Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: Lost in the Dark

Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: Lost in the Dark

Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: Lost in the Dark
Posted by… suppressed (15) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)
Roman looked at Randy and shrugged. The lemon thing was weird but maybe her tastes had just changed? At least she was asking for something to drink. “I will still be by for lunch,” he said, assuming he was working today. If she asked him to though, he would still stay with her.

~ Roman

Rand nodded, “Okay.” She wouldn’t ask him to stay. She was too despondent and self-reproachful to feel she deserved to ask.

Randy returned with her drink. He sat down and let her help some with the reports. Then he left. He had work to do.

Rand left the room knowing Randy would be very angry with her. Roman too if he saw her. She went to sickbay and saw Elbbirt. He walked her back telling her she could have paged him and he would have come to her. She made him promise not to talk to Randy or Roman about their conversation. Elbbirt agreed confused as to why, but if it made her feel better.

“Will you send me home?”

He misunderstood. Rand wasn’t afraid that he would and wanted reassurance, Ra d was asking him to send her home. She sounded so forlorn that Elbbirt had to reach over and pat her hand. “No dear. I won’t send you home. You are doing very well. I know this set back must seem horrible, but it happens.”

“But I can’t do my job. And Randy and Ro.. Cmdr Alden are having to do my work and theirs.”

Elbbirt gave her a very grandfatherly smile. “Rand we are on long term deep space missions. We don’t send officers home when they are injured and are recovering. And you have helped cover more shifts and rotations when others are sick than anyone on board. We don’t mind doing this for you.”

“But…I’m not getting better. I can’t do my duty.” Then she fell into a list of everything that was wrong, but she was speaking Gaelic and Elbbirt didn’t understand.

“Rand, dear, you will get better I promise. We won’t give up on you and send you away. Now, let me have a look at you.” He gave Rand a full physical and promised to check her first thing the next day to reassure her of her progress. Then he left, and the only thing for Rand to do was cry herself to sleep.

Rand

Roman’s morning was busy, like always. He was still behind and there were things that needed dealing with everywhere. He needed to remember, so he set an alarm for lunch. He was grouchy and unapproachable for most of the morning, not because of Rand but because of the time of year, alongside his worrying what to do about the med problem. When the alarm went off, he headed straight up to deck three and into their quarters to look for Rand. “Rand? It’s lunch time.”

~ Roman

Rand looked up where she was on the bed. She didn’t seem to ever be anywhere else lately, unless she was in the bathroom sick. She quickly closed the book she was looking at and shoved into the drawer on the bedside table. Roman could tell from the size and shape it was one of her scrapbooks. The breakfast Randy had brought was untouched except for her drink and maybe a couple pieces of fruit. He didn’t have to come get her. He needed to work for lots of reasons and she hated she was adding to his responsibilities. The least she could do was hurry. She didn’t need to take up a lot of his time. She stood, clasping her hands in front of her, they seemed to be shaking, but she wasn’t sure why and walked over to him. He didn’t have food with him, so maybe he was taking her to the mess?

Rand

Roman noticed the mostly untouched breakfast. “Still not hungry?” He asked, a note of concern in his voice. “Are you ready to go lunch?” He didn’t want to make her go if she didn’t feel up to it, but it seemed like time outside their quarters really helped her.

~ Roman

“Nnnot this mmmorning.” She was a little hungry now. She had been too upset to eat. What she did eat was because Randy had been sitting there and making her try to eat. She nodded, “Yes.” She would go with him, and she would try to eat so that he wouldn’t worry about her. So he didn’t feel like he had to come babysit her. She had made an effort, before she snuck out to sickbay, to brush and lightly braid her hair.

Roman smiled when she said yes and walked her to the mess. While they walked he kept an arm around her, occasionally playing with her hair as he noticed she had tried to brush it on her own.

When they got to the mess, she sat the table like he asked her to do. Gorshin had made a plate of random things. “Randy said her stomach is bothering her, so maybe this will entice her.” Gorshin set the plate on the tray along with a glass of Lemonade. Gorshin figured it must help since Randy came and asked for some that morning.

Rand

Roman nodded to Gorshin, thanked him, and then took the tray and sat down with Rand, setting her plate in front of her. “Chef is trying to find something you’ll eat, I think.” He started eating from his own plate. Like the last couple of meals, he ate like he might never see food again.

~ Roman

Rand nodded and smiled a little. Gorshin was sweet and cared about people. “I will try to eat it all.” This is what she ate off her plate: a couple bites of a pimento cheese sandwich, a whole cucumber sandwich (minus the bread she really liked), green and red peppers, lemon and lime slices, kiwifruit, grapefruit (that she had never had before), tomatoes, green peas, she tried the potatoes but they were too heavy, and a kale salad (which she had always complained as being to butter to eat). And she drank the lemonade like she was dying of thirst and it was water.

