<USS Lovisa> People Who Need People...
- From: Robert Butler <rwbutler@xxxxxxx>
- To: USS Lovisa <usslovisa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:42:56 -0400
~~~ People Who Need People... ~~~
Sarah and Joy
The door to sickbay opened with its familiar swoosh. Joy entered
quietly, a bit uncertain. She still didn't feel entirely that
Sickbay was home. It was a place of many organic mysteries. Still,
she had been lurking on the bridge enough. Time to 'do the rounds.'
Sarah wasn't busy. It seemed Sickbay didn't get busy when the ship
was on alert, unless people were actually getting shot up. Everyone
else was too busy to be bothered with attention to small medical
details. Except that darned Ensign Wheeler and his perpetual
hangnails. If he would stop biting his cuticles, he wouldn't have
that problem... Sarah had run the dermal regenerator over his hands
for ten minutes and sent him on his way. She was a little surprised
when the door opened and Joy entered, but she stood up and managed a
smile. "Counselor... how is everything?"
"Well, thank you. I am glad to be free again. Between Leges,
security drills, chases after mystery ships and the anniversary
party, I haven't had much time. Yourself? You didn't look quite
your best at the party."
Taken aback, Sarah wasn't sure what to say. She started to shrug it
off, then sighed and sat down. Looking up at the Counselor, she
admitted, "I haven't exactly been feeling very sociable lately."
"I'm not sure I've been at my best, either." Joy hesitated.
"Anything you'd care to talk about?"
Now, Sarah did shrug. "Have a seat," she invited, and turned toward
the replicator. It was a little tricky to touch the manual controls
at a distance, but she only needed the "repeat" button and the simple
sequence for a glass of water. The water, and her mug of fortified
coffee, appeared, and carefully she called them from the slot to her
hands and set them on the desk. "Distilled water," she said to Joy,
with a small smile. "I remembered."
Joy returned the smile, accepted the offered seat, and gingerly
accepted the floating glass. "Which makes one wonder... Which is
the greater oddity, the object appearing from nothing, or floating
across the room."
"I'm still not used to doing that in front of people," Sarah
blushed. "I guess I thought you'd be a good person to practice in
front of, being a Counselor and all." She took a sip of her coffee.
"I've just felt so tired and dragged-out lately. And..." she
hesitated. "And lonely. Ruthie and Dan keep the kids busy, and Alex
has hardly been home except to sleep..."
"Practice away. If things happen often enough, they become normal,
if there is such a thing as normal Starfleet. Sorry about my share
of any lonely. I've been bridge sitting. I have to remember to get
around more, though I can quite understand your husband being busy."
Joy looked at Sarah closely. "Is any of the tired physical? I'd be
tempted to recommend Rikka therapy, except engineering and security
seem to have preempted the ship's most vital social engineering tool."
That got Sarah to chuckle. "It might be physical," she said slowly.
"All the literature says the middle trimester is the easiest time of
a pregnancy, but I guess that doesn't mean everything has to be
perfect..."
"Well, I'm not sure I can help you on the physical side, unless you
want me to point some of this equipment at you." Joy looked about
the various instruments, dubiously. "I could seek Starseeker, if you
like. I might have better luck than security."
"No... I promise I'll have Star and maybe Dan take a look at me in
the next day or so," said Sarah. "I think Dan's waiting for me to
ask him for some training, anyway. But meanwhile... what can I do
about feeling so abandoned, without looking like I'm unstable or too
needy?" she asked plaintively.
Joy settled back. "Abandoned is a strong word. Do you feel
something owed is not being given?"
"I don't know." She took a sip of her coffee, and then another. "I
feel like suddenly we don't have family time any more. Or, when we
do, it's so much shorter and more hurried than it used to be."
"More with your husband, the children, or both?"
"Both," Sarah answered quickly. "But especially Alex. I mean, I
hope I could ask Dan and Ruthie to give me more time with the kids.
I know they're just taking them out of my way so much because they
think I need time without them. But since we left Home... it's just
been one thing after another that needs hours and hours and hours of
the Captain's time. I know I sound so selfish..." she trailed off.
"If it is any consolation, at least a few of the crew might feel a
lack of his time as well. We sort of had to organize our own figure-
it-out meetings lately, analyzing the sliver ship business. He is
quite genuinely busy... But that doesn't answer emotional need."
Joy hesitated. "Did you get that memo from his new Yeoman? His
schedule, which, by the way, does not include a fixed time to get
nagged by the councilor?"
The schedule had not made Sarah very happy. She nodded. "I think
it's a bunch of..." she hesitated momentarily, "hogwash." Her eyes
flashed with barely suppressed anger. "How dare she schedule his
personal family time? Can't he have a little while to himself to
decide how he wants to spend it with us?"
"Hmm..." That was a strong reaction. Unfortunately, Joy knew the
intricacies of organic family life more from theory than
experience. Well, if Sarah was going to open up, to use unusual
gifts in front of others... She turned to a nearby computer display,
froze, and transmitted a few search commands into the computer system
through her wireless network port. Her necklace briefly blinked, and
a series of articles appeared on screen, guidelines and statistical
analyses of how senior officers, married and unmarried, ought to
spend their time. "While this ultimately won't be settled by
statistics and reports, let's see if your subjective feelings agree
with a few thousand other captain's wives, shall we?"
It was humorous, even if it really wasn't funny. Sarah smiled.
"Okay," she agreed, and turned to watch the screen. "What have we got?"
