The Fallacy of the Awkward Doctor

Posted on Sun Apr 10th, 2022 @ 11:12pm by Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai & Lieutenant Kennedy Ryan Walsh

Mission: Sojourners of Time
Location: Holodeck
Timeline: Mission Day 5 at 2100

Kennedy Ryan Walsh’s anxieties were at an extremity. His mind was being pulled in a million different directions and calculations of Irynya and Noah’s rendezvous. He felt betrayed by the only two people on the ship that he cared for. His only two friends onboard. He felt like he was going to throw up as he walked down the corridor bracing himself along the bulkhead to ground himself. He had run to the Turbolift when he heard Irynya shouting at him. She was angry with him. He didn’t know why. She was the one that kissed their friend naked.

He didn’t know the emotions he was experiencing. He didn’t know where he began or where the anxieties began as he felt like his feet began to be heavy. He found himself at the Holodeck. Why was he here at the Holodeck? The very Holodeck that was the source of his betrayal? He disliked confrontation. He hated it. He avoided it and was forced to bundle it up his entire life. His mother lived on confrontation.

He pressed the console and found that it was already occupied. He searched to see if there was an available time afterwards and there wasn’t. He saw that there was one occupant: Dr. t’Nai. She warned him about Irynya. Get to know her, she said when he told her about his feelings. He started to cry as he pressed his forehead against the bulkhead, “I don’t know what to do.”

Without thinking he pressed the call button. She was the only person who would understand where he’s coming from. He felt sick to his stomach. He didn’t want to bother her. His finger moved away as he switched his body around as if he was tying himself in knots. He fell down to the floor and wrapped his arms around his chest. His mother was right. Starfleet wasn’t a place for him. He felt like Ireland was too far away. He placed his head against his knees. He started to breathe deeply trying to ground himself.

Three things you can see. Kennedy looked up, “Ceiling. Information display. Access door.” Four things you can smell. “Iry’s… no…” He screamed into his knees as he refocused. “Focus, Kennedy. Focus. My pants.” He brought his hand to his nose, “Lavender.” He looked around, “the floor. The crew that pass through these hallways.” He found that his breathing and anxieties had passed momentarily. He pressed himself off the floor.

He reshuffled himself as he stood to face the console, “I’m sorry Dr. t’Nai… but you’re the only… only… only person I can talk to right now.” He pushed the button.

Emni didn't frequent the holodeck often, but in the recent weeks since Karim had rejoined them she had taken to doing so from time to time. After her time sharing tips with Lieutenant Blackstone she had begun to frequent this program. A warm sea spread out as far as the eye could see, its shores covered with golden sand made warm and honey-colored by the setting sun. The water, itself, was dark. She’d once commented that the Pacific Ocean was not dissimilar to the color of the Apnex Sea to a roommate. She couldn’t remember now how they had responded.

She had been seated just out of reach of the soft lap of the tide against the shore, legs crossed into a lotus and hands resting loosely on her knees, recalling a favorite memory of Sulli and Jori during one of their earliest visits to this very beach. They’d been newlyweds at that point, high on their love for each other and giddy from the absence of obligations as they lounged on the beach. In her mind’s eye the two of them cavorted in the waves while she looked on, admiring them from afar as the sounds of their hijinks reached her ears in time with the peaks of joy that flowed over her.

It was in the midst of that memory that Kennedy Ryan Walsh’s voice echoed through the space and, with it, a wash of intense grief. She was on her feet in seconds, calling for the arch and striding to it, finding the young man curled in a ball just outside the door.

“Kennedy?” she said, tone gentle and careful. “What’s happened?”

Kennedy’s eyes were filled with intense sadness while he looked up at her. He was filled with regret, guilt, shame, reproach, anger and betrayal along with overtones of severe depressive state and high octane anxiety. All emotions that Kennedy rarely experienced. He didn’t know how to explain it. Irynya’s words constantly repeated in his mind once more: It was a very Jamaharon-type experience… Not formally Jamaharon, of course… but… Jamaharon-type experience… and then his own, This is my own damn fault.

Emni took him in, keeping her defenses high, but not so high that she couldn’t feel the flavor of everything roiling inside of her young CMO. She bent down, gently taking the man’s arm in her hand and tugging. “Come inside,” she said quietly but firmly. “Sit with me.”

