Different Types of Repairs

Posted on 24 Jan 2013 @ 1:31am by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Ensign Jessica Wilson M.D.
Edited on on 24 Jan 2013 @ 9:56am

3,091 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: Deck 4, Sickbay
Timeline: MD01: 0600 hrs

[ON]

Lilou hadn't slept much. She'd wanted to. It wasn't for lack of trying. She'd lain there, with the comforting weight of Lamar's leg resting on top of her and his arms around her. She'd been warm and safe. But her back hurt and her shoulder felt tight and her neck ached every time she tried to turn it and her mind had kept on spinning, spinning, spinning. She fell asleep, the dreams came, she woke up, she fell asleep, the dreams picked up right where they'd left off, she woke up. Twenty to thirty minute cycles.

She should have taken the pills Pola had prescribed, she kept thinking, but Lamar was restless and she didn't want to wake him. He'd had a hard enough night as it was and, anyway, it was too late now anyway. The sedative was supposed to last six to eight hours and she couldn't sleep through the first hours of her shift.

A little before 0600 she felt Lamar finally give way into deeper sleep. His breathing, which had proceeded already from shallow and patchy to regular, dropped into a deep, slow rhythm. Carefully she shifted, inching bit by bit out of his grasp, hoping not to wake him. Every move was a twinge through her neck and shoulder. Slithering to the floor, she grabbed her things and slipped into his washroom. In the light of that small space, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and paused. There were bruises on her chest. She peeled the neck of her tank down and about, marking the two spots. Where the dog had pinned her, she guessed. Little scratches just above the line of her shirt. She turned and sighed. Bruises around the backs of her shoulders - patchy and darkening to purple - and her left arm where she'd landed from the ceiling was mottled with more. Peeling up her tank top, she tugged the modest bandage she'd placed over the scratches on her side and stomach away. They were healing fine, although the place where the little door had pierced when she'd fallen looked red around the edges.

Thank the spirits these weren't so obvious last night, she thought. If he'd seen her bruises in the state he'd been in when she'd first arrived, it might have made things worse. By a lot. Darkness and time.

She dressed quickly, hissing as she pushed her left arm around the sleeve of her uniform jacket, then peeked out of the washroom. Still asleep. Good. She hoped he rested through at least another hour. With a small smile for him, she ducked out of his quarters and headed down to deck four.

It was Gamma shift and there was hardly anyone around. Good a time as any to get herself seen to. The ache would be a distraction. And anyway, she'd made a pledge to herself that she was going to work on getting herself fixed quickly instead of putting it off.

The officer in Sickbay wasn't one she recognized, but that wasn't a bad thing. She didn't need to go worrying Pola again so soon after they'd spoken last. "Excuse me, do you have a minute?"

Jessica yawned as she wandered around sickbay, grabbing herself a strong cup of tea as she did so. She had just finished her, frankly ridiculous bridge duty and was due to head onto duty in sickbay for the next entire shift before she could finally get some sleep. It wasn't an ideal duty rotation and she fully intended to get herself relieved from bridge duty for the foreseeable future, even if she ever wanted to switch to command one day, which wasn't likely right now, she really didn't need bridge experience at this point. It meant however that by this point she was a little tired, especially as she had a substantial amount of sleep debt at this point, but having taken on some tea she would get through her next shift just fine. She glanced up as someone entered the sickbay doors and smiled warmly.

"Of course, I'm Doctor Wilson," Jessica smiled gesturing to one of the biobeds to the side. "How can I help you?"

"Ensign Peers," Lilou introduced herself with a quick nod. "I wondered if you might be able to- my neck and shoulder seem a little tweaked."

"Alright, jump up on the biobed properly and we'll get the scanners working whilst I take a look," Jessica replied. "Do you mind if taking your jacket and turtleneck off so I can take a visual look, we can put a screen up if you like.

"Mn," Lilou made the sound through her lips as she nodded, carefully opening her jacket and trying not to wince as she pulled her left arm free. It was the lifting that hurt. And having to roll her shoulder to work it out of the sleeve. Not good signs. Sleeping on it probably hadn't helped, but it hadn't hurt the night before. Adrenaline, maybe. With the jacket and shirt off, she perched on the biobed behind the screen the doctor had set up.

"You look like you've been through the wars," Jessica commented as she examined the bruises and cuts. "How did these happen?"

Lilou wrinkled her nose, "I was chasing a runaway experiment through an air duct that turned out to be not so secured as I thought it was." There was no point bringing up the incident with Stone. He'd made it clear that any mention of the incident would end in something 'unfortunate' happening to her and she wasn't about to risk his ire.

"Ah, I know the feeling for those kind of injuries," Jessica grinned, thinking back to her time in the Lake DIstricts and the bumps and bruises she came back with on a regular basis, she frowned looking down at the monitor before looking back up again. "Can you roll down your undershirt so I can see your upper back and chest?"

