Corliss Fortune: "Revelations Hitting Like That Time We Crashed In The Ocean"

[Corliss]

Personal Log of Doctor Zazi sh’Viakrik, stardate 2399.0214

This log has nothing to do with the previous mission, or at least, not in an official capacity. The takeover by rogue members of a Vulcan clan who designated themselves as ‘vampires’ have been arrested and are being put to justice, the ship itself is healing and the people who were injured have been well and truly tended to.

This is about the after.

I was in my office, cup of Katheka on the side, hardly touched. I had just finished an emergency surgery and was filling in requisition forms. Gods above we need as much supplies as the USS Tripp can carry right now. My door opened, and I wanted to snap at whoever it was. This was my time, the hour I had left to myself before being dragged into the fray, or being forced to be alone with my thoughts.

It was Jenny. She looked pristine as if this were any other shift on the rotation. Today she had on a beautifully tailored set of black pants, flat shoes, and a scrub top that could easily be shucked off in case of blood spillage. We had a lot of those recently. I was pretty sure this was not the scrub top she had come on shift clothed in, but better than my own doctor’s coat that, on the edges, wore a spattering of green and red blood.

Her blonde hair was perfectly coiffed in a bun, and she smiled at me, holding a platter with two cups of what I knew to be tea, a bowl of sugar cookies next to them. “Doctor,” she said, and I sunk lower in my seat, prepared for the gentle admonishing. “You’ve been up for nearly two days now.”

“Yes, and nearly half the ship’s been unconscious for the same amount of time,” I snarked back, despite knowing it was not her fault. I feel embarrassed about it even now, that in the face of gentle friendship, I snapped at the hand offering it. Still, she never wavered, stepping inside and setting the tray down on the desk, heedless of anything I was doing. She took a seat across from me, and picked up the cup, placing it in front of me near the PADD I had some files pulled up on.

“Just means our CMO shouldn’t run herself into an early grave.”

Those words had been spoken so many times. I was known for taking on multiple shifts, using the fact that I could sleep for only a few hours before jumping into the fray again to my benefit. It didn’t mean my coworkers didn’t worry, and I was sure that they had goaded Jenny into being the one to come and see about me. She was better at tampering my blood pressure.

I stared down at the cup as she took up her own, sliding the tray away after settling the set of cookies before us. Her hands, slender and pale, cupped the tea with a middle finger looping into the handle. She picked her cup up, settling it against her lips, the tendrils of steam rising every second. Exhaustion seeped into my very joints then, as if her entering and providing me with tea had sent a signal to my brain. ‘It’s time to rest now.’

My brain was a liar.

I watched her take a sip before settling the cup back down onto its small saucer, gifting me another easy smile, the blue of her eyes sparkling in the light of the office. “Doctor. Your tea.”

“Right,” I mumbled, and I cupped my hand around the tea, finger looping in the handle before bringing it to my lips. My eyes shut out of instinct, the srjula hitting my lips and giving a shiver down my spine. I lowered it, smacking my lips as I opened my eyes. “Srjula. You never fail to remember.”

“Three years together, sir,” she had said, a hand reaching out for a cookie, breaking a piece off to dip in her tea. “You act, every single time, as if it is our first day together, and that it is something of a torture to know you.”

Just as she knows me, I know her. I know the tea in her cup is more milk than tea, that she will dip the sugar cookie in it three times, tap it against the edge of the cup, then flick it as if trying to get the drops off. Only then will she attempt a bite of the cookie, and she will smile and compliment the cookie as if it were the first cookie she had received in her entire life.

My dark blue hand reaches out to one cookie, and I drag it to me as if the weight of it made it seemingly impossible.

I’ve never liked sugar cookies. But I like Jenny.

We eat in silence, Jenny’s nimble hands plucking up pieces and dipping them, while I tiredly watch it as if it were a private entertainment show, a jester putting on tricks to make me laugh. I feel as if someone were cupping my cheeks, dragging their fingers across my eyes and downwards, as if trying to force myself to sleep.

Jenny put her now empty cup down, letting out a long sigh that usually accompanied her finishing any drink sent her way. “A little quiet helps the soul.”

“So you say,” I grumbled, a barb neither meant for her nor anyone really. I’ve been told my bedside manner could use some work.

She nodded, brushing a hand across her forehead, bits of stray hair following her hand and pressed into place. “I daresay our counselor will have his hands full.”

Oh noble Syron, he who uses logic above feelings. If I was quite honest, and I usually am, he’s been good for the crew. He is stalwart, unbending to anyone’s anger or pleading, and quite honestly a breath of fresh air. I hadn’t gone to see him, but after this last…hoorah, well, it may be in my hand of cards this time.