"Well, not every captain runs a rigid schedule... Married captains
don't seem to take their schedules quite so religiously as bachelors
or those without an on board family... And there are any number of
articles, for wives, husbands and councilors, that suggest you aren't
the first to have this problem..." Joy's necklace blinked again. A
few more windows appeared on the display. "And, yes, there are
reports of additional workload and stress by XOs paired with captains
having family on board. I'm going to have to look through this
before launching any direct frontal assaults on the captain's
schedule, but at first look your feelings are not unusual. Your
problem is not unique."
"I suppose that's some small consolation," Sarah sighed. She rubbed
her belly; there was one small spot where the baby seemed to be
practicing for a conga drum competition.
Joy turned from the console, back to Sarah. "But the next question
would be how you want to handle it. I can help you learn what is
reasonable, or at least what is the usual. Can you take it yourself
from there?"
"I hope so..." It was a rare occasion that Sarah felt young and
helpless. She'd been so much on her own as a child, that she'd
learned to be self-sufficient at an early age. But with everything
going on lately, she'd been feeling rather small and lost. It was
difficult to admit.
"Well, if you can, do. If you have problems, I'll be here to talk,
at the very least."
"I wish I didn't feel so darned needy," Sarah said very quietly.
Joy smiled sadly. "I think that is part of what is called being
'sentient.' Races that develop language and tools aren't meant to
walk alone."
Finishing her coffee (and hoping the added nutrients would be enough
to hold her without a meal for a bit longer), Sarah set down the
mug. "I've spent so much of my life being emotionally alone that
it's hard to admit I'd rather not be," she tried to explain.
"But are you truly ready to walk away, to walk alone?"
"Oh, no..." She shook her head. "That's exactly the problem. I did
it for so long, that I never want to do it again. But if I say so,
especially to Alex, I feel like I'm whining..."
"And yet, if you do not tell him, how will he know? An unwillingness
to talk, to communicate, is often a problem in these situations. I
mean, handling things through ship protocol, with councilor and
yeoman discussing schedules, won't do it. It's not just about time,
is it?"
"Well... mostly it's about time," said Sarah. "And about making the
most of what time we do have together, I guess. But if he hasn't got
time for our family now, how will he have more time later, when we'll
have a new baby and need to juggle our schedules even more?"
Which thread to push? "It seems that there are two aspects, then.
Lack of time, which is to a large extent his problem, given his
responsibilities. Then there is an inability to communicate, to
address the problem. This might be more your difficulty, perhaps
growing out of a time when you were used to being independent, when
you were accustomed to making demands of others?"
The young doctor smiled sadly. "There was never anyone to demand
of," she said. "We had a fairly structured schedule at boarding
school, and then I went to university when I was ten, and just sort
of managed on my own. When the people who were supposed to watch
over me would check in, I just said everything was fine. Because I'd
never known any other way for things to be."
"Were things always fine? Did you never feel needs such as you are
feeling now?"
It took a few moments for Sarah to think about that. "Sometimes I
felt lonely," she decided aloud. "I would have a dream about my
parents, and feel empty when I woke up. Or dreams about my People,
that I didn't understand except for the feeling of aloneness when
they were over. But I didn't have any close personal relationships,"
she explained. "I didn't have any experience with them."
Joy nodded, slowly. "I'm not sure what to say, then. I would think,
that for a relationship to work, you would need to be able
communicate at some level. Your People, it seems, are more social,
more a group, than many cultures. I think, perhaps, you have their
need to be part of a group, a family, or perhaps a crew, without the
practice in your youth of what it takes to make such groups work."
Sarah blinked. What a startling revelation! Of course she didn't
have the experience or the practice to be part of a family unit or a
Group. But the question remained -- how to communicate to Alex (who
was, when all was said and done, not of the People) what she needed
when she hardly understood her own needs herself? There was the crux
of the whole issue. "So how do I communicate it?" she asked.
"With words. With touch. Well... I think the first step is not by
saying everything is fine. Alex cannot be treated as the councilors
at your boarding school, to whom you always answered everything is
fine. I'm not sure. I just visited your People briefly. It seemed
that if they saw a person in the village in need, they would answer
that need. Starfleet is no different in that. But you have to let
the need show. Not everyone has a councilor's training to find a
need unstated."
"I guess that means I shouldn't hesitate to be a bother?" Sarah
asked, rather timidly.
Joy smiled. "You shouldn't. At a guess, you will anyway."
"Well, I do hate to be bothersome," laughed Sarah. "Even when I
probably should be."
"I know. A major character fault, independence." Joy again fought
down the urge to advise that it is possible to nag too much. An
unnecessary data point, just now.
Sarah laughed again. "But independence is part of what makes someone
a good doctor, so there must be something positive to be said for it..."
"But do not doctors also have to be able to work in teams? Oh, yes.
It is good to be able to function sometimes alone, but if everyone
were entirely independent, I'd be out of a job! Can't have that!"
"Like everything else, a balance," Sarah concluded, smiling. "Thank
you, Counselor Joy." She felt a little better emotionally -- and
much better physically. She thought she might even be able to eat
something more than fortified coffee and clear broth.
"You are quite welcome, Sarah. I'll try to keep in touch."
Sarah hauled herself to her feet and walked over to the replicator.
She knew Joy was watching her, and felt a little self-conscious, but
placed an order for a tuna sandwich and glass of milk.
Joy stood. "Next step... rearranging bits in the computer. I'll be
hiding in my office if there is need."
"Thank you," Sarah said again, turning with a smile, and took her
lunch tray into her own office to work while she ate.
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