Nodding, Lilou did as she was asked, then twisted her long hair up with her right hand and winced as she tied it into a knot at the back of her head.

Jessica frowned as she examined the injuries of the bruises on the back before moving around to the front. The bruises and scratches around her shoulder blades and the upper slope of her breasts were certainly unusual, she of course was no expert in that area, having absolutely no experience when it came to things like that, but it didn't look like what she would expect.

"What caused those scratches, they don't look like they came from a fall," Jessica queried.

Lilou's gaze slanted down and to the side for a moment before lifting to the woman's eyes. "They must have done. I can't speak to what else might have caused them." Unconsciously, she wound her hands together in her lap, "It's not bad, is it?"

Jessica frowned, but her expression was one of concern. No, the injuries were not particularly serious but she could tell from the womans reaction that they hadn't been caused by the fall.

"No, it's easily enough repaired," Jessica replied carefully. "But those are far too uniform to be caused by a fall... is there anything you want to talk about?"

Lilou shook her head, then winced from the jolt of the movement to her neck and shoulder. "No," she said, recovering with a hard blink. She knew very well what happened when she reported on her superiors. Department head or not. Ensign or not. It didn't really matter. In the end, it was his word against hers. His, and whatever video surveillance there was. But that had probably been erased already if he was smart. Or would be before she could prove her side if it wasn't. Anyway, she hadn't even wanted to report the incident in the first place, but his words were slamming around in her head like a defragging vidlink. "Nothing," she said, then cleared her throat. "You're new to the crew, aren't you; how do you like the ship so far?"

Jessica sighed, her patient was holding something from her but she couldn't press her to say what it was if she didn't want to, her duty was to treat the injuries. It just seemed like there were so many people on this ship getting hurt in ways that made them not want to talk about it... wasn't healthy, not at all. She got out a dermal regenerator.

"This may tingle slightly," Jessica warned. "Yea, I've only been aboard a week or so, been busy so far, not had much chance to do anything off-shift."

"Gamma's the breaks," Lilou commiserated with a fleeting smile, holding still as the wounds were sealed. "Your chief's a good woman, though. She won't work you into the ground unless she needs you to. Where did you transfer from?"

"Starfleet Medical Academy, this is my first posting," Jessica replied as she treated the wounds on the chest. "This is still my internship."

"I see," Lilou said, ducking her head. "You had a biobed on the fritz, didn't you? Everything worked out okay?"

"Yea, some new piece of experimental equipment, one of your people came down and ripped them all out," Jessica replied as she moved to treat the bruises on the back, satisfied with the healing on the front.

"Good. Good." Lilou looked down at her hands. At least they weren't talking about her anymore. At least the evidence that had brought the whole Stone topic up was done. "That was Hunter, wasn't it, who came up?"

"It was," Jessica nodded. "A quick worker and he got the job done, we appreciate the quick response."

Lilou hadn't had much of an opportunity to see Hunter in action, but he seemed to be managing well. That was good to hear. She studied her fingertips, trying to think of something else to say. She was miserable with small talk. "You said it was a piece of experimental equipment?"

"That's what Hunter said, something to do with the scanners or something," Jessica replied as she gently ran her fingers over the site of the former bruises to look for any sign of tenderness, as indicated by a reaction from her patient. "It worked fine once he took it out."

Took it out? Lilou wondered. The doctor's fingers on her shoulder made Lilou twitch, not from pain so much as she just didn't like being touched when she didn't see it coming. Carefully, she rolled her shoulder. The ache was receding. "Well, I'm glad it's working now," she said, feeling completely inane. "It feels better," she added quietly. "My shoulder, I mean. Thank you."

"You're more than welcome," Jessica smiled. "Alright, let's take a look at that nasty scratch you've got on your side, looks like its drawn blood there."

"I'm a mess," Lilou grumbled, agreeing. "I am going to make a solemn effort to not fall out of any more ceilings for at least a week, if that helps."

"That would probably help a great deal," Jessica smiled slightly. "You should be more careful, you might do something that even we can't fix."

Lilou ducked her head, thinking of Will and all the other dead and gone. "I'll try." She bit her lip, kicking her heels together lightly off the side of the biobed. "Where did you graduate from? I mean, which Academy?"

"Starfleet Medical Academy," Jessica replied, taking note of the sombre mood of her patient. "End of last year, took this long to get me a posting."

"Right," Lilou nodded. "But you got this ship. That's... you know. Interesting. Right? I mean, the Galileo is first rate, so if you wanted a good place to learn, it's probably worth the wait, right? Or..." She cleared her throat, "Which SMA? San Francisco? Or... I don't know where the other ones are on Earth, actually. I know where the best engineering courses are," she added, "but that's about it."

"Yea, you've got a point there, it does seem to be a good place to learn, although I must admit that I've learned some things non-medical that I wish I hadn't," Jessica sighed. "I was at Paris."

