Sickbay Chore 1: Pulling The Strings

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I worked my whole life - I don't apologize - to take care of my family, and I refused to be a fool, dancing on the string held by all those bigshots. I don't apologize - that's my life - but I thought that, that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the string.

 

 

 

- Marlon Brando, The Godfather

 

 

 

After sending his memo, Victor was back at work, calibrating the medical tricorders. He could have used any of the consoles around him to send his message to Muon but he’d felt slightly exposed in sickbay, especially after his spat with the Captain, so he’d nipped out for a few minutes to the privacy of his own quarters and his own console.

 

 

 

He now performed the task of checking out the tricorders the old fashioned, the most reliable and the most common way. He took each tricorder, pointed it at himself and studied the reading. Any tricorder that seemed slow to respond, had anomalous results or had any other error would be set aside for closer examination. Once finished with the main bulk he would look at these defective leftovers and adjust them so they would perform properly. It was a tedious job but one that he knew must always be performed on receiving new or replacement equipment.

 

 

 

For a moment his eyes darted to the office door. Victor’s mind corrected itself in its analysis to “Dr. McKinney’s office door”. He sighed, knowing he would have to get used to that. For a long time the office had just been, “the office”. When Sheepy was chief, he often spent a lot of time away at conferences and when he did, he had no qualms with and pretty much encouraged the use of the comfy room as group space. It provided a nice little haven in their stressful environment. Victor was going to miss that extra room.

 

 

 

“Oh who are you kidding?” he thought to himself as he got back to his task. “This isn’t about a blasted door or a room, its’ about the new boss”.

 

 

 

Doctor ‘DJ’ McKinney, the name rang a couple of bells. An interesting medical paper he had read once perhaps? He was sure there was some sort of link. Wherever he had heard of her though, she was now in charge. A bit of a shock, Victor thought. The station seemed to feed on paperwork like a great beast, yet no forewarning had been sent to the team. Captain Ayers had just introduced her out of the blue.

 

 

 

Victor admitted that the announcement of a new CMO was not too surprising in itself. Every sickbay needs a chief, no exceptions. But why the secrecy? Why hide the identity of Sheepy’s successor? Was it to prevent self-esteem bruising for the other likely candidates? But who was there it could possibly bump?

 

 

 

“Oh.” He said out loud and covered up with a cough.

 

 

 

Victor contemplated. He’d been on Aegis a long time now, as he’d told Nick, longer than anyone in the department. He was given his post a year and several months before even Mimi had first appeared. That meant that technically, with his rank and service date, until the Captain had made his announcement, Lieutenant Victor Images M.D. had been the highest-ranking doctor in The Sky Harbor Aegis sickbay.

 

 

 

If there was someone the bosses were trying not to hurt with the news, it was he.

 

 

 

Victor put down the last of the fully-functional medical tricorders and folded his arms. He had never craved authority but the allure of another pip and being able to make more changes wasn’t to be sniffed at. Promotion in post or rank is attractive to nearly every single Starfleet officer, regardless of race, field, background or gender but it had never bothered him before that he wasn’t a Captain or an Admiral. He honestly often saw himself practicing medicine happily by Sheepy’s side till both of them got so old, gray and shaky that they’d have to be carried out of their workplace on stretchers. It was an idea that had made Victor smile quite a few times. But deep down he had always thought that at one point, Sheepy would move on to a grander calling, a different posting and would leave him to run the show for a while before sooner or later he himself would pass on the reigns. Probably to Mimi if she was still there.

 

 

 

But of course the only thing ‘passing’ now was fate bending over and passing wind in his general direction. “The worst that can happen is not losing your parents in a disaster, its losing your parents in a disaster and being adopted by a foster father who will one day decide to smuggle dangerous drugs and will keep you prisoner”, he considered putting on a mug but realized it was too long. The truth was that Barry had messed up parts of Victor’s life with his moronic actions and that this, like all the other outcomes from it, was a pain but unavoidable. The arrangements for Dr. McKinney had most likely been made when he was still trapped in that time field and presumed dead. And Victor knew as much as anyone else that a dead man can hardly be good choice for a job, except in politics.

 

 

 

However Victor conceded, as he started work on the pile to his right of defective tricorders, that perhaps it wasn’t so bad as it looked. ‘DJ’ seemed to be charming, intelligent, forthright and had spunk or chutzpah or zing or whatever you called it. She had faced down not only him but also the Captain to stop their argument. And afterwards Victor had felt incredibly ashamed of his quarrel even though he barely knew her. These were all good qualities for leadership in his opinion plus she was a looker too, which wasn’t bad at all.

 

 

 

What had really left a mark was how DJ sent them back into action immediately after her tour round the station with none of the “getting to know you” so usually common in these situations. Instead she’d given them exact, seperate meeting times for all that. Now that was pretty impressive. Though some often saw him as being some sort of troublemaker, Dr. Victor Images respected order and authority above all else when used correctly.

 

 

 

Maybe it wasn’t his time to take charge yet; maybe he needed someone like Dr. McKinney pulling the strings. He needed someone with her force to observe. He’d usually treated his fellow physicians and crewmen as complete equals, regardless of rank; always asking but never ordering. Maybe the congeniality had made him too soft, made him less likely to be listened to. Perhaps he could, through watching Dr. McKinney, gather some more skills in enforcing discipline and respect that he could one-day use. Maybe this was a blessing. Things didn’t seem so bad when he looked at it like that. Victor began to look forward to his upcoming interview when he'd listen to everything she had to offer and show her everything he had to offer back as ranking assistant. The blonde Lieutenant actually began to smile.

 

 

 

Then he remembered how Nick had smiled widely at him after his rumble with Ayers. “

 

 

 

"Why did the Ensign do that?” he wondered, looking at the other man at the desk “Didn’t he see how serious the conversation was?”. But he wouldn’t wander down that train of thought while this tricorder task was still at hand. He’d save it till he started on the emergency operating equipment.