Maintaining Sanity

Posted on Wed Sep 7th, 2022 @ 7:08am by Lieutenant JG Calanthe 'Cal' Diaz & Commander William Gerhard
Edited on on Wed Sep 7th, 2022 @ 7:14am

Mission: Mission 6 - Memory
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Recuperation Period, Prior to 'A Parting Gift'
2371 words - 4.7 OF Standard Post Measure

It was the repetitive, monotonous beeping that got to her first.

Not that Calanthe had thought to complain initially. If there was one constant in the universe it was that it was very easy to determine when the brunette was unwell because she tended to consent to being confined to one place and given enough gentle sedation to aid sleep. A secondary predictability might have been that you could also tell when she was feeling better because she became insufferably antsy about exactly the same expectations. During the first few hours of her recuperation, Cal hadn't really minded the sound of instrumentation monitoring life signs and alerting the medical staff to changes in condition, or simple alerts for medication administration, because she'd been too drowsy to really notice them. As her strength had returned, without her headache necessarily abating all that much, the intrusion of noise had started to cut through sedation and drill a hole right through the centre of her patience.

Sitting up didn't improve things much, adding a dishevelled halo of dark hair to the effect the bags under her eyes was creating, but it allowed her a better view of the room and the rows of huddled bodies responsible for the litany of blips and beeps. Next to her own bed, the monitor fluttered its own change in cadence as an attempt to tattle on her and a subsequent attempt to glare it into submission didn't produce the desired results. Devoid of anything to throw at it, Calanthe opted instead to press the heel of her palm against her left eye and muttered an unintelligible curse word, French no doubt, under her breath.

"Something wrong, Ensign," William said as the slight disturbance from the adjacent bed woke him. Not that he had been sleeping much either, but Cal's frequent tossing and turning had kept him somewhat lucid. He opened his eyes and looked over at her sitting up in the bed. He remembered when they had brought her in, and given their recent interaction, he had thought it ironic that she had been placed in the bed adjacent to his. Her previous words to him still stung, and they had not spoken much since her arrival. Sickbay was already an anxious place for him, and he was counting the hours until he could get back to his own bed.

"Why is this place so damn noisy?," the ensign in question groused, though Cal moderated her volume to at least avoid adding to the din. As was typical of the brunette, Calanthe hadn't really given much thought to their last exchange and possibly would have taken a moment to recall it accurately without some prompting. At the time, chastising him had been sincere though without any real vitriol beyond the usual fiery undercurrents that peppered her normal interactions. There certainly hadn't been any intended unkindness, though unintentional thoughtlessness was always a possibility.

She had a tendency to fire up and then move on.

She also, when it was all said and done, had a bigger heart than mouth, for all people had a hard time believing it, and saw nothing to be gained from bickering with her best friend's boyfriend. Not with everything that had happened. Not if he was feeling anywhere near as rubbish as she was.

With some effort, Cal swivelled herself to sit on the edge of the bed facing him and squinted at the recovering security chief. In a decidedly softer tone, she asked, "You okay?"

"The noise probably has something to do with making sure we stay alive," William replied as he winced slightly and rubbed his chest. His ribs were still sore from having CPR performed on him, and he was sure the bruising would remain for a while. He looked back over at her after noting her soft tone. He nodded in response, "My chest feels like a shuttlepod landed on it. I'm just glad those headaches are gone." He'd noted that since Smith had departed the constant throbbing pain behind his forehead had been receding.

Calanthe struggled to ignore niggling doubt given that, unlike William, the pain she'd been experiencing over the last week or so had only increased and now lingered, admittedly curbed by current medication protocols. Nevertheless, she considered herself the luckier of the two and perhaps had the sluggishness of fatigue and pain to thank for the fact that she was able to apply some thought before speaking for once. There was a wealth of 'we told you so' sitting between them that served no purpose and, despite being the first to tease the hell out of him in good nature, Cal had absolutely no intention of capitalizing on being correct in this instance. There was really no sense of triumph to it anyway.

"What happened anyway?"

It was a tentative question, though quite like the woman's tenacity for information-digging. There'd been no opportunity to catch up on reports of Smith's earlier attack, not when it was proving hard enough to get anyone to tell her details about her own. Constant reassurances that she was safe and that everything was being done to make sure Smith was gone did not, in fact, make her feel better.

William looked over at her before answering her question. The events were still fuzzy, and he suspected that Nurse Daglish had been running interference with his team. She'd been adamant that he needed rest and the reports could wait, but Lexi had snuck a few in when she had visited. "It all still comes in flashes, but When I was going to reinterview our guests I ran into Smith," he said before trailing off, "No, not Smith. Whatever 'it' is. Anyway, He tried to talk his way out of the situation, and as he did so he revealed that he knew more than he let on. I'm told that's when he tried to 'feed' on me, so I shot him." He trailed off again and looked down at his hands, "Next thing I remember is waking up on the deck, people standing over me, not really being there in the moment. Then everything went black again."

Wincing as his story unfolded, partially from sympathy but also as a direct result of yet another medical alert going off elsewhere in the room, Cal sat in silence for a moment, which finally proved she was capable of it, and then screwed up her nose. "At least you shot him," she eventually approved, her expression darkening. "Which isn't even half of what he deserved."

Her gaze wandered then, towards the other beds, the source of bleeps and blips, casualties of a malicious creature's absolute indifference. Cal wasn't bothered quite so much by her own attack as she was theirs; she, after all, had never gone out of her way to avoid provoking Smith even when he was pretending to play nicely. These people had just been trying to eat and, stuck 150 years from home, had arguably already suffered enough.

