Midshipman Dennis Heldane
EDF Atlas Cargo Bay Slums

Lying still on his side, facing the blunt blandness of a plastic divider, the crumpled form of Dennis Heldane was motionless in self-imposed reverie. Internally he writhed and roiled with pain, more so from the old wounds to his soul than from his fresh one to the flesh. Wallowing in his own sorrow was a much abused coping mechanism of his. It was a way of shutting reality out, completely insulating the psyche. Heldane’s logic was that if he denied all input from the outside, well then he certainly couldn’t be expected to act within it. It was bullshit and he knew it, but suspension of disbelief was a powerful force. A coward’s trick. In this state of mind he did not deny that he was a coward and this made things much easier for him. A coward lost the right to commit to action. A coward should not act for they would do more harm than good. Dennis proved that during his outburst when he stood before an armed mob and allowed his nerves to fray. Allowed someone to be killed hereby escalating the situation. For this he chastised himself, and mercilessly at that.

“P-p-please God ma-a-ke me stone.” He begged in near silence. Dennis was not a superstitious man by nature, he had seen enough suffering in his life to deny even the most remote possibility that any benevolent deity could possibly exist. In a proper state of mind he knew this most likely denied the possibility of cruel gods too. However, Dennis was an opportunistic believer. He did not engage in religious ritual or expand his knowledge of religion beyond what he already knew in desperate times and he never thanked any would-be gods for any miracle or blamed them for any disaster. In matters of the soul however when his will is strained Dennis tends to blame the gods he does not believe in for his predicament. What god would torture him with a twisted mind and encumber him with cursed flesh? Why no mercy? For what heinous crime which he may have committed in another life he did not have, was he paying the price for now?
Such irrationality strongly appealed to Dennis’s engineered helplessness.

Dennis’s silent self-victimization was crowded out by the verbal and physical confrontation between Lt.Cmdr Medina and the renegades. It was a curious thing to hear the doctor from a different perspective. Up until now Dennis had only heard her scorn her patients and with unnecessarily cruel intent, but doing the same to an armed man who probably wanted nothing more than to put a bullet in her head was something else. It was the difference between condemnation from a position of power, and defiance from a position of weakness. Dennis wished he had that kind of willpower. Yet it was not admiration or respect that began to well in Dennis’s gut but a far more sinister emotion. The amalgam of contempt and jealousy, the most insidious of the seven deadly sins that nobody ever openly admitted to.
Envy.

His pulse quickening with that special kind of hatred, Dennis found he could not remain still. God how he craved the doctor’s power! With not-at-all friendly competition, Dennis willed himself to stir.

“Get. Up.” He growled through clenched teeth and lurched upright on his rear and bracing against the wall rose up on resistive legs. Starring at the entry to the clinic where the doctor stood before the two guards, Dennis noticed the doctor’s hands were bound. The captain was there too, and her hands too were bound.

He also noticed that his were not.

Lt. Aiden "Roamer" Morrow
Sickbay, EDF Atlas
Melchoir System

The day was shaping up to be a banner one for the young pilot. Fresh off a public berating by his Wing Commander in the middle of a briefing and pulling the glorious position of manning the alert fighter -- sitting in a ready launch tube for half the night just in case something actually happened on what was turning into the most mundane joint mission in the history of manned space flight -- Morrow brush off the sleeve of his utility dress uniform and stepped through the hatch leading down the hall toward the Atlas sickbay.

If the day wasn't bad enough, he'd been putting off his standard round of injections and was going to catch more hell if he didn't get them taken care prior to his next launch. The standard joke was that you needed at least twelve shots to avoid getting an infection just by stepping onto one of the old Titan-class cap ships, but in this case it seemed that the Chief Medical Officer running things aboard the Atlas was either short of a sense of humor or suffering from on overabundance of satisfaction in sticking flyboys with big needles. Either way, Aiden wasn't going to weasel his way out of this one.

"Just in time, Lieutenant," a voice sounded to his left as he entered the bulkhead secured sickbay, causing him to meet the figure of Nora Grey, sporting a rolled-up sleeve and a bandage covered her own arm. Apparently the command and bridge staff weren't immune to the new regulations, either.

"What's the matter, they worried that you deskchair types are in danger of some nasty papercuts?" Aiden flashed the best smile that he could manage under the circumstances, never much of a fan when it came to needles, doctors, or even being around blood and sick people.

