Previous Next

Limping to Therapy

Posted on Sun Mar 27th, 2016 @ 9:24pm by Commander Angelica Fairchild & Tallara Lifal-Lesteh

Mission: Talosian Perversions
Location: Counselor's Office

Having volunteered to speak with the counselor without any prodding, Angel had set up an appointment with Tallara following her release from sickbay. However, she'd neglected to factor in how long the walk from her cabin to Tallara's office was. Already a few minutes late, she paused outside the door to lean against the bulkhead and take some pressure off her sore leg. She'd broken bones before, but they'd never hurt so much after being repaired. Then again, she'd never broken her femur before either. A moment passed before she was certain of her balance again, and finally she tapped the chime button to request entry into Tallara's office.

"Come in," Tallara called, already sitting in her preferred comfy chair and looking at a PaDD. The remains of a carafe of coffee and a set of mugs were on the table in the middle of the room.

Trying her best not to limp or hobble, Angel entered the room. It was odd how she still felt so wobbly despite medical having declared her physically fit for duty. "Sorry, I know I'm late."

"It's fine. It gave me a few minutes to finish up a letter." Setting the PaDD aside, Talarra motioned to the coffee pot. "Interested in some coffee? or something else to drink?"

"Coffee's not good for the baby, and I can't stomach it right now anyway. Maybe some ginger ale?" That been a safe bet even since before Angel was released from sickbay. She liked the ginger and it seemed to keep her stomach settled so she wasn't taking so much zofran and phenergan.

Tallara leaned forward and moved one of the mugs to a strange circular pattern in the table and tapped on a screen on it. Within moments, the mug had been filled by a tiny replicator with ginger ale. "I hope a dry Canadian ginger ale is to your liking. Please, have a seat."

"Canadian dry is perfect, thanks." Angel made her way over to one of the other chairs next to the table, carefully sitting down. Picking up the mug of ginger ale, she took a few sips of it. "I don't normally visit counselors. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to talk about."

"Whatever you feel you want or need to. If you want to talk about your family or a recent trauma or the weather, it's fine." Tallara assured her with a soft smile. "And if you need guidance for something, I make a pretty good sounding board."

"Just recent trauma could keep us here for weeks. I'm not sure some of what I saw and heard over there was real..."

Tallara nodded thoughtfully. "I happen to have weeks of free time. Especially now that my number one patient is on an away mission. How about we start with how it started then?"

"Well..." Angel wasn't sure if Tallara meant how this particular fiasco of an away mission had started or when she'd started having nightmares and other manifestations of anxiety. "Nightmares are nothing new to me. I've had them for over a year... that's why Sinek taught me how to meditate, so I'd sleep better." Hearing those words while she was awake was new, but she wasn't going there just yet. "Anyway." She took a sip of her soda, stalling a bit. "I thought going to the Cube was a bad idea, but I sure as hell wasn't letting Enalia go over there after what happened the last time she went to an alien ship."

"Ah yes, when she was taken over by that energy being. I'm surprised you let her take a runabout on a two week vacation." Tallara commented. "Please, go on."

"I didn't make that decision," Angel replied a bit defensively. "Sinek did, as acting first officer, while I was in the ICU." She didn't know why it bothered her so much that Tallara had assumed it had been her decision, but it did. "Everything was fine when we got there. It was just a creepy dead Cube."

"What do you mean by dead? Was it a ghost ship?" Tallara asked.

"I mean we didn't see anything moving. Not a single drone in sight, no sounds from anywhere. Just... silence except for our own voices." Silence, that is, until the creepy voices started talking. Angel still wasn't entirely sure they were real, but Nexi had heard it too. "It was weird. It reminded me a lot of the Romulan cold storage station we visited before our time jump."

"Not even the hum of machinery or engines? That does sound creepy..." Tallara was also a bit creeped out just from the description.

"No hums, no whines, nothing. But then there were... I don't know if they were announcements or telepathic messages meant only for certain people to hear or..." Angel trailed off, thinking back to the writing they'd seen on the walls. "There was weird purple writing everywhere."

"So there were voices and strange writing? Borg lithographs are normally green... I wonder if being purple had any interesting meaning..." Tallara mused.

