Another Day in Paradise
Posted on Sun Nov 27th, 2011 @ 1:30am by Commander Cailean Fox, M.D.
2,110 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
Taylforth
Location: Sick Bay
Timeline: Current
"One day, Starfleet Medical's going to invent a treatment that cures people's idiotic fear of Sick Bay." Doctor Fox complained, holding Lieutenant Lavena's head with his left hand while he moved a dermal-regenerator over the opposite side of her face. She was trying to squirm again and for the fifth time, he was forced to stop and chide her for not letting him do his job. "If you'd come to me when the wound was still fresh it wouldn't sting like all hell." he replied, "And there ain't no amount of anesthetic I can give you for this one. You get to learn the hard way."
"Isn't that against the hippocratic oath, to make me suffer?" Lavena asked tersely, folding her arms across her chest. The raven-haired Engineer was already mad enough at getting maimed for something as stupid as repairing a simple panel, but she wasn't about to let the Doctor make it any worse if he could help it.
"Isn't it against common sense not to come see the Doctor when you're bleeding freely from the head?" Fox countered, once again leaning back when she squirmed. "All right, that tears it. I'm tying you to the bio." he grumbled. It was hard enough to have a steady head with a dermal regenerator, doubly so at his age, but add to that a squirming patient and it was just about impossible. Naturally, he could scar he up one side and down the other and blame it on her moving but that only meant that he would have to come back and patch her up once she cooled off.
"No!" Lavena shrieked, toning herself down quickly, "No, no... I'll be still." she said, clenching her teeth and closing her eyes. It stung in a way that wasn't particularly painful such as a broken arm or worse. It was the kind of pain that was fleeting, sharp and damned annoying.
Fox watched her for a moment and then resumed, trying to move in delicate strokes but naturally hampered by the age of the wound and the slight shake of the Lieutenant concentrating with all her might to stay still. He resigned himself to the fact that she wasn't going to stop moving, even if she was trying to stop moving.
It had been the measure of Fox's day so far, which had started at oh dark thirty with one of the ship's civilian crew convinced that she was going into labor four months early. Considering her species had a gestation period of just over twenty-one earth standard months, he could understand the impatience, but if anything Targaran's were late and very rarely on time. From there, his day had descended into more or less a state of anarchy contained only by the four walls of Sick Bay. A baby with a head cold, two siblings who thought it would be fun to beat each other with the armrests of their mother's favorite chair, two teenagers who were sneaking kisses in the back corridors only to have one of them get caught on the others braces and to top it off, a Siamese cat with diarrhea accompanied by a very frustrated owner - one he sent away for a shower while he treated the animal. It was a banner day for Sick Bay all in all, and Lieutenant Lavena had walked in right in the thick of it.
"Do you ever get out of here, Doc?" Lavena asked, still focusing her mind on not moving. Oddly enough, her speaking helped her not move more giving Fox the chance to move a bit faster than before. "I mean... I don't usually see you in the lounge... or anywhere really. Just here." she said, suddenly rethinking her choice to ask the Doc.
"Usually don't get out of here until late." Fox replied distractedly, pursing his lips in concentration, pushing his bushy mustache outwards a bit. "Am I missing something?" he asked, flicking his eyes briefly towards hers.
Resiting the urge to shake her head, Lavena replied, "No. I just wondered if maybe you didn't like hanging out in the lounge." she said, cringing as the words left her mouth. Of course he does, you idiot, he probably just doesn't know anyone. Moron! She chided herself, closing her eyes in frustration. Sometimes she let her curiosity and her mouth get away from her.
"I rode through a couple times when I first got here." Fox replied at length, changing to a different tool in the time it took him to get around to replying. Again gripping the side of her head firmly, he thumbed on the new device and continued his repairs. "Was pretty dead. Synthehol was the worst I've had in a long time. I got the real stuff in my quarters, so why waste theirs." he added.
"Can't really blame you." Lavena replied, "The Synth is bad... really, really bad. But have you tried the Soroyan spritzer?" she smiled, "It's not synth, but it's really tasty. A lot of the guys think it's girly, but that doesn't stop them from ordering it." she chuckled lightly, trying not to move too much, "They think we don't know they're getting the bartender to put it in a regular glass instead of the tall frilly ones with the umbrella.." she whispered conspiratorially.
Fox smirked. Girly drinks weren't his cup of tea in the least, but he could understand the desire to want to keep up pretense. Not that he'd ever need to, he wouldn't be caught dead with a fruity concoction like that in his hands. Well... dead is probably where he would be when they did catch him with one. He preferred something with a bite, and he paid handsomely for it at any port of call that happened to keep spirits of the terran or any variety on hand. That was if it was the real thing. His collection boasted both the legal and illegal variety spanning dozens of worlds. But that was just the commercial variety, being a man of science as well as a fan of spirits, there was the Fox variety distilling quietly in his quarters. He'd not shared that information with anyone else, but Cailean had spent many a night enjoying his own variety of alcohol. To him, it was a tradition of the service. There was always someone somewhere distilling their own, the only difference was he wasn't sharing it with anyone but himself.
