How do you solve a problem like a Miran?
Posted on Thu Jan 11th, 2018 @ 1:50pm by Lieutenant JG Jai & Commander Jonathan Mantell & Chief Petty Officer Victor Corrino & Aaron Corrino & Rashane ch'Thaia
Mission:
Back Post
Location: Sickbay, Deck 16
Timeline: After "Somewhere in Neverland"
Tags: Jack, Jai
2674 words - 5.3 OF Standard Post Measure
The lift deposited the gangly trio of boys on Deck 16, outside of Sickbay. In fact, Sickbay was nowhere to be seen except on the small map displayed on the wall beside them, indicating it lay just around the curve. Cautiously, they urged on their curly-haired companion, who braced himself upon the shoulders of a uniformed boy about his height and another boy of Andorian descent, hopping on a good leg as his other dragged uselessly behind him. He accomplished a few steps before crying out and stopping, refusing to move any more.
"Computer," the boy called Jack intoned with his alto chords, "three to transport directly to sickbay."
The whir of the system could be heard, and shimmering lights played before their eyes as the matter that composed their bodies was broken down into a stream for transport. Moments later, though instantaneously to their eyes, the world resolved into the doorway to sickbay, rather than inside its sterile chamber. The uniformed boy with blond hair let his eyes roll in exasperation.
For a moment, he considered reporting the issue to the Transporter Chief. His mind searched for the name, until the realization came to him out of the corner of his eye. Hanging on his shoulders was Aaron Corrino, the son of the very same Transporter Chief who had nearly chased him off the ship on his very first day. At least, the boy figured, he should make it inside the Sickbay before inviting the wrath of an ill-tempered patriarch.
The doors parted for the trio, and sweet relief was steps away. He pointed to a nearby biobed, "Over here, Aaron. Rashane, can you lower it for him?" The trio hobbled to the bed, and then Jack took on the full brunt of his friend's weight until the bed was low enough for Aaron to sit on it. Calling out to the staff, the Miran boy brought attention to their plight and asked, "Can we get some help over here?"
It had been seriously dead in Sickbay all day. The most work that Jai had done today, other than re-stocking the cabinets, was treat Ensign Grezhenki's ingrown toenail.
Which, was probably a good thing. Apparently this morning, Doctor Sorenson had been called upon to treat Crewman Ricky's rather aggressive case of crabs. And, in the midst, discovered a new genus of pubic lice.
Join Starfleet Medical, they said.
See the universe, they said.
But no one ever mentions ingrown toenails or pubic lice. It's all boldly going this or final frontier that...
In any event, hearing the door to Sickbay pop open, Jai had stuck his head out from the medical lab. The half-eaten piece of pizza and the sound of root beer bottles clinking together was absolutely not indicative of an unauthorized pizza party that was taking place while Doctor Sorenson was off shift.
Re-purposing a padd as a make-shift plate, the boy deposited the mostly eaten slice onto Martin's desk as he cut through the Chief Medical Officer's office to access the main medical bay.
He saw Jack, whom he recognized from their meeting in the arboretum, along with a human-ish looking boy, and an Andorian that was helped the human-ish one onto a biobed.
"Scientific progress went boink?" Jai asked, a rhetorical question merely meant to take the place of the usual pleasantries. Swiping a medical tricorder from off a nearby medical cart, the Miran boy paused a moment as he lashed out with one foot and casually slung a step stool across the floor by the bed.
The nurse and orderly were coming out of the lab now, glancing back over his shoulder, Jai looked up at the nurse and noted aloud, "Get me five cc's anetrizine, please." With that, the young monk shuttered the tricorder and looked up at the frightened human boy. "Hi, my name's Jai," the Miran remarked. He vaguely recalled the patient before him from the catalog of pediatric patients. There were not that many. It was a name that started with an A. Alexander? Adam? " I'm going to give you something to numb the pain in your leg. Then I want you to lie back and relax, all right?"
The lone human among the group nodded meekly at the command, and put his head on the small pillow behind him. Jack stood by his side, watching with a sympathetic gaze at Aaron's miserable condition. Guilt wracked his small body, and though he was surely concerned about what the Captain would say, or what would happen once Aaron's father got there and realized what Jack had done to his son, the Miran's conscience was weighed down overwhelmingly with fears that he had lost yet another friend. And so soon on his new assignment, too. On his Vulcan ship, he'd had few of them by design, Vulcans were boring and difficult to get along with. Here, with kids his age, or at least his size, Jack had hoped for a better outcome. Now it seemed like he was going to be alone again.
