Lt. Kim Stapledon - In the Clear

[John Smith]

((Counseling Office - USS Eagle-A))

At Counselor Viridis' prompting Kim told her about how she'd handled her latest mission.

Stapledon:  Well...  Yes, the mutations of the animals on Ondo were disturbing.  I used the block stacking tetri game that the ex marine psychologist on the Chin'toka recommended after the nuclear bomb blast I was in to decompress a little...  And then I played with my cats.

For some reason she found it hard to remember the name of the game.  She'd heard somewhere that it came from an Earth language spoken by a tough people who lived in a cold place.

Viridis:  From nuclear blasts to feline therapy. Very well. ::She typed a brief sequence into her PADD, her gaze fixed on the screen.::

Stapledon:  Well just for a little.  Then I helped hack into the AI that was running the terraform.
She seemed confused.  Kim felt a brief surge of anxiety and then forced herself to relax.  

Viridis: Sorry, what did the cats have to do with any of it? I notice a shift in your posture. Is there something else on your mind that we should discuss?

Kim stopped, realizing she might have been avoiding the topic of Frontier Day.

Stapledon:  Well...  It's been a couple of years.  I think...  I learned a lot from it.

She thought of the last nightmare she'd had about Frontier Day.  It had been over two months ago.  Her dream journaling program had helped her capture it all after she'd woken.  

Viridis: Okeey... Understood. Do the events of Frontier Day and your time with the Collective still disturb you? How would you characterize the quality of your sleep lately?

Kim felt slightly taken aback.  Was she telepathic?  Wait, she was Dokkaran.  It was reasonable to suspect she could at least detect biochemical changes in Kim's disposition rapidly.  Maybe she could also sense her thoughts?  

Or, the more likely explanation, Frontier Day was flagged as the foundational trauma in Kim's life.  How could it not be?  She wondered if it would be considered a generational trauma the way the Dominion War was.  No one who'd served during that war could expect a psychological evaluation not to include it.  Hell, there were legions of counsellors in Starfleet who'd begun their careers either during or as a direct result of it.

Stapledon:  There were quite a few nightmares for the first year after it.  With the help of Counselor S'Rorr on the Chin'toka I started recording them and they've become less frequent.  I've also been trying to give myself tasks and things to make it harder for PTSD to emerge when... subsequent missions have been difficult.

Viridis:  A proactive approach. Externalizing the subconscious through recording is a highly effective way to de-fragment the trauma of assimilation. And these 'tasks' you assign yourself... they serve as a sort of cognitive anchor, I assume? It seems your time with Counselor S'Rorr provided you with a very robust toolkit for stabilization.

Kim nodded.  A cognitive anchor?

Stapledon: Well..  Yes.  He was very helpful.

There was a short pause and Viridis said,

Viridis: Evaluation Summary & Recommendations
Lieutenant Stapledon is Fit for Duty. Her transition from the Chin'toka to the Eagle-A is progressing within expected parameters. She is highly functional and possesses a pragmatist's perspective that serves her well in high-stakes environments.

Recommendation: Monitor for Work-Avoidance of trauma. While her tasks are an excellent defense, we must ensure she is not merely substituting labor for true processing. Suggest a follow-up in three months to discuss the narrative control of her dream journals.

Stapledon:  ::Kim nodded, feeling herself relax::  Well I do write as a way to explore my emotional responses to things.  And I create holoprograms.

Viridis:  Response

Stapledon:  Well...  I guess I sort of did deal with the nuclear explosion by just helping during it.

Viridis:  Response

Stapledon:  Well I was born on New Cyprus..  Now during the good part of its history, not during the crazy years.  So I picked up a lot of...  computerized spirituality and creativity.

Kim briefly smirked at the memory of listening to Midnight on Subspace, with Piltas Lusar, when his guest and apparently altered time by changing the buffered data on her subspace radio so the recorded broadcast was different from how she remembered it.

Viridis:  Response

--

Lt. Kimberly Stapledon

Chief of Science

USS Eagle-A

I238601KB0

Pronouns:  

Character:  She/Her 

Writer:  He/Him