Mobile Physical

Posted on 30 Sep 2016 @ 6:00am by Commander Jayla Kij & Lieutenant Elizabeth Marion

1,323 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Click Three Times
Location: Relay Junction 17 Alpha
Timeline: MD 8 || 0950 hours

Jayla sighed aggitatedly. She wasn't usually impatient, but this was the fourth time Lieutenant Marion had missed her scheduled physical and she really did not want to reschedule again. "Computer," she said, grabbing a medkit and checking the contents. "What is the location of Lieutenant Elizabeth Marion?"

=/\=Lieutenant Marion is in relay junction 17 alpha.=/\=

Jayla hesitated. Jefferies tubes annoyed her. Did she really want to go crawling through them? The alternative was rescheduling the appointment again. No. She would go. That would show Marion that Jayla wasn't kidding when she threatened to bring the physical to her. She had warned her and now she was going to make good on that warning.

So, she found herself crawling through the Jefferies tubes.

Once she got started, her resolve strengthened and she kept moving. Finally, she heard noise up ahead. "Hello!" she called. "Lieutenant Marion?"

Liz glanced back toward the voice in mid-pull on a relay bundle, "Yes? Who's down there?"

The other members of her repair team had already arrived and were well into their own tasks, which meant whoever had made the narrow crawl to the relay junction wasn't from the Operations department.

Jayla gave a single nod and rounded a corner to see Marion peering down at her. "Doctor Kij," she called back, readjusting the medical kit on her back and continuing down the tube. "You missed your physical. Again."

Liz grimaced at the mention of a physical and gave the fragmented piece of equipment a rather sharp tug, snapping it from the bracket it was fastened to, "Sorry about that, but I've been up to my elbows in other people's mistakes lately. I didn't figure something like a routine scan was more important than getting the ship back in order."

Liz tossed the damaged component on the deck beside her and continued to work, "I didn't think you'd come all this way just to remind me of it though. Dad was right, some medical officers really are just that dedicated."

"You have no idea," said Jayla, pulling herself out of the tube and sitting on the edge of it. She pulled out her medkit and opened it up. "That's why I came to you, though- because you're so busy. You keep working and I'll do my scans." She pulled out her tricorder and powered it up.

"No offense, Commander, but I wasn't planning to stop," Liz remarked politely enough before glaring at the four men who had stopped working to watch the spectacle.

"This isn't a peep show, boys," Liz growled, "And these conduits don't fix themselves."

All four crewmen sputtered in laughter and voiced a collective 'aye' before turning back to their own tasks. For her part, Liz could only roll her eyes and dig around in the toolkit she'd been given to retrieve the decoupler inside.

"That's the beauty," said Jayla, beginning the scans. "My tricroder will work whether you stop or not. Have any complaints? Medically, that is," she amended with a grin.

"Medically? Never. Dad always kept me healthy," Liz remarked as she worked to get a rather stubborn piece of the relay to cooperate.

"Good," said Jayla, nodding. She adjusted her tricorder to compensate for a patient in motion and nodded at the results. "What's your exercise routine like?" she asked.

"You're looking at it," Lt. Marion said with a grunt as she pried a blackened deck plate up, "Crawling through Jeffries Tubes and yanking out defective starship parts is by far the best cardio and muscular workout you can ever hope to find."

Jayla nodded fairly. "I suppose I can't argue with that," she said, switching to secondary scans. "I mean, after all, I did just crawl through a bunch of tubes. It's not easy."

"I've done it since I was 18 years old, so I think it is," Liz grinned, "But Dad used to complain that by the time I got to be his age, I wouldn't have a speck of cartilage between any of my bones. The Old Man seems to think I'm going to live to be six hundred or something..."

Jayla grinned again. "Technically, I'm pushing a thousand," she said, speaking of the symbiont. "You dad's El Aurian, right?" Jayla had made sure to review the Lieutenant's file that morning. After all, what kind of Chief Medical Officer would she be if she didn't?

"He is, yes. I'm not, however," Liz explained, "Dad adopted me when I first joined Starfleet. He was Captain of the Nobel at the time, and for whatever reason, he singled me out of that entire crew and took an interest in my future. I don't think a day went by after the first time I'd beamed him up from some planet that I didn't see the Old Man bluster through the Transporter Room I was assigned to, shouting about something that had gotten him annoyed. It was usually the Chief Medical Officer. They didn't get along at all. This was back when Dad first came out of retirement and wasn't used to staying out of someone else's sickbay."

Even while she was reminiscing about the old days, Lt. Marion still managed to deftly pry apart whole chunks of the Jeffries Tube sitting in front of her, "I can remember one time he actually punched the CMO in the face and broke his jaw, then spent the next half hour setting the bone and berating the man for making him practice medicine on a man that didn't want him in the same sickbay with him."

Jayla chuckled softly. "He sounds like a colorful character," she commented, adjusting her tricorder again and recording the results. "I hope I get the chance to meet him some day."

Liz shrugged, "Who knows. He might annoy the Admiralty so much back on Earth that they ship him off to some corner of the galaxy exactly opposite the one we're in. Would be just like him to do it on purpose just to get out from behind the desk..."

"Can't stand desk jobs, eh?" said Jayla. "I hear that; I never would have accepted the CMO post if I'd known there was so much dratted paperwork to go along with it."

"I think it's more... he can't stand any place where he can't run it the way he wants it run, and then take naps while other people do it," Lt. Marion grinned, "He was much happier commanding starships than he ever was doing anything else, even if he won't admit to it. Though, if you heard him tell it, starship command is for men like Kirk that like to fornicate their way from star to star while he'd rather just run a sickbay and be left alone."

"That's more or less how I feel about it," Jayla admitted, closing her tricorder. "I've gone as high as I want to go in Starfleet. If they try to force me into command, I'm resigning and going back home to work in a hospital. The Captain had to pick a temporary XO and I was utterly terrified when he said my name. Turns out he was just informing me that there were too many injured to pull me away from Sick Bay. I don't know when was the last time I've been so relieved. Oh, clean bill of healthy by the way. But, next time, maybe come to Sick Bay. I don't like crawling around in tubes to track you down."

"I would say I'll do my best... but Dad would kill me if he found out I lied..." Lt. Marion flashed the doctor a smile, "So I'll just try not to get hurt enough to need to see you. Best I can do."

"I suppose it's all I can ask for," said Jayla, repacking her medkit and slinging it across her back once more. "Try not to work too hard," she added as she headed back down the jefferies tubes.

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