A Mandated Physical

Posted on 18 Dec 2014 @ 11:37pm by Lieutenant Benice Gyce Ph.D. & Lieutenant Olsam Mott
Edited on on 20 Dec 2014 @ 2:00am

3,189 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: Starbase 84 - Station Sickbay
Timeline: MD 3: 0900

[On]

Locating her next quarry was not hard to do. The physical was the main aspect for duty clearance. It took the computer a matter of a few seconds to determine Doctor Mott's location. And when Gyce entered the posh, massive sickbay/infirmary of the station, it was not hard to figure out which one he was.

Practiced as ever, Gyce remained content to watch the eccentric doctor annoy the station's staff.

"Now, why would you put the dermal regenerator there?" Olsam gasped at the nurse, looking exasperated. He'd volunteered to lend a hand in the starbase infirmary (of his own accord, naturally), but he'd never dreamed to find it in such a state. It was an absolute disaster, really. "It's too far away. It should be on the right, near the osteogenic regenerator. They're the two most used pieces of medical equipment next to the tricorder, so wouldn't you want them near you? Of course you would! Honestly, I don't know how this starbase functions..."

Gyce became easily enamored with Mott's personality. It contrasted with just about every person she ever worked with.

"I can only assume they prep for typical, elective procedure mostly. They do not have to perform a lot of the meatball surgeries, ships often end up having to do." Gyce's voice was even and polite. Not intrusive at all.

Olsam turned, ready to put some mouthy med-tech in her place, but just blinked and gawked at Gyce. Some Bajoran...security officer? Ops? Engineer? Regardless, that yellow collar certainly didn't give her the right to come down here and tell him how to tell them to do their jobs. So, he just frowned at her for a long moment, long enough to actually start thinking about what she said. The muscles in his face loosened and finally he nodded appreciatively.

"I suppose you're right," he admitted. "They really don't do anything at all here. Fix someone's toe or something a first-year med student could do. What does it matter the ordering of their medcarts? Oh! Wait, are you hurt? Do you need medical assistance? Sorry, I almost forgot you'd come in here instead of the other way around. Uh, the other way around being that I'd come in here, that is." He blinked, starting to get confused by his own rhetorical perambulation. "Um, right, so, you've got a broken toe, is it?"

"No. Not a broken toe," Gyce answered with a smile. Amused. "I suffer from a massive weaponized neurological disorder in the motor cortex that causes hyperactivity and sensitivity in my pain receptors in L3-L5 vertebra. Lamens terms, I use a cane most of the time to cope better with the constant level eight of nerve pain, located mostly in my right thigh and leg."

She basically paraphrased her own medical file for two reasons. The first so he knew what the problem was. The second, so she'd fuel his... addiction? That word seemed to fit best in her observations. Was he addicted to being right all the time? Maybe. It was quite fascinating to watch, regardless.

"Huh," Olsam said, tilting his head to the side slightly while thinking over what she said. He casually picked up a medical tricorder off a nearby medcart, trying to ignore what a stupid place it had been left in, and opened it up. "I bet that hurts. Well it's a good thing I was here when you came in because these hacks would have just wanted to take your whole leg off and jam some kind of cyborg looking thing back on there like you're a Borg or something. Did this happen today? We should probably alert station security about a neurogenic toxin being on board the starbase, right? There's probably a protocol for that..."

"I'm here for a standard physical," Gyce corrected gently. "I was hit with the nerve gas on Bajor, a looong time ago Doctor Mott."

"Oh, right. Oh! Ooooh," Olsam said, as some lightbulb went off in his head. It made sense that a Bajoran lieutenant from security with pronounced signs of neurological damage would show up at precisely that time as he had an appointment with a Bajoran lieutenant from security with pronounced signs of neurological damage. "You must be Lieutenant Benice, it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Dr. Olsam Mo-... Oh, right, you said my name. You know who I am. Am I the only Bolian here?" He paused and whipped his head around to survey the Sickbay, then nodded. "Yep, the only one. Sometimes I forget to look. No wonder you knew who I was. Uh, so, right, we had an appointment. Let's see here..."

