Lt. JG Alix Harford - A Doctor’s Dilemma Pt 1: Objectivity Lost
Meri
((Conference Room, Deck One, USS Khitomer))
((OOC – Conversation between Amelia and Ras excluded as Alix is involved in her own side conversation with Charles.))
Unable to shake what she’d heard on the Bridge while treating Lieutenant Ayemet Dewitt, Doctor Harford had spent hours in Sickbay. She’d poured over research and quadruple checked the scans that had been taken of the newcomers to the Khitomer. Putting those pieces together with her concerns about the safety of Ayemet and Amelia’s compromised telepathic abilities got her head spinning. Considering the position Dr. Ohnari was in made her eyes cross and her head pound. When she couldn’t stare at a screen any longer, Alix had found an out of the way corner of Sickbay and curled herself onto a stool. Sometimes letting the hustle of a busy room swirl around her helped her tune out her mind and just sit with something. She didn’t want to think, just let the information wash over her.
Most concerning, outside of the multitude of professional concerns, were the feelings Alix felt bubbling within herself. It wasn’t all that long ago that an event such as this would have sent her into an anxious spiral, but not now. She couldn’t quite name the emotion, but anxiety it was not. Her skin prickled hot and her blood pounded through the veins in her neck. Was this anger? That didn’t make sense. She had no direct connection to the time travelers, no connection to any of it really. Her focus here was ensuring the safety of those she was sworn to heal, to keep safe and at the moment, she was more concerned with several members' emotional stability and professional objectivity.
The closer she got to the briefing she’d been called to, the more she felt herself shutting down. Distancing herself from the situation and from her own emotions. Her eyebrows were stitched tightly together, forehead wrinkled in concern and jaw clenched against the strong urge to just let it all out in the turbolift at an octave that would make a banshee proud. By the time she entered the conference room on deck one, her face was so far past neutral that she wasn’t sure it could form a pleasant expression.
Feeling on edge as she walked into the briefing, Alix glanced around and found herself gravitating towards the most familiar presence in the room. As she neared his end of the table, Charles greeted her with a soft smile and she took a seat to his left. For reasons she couldn’t explain beyond the primally coded need for security, the phaser she noticed strapped to Charles’ left thigh helped her to relax the smallest degree, letting an ounce of tension leave her shoulders.
Charles: Hi, Alix.
Harford: ::nods:: Charles. I don’t like this. I don’t like any of it. ::glances at his phaser:: And I see you don’t feel much different.
Charles: No, I don’t like it at all.
Charles shifted in his seat and leaned in towards her, partially covering his mouth with a well placed beard stroke. Normally she might find herself distracted being this close to him, but her mind was too spun up with the implications of time travel, the loss of objectivity, and now the concern over what the topic of this briefing might unravel. Their conversation continued in hushed tones, leaning in towards each other for privacy.
Charles: What do you make off all of… this? I assume you’ve put these people through their paces.
Harford: I haven’t been given the opportunity, but I’ve seen the initial scans. They are who they say they are as far as those readings go. ::pause:: I wouldn’t mind doing them again for my own peace of mind.
Charles: ::frowns:: Your peace of mind?
Harford: I am not quick to question the competence of another doctor, but exactly how objective can the Chief be after learning of her own potential offspring? ::sigh:: I don’t know, Charles. Maybe I’m too on edge.
Charles: Do you think she might be emotionally compromised? The others too?
Harford: How could they not be? And isn’t it safer for the entire crew to assume they are?
Charles: ::sighs:: That’s a good point. The problem is that we might need them not to be.
The man next to her took a moment to think, his thumb dragging across his bottom lip as it always did before he said something he’d been chewing on for a while. The intensity of his gaze when he turned back to her, caught Alix off guard so much so, that it shook loose some of her own mental fatigue and sharpened her mind. She sat the tiniest bit straighter and blinked her eyes a couple times.
Charles: Have you checked their quantum signatures? They might be from another time but what if they’re not even from our universe?
Both eyebrows shot up. She hadn’t thought about interdimensional travel. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The situation that the Dewitts, Doctor Ohnari, Amelia, even Hobart, found themselves in had made her think back to her own dimensional travel. It forced her to recall just how unsettling it had been to meet herself and to learn of a reality in which her life had unfolded very differently. But she’d not considered these visitors might be interdimensional and that was slightly embarrassing. She was just opening her mouth to admit as much when Commander Hobart arrived and she no longer felt free to speak candidly. Instead, she met his gaze with a matched forcefulness and shook her head no in answer to his question before turning her attention to the front of the room.
Hobart: How long until we reach Deep Space 33, Lieutenant Korras?
Korras: Response
Hobart: No lingering effects on the ship?
Connor: Aside from the collective existential crisis? Nothing on sensors. The SDA’s prepared, Ensign Banks and I are going to operate it, if it becomes necessary.
Existential crisis was right and while it might be collective, it was not equally dispersed. Alix would hazard a guess that the Chief Engineer was wrestling with his own existentialism more than most, save for Doctor Ohnari.
Michaels: Between the efforts of Science :: Nodding toward both El’Heem and Semara :: and Engineering, the ship is ready.
Banks: The anti-cascade measures installed by the Science department are up and running, and fully integrated with existing systems. The Operations department recommendation is that pending a review after this mission we should consider making them a permanent installation.
Hobart: Any insight as to where the runabout came from, yet?
So far this was feeling like any ordinary briefing. Ship status, department updates, until…
El’Heem: Well ::Pausing:: Yeah. Yeah…forty years into ::Lifting his hands palms up and dropping them onto the table:: the future.
