Diagnosis: Dawn (1/2)

Posted on 12 Feb 2013 @ 12:37am by Lieutenant Dawn Meridian & Lieutenant Commander Pola Ni Dhuinn M.D.

1,447 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Medical
Timeline: MD-1 1448 hours

[ON]

For the first time since coming aboard, Dawn was worried. Maybe worried wasn't the best word for it, but she had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that she wasn't too familiar with. The truth was that sickbay scared her a little bit.

A doctor that's scared of sickbay. That's a good one. Still, it was true, and there wasn't very much she could do about it. Sickbay was a place people went when they were hurt, or something was wrong with them. Sickbay was a place where everything she loved about people - their oddities, jokes, and hobbies - was thrown aside with the goal of simply keeping them alive. That was a good thing, and the people who actually kept those things alive were beyond interesting, but sickbay was still a scary place because of it.

There was a reason she wasn't a doctor doctor. She wondered if there was anything horribly wrong with her that she didn't know about yet. Maybe her brain was being eaten from the inside by an alien parasite and it was too late to do anything about it. Maybe the medical equipment would mess up and say something was horribly wrong with her and she'd have to be pumped full of weird drugs and be confined to quarters for the rest of her natural life. Worse, maybe the equipment wouldn't pick up what really was wrong with her and she'd suddenly die in the middle of something important.

"Shut up," she said out loud. "Focus on being less stupid about something so simple." A crewman passing her in the hallway gave her a strange look. She was right, as usual. She could focus on getting to know the medical staff better instead of becoming the subject of horrible experiments that would disfigure her forever and leave her hated and avoided by everyone.

Oh. This isn't working, is it?

Dawn tucked a loose strand of her dark hair behind an ear and let out her breath. After a moment, she stepped through the doors and into the surprisingly welcoming sickbay. "I'm looking for the doctor," she said softly to the nearest person. She was okay. She was going to be fine. "For my check-up. To make sure I won't die horribly in the middle of the mission. Hopefully." Stop talking. Stop talking!

Turning at the sound of a woman's voice, Pola smiled softly as she watched the person behind her. "Well now...I guess today is your lucky day, I'm Doctor Ni Dhuinn. That's a very bleak outlook you have...Surely things can't be that bad Lieutenant?"

Dawn tilted her head, her grey eyes scanning the woman. She wasn't that much older than Dawn was, and they were even around the same size. Hm. She remembered a Ni Dhuinn from the manifest, vaguely. Oh. That's good. I've found the CMO, she thought. She wasn't the evil mad scientist Dawn had been expecting. Her dread faded slightly. "No," she said at last, smiling a bit at her silliness, "I guess not. Sickbay just... worries me a little bit sometimes. It's easy to be worried about going somewhere people only go when something's wrong with them." She paused. "Other than you, of course." She wondered if people saw counselling the same way.

"I'm Counsellor Meridian," she said. She thought it was a bit of an ugly way to introduce herself, so she added, "Dawn. Pleased to meet you."

Indicating towards a nearby biobed, Pola extracted a tricorder from her overcoat pocket. "Well Dawn, I'd like if you called me Pola, I prefer that things are in a casual basis in this place, it helps build relationships better, and might help you feel more comfortable in some ways. Nervous patients seem to be a common sight these days so at least you aren't alone in that, I can promise is that I don't bite."

"Pola. Okay," Dawn said, hopping onto the biobed. She preferred having a simple name to call people. Some names, like Ni Dhuinn, were hard to say and harder to remember, and rank only got in the way when it came to counselling. It was good to see she wasn't the only medical officer on the ship that felt that way. She was definitely starting to feel better now. "It's not so much the biting that I was worried about," she mumbled. If the tricorder says horrible things about my health, it's not true, she wanted to say... but that wouldn't do at all.

Moving her fingertips across the tricorder in her hand, Pola brought up the relevant scans which she needed to take. "Hum....if not the biting may I ask why the nerves?"

Dawn frowned slightly. "Not knowing," she said after a time. "Before the readings come through, it's hard to tell what someone's fate will be. Even if something's really wrong with someone, up until they find out, they still have hope." She ran a hand through her dark hair. "I don't mean that in a bad way, though. You have the hardest job of all. You have to be hope... even when there isn't any."

As she moved her tricorder along the woman's body, a hint of a smile played across Pola's lips as she listened to her words. "Hum...But why worry about something out of your control? Generally if you don't show a symptom you are perfectly fine. Have you have any symptoms lately which you feel would indicate that you are ill in someway?"

"I don't think I'm ill," Dawn said, eyeing the tricorder. "It's not really logical." She shrugged. "It's not something you'd expect a counsellor to worry about, I guess. I just don't really think that anything might be wrong until I'm on the way to sickbay. It's not so bad after the first visit, anyway."

"A counsellor is still a human being like the rest of us, with their own ways of thinking and fears. You're no different to anyone else and shouldn't be expected to conform to how people precieve that counsellors should act." Pola said the words gently, showing them to be an observation only and nothing more as she started to upload the scans to the biobed monitor.

Dawn shrugged, smiling a little. "Still, I deal with people's irrational fears all the time. It's funny that I can't just... talk myself out of them." She tilted her head at Pola. She wasn't so worried anymore, for some reason. "Although apparently you can."

Feeling her cheeks flush slightly, Pola occupied herself with flicking through the scans on the monitor. "It's a regular occurrence to get nervous patients. In here we need people to be relaxed to be able to carry out true medicals on them as stressed people increase simple vital signs such as blood pressure which we need to establish a base line. Also, in matters where bad things might happen, you need to be able to trust your Doctor's to give you good advise and believe that we have your best interests at heart."

Dawn's smile widened. She liked the doctor, she decided. "That makes a lot of sense." They had gone through much of the same training at Starfleet Medical, after all. "And it's better if crew members aren't terrified of reporting their medical problems. Wouldn't make for a very healthy ship." She stretched slightly. "I'll try to think of it that way. As long as you aren't hiding any Klingon medical officers, I can see myself getting used to sickbay." She paused, putting a finger on her chin. "Although hopefully not too used to sickbay."

Wincing slightly, Pola started to compare the vitals she'd collected and compare it to Dawn's base line on file. "Aside from the Klingon's already onboard, I'll be quite happy if I don't see another one for quite sometime. In relation to medical staff there's myself, the two Jessicas of which one's an intern and the other a nurse, Eda and Varek."

"I look forward to meeting them," she said cheerily. "It's odd actually being able to know the entire medical staff. I was stationed on a big ship before - a Galaxy - and it seemed like every time I went to sickbay, it was filled with people I didn't recognise." She let out a breath. "It wasn't very... welcoming. Not like this."

[TBC]

Lieutenant Commander Pola Ni Dhuinn
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Dawn Meridian
Counsellor
USS Galileo

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