No One's Ever Going To Stop Us Now

Posted on 24 Oct 2012 @ 7:09pm by Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant Commander Pola Ni Dhuinn M.D.

2,361 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 03 - 1210 hours

[ON]

"Pola..." Kohl said in a sing-song voice. He ducked his head in before he sidled his way into the office of the Chief Medical Officer. Andreus Kohl stayed close to the door frame, cautious that Pola may want her privacy. Atop the platter in his hand, there was saucy poultry wrapped in leafy greens, and a mound of something reminiscent of chunky potato salad. "The replicator gave me a massive sandwich," he said. "Truly massive. Do you want half?"

Looking up from the PADD in her hand, Pola smiled tiredly as she spotted Kohl and the platter in his hands. "Sounds good. Care to pull up a seat? I kinda need to have a word with you."

The smile on Kohl's face became strained, but he tried to keep on smiling all the same. He moved to the chair opposite Pola, but his every step was slow and apprehensive. "Did, uh, did one of the doctors from Central Hospital say something?" Kohl said, in reference to the Vega Colony medical facility where he had been seconded for a couple of days. As he sat down, he placed the plate down on the desk between them, hoping it looked mighty appetizing. And distracting. He may need to distract Pola from whatever she wanted to say.

Nodding her head, Pola looked back down at her PADD, her focus on the information. "They did actually. This is the report that they submitted back to the ship." Looking back up, Pola suddenly smiled brightly, "What do you think that they had to say about you?"

Kohl twitched a lopsided smile, but he still didn't look very mirthful about it. "That," Kohl said, elongating the vowel nervously, "I demonstrated competence in the medical field, but I can be, uh, outspoken to authority figures?"

"Well...something along those lines." Holding out the PADD, Pola allowed Kohl to take it from her hands. "It's seems that they very much enjoyed the outspokenness. They felt that you always introduced it at the most appropriate of times and that it was always useful and informative information that you would come out with. They enjoyed that as a Nurse Practitioner you didn't allow yourself to be intimidated by other Doctors."

In an undertone, Kohl said a, "thank you," when he accepted the PADD from Pola. He had to smile at Pola's words; it was a genuine, beaming smile. Before he responded, Kohl turned his eyes towards the display on the PADD. He had to make certain that they really hadn't referred to him as a lippy git. Then, he looked up at Pola. With a mischievous smile, Kohl said, "I've had patients who were more intimidating than any doctor I've met."

Leaning back into her chair, Pola rested her elbow on the arm of her chair before resting her cheek against the palm of her hand. "I'm glad to know you don't find me extremely intimidating here so." Pausing for a moment or two, the Doctor studied Kohl for a moment. "I know when you came onboard, me and you had our issues, our ups and downs with each other....Are you happy here now Andreus?"

"I could be," Kohl said without too much hesitation. He winced because he knew Pola was hoping for a more definitive reply. He chomped his teeth together lightly when the right words wouldn't come to him. He wished he were born with telepathy and could express what he was feeling instead of parsing it out into words. "I do think I could be happy here," Kohl said. "I can't know until I've settled into my quarters again and got a feel for the routine. But there's certainly nothing making me want to run."

Bending her baby finger, Pola started to chew on her nail as she studied Kohl closely before finally speaking up once again. "You know I couldn't have been anymore prouder of you then I was when we were fighting the Klingons. You were a show of strength to me and your fellow colleagues. I know there was a few scary points for us and you but over all...you saved lives, you performed beyond any ability any of us thought you would ever have,"

"Thank you, Pola," Kohl said, and he nodded to acknowledge her compliment. He shifted his weight in the chair, leaning back a little, getting comfortable. He smirked and he said, "You kept me on course."

"An opportunity has arisen, one which has been endorsed by both the CO and XO which I felt is the right decision and right choice." Lifting her head, Pola flexed her hand before grabbing a second PADD and handing it out to Kohl. "I'll just come out and say it...if you feel like you wish the position, we would like to promote you to Assistant Chief Medical Officer. We all know you're ready for the job but it's only right that you have a choice to accept or refuse."

All at once, Kohl felt his face flushing with heat, and the act of breathing seemed to require so much more effort. His mind raced in seventeen different directions, and he inarticulately muttered something like, "Wait. No. What? I don't--" Kohl closed his eyes for two full seconds, he cleared his throat, and then he took in a deep breath. He looked at Pola, and he asked incredulously, "You wanted me to be your Assistant Chief?"

Worried about his reaction, Pola stepped over to the replicator, grabbing a glass of water which she held out to him as she perched on the edge of her desk in front of him. She could feel a headache starting again, but right now she tried to keep her focus on her nurse. "I feel that you're the best person for the job. During our previous mission, sickbay would have fallen apart without the aid which you provided to me, especially in the situation where I was trying to juggle being an acting XO and keeping sickbay running. Andreus...I need a person I know I can rely on to pick up the reins and run sickbay when I am unavailable. A person I trust to have my back when I need them there. I know you can be that person."

Sitting across from Pola with his shoulders square, Kohl nodded at her assertions, and each nod came across with more confidence. "I can be that person," Kohl said. He said it quietly. He said it for himself. Speaking up, he stated, "I will be that person. As your Assistant Chief Medical Officer."

Smiling, Pola held out the second PADD once again. "Here's the promotion details, all you need to do is sign off and it is then official. It's already been cleared by myself, the CO and the XO."

The PADD was in his hands, and it felt like it was happening so fast. Kohl's conscious mind couldn't quite process it, not really. It felt surreal, like maybe he was just an actor in a play. He read quickly, trying his best to understand the meaning of the words, because the meaning behind each individual word was escaping him. For fear they might all change their minds the next time Varek or even the EMH walked into Sickbay, Kohl provided his personal authentication to accept the new position.

Smiling as she watched Kohl, Pola rested her hands either side of her hips on the desk. "I remember my promotion to ACMO and even more recently to CMO. The only singular piece of advice I'll give you is this, don't change anything. Continue being who you are, continuing doing things the way in which you do as its those small things that make you the person who you are. And if ever it starts to become too much, you come to me, or even Commander Holliday, and you talk to us, let us sort it out."

"I will, Pola," Kohl said. He nodded at her words, but he was still wide-eyed and struggling to take it all in. He picked up the glass of water and took a big gulp from it. He still didn't know what to say, for once, and he reached for the lettuce wrap and took a bite.

Boosting herself up onto her desk, Pola looked down at her knees as she gave Kohl a moment before she spoke again. "Thought you were going to give me some of that?" Smiling, the Doctor realised that she wasn't feeling very hungry but should at least try to eat something.

"This is just half," Kohl said and he took another big bite. He mumbled something incomprehensible while he chewed satisfyingly. Kohl nodded to the plate, which held the other side of the sandwich wrap and the potato-salad-looking mound. After he swallowed, he said, "You must be starving. You've been here all day."

Looking at the plate, Pola picked up her half and nibbles at party of it, feeling slightly sick as her body readjusted to the intake of food. "Funny you should say that, my apatite hasn't been the best lately. I figure its from suddenly going from a manic pace for nearly a week to now everything having quietened back down."

"It's terrible the things stress can do to a body," Kohl said. He shook his head sadly and spoke in a tone expressing genuine concern. "Now that," --he dropped his wrap on the plate so he could waggle a finger at Pola-- "That is something I can help you with now, yeah? Whatever responsibilities you've got to pass to me, to give you the time you need to be the leader you need to be, I need you to feel comfortable doing so." His sapphire eyes lit up as if a cartoon light-bulb materialized over his head. "In fact, I think I'll need to make that a condition of my new assignment."

Smiling, Pola took a small bite from her half of the food. "Well things have quietened down now. A majority of the crew are now out of the colony medical, those left should be discharged within the coming days. Any of our cases needing further care, we should be able to start transporting them back here in another day or so with power now having been restored and work to repair the damage still ongoing."

"That's true, that's all true," Kohl said in agreement. He winced, though, and everything about his delivery warned Pola there was going to be a, "But." He said, "It's never the patient care that causes the stress. That's the fun part, the rewarding part. The stress comes with the everything else that comes with being a health care provider and a Starfleet officer, and the cognitive dissonance between the two. We don't get shore leave from that."

Chewing on her food for a few moments, Pola looked down at the floor for a few moments as she tried to compose a response to that before looking back it. "It's part of the responsibilities we take on when we make that decision in 2nd year to go ahead and do medical. Noone ever promises that it is going to be easy...it's how to deal with it and move on from it which keeps you going." Swinging her legs for a moment, the Doctor studied Kohl for a moment. "We encountered it already in this mission...how did you feel then?"

Kohl shrugged helplessly. He offered Pola a 'you win' sort of smile. "There is nothing else in the galaxy I would rather be doing," he said.

Believing his words, Pola found though that she couldn't shrug off that Kohl had seemed to deflect part of the question, the part that was most important. "I was scared you know. Trying to lead and protect all of you, keep our patients safe and fight the exact conundrum we are talking about. I can't promise it gets any easier but you learn each time how to do it better if it happens again."

"I am certainly learning," Kohl said, speaking in a timbre of haunted wisdom, speaking from his own experiences. His thoughts went back to that dark place. He remembered kneeling on the floor of Sickbay, training a phaser on a door, waiting to die. He looked at the desk when he said, "I used to be hopeless with any kind of violence. Well, I enjoyed the basic security training, but my body and mind and spirit couldn't cope with the reality. Even if an intoxicated patient fought off an examination, it would make me freeze up. I learned to cope with it on Bactricia. We lived in violence there. I'm perfectly comfortable with a phaser now." --Kohl shook his head slightly-- "There was just something incomprehensible to me about violence coming to me aboard a starship. It felt different. Alien. ...I guess that means Galileo felt like it could be home from the start?"

"Sometimes that the key indication that you've finally found the place in which your meant to be." Pola smiled slightly as she looked up, pushing aside the food as she found she still had no appatite. "How about a walk? We both seem to be getting down on ourselves and today is a day of celebration for you and your achievements."

"Yeah, we can leave Sickbay to the Vega Colony doctors for an hour. We're the one's who set the duty roster after all," Kohl said playfully, but his proud smile was all heart. For just a moment, he narrowed his eye at how Pola pushed away the wrap she had barely nibbled on, but then he picked it up for himself and took a bite. Sheepishly, he said, "I need my energy for the walk."

Laughing, Pola indicated for him to go ahead. "Bring it with you...I'm reliably told that should you choke from trying to walk, talk and eat I should be able to save your life."


[OFF]

Lieutenant JG Pola Ni Dhuinn
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

RSS Feed