Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Leah Hart (Nurse Practitioner/Counseling) in Main-Sim-Sickbay: Hunger Pains

Posted by Gamemaster OZ (GM) in Main-Sim-Sickbay: Hunger Pains

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Leah Hart (Nurse Practitioner/Counseling) in Main-Sim-Sickbay: Hunger Pains
Posted by… suppressed (18) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Zaril walked quickly into sick bay stopped to finish off one of the bowels of soup and then looked to the closest person for help. He was worried, fearfull, and Hungry all emotions that were now permeating sick bay. “I need help!” he said

Lieutenant Junior Grade Zaril Dovek
Communication Officer U.S.S Sentinel

Leah appeared immediately, her brown eyes assessing him. “Sit,” she said firmly, pointing to a biobed before grabbing her tricorder. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said, slipping into crisis management mode even as she could feel worried and afraid. And hungry? Strange. But she looked at Zaril and understood what was happening.

~Leah Hart, NP

He looked at her, and then around for some food. “I can’t stop eating, nothing is satisfying my hunger,” he said his eyes dancing around the room , the hunger in his aura increasing.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Zaril Dovek
Communication Officer U.S.S Sentinel

She stared at him intently, knowing that he wouldn’t come by unless whatever was going on was serious. “Zaril, we’re going to figure out what’s going on but I need you to take three deep breaths for me okay?” She began to scan him with the tricorder.

~Leah Hart, NP

Zaril gave a slight nod, his hunger was not helping him. The hunger he was feeling was intense, he had to focus on something, Leah had brought calm to him in their first session together she was easy to talk to, he focused on her and what she would say to him, maybe he could teach her another language. His calm increased as did it’s presence in the room, but the hunger had not changed.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Zaril Dovek
Communication Officer U.S.S Sentinel

The CMO came into view from around a bend in the central bulkhead. He looked at Dovek and then the readings from Hart’s tricorder. “When did this hunger start, Lieutenant?”

Kreed, CMO

As the CMO approached, the hunger surged again—like a wave cresting just beneath Dovek’s skin. It was no longer just an emptiness in his stomach; it had begun to thrum in his muscles, crawl along his nerves. His fingers twitched involuntarily. His mouth had already gone dry again, despite the soup.

The scent of antiseptic in Sick Bay was nauseating. Not because it was unpleasant—because it wasn’t food.

His heart rate spiked, visible on the monitors now syncing to the biobed. His stomach let out a low, gurgling groan—not a protest, but a demand. He could feel himself beginning to sweat, clammy at the temples and the small of his back. There was a creeping sensation in his jaw—an ache, as if his body was preparing to chew long before food arrived.

And beneath it all, something subtler had begun: a rising internal urgency, almost instinctual. Like the slow panic of suffocation—not loud, but constant.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t just psychological anymore.

-OZ

OOC: Anything from the tricorder readings?
~Linds

OOC: GM?

Lieutenant Junior Grade Zaril Dovek
Communication Officer U.S.S Sentinel

OOC: My bad! I’m still getting my GM legs under me again.

IC: Tricorder analysis reveals accelerated metabolic activity well beyond normal physiological parameters. Glucose is being metabolized at an extreme rate, yet blood sugar remains low, suggesting an abnormal energy consumption process. The patient’s vitamin and mineral levels are significantly depleted, and digestive efficiency is unnaturally high—indicating the body is rapidly processing and absorbing nutrients, potentially at a harmful rate.

No viral, bacterial, or parasitic cause is immediately identifiable, and standard scans do not match any known syndrome in the ship’s medical database. However, systemic stress is mounting. Cellular catabolism may be imminent if the current metabolic demand continues unchecked.

The condition appears localized to one individual at present, but bio-spectral monitoring of other crew members may be advisable to detect any early signs of a shared phenomenon. Further investigation is recommended to determine whether the anomaly is environmental, neurological, or something else entirely.

-OZ

“Zaril, I need you to lie down,” Leah said, careful not to touch him unnecessarily.

Zaril did not want to lay down, he wanted to eat, “Im so hungry” he exclaimed looking around for food. He started looking Leah. “Im so hungry ” he pleaded the hunger permeated the room, everyone was starting to feel extreme hunger.

She read over the results and shook her head, glancing at Kreed. “If we can’t figure out the cause, and fast, he’s going to crash on us. It might be prudent to sedate him, to conserve his metabolic function.” They needed time to figure this out and time seemed to be something they did not have in great quantities.

~Leah Hart, NP

Lieutenant Junior Grade Zaril Dovek
Communication Officer U.S.S Sentinel

The air in Sickbay grew heavier—not from any change in oxygen or pressure, but from something more primal, more intimate.