Kennedy felt heavy while she pulled him to his feet. His body didn’t want to be pulled off of the floor. I trust you, Doctor t’Nai even if my anxiety is lying that I don’t. He found himself using his free arm to help push himself off the floor and braced himself with the palm of his hand on the bulkhead as he was on his feet. With one hand he absentmindedly brushed off his slacks.

He slowly nodded his head.

Doctor t’Nai is a friend, Kennedy. You can trust her, he told himself. He wanted to say it outloud but he didn’t know how. He felt like this needed to be internalized. For now. As she brought him into the Holodeck. The brightness of the sun blinded him. It had been a long time since he felt the sunshine on his skin. At least that he remembered. It was long since he was on Risa… his face fell sullen when he remembered that is where he had met her. The woman he couldn’t even name in this moment. He was so angry. Guilty. He felt like he was going to hurl as he raised his free hand to his stomach. He closed his eyes as he smelt the saltwater. It reminded him of the Irish Sea. Home.

Emni drew him forward, returning to the spot where she had been sitting. When she stopped there she dropped to the sand, resuming her lotus and then looked up at the young man next to her. “Sit,” she said. It was a command, not an offer though it was delivered with the doctor-precise bedside manner she had developed over so many years. She knew a person in distress when she saw them and she knew that they couldn’t easily make their own decisions in those moments.

Once he had joined her on the sand she sat, staring out at the sea for long moments, letting the silence build. “When you are ready,” she finally said, “you can tell me what is going on.”

Kennedy allowed her to guide. By the time they had come to her spot his eyes were wide open. He was unfamiliar with his surroundings as he looked across the horizon. When she spoke, instructing him to sit down, he complied as if he were the schoolboy called to the headmistress’ office. He sat down. Uncertain if he should sit like her or not. His knees were up with his legs in front of him. His arms found themselves hugging and bringing his legs towards him.

He looked over squinting at Doctor t’Nai as the sun shined in his eyes, “I… I’m sorry I.. I interrupted your time.” He turned his eyes as he used his arms to push his legs down across the sand stretched out in front of him. The sand came up his pant leg. He always hated that. These were new slacks.

A very small smile flashed across her features as she picked up the annoyance with the sand. The sensory change, even if it was one that annoyed, was distracting and she took that as a good sign.

“It’s alright,” she said. Her tone was genuine, but she didn’t press him. “I don’t mind the company.”

“I’m not good company,” Kennedy replied. “I feel… I feel hurt. Betrayed, even by two people I care a lot for.” He looked around while he put his hands up in disbelief, “Here on this very Holodeck.” He looked over to her, “you were right. You were so right about her. I thought I understood what you meant by get to know her. Before.” Kennedy struggled and didn’t know where else to go farther as he started to cry loudly as he brought his legs back up and wrapped his arms around them.

Understanding washed through the Romulan doctor and an almost imperceptible sigh escaped her. She didn’t know the extent of the crossed wires, but she’d no doubt that their two cultures had finally clashed. She turned to look at the young man next to her and with an almost motherly gesture, put her arm around him.

“I’m not sure what you thought I was right about, but I know hurt when I see it. Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked with quiet calm. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know, but it seemed like the right direction to go in all the same.

“She… and I… made plans for a dinner date at Debbies… tonight…” Kennedy continued, “... I… got out of my uniform…” He looked down at his plain civilian clothes. They felt alien to him. He had always worn a uniform. He felt unnatural dressed like this. “Then I said… I’d pick her up… at our quarters… her quarters… that she…. Shares… with him.” He began to shake. He didn’t know if it was the guilt, the anger, the sadness or the anxiety at this point. He started to bawl as he tried to go farther.

Emni frowned. She knew the current roommate arrangements there, had heard whispers that the new Antican engineer was making waves. There were only two hims roomed with Irynya and it seemed unlikely that Sheldon Parsons was the source of this level of intense feeling although she couldn’t rule it out entirely. That left Noah Balsam and the idea that he had anything to do with whatever was happening here struck her oddly.

“Take your time,” she said. She didn’t quite feel like she should withdraw her arm, but it also felt odd to keep it there, so she settled her hand on his shoulder, a more friendly gesture, and squeezed lightly.

