Can you hear me now?

Posted on Thu Oct 30th, 2025 @ 4:14pm by Lieutenant Tork & Petty Officer 1st Class Gatien Savoir

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Mission Day 2 at 1100

Lieutenant Tork woke up several hours after his triumphant escapade of reconfiguring the sonic shower in the quarters he would be occupying for the immediate future, a languid sigh escaping him as he reveled in not having to be anywhere in particular for a change. Having only recently returned to what one might consider ‘civilization’ when compared to life aboard a rather antiquated and ill cared for ship, the Ferengi had some down time before the ship he was currently aboard reached its destination, some starbase or outpost… Tork