Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Side sim - Sickbay - Cobb dares to submit to a physical

Posted by Lieutenant Fey Kastil (Chief Medical Officer) in Side sim - Sickbay - Cobb dares to submit to a physical

Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Side sim - Sickbay - Cobb dares to submit to a physical

(Snip)

OOC: Love what you’ve done with the place! lol!

IC: The captain remained motionless at the doorway, every muscle in his body seized by a temporary rigor mortis borne from shock and pure, primal fear. He had to be dreaming, still. For in no manner could his already traumatised psyche accept this as a real and waking vision before him.

Forcing his left arm into action, he raised an open palm and delivered a powerful blow to his cheek. Nothing. Still the vision refused to dissipate. Which left Zachariah with only two options, neither of them palatable in any way - one: that he truly was awake and his sickbay truly had been transformed into a laboratory fit for Dr. Frankenstein himself, or two: that he remained trapped, for all eternity, in a nightmare from which there was no possible means of escape.

“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin,” he could hear his own tongue quote into the stillness, the words being swallowed almost instantly by myriad tendrils of encroaching fog. He could leave, still. To his back the main doors remained closed and yet temptingly accessible. But how far along the corridor would he make it before those monstrous hands were upon him? Unnaturally elongated fingers reaching out and clamping like a vice around his ankle…

No. In truth no single escape remained optional for Zachariah Cobb. All that was left now was to accept his fate like the apathetic coward that he was and climb slowly onto the nearest, empty, biobed while mustering every ounce of willpower that remained to avert his eyes from the neighboring bed…and the thing that rested atop of it, separated only from this world by a thin, once-white sheet.

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

The Doctor stood and moved through the fog like some horrifying banshee, gliding toward the Captain as if her feet were not even touching the ground. Her hands producing the tricorder and node from the sleeves of her jacket. Moving with an inhuman grace she scans the captain for a moment taking longer stops at his abdomen and his head. With another stop at his head, she paused and re-read over the readout on the tricorder. A sharp eyebrow raised and her eyes shifted to look into the Captain’s for a long moment, some dark intent settling behind those strange red-orange orbs settled deep into her sharply angled face. “It seems we have an unexpected problem that will require an unorthodox treatment.”

“Unexpected?” Cobb muttered, his eyes growing wide as he began retreating to the farthest edge of the bed, his knees drawing up and into his chest. “Un…orthodox?”

The Monsterous Doctor moves over to the biobed with the misshapen mass on it and reaches out with her elongated fingers to remove the sheet with a flourish of a mad scientist showing off their latest creation revealing something far more frightening. On the biobed was a collection of organic stasis containers used to preserve organic materials for interstellar delivery! Doctor Kastil moves a few of the boxes around, looking for something specific and smiles once she has found it. Lifting the small package carefully, she carefully brought it to the Captain. “I’m afraid there is only one cure for this.” Holding the container out to the captain, she deactivates the stasis setting to open the package. The lid cracked open on the package frequently used to transport organs. A short moment passes and the scent of the package’s contents reaches the captain smelling strongly of…mint and chocolate?

As the Doctor began to set free the monstrosity on the bed at his side, Cobb’s hands had moved instinctively to his face, his eyes now watching in horror, through his fingertips, as the sheet was pulled back and the demon revealed…

Inside the container are cookies shaped like small shuttlecraft and starships of various classes and models. All mint chocolate chip, the doctor once again offers the contents to the Captain. “Based on the tricorder readings, you have elevated glutamate receptors in key locations of your brain and an above-average generation of adrenaline. You are experiencing fear at a level that will be dangerous for your heart and sleeping patterns. I know I look rather terrifying and it is affecting your perceptions, but I assure you that it is all a matter of coincidence. Please, have a cookie, I promise you that I am a Doctor, Captain Cobb, not a monster.”

• Doctor Fey Kastil

“They’re…they’re…shaped like little shuttles!” Cobb gasped, for the briefest of moments transported from the horrors of sickbay and back to the wondrous innocence of childhood. Or, at least, childhood how it was meant to be, since his own had been bereft of both innocence AND wonder.

Reaching out, Zachariah grasped hold of the nearest cookie. It was an armadillo-type, he fancied. Bringing it towards his nose, the captain could not quite stop himself as he allowed the chocolate shuttle a few swoops in the air before docking at his lips. Closing his eyes, were Kastil listening closely, she might just have made out a mumbled whisper of “Cargo bay doors released. Proceed inside,” before he placed the cookie into his mouth, whole, then crunched and chewed noisily through several ‘mmmmm’s.

It was only when the act had been done and the strange cookie swallowed, that the reality of the situation dawned on the man. But of course, by then it was all too late. Whatever poison this monster had laced her cookies with was already coursing through his bloodstream. In a few moments it would all be over. In the whole scheme of things, he probably couldn’t have prayed for an easier, or more flavourful death…

…but as the seconds ticked by and Zachariah Cobb found himself still very much alive and breathing, he dared to risk his first direct study of Lt Fey Kastil. And while it was true that her appearance remained the stuff of nightmares, he fancied, in that moment, that he could glimpse a distant spark of humanity in those peculiar fire-flecked eyes. Or perhaps he was just hoping for another cookie.

“I…” he began, the shame of his seemingly irrational reaction to his new Medical Chief beginning slowly to emerge, “I meant no offence, Doctor. I just…the last few days have turned everything I have ever known on its head and, well, in truth I’m still just scrambling to keep up.”

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

The doctor was caught off guard with the Captain’s behavior with the cookie, it took every ounce of her will to keep from laughing at the man frightened back to a child-like state. Instead, she offered the Captain the entire container of freshly, well as fresh as they could possibly be, baked cookies. “None taken, coincidence tends to follow me around making me appear like something straight out of an old Clive Barker novel. It tends to have less effect on logical types that are able to explain the coincidences. The fog, for example, is the result of a cleaning solution mixing with spilled chemicals that one of the new staff members dropped by accident. Nothing harmful just looks more ominous than it is.”

The doctor moves over to the other sheet covered body and pulls it back enough to reveal a sleeping crewman. “This is Crewman Tackt from Engineering, he passed out from exhaustion so he was brought to sickbay to get some needed sleep. This is why the lights are dim and the organ music is playing. That is his favorite type to sleep to, though I prefer the harpsichord myself.”

Doctor Fey moves over to the chemistry contraptions boiling liquids to gesture toward them. “This is my attempt at a temporary protective measure for any biological alteration as a result of the anomalies we encounter. It’s still in theory and testing states so we can’t count on it yet, but it is a work in progress that I will confer with GLaDOS and Synthi-er about.”

She carefully strides back over to the Captain, taking a seat in a rolling chair so as not to be quite as tall in front of him, “Does that help put you at ease sir?”

• Doctor Fey Kastil