Ensign Jania Nis - Counseling the Counselor
Jania Nis
Except for a bad case of food poisoning, there hadn’t been many serious incidents on Deep Space 14, so Jania had been able to relax long enough to start getting bored in sickbay before Lt. Stendhal entered. Maxwell’s cat had been fun for a time, but Haggis had disappeared to prowl other parts of the ship after he'd realized they wouldn't replicate him more tuna.
When someone finally arrived in sickbay, Jania was almost a little happy to finally have something to do.
Stendhal: Hi Doctor ...Nis, right? Nice to meet you! I’m Counselor Karen Stendhal.
Nis: Hello, yes, we’re Dr. Jania Nis. You can call us Jania, though.
oO Or call us Nis -- the symbiont is important too. Oo
Jania didn’t like the formality of the term ‘doctor,’ but she did feel like she was leaving Nis out when people just called her Jania. Still, it was important her patients were relaxed, so Nis could shove it for the time being. Jania was fine.
Stendhal: Hi, I’m here for a medical check. It should be all in my medical file. The short story is that on my last mission, an alien device caused me to split in two. And on the first try, Karen2 was also shot into a transporter buffer.
Nis: Oh. Yes, we’d heard about that. Sorry for your twin--that must have been rough, psychologically.
Stendhal: Well yeah... That Karen was a bit, um, aggressive.
Karen made a reassuring gesture with one hand.
Nis: Okay, tell us more. So she was placed in a transporter buffer?
Stendhal: Well, after that, she was rematerialized, and I think she tried to bite someone.
Karen seemed to speak with her hands a lot. This wasn’t a problem until she mentioned the fact that her copy had tried to bite someone. This time, when she waved her hands around, Jania leaned back nervously and cringed.
Nis: Right …
Stendhal: Don’t worry, I don’t intend to bite you.
Nis: Oh, we’re not . .. excessively worried about that. :: Rubbing her chin:: Tell us a bit more about what happened.
Stendhal: So, I don’t know the technical details, but I was transported again and rematerialized together with her. End of story. And if you look through my files, you’ll find that about four years ago, I had problems with my DNA integrity due to another alien device.
If that was the case, the biobed should figure it out pretty quickly. Anything deleterious would probably be symptomatic.
Nis: Are you symptomatic?
Stendhal: Response
Nis: Well, we’d guess you might experience sped-up aging, for example. Less common would be mutations, but you've always had that tail, right? Just kidding ... heh ... sorry. A compromised immune system is pretty common--have you gotten sick at all lately?
Stendhal: Response
As the councilor spoke, Jania turned on the biobed to scan her DNA. It also scanned her thought waves.
Nis: Your DNA looks good. There’s some signs of damage, but it’s mostly corrected itself. We assume that’s from your previous experience. As for the most recent one, we’ve heard the issues were caused by a changeling, so it’s possible the replica of you was not actually made from your body or, shall we say, ‘essence,’ in any meaningful way.
Stendhal: Response.
Nis: How do you feel about it, though?
It felt somewhat weird to ask a counselor how she felt, but if there was no indication of physical damage, emotional damage was the main concern …
Stendhal: Response
Nis: That sounds rough. What have you been doing to take care of yourself?
Stendhal: Response
----
TAGS-TBC
Ensign Jania Nis
Medical Officer
USS Octavia E. Butler NCC-82850
O240108JN2