Medic!

Posted on Thu Feb 2, 2017 @ 5:27am by Lieutenant JG Mar Megara & Lieutenant JG Zander Devereaux

Mission: An Orion to Die For
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: MD 3 || 1345 Hours

"Of all the stupid, bone headed, imbecilic, stu...wait...I said stupid, didn't I?" a short, black haired heavily muscled man muttered as he walked into medical while holding a blood-soaked rag around his left hand.

"MEDIC!" he bellowed as he looked around.

Meg blinked and looked around for a doctor, but did not see one. She was technically a doctor, this was true, but she was also just starting her internship. Still, this seemed like simple wound healing and she'd done a lot of that at the Starfleet Command Infirmary, so, after only a half second's hesitation, she grabbed a medkit and hurried over to the bio bed nearest the rather good-looking, if short man. "Right up here," she instructed, taking out her tricorder to check the wound. "Ai mi Dios! What have you done?" she added, spotting the rag wrapped around his hand.

Zander looked up and nearly fell over when he saw the Klingon woman approaching him. "Oh shit...Kendra?" he asked, getting even paler than he had been at the blood loss. Then he looked closer. "Wait...you aren't related to a Lenaris Kendra are you?"

Meg blinked again, this time in surprise. "I cannot say I have ever met her," she replied, beginning to scan his hand. "I am Mar Megara, daughter of Brost. What is your name?"

Zander took a closer look at the woman by getting within a foot of her and sniffing, then he nodded. "No...you aren't. I recognize the smell of crazy," he said as he moved to the biobed. "EPS conduit blew during the battle and stupid me hand my hand right beside of it making repairs. I've gone from Damage Control Specialist to Damaged Control Specialist."

He paused and looked at her. "What are the odds?" he said in a half whisper. "Of all the starships in all the quadrants....." He shook his head and remembered the question she had asked him. "Zander Devereaux's the name, Engineering's the game."

"Well, it is nice to meet you, Zander," replied Meg, closing the tricorder and pulling a dermal regenerator out of her pack. "There are three broken bones in your wrist, but luckily, they are simple fractures, so I'm going to take care of the cuts and abrasions first. Oh!" she said, suddenly remembering that humans don't like to sit in pain any longer than necessary. She took out a hypospray and loaded it with a local anesthetic. "For the pain," she said, pressing it to a spot on his arm just above his wrist.

"You'd win me over better with coffee," he said with a sigh as the analgesic kicked in. "This is the second time an EPS conduit has gotten that hand," he said. "I'd do better with a duranium hand because this one keeps looking like a Kl...nevermind."

She afforded him a half grin as she began unwrapping his hand to see the damage. "I can help you with that, if you like," she offered. "It is just as easy to cut a hand off as it is to fix it up."

When his hand was unwrapped, it looked like a burned, bloody mess that was only vaguely hand-shaped on the side where his thumb and index finger were. He winced. "I'll pass on that, Doc," he said. "Maybe a note saying to stay away from EPS conduits."

"Or at least wear protective gloves," she said, setting to work on the worst areas first, scanning with the tricorder periodically. "This... this is bad. I have, however, seen worse. I shall have you patched up in no time."

Zander laughed. "Do you really think gloves are going to protect me?" he asked as he noticed her accent for the first time now that the pain was gone. "Wait....why are you speaking with a Spanish accent?"

"Because I was raised in Venezuela, on Earth," she replied. "My mother and I moved there after my father died. She owns a pet shop."

"How'd ya manage that?" He asked her as he watched her work on his hand. "For that matter, how'd ya end up in Starfleet?"

"The usual way," she answered. "I applied and was accepted. Or did you wonder why I joined?"

"Why ya joined," Zander clarified, but to him it was pretty much the same thing said in a different way.

"I have wanted to be a doctor since I was about 8 years old," she replied. "And I figured, why not see the stars while I am practicing medicine?" She finished the worst of the burns and started in on the cuts. "What about you?" she asked.

"My Uncle Tom got me into engines when I was fifteen," he said. "From the moment I first got my hands dirty, I knew it was what I wanted to do with my life. I moved from personal transport engines to shuttles and small freighters, then aimed for the great birds of the galaxy. Took me three tries to get into Starfleet and it's where I've been the past twenty years."

Meg smiled. She didn't have any particular reason for wanting to be a doctor. Nobody had made an impression on her. For some reason, whenever anyone would ask her what she wanted to be, she would reply, "un médico!" "I am not sure why I decided to be a doctor," she said, scanning his hand one more time before tackling the last of the cuts. "I think, perhaps, I thought that is what everyone wanted to hear and once I said it, I felt I had to do it."

"Why doesn't matter as long as you like doing what you're doing," Zander said. "You're doing a great job on my hand and that will get me back to fixin' this beauty before the shift is done. Unless you order me to take six hundred milliliters of coffee and call it a day, Doc."

"Once I get these bones healed, you will be good as new," she replied. "Or, well, as good as you were this morning, anyway."

"Does that mean no coffee and the rest of the day off?" he asked as if she had sentenced him to a penal colony in the Gamma Quadrant.

"It is not the end of the universe," she said, swapping out the dermal regenerator for an osteogenic stimulator. "Although, probably nobody would fault you for taking an extra hour for lunch."

Zander laughed. "It's no fun to eat alone," he said. "What time do you get off?" he asked and a moment later wanted to run headfirst into the nearest wall as fast as he could go.

She gave him the amused sort of look that one would give a kitten chasing a laser. "1600," she answered, curious as to what he would say or do.

In for a strip, in for a brick he mused. "I meant for lunch. We have a kickass restaurant on deck ten called The Black Hole and they serve the best real food on the entire ship."

"In that case, I can go anytime, as long as there are enough personnel here," she answered, finishing up with the second bone and moving onto the final one.

"There's two hundred people in Medical," Zander pointed out. "Yeah, they may not be all on duty at the same time, but I doubt one person would be missed. Consider it a thank you for healing me up."

"It is my job, after all," she pointed out.

"It's not a job, it's an adventure," he countered. "Are you ready for an adventure?"

"I think you will find," she said, shutting off the osteogenic stimulator and leaning forward slightly, "that I am always ready for adventure."

"Then once you get done wrapping me up, we can go have a Hasperat wrap and wash it down with a gallon of good ale," Zander said.

Meg laughed, a lovely deep bubbling sound that seemed to come all the way from her toes. "Oh, I think I will join you," she said, taking out her tricorder one last time to make sure everything was healed up nicely. "I could have a lot of fun with you."

"You have no idea, but you will," he said as he looked at his hand and gave it a tentative flex. "Feels good, but I need to give it the empirical test to know for certain."

"I am almost afraid to ask," she said. "But, what exactly is the empirical test?"

"You're kidding, right?" Zander asked her. "How else will I know if it works right if I don't wrap it around a mug of coffee?"

She laughed again. "Somehow, I was expecting something much more... exotic," she replied.

"You've obviously never had good coffee if that's your expectation," he said with a laugh. "So you ready to roll?"

A quick glance around revealed plenty of doctors and nurses around, so she nodded. "Quick, before someone gives me something to do!" she replied.

"That's the spirit!" Zander said as he hopped off the biobed. "Next stop...The Black Hole and beyond!"