Rand

Roman gave her another weird look at her selections of foods. It was almost all fruit and veggies she didn’t usually like. Had her concussion made her tastes change or something? Maybe he’d ask Randy. At least it looked like more than she had eaten lately. When she finished the lemonade, he asked her if she wanted him to get her another one. He was finished eating, he hadn’t quite finished his plate but close.

~ Roman

Rand glanced quietly at the time, and then shook her head. She didn’t want him to be late back to his shift. “No, I..I’m okay. I’m done.” She’d eaten more than she had in days. And it made her stomach hurt, but more in a full kind of way than a sick way. They hadn’t really talked. Just sat silently and ate. That was okay though because if they did she’d ask a lot of questions and he’d be late. He was probably already taking extra time just to walk with her. “I…I can walk back…ssso you can get back ttto the lllab.”

Rand

Roman shook his head. “Let me walk you back.” She might get lost or stuck alone and Roman didn’t want that. He checked the time, he had enough time to walk her back if he was a little late, which was fine. He stood and cleared their trays and then came back and waited for her to be ready to go. Then he walked her back to their quarters. He was not taking ‘no’ for an answer.

~ Roman

Rand would have cleared her own tray of he had let her. She was standing waiting to go. She tried to hurry, but that made her feet feel like they were tripping over themselves so she slowed down. She but the inside of her cheek hard as they passed the lab. Poor Nibbles probably thought Rand had abandoned her again.

When Roman left their quarters, Randy was waiting for him. “How is she? Did she eat all?”

Rand

Roman didn’t expect to see Randy that quickly so he did a double take and then shrugged. “She ate some. Mostly more fruits and veggies, like a cucumber sandwich without the bread, another grapefruit, the tomatoes off another meal Gorshin made her.” He shrugged again, “At least it wasn’t nothing.”

~ Roman

Randy nodded slowly. The grape fruit was weird. Rand loved Gorshin’s bread so her not eating it was strange. Rand ate tomatoes but not alone. The. There was the lemons. “Don’t you think what she’s eating is kind of weird? And she keeps getting sick?” Randy really didn’t want to pry and this was SO awkward. But he was afraid to ask Rand and stress her out.

Rand

“I figured she was sick because of her head…” Clearly Randy did not think that. He’d mentioned her odd choices in food twice now… Roman’s face turned bright red and he ushered, nearly pushed, Randy into the Farquharson quarters. Once the door shut, in a quiet voice so Rand wouldn’t over hear, “You’re not implying she might be…?”

~ Roman

“Well, yeah most likely. At first, you remember, she was so dizzy all the time she stayed sick.” And then Roman marched him into his quarters and started whispering. Randy shrugged, “I don’t know!” he whispered hissed. “You’re the one who asked me about…ehm…exercise. I don’t live with her anymore, but a concussion wouldn’t change her food preferences.” One of the side effects of just not living with your twin sister but sharing a bed room, you learned the warning signs. And round about the same time very month, Rand would gorge on ice cream. “When was the last time she ate Gorshin out of all his ice cream?”

“Ice cream…? Before her concussion, I think.” Since then she hadn’t had much of an appetite for anything. Roman had sisters, he knew the way those things worked and he knew the general signs… He didn’t think he’d seen them in a while but he wasn’t sure.

“I mean Shrine keeps good records but if I go ask her if Rand has had her…cough…contraceptives she’ll treat me like a kid stealing candy and ear march me out of sickbay.”

Rand

“What if I ask? She knows we’re together.” Roman asked, anxiously.

Randy looked at him like he was nuts. “Sure you go ahead and do that. Go ask Shrine if Rand has had her…medication. Shrine won’t ask why, she’ll know why. Go ahead and ask and see what she does to you for putting Rand at risk with her concussion because you can’t stop snogging her. That will go over real well.”

Roman’s face turned red. “I didn’t think she’d get pregnant! She didn’t either!”

He put his hands on Randy’s shoulders, “She had better not be! You can’t have families on active Starfleet vessels. One of us would have to go home… Or we’d have to give up the child.”

~ Roman (NOT ready for parenthood and panicking)

Randy put his hands on Roman’s shoulders. “Don’t yell at me. I’m not the one who did this. And no, one of you wouldn’t go home. Rand would go home. She can’t serve while she’s pregnant, period. And then she wouldn’t come back. She wouldn’t give up a child, and she wouldn’t let you give up your career so she could come back.”

Randy

“I’m not letting her give up hers. And I don’t think she’ll like the third option.” By that, Roman meant termination. He shook his head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Can’t you run a scan? Say you’re making sure she’s hydrated or something.”

~ Roman

“Of course we can, but not with a tricorder. She has to go to sickbay. Tricorders aren’t sensitive enough to pick up the readings of a fetus that young. We could run a blood test, but since we haven’t been doing that, suddenly asking her for one would really freak her out.”

Randy

“Asking her to go to sickbay will freak her out, especially if I ask her.” Roman replied. “We both hate it so much, she knows I keep her away from it if I can.” He looked at Randy, “What do we do?”

~ Roman