Taking your medicine.

Posted on 04 Jul 2016 @ 7:55am by Commander Jayla Kij

1,701 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Risky Business
Location: Medical.
Timeline: MD2 1100

Wooosh! The door to Sick Bay opened and Dzhossen walked away. Two corners later he paused, staring straight up at the ceiling and practiced a breathing technique he had been taught as a child. Honestly, he hated it, but hated what was to come next more. Screwing a grim expression on his face he turned around and went back the way he came... And when the Sick Bay doors wooshed! open he walked right past them and continued on for about twenty meters before stopping to stare up at the ceiling again. This time he managed to pause for nearly three full seconds after the doors opened before he turned and walked away. This was stupid. He'd faced down wild targ and fought countless scrums. He flew Valkyries at Warp 4, why in the world was this kind of garbage always so hard.

Jayla had heard the doors open twice and looked up to see nobody there. When they opened the third time, she looked up to see a Vulcan standing there for a few seconds before turning and walking away. Her brow wrinkled as she hurried after him. "Hey!" she called as she entered the corridor. "Hey, wait! Do you need something?"

Closing his eyes again, Dzhossen repeated his ritual and focused on his breathing. He heard a female voice behind him and sighed. "Leave me alone. I'm just checking in. I don't need you here because I'm suppose to go to the stupid doctor."

Jayla grinned and raised her eyebrows. "Stupid, am I?" she said, sounding amused. "I've been called a lot of things before, but stupid was certainly not one of them."

Dzhozzen groaned and opened his eyes, spinning sharply before thrusting his medical record towards the voice. The trill woman who stood before him was surprisingly young. He hoped her tricorder wasn't a toy. "Sir. Ensign Dzhossen reporting for assignment physical."

Jayla jumped as he spun and thrust a PaDD at her. "Oh," she said, blinking several times before taking the PaDD from him. "Oh, all right. Well, right this way, then," she added, motioning for him to follow her back to Sick Bay.

Following the doctor, Dzhozzen slunk into Sick Bay glancing sidelong at everyone who passed him. When the doctor motioned towards a biobed, the Vulcan dutifully jumped up onto the bed. "Can't we just get this over with."

"That's what I'm trying to do," answered Jayla, giving him a winning grin. He was awfully reluctant for a Vulcan. She glanced over his medical file. "Any complaints?" she asked. "Other than me being too slow," she added with a grin.

Discord shook his head. The doctor smile was friendly enough but it made him oddly... Suspicious. Shariel but he hated these things. He figured it was from a lack of control, submitting so totally to another person, but Arev had always claimed it was a reaction to childhood trauma. "No. No real medical history either. Childhood scrapes and cuts. Broke an arm once when we where on Kronos but I was four or five at the time and it hasn't bothered me at all."

He cocked his head to the side, "Do you ever play connect the dots to see what the picture is?" He knew it was rude and immediately shut up again but he felt this impulse to strike out.

Jayla blinked at him, surprised. Then she had to stifle a laugh. Connect-the-dots actually was something that Trill did, but they just used their fingers and it was usually a prelude to... well, something else. Still, most non-Trill didn't know that. "It's a wallaby," she told him with a grin.

"Strange. I would assume it was a Trill creature. Wallaby. At least it's a marsupial too." Discord shifted nervously again. "Do I have to touch my toes or anything?"

"No, nothing like that," she said. "It's just scans, maybe blood work if the scans are wonky. A wallaby is the first animal that came to mind, oddly enough," she added, starting her scans.

The tricorder whired gently and the Vulcan ran his hands through his bright red hair nervously. He hated these things. The worst had been Processing Days in the Academy. Days and days of hypo-sprays and scans and an endless line of inoculations and vaccines. That had been his first disciplinary note. A hypo-spray had malfunctioned and the Marine Corpsman that was working him up had grabbed an old school hypodermic needle. Discord had threatened to shove it through the Marine's eye. After that it had been mandatory PT with the Marines for the next three months.

Trying to take his mind off the tricorder, Dzhossen tapped nervously on the biobed. "What do you do here? I mean, when you're not doing flunky work like this. I mean, these are pretty basic right? The Chief Medical Officer probably has you do these while they're taking an afternoon nap."