"I don't know. I couldn't read it." Angel shook her head slightly. "But still, everything was fine until Wang suddenly started turning into a Borg."

"How did that happen?" Tallara asked, concerned.

"Well, it was dark. We couldn't see the floor very well, and we didn't realize we were surrounded by Borg Tribbles until Wang had already been assimilated." It was the honest truth, but even Angel had a hard time believing it.

Now Tallara was incredulous. "Borg... Tribbles? Was that the best they could assimilate?"

"Oh no, it gets way better. There were Gorn... fire and ice breathing ones."

"There were... What?" Now Tallara was starting to worry over her own sanity for hearing that.

"I'm not making it up! How do you think I broke so many bones? Certainly not running from Tribbles." Angel was starting to worry that maybe Tallara thought she was crazy and had imagined the whole thing. "I swear, every word of it is true."

"Ok, then please go on. Wang was assimilated by Borg tribbles and then a Borg dragon gorn thing attacked you?" Tallara would have to check the reports, but this was sounding pretty crazy.

"Uh." Angel hesitated for a moment, trying to remember everything in the right order. "Chief Klem threw a grenade at a cluster of Tribbles, there was some shouting, and then a fire breathing Borg dragon Gorn attacked us. I don't remember if I hit my head the first time then or if it was just my shoulder."

"Ok... After the fire breathing one attacked, what happened?" Tallara prodded.

"It chased us. We set up some spatial charges on the run, and then we headed back to the shuttle." Angel wasn't sure she was making any sense at all at this point.

"You couldn't kill it? And it chased you?" Tallara picked her PaDD back up and started tapping at it furiously to get the reports from the other three survivors just to corroborate this whole seemingly fantastical story.

"No, I couldn't kill it. I dropped my phaser when I fell, and the projectile weapons don't work against Gorn. The bullets just bounce off." Angel's tone sounded a little cross, like she realized what Tallara was doing with the PaDD.

"Holy shit..." Tallara mumbled, having found a copy of the shuttle recorder video. She sat there and watched a Borg Gorn shoot ice out of its mouth, freezing the hull and one of the security guards, then the fire breathing one physically ate him. this was like nothing she'd ever expected to see - especially from a race of cold emotionless cybernetic drones.

"Yeah, it was pretty fucked up." Setting her drink down, Angel crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring the twinge of pain that radiated through her shoulder and down her arm. She wasn't sure if Tallara actually believed her now or not.

Clicking the PaDD off and setting it aside, Tallara looked back up at Angel wide eyed. "How did any of you even survive?"

"Sheer dumb luck, I guess." Angel shrugged slightly, looking away.

"So... How do you feel about all of it? Your mission succeeded, right?" Tallara prompted, trying to get back on track.

"Two young officers died and I damn near didn't make it back. How do you think I feel?" The mission had been successful otherwise, but Angel felt like there was more to a mission than just finishing the final objective.

"If I had to guess, pissed off at yourself, frustrated with the loss of life, lucky to be alive yet guilty that you survived, embarrassed over getting hurt, and unsure of yourself from what you had to deal with." Tallara was calm now as she spoke.

"...that was a pretty good guess," Angel muttered, still not looking directly at Tallara. The description she'd just heard was pretty spot on, actually.

"What do you want help with first then?" Tallara said softly, hoping Angel would look back at her.

"I don't know." It might not be the answer Tallara was looking for, but it was an honest one. Angel couldn't quite bring herself to meet Tallara's eyes, but she did turn back in that direction at least. "I was in Security for a long time. The anger and frustration... I've dealt with those feelings for years. I've had other critical injuries in the past... I've led a lot of teams where someone didn't make it back. But it wasn't until I came to the Hera that I started surviving missions I had no business surviving while other people died to save me."

Tallara nodded. "And that doesn't sit well with you when they sacrifice themselves so their commanding officer can continue on."

"It's not a comfortable feeling," Angel admitted a bit reluctantly. Had Hawke not returned for her and physically put her in the shuttle, he'd have lived but she'd have been dead. It was a repetition of when young Ensign Jones had pushed her to safety moments before he was dismembered and eaten by the Borg dogs on that station. "But the worst of it is I froze. I was petrified, unable to move or give orders because of a voice that might not even have been there."