"Maybe I'll give it another shot." Fox nodded, flipping the device in his hands off and setting it on the table. He arranged his tools the way he liked them for a moment before finally turning back to Lavena who was still sitting there stock-still, waiting for Fox to continue. "Allright, Lieutenant. You're all done." he said, holding up a large data PaDD configured to be a mirror. "Have a look." he added.
Lavena surveyed the now smooth skin on the side of her head. She smiled at her projection on the PaDD and then handed it back to the Doctor. "Thanks Doc." she said, "Sorry to be a pain."
"Damn right you were." Fox replied quickly, tossing the PaDD on the bed behind her, "Next time come and see me while it's still fresh. You're lucky your anatomy responded to the derma-regenerator without a fuss. I've seen it go much worse." he frowned, folding his arms across his chest.
She nodded back as she hopped off of the bio-bed. "Maybe I'll see you in the lounge sometime." she said hopefully. Lavena was intrigued by puzzles and problems that seemingly had no solution and to her, Doctor Fox was just that. A puzzle that needed solving. "Petty Officer Ji's jazz quintet is playing tonight. You could see the lounge in full swing." she smiled, turning away slightly towards the door to Sick Bay. "I'll save you a seat, Doc." she grinned and without giving the man the chance to reply she was on her way.
"Jazz?" Fox asked the doorway once she was gone, shaking his head, "What the hell would I want to listen to that for?" he complained. He stared at the door for a moment, convinced that someone was going to walk through and continue this debacle of a day, but nothing happened. He continued to stare for what seemed like an eternity before finally letting himself be convinced that no one else was coming in. But just as the man turned to head towards his office, the double doors to Sick Bay hissed open. Groaning loudly, he turned on the spot again to see a woman walking through the doors.
"Hells bells, Ensign. What the hell happened to you?!" Fox asked quickly, taking a step towards the red-headed woman. Ensign Yolan stepped through and looked as if she'd been beaten handily by a large beast of some sort. Both of her eyes were bruised with the left one starting to blacken deeply. Her lips were busted and swelling to twice their normal size and the generally milky white skin of her face was red, yellow and all sorts of other colors slowly coming into being. She was wearing uncharacteristically loose fitting clothing that almost looked as if they belonged to someone much larger, but his mind looked right past that. Fox's face colored up quickly as well, ready to take the nearest blunt object and head out of Sick Bay to find the chump that had beaten the pretty young woman so completely. "Where the hell is he?" Fox growled, "Ain't a Doc in Starfleet that'll be able to put him back together when I get done with him."
"It's not like that, Doc." Yolan said, wincing as she spoke and exhaling a sharp breath. It hurt like hell to talk, let alone breath, but she had to. "I had a seizure of some sort. My jaw locked up and I couldn't move, all I could do was just shake helplessly. I've never had anything like that before in my life." she said, shaking her head before realizing that was a bad idea. She winced louder.
"Ah." Fox replied, feeling his anger melt away. The young woman must have been in a place where she couldn't' really afford loosing her motor skills. Possibly falling down a jeffries tube or simply out of a chair onto her living room furniture. When you couldn't control anything about your body, there was danger everywhere. "Alright then, that changes things a bit. Now just stand here and let me get a scan. No..." he said, grabbing her gently by the arm before she could head to a bio-bed. "I need you standing up. Your brain activity is much different this way. That's what I need to see." he said, forcing her to stay where she was.
Doctor Fox pulled a medical tricorder out of his lab coat pocket and flipped it open, pulling the scanner node free from its housing and spinning it deftly in his hand just as the door opened again. Fox closed his eyes in frustration. You've got to be kidding me, he thought to himself. He took a brief moment to take a breath and then turned around to the door to see yet another person walking in - though walking was a loosely interpreted term in this case.
Ensign Travis waddled into Sick Bay wearing a bath robe that was drawn loosely about his person and held out slightly at the waist by his left hand. "Really, Ensign?" Fox asked, shaking his head, "You couldn't put something more substantial on?" he asked with a frown. "You might think this was a damn pleasure cruise. What the hell?"
"Sorry Doc." Travis groaned, his voice a little more than a whisper. "I... uhm... I had a little accident." he said, gesturing to his robes. "Ki...*cough*... kind of urgent." he said.
"Urgent how?" Fox asked bluntly, completely lost to what Travis was trying to tell him. The Ensign frowned, and looked about curiously before gesturing fox closer and pulling his robe out slightly and opening one flap to reveal what he was cherishing within.
"Shit, son, have you been playing Doctor with a procupin-." Fox stopped. His mind caught up with his mouth and he turned slowly towards Ensign Yolan who, despite the bruises and bleeding, turned a shade of red reserved for plasma engines at full power. Fox put his hand across his face and sighed deeply, "...You have got to be kidding me..."
Cailean Fox, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer
USS Ranger
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