Ensign Imril - Back Talk (The Polite Kind)
Chris Taylor
(( Primary Sickbay – Deck 7, USS Artemis-A ))
Imril: ::Wincing:: Oooh! There it is!
Kyle moved his hand along Imril’s lower back, pressing gently as he did so. When he got to the impacted spot, Imril winced again.
Morgan: Hmm. And it’s been like this since Galaris?
Imril: Well, if certainly wasn’t there before Galaris. I think it would have come up during all of the running and ducking.
Kyle once again had his tricorder in hand, this time waving the scanner over the area of Imril’s back that seemed to be affected.
Morgan: Is this the same spot that you had the shrapnel removed?
Imril had to think back to the moment when they removed their field jacket. The stings of pain that rose up and faded away which were the places were glass had only gotten partway through the false leather, and had been pulled away with it. And the brighter spikes that were the pieces which remained afterward.
Imril: A bit lower, I think. But to be honest, with all the adrenaline, it’s possible I may not have ‘felt’ all of it.
Kyle’s brow furrowed once again as he keyed several commands into the tricorder.
Morgan: But did you feel any relief after the initial bit was removed?
Imril: Yes, definitely. Enough to carry on with the mission. And by the time the medic was done, the adrenaline rush was over. I remember the crash coming down on me while I was still on the biobed, watching the little pieces of glass hit the collection pan.
In that moment, far above the war-torn planet and in the care of Starfleet medicine, they’d allowed themselves to relax. As relaxed as one could be with the memory of all that violence ratting in one’s ears. And the determination to go right back down as soon as they were medically cleared to do so. But that little bit of permission was all their body needed to slip into the deferred aches of adrenaline loss. Their knees were the first to go, sore from all the running.
Morgan: Response.
Imril: Sorry, I’m not being very helpful in pinning down the problem, am I? I suppose it must feel like I do sometimes when someone with no engineering background is trying to explain to me something that’s going wrong with their equipment. Needing me to fix it, when they can’t explain what the problem is.
Morgan: Response.
Imril: Come to think of it, maybe I picked up a hitchhiker later, in the bunker. Towards the end of the mission, the insurgents had my team pinned down in a field command center. They shot the place up pretty badly once they got the door open. I thought I got under my desk in time, but…?
Imril wanted to shrug, but didn’t let themself for fear of agitating the trouble area again.
Imril: I was nowhere near a window that time, so if there’s something in me that’s not glass, we have an answer.
Morgan: Response.
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Ensign Imril
Engineering Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240110I12