ten_fwd | [Sickbay]: Round One scans and vaccines

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[Sickbay]: Round One scans and vaccines

[ Captain's Log: a Meeting with the Senior Staff. Wherein Picard discusses what to do with their new, er. "Guests." ]

As you enter sickbay tonight, escorted there by Lieutenant Worf and his security detail, you may notice it isn't all that unusual. There are no terrifying devices or humming machines you could 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 Chief Medical Officer Crusher herself, she's well-groomed and kindly, wearing her teal uniform and a blue coat. No masks, no rubber gloves. The most dangerous thing about her is that maternal look in her eyes; the one that scolds you for not doing your homework, or leaving your dirty dishes in your room.

The crew makes no promises for Dr. McCoy, on the other hand. He isn't one of ours. You should probably watch your neck.

"All right, don't be shy," Dr. Crusher calls out as you enter. "Come in and sit down. It's just a scan and maybe a hypospray, nothing to worry about."

Probably.

[ooc: This is an open log for everybody. Tagging isn't mandatory, but going to sickbay is. So 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, we have Bones McCoy and Beverly Crusher (NPC) on deck, so if you'd prefer one over the other just specify it in your tag. If you would like more details about sickbay, here's the wiki page. If you haven't made your OP yet, you can assume the doctors will want to see your character shortly after they arrive.]

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Leonard stared at the scanner like it was broken for a minute and then he sighed. Great, someone else that wasn't human and not in the system. Fantastic. But he'd been through this before and at least she was reading as some life form, not as a damn sun. At least that was working on his favor. The colony of microbes showed, but the biobed would give him a better reading on that.

He set the medical scanner aside. "Lie down for me. The biobed needs to get your complete readings so we can log them in the database. It'll help us out in case you're injured in combat. Let's us know what can save your life. But I'll need to ask you some questions about the physiology of your body - location of organs, inner workings, that sort of thing. Your race isn't logged into the system." He paused, giving her a mildly concerned glance. "I'll also have to take a blood sample."

See, he's calm about it. You missed the freak out from earlier. "What do they call your race of people?"

There's a look in the direction of John, presently being examined by the other doctor, across the room. But it doesn't hold even the full pass of a microt. She expected this. Everyone she has run into has claimed to be human. From Earth. Or was already speaking the English language that was the gibberish they'd all become accustomed to John spouting.

"Sebacean." Cool. Calm. Collected. Not reflex out of place.

Even when the thing running through her head is the needle coming toward her eye.
Is the last time someone needed a sample from her. What that did. What she couldn't undo.

Aeryn turned, pulling her legs up, and lying down in the bed. Willing herself to continue breathing absolutely normally. Even if her hands may have tightened on the sides of the bed as she was laying down on it, and her focus on the distance between her hand and her pulse pistol was leaned toward a handful of times just as a thought.

As the biobed started spitting out readings, Leonard started annotating information about Sebaceans. The bed didn't log any in the past, so the blood sample had to be done. The microbes popped as a harmless colony that aided the communication portion of the brain. He looked up more information, but there was nothing in the system about it. Another scan with the mental device would need to be done. The DNA popped back another unknown race, that different from the main one that presented itself, almost overlaying. That was unusual.

"Your race often have two different DNA patterns read out?"

There, first question. He'd have a lot if the answer was 'yes'. Or 'no', really. Because two DNA strands, how does that even happen?

If silence near blatant ignoring is a normal response form Aeryn, one that people grow accustom to, whether that is her new teammates or a man who claims to have fallen through a hole in space or these creatures, these people, here on this ship, this is still a completely different kind of silence. The one meeting the doctor's question. This silence is sharp as a knife.

The one shoving itself with brutal ruthlessness straight through Aeryn's ribs to press her lungs flat.
Tripping every trigger as it slides in. Through every single year. Every word of doctrine on Genetic Purity.

This is not Crais's blind grief turned madness. This is her fault. The price of her weakness.

"No."

That silence.

Leonard had been through a lot of awkward silences in his day, but that silence. It told him everything - she didn't know. Hadn't known, rather. Then he asked. His eyes flicked down to her in concern.

"Do you know what it is?"

He wasn't sure he'd get a straight answer. He wasn't sure even if she knew what that strand of DNA was. But he had to log it as something. Anything. He'd make up a name if it meant putting the damn thing in the database.

"Yes."

Complicated.

One part of her wanted to very suddenly, very violently, rip it from her skin, as though that was all it would take. Digging her fingers into her flesh, any part of it, every part of it, until it parted and bled, and she could drag the remnants of NamTar's experiment out through whatever pain that might cost, until she was just herself. Pure. Flawless. Superior. Peacekeeper.

Until she never gave in. Was never that scared. That desperate to have an option. To not be the only one of them without one.

"What is it?"

Again, wasn't sure he was going to get a straight answer. He might just have to make something up. And he definitely needed a blood test now, but with how tense she looked, he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to grab one easily.

Aeryn's jaw knitted for a moment. He wouldn't understand. His machine already hadn't recognized her. It was naming the greatest error in her judgement, and prison, there. A contamination in her skin deeper than Crais's edict of her exile. The requirement of being saved from being nearly erased completely while still in her own skin, while it was anything but hers suddenly.

As her body and mind were changing entirely to one like Pilots.

"It belongs to a species we call Pilot."

Leonard made more annotations, marking the DNA strand as Pilot and adding it to the database. Honestly, it seemed harmless enough, so he decided not to press the matter further. She sounded like she had enough problems to deal with. Although he was curious how that happened, knowing wasn't mandatory. She seemed human. And there was a possibility it was simply dormant. The blood work would tell him more. If he needed to ask questions again after that, he'd find her.