He blurted out the words that came from Irynya’s lips earlier that evening. He struggled with each word as they came out of his lips, “It was… a…. very Jamaharon-type…. experience… Not formally Jamaharon, of course.” He made a whimpering sound.

She still wasn’t sure she was following, but the inclusion of the term Jamaharon in his explanation gave her at least a direction to consider. It felt like an impasse. Jamaharon, from her own understanding, encompassed a great number of things. It didn’t seem like Irynya to sleep with someone else, but then… she also didn’t know what the Risian and her Irish paramour had agreed to. It did, however, sound like what she had tried to warn him about. Not that he shouldn’t be interested in the flight controller, but that he should make sure he understood the cultural differences, going into any partnership with open eyes.

Kennedy began to shake back and forth. He hadn’t realized that she had placed her arm around him at first but found the comfort of her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t know what to say and couldn’t stop thinking of Noah and Irynya kissing passionately on the beach naked. That very thought ingrained into his mind. His anxiety started to pick up.

Emni felt the spike before he even spoke and intervened. “Breathe, Kennedy,” she said with that same firm quiet. “Close your eyes. Listen to the water. Breathe in for 3 beats and out for 4. 10 times.”

Kennedy closed his eyes. He changed his focus on the rolling waves of the sea moving in and clashing onto the beachhead in front of them. He breathed in for three and then out for four. He repeated and followed her direction to the letter. He felt cooled down and he slowly reopened his eyes. He wanted to enjoy the tranquility of this space where Doctor t’Nai was conducting her meditation.

He was the interloper here.

In her space.

He reclosed his eyes as the anxiety had tried to overpower him again. He focused on the water and breathed in and out a few more times before he turned his head to face her. He slowly reopened his eyes. He remembered the cafe on Risa the two of them had met. He was so eager for his new boss to like him. A whole new experience vacationing on his own, mandated by his previous CMO. His journey on the Sojo wasn’t what he expected. He had trials and tribulations. He was promoted and now CMO. A position he didn’t expect to have for a very long time in his career. He didn’t know where to start. He kept opening his mouth searching for words to say but nothing would come out. He would close his mouth and then reopen to try again.

She felt the struggle as much as she saw it and tried to come up with some way to help him unlock whatever it was he needed to say. She looked out over the beach, back at the waves, the image of Sulli and Jori returning as if they were standing in front of her. They’d had their own share of difficulty along the way, but it was these moments that she clung to, memorializing the happy over the periods of sadness and hurt.

“Did you know that I was married once?” she asked.

Kennedy’s hand came up to wipe the tears off of his face. He shook his head as he realized there was much to Doctor t’Nai he didn’t know. “No.” He fell silent briefly. He had never asked, “but I’ve never asked either.” He realized she chose words in the past tense. “Sorry.”

She waved the sentiment away. “Nothing to apologize for,” she said simply. “I don’t speak of them often. Few people know and even fewer of those anything more than their names. This is where we honeymooned,” she explained. “It was a refuge for us year after year. The only place we always made sure to come back to together.”

Kennedy felt sorrow for her and he lifted his hand and gently patted her knee before returning it to his own. He looked over the horizon and behind them to where the arch used to be to take in the view, “It’s a very gorgeous locale. The water reminds me somewhat of the Irish Sea.”

She nodded, hearing the splashing of the waves as Jori, flat handed, sent a spray of water across Sulli’s hair, dampening it in a way that she had expressly told him not to. Her outrage, though, was feigned and he’d scooped her up and brought her kicking to deposit her before this spot.

“It’s the Apnex Sea on Romulus,” she said quietly, eyes nostalgic as the memory that he couldn’t see played in her mind’s eye. “A happy place for us and a good memory to return to when I need reminding that the happy times outweighed the unhappy.”

Kennedy lightly nodded his head. This view was permanently gone and now replicated holographically with simulated smell, sound and vista views. The anxiety started to creep up again. He took a long deep inhale and then exhaled, “What was your spouse like? If… that helps?”

“Spouses,” she corrected him gently. “There were three of us. Jori, my husband, was tall and painfully smart. He was the protector of our family, but also, in many ways, the most playful. He was the first to learn to shield his emotions from me. Sulli, my wife, was shorter than I am. She had a round warm open face. She wore her heart on her sleeve and we both loved her all the more for how easily we could tell what she was thinking.”

