Feelings are Hard

Posted on Fri Oct 31st, 2025 @ 5:03am by Lieutenant Commander Rin & Lieutenant JG T'Kek [Naxea]

Mission: Season 6: Episode 6: Conglomerate
Location: Main Sickbay; USS Elysium
Timeline: After the Galatonian attack
1306 words - 2.6 OF Standard Post Measure

T'Kek was taking a much needed breather. He had been working nonstop on patients for nearly two standard hours. Looking down, he just realized the blood covering his uniform jacket as he removed it and placed it into the recycler, watching the jacket dematerialize from sight. Patients were still incoming but not at the rate they had been a short time ago. They were finally making headway.

Supported by an Intel crewman, Rin staggered into Sickbay. She felt decidedly less "fine" than when she had left the bridge. She cradled her left arm with her right. There were deep tears in her flesh. The fingers of her left hand weren't working right: a combination of injuries to tendons and nerves, according to her self-diagnostics.

There was a deep gash along the left side of her face as well. It had bled heavily, so now she looked a fright. Her uniform was soaked as well.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Rin said quietly as a medical crewman ushered her to a bed. This wasn't a display of I'm Too Tough for Sickbay. She was just analytical to a fault. She knew what her systems were telling her, and she knew she needed to be in Sickbay, but she was confident there were other people who needed care first.

"I promise, half the blood isn't mine," she continued while dutifully allowing herself to be led.

"Then we're going to treat you for the half of blood that IS yours," the crewman said.

Rin sighed as she was helped onto a biobed. Everyone in Sickbay had to be exhausted. She didn't want to further tax the staff. "Moderate blood loss. Successful hemostasis. No skeletal breaks. Damage to the ulnar nerve..." she started rattling off what we diagnostics were saying.

T'Kek had seen the Intel chief be escorted in. 'Better get back to it,' he thought as he made his way over to the bed that she had been assigned. He grabbed the medical tricorder that he had kept on his belt since the attack occurred. It made it quicker than to have to look for one in the chaos that was Sickbay. "Let me guess, Commander...I should see the other guy," he joked, grinning at her. Joking with patients had been a habit he picked up from his mother.

"I honestly don't know how the other guy looks," Rin said with a tired smile. "Other than he's dead, which is all that matters."

"At least I didn't have to do this one in my pajamas," she added. After the accident, the two of them had found each other fairly early on. Rin had been asleep at the time. She and T'kek had climbed though turbolift shafts and jeffries tubes until getting to the battle bridge, where she had directed what survivors she could, unable to reach the main bridge, while T'kek had organized medical evac and treatment. Rin had made a somewhat undistinguished sight, sitting in the command chair in her pajamas.

T'Kek couldn't help but chuckle at the comment. "You were rather awesome in your pajamas if I recall correctly." He finished looking over her injuries, setting his tricorder back into it's holster on his belt. He grabbed an dermal regenerator and began to run it across the gash on her head.

"Thank you." For several long moments, she lay there quietly, letting the doctor do his work.

"I was scared," she said, quietly. "On the bridge just now. I was scared, and I don't get scared. I mean, I have the fear response that keeps people alive. But this was something else."

T'Kek paused for a moment at Rin mentioning that she was sacred. It seemed very unlikely her. He began again as he finished healing the gash on the side of her head. He looked at her. "It is ok to be afraid. What specifically caused your fear?" he asked as he grabbed the neurolytic regenerator and began to gently place the device on her damaged arm.

Rin sighed, closing her eyes as she tried to sort out the things inside her head, the things that lived at the very edge of her awareness and had always refused to clarify. The thing she never liked talking about, in part because they were so nebulous. Facts weren't supposed to be nebulous.

Also, emotions were hard.

"The London, perhaps," she said finally, opening her eyes, fixing her eyes on T'kek. "I have a dozen different memories of the Borg attack. I don't know if any of them are correct. Sometimes I stand my ground. In one, I hit one with a chair."

She made a face at the absurdity of that.

"Sometimes I just run. Sometimes I'm trying to get to a weapons locker, but sometimes I'm just fleeing. Sometimes it's quick. Sometimes...not. It had to have been terrifying, realizing none of our weapons even slowed them down. Watching our friends turn on us. Knowing, at some point, we were all going to die, every one of us, no matter how hard we tried. That resistance really was futile.

"This was the first time I've been in a fight anywhere close to that."

T'Kek was silent for a moment as he processed the information while also monitoring the neurolytic regenerator as it hummed softly. He looked at her. "Resistance is not futile, however. You being here is proof of that." He wanted to comfort her by squeezing her hand but he fought against it. He busied himself by drawing a hypospray and loading terakine--a pain reliever into it. "Here is something for the pain," he explained. "And I am sorry you felt afraid though it is understandable."

"We died. Every one of us, We died." Rin gritted her teeth. She was frustrated and tired, and the fear she had felt on the bridge still lingered in her memory. At least the pain had subsided. "And people wonder why I don't talk about my feelings."

The neurolytic regenerator beeped, indicating that it was finished. He began to gently remove the device. He didn't want to upset her as one hand gently rested on her shoulder. "It is never a good thing to bottle up your feelings." Just know that I am available if you ever need to 'get anything off your chest' as my mother likes to say. He removed his hand and took a look at the biobed display.

Rin flexed the fingers of her left hand, then her wrist, then the elbow, noting that everything moved much better now, though stiff. She considered the implants that ran along that hand and into her arm. Most days they didn't bother her. They were an integral part of who she was. Few people understood that. But, today, today they looked a little more foreign to her. The parts they added to replace the parts they took away.

""Am I good to go?" she asked.

"Am I thatvbad of company? " He joked before continuing. "Not quite. You suffered major nerve damage tonyour left arm. I want you to limit movement and allow the nerves to finish healing thanks to your implants. I'd suggest a sling to help keep it immobilized and protected." TKek grabbed a padded silver bandage from a nearby medical cart and began to fold it into a sling and began to fix her arm into it. "I know you will likely ignore my next suggestion but I also want you to rest. "

"I know senior officers have a reputation for ignoring such suggestions," Rin acknowledged, "but I do intend to follow that direction to the best of my ability. I promise the sling stays on at the very least. I can fulfill most of my duties from a chair. Now, I will free up this biobed for your next patient. Thank you."