as much as she did; if they didn't, why would they come here? It was something that tied her to them, even when she couldn't figure out how to express that. But if they didn't... if they couldn't see, didn't feel that underlying joy she did when she was out of the whims of atmosphere and weather... then maybe they weren't like her? Maybe she was alone, even on the ship. And the aloneness was so much worse when she was constantly reminded by the ache in her abdomen that she was missing something. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, the mere thinking of it exacerbating the sensation.

Dru sensed Lilou's discomfort and wondered at what might have caused it,"Well you have three different groups of people, those who loves being on ships or stations, those who love being on planets and those who love both. You fall into the first group from what your saying, I would place myself in the last group. I love being able to be amongst the stars but often I love to be able to stand on a real beach with a real ocean stretched out infront of me. Each of our own preferences make us who we are." Dru smiled at Lilou.

"Or who we are makes our preferences," Lilou lifted a shoulder. "I always wondered which came first. No matter how much we explore the universe, our own minds remain more complex and inexplicable. More so with every new species that comes to light." She shook her head. "I don't envy you your job at all, sir. Dru," she corrected herself. "I'd rather recrystallize dilithium than try to understand another person's brain, let alone my own. I guess that's another line of preferences, born from genetic and experiential coefficients."

Dru laughed, "I guess that is where everyone is different. I couldn't even try to recrystallize dilithium...inface I'm not even sure where I'd find it to start it. Why do you think you enjoy engineering so much mroe then everything else?"

"Because it's the only thing I'm good at?" Lilou asked. She'd meant it as a joke, but out in the air it was a little too close to home. "I don't know. Because... I guess, because everything has a use. Each tool has a specific purpose. Every data line is routing communications for a reason. There are ways you can work outside the technical toolbox, true, but everything has a root utility. And you can see it when it works, hear it, feel the hum of an engine when it's running just right. It's all tangible. Not based on faith or thinking, just... the reality of the mechanics." She squinted a little. "That make sense?"

"For someone who doesn't know one end of a warp core to the other...that actually made perfect sense. You are obviously extremely good at your job. It's better to be good at one thing then to be average at a load of different things we often find, things can became very confusing if you try to learn a number of different things." Dru placed her elbow on the arm of her chair and cupped her cheek, as she made herself more comfortable.

Lilou shifted, uncomfortable with the unwarranted praise. How could Dru know she was any good? Well, she did have a position on the Galileo. Maybe that was enough proof for the counselor. "How can you stand it?" she asked, folding her hands together. "Being on a ship hurtling through space at faster than light speeds without understanding how the ship works? I've never understood that."

"Hum....well I guess by concentrating on the people in the ship and the Captain. I trust that the Captain has choose proficient crew members. After that, how the ship runs isn't my concern, it's how the crew of the ship run's that is most important to me. If the crew of the ship are fit, then I trust them to do their job's correctly, which is keeping the ship in working order. Let me ask you this, what do you think my purpose is here?" Dru was starting to feel like she was in her own counselling session but was interested to see Lilou's views of departments outside of engineering, she seemed very focused on just engineering.

"Your..." Lilou tugged at her ear thoughtfully. "To make sure we're all in working order. And hopefully to weed out the crazies before we're stuck with them all the way to 152 and back."

"In the end all of our purposes and roles are merged together. A ship can't operate without a crew, a crew can't get through space without a ship. I trust you to maintain this ship that I can safely be on board while we hurtle through space. You trust me, at least I hope you do, to evaluate if the people you work with are psychologically sturdy enough to be here." Dru sat back in her seat to give Lilou a change to digest this new information.

"Have you? Thoroughly?" Lilou asked before she could stop herself. "I'm sorry. It's not that I'm doubting your skills. It's just..." She sought the right words and ended up settling. "People can be deceiving; maybe not intentionally all the time, but... very hard to read. I guess you know how to read that, though. That's your job. Right." She smiled tightly and ducked her head. "That's your job; reading people. And the Captain was smart enough to keep a counselor on board; she knows what she's doing. Thank you. For keeping an eye on us."

Dru leaned forward in her chair, not touching Lilou as she had a feeling she would become uncomfortable. "People are usually easy to read once you talk to them for 10minutes or more, thus why I have these sit downs with everyone. I usually find reading them isn't difficult, it's getting people to open up. It's what I'm trained to do, to utilise my abilities and who I am to be able to get people to talk. It's kinda like you using your mind and how to picture things to take an item apart and put it back together. Our Captain is a very compatant woman, I like to think she knew what she was doing when she choose each of us for the roles we ate to fulfill because we are good at what you do."

Dru smiled gently,"And thank you Lilou for keeping an eye on our ship."

"It's not really me. It's Quinn. But he's a genius, so no worries there." Lilou scooted back slightly in her chair, kicking her feet idly. "What do you like about people, then? Why go into the career of having to figure them out all the time. Why they do the things they do? That can't be pretty; not all the time, anyway."