"Do you think he's really gone?" Her attention turned back to the Lieutenant, Cal regarded William with guarded conspiracy. Like him, every time she'd tried to seek information, she'd been told the same set of platitudes and then been expected to sleep.

"From what I can gather yes, but I think the question is if he can come back," William replied as he pondered the thought. The rumors he had heard was that Smith had vanished, but the fact he knew that Smith could jump between realities didn't mean they were fully rid of him. It was this thought that concerned him the most. If Smith returned, how would they know?

"Coming back would be risky," Cal countered, desperately wanting it to be true. She'd certainly tried to convince Smith that his time on board was limited, though Cal herself had only a very sketchy memory of her attempts. "If he even has that much control over it. I mean, he dragged the escape pod with him and didn't seem to realize."

William thought about that for a moment. It was true that if he returned it would be risky, but if they could figure out a way to detect him that would even the playing field. "True, but one of the last things I remember him saying was that he could jump at will. But he was able to leave of his own volition, and he took two MACOs with him," he said before looking back over at her. "I heard you tried to stall him, keep him occupied so my people could get him," he said with a tone of respect.

Cal frowned, puzzled yet intrigued. Her recollection was spotty, just bits and pieces that wouldn't slot together into a coherent narrative. "I don't really rememb...wait." Her eyebrows shot up. "Someone threw a chair at him. I think it was Reade. Oh, I hope I'm not just making that up." A slow grin rendered the brunette's expression decidedly more familiar before Cal considered his remark and hunched a shoulder. "From what I can recall, he was letting his ego run off with his mouth so it just seemed better to keep him boasting. A bunch of corpses aren't going to care that you've beaten them, right?"

"It was a smart move, keeping him occupied like that. Are you sure you didn't miss your true calling as an Armory officer," William asked before laughing slightly. It was true, her actions were brave. By keeping Smith occupied, she was buying time for the security teams to respond and get in. Not many people would've done that, but he knew Cal was a fighter.

"Trying to recruit me, Lieutenant?" Cal grinned and then raised her eyebrows. "By doubling Lexi's workload. She might kick both our arses for that one." Offering a huff of laughter at the thought, Cal stretched her head back in an attempt to get her neck muscles to relax and continued, "She was here earlier, right?" Vague recollections, through sedation, painted the picture of a concerned yet indignant communications officer hovering somewhere between their two beds. "She okay?" Thus far, Cal hadn't been able to track everyone caught up in Smith's rampage.

"Yeah, she was here. She seemed ok, worried about us both," he replied with a slight sigh. Lexi had been there and checked on her roommate before William. She had promised to come back in the morning and give him a heads up on what was going on, but she'd also been adamant that she wanted him to do what the doctor ordered. "For someone who hates being doted on, she sure does enjoy making me listen to the nurses," he offered in commentary.

"Complete hypocrite," Cal agreed, her tongue wedged firmly into her cheek. Whilst known to be a little capricious in offering any kind of predictable allegiance, the linguist had come down several times firmly on Gerhard's side, particularly right after Lexi's accident. It was a privileged position, one that enabled her to swing like a pendulum to whatever side she thought deserved priority. Right now, a certain degree of camaraderie afford Will the lion's share of her empathy. "At least she's okay though," she added in more subdued tones. "She and I were working on something." For an odd reason, it felt a little disloyal to add that they'd gone over his head to another authority. "And we split up. I..." Cal frowned and then exhaled softly. "I'm glad I drew the short straw."

William looked over at her with a sympathetic look. He didn't respond and the silence between them served its purpose. He knew what she meant. Lexi could've easily been in the bed next to his. He wasn't sure how he could've handled seeing her in sickbay twice. After a suitable time elapsed, William cleared his throat before speaking. "It's my fault. I didn't take her seriously when she came to me with her concerns. I rationalized it by claiming it was memory issues. If I'd taken her at her word maybe I...," he said before trailing off. His brow furrowed in frustration that he should've done more.

Most people, given the state the Lieutenant was in, might have felt compelled to soothe over any feelings of self-recrimination. Calanthe, who couldn't lie to save herself, wrinkled her nose in a way that didn't immediately rush to correct him. She'd been ready to bang his head against a wall; trying to pretend otherwise wouldn't sit right. "Probably a learning curve," she eventually settled on, agreeing without adding her own condemnation to his woes. "And who knows," she continued kindly, succumbed to a soft heart because throwing a pillow at his face could wait, "Maybe you trusting him as long as you did gave us time for a few things to fall into place. This would have been harder without Ben and his people on board, for a start."

William nodded slowly as he thought about what she said. He looked back over at her. "Perhaps, and I would agree that Jameson and the others were a benefit. Hell, Jameson saved my life," he said rubbing his bruised ribs as he did so. Before he could respond anymore, the partition surrounding the two biobeds was pulled back. The duty nurse stood there with her hands on her hips. "You two should be sleeping per doctor's orders. Do we need to bring out the sedatives," she asked.

"No," Cal managed after taking a moment to regather her wits, "but I may need a change of clothing if you insist on sneaking up like that."

William shook his head in response before replying, "We're sorry, nurse." The nurse gave them both a look before sliding the curtain back and the sound of her footsteps receded. William turned and gave Cal a wink, "Busted. She's right though, we should be sleeping."

"Ugh." Despite the inherent protest, Calanthe reluctantly unwound her legs and slid back down onto the bed. Flat on her back, she stared up at the ceiling and rolled her eyes to the sound of a resigned sigh. "If I ever complain about not getting enough sleep again, just throw me out an airlock."