Aaron tensed as the hypospray touched his skin, biting back a whimper. His brown eyes surveyed the uniformed boy in front of him with caution, Jai was unlike any doctor he had seen before. He knew Jack was ancient, even if he didn't look it, but surely this doctor wasn't the same, right? The thoughts faded from his mind as the medicine flooded his body, making it numb and his thoughts fuzzy. He gazed up at the paneled lights above, watching them blur together in his vision as the rest of the world seemed to carry on without him.
Passing the hypospray back to the nurse, the young monk quietly remarked, "You're doing great." Cradling the boy's ankle, the doctor tugged with a squeeze as he re-positioned the bone. "But I don't believe I got your name," Jai added.
Beside him, the nurse was already holding the osteogenic stimulator at the ready. Taking that, wordlessly, the young doctor began the actual work of knitting the bones back as they should be.
"Aaron," the weakened boy muttered groggily, his eyes half-closed from both the glare of the lights and the drugs coursing through his system. Nearby, Jack stood aloof, but the Andorian boy moved close, putting his blue hand into the pale boy's own. When Aaron turned to see who it was, Rashane gave him a smile, glancing warily at the diminutive doctor's administrations from time to time.
Jack wasn't paying attention when the doors opened again from the entrance to the medical lab, but he swung his head around to watch when he heard a young voice call out, "Whatcha doing? Someone sick?" A humanoid girl about the age of Aaron or Rashane approached the group, a half-eaten slice of pizza in her hand, which she stood chewing as she looked on.
"Not now, Veronica, I'm working," the nurse beside Doctor Jai said, and turned back to attending the small physician.
"You're always working, Mom," Veronica retorted, but she didn't turn away. Nestling herself up just behind Jack, loomiing with her neck stretched out, as if to emphasize the few inch differences in their heights, she added in a low voice, jutting out her chin to point at Aaron on the bed, "What'd you do to him?"
Jack looked at the girl, taking her indifference to the scenario with a sour face. "No," he protested, guilt rising in his voice, "we were just playing." That had been all they were doing, even if they got a bit rough. He hadn't meant to hurt Aaron, but now it was done and, with it, Jack figured their friendship. "What do you care anyway," he asked bitterly.
"Oh, I don't," Veronica dropped casually, making Jack even more irritated. "I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about." She paused for a moment, as if reconsidering her words. "I mean, I'm sorry for your friend, I guess." She managed a small smile at him, and Jack felt the heat on his cheeks abate slightly. "I'm Veronica."
"Jack," he muttered, turning back to the bedside operation. "That's Aaron who got hurt. And—"
"You're Rashane, right?" Veronica blurted out before the blond Miran could. The Andorian turned to look, with a small nod of his head, and then went back to ignoring her. "He's in my class," she said by way of explanation, "and Andorians are hard to forget. What being blue and all." She giggled alone at her own joke.
"Can you two take your chattering and go sit over there?" Nurse Betty intoned, glaring at the pair as she gestured to the other side of the room with her head. Silently, Veronica walked away, rolling her eyes as she went, and Jack ostensibly followed.
"Almost done," Jai noted aloud. The break had been a closed fracture, so there was no need for an autosuture. The osteo-regenerative stimulation was proving effective at re-knitting the bone back together. "Vascular regenerator," the young monk said, passing the osteogenic stimulator back to the nurse. Trading out the pieces of equipment in hand, the boy went to work repairing the series of blood vessels around the wound. It was really necessary, but would alleviate the bruising and improve blood flow to heal the wound.
"Could you go ahead and pull his patient file for me, please?" the young monk asked, as he made some fine adjustments with the tool in his hands.
Finally, shutting the regenerator down, the boy passed it to the nurse in exchange for the padd containing the boy's patient record.
"No mention of adverse reactions to metorapan, but let's do a script for bicaridine just to be safe," the Tibetan mused, as he entered the updates to the boy's record, and then passed it back to the nurse.
Moving over toward where Jack had gone to sit, the monk bowed slightly to demonstrate his respect to the superior officer. "He'll have to be released to a parent," Jai noted simply. "Would you like for us to make contact, or would you prefer to handle that?"
Without knowing the exact details of how Aaron had ended up as he had, it seemed prudent to offer Jack the option.
Jack nodded solemnly, bile rising in his throat as his stomach churned. Yet he had no need to see a doctor, his illness wouldn't show up on any tricorder scan and couldn't be fixed by drugs or bed rest. This was something that could only be fixed by confronting his fears and admitting his involvement in Aaron's injury to the boy's father. Chief Corrino had been the first person the boy engineer had met on the Vesta, and he was the last one he wanted to run into again. Nevertheless, he had little choice in the matter.