A subtle gnawing sensation began to stir in the stomachs of those nearby. At first, it was easy to dismiss: a skipped breakfast, a long shift, a lingering thought of food. But the feeling sharpened—persistent, disproportionate. Not sharp enough to alarm, but disconcerting all the same. A dull ache in the gut, a faint dryness in the mouth, a sudden craving for something warm, fatty, filling.

It wasn’t contagious in any clinical sense. But it was spreading.

Dovek’s presence pulsed with a quiet desperation—uncontrolled, unchecked—and it radiated outward like heat from a fevered body. Not enough to override reason, but enough to distract. Enough to whisper to the subconscious: eat.

Empathy was a gift. But in this moment, it had become an amplifier—broadcasting need without permission, hunger without words.

-OZ

There was no waiting for confirmation of instructions. As the air in the med bay became saturated with these undeniable feelings of hunger, Leah felt her own stomach almost twist in pain. She reached behind her and grabbed a hypo. “I’m sorry, Zaril, but it’s necessary.” She injected Zari with one of the sedatives approved on his file and braced her other hand on the side of the biobed, waiting for relief of some kind. Fr all of them.

~Leah Hart, NP

The hiss of the hypo was quick, almost anticlimactic.

Within seconds, Dovek’s breathing began to slow, the tension in his jaw easing as his body yielded to the sedation.

And just as quickly, the pressure in the room began to lift.

It wasn’t dramatic—no gasp of relief, no sudden clarity. Instead, it ebbed like a tide, the gnawing in the gut retreating with each passing breath. The sharp craving dulled, the dryness in the mouth faded, the restless undercurrent that had been tugging at thought and focus finally loosening its grip.

The air felt clearer, lighter—though the lingering memory of that hunger remained, a faint echo in the body’s awareness.

Sickbay’s background hum reasserted itself, the steady rhythm of monitors and the low murmur of equipment once again the loudest sounds in the room.

For now, the urgency had quieted.

But nothing about it felt resolved.

-OZ

OOC: I’ve decided to jump forward five days in the main sim on the bridge. You can continue to play this thread out. When we are at a good spot, I’ll catch you up with the bridge timeline.

-OZ

Able to breathe more steadily and feeling her head clearer, Leah sighed and looked over at the readings. “Computer, display Dovek’s current neurological readings, including neurotransmitters and compare to the last five minutes.”

~Leah Hart, NP

The computer responded with its steady tone, the diagnostic displays flickering into sharper detail across the nearest monitor.

Neurological Scan: Comparative Analysis

Baseline (last five minutes): Suppressed synaptic activity consistent with sedation. Neurotransmitter levels reduced across the board — serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine — all within expected range for chemically induced stasis.

Pre-sedation: Marked irregularity in limbic resonance. Dopamine spiked to levels normally associated with starvation responses, yet metabolic indicators showed no correlating caloric deficit. Neural firing patterns in the hypothalamus suggested not mere hunger, but compulsion.

Overlayed against typical stress responses, the difference was striking. Hunger impulses should have distributed unevenly, fluctuating with metabolic demand. Instead, they had risen in an almost harmonic pattern — synchronized bursts across multiple neural clusters, peaking in intervals that bore no relationship to his actual physiology.

Once sedation interrupted those peaks, the compulsion simply… evaporated.

-OZ

She shook her head slowly. “It seems to be some sort of external manifestation.” She pointed to the monitor. “See the peaks? There’s some sort of pattern there that is not natural.”

Leah blew out a breath. “Computer, analyze pattern of the synchonrized bursts and compare to library, noting any similarities to known patterns.”

~Leah Hart, NP

The computer emitted a brief chirp, then overlaid the requested analysis across the monitor.

Pattern Analysis – Neurological Bursts

Synchronization Interval: Bursts occurring at near-regular intervals of 3.2 to 3.5 minutes.

Comparative Database Query: No matches found in standard neurological pathology, Federation xenomedicine archives, or stress-response models.

Partial Correlation: The harmonic peaks show 64% similarity to known subspace resonance harmonics observed in localized anomalies. Pattern shape resembles waveforms recorded in spatial distortion fields, not biological processes.

Notable Anomaly: Burst intervals show progressive drift toward alignment with external background readings already flagged by the Sentinel’s sensor logs.

Conclusion:
Neural compulsion spikes in Lt. (jg) Dovek appear to resonate with an external harmonic source, rather than any internal biological driver. The system cannot identify a precise origin, but the overlap with subspace interference patterns is statistically significant.

The readout ended with the clinical detachment of the ship’s computer, but the implication was clear: Dovek’s hunger wasn’t random, and it wasn’t natural.

-OZ

She frowned. “He’s empathic. Something he’s picking up perhaps. Strange that it’s via subspace, but depending on the anomaly, unusual outputs wouldn’t be so strange.”

~Leah Hart, NP

Bump