Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in Temp Quarters- Assessing the Situation

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Leah Hart (Nurse Practitioner/Counseling) in Temp Quarters- Assessing the Situation

Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in Temp Quarters- Assessing the Situation

(snip)

“Why not?” she asked softly. It wasn’t the first time he had asserted he couldn’t talk about it. He could but he was choosing not to and Leah needed to understand what was behind it, even if it was only a hint. She also knew that she would have to shift into Phase 2 very soon, but much depended on how he answered.

~Leah Hart, NP

Roman took a short, shaky breath, shaking his head again. Because it hurt too much, because it reminded him of things he couldn’t think about without breaking down in tears, but he wasn’t able to verbalize that. So instead he said, fighting to keep his voice something resembling even, “I just can’t.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

She watched him struggle and Leah well knew what that felt like, even if their experiences of it were vastly different. She inhaled deeply and radiated the genuine compassion she felt for this man. “You are so strong,” Hart said with conviction.

“You have to be in order to carry something that heavy, that overwhelming, for however long you have carried it. And it’s hard to be that strong. Harder still to feel like we can set that burden down for a moment. It can make everything feel so precarious, like everything will fall apart if we do.”

~Leah Hart, NP

“I’m not, though. ‘Cause I can’t keep doing it.” Roman replied. “That’s why. Why the note. Why all of it.” He looked up at her, not quite meeting her gaze. “There’s nothing to be put aside. Nothing can change things.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

She nodded very slowly. “Just because we’ve reached a breaking point, doesn’t mean we aren’t still strong. It just means that we’ve run out of tools to deal with the thing we’re carrying. It’s like running an experiment and finding that the one process you’ve been using isn’t ideal. So instead of tossing the whol experiment out as a failure, we adjust variables one by one till we find a process that works better.”

~Leah Hart, NP