As Verity held the PaDD that contained her discharge orders, which Captain Glen had reluctantly authorized, in one hand as she placed the Starfleet-issued duffle bag she’d arrived on the Merrimack with near the shuttle that was to transport her home.
After spending only a few months on the ship it had felt like home. However now she was off to Sol to care for her aging grandfather because she had received word that her grandmother had passed. Since she was raised by her grandparents after her mother, their only child, and her father died when she was an infant, she now found herself the sole caregiver for Louis Aphelion the IV. He’d had a serious stroke years ago caused by a blockage in his brain. Stubborn grandfather never wanted to go to the doctor and never wanted to keep up with his health. As a result, it cost him. For if he’d gone one time during any of the last months before he had the stroke, they would have seen the blockage and advanced medical technology could have removed it.
Grandmother had done so much for him afterward and he depended on her for his day-to-day needs. Verity felt sad because she wasn’t sure if he even fully knew she was gone. She bent over, picked up the duffle, stepped onto the shuttle, and sat in one of the far back seats. As the shuttle backed out of the shuttle bay and began to glide away from the ship, she pressed her face and one hand against the glass. She stayed that way until the Merrimack was out of sight.

V. Aphelion, CSO