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

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Leah Hart (Nurse Practitioner/Counseling) in Temp Quarters- Assessing the Situation
Posted by… suppressed (18) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

“Because you just told me there was no shame in needing help, that it was good that my fellow staff at the hospital intervened when it was clear I was not able to tkae the necessary action myself,” Leah said. “And I would agree with my assessment. And yet, you avoid my questions, and seem to believe that what applies to others does not apply to you. So, what makes you so different? We’ve established that there is an issue that led to you being here. Are you not deserving of care and help?”

~Leah Hart, NP

“What? What kind of question is that?” He crossed his arms and humphed, giving her a look akin to a stare down. “How did you get to that conclusion? Why in all the space between here and earth would I believe something like that?”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

Leah wore a placid expression, utterly unruffled. People lashing out at her was nothing new and a part of the job. “Because you don’t believe the crew should look out for you. It’s an easy conclusion to make, but I could be wrong,” she said with a shrug. “If I am wrong, by all means explain with an example that shows to the contrary.”

~Leah Hart, NP

“What is this? Secondary school? I haven’t got an example to the contrary.” Roman never rose his voice. He never would. But that sarcastic, dry tone he got was indication enough he was lashing out. “It doesn’t matter whether they do or don’t, this conversation is irrelevant.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

“It absolutely is, Roman. You wrote a suicide note. Stop playing games with me.” She didn’t raise her voice, but there was a seriousness and command to it. “I want to help you. I told you so on several times and you agreed to give this a chance. But you can’t go where you need to go because you don’t believe you are worthy of the help. That you can be helped. You’ve given me so many examples of why your career holds value in your life, on how you are an asset to this ship and crew, but it seems completely divorced from reality. You were the one who wrote ‘I can’t do this anymore’. That was your truth, but it’s not all of the truth. Whatever is making it so hard to be Roman Alden, to live this life, isn’t going to go away because you wish it to. If it could, it would have already.”

~Leah Hart, NP

“That’s… Don’t you understand? It has nothing to do with this ship.” He seemed to flinch slightly at her using the wording out of his letter. It wasn’t intended for her, her reading it was embarrassing, though he knew she would have. “I know it won’t go away, there’s one way to make it and… That’s why we’re here.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

“Bullshit,” Leah said firmly. “You said there’s no shame in accepting help. Why aren’t you allowed to accept help?”

~Leah Hart, NP

“I.. I don’t know.” He was getting upset, rubbing his hands together, a habit he must’ve picked up from Rand. When he noticed himself doing it, he stilled himself. “I don’t know.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

“This is conjecture, but in my experience most people do know. But it’s scary. Going deeper to pull out that reason why is hard. It’s possibly painful. But until we do we’re stuck. We can’t move forward. We can’t go back. So we end up in situations we never wanted and can’t get out of, unless we do something drastic.”

Leah slipped off the bed and moved to the floor, sitting across from him, cross-legged. She gave him and Pipkin a little space, but was close enough to be in arms reach. “You had a drastic action in mind and I’m challenging you here and now to pick a different drastic action. I’m asking you to be courageous the way you ask the crew to be. Dig deeper Roman.” She gestured around them. “This is the safest space you could have found yourself in. I know it doesn’t seem that way now, but I hope later you’ll see that this was the best possible outcome for Rand finding that letter. Because you got me, and here’s the thing people don’t fully realize yet: I’m a stubborn-ass woman who has had to defy so many people at times in order to do what was right, especially by my patients.”

“So I’m going to suggest an idea right now. You absolutely have a choice. I can’t force you to share and open up. Maybe you think you have no reason to. But I’m giving you a really good one right now. Do it for yourself, for the perhaps minuscule part of you that wonders what if things could be different. Can I pitch this idea to you? Are you willing to try? Because I’m determined to see you find you way. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to you. This is your crossroads, Roman Alden. Time to pick a path: doing things the way you have been with an outcome that I fully believe you really don’t want, or trying something new with no gaurantees but perhaps some hope. Consider it an experiment we’re going to attempt. “

~Leah Hart, NP

“Experiments have parameters. And don’t dig into my personal life.” Roman sighed a long, tired sigh, “then again, if I don’t say yes I suppose I’ll never get out of this ‘safe space’ so I suppose I have to try.” He said, giving Pipkin more attention.

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

Leah usually tried to keep her expressions to herself, but as she was shifting the format of this conversation, she allowed a bit more of herself to be visible. She snorted. “Seriously, Commander? We’re not here because of your work life. Your personal life is a part of this conversation. It has to be and you know it. And you can leave this space two ways: we find a reasonable path forward that will get you back to duty, or you will be transferred to Starfleet medical. Those are my two options. And not only am I rather committed to seeing you succeed here, but others on this are as well. They want you to be a part of this crew too. Because they care.”

~Leah Hart, NP

Roman gave her a carefully guarded look, one that said he didn’t quite believe her words. “I am not one to talk about personal matters.” Not just because it fulfilled his parents’ code of conduct, but also because he had lived that way for so long, trying to talk to someone about it now just felt awkward and weird. “So… What exactly is it you want to know?”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

She shook her head. “Actually, this is where I actually tell you about the experiment I think we should do. Maybe it will help you feel more at ease with talking about personal matters. But maybe not. We won’t know until we try.”