Moving away from Veronica and Jai, Jack took in a shakey breath. He swallowed, hoping to clear his throat of the ball of fear, but mostly he just got saliva. Tapping his combadge, the Miran said, "Commander Mantell to Chief Corrino."
The reply was quick and terse. [Go ahead.]
"Can you come down to Sickbay? You son, Aaron, was in an accident." Jack explained, quickly following it up with, "He's all fixed up now, but you'll have to come get him."
[I see. On my way.]
The Miran boy sighed, grateful at least for the brevity of the exchange. He considered leaving now, avoiding the inevitable encounter, but knowing it would resign him to his fate of losing a friend. No, Jack decided, planting his feet on the floor in front of Aaron, running away wouldn't solve anything. It was a disservice to both him and Aaron.
But that didn't mean Rashane should get involved in the blame. "You should probably go now, before Aaron's dad comes," Jack mentioned to the Andorian. A thick head of white hair nodded in agreement. Saying his goodbyes, Rashane departed the sickbay, leaving Jack and Aaron to wait with the medical staff, the nurse's daughter having conspiciously vanished as well.
It didn't take long for Chief Corrino to arrive, and embrace his son, who by this point was sitting upright on the biobed waiting. "Are you alright?" the man asked, looking over Aaron as any worried father would a son. He clasped Aaron on the shoulders, "What did I tell you about associating with him?" At that Victor Corrino gave Jack a stern look, and without taking his hands off of Aaron, addressed the Miran. "I want you to stay away from my son."
Jack looked forlorn, withering under the transporter chief's gaze. He hadn't meant to hurt Aaron, not at all. They were just playing, and then things got out of hand. A broken leg wasn't too bad anyway, not with Starfleet's medical capabilities. So why was Chief Corrino so upset? Jack tried to speak, but only breath came from his open mouth.
"Dad, it was an accident," Aaron cried, piping up to defend Jack and catching the Miran boy by surprise. The boys looked at each other, and at that point Jack knew he hadn't lost a friend. Echoing his earlier defense, Aaron said, "We were just playing. They didn't mean for me to break my leg."
The Chief's eyes rose at that. "They?"
"Yeah, a bunch of us were hanging out, it was just fun and games."
"And then you got hurt," Aaron's father said sternly, filling in the gaps.
"Well, yeah, but now I'm better!" Aaron jumped off the bed, and then grabbed as his father's arms. "Just kinda dizzy," the brown haired boy admitted, frowning for a second. He gave Jack a forlorn look and then glanced back up to his father. "I just want to back to our quarters."
"The dizziness will subside. It's a side-effect of the anesthetic," Jai remarked from beside the biobed. "He'll be groggy, but should be able to support his weight and walk on the leg without any trouble now."
Making a few final updates to Aaron's patient chart, the Tibetan boy handed the chart out for Chief Corrino to review if he liked. More importantly, sign the receipt that acknowledged the emergent care and documented that Aaron was released into his care. "He should get some rest," Jai advised. "When he wakes up, you likely won't even be able to tell that he was ever here."
"We can do that," Chief Corrino agreed, and helped his son down from the biobed. "Let's just get you home."
Jack watched as the two of them left sickbay together, son leaning on his father for support. Even Aaron's silent forgiveness didn't help fill the hole that had formed in his stomach, and as he stared at the closed doors behind their retreating figures, it throbbed inside him. It was a pain he would never seek Jai's help to resolve. It was something that couldn't be fixed by medicine.
"You shouldn't blame yourself."
Making his way around the other Miran, the Tibetan monk sought to interject himself into Jack's field of vision so that he was between the boy and the empty door into which Jack seemed lost. "Our bones aren't as developed as those of adults," Jai noted, in a very matter-of-fact tone. "Our bodies are designed for sudden and rapid growth, so our bones are less rigid and more prone to breaking. In other words, it was an accident. And that's okay. Accidents happen."
The Tibetan boy placed a hand on the other boy's shoulder.
If anyone could relate to feelings of guilt, it was a doctor. Sometimes all the knowledge, all the precautions, all the technology in the world couldn't provide the safety or security to stop a bad result from happening.
But Aaron was alive. And he was set to make a full recovery. That didn't always happen. In Sickbay or in life.
Jai let his hand fall away after another moment, as he moved back to see to the necessary medical records.