“Syron’s good at his duties,” I had answered, and she smothered a laugh. “What?”

“Normally you have something quite prickly to say about folks. Has Syron gained a little recognition from the mission before?”

Of course he had. The darned man had put himself in danger just to try and save me from a falling rock. He was foolish and hard-headed and I gave him a piece of my mind only to get laughed at in my face.

I admire people who think they can do that. I admire it more when they’ve saved my life. Still does not save him from me calling him many, many things under my breath.

Jenny just had that knowing smile on her face, and I grimaced, looking away from her for a moment before my attention slowly wavered back to her again. “He’s…okay.”

“So he’s wonderful then, in Zazi speak.”

I sometimes wondered was it really the fact we had been working three years together that we knew each other so well? Or had it been something else?

Her smile shifted to a frown in my silence, her head tilting, allowing her bangs to slide forth once more across her forehead. “Zazi.”

There it was. That tone. That tone that had came forth in our last year of Academy, that tone that popped up so many times aboard the USS Tripp. It was one that I knew by rote. ‘Zazi, when have you last slept? Zazi, four days ago and for three hours is not healthy. Zazi, as a professional, you of all people should know the dangers of burnout.’

I felt my shoulders climb up to my ears, my face darkening from a rush of blood to my face. “I know,” I mumbled back at her, hoping this conversation would not be had. “I get it, but I have to get this all done, no one else is going to be able to do it.” My antenna quivered in the air, twitching and shrinking down lower as well.

I heard her sigh, and didn’t know when my eyes had started to drift down. I looked back up at her, and her face softened. “Being CMO is hard, and I know you’ve only been for the last year. Have you…considered…taking a break?”

Laughable, and she knows it. The last time I ever took a break was our first year here, when the ship had been assaulted by a memory-eating nebula, our minds adrift and unknowing. I had felt…a lot that day, and had taken a week off to destress. 

As did many, many people, for many other reasons.

“Breaks are for others. We’re low in this department until a new influx of Ensigns, and it’s only us and the other four nurses.”

“It’s not fair to leave it all on you, Zazi. You have just as much importance as anyone on this ship.”

“My duties,” I had said, my hand curling into a fist and shaking under the desk out of…adrenaline or anger or something, “are never-ending. I won’t put them off on someone else, I am not…that way, and you know that.”

“I do,” she had said, looking at me as if she could physically peel away the layers and see what made me up. What triumphs and failures I had experienced, what life had put me through. “But it’s no harm in asking for help.”

“I don’t need help!” I had shouted, and now, hours later, I feel just as horrible for doing so. Jenny had not done a thing to me, and yet here I was, shouting at her, standing up from my desk and motioning wildly, almost knocking my tea over that she had brought me. “I don’t need help, I just need to get this done! Once it’s done, I’ll-I’ll just have more to do, more notes to put together, things to send to Syron or my opinions on those who need to go to work and those who shouldn’t, th-the replacement hand for Traxxon…” 

The list was never-ending. There was always one more thing to do. Syron needed updates for the mental wellbeing, Traxxon’s hand that had been necessary to amputate, Kyra’s fear of inheriting her mother’s heart condition. One more thing, one more thing on top of another, and I was drowning-

I hadn’t realized when she had side-stepped my desk, nor when her arms wrapped around me. My own hands came up, grabbing at her shoulders as if to push her away, but they didn’t cooperate. They just kept her closer.

She smelled of antiseptic and flowers. Her hands were grounding in a way better than any meditation I had attempted. The texture of her shirt, how it appeared to be flowers but felt slick and smooth at the same time, how it bunched under my fingers.

I’ll never forget the way it felt in my hand that day.

Our relationship was never more than cordial, than professional.

…today I learned two things, both of them just as terrifying as the next.

One: I may be in love with Jenny.

Two: I needed lighter duties, or to step down as CMO.

Temporarily, at least. The work is killing me, literally. My blood pressure has yet to really recover. I know that the USS Tripp is the last on the list to get new recruits, but I’m going to force Starfleet’s hand. CMO will have to wait until I can handle it again, when and if that happens. 

And when it does, I hope Jenny’s by my side when it happens.

…she’s a great nurse, an even greater friend…I’ll just…not think about anything else but that. That’s the appropriate way of handling this, yes?

What am I doing. I’m talking to a PADD as if it can answer me.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with Syron. We’ll…we’ll discuss this. First about me stepping down as CMO, or at least taking on much lighter duties than I had been, and…then about the…about Jenny.

For now, I’m going to rest, as I promised I would do. 

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Log, end.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Corliss