"What was so bad about this voice? What did it say?" Tallara asked softly.

"I'm not sure it would make any sense to you, to be perfectly honest." Angel sighed a bit, not sure she should share what the voice had said.

"Frankly, nothing about this is making much sense, but if it helps any, I still believe you." Tallara replied.

"Look up the report titled 'Bonnie-kin'." Angel didn't think she could do the voice justice, but she'd put its exact words into that report. "It's from four years ago, if you only go by the computer's dates. For me it was last year."

"Ah yeah, the Romulan cold storage facility. While you were all missing, it made the news back on Jupiter station." Tallara nodded, familiar with the public records already.

"Yes, but they didn't have my log with the exact quotes in it. Unless someone stole it..."

"No, that wasn't in the public news." Tallara admitted. "You heard those same words on the cube then?"

"Same words. Same creepy voice. There might still be an audio recording, actually." Angel had no idea what the recording might be named, but she knew they'd had one.

"I'll look it up later." Tallara said, gesticulating with one hand. "This voice freaked you out and you froze then?"

Angel nodded slightly, clearly not enjoying where this conversation had turned to. "I couldn't breathe. And this was before I broke two ribs and shattered my collarbone."

"Sounds like you had a panic attack, which is perfectly normal in a situation like that." Tallara reassured her.

"I know what it is... I've had a few of them." Angel decided to leave out the one she'd had when the alien thing had possessed first the computer and then Enalia. "They feel like you're dying. And I've been at death's door a few times, so yeah. I know what that feels like."

"Of that I have no doubt." Tallara said. "How did you overcome this panic attack?"

"Honestly? I didn't come out of it until we were back in the shuttle. Whole mission, I couldn't breathe. I functioned. I gave orders." Angel didn't know if that made sense, but it was true. She suspected that was why so much of it was a blur.

Tallara nodded some more in that somewhat sage and attentive but sometimes frustrating way of hers. "I can only imagine what it was like over there. You got four people home safely even with all that."

"Yeah. Somehow." Angel didn't know if Tallara was trying to be helpful or not, and it was kind of frustrating.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you were given a medal and promoted, personally." Tallara said thoughtfully. "Not that that helps you come to terms with any of it. Is there anything specific about the incident that's bothering you more than anything else that you'd feel comfortable sharing your feelings about?"

Angel shook her head. "It's more that I can't deal with it all at once, and yet I have no choice. It's already happened. And then I came back to find out I was pregnant and neither myself nor the baby was certain to survive. It's too much."

"That's why we're here. So you can talk it out and go through it at your leisure." Tallara said with a soft smile. "Personally, I'm glad that you made it back and both you and your child survived. You're less than a month along, I assume?"

"Um... yeah. They said 'embryo' not 'fetus' so maybe a week at that point... I was in the ICU for three days, main sickbay for two... so I'd guess maybe two weeks. Ethan could tell you for sure, if you wanted to know." Ethan had probably told her, but Angel didn't remember. Her brain still felt scrambled despite having healed from the concussion.

"That makes sense. How does being a mom make you feel? Or has it even sunk in yet what with all that's happened with that duel with the Vulcan woman and the away mission?" Tallara questioned.

"I'm not sure how I feel. I mean, we hadn't even talked about getting married until the T'Zal was about to arrive, and we certainly never discussed kids." Feeling like she needed to do something with her hands, Angel picked her soda back up and just held it in her lap.

"Understandable," Tallara replied. "It's a lot to take in. Personally, I think you handled that duel as well as anyone could hope to. I was there watching from the buffet table."

"Um, thanks. I guess." Angel knew the fight had ended quickly and likely looked impressive, but most of what she'd done was reflex. Not conscious thought. "I do better with a threat I can face head on. Anxiety... I can manage it with meditation, but it's hard. Sinek's had to help me."

"I'm a big fan of meditation. It keeps my own violent impulses to manageable levels. Is the form of meditation he coaches you in helping? Would you be interested in trying other methods?" Tallara asked curiously.

