A Visit From a Friend

Posted on 10 Aug 2016 @ 12:38am by Lieutenant Commander Temerant Bast & Commander Jayla Kij

773 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Risky Business
Location: Sick Bay
Timeline: MD 6 : 1325ish

Jayla was dozing again. She'd been doing that off and on pretty much all day. She would wake up, stare at the ceiling for a few moments, then drift back off only to be awoken again thirty minutes or so later.

She considered getting up to find Doctor Abrams, but the moment she lifted her head off the pillow, the pesky beetles had pounded a tattoo against the inside of her skull. She grinned at the memory of her father explaining headaches to her; the beetles that lived inside your head got bored because you're not learning enough, so they start dancing. The only way to keep them from dancing was to read a book. She had believed him for far too long, but by the time she learned the truth (about age 6) she was reading a book a day and the workers at the local library knew her by name.

She awoke with a start as an instrument beeped. She looked around and spotted a neural monitor which was now set to keep her out of anything more than stage 2 sleep. That must mean that she was on the mend and they wanted to get her back into a normal sleep schedule. That was good. It meant that as soon as Abrams was free, she could get out of here.

- - - -

Temerant Bast walked the corridors of Deck 4 with his tricorder in hand, scanning the decks for traces of nebular gases coming from microfissures in the hull that the ship might have sustained in the battle. So far the gaseous concentrations were low enough on this deck, but other areas had required intervention - purging the atmosphere from the compartment, and repressurizing, while the area was tagged for an Engineering maintenance. The ship's internal sensors were unreliable, and lights flickered again here and there on the ship.

He spotted the entrance to Sickbay on his left. The medical center was far enough away inside the ship not to be affected by the microfissures, but he decided to check on Jayla nonetheless. He'd heard about her accident the previous night, and was somewhat worried about his friend. This just gave him an excuse to drop by.

He entered Sickbay, and asked Nurse T'Lura for the doctor's whereabouts. The Vulcan nurse informed him that Doctor Kij was currently under observation in one of the private rooms, and directed him to her location.

As the doors to Jayla's room opened, his tricorder emitted a 'Ding!' sound, indicating that it had detected a slight contamination by nebular gases. He filed the information away in the back of his mind, as he ducked his head in to see his friend.

"Hey there," he said.

Jayla looked around to see Bast entering her room. "Hey," she said drowsily. "What have you got there?" she added, nodding to the device in his hand.

The tricorder dinged again, waiting for him to acknowledge the warning. "It's a machine that goes 'Ding!'" he said. "I calibrated it to detect pockets of nebular gas that might have infiltrated the ship. We've got a few microfissures from the battle." He pushed a button to silence the alarm. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm all right," she said with a grin. "Got a killer headache and the room spins every time I try to sit up. I think it's got it in for me. But, this thing," she said, nodding to the monitor, "is keeping me awake, so I must be improving. Or getting very very bad, but that's not likely or else Abrams would have been in here long ago."

"Another machine that goes 'Ding!'" noted Bast, nodding in the monitor's direction. "But in your defense, the room spinning may not have been entirely in your head. We got tossed around pretty good."

"Oh, good," said Jayla. "In that case..." She very carefully pulled herself into a sitting position. The room gave one tiny whirl and the settled down. "Mff," she said. "Now if I can only conquer the headache."

"Get some rest," advised Bast. "But then I'm sure they're already telling you that." He looked at the time on his tricorder. "I should get going."

Jayla grinned. "You could've told me that before I sat up, you know," she joked. "I should probably stay up for a bit anyway. There got to be a reason the monitors don't want me sleeping."

"You're the doctor, you tell me," he replied. "Take care of yourself. We need our Chief Medical Officer right now."

With a final nod, he walked out of the small room, and went back to work.

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