Jayla grinned again, eyes sparkling. "Yeah, she's a ruthless taskmaster, that one," she said, barely containing a laugh. "Makes all us flunked do all the work while she kicks her feet up and orders cadets to bring her coffee."

"Had a flight instructor like that. We stole the emergency transporter out of a downed Peregrine trainer and configured it to his genetic signature. Next time he sat down on his chair, he was transported five clicks away and twenty meters above an spring fed lake. I got blamed for that one. I can show you how to do it if you'd like." His lips twitched into nearly a smile at the memory before he focused again on anything but the doctor or the tricorder. "Is it wonky? It's wonky isn't it. You're going to need blood. This happens to me all the time."

This time, Jayla did giggle. "I'm joking," she said. I am the CMO. And no, it's not wonky. Preliminary scans are normal." She switched to secondary scans. "Just a few more minutes," she promised.

Dzhossen turned a deeper shad of green and rubbed his eyes. "Um... Sorry... Sir... Ma'am... I can still teach you the transporter trick if you like. What are all these scans even for anyway? I mean, you have a practical encyclopedia for me in my file. Shariel, it even has that time I got food poisoning from eating dead Gagh."

"This is where I check to see if everything is the same as in your file," she told him. "Making sure nothing's changed. I check blood pressure, heart rate, white blood cell counts, cholesterol and hormone levels, that sort of thing."

"Allow me to summarize, everything's the same. Blood pressure and heart rate are high, right? But then I'm obviously agitated. White blood cells should be fine. Cholesterol is safe, but high for a Vulcan but then I eat meat so it is to be expected. Hormone levels are also likely to be spiked due to my agitation. Is that about it?" Discord nervously ruffled his hair again. "Are we there yet?"

"Almost," said Jayla. "Just relax. You know, you are the most unusual Vulcan I've ever met."

Discord shook his head but his jittering stopped, replaced by a slow flair of anger. This was an old subject so the fire burned low. "I'm not Vulcan. At least not in the normal sense. I'm V'tosh ka'tur, a Vulcan without logic. Most Vulcan's won't acknowledge me. I'm a... Dirty secret. Kind of a cross between a rabid dog and a bastard child. It's all in my record, thanks to the Vulcan shrink at the Academy. I'll be stopping to see the Counselor next."

"I see," said Jayla. She knew about V'tosh ka'tur. She also knew that most other Vulcans wouldn't even acknowledge him. She didn't pretend to understand it, but she knew what he meant. "Well, at least Trill don't care if you use logic or not," she said with another grin, this one friendly and sympathetic. "Most of us exactly fail to use it ourselves, so I suppose we can't be too judgmental."

"Trill are fine. Most people are fine. I thought about having my ears done, you know cosmetically? But then some doctor would probably pump me full of AB negative and kill me. 'Sides this is who I am, you know, like it or not. Is this scan ever going to be over? Can you put it in my record that I don't like needles? I hate needles. We were supposed to get tattoos when we graduated from flight school. I puked."

Jayla grinned despite herself. "No needles," she said. "Hopefully we don't have to take a blood sample then. Just about another minute. This would be much easier if you would sit still."

"Says the lady that does all the poking and prodding. Look, can't we just mail this in? Obviously I'm alive and well. If I take a torpedo in the aft, I'll call you."

"I haven't done any prodding, yet, but keep it up and I just might," she said firmly, yet still with a smile in place. "Now sit still or I'll have to declare you unfit for duty and we'll have to do this all over again."

The power to down him, to declare him unfit for flight or fight. Add that to the towering terror that was the medical profession. Doing his best to sit stone still, Dzhossen managed to tone his jitters down to a dull vibration as he again closed his eyes, looked up at the ceiling and concentrated on his breathing.

Jayla grinned as she finished up her scans. "There, you see?" she said, snapping her tricorder closed. "No poking, no prodding, no needles. And you're fit for duty. You don't have to see me for another year. Unless, of course, you get yourself injured."

Discord paled visibly and leapt from from the biobed. "Sir," he said as he snapped a quick salute and scurried from Sick Bay.

Jayla grinned as he hurried away. She had a feeling she was going to have to fight him to get him in for his physicals. Oh, what fun! She shook her head and turned to head back to her office.

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