Posted by Civilian Yavia Crockett (Nurse - Sacred Heart Hospital) in Tenkiller’s House- Tipping Point, Day 2

Posted by Major General Charles Tenkiller (Vice-Commander, Colonial Customs and Defense Agency) in Tenkiller’s House- Tipping Point, Day 2

(snip)

“Finish up. I’ll be in the kitchen. The ladies are still asleep… at least, I think they are.” he said with a grin. He turned and walked inside.

The ladies were not asleep. Sharah a d Yavia had both slept lightly out of ha it when there was a patient around. And for the moment Eela was both friend and patient. The alarm on TK’s wrist control went off. The ladies had the good grace to wait to laugh till he left the room. They shared a look, “Yes, Sweetheart, it was a much better show with you.” They slipped on their robes and went into the gym. Yavia I sisted a d Sharah had to admit it helped.

There wasn’t really anything to finish but she did resume her earlier stance and close her eyes, giving herself a brief moment to meditate.

Tenkiller set about making coffee. Ground beans, hot water, French Press coffee maker. What he made was strong, but he cut the bitterness by mixing raw sugar into the ground beans so it all steeped together. What resulted was a delicious beverage that could potentially be used as a defibrillator if one was hard up. He pulled down two large ceramic mugs. They seemed to be handcrafted by someone who was not very good at pottery… but they did hold a lot of coffee; and were surprisingly comfortable in one’s hand. He filled both and leaned against the island in the kitchen, waiting.

Tenkiller

Eela made her way back up into the house with tentative steps- going up was always harder than going down when her back wasn’t great, even with the brace on (she shuddered to think what it would have been like without the device). But it was more than that as well. As soon as she was up there, she would have to resume dealing with everything that had happened yesterday. She knew she was capable of doing so but that didn’t make make her want to race up the stairs with excitement.

Stepping through into the kitchen, she spotted the mug and smiled as her hands slipped around it. “Oh good, a reasonable size. I had to have a chat with my replicators over the years about what was a suitable serving of coffee. It was like they didn’t believe me.”

~Eela

Tenkiller smiled and said “Next time tell it to talk to my sister. She made that mug and this one for me.” and he grinned and took a sip. “So… how are you doing today? Did you get some rest?” and he chuckled. “I mean, I know you slept. But did it help?”

Tenkiller

She drank deep from her mug, allowing the strength of the brew to hit her. Ahhh, see? Now was that so hard? Then again she was one of those that liked raktajino so she wasn’t adverse to strongly brewed things. Eela blew out a breath. “Well, I feel less like a panicky cornered creature, so that’s an improvement. I don’t know that decisions will be any easier than yesterday but at least I can be a bit more steady while making them.”

She sipped again. “Kenzo said something to me that put things into perspective a bit and I woke up and realized I missed calling my daughter yesterday and I had these messages from her. She doesn’t know yet but Cort did tell her I was dealing with something, so I have time to figure out how to talk to her about any of this.” Eela gave him rueful smile. “I never thought it was necessary to have Cory’s arrival here flagged. Things were amicable enough at the end that while we weren’t interested in spending much time around each other, I never thought he posed a risk. I guess I’m just glad that everyone else was quicker on the mark and flagged him somewhere along the line. It’s the only way my mind has figured out how a whole tactical team was there so fast.” A part of her thought that after she broke the vase and in her rage-filled state she herself posed a greater risk to Cory than he to her, but that could have changed so quickly. He knew exactly how her body was and wasn’t okay. And it made her feel ill to think that her mind even went there at all.

~Eela

Tenkiller smiled and said “Well, as far as the flagging goes… that was Agent Gan’s call. She’s divorced, so she is a bit risk averse to ex-husbands. And I’m just glad that it was Hasid that got there. Gan would have straight up thrown him down the lift shaft without a word. And so you know, we didn’t flag him as a threat. Just a higher risk level than normal. But that means stand-by response team. So that is where all that came form.” He took a drink and then looked at her. “You know you didn’t do anything wrong… right? In fact I’d say you showed a helluva lot more restraint than almost anybody. If that had been Yavia, she’d have smashed the glass on his head and cut intricate floral patterns in his ass-cheeks with the shards.” and he laughed.

Tenkiller

“And used every spherical part if his body for batting practice!” Yavia’s voice carried up from the lower floor as she and Sharah came up the stairs. They paused, looked at Tenkiller, then at each other and laughed, more like giggled. Both women hugged Eela as they passed. “Sharah you want coffee?” The shorter woman made a face. “Eww No. Chocolate.”

Eela welcomed the hugs. It was so strange to have such contact wth people again. She had had more physical contact with people in the last 18 hours than she had had her entire tenure on Oed. And she realized how much she had missed it.

“One of these days, Sharah I am going to convert you to coffee.” Yavia pulled down a mug and poured it to the brim.

“Sure and how do you plan to do that?” Sharah asked as she started to heat milk on the stove.

“I am going to hide all your chocolate so you have no choice. And refuse to think about where I hid it.” Yavia bumped her hip and moved away from Sharah with the hot milk.

Eela laughed. “I don’t know. Hiding chocolate might be considered an offence.” She sipped on the coffee. Something about all the care and affection in the kitchen made her feel actually happy, rather than sad like it might otherwise. For some, being surrounded with genuine love and happiness while you in crisis could amplify your own feelings of struggle and despair. But not Eela. She revelled in it as a positive reminder.

Sharah looked over at Eela with a ‘See what we put up with’ look. “Would you like breakfast?” Sharah didn’t ask how she was, not because she didn’t care, but she knew Charles had asked and you could only be asked the same question so many times.

Yavia and Sharah

She shook her head. “I’m good with my coffee. Not a breakfast person. But you do you need to.”

Eela moved a little ways down the counter so she felt less like she was in the way of them working and leaned her back against the counter. “Any restraint I showed him was hard won. Sometimes I think relearning emotional control was harder that getting up on my feet and walking again. So sometimes that middle ground between expressing emotions and knowing when to hold back is hard for me. It feels like a slippery slope.” It was hard to explain just how volatile she felt after the coma, how everyday simple things would reduce her to tears of frustration and she’d shout and throw things. Sometimes it was a perfectly reasonable reaction to the stress and grief she was experiencing after such a dramatic set of changes in her life. She vividly remembered that one day she felt fear from Caridee and had doubled down on the therapy. She had been determined to not be someone those she loved was afraid of. The irony of this reverse situation was not lost on her. “Besides, therapist first by training, remember? I’m trained to not escalate a bad situation if I can help it.”

~Eela