"Something like that," the young communications specialist said with a nodding, slipping on the jacket of her duty uniform and sliding off the examination table where she'd been seated. Black hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail behind her, giving way to exceptionally clear skin and bright blue eyes. "Althought I think they saved and extra long one just special for you."

"Well damn, thanks," Morrow shot back with a glare before Grey offered a smile and headed back down the same way from which "Roamer" had come just moments before. Good to know that some people were having a good time with getting filled up to their eyeballs with god-only-know what kinds of drugs. It wasn't long after the officer allowed his eyes to trail Nora Grey walking again that the technician fielding all of sickbays vistors for the shift was before him and checking another name of the clipboard.

"Lt. Moor-oh," she said, mispronouncing the name with all the concern and care of a leaf blowing on the wind, "last curtain to your left. Take off your shirt and have a seat, the doctor will see you in a moment."

"Right, thanks," he said dismissively, but not before the technician had already dismissed his presence and moved on down the line. Aiden was beginning to feel like a cog in a machine, just another running on the assembly line. Still, he found the curtained-off "room" and dutifully removed his jacket and shirt and waited with a long sigh.

On the other side of the curtain, someone was puking their guts out into what sounded like a bucket. Or a flight helmet.

A banner day.

Lieutenant Commander Delilah Medina MD
EDF Atlas MedBay

Previously...

“Are you sure this is proper? To be offloading so much of our supplies?” a nurse quipped. Delilah found herself standing in the primary medbay’s pharmacy, peeling off tabs and counting off additional vials of antiviral vaccinations. “If everyone gets sick, then we’ll be in trouble. Right now we’re not and we can prevent that trouble from coming. Keep shooting them up,” she instructed. The brunette was quite focused on the slew of vials before her but no sooner had the nurse left with a shrug than her fingers started shaking. The lieutenant commander exhaled deeply and set the vial of vaccine in her hand in a basket with twelve others. Gripping the edge of the steel table on which she was working, she tried to brace herself for the panic that seemed to continuously re-emerge. She was the bitch who ran things now, what with their chief of staff dead along with their direct Medbay CO. That left her unofficially in charge and making this decision.

Vaccinate as many as possible. If there’s an outbreak of anything we’re all dead out here. I have next to nothing in terms of formal drugs to dole out. All I have are vaccines. I had better use them. Her decision had been within perfect rational action in her mind. Yet all of her staff were barely following through with the protocol, including that last nurse. The woman was the ninth person that day to ask her the same question. Should we really be doing this? The vaccines were meant to prevent illness. They were also in foreign space, facing foreign bacteria and illness. The change in environment would be hard enough for some, even though the EDF Atlas itself hadn’t altered. Given their complete lack of supplies in the face of disease, even battle, she didn’t know what else to do.

“Ma’am?” one of the nurses asked. His name was Brad Dawes she remembered quickly. Delilah blinked twice and turned her head viciously to face one their male lieutenants. He was one of the few staff she had that hadn’t yet pressed her nerves and better yet, he was good with the patients. They call that bedside manner. Oh Lord how many times she’d been told she didn’t have any.

“Mhm?” she hummed, sighing again as she collected the basket of vials and moved beyond the storage area to their main medical area, designed much like standard Earth Emergency Rooms at the moment, providing curtained off areas for every patient in their cue. Apparently they don’t want the officers seeing each other shirtless.

“Nurse Hale is off duty. We’re now short staffed,” Brad announced. “I’ll be on the floor now. Have to make sure things are getting done now anyways,” Delilah half smiled, moving a gloved hand to her hair to brush the wavy locks from her eyes. Her most recent haircut was proving troublesome. The woman had called it layering, making her cheekbones more pronounced. Instead, half her hair refused to stay in a ponytail. She’d have to bug one of the other lieutenants for bobby pins or whatever she could to keep it out of her face. If she wore her surgical cap around everywhere, now, when she was trying to convey confidence in what she was doing, would likely only disturb any of the officers coming in for this. Not to mention the aggressive campaign she had planned for any of the passengers who weren’t crew, given that they were eons away from EDF health standards.

Brad nodded in response to her comment and moved, discarding his old latex gloves to retrieve a fresh tray set up with the prescribed doses and vials. Under his arm he maintained a tablet which flashed the information of the latest lieutenant to check in.