Dru smiled to herself as she tried to figure out how this had become a counselling session for herself. She felt though that Lilou really was trying to understand and the young counsellors answers seemed to be calming her. Dru didn't see any harm in it aslong as Lilou continued to answer her questions there seemed to be no harm in continuing.

"I like how every single individual is different, no two people are the same. I enjoy the challenge of trying to get people to open up. I like learning about makes a person tick, how they think about things and how they view things. I enjoy knowing I've helped a person, weather it be I've helped them take a weight off of their mind, or they understand something better after talking it through, or even that they needed to shed some tears and I enabled them to be able to do it." Dru paused as she thought over the next part. "Of course my role involves as much frustration and upset as it does fulfilment but I'm trained to cope with that. Every human is impacted by seeing a person in pain or hurting, even though I might not be able to block it out, I can manage it. I've years of experience and training behind me which enabled me to do this."

Dru took a drink of water from the glass constantly kept beside her."Why all this interest in other people and their roles?"

"I guess it's like you said. If the crew is part of the ship the same way the engines are... if I think about it that way, then I guess maybe it's important to try to figure out how they work." Lilou grimaced. "Not that that's going to be easy. People are far more complicated than warp cores, and they don't come with instruction manuals." She looked away again, peering around the office. "How do you do that?" she asked, not looking at Dru. "Manage it, I mean. The... negative stuff from other people?"

"Well I tell you what, why don't you try answer that question? I've told you abit about me and you have sat here and talked to me." Dru smiled at Lilou.

Lilou cocked her head to the side. She'd sat there and talked...? "I..." Her cheeks felt far too warm. "Oh." She ducked her head, ashamed. She'd talked too much. Asked too many questions. And now she was being reminded - gently - of her place in the cosmos. Shut up and do your work. Just... not so mean. She supposed she should be grateful for that, at least. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean any negativity-" She broke off, biting her back teeth together as she fought to keep from adding yet more negativity to the situation by crying or something horrible like that. Stupid. Stupid she'd come along without enough of her defenses up. She should have just waited until she was called. The counselor probably had other business and- "Sorry," she said again, her voice a little on the raw side. "If you... I can just answer whatever you ask and get out of your hair."

Dru leaned forward in her chair reaching out to touch Lilou's arm and waiting for her to look up, "Lilou you've misinterpreted what I asked." Dru smiled softly at Lilou so she would see everything was fine. "You are an extremely observant young woman. You like to ask questions, gather information, learn new things. There is nothing negative about that, that's something to be proud of, you are educating yourself. My question was for you to use your new information. That is all."

"I...oh." Lilou shook a little as she exhaled. "Right." She ground her back teeth together, thinking, trying to focus on anything other than the stinging in her cheeks and behind her eyes. Idiot. "I guess you... ah... listen, but don't... get... hit by it?" she asked, a little flummoxed. "Maybe I'm not that observant," she added wryly. "You're sensitive, but you don't let things affect you?" She shrugged. "I don't know how to do that, I guess."

Dru kept the contact with Lilou's arm. "Your more observant then you realise, you just like to lock it up in your brain and you don't know how to verbally speak it back. Your an extremely intelligent woman Lilou. You shouldn't feel that you need to hide."

"Well, I can't. So I guess it doesn't matter much whether I feel that way or not." She swallowed hard. She probably looked like an idiot, getting all wound up and weepy over nothing. Nothing at all. It was ridiculous. "Intelligence doesn't mean smart," she said, smiling to take the edge off the words. "Ever heard that one before? I have. Lots. And it's true. You have both. I got one. S'ok. The ship doesn't need to like me, she just needs me to do my job. I can do that."

"Lilou you should have more confidence in yourself. One only has to read the praise in your file from previous positions and superiors to see you have a fantastic ability to be able to do your job and do it well. You have the intelligence, that's your knowledge and you have the smart, that is the ability to be able put your knowledge to good use." Dru squeezed Lilou's arm gently.

"Right. Okay." Words, words, words, she thought, ducking her head. "What was the question again?"

Dru resisted the urge to tilt up Lilou's head to have her look her in the eyes.Dru knew Lilou would get more confidence from doing that but the young woman had to want to do it. "I want you to think back over the questions you asked me, the answers I gave you and I'd like you to tell me, how do I manage to be a counsellor? To cope with people's emotions?"

Lilou thought back over what they'd talked about. "Because you trust them to do what they're here for. And you like to help them, so I guess... it's like getting a little scraped during the course of a repair. Maybe you get a little twinge here or there, but for the most part you're focused on helping them so you're not worried about yourself." She glanced up, "Ish?"