“Basically, we’re going to go back and forth. I’m going to tell you something about me, then you say something about yourself that is similar. For example, I might tell you my favourite food. Then you tell me yours. I will try to guide us in a direction that I hope will be useful to my evaluation. I might pause and ask you to clarify something, but I’ll try to just let us continue the back and forth. We will start simple and go from there. Does that sound doable? Any questions?”

~Leah Hart, NP

Roman nodded slowly. “No questions. I’ll try this.” He nodded towards her, “You first.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

Whether he realized it or not, this was a big step he was taking, one that showed her yet again that there was still a sliver of hope. That he hadn’t given up yet. If he truly had, they would not be having this conversation. Rand would have found the letter, but the final draft. This would have been a tragedy rather than an opportunity for growth and hopefully healing. All this Leah took very seriously, even as she committed what many in her field would consider not just a faux pas, but an ethical error. She highly disagreed because she knew what she was trying to do.

“I have a mother and a sister who is nine years older than me. My father died eight years ago.” She gave him a nod. It was his turn. They were sticking to facts.

~Leah Hart, NP

“I have both my parents, a younger sister, and two- well, one brother. The other died last year.” He shrugged, “We never spoke much.” Pipkin had grown tired of being held and instead was exploring the room sniffing everything. Roman set his hands in his lap and tried not to fiddle with them as he spoke. To do so would be unbecoming. Less than perfect.

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

“I grew up on in New Aberdeen, on Aldebaran Three. I liked the colony but I left when I knew that what I needed most was off-world. I applied for Starfleet and have not been back home since,” Leah said. She left her hands open and loose on her thighs and her gaze flicked between Pipkin and Roman.

~Leah Hart, NP

“I was born and raised in Salisbury, England, where my…” He sighed and took a long breath, “my family goes back generations, as old English nobles, from the twelfth Earth century.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

As promised, Leah offered no commentary. “My family originated in Spain, with my father’s side coming from Basque Country and my mother’s from the Andalusia region. I speak Spanish as my mother tongue, as you can probably guess from my accent, but I grew up bilingual.”

~Leah Hart, NP

Roman nodded politely, “Hablo español tambien. Aprendí en la escuela.” His Spanish was heavily English accented, but perfectly understandable. “I speak French as well.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

“Tu español es bastante bueno,” she said with a smile.

“Muchos gracias,” Roman replied gracefully.

“My cultural roots are really important to me. There’s so much about it all I really appreciate, but sometimes it’s really hard to feel a part of it all because my family can be difficult to deal with.” Leah said this rather matter-of-factly.

~Leah Hart, NP

Roman shrugged, “Is that not how family is?” He folded his legs so he was sitting cross legged. “I suppose Rand’s isn’t. Or at least so she says.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

Sitting there in a mirrored position, Leah went with the shift. “Apparently not,” she said with a light laugh. “Imagine my surprise after I finished my nurse training and moved out on my own for the first time. It was one thing to have friends with well-adjusted families, but there I was watching such families interact and couldn’t help but go, ‘Huh, so that’s what that looks like.’”

Hart drew in a long and slow breath. “My father was the one who got me best. Never tried to make me be something I wasn’t. My maternal grandmother is the same way. Too bad her daughter wasn’t,” she said, rolling her eyes.

~Leah Hart, NP

“Hm,” said Roman. “I’m sorry that’s how things were for you.” It was genuine, but also meant to keep her from asking questions about his family.

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

Leah rolled her hands and gazed at him expectantly. “Your turn.”

~Leah Hart, NP

“I went to a very prestigious private school,” said Roman, and then he gave the name of his school and his graduation accolades. He was trying to keep to superficial things.

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

When you were trying new things, especially things you didn’t want to do, there was always a certain learning curve that you had to expect. A certain resistance would go along with that. And then there was sheer stubbornness. Roman was dealing with both, not that she hadn’t anticipated this already. She was modelling a process that was hard for him. Expecting huge shifts in a short time was not reasonable.

“When I was twelve years old, I was climbing a tree. There was this giant tree in the park we were at having a celebratory family picnic before my sister started university. I, of course, decided to climb it. My mother kept telling me to come down, but I wanted to see out from up high because we were in the hills and there was a good view if you could find a vantage point. I sat on this big limb and could see the lake on the other side of our valley. It was so pretty. But my mother was getting angry and so I climbed down. I was doing quite well till I hit one spot and got a bit stuck. Suffice to say, despite my agile efforts, I fell out of the tree four metres and fractured my left wrist and all three bones in my right shoulder. First bones I ever broke and I joke now it’s because I do things with style.”

~Leah Hart, NP

Roman listened attentively to her story, with a reflexive “ouch” at the part of the story where she fell four meters. He smiled, “The best way for a child to learn is to explore… Even if the result isn’t great.”

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO

“Too true,” Leah said with a nod. “And it sounds like you know from experience. Share an example.” She was still keeping it light but she didn’t want to deviate from this experiment they were trying.

~Leah Hart, NP

It was said casually and light, but it was an order of sorts, she wasn’t going to let him skirt around it. Roman shook his head ever so slightly. He didn’t want to, he couldn’t. All of his stories… He… No, he wouldn’t go there, not now. Because then he’d cry and he wouldn’t do that.

~ Cmdr Alden, XO/CSO