"Alright, sit up for me." He picked up an empty hypospray and walked back over. "I need to take a blood sample."

If she moves this time, easy and stiff at once, it's because it's easier to follow orders.
Hands wraps the sides, and she pushes upright. Turning to let her legs hang off.

It always has been. This is like every other time. Scans. Blood work.

Your race often have two different DNA patterns read out?

The answer isn't simply No. The answer is never.

Leonard takes the silence as an okay to take a sample. He reaches out for her arm, not really looking at her face and starts to press the hypospray against her skin. It's not quite in yet, not quite taking the sample. He half wonders what the hell caused a second DNA strand to pop up on her system, wonders if this Pilot race would show up on the ship elsewhere. Maybe he could question them then.

Because questioning her about that right now seemed like a terrible idea. She was just so out of it.

Never is too strong. Mixbreeds were born from time to time. But they were reviled. Considered mongrels. Hunted down. Ferreted out. Taken away. Born from Sebacean's without service or dedication to keep them true. Outer colonists. Deluded fools. Those not like her and those she'd served with from birth. Born pure. Raised pure. Eating, sleeping, and believing in the doctrine for genetic purity as well as every other.

Crais might have slandered her record and exiled her with false accusations of being "Irreversibly Contaminated" for defending John's idiocy and incapability in killing his brother. But she'd been the one to do this. A needle in the eye twice. Making her blink, too fast. She could still hear her own voice I wanted him to find me a place where I could belong. I didn't want to get left behind. I'm so scared.

Which was the cowards way of lying. Saying anything but that she'd been so very, very stupid.

But she had the choice not to be again. It was what soldiers were supposed to do. Learn, and adapt.

Which is why Aeryn's hand snaps out viper fast and hard when the instrument grazes her, catching the doctor's hand and dragging it from her skin, while she's pushing off the bed, and twisting to push him toward it, block him against it, while saying. "No." A hard, fast order. But it's not at him, even when it's inches from his face. It's at Namtar, and herself, and letting it happen again. One pinprick. One promise. That would cost her everything she was. Again.

The grasp caught up off guard, which is why he was so quickly wheeled around and pushed against the bed. Not that he would prove much of a fight against someone with actual combat training - he wasn't much of a fighter at all - but he was there, in a far more compromising situation than he would have liked.

Two security guards started coming over, moving to grab her, but Leonard held up a hand to stop them, his eyes trained on Aeryn's face. They remained close. If she were to hurt him in anyway, they'd have no choice but to respond, and he didn't want that.

"I need you to calm down."

His voice was a bit tense. He wasn't freaking out, but the edge showed that he was a little concerned. Any argument or fight would result in a stream of swear words. He'd already made an idiot out of himself earlier by doing that, he really didn't want a repeat and another reprimanding glare from Dr. Crusher.

Lucky for everyone involved, Dr. Crusher is just finishing up with her current patient when this all goes down. John's been keeping half an eye on Aeryn, but the chip on her shoulder is so big it's hard to tell sometimes when she's about to snap and when she's just at rest.

"Whoa. Whoa, Aeryn, stop!" he hollers, tripping over himself to get to McCoy's station. He forces himself into her line of sight; eye contact is key in getting her to listen. "What happened? Are you okay?"

The memories of NamTar are still fresh for John, too. He's never seen Aeryn lost or unsure before, hearing her tell him she's scared is going to ring in his head forever. He's on her side. Even if that means getting her to calm down and avoid arrest, it doesn't mean he'll dismiss whatever she's obviously feeling.

Everything else in the room slides into a buzzing hum, clear and separated, aside from the near considerable threat that lets her hand slip back to the top of her gun and the Doctor's face. The other people in uniform don't scare her either. They can't make her anymore than McCoy can.

The deadly certainty of that sliced through suddenly with John's voice, and then, just as jarringly John's face. John shoving himself into the center of this, them, demanding her attention and making everything burn to a higher pitch at his question. Was she okay. Was she okay. After what he'd already seen and had to save her from. Only she wasn't. Saved from it. It wasn't undone.

When the idea of him knowing that, too, what she'd become, was fresh blistered bile and revulsion.

Makes her words hard as nails and just a exactingly sharp, without having moved. "I'm fine, Crichton."

When John ran over, Leonard glared at him out of the corner of his eye.

"What the hell are you-"

But he stopped. No. They knew each other. More than Leonard knew either of them. He needed to trust him with her. It bothered him - he didn't fully trust anyone or anything on this ship anymore - but quite frankly, he didn't have a choice. So he fell silent, his eyes falling back to Aeryn as he attempted to keep his mouth shut. They needed to talk, and he was forced to stay and listen.

John places a careful hand on Leonard's shoulder. It serves a dual purpose of asking Leonard to trust him, to relax and let him talk, and showing Aeryn that Leonard isn't a threat. John knows him.

"Yeah, 'cuz you look fine," he says. The sarcasm is applied lightly; he's trying to get through to her, not set her off. "Look, Aeryn, I know this place is foreign to you, and the doc here, maybe he's not the most personable guy in the universe. But nobody is going to hurt you. He isn't NamTar, this isn't the Uncharted Territories, and the people here just want to help. I promise."

He holds her gaze for a handful of seconds, willing her to calm down and take her hand off her gun. Glancing at McCoy out of the corner of his eye, he drops his voice and the tenderness that was in it. "What were you trying to do to her?"

It's only half an accusation. Aeryn said she was fine, but he knows something set her off. The other half of his intent is to get McCoy to explain everything calmly, so that the Peacekeeper commando doesn't shoot him in the face.

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[Sickbay]: Round One scans and vaccines

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