There it was, the first elephant in the room addressed. Alix stared at her Kressari colleague wondering what his take on the entire situation was. She rolled her neck, only yesterday, or was it earlier today- didn’t matter. Only recently, their biggest concern had been the threat of Sencha radiation and defunct gel packs. If only the mission had stayed so ordinary.
Michaels: Perhaps not necessarily our future.
Richard: To jump off what Michaels is saying. We theorize that time travel involves both predestined timelines and the creation of multiple alternate futures. Logs from Deep Space 9 surrounding the prophets point to future events that are fixed and unavoidable. The distinction between if our visitors are from our future or another. Is if these travelers alters their own past, creating a paradox, or a new, parallel timeline to our own that they would be going back to.
So Charles wasn’t the only officer in the room concerned about interdimensional travel. Or were they just discussing the principle of fractured timelines, she couldn’t be sure. Temporal Physics had not been a course she’d elected to take. After all, as long as their spleen was in the same place, a doctor didn’t really care what time or plane of existence their patient was from. It was odd warring with her own conflicting values. On the one hand she weighed the safety and well being of her own crew, on the other she had to maintain the cold neutrality that allowed a Physician to dress the wounds of an enemy. Preservation of life was such a deeply entangled concept.
Semara: We got a coupl’a clues from their shuttle, whatever the semantics are. It’s got heavy damage from Lattice weapons, and underwent several refits since we saw it last. There’s evidence it’s been hit with Sencha a lotta times. We still oughta search it proper.
Hobart: And, how's everybody feeling?
Zerva: You mean besides the headache I’ve got?
Ayemet: :looking at Michaels: They are from the future. They’re here to disrupt the timeline. That presence I felt in the bridge. It wasn’t Commander Dewitt :unable to make eye contact with him: It was his child, Oh and I’m feeling great, never better. Why else would they be here?
Ayemet seemed to have recovered well from the shock Alix had treated her for, at least physically. There was no denying that the Counsellor might need a counsellor herself after the weight of this most recent mission had fully settled onto her telepathic shoulders. Glancing from the woman speaking to the one who spoke up next, Alix bit her tongue. She was feeling however she was feeling, but fairly certain that her own emotions were far more regulated than her boss’.
Ohnari: ::slightly strained:: Not well. Hoping getting some answers will help.
Charles: I’m… tickety-boo, Sir.
Korras / Any: Response
Hobart: Any… threats?
Everything inside of Alix was screaming that the biggest threat to the crew was the possibility of several senior officers making decisions for the rest of them while emotionally compromised in the face of their own futures. Yet she remained frozen in place, listening instead of speaking. Who was she at this table to raise those sorts of concerns? Not a security officer or a tactical officer. Not a Chief of any department, not even a Lieutenant. In fact, her own department head was sitting at this very table and, by every reasonable extension of psychology, was perhaps one of the most emotionally compromised individuals in the room.
Zerva: I have submitted our report to the Captain ::looks over at Charles:: on the results of security and tactical’s time on the holodeck training. I must say, unfortunately the odds are against us if we were boarded or attacked by the Alliance ships. It’s just enough to tip the results in the Lattice Alliance’s favor. If anyone would like a copy of that report, I will forward the results along. I highly recommend for those of you who were not with us last year during the invasion of Starbase 33, to read up on those reports. The results of that day nearly cost us the Khitomer and ::pausing lost in sadness:: there were those we lost. ::shaking his head as he tried to forget that day:: As for our visitors from out of time, the one named Kael is rather direct in his approach. He had made it known his intentions to us in the shuttlebay if we tried to harm them. I recommend exercising caution. We do not yet know what their future is like or the full reason for their arrival.
Charles: There is a lack of any real information, Sir. That is a threat in itself. Until we know more, it is difficult to speculate.
Korras / Any: Response
Finally having mustered the courage to speak off, Doctor Harford again found her words stolen from her chest by the swoosh of the conference room doors opening and a Senior Officer, this time the Captain, stepping through them. She decided to bide her time.
Hobart: Oh, thank goodness. All present and accounted for, sir.
Kael: I hope you’ll hear us out Captain Shayne.
Admiral: He wouldn't have brought us here otherwise, Kael.
Instead of watching the people entering the room, Alix watched the faces of her friends and colleagues. She wanted to gauge their reactions, to see if she could glean any information as to their mental or emotional state as they reacted. More than anything, she wanted to pretend she wasn’t looking at time travelers from the future who’d come for whatever reason; something they no doubt felt worth the risk, and had put her own timeline, her own future, in jeopardy.
Shayne / Korras / Any: Response
Kael: :indicating Ayemet: What’s her problem?
Admiral: She's not your mother. Let's focus.
oO A bit insensitive, and that's coming from me. Oo
Eyes softening with concern, Alix focused on Lieutenant Dewitt as she spoke up.
Ayemet: :Looking at the Admiral: Why are you here? Why the hostility?
Tori: Not hostile. Just tired still, right my love?
Zerva: ::muttering under his breath:: Let’s hope that’s all it is.
Shayne / Korras / Any: Response
Her focus was pulled from where it had remained on Ayemet’s pained expression when Charles leaned in close and whispered to Alix again.
Charles: ::whispers:: You don’t happen to have your tricorder, do you? We could check the quantum signature right now.
Harford: ::whispers:: I always have my tricorder.
And if asked, Alix would jump at the opportunity to perform any and all tests on the three haggard faced individuals standing with Captain Shayne.
Kael: My apologies :pause: We’ve been through a lot, and it’s important that you listen to us. That you give us a fair hearing.