Welcome to Star Trek Simulation Forum

Register now to gain access to all of our features. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to contribute to this site by submitting your own content or replying to existing content. You'll be able to customize your profile, receive reputation points as a reward for submitting content, while also communicating with other members via your own private inbox, plus much more! This message will be removed once you have signed in.

Sign in to follow this  
Followers 0
Dox Maturin

"The Orphan"

"The Orphan"

Duty Log, 0706.25

 

Dox crouched and pulled the science officer's arm off his shoulder and set him down into a waiting chair. Sickbay was full of injured people, some more so than others. The science officer, an ensign like himself, had only suffered a broken arm. Unfortunately that meant he would probably have to wait in pain until a nurse could come by and help him.

 

Maturin breathed deeply, taking in the scene around him. There was something that was so comfortable about sickbay. It reminded him of something from his past, but of which of course he knew nothing about. Dox was an orphan, and apparently a troubled one at that. He woke up at the age of thirteen in an orphanage in Cornwall, England without a single memory behind him. He had been dropped off only hours earlier by a man who simply gave them a shoddy birth certificate with "Donalek Maturin" scribbled on it, and empty space where the parent's names were to be written. His DNA couldn't be traced and no one came to claim him. It was as if Dox, a nickname that his fellow schoolchildren gave him that he later appropriated as his legal name, had just arrived there at the orphanage out of thin air.

 

But every once and a while something from his clouded childhood memories would surface; a smell, a feeling of déjà vu, or even a voice. One thing that consistently brought these feelings was the medical profession. Hospitals, sickbays, he was comfortable and familiar with them all. The injured and sick didn't bother him; he was quite at ease with it, desensitized to it even. That, however, terrified him. How odd that when faced with the sick and dying he felt nothing at all.

 

So, even though it felt right and he had even tried to apply to medical school to become a doctor, he couldn't bring himself to it. As soon as he would try to sign a paper to commit, or attend an orientation, he would collapse in a panic attack.

 

Here they were, in the eye of the storm having raged one battle and were on to the next, and he felt nothing for the dying people in that sickbay.

 

Alas, his attention was focused on the little boy he saw standing next to a biobed. The boy was the one that he saw often, and dreamed of often, who would always run off if he ever approached. Another figment of his imagination. Whenever something became familiar, that little boy would appear. Perhaps, Dox always thought, this boy was someone from his past, before he lost his memory. If only he could remember.

 

Then Dox saw the patient on the biobed that the boy was standing next to. It was Tristan. Frowning with concern, he approached and grabbed the attention of the attending nurse.

 

"Is he alright?" he asked.

 

The nurse nodded, flustered, obviously fatigued at the sudden influx of customers. "Yes, there was an explosion on the bridge."

 

"Does Commander Teykier know he is here? What happened?"

 

"I don't know," she made a few adjustments to the panel above Tristan's bed and made a motion to leave, "I have more patients, I don't know what his condition is, I can't talk now."

 

And immediately she was gone. Dox and the little boy stood by the biobed and watched Tristan for a moment, before he shook his head, turned on his heel, and hastily left the sickbay. He stopped just outside the door and tapped the corridor panel, bringing up a communications program. He used it to write a brief message to Laarell, just in case she didn't know what had happened to Tristan.

 

Laarell Teykier. She had called a department meeting, her first, and he had been unable to attend. Dox had been assisting an engineer at repairing a sensor relay deep within the bowels of the ship. By the time he had reached the main science lab, everyone had been dismissed. Even hours later, he still had yet to report to her, and as a new crewmember aboard Excalibur he had not even had a chance to meet her at all yet.

 

As soon as the conflict was over, assuming they survived, he would make it right and report to her properly. Dox still wasn't sure what the benefit of combining the operations department and science department would be, although he was certainly glad to have an officer he could report directly to. What did science have to do with ops? He didn't know, and he knew less of how Excalibur did things, but he certainly knew who he could ask.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!


Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.


Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  
Followers 0