Delilah moved over to her primary nurses station, a circular hub close to the middle of the MedBay’s layout. Drop screens projected information as to who was in what curtained area and which staff were on the floor and who was off and how long they had before they would return. The new programming was something she’d just instituted but it was helpful to know who was on and off the clock and for how long. Delilah set the signed out vaccinations into a rolling trolley of other vials and supplies. When each officer checked in at the door, their information would allow a nurse to draw up the specific doses. Depending on their field and station they would face specific vaccinations. The more exposure they had, the more they got. As Delilah began to schedule in the next round of shifts it popped up on the touch screen that Lieutenant Commander Aiden Morrow checked in. “I thought we had covered all of the flight deck personnel,” she clucked, touching her finger to the corner of Morrow’s name to drag it to a tablet on the desk to her left. She set aside what she had been working on and the screen returned to normal. Delilah picked up the tablet and Brad came to look over her shoulder absently.

“He’s late,” he answered her, pointing to the stamp date in the corner that indicated when he had been initially called for his round of vaccinations. As the pilot walked by, Delilah watched him exchange words with another crew member, his eyes lingering more than she would have thought appropriate. “I’ll take this one,” Delilah smirked at Brad. “Be nice!” the lieutenant quipped. Delilah rolled her eyes. “Enough of that. Get back to work, all of you,” Delilah barked and at that came the loud struggled noises of vomiting from curtain three.

Delilah pulled a white doctor’s coat over her black scrubs, taking the tablet with her and a tray of several vials and pre-loaded syringes loaded to Morrow’s specifications. The doctor was quick and she didn’t doubt that he had been in the curtained off area for long. Part of the program required them to be fast on their feet. They had a lot of people to see and she had a rule with her staff on how long they could allow a person to wait. Delilah knew it would be ill of her to break her own regulations and so she was fast, whipping the curtain open and stepping inside the small area. Morrow was seated and shirtless. She bit her lower lip, glanced at him and moved quickly to close the area again.

“Lieutenant Commander, I’m Dr. Delilah Medina,” she introduced herself though she didn’t look directly at him. The brunette kept her back turned to the pilot momentarily as she fished through a small cart for a pair of fresh gloves. Snapping them over her hands, she stood tall and turned to him, flicking her head so that the loose strands of hair remained out of her eyes.

“So, what’s kept you Morrow? I have twice the reason to give these vaccinations to you in a less than pleasant way,” she taunted him, glancing up from the tray as she moved to withdraw specific doses. The tablet with his information was set next to the tray of vaccinations and she eyed his weight and height, mentally crunching the numbers on the fly before she stabbed the caps with the syringe tip and withdrew the appropriate amount. Three needed to be prepared, the other two were spring loaded needles measured predetermined doses. Apparently, on top of her vaccination scheme he was due for regular shots as well. Fun for me, not for him.

“Unfortunately because you’re a pilot and you're overdue, you get twice as much as the others but from the looks of you,” and here she paused momentarily to let her eyes take in his physique, “I’d say you’re no baby and you can take it, but I’ll pin you down if I have to.”

Unfortunately, Delilah couldn’t say why she was rambling off the way she was. When she looked up in his eyes, she saw charm. For a pilot, he lacked that rugged look that accompanied most of the flight deck crew. Instead he was well kept and, unlike herself, appearing well slept and fed. I need a break and I can’t even take one.

“Just remain seated upright,” she instructed, moving to his side and pulling the cart with her. She pulled a stool from the corner of the curtained off are and took a seat. Delilah pulled a handful of cotton balls into her lap before she took his right wrist with her left, gently guiding his hand to face palm up to quickly check his circulation. “At least one of us has been eating,” Delilah commented, seeing the healthy blue of his veins trailing up the length of his forearm. Dropping his hand she proceeded to wiping the skin of his forearm with an antibacterial swab. Here, she dropped her bedside manner completely. She focused on his arm the shots before her. Were it some other medical officer attending to him, Delilah didn’t doubt they would try to take to him to distract him. Delilah didn’t feel that kind, especially seeing as he was late. Instead she pulled the first syringe into her left hand and pulled the skin tight with her right on his arm. “Deep breathe,” she instructed before she stabbed the tip through his skin and into the muscle of his deltoid. The spring loaded mechanism in the first clicked audibly and she didn’t doubt that he felt it. “Exhale,” she instructed, swallowing herself and discarded the used syringe into a bucket of medical waste. “Four more to go.”