"You'll want my cardio workout data," Gyce added and pulled out her swimming diagnostic logs from a PADD, from her tactical vest.

"Right! Right, your pre-assignment health assessment," Olsam said, nodding at the reminder. He detached the sensor wand from the medical tricorder and began waving it around, as if he'd gone through the motions a thousand times. Naturally, his mouth never stopped moving. "Do you know what you'll be doing on the Galileo, yet? I didn't really read that far in the personnel file, otherwise we'd have nothing to talk about while I make my assessment. We'd just be staring at each other like a couple of..." His eyes swept the room again, and he lowered his voice. "...Vulcans."

"Security Investigations," Gyce answered quickly with a small laugh. She'd worked with some stiff Vulcans here and there too. "Means I'm a detective of crimes, and I assess threats - Though I doubt the command staff gives a damn about what yet another security officer thinks."

"A detective! I love detective holoprograms," Olsam said, hardly able to contain his excitement, as if being a real detective and a fake detective were one and the same. "That sounds absolutely fascinating! What will you detect? I mean to say, there's no crime on the Galileo, that I can think of... Although, someone did move my favorite hypospray from Medcart A to Medcart B. I guess they thought I wouldn't notice, but I did. I bet it was that stupid EMH." His eyes narrowed. "That's criminal. Can you press charges against a hologram, I wonder? Have the courts covered that, yet? Oooo, maybe I can be the first one! Mott v. EMH will go down in the history books..."

"One of the things I hope to be doing is going through the narcotics and stimulants use. Making sure there aren't any missing vials, as ships the size of Galileo actually breed illegal substance abuse far more often than larger ships with better living conditions. Plus science and medical vessels are more likely to run unauthorized, dangerous experiments. Or hide them," Gyce pointed out matter-of-factly.

She grinned at that, "I'll also be checking the surveillance systems for flaws and improvements. But mostly, I'll be looking at the surveillance feeds. Since it's likely the command staff wont need me, unless someone goes missing or is murdered."

Olsam fell silent as he withdrew into his own thoughts. Missing narcotics and stimulants? Illegal substance abuse? Unauthorized experiments? Surveillance feeds? He cleared his throat and tried not to look too shifty eyes as he turned his attention to the PADD in his hand. Unblinking, he made some routine notations in the device, looking like he might bore holes through it with his eyes. Hopefully her investigations wouldn't be retroactive, as he was sure his time investigating the interphasic pathogen with Norvi and Asahi wasn't exactly above board.

"Uh, right, well, that all sounds very interesting," he mumbled, quickly changing the subject. "I see you're taking an 800 milligram dose of Zynoprofin, but the notations in your medical file are a little muddled. Was that prescribed by a physician at your last posting, or a civilian doctor on Bajor? It's not a drug we commonly see in the Fleet."

"It was requisitioned, while I was getting treatment for the neurotoxion on Vulcan." Gyce grew skeptic. Wondering why the horse pill she took almost every other night, was a problem. "Zynoprofin was something my neurologist at the time, Doctor Corvik, prescribed and ordered from Bajor. Mostly since the active ingredient in the drug, reduces swelling of the nerves in my spine. It allows me to sleep painlessly during the night."

Olsam pursed his lips in concern, referring momentarily to the PADD in his hand. "How often do you take the medication?"

"I usually take it when I know I'm going to get a full night's rest, so maybe four times a week." Gyce was guessing. She honestly did not pay that much attention. "Occasionally I'll take one after a hard workout."

The Bolian's bald blue head nodded in response, though he still looked plenty concerned. "It's just that this class of medication is difficult for your body to metabolize - it places a good deal of strain on your liver and kidneys as they work to process it out of your system." He tapped the edge of the PADD with a thick thumb, lost in thought for a moment. "Have you tried other analgesics? I know the standards aren't exactly miracle workers when it comes to nerve pain, but they're significantly easier on your body."

"I can't take opiates. They'll make my head spin so much, I can't think straight," Gyce spoke vehemently. She did not ever want to be an opiate junkie. "I'm always in some level of pain though, Doctor Mott. But Zynoprofin brings it down enough, that I can sleep through it. If I knew of another option, I would seek it out."

"Hmm, yes," Olsam said, nodding once but keeping his brow furrowed. He pulled up the Starfleet Medical Database file for zynoprofin and studied the spinning chemical formula of the medication, atoms chained together and moving off in a variety of directions. After several long moments of review, he sighed. "Well, I can't think of any immediate alternatives, but I'll start investigating. You never know what new pharmaceuticals are floating around these days... Well, I mean, some people know. Obviously. They invented them. But then others don't know, yet. You know what I mean!"

Gyce wondered if Olsam suffered some sort of untreated mental illness. But she smiled easily at him. He was one of those harmless crazies. "I think I do."

Olsam hummed to himself as he moved down the checklist on the PADD, cross-referencing a few items with Gyce's medical file. He frowned at the notation on her physical therapy routine and looked up at her.

"There's no pool on the ship... Will you be using the holodeck?"

"You're my doc now. I assume. So I'm open to ideas on how to get around that obstacle," Gyce shrugged.

"Yes, I'm your new primary care physician. Wait, didn't I say that? Oh, I don't remember if I said that or not when you first came in... Maybe I didn't. I was pretty upset about those improperly categorized medcarts, so it may have slipped. Right. So. What were we talking about?" Olsam looked down at the PADD in his hands in the hopes that it might jog his memory. "Oh, that's right! Your physical therapy. Although frankly that's a bit of a generous description if you ask me - physical therapy is closely overseen and monitored by a medical practitioner, and the doctor on the McKinley only made notations in your files every quarter. So you were doing more exercise than therapy." He almost jumped in place, as if he shocked himself. "Not to downplay your hard work, it appears you worked very hard. It's just you can't call something therapy if there's no actual therapist involved, you see. And there wasn't. A therapist involved, I mean to say. So it wasn't therapy."

Gyce nodded at his assessment. She honestly was not entirely sure how to debate subjects like that with him. Part of her believed he was naturally hyperactive, and tried not to let her eyes gloss over as she tried to process such a fountain of information, in such a short span of time.

Olsam blinked at her. "Uh... So, we'll get you started on a completely new therapy regimen that will actually be therapeutic because frankly these outcomes are just unacceptable." He waved the PADD around for emphasis. "I'm not going to have some patient of mine not making significant progress every quarter, even if I've got to run you around the ship a hundred times a day. Not that I would actually do that, of course... It's probably breaking some sort of Starfleet regulations on torture. But you get the picture. We'll definitely stay under the torture thresholds."

"I was tortured in a Bajoran internment camp for years, Doctor Mott." It was said in an accepting tone. As if she had long ago come to terms with the fact she could never change to past with her anger. "I assure you, my tolerance threshold for pain is much higher than most other people."

"Okay, I'll make note of that when putting together your therapy regimen," Olsam said matter-of-factly, as if they were talking about a quiet Sunday walk through the countryside rather than internment camps, systematic torture and pain tolerance. Another doctor might have been embarrassed and felt he'd made a faux pas in mentioning torture, but Dr. Olsam Mott just carried on; after all, internment camps were a part of life, and there was no use in denying it. "We can start tomorrow at 0700 hours."

"I usually am up at oh-five-thirty to dress and exercise by oh-six-hundred," Gyce confirmed with the doctor. "But I'm guessing you don't want me to exercise until our session?"

Olsam seemed to think for a moment and then shrugged. "If you feel like you have the physical endurance and stamina to both exercise and go through the therapy regimen then by all means... Just as long as it doesn't interfere with your duties. I wouldn't want you falling asleep on your duty shift and then some criminal gets away with...I don't know, something, a crime...because I insisted you should work yourself to death in the early mornings. I think if I exercised before my duty shift then I'd be asleep by lunch."

"Exercise in the morning is a proven method of energizing people for the day- as long as they also eat a balanced breakfast," Gyce countered, then asked as she took Mott in, "...So what are your chosen specialties anyway, in medicine?"

Olsam always ate a balanced breakfast, of course; both sides of his plate were always equal in weight. "Pathology, critical care, emergency medicine... You know, the useful things on a starship. I've written a paper or two. Or fifty, give or take. But as much as I love writing journal articles, I truly enjoy practicing medicine. Pathology is academically stimulating, but nothing really replaces interacting with patients and fixing what's broken."

"Some broken things can't be fixed, Doctor Mott." Gyce looked at him with honest concern and sympathy for him. "I admire your outlook, but I should caution you too. To obsess or linger too long on situations you can't fix? Those are the ones that could burn you out."

Olsam stared at her and then laughed. It was a good-natured laugh, but one that also indicated he didn't necessarily share her point of view. "Everything can be fixed, just sometimes it's beyond your means. And yet other times it's really, really beyond your means, like it would take a Q or something to fix, you know? But I won't accept limitations. Nope. I can't ever look at a patient and say, 'I can't help you.' Because how do I know if I haven't really tried? Science is ever-advancing; there are new discoveries every day. There's always reason for hope. Besides, I'm too cheery to burn out."

The Bolian doctor grinned at her, a broad and exaggerated grin full of pearly white teeth that pushed his cheeks up so far his eyes became narrow slits.

Gyce did not doubt his claim, as bubbly as she perceived him to be. His attitude actually caused her to smiled just as widely.

"Well if an idea comes your way, I wont say no to it." She honestly could not, for she began to understand that while Mott was a bit weird, he also cared greatly about his patients. "But know I am content as I am, because I know that clinging to hopes that offer no guarantee of fixing my problem, will only shatter me."

"There's nothing wrong with being practical about things. I could probably do with being a little more practical myself," he said, pausing to reflect on the statement. Eventually, he shook his head. "Or not. Anyway, I'll certainly be looking into it, and if I find anything then I'll let you know. And until then, we'll remain very practical and stick to therapy."

"So what should I use to take the edge off, before bed?" Gyce asked, feeling her appointment was just about up. "It's not normally until after a hard, truly physical day that, when I sit down to relax, the pain usually flares to about a 7."

"Hmmm," Olsam pondered. "Would you say your nerve-related pain worsens, or is it simply additional pain from exertion?"

"I never really noticed," Gyce answered honestly. "I assumed it was related to the nerve pain, since that is usually the only type of pain I experience."

"I'll give you a hypo of terakine," Olsam replied, turning to the medcart to begin preparing the device with the right dosage and settings. "It's a general analgesic with some anti-inflammatory properties; try it first, and if it's not working then we know it's more nerve-related pain and you can fall back on the zynoprofin. In the meantime, I'll look more into finding a replacement for the zynoprofin that won't cause damage to your excretory system with long-term use."

"So I'm clear for duty then?" Gyce confirmed, hopefully. Though inside, she was a bit nervous about the med changes.

"Oh! Yes, of course, you're healthy," Olsam replied, looking down at the PADD in his hand. He checked off a few items, entered a few commands and then smiled when the device beeped an acknowledgement. "Sometimes I forget to do the paperwork. Once this ensign was waiting around for four days waiting for me to clear him for duty. He was too nervous to say anything about me forgetting, I guess. I don't know why. I'm completely approachable! Anyone could approach me, really. Anyone! So please don't wait around four days for anything. Or, really, even four minutes. Because if I haven't done it in four minutes then I'm guaranteed to have forgotten."

"It was a pleasure meeting you then, Doctor." Gyce truly meant it. The oddball doc growing on her in an endearing way.

[Off]

---

Lieutenant J.G. Benice Gyce
Security Investigations Officer
USS Galileo

&

Lieutenant Olsam Mott, M.D.
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

 

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