Emni sighed. “We had 10 years together and then Hobus failed and we had choices to make. I chose to leave and help with the survival of our people. They chose to stay and were lost when the star nova’d.”

Her gaze dropped to her free hand, the one on Kennedy’s shoulder hadn’t moved yet, though she wondered if he might like her to release him. “We often didn’t see eye to eye,” she continued, “and in the end our disagreement in what to do cost us our marriage, and their lives.” She turned to look at him then. “I would give everything I have accomplished. Everything I own, if I could bring them back even for a moment. So I come here sometimes, and I remember them.”

He brought his hand between them and gently tapped her on her far shoulder and kept it there. He looked into her eyes. He felt sorrow for her loss. He hadn’t had a significant loss in comparison to Doctor t’Nai. He appreciated that she had opened up to him. He wasn’t the easiest person to do so but he knew that the Romulan people were quite secretive when it came to family, “Thank you for opening up and sharing about this. I don’t know how tremendously difficult your losses are.” His hand drifted away from hers worried that it outstayed its welcome. She was his superior. He found it comforting that her hand remained on his shoulder. It helped ground him.

The Romulan nodded, eyes turning back to the horizon. “It has been some time. The sharpness dulls with age, but they ache no less.” She was quiet for several long moments then, the two of them looking out at the gentle swell of the waves that lapped the shore of the Apnex Sea. Finally, still facing the sea, she spoke again. “What do you think I was trying to warn you of, exactly, Kennedy? When I told you to take your time and get to know Irynya.”

Kennedy’s eyes shifted from the waves rushing up on the beachfront of the Apnex Sea after she had returned to one of her questions from earlier to his boots. He knew he had to answer her. He needed to talk to her, “We… I…” he stumbled with the words he needed to bring, “I took it in the literal sense of the world. I found myself at Debbie's late at night formulating over a hundred or so questions to ask her. We would spend evenings just sitting on the couch, talking as I asked her questions. We bonded. We became close.” Tears streamed down his face, “Whenever I get close to people, I get hurt. My siblings… My parents... My only friend I made at the Academy… And Noah… and Irynya… have been added to that list.”

If Emni felt any strong reaction to what he said it didn't show on her face. Her visage remained neutral, thoughtful, even as she parsed what he was saying – reading as much between the lines and from his emotional state as she was listening to his words. She held the silence, waiting for him to continue.

He didn’t want to unpack the trauma he suffered in childhood nor was Gosia relevant to how he felt right now. The sense of betrayal was certainly shared. He looked over at Doctor t’Nai, “I know she’s a Risian. Their ethos is very different to me. I was raised as a devout Roman Catholic, Doctor t’Nai. It was more my upbringing than my own belief cycle I came to realize during my third year. I was always taught that sex was saved until after marriage. You warned me but I didn’t understand it at the time. I thought she’d wait until I was very ready for sex. Or when I was comfortable for her to talk about it with others. I was okay with her snuggling with others. Kissing. Nudity happens. But intimate kissing… naked… on this very Holodeck?” He looked around him. “I. I caused this to happen. She sought out Noah because I wasn’t providing what she needed. This is my fault. But how can I go back to trusting him? How can I go back to trusting her?”

She saw what she took to be the fallacy almost immediately, but knew pointing it out wasn’t going to help… at least not yet. “Did she tell you that?” she asked. There was gentle probing in her tone. She knew Irynya, had known the Risian for longer than she had been on the Sojourner, and though they had not been close in any sense on the Adelphi, she had a sense that the other woman viewed connection very differently then what Kennedy was describing to her now.

Kennedy shook his head that she hadn’t, “She didn’t need to.”

"I see," Emni said quietly. "So you are certain of what happened between them then." Though it was a statement there was a question in the mix, or perhaps a nudge to examine his assertion.

He looked out at the Apnex Sea once more then turned back to face her with a sullen face. He nodded his head, “I don’t know all the details but they kissed. She confirmed that much. She also confirmed that it was a public nude beach. Just them. Naked. Kissing. Alone. Together.”

His eyes rediverted back to his boots in the sand.

