hyralt
Well-Known Member
- RP Date
- 44.9
- RP Location
- Counselor's Office, YSS Resurgence of Yamatai
Thia lay on the upper bunk of her office, wearing the skirt version of her uniform as she held a datapad aloft over her face, scrolling through what little of Vec's personnel files she had access to. "What would be a comfortable place to meet?" She asked herself aloud as she continued to read. "Born in an agricultural colony. But might that have traumatic memories? There's just not enough to say for sure."
With a sigh, Thia rolled over and hopped down from her bunk before walking over and depositing her datapad onto her desk. From a vacuum-insulated container, she poured some of Rossa's excellent coffee she'd taken from the mess into a couple of mugs and then moved to stand in the center of the room. With a click of her jaw, she enabled the room's volumetrics, cycling through several of her memories before landing on the one place Vec seemed most at-ease. Looking around, Thia felt satisfied at her recreation of one corner of the Resurgence's medbay, before setting the mugs down on a table and sitting in one of the chairs as she awaited Vec's arrival.
Vec was potentially the biggest hypocrite in the Army. The day Thia had arrived on the Resurgence, he ordered that every soldier schedule an appointment with her. He had even prioritized his medical staff. Vec, however, the Chief Medical Officer himself, had delayed. Even now, the day of his appointment, he dithered. He performed another unnecessary inventory, checked medical files that hadn't changed since he'd looked at them earlier in the same day, and scrubbed down spotless surfaces. Two prime directives warred within the aging soldier. The first and more logical directive was one of the first lessons any first responder learns: Don't become another casualty. It was the reason he'd prioritized sending medical staff to counseling. They wouldn't be any good to anybody if they were too busy battling their own demons. The second directive was a near pathological inability to put his needs in front of others. Sure it sounded selfish, but deep down, the doctor knew it was actually quite selfish. With a sigh, Vec decided he was far too old to act like a petulant child and closed down the medbay. Pink was on call that night, so there wasn't any need for him to delay any longer.
A few minutes later, Vec was pressing the call button outside of Thia's quarters, the makeshift Counselor's Office. When the door stepped in, he paused looking around at the room he'd just left. "This is... a bit surreal," he said stepping inside.
Thia smiled and held back a laugh as she stood and beckoned him to join her at the table before sitting down again. "That's understandable. I try to recreate a space individually tailored to my patients to maximize their comfort. If I don't know much about them, I normally just turn off the volumetrics, but..."
With a click of her jaw, the volumetrics dropped and they were now sitting at the same table in her office. It was a standard officers' quarters with bunk beds, a desk and chair, and lockers in the back. The walls and floor were plain Zesuaium, but the volumetric window overhead showed the space outside of the Resurgence.
"It's a bit plain. If that sets you more at ease, we can go with it. You seemed quite comfortable in the medbay, so I thought it might set you at ease. Though, perhaps given your enjoyment of coffee..." Thia clicked her jaw several times in rapid succession, and the volumetrics switched on again, recreating the Ypperlig café in Kyoto which she had once visited. At the center of the space was a well-worn wooden bar that formed a circle around a set of coffee equipment that looked like it was scrounged from scrap, but which the baristas used expertly at a frantic pace to serve customers who were approaching the bar from every direction. Thia and Vec sat to one side of the space in one of a series of cubbies that ran along the walls and offered a modicum of privacy from prying eyes. "A café might be preferable?"
The CMO hunched in on himself a little. "It's fine, I guess," he said as the room shifted and changed around him. He couldn't place why he felt on edge. Part of it might have been an aversion to being catered towards. It also might have been a result of how superficial it all felt. It was his own fault for being standoffish with most of the crew. "No, um, sorry it's nice, thank you for the effort, Thia," he corrected. She was doing her best to relate to him, he owed her that much at least.
Seeing Vec's body language become almost defensive as she switched settings, Thia decided to leave the volumetrics set to café for the time being. "Of course, I do my best to set my patients at ease. I'm here to help. I'm not here to tell you how to get better or even if you should get better. I'm here to be a resource to you, in your own process of improving or maintaining your mental health."
