Taking a Break, and Remembering a Break

[Mreh K'hal 0]

Taking a Break, and Remembering a Break

Ens Mreh K'hal

 

With Alex's help, sickbay was once again in order and ready the next time the fecal matter hit the air accelerator. Mreh liked the Counselor, who seemed at ease with himself. Which, the Caitian thought, was always a good quality for that occupation, as its harder to trust someone to help you put your life in order who can't do it himself. So far, he liked everyone he'd met on the medical staff. Pilot seemed kind enough, even if he was a bit preoccupied with something or other, though he hadn't seen much of the man since the crisis point passed. Holed up in the office doing paperwork, from the looks of things. A duty that Mreh was more than happy to avoid when possible, and luckily the majority of what needed done was kittensplay for a junior officer.

 

With nothing else pressing at the moment, he headed down to the junior officer's mess and ordered himself a tuna salad and enthusiastically started devouring it. It wasn't nearly as good as his mother made, but he'd yet to meet a replicated meal that could. He missed his family a good deal; they had always been quite close, and shared much more than meals at the table. While he ate, he tapped out another message for his parents on a PADD. That was a practice he had started at the Academy, even though both of them had been close at paw. Though now, far off in the depths of space, he compiled them and sent them in large chunks rather than firing them off at the end of day. He also jotted down a few for his siblings while he was at it. Mren and Rhan were easy to track down, still on Earth. Hakran was off studying nebulae or some such on the Copernicus, and they'd not talked in a while.

 

His time aboard the Excalibur, short though it was, had been quite busy, just as he liked it; he preferred having to deal with bumps and scrapes instead of life-threatening injuries though, specialty or not, but life rarely obliged such fantasies. He had chosen medicine because he could never stand to watch people suffer, and having been the older brother of three raucous Caitian siblings had certainly given him ample opportunity to practice first aid. In fact, it had been their vacation when they were gallavanting around Rocky Mountain Park in Colorado that he had truly found his calling.

 

He still remembered as clearly as if it were in front of his eyes now the way Rhan had screamed when his foreleg broke after falling down a steep hill as they were hiking. The rest of the family was kilometers away, and the communicator had been on Rhan and broke as badly as the leg during the fall. After scrambling down to his youngest brother, Mreh had little choice but to care for the injury right away as the bone was stuck right through the skin and bleeding profusely. To this day he could not figure out how he handled it without panicking, and his paws had been rock steady throughout. After splinting the leg and settling his brother in, he had marked the spot and raced to find his family. The Park Rangers had eventually locked onto Rhan's biosign and transported him to the hospital in Estes Park a few hours later, and while they travelled there in more conventional air transport, Mreh knew that he could not only handle being a doctor, he would be good at it, and that he wanted to do it. Though Rhan still feels some pain in the leg after much exertion, he was as good as new in a few weeks, and never gave Mreh the usual little brother to big brother bother thereafter.

 

With his meal finished, and his personal memos to his family finished, Mreh recycled his bowl after washing down the meal with a large glass of water. He stopped off at his quarters and put the PADD in its rightful place on his dresser. Popping into the bathroom for a quick shower, he made sure to get any loose hairs off now so that he didn't shed. He was always obsessive about it, which was not uncommon for a Caitian, but being a physician made him doubly so. The last thing he wanted was to apologize to a patient for shedding in their wounds. Also, before stepping out, he made sure the tuna on his breath disappeared and was made minty fresh.