The Lost Akia

[Shujinko 0]

Shujinko leaned back in his chair, his feet on the smallish desk in the med lab. Glorious seclusion. Since he’d moved to night shift shortly after being assigned to Challenger, he’d found it to be the only time he could simply sit back and relax, work on his martial arts and meditate.

 

Sure there were the occasional disturbances—Crewman Aquil most recently. The young man must have been on the unluckiest humans he’d ever met. In a period of a few weeks, he’d managed to sprain his left shoulder, right ankle; break his nose; burn his tongue (cofee’s hot you know); and contract chicken pox.

 

Why it always ended up being Akia’s shift for all this to happen eluded him. Sighing and shaking his head, Shujinko removed his feet from the table and stood up. The soft sound of Asian music in the background drifted through his ears.

 

For a man who’d spent the better part of his childhood in a monastery reading ancient scrolls and meditating on the existence of life—Shujinko found the serenity of the sickbay comforting. The days he really hated were when he had to work day shift. They were noisy, chaotic and usually involved him having to deal with some stray engineer who hadn’t learned how to properly fix something with out hurting themselves.

 

The addition of Doctor Marlin had allowed him to avoid such annoyances more often, and so now he spent most of his time tucked in Sickbay while most of the ship slumbered peacefully.