Thia reached out and picked up the mug of coffee she'd placed closest to herself, lifting it to her lips and taking a slow sip with her eyes closed. Though she preferred a stiff drink to coffee any day, she had to admit that Rossa made a damn fine cup of coffee. Rather than setting the mug down again, she held out her hand like a platform, resting her shoulder on the table, and set the mug into her hand as she looked across at Vec.
"How is your first CMO posting treating you so far?" She asked, enjoying the warmth of the mug in her hands as she smiled warmly at him.
Taking a sip of his own coffee, he had to admit that Rossa's coffee wasn't half bad bold without becoming bitter. It was as much a matter bean choice and technique, or at last Vec thought as much. He mulled over Thia's question between sips. "It's hard to say," Vec said finally, "Its a new experience. I've never actually been stationed on a ship before. I just never know if I'm going about things the right way." He decided to go with honesty he didn't plan to just spill his guts, but clamming up defeated the purpose of seeing a therapist. He wouldn't be a recalcitrant patient. He owed her that much at least, as one medical professional to another.
"It's my first military posting, so I kinda know what you mean. It certainly feels like there's a right way to do things and I don't usually know what it is," Thia commiserated with a slow nod. "But I think the chief part of Chief Medical Officer gives you some authority to say what the right way to do things is. Would you say that things have been working out so far?"
"I mean, nobody's permanently dead," Vec said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "I honestly don't think I'm particularly well liked though. I'm of two minds about it. If people are physically and mentally healthy then that's all that matters. Well no, that's wrong, having a good bedside manner is important for that whole process. Besides, it is important to be able to enjoy working with people, especially when we're all trapped on a tiny boat in space."
Taking a sip of her coffee, Thia paused for a moment as she thought about what he said. "I don't like doctors. Or authority figures. And you know what I hate the most? When they're right," Thia gave him a toothy smile, showing off her pointed canines. "What I mean is: sometimes as a doctor and a leader, it's more important to be right than to be liked. You're right, bedside manner is important. Don't go around barking at people. But at the end of the day, if barking at me or Poppy or a patient saves lives, then that's important."
"I mean fair, I really don't like barking at people either. I don't even like pulling rank. A good chunk of an Officer's job is mentorship, that's something you'll need to keep in mind too, Shoi Hates Authority," Vec said, an amused tone creeping into his voice. "Anyway, that's all well and good, but this isn't the kind of job you can just clock out from and go have drinks with a whole nother group of people. The same people I see every day are the same people I see on my off hours. Crewing a gunship means everything is a little more personal."
"Yeah, I might've made the wrong choice going into the army when I know I hate authority, huh?" Thia laughed a little too loudly and quickly reached up to cover her mouth as she cleared her throat. "But you're right, of course. You have to be able to look us all in the eyes at the end of the day."
Thia took a long, slow sip, more as a stalling tactic than anything else. "If it helps, I'm always up for drinks and conversations even if you don't want to look at me, or think I don't want to look at you. I've had a lot of that with people I absolutely despised and I've been pretty good company, though I do say so myself."
"I think I'd like that, I've been in the army for almost as long as a lot of the older crew have been alive," Vec said, finally sitting back in his chair. "Sometimes it feels like I'm on a boat full of children. Grabbing drinks with a colleague my own age wouldn't hurt." An actual grin crept across his face, "Careful, Thia, you might fuck around and get appointed Med department's unofficial moral officer. I mean I think you are the most well-adjusted one of us."
"Morale is indirectly what I'm here for. I'm going to work with everyone who will sit down with me to help them with hard things, and the individuals are my priority. But ideally, there are knock-on effects and the mental health of the group becomes self-sustaining. That's the dream, anyway," she smiled. As she sat there, smiling warmly, almost like a proud parent, something shifted and there was a hint of sadness in her eyes. "I've been through some hard times myself and learned to be good-humored about it at least."
Thia finally set her mug down on the table, crossed her legs, and leaned back in her chair. "How have you been taking the hard times yourself?"
"If I haven't let an enemy kill me, I'm sure as hell not doing it myself," Vec said with a dark grin. It slipped as he realized what he was doing. "Hard to say," he said, trying to think about own actions. He'd been at it so long, he didn't really know what baseline normal was.