"We use a lamp and guided imagery. It works for me, and I didn't think it would at first. When I was in Security I used to just go to the range and lock the doors so I could shoot things in private." Angel hadn't told many people that, but it seemed like Tallara really wanted to help her. She needed to be honest. "Emotionally and mentally it works anyway. Nothing's worked so far to help with pain, and sickbay took away my pain meds when I was discharged." She shifted a little in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position that didn't put any stress on her various sore spots.

"I could probably get a mild painkiller into the system for you, but it would be tablets. I have one running for the Captain and they seem to work ok for her," Tallara commented.

"That would be fantastic, if you could." Angel wasn't sure how much help a mild painkiller would be for her leg, but the other soreness wasn't as bad. She figured a tylenol tablet was better than nothing. "I get headaches, bad ones. I don't think I could deal with that on top of what I'm feeling now."

Picking the PaDD back up, she tapped at it for a minute or so before setting it aside. "I mirrored most of the Captain's stuff to you. Sumatriptan, Morphenolog, Anatriptan THC, and Tramadol. Try not to use more than two of each in a day."

"I'm going to try not to use it at all unless I have to. Thank you." Angel suspected she'd at least need something for pain once she made it home, but she'd wait and see if it was really necessary. She set her drink back down and readjusted her position in the chair. "I don't mean to fidget. I'm just really uncomfortable."

"Is there anything I can do to help? More cushions? Would you prefer to lay down?" Tallara had noticed and she'd been concerned, hence her willingness to prescribe some tablets into the replicator system for Angel.

"I breathe better sitting up still. Starfleet only thinks they've perfected precision bone reconstruction." Angel sighed lightly; any position that took weight off her sore leg either made her breathing more difficult or was too awkward to maintain. "It's my leg, mostly. Ethan fixed the break, but the nerves and muscles around it are still unhappy. And the blood flow isn't back to normal, so it just aches."

"I don't doubt it. They'll probably be unhappy for some time to come. Pregnancy is not kind to the body." Tallara stated, nodding some more.

"So I've heard." Angel paused for a moment, thinking. She hadn't found a comfortable way to sit at home either, other than on the bed or sideways on the couch with her leg supported but not bearing any actual weight on it. "At home I try to sit so I can have support from my hip through my ankle, usually with a pillow under my knee. Maybe next time we can try that."

"I'm all for anything that helps." Tallara said with a bright smile. "Did you want to go home and get some rest now? Or did you want to talk some more?"

"I'm getting kind of woozy." That wasn't really an answer, but Angel wasn't sure if she was still okay to walk home or not yet. She'd probably benefit from resting, if she was able to rest once she got there.

"You could rest here if you need to. I don't have any more appointments today and my bed is free. I was planning on meditating a while as well." Tallara offered.

"I hate to take up any of your furniture, but I'm not sure I can make it home. I hate feeling this weak." Angel knew she hadn't been in sickbay long enough to get so weak and wobbly, and she hadn't been pregnant long enough for it to be the baby.

"You're probably still in shock. And that's a professional opinion." Tallara stood and offered Angel a hand so she could help her to the offered bed if she so desired. "Either use my bed or tell me who to call to help you home."

"Sinek's busy working. Could maybe call Amelia." Angel took Tallara's hand and gingerly stood up, most of her weight on her left leg. "Just send her a message. She can come get me later."

"I will then, but for now let's get you comfortable." Tallara said as she helped Angel to her own bedroom. It was sparsely decorated and the shades over the windows were completely drawn. About the only personal item in the room was actually a picture of several researchers - a Vulcan, an Andorian, several Humans, and a Trill.

Angel snorted at that. 'Comfortable' was a relative state for her now. She took a brief look at the photograph as she sat down, wondering who the people were. Most of them wore lab coats, so she assumed they were scientists of a sort. That meant she wouldn't know them. "I can get settled. I'll be fine."

As soon as Angel was situated on the bed, Tallara headed back to her desk and sent a message to Amelia. Thankfully, Amelia was one of her normal patients, not that that had given Tallara any hint of her plans to resurrect her lover. Getting a quick reply message, it seemed Amelia was in the middle of something but she'd still be there within the hour.

 

Previous Next

labels_subscribe