"Oh." Lilou wasn't sure why she'd asked, except that it seemed like something she could ask that wasn't too personal and would keep her from just sitting there while this woman ran medical equipment over her damaged skin. She didn't know anything about Paris. She didn't know anything about the medical wing of the Academy, either, aside from the fact that was where medical officers learned how to use all the equipment in here. "What do you mean?" she asked, "Non-medical?"

"Let me put it this way, I came out of the Academy and to the Galileo with a very firm, probably more than a little naive, expectation of what Starfleet Officers are supposed to be like," Jessica replied with a scowl as she saw the image of Lieutenant Stone and his damned dog. "Let's just say that certain officers on this ship have shattered that nice mental image that I had."

"Oh." Lilou bowed her head. She was pretty sure she hadn't done anything too unbecoming of an officer since she'd come in, so, for once, she didn't feel like the comment was aimed at her. Unless it was, and she was grossly misunderstanding. That was entirely possible. She did that more often than not. "What did you expect us to be like?"

"Upstanding, professional and the like, everything you see on the recruitment vids," Jessica sighed as she finished. "And in fairness it's only really one particular officer."

"Oh." Lilou's brow furrowed thoughtfully. She didn't sound hurt or scared. Just... irritated. "People are people," she said with a small shrug. "The uniform, the oath... they're ideals we try to live up to, but... no one is perfect. No matter how hard we try." She glanced at Wilson. "That said, if an officer is being imperfect and is a threat to you, you should report to your CO. There's no point putting yourself at risk needlessly."

"Trust me, if I had my way I would have reported him a week ago, unfortunatly whenever this guy has been a dick to me it's been here in sickbay, and the Doctor seems to think that her way of dealing with things is better," Jessica scowled. "I can't go above her without getting in trouble myself, hell I shouldn't exactly be bitching about him to you, either."

Lilou blinked a couple times, trying to sort out what was going on. People didn't talk to her like this. "If Lieutenant Ni Dhuinn has heard about the problem, then I have to believe she's handling it as it should be." How could an intern question her commanding officer so bluntly? And aloud. The idea made Lilou nervous all on its own, without the fact that she was now in the situation. Was she supposed to say something? She was a department head herself now. Was she supposed to let Pola know if there was trouble in the ranks of her department? No. Pola was smart; if there was a problem, more than Lilou's own discomfort, then she'd probably already know about it and deal with it in her own way. She was better with people than Lilou was, anyway. "She's a good Chief," she added quietly. What did that mean, 'being a dick'? Sexual advances? It was a really coarse turn of phrase, whatever the interpretation. "If you're upset about something, you should tell her."

"Sorry, its a British saying, it basically means being an arsehole," Jessica replied with an apolgetica smile before sighting. "I'm sorry for venting on you when you came in to get your wounds treated, its damned unprofessional and I apologise, I'm not used to talking to people, much less about my problems..."

"I'm not used to it either," Lilou murmured truthfully, still trying to sort out the situation. "You don't have to apologize to me."

"Still, I feel like I should," Jessica sighed. "I shouldn't let him ruin my professionalism with others."

"Feelings are feelings," the engineer said with a small shrug. It wasn't like she could speak to the issue. She'd let the actions of three marines turn her into a basketcase for the better part of two years. "Sometimes it's hard to rein them in."

"I guess," Jessica sighed as she finished her work. "Well I can at least assure you that the work I have done is top notch, you may be a little tender for a few hours, but all the serious aches and pains should be gone."

"Thank you." Lilou tugged her ear and found her shoulder didn't hurt nearly as much with the motion. "I am sorry you had a bad experience. I hope it all gets sorted."

"So do I, but despite appearances I can handle myself if it ever came down to something nasty," Jessica replied with a nod. "So if you've got any more medical issues don't hesitate to come on down we'll get you fixed in a jiffy, oh and stay away from pointy objects, okay?"

Lilou wasn't sure how likely that was, given her line of work, but she nodded anyway. "And if you've got any more engineering issues, don't hesitate to come to us," she returned, pulling her clothes back on. "Or anything," she added. "I don't have much pull, you know, but if there's something you need said, anonymously, I can pass it along for you."

"I appreciate that, I'll keep it in mind," Jessica smiled. "But I'll be fine as long as he keeps himself and that bloody do-," She cut herself off, bitching about an unknown officer was one thing, actually coming out and naming him was another.

Lilou cocked her head to the side. "Yes?"

"Nothing, that was a slip up that would be going too far," Jessica chastised herself.

Lilou watched the other woman in silence as she finished re-securing and straightening her uniform top. "All right then." She flexed her shoulder one last time, just to make sure it was working again without too much distraction, keeping her gaze steady on the doctor's face. "Thank you for your time, Doctor Wilson. I'll see you again soon."

"Any Time, Have a good day, Ensign," Jessica smiled.

[OFF]

ENS Lilou Peers
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Jessica Wilson M.D.
Medical Officer (Intern)
U.S.S. Galileo

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