What an interesting answer, Thia thought. Most people either tried to avoid the question or took it as an opportunity to vent. "Maybe I can ask some more specific questions that might make it easier to answer the big one," she offered. "Aside from drinking with Counselors, what do you like to do outside of work?"
"Play guitar, listen to music, I like to catch a live show when I can," he said before topping off his coffee. "I also like to bank up my leave to go on long backpacking trips. Find a planet and a map and just start walking. You see all sorts of interesting things and meet interesting people like that. Sometimes I even'll see how far I can get just by busking."
"Wow, that sounds really exciting. I never really traveled much except when work sent me somewhere. The only real vacation I ever took was going to see the opening of the Aquarius Star Fortress, because I thought it would be fun to see a bunch of nekos swimming around in big tanks of water," Thia's smile pulled a little wider on one side as she thought back on the memory, fighting the urge to click her jaw and revisit it through the volumetrics. "When was the last time you had leave like that?"
"Before I came here, basically reported to the Res right off the tail of my vacation," he said matter of factly. "If you don't mind me asking, was it lack of opportunity or lack of interest? That's kept you from traveling, I mean."
"I really like meeting people," she said as she went to take a sip from her coffee but found it empty. Rather than putting it back on the table, she held onto it but rested it on one of her knees as she continued. "The right bar in any big enough port has new people every night. So I guess I let people come to me, rather than going to find them. I lived in Ternifac for the last four years, and there's this bar right off the train station where there's a constant flow of people either just arriving or just about to depart. So when I wasn't studying, I'd go there and single out whoever seemed like the most interesting people to talk to. There was always someone. So I guess I never felt like I had to go much farther afield to find what I was looking for."
Thia smiled again, but it wasn't the warm encouraging smile she liked to give people, or the lopsided grin when she was thinking of something devious, but an embarrassed smile that looked like it ought to be accompanied by nervous laughter. "Anyway, did you enjoy it last time you traveled?"
"Can't really complain," Vec said, unsure what she was looking for.
"You don't seem very enthusiastic," Thia noted with a slight tilt of her head, trying to gauge his tone. "Were you happier to come back to work than you were to have leave?"
"Hard to say. Sorry," Vec said ruefully, "Going on leave between assignments is a bit different. Usually, I'm going back to the same unit and the same troops I'm familiar with. Last time I went on leave, I was leaving people and a job I was familiar with to start something completely new. Well, I got my specific orders while I was on leave. Sorry can't be more helpful," Vec added.
With a sigh, Thia rolled over and hopped down from her bunk before walking over and depositing her datapad onto her desk. From a vacuum-insulated container, she poured some of Rossa's excellent coffee she'd taken from the mess into a couple of mugs and then moved to stand in the center of the room. With a click of her jaw, she enabled the room's volumetrics, cycling through several of her memories before landing on the one place Vec seemed most at-ease. Looking around, Thia felt satisfied at her recreation of one corner of the Resurgence's medbay, before setting the mugs down on a table and sitting in one of the chairs as she awaited Vec's arrival.
Vec was potentially the biggest hypocrite in the Army. The day Thia had arrived on the Resurgence, he ordered that every soldier schedule an appointment with her. He had even prioritized his medical staff. Vec, however, the Chief Medical Officer himself, had delayed. Even now, the day of his appointment, he dithered. He performed another unnecessary inventory, checked medical files that hadn't changed since he'd looked at them earlier in the same day, and scrubbed down spotless surfaces. Two prime directives warred within the aging soldier. The first and more logical directive was one of the first lessons any first responder learns: Don't become another casualty. It was the reason he'd prioritized sending medical staff to counseling. They wouldn't be any good to anybody if they were too busy battling their own demons. The second directive was a near pathological inability to put his needs in front of others. Sure it sounded selfish, but deep down, the doctor knew it was actually quite selfish. With a sigh, Vec decided he was far too old to act like a petulant child and closed down the medbay. Pink was on call that night, so there wasn't any need for him to delay any longer.
A few minutes later, Vec was pressing the call button outside of Thia's quarters, the makeshift Counselor's Office. When the door stepped in, he paused looking around at the room he'd just left. "This is... a bit surreal," he said stepping inside.
Thia smiled and held back a laugh as she stood and beckoned him to join her at the table before sitting down again. "That's understandable. I try to recreate a space individually tailored to my patients to maximize their comfort. If I don't know much about them, I normally just turn off the volumetrics, but..."
With a click of her jaw, the volumetrics dropped and they were now sitting at the same table in her office. It was a standard officers' quarters with bunk beds, a desk and chair, and lockers in the back. The walls and floor were plain Zesuaium, but the volumetric window overhead showed the space outside of the Resurgence.
"It's a bit plain. If that sets you more at ease, we can go with it. You seemed quite comfortable in the medbay, so I thought it might set you at ease. Though, perhaps given your enjoyment of coffee..." Thia clicked her jaw several times in rapid succession, and the volumetrics switched on again, recreating the Ypperlig café in Kyoto which she had once visited. At the center of the space was a well-worn wooden bar that formed a circle around a set of coffee equipment that looked like it was scrounged from scrap, but which the baristas used expertly at a frantic pace to serve customers who were approaching the bar from every direction. Thia and Vec sat to one side of the space in one of a series of cubbies that ran along the walls and offered a modicum of privacy from prying eyes. "A café might be preferable?"
The CMO hunched in on himself a little. "It's fine, I guess," he said as the room shifted and changed around him. He couldn't place why he felt on edge. Part of it might have been an aversion to being catered towards. It also might have been a result of how superficial it all felt. It was his own fault for being standoffish with most of the crew. "No, um, sorry it's nice, thank you for the effort, Thia," he corrected. She was doing her best to relate to him, he owed her that much at least.
Seeing Vec's body language become almost defensive as she switched settings, Thia decided to leave the volumetrics set to café for the time being. "Of course, I do my best to set my patients at ease. I'm here to help. I'm not here to tell you how to get better or even if you should get better. I'm here to be a resource to you, in your own process of improving or maintaining your mental health."
Thia reached out and picked up the mug of coffee she'd placed closest to herself, lifting it to her lips and taking a slow sip with her eyes closed. Though she preferred a stiff drink to coffee any day, she had to admit that Rossa made a damn fine cup of coffee. Rather than setting the mug down again, she held out her hand like a platform, resting her shoulder on the table, and set the mug into her hand as she looked across at Vec.
"How is your first CMO posting treating you so far?" She asked, enjoying the warmth of the mug in her hands as she smiled warmly at him.
Taking a sip of his own coffee, he had to admit that Rossa's coffee wasn't half bad bold without becoming bitter. It was as much a matter bean choice and technique, or at last Vec thought as much. He mulled over Thia's question between sips. "It's hard to say," Vec said finally, "Its a new experience. I've never actually been stationed on a ship before. I just never know if I'm going about things the right way." He decided to go with honesty he didn't plan to just spill his guts, but clamming up defeated the purpose of seeing a therapist. He wouldn't be a recalcitrant patient. He owed her that much at least, as one medical professional to another.
"It's my first military posting, so I kinda know what you mean. It certainly feels like there's a right way to do things and I don't usually know what it is," Thia commiserated with a slow nod. "But I think the chief part of Chief Medical Officer gives you some authority to say what the right way to do things is. Would you say that things have been working out so far?"
"I mean, nobody's permanently dead," Vec said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "I honestly don't think I'm particularly well liked though. I'm of two minds about it. If people are physically and mentally healthy then that's all that matters. Well no, that's wrong, having a good bedside manner is important for that whole process. Besides, it is important to be able to enjoy working with people, especially when we're all trapped on a tiny boat in space."
Taking a sip of her coffee, Thia paused for a moment as she thought about what he said. "I don't like doctors. Or authority figures. And you know what I hate the most? When they're right," Thia gave him a toothy smile, showing off her pointed canines. "What I mean is: sometimes as a doctor and a leader, it's more important to be right than to be liked. You're right, bedside manner is important. Don't go around barking at people. But at the end of the day, if barking at me or Poppy or a patient saves lives, then that's important."
"I mean fair, I really don't like barking at people either. I don't even like pulling rank. A good chunk of an Officer's job is mentorship, that's something you'll need to keep in mind too, Shoi Hates Authority," Vec said, an amused tone creeping into his voice. "Anyway, that's all well and good, but this isn't the kind of job you can just clock out from and go have drinks with a whole nother group of people. The same people I see every day are the same people I see on my off hours. Crewing a gunship means everything is a little more personal."
"Yeah, I might've made the wrong choice going into the army when I know I hate authority, huh?" Thia laughed a little too loudly and quickly reached up to cover her mouth as she cleared her throat. "But you're right, of course. You have to be able to look us all in the eyes at the end of the day."
Thia took a long, slow sip, more as a stalling tactic than anything else. "If it helps, I'm always up for drinks and conversations even if you don't want to look at me, or think I don't want to look at you. I've had a lot of that with people I absolutely despised and I've been pretty good company, though I do say so myself."
"I think I'd like that, I've been in the army for almost as long as a lot of the older crew have been alive," Vec said, finally sitting back in his chair. "Sometimes it feels like I'm on a boat full of children. Grabbing drinks with a colleague my own age wouldn't hurt." An actual grin crept across his face, "Careful, Thia, you might fuck around and get appointed Med department's unofficial moral officer. I mean I think you are the most well-adjusted one of us."
"Morale is indirectly what I'm here for. I'm going to work with everyone who will sit down with me to help them with hard things, and the individuals are my priority. But ideally, there are knock-on effects and the mental health of the group becomes self-sustaining. That's the dream, anyway," she smiled. As she sat there, smiling warmly, almost like a proud parent, something shifted and there was a hint of sadness in her eyes. "I've been through some hard times myself and learned to be good-humored about it at least."
Thia finally set her mug down on the table, crossed her legs, and leaned back in her chair. "How have you been taking the hard times yourself?"
"If I haven't let an enemy kill me, I'm sure as hell not doing it myself," Vec said with a dark grin. It slipped as he realized what he was doing. "Hard to say," he said, trying to think about own actions. He'd been at it so long, he didn't really know what baseline normal was.
What an interesting answer, Thia thought. Most people either tried to avoid the question or took it as an opportunity to vent. "Maybe I can ask some more specific questions that might make it easier to answer the big one," she offered. "Aside from drinking with Counselors, what do you like to do outside of work?"
"Play guitar, listen to music, I like to catch a live show when I can," he said before topping off his coffee. "I also like to bank up my leave to go on long backpacking trips. Find a planet and a map and just start walking. You see all sorts of interesting things and meet interesting people like that. Sometimes I even'll see how far I can get just by busking."
"Wow, that sounds really exciting. I never really traveled much except when work sent me somewhere. The only real vacation I ever took was going to see the opening of the Aquarius Star Fortress, because I thought it would be fun to see a bunch of nekos swimming around in big tanks of water," Thia's smile pulled a little wider on one side as she thought back on the memory, fighting the urge to click her jaw and revisit it through the volumetrics. "When was the last time you had leave like that?"
"Before I came here, basically reported to the Res right off the tail of my vacation," he said matter of factly. "If you don't mind me asking, was it lack of opportunity or lack of interest? That's kept you from traveling, I mean."
"I really like meeting people," she said as she went to take a sip from her coffee but found it empty. Rather than putting it back on the table, she held onto it but rested it on one of her knees as she continued. "The right bar in any big enough port has new people every night. So I guess I let people come to me, rather than going to find them. I lived in Ternifac for the last four years, and there's this bar right off the train station where there's a constant flow of people either just arriving or just about to depart. So when I wasn't studying, I'd go there and single out whoever seemed like the most interesting people to talk to. There was always someone. So I guess I never felt like I had to go much farther afield to find what I was looking for."
Thia smiled again, but it wasn't the warm encouraging smile she liked to give people, or the lopsided grin when she was thinking of something devious, but an embarrassed smile that looked like it ought to be accompanied by nervous laughter. "Anyway, did you enjoy it last time you traveled?"
"Can't really complain," Vec said, unsure what she was looking for.
"You don't seem very enthusiastic," Thia noted with a slight tilt of her head, trying to gauge his tone. "Were you happier to come back to work than you were to have leave?"
"Hard to say. Sorry," Vec said ruefully, "Going on leave between assignments is a bit different. Usually, I'm going back to the same unit and the same troops I'm familiar with. Last time I went on leave, I was leaving people and a job I was familiar with to start something completely new. Well, I got my specific orders while I was on leave. Sorry can't be more helpful," Vec added.
