Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: Paying for Our Sins

(snip)

Randy shrugged, “She’d probably say it was quieter than my snoring.” Randy blocked and countered, and after a handful of exchanges he noticed that Roman was pushing him further compared to earlier. It was giving him a good chance to get confident with the basics and learn to improvise. Randy absolutely knew for sure though, that if Roman was really trying the match would have been over a lot more quickly.

When it was over, Randy drank two bottles of water and headed back to his quarters for a shower and clean clothes.

Randy

Roman stayed after Randy left. He wasn’t avoiding Rand, he didn’t think, he just didn’t want to think about any of it. So he went back to work against Mr Dummy. That slight tightness in his chest had been getting worse, he assumed it was in his head. That he was imagining it because he knew he’d had the meds the night before. He practiced for another half hour, going hard again. Practicing more advanced moves Randy wasn’t ready for yet. After one of the moves, he stumbled a little. He wrote it off as being dizzy, because he wasn’t eating or drinking enough.

It got worse. He wanted to keep going but the tightness had turned into a pain, a pain he recognized but at first tried to ignore. But the dizziness was getting more noticeable, it felt like he couldn’t catch his breath. This was how he felt when he needed his hypo. He hadn’t needed it in a while. Where was it…? At last he stopped practicing jiu jitsu and checked his gym bag. It wasn’t there. His office then, maybe he’d stashed it there. Somewhere he didn’t have to look at it.

He grabbed his gym bag and made his way to deck nine, then the CSO office, and dug around in the drawers in the desk. No, it wasn’t here, either. He checked the desk in the lab, going through all the drawers. Nope. What had he done with it? He didn’t want to worry Rand, and besides, by now, he really needed to rest. Deck three was sounding like a long walk. He didn’t want to bother Randy again, but he wasn’t sure he had a choice. He went back to his CSO office, took a seat at his desk, and paged Randy, fifty or so minutes after Randy had left the gym.

Randy got the page and was perplexed. He had left the gym, grabbed a shower and went to talk to Rand. Except she wasn’t in Roman’s quarters and neither was Roman. He assumed they had gone to the mess to eat. When Roman said he was in his office, Randy remembered that Roman had been bringing Rand to the lab after her shift to see the animals. When he arrived though, there was no Rand.

When Randy arrived, it would be obvious what the problem was. Roman sat slightly hunched over in his chair, his right wrist and hand pressed tightly to his chest, his breathing too fast considering how long since he had been exercising by now, a good ten to twenty minutes. He’d pushed too hard in the gym. The nightmares, the not sleeping, the not eating well, it had all been putting extra strain on his body that might have made this easier to set off.

~ Roman

“Lean back in the chair, don’t hunch over. That’s instinct but leaning back will open your airway. More oxygen is good and deeper breaths will eventually help your heart slow.” Randy said this knowing it was hard to do. He put a hand on Roman’s shoulder and helped him lean back, supported by the chair and the wall and made sure his legs weren’t crossed. Then he opened the tricorder and pulled out one of Roman’s emergency hypos. He had taken to keeping one on him because Roman and Rand were always losing them. Checking the dose against the tricorder readings he put the hypo in Roman’s hand.

Randy