Dru smiled reassuringly over at Lilou. "You need to have more confidence in yourself Lilou. Your a bright woman who obviously cares about people. I can see that in you from our conversations today. You got me right, you described me better then I would myself. I can work with you on your confidence if you'd like."

Lilou grimaced, "What do you mean - work with me on it? How?"

Dru sat back in her chair thinking the question over and trying to figure what might work best with Lilou. "There's different ways. First thing we can concentrate on how you view the work you do. You know you do a good job, you know you have the knowledge to do your job, you want to do your job but you don't seem to realise that people around you also see this in you. You don't seem to realise that your work colleagues and your superiors appreciate the work you do and appreciate you."

"I don't need them to. It's not about me. It's about the ship." Lilou tugged at her thumb, stretching it until it popped a little. "How I feel - it doesn't matter. Not really."

"Of course how you feel matters. How you feel makes you who you are, allows you to live your life, experience your life. I wouldn't be here if a person's emotions and feelings didn't matter." Dru rested her hand against Lilou's arm again.

"Well, no. I didn't mean to say... I mean, of course they matter. If you're on the bridge, in charge of weapons systems, or you're in command of a group of people, say. Or if you're a diplomat or a merchant or... but I'm just... me. You see? In the long run, as long as I do what I'm supposed to and keep things working, that's enough. I don't... I made the mistake of thinking what I felt... meant something... once. And it... well." She blew out an awkward laugh. "...was a mistake. So." She lifted her brows as though that was that. "It's... I mean, if my superiors can count on me to get the job done, that's what matters. I'm not..." She frowned thinking. "I'm not going anywhere, you know? Just... trying to learn enough to... well. Be better. Do more. But not... for me. You know? For-" she trailed off. She felt like a yammering idiot. For the future of starships everywhere. What a moronic thing to say aloud. It felt so pure and good in her head; a solace to the emptiness. If she couldn't be joined to a symbiont and have a greater path, the one her body screamed it wanted, then she could damn well be joined to the ship. "Anyway. The point is, I'm fine. I don't... I don't know how it is you get... how you-" She bit her lip. "Something. I don't know. Connect to people. Maybe no one else has that problem. Maybe no one else sees that in me. Or maybe- maybe it's just a receptor issue on my end. System malfunction. Needs rewiring. Doesn't matter. I make things work. That's what matters. Doesn't it?"

"Lilou...." Dru waiting a moment or two until Lilou had focused her attention back on her."What happened last time you put what you felt as a priority?"

Lilou's brows drew together. "I- did I say that?" She looked down. "Can we pretend I didn't?"

Dru tried to weight up her options. She felt that Lilou needed to talk about this, this was the first subject she had frozen up on but at the same time, the counsellor didn't wish to upset her further."I'd like it if you talked to me about it."

Staring intently at her hands didn't seem to be helping. "I- don't think that's..." Lilou shut her eyes and started seeking numbers in her head. An old favorite. 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097... she recited the numbers in her head, but thinking about the other thing that one second had made it present and it wouldn't go away. Not even for pi. She gave up. "There's really not much to say."

"Sometimes very little is more then enough." Dru maintained the contact with Lilou's arm, getting the feeling that she seemed to respond best with this contact.

"I-" she sighed. "This is stupid." She crossed her ankles, twisting her legs together in some vague attempt at solidarity with herself. "The last time I brought this up, I almost got court-martialed. It's really not worth it." She looked at Dru's intently waiting eyes and then down at the hand on her arm. The contact, the closeness, made her feel uncomfortable and comforted at the same time. Then again, feeling in general usually made her feel uncomfortable. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. "This doesn't go out of this room, right?"

"Of course not Lilou. You can trust me." Dru squeezed her hand slightly on Lilou's arm.

"It's not about trust." She scowled at her hands, rubbing them together and clamping them between her knees. "Okay. On the... my last ship. It wasn't like this one. Huge. Mostly marines. Underused. Bored out of their minds. Shit for brains marines. Sorry," she cleared her throat. "New batch thought it'd be fun to take the transport ship out for weapons testing and ended up making a mess out of her, so I lit into them. Which... was maybe not protocol, since they outranked me. But they'd wrecked the transport vessel completely, barely got her back to the ship in one piece, and they'd damaged one of the rigs on the roid in the meantime, which meant a bunch of my crew getting beaten to pulp by debris while they tried to fix the damage. Long story short, they beat the crap out of me. Might've... well. I hauled myself into an access hatch and got out of their reach. One of the nice things about spending so much time in those cramped tunnels is knowing my way around a ship without ever having to walk a corridor." She shut her eyes, trying to shut down the emotional recall and focus on the facts. "So, like with everything else, I made a report. Which I then had to recall and rewrite, since the original had 'falsely implied that my injuries were sustained through an altercation with crew members who had been in a mandatory training session in the holodeck'." She freed her hands long enough to make the ironic quotes with her fingers. "Point is, the marines were needed. Command had intel we were being targeted by a pirate convoy and a couple days later we were attacked. So... no. What happens to me isn't really that important. If the ship keeps flying and the mission is accomplished... well, that comes first."

Dru couldn't believe what she was hearing but she pushed back on the look of disbelief. She'd managed to make advances with Lilou and didn't want any set backs by Lilou thinking Dru might not believe her or might side with the Marines."Lilou I'm sorry you had to experience that but what those people did was wrong. You are to be commended for trying to look after your people. Those marines were reckless in their behaviour and should have been disciplined for what they did to you." Dru leaned forward more in her chair, leaving her hand on Lilou's arm."Let me ask, how did your people in engineering react to what you'd done in defense to trying to protect them?"

Lilou looked confused. "What- I don't know. I didn't tell them. Nothing came of it, anyway. The marines protected the ship and went back on rounds. I stayed out of their way. We still had to rebuild the transport and we still had to fix mining rig. See? Stupid and pointless."

"But surely people noticed something had happened to you, weather it was believed to have happened in the holodeck or otherwise. How did they treat you?" Dru tried to probe further.

"I had a broken arm, a couple cracked ribs, two black eyes and some other bruises. So... yeah, they noticed. Command said any mention of my first report or its contents would get me waylaid on a planet for court-martial. So I said I'd gotten knocked around trying to fix the hull damage near the nacelles by myself. The Chief thought it was ballsy and almost gave me a commendation. Didn't though. The rest of the team was pissed that I'd gone off half-cocked. Could have ruined a containment suit. Could have done irreparable damage to the transmission grids. And I couldn't have taken it, even if he'd gone ahead, since... you know... I hadn't." She shrugged. "But we survived the pirates, did our work, eventually the bruises went away and people forgot. People do that."

"You never forgot. Your feelings on why you didn't forget matter Lilou." Dru replied.

"Just because they don't go away doesn't mean they matter. They just are. Uselessly. There's no purpose served by them. And thinking about them only gives time to them they don't deserve. The only thing they've ever been good for is reminding me why I shouldn't bother people with things." Lilou shook her head. "And still, I do." She laughed self-deprecatingly. "Talk, talk, talk. All the time." She closed her eyes again, suddenly tired. "At least you get paid to listen to me ramble."

Dru tried to resist the urge to pull back. She knew Lilou was just saying her feelings but it didn't make her statement hurt any less. Trying to put a spin on it, Dru just smiled, "Well, we all need to get paid for something I guess." Dru pulled back her hand and sat back into her chair, "That's what feelings are for, to be experienced and sometimes to be talked about."

"I just wish they'd go away and mess up someone else's life." Lilou scuffed her heel lightly against the carpeted floor, oblivious to any insult she may have given. "And I wish I could stop talking. Just for a while. A break from the incessant babbling would probably do wonders for my social life. Or not. Maybe not. Who needs a social life, anyway? I only get eight hours free a day; what kind of time is that to do anything but sleep? Anyway." She cleared her throat. "We don't have to bring up that... you know. What we talked about. Do we?"

"In what sense?" Dru folding her legs under her on the chair and leaned over to take a drink of water from the glass on the side table.

Lilou squinted at her. The distance made the other woman's face too blurry to read. Normally, this was a good thing. It meant she could just not know what someone's expression was and so be able to avoid it affecting her. But in this situation... it probably would have helped to be able to see better. In more ways than one. In what sense? What did that mean? "In the sense that... I'd really... rather not?" she asked, hopefully.

"Lilou. I cant force you to talk about something you don't want to. At the end of the day, the decision falls to you on what you do or don't want to do. I can tell you that I feel you need to talk about it more and I feel it might benefit you to come see me again but at the end of the day, the final decision falls to you." Dru suddenly realised that she felt very tired. This session had taken a lot out of her. Between Will the other day and now Lilou, she started to wonder why she bothered trying to do this job. At the end of the day, she was a human being like the people who sat opposite her, here to help them in whatever way she could but at the end of the day, people didn't seem to see who she was beyond a person there to analyse them. Dru kept her body language relaxed and a smile on her face, her difficulties were hers and hers alone to deal with.

The half-Trill wrung her hands together. "So... I can go?"

"Unless you feel there's anything further we need to discuss. If you don't mind, I'd like you to come back for a follow up appointment in a few days, just check in and see how your getting on." Dru smiled across at Lilou.

"Fff," Lilou exhaled, wincing. "Okay. Few days. I'll... okay." She stood up. "Ah... thank you. For listening. For not saying anything." She wound her hands together behind her back and slipped out the door.
--
[OFF]

Master Warrant Officer Lilou Peers
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Drusilla McCarthy
Chief Counsellor
USS Galileo

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