The conflict was there, plain as day, but so was the insecurity and the fear; the failing self confidence and underneath it anger. She debated, turning over the options she had in her head. She could share the experience she did have on the matter, but she was in no way qualified to speak at length on the Risian views of nudity and intimacy. Her knowledge stopped at the edge of understanding there was a significant cultural difference and knowing, from her interactions with Irynya, that the woman was extremely body confident. She didn’t have enough information about this beach or either party’s connection to it either. All she knew was that what Kennedy described didn’t fit the emotional fingerprint she was familiar with for either Noah or Irynya.

Finally, she settled on the one thing that she could speak to. “Do you love her?” she asked quietly, knowing it might seem she was ignoring his complaint, but seeing no other way to truly help.

He looked back out to the wave crashing into the beach from his boots as he swiped away the tears under his eyes while he looked out to sea, “I… I do. I do still love her. This is why it really hurts.” He raised his hand over his heart to symbolize his heartache.

“Sometimes,” she began slowly, “love feels immensely fragile. Like it could shatter and us with it.” Her eyes scanned the sea again then fell to the sand before her. In her memory Jori and Sulli both sat with her, one to either side. She set her hands on the sand to either side of her, pulling free from where she was still resting her palm against Kennedy’s shoulder and digging her fingers down into the warm golden sand as if somehow that would cause them to materialize, each one taking one of her hands in their own. “We do love a disservice, though, when we believe it to be like this.”

Carefully she pulled her hands free, rubbing sand grains between her fingers as she returned them to her knees. She blew out a long breath. “When I told you to get to know her, I knew that you would both have significant cultural hurdles to consider. Interspecies relationships are rarely easy. I wasn’t warning you that she would hurt you. Far from it. I was warning you that she was different from you. So different as to be alien to your own experiences. But this is equally true for her. She was not raised human. She has no rule book for what it means to grow up in a Roman Catholic family. No more than you do to understand the significance of Jamaharon to her.”

She fell quiet for a moment, looking down where the grains rubbed into the pads of her fingers before she brushed them quickly against her pants and stood. “Consider, Kennedy, if you love her, that you may simply need to find a better cultural translator. Entire diplomatic relations between peoples have fallen over simple misunderstandings of cultural mores. How much more difficult could that be when strong romantic feelings are involved?”

She offered the younger doctor her hand. “My time here is about up,” she acknowledged. “But there are a few minutes left. If you would like the space to yourself I will leave the program running.”

Kennedy listened to Doctor t’Nai speak on significant cultural differences. A cultural translator. He wasn’t certain about that but when she said that her time was about up he felt he had already eaten up enough of her free time. He gave her his hand and lightly squeezed her, “Thank you Doctor t’Nai. I’m sorry that I interrupted your free time. I would love to remain here until your time is up.”

Emni nodded, a warm encouraging smile on her features. "I believe you have about 5 more minutes," she said before turning away from the soft lapping of waves. "Computer, arch." The doorway materialized and she headed for it, stopping just before she stepped through. "Kennedy?" She asked, aiming to catch his attention. "Good luck." And then, with a whoosh of pneumatics, she was gone.

Kennedy looked over his shoulder when she asked for him and offered her a small reassuring smile that he was better than the state he was on the floor in the corridor outside of the Holodeck. He looked back out through the sand and took two handfuls and raised them in front of him. The sand spilled through the cracks of his fingers until they fell back into the sand below. He began to walk towards the water as he focused on the present and the parting words from Dr. t’Nai. He pulled up one knee as he came to the water’s edge up to his chest. He pulled it off and then the ankle high sock. He placed the bare foot down to balance himself and placed the sock in the boot and then moved onto the other foot to repeat.

The computer chirped and spoke but he ignored it.

He held onto the shoes in one hand. He turned around in a three-hundred and sixty degree turn to ensure that he was still the only person here. He spun around raising the boots in one hand and the other as he twirled and stepped into the water. He kicked up the water to wet his toes.

The computer chirped, “Please depart the Holodeck.”

He looked back out to the sea and spoke from his heart, “Jori and Sulli, Doctor t’Nai misses you.” He turned, “Computer. Arch.” The arch appeared and he stepped out before pausing then looking both ways. The door closed behind him.

A Joint Post By

Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai
Executive Officer

&

Lieutenant Kennedy Ryan Walsh
Chief Medical Officer