[Sickbay]: Round Eight Scans and Vaccines

[ten_fwd_npcs]

O-kay, so things have been a little ... odd on the ship. Some people have been acting rather out of character, ducking their duties for romantic escapades or complaining that their good friends aren't quite themselves. Romance may be in the air, but the CMO has other ideas. Like maybe an alien pest who likes to play tricks on people. Her sickbay hasn't gone unaffected, but luckily the strange effects are beginning to wear off and people are returning to work. Still, she's prepared to treat anything. Just please assure her you were safe and responsible if you, uh, made a special friend.

If this is your first trip to Sickbay, you may be surprised to see that it's a fairly ordinary-looking hospital. There are no terrifying devices or humming machines you might see in a sci-fi thriller. The biobeds along the walls are equipped with biofunction monitors, but look fairly standard. Instead of silver trays filled with metal tools and sawblades, there are an array of small devices that look as harmless as cell phones. As for the staff, they're all well-groomed and friendly. As a matter of fact, all personnel look harmless. Well, relatively harmless.

If you're new to the ship, no doubt you've been escorted here by the security team. Nothing to worry about, the doctors just want to make sure you aren't carrying any viruses or are vulnerable to terrible space disease. Once you've been checked over — a quick scan from a tricorder and any necessary vaccines — you'll be free to go. Lollipops are optional.

"All right, step on in," one of them calls out as you enter. "Don't be afraid. It's just a scan and a hypospray, nothing to worry about."


[ooc: Sickbay is, as always, OTA! For new characters: tagging isn't mandatory but IC going to sickbay is. If you'd prefer to skip threading with one of our doctors, you can handwave that your character got a clean bill of health and a shot and were sent on their merry way. For those who are tagging: if you have a preference which doctor sees your character, please specify in the subject line of your tag who you would like (Beverly Crusher, Julian Bashir, Sam Wilson, Mack Gerhardt, and Merlin are definitely on deck, with possible appearances by others). There is a post up in the OOC comm with more details if you have any questions.]

Comments

[osirian_doctor]

He's familiar with bad patients, and it seems that he has one here. But he's spoken to enough of their guests to know that not everyone is necessarily familiar with the level of medical care available here or with doctors in general. He's not certain what to expect from a man who'd arrived riddled with wounds from a weapon that hasn't been used for hundreds of years.

The cold response is not entirely unexpected. Simon glances at the tricorder and shrugs.

"It can tell me about tissue damage and healing. What progress your wounds are making. It can't tell me if you're in any pain, or how you're adjusting to being in a place you doubtless never even knew existed, let alone expected to find."

He is keeping an eye on the tricorder for what it tells him, but he's also doing his best to watch his patient.

"The way you're moving that arm suggests you're in pain," he says, with a nod towards Enjolras.

[bienmourir]

Enjolras did not consider himself to be a bad patient, even now. A stubborn one? Yes, certainly. But at least he was usually agreeable to allow the doctors whatever they wished to do. He may not have had much to say to any of them, but he let them run their tests, take their samples if they wished. Was generally easy to work with; would roll here, move there when he was told, even if he did not give them much in the way of answers to their questions whenever they came. After all, what did he have left to lose here? Nothing. Everything that he had once valued seemed already lost to him.

His gaze dropped to his arm where it was folded carefully against his stomach, his silence near deafening in the expanse between them. Likely, it seemed as though he would not bother at all to speak any further, or answer Simon's question to continue the assessment. At long last, though, he parted his lips. Sighed, and began.

"There is pain," he agreed softly, "Though none of it is any less than what a man as I deserves. I should be dead. That I am not- that is what I have trouble adjusting to, doctor. That is what pains me the most. Do you have a tricorder for that?"

He lifted his head then, blue eyes squinting in stern judgement at the other's face, lips thinning as he awaited an expected answer.

[osirian_doctor]

There is no simple cure for 'I should be dead'. There never has been. 'I should be dead' is a judgment of the person making the statement, and Simon has no idea what the young man in front of him has done, or what sort of a person he may be. But Simon is a doctor, and as a doctor, there are some things that he holds irrevocably as true, and the fact that no patient of his should be dead is one of them. No person in his charge, no matter how much he dislikes them, no matter what they have done.

So his expression softens, somewhat, as he looks back up from the tricorder.

"No. There isn't. But there's also nobody here telling you who should live and who should die. I was dying when I came here. I'd just been in a battle, and I'd been shot in the stomach. I ... still don't know if I'd have survived if I'd stayed in my own world."

The tricorder shows satisfactory healing, as it should, with the surgery Enjolras has had. His mind, though, that is something harder to treat, even in a fully staffed and stocked infirmary such as this one.

"That doesn't mean that I should be dead any more than you should."

[bienmourir]

"You saw the nature of my wounds. They would have claimed my life, and you should have let them. Perhaps then I would be with my friends," and yet perhaps not. Did it matter? He was not with them; he had not died with them, as he had expected. As he had wanted, asked for.

"I did not ask for this, it was never my will- and what I wanted was never even made a consideration," he scowled. If he had known that DNR orders existed, he might have asked for one the moment they had found him, drowning in his own blood and quickly bleeding out.

"And now I am here, for god only knows how long," he did not even attempt to disguise the bitterness in his tone, gaze sliding away once more.

[osirian_doctor]

"Do you honestly believe anything would be served by your death?"

Simon, too, has seen death. He's seen his friend die while he frantically tried to save him, and he'd been there when they'd all realized that Wash wouldn't be joining them for the fight against the Reavers.

If the others had died? If River had been killed? If Mal hadn't made it back? Would Simon, too, have felt there was little to live for?

Perhaps. But that does not mean he is eager to allow that same sense of despondency to sink into a patient here.

"We didn't have the opportunity to ask your opinion. But many here choose to think of finding themselves here as an opportunity for a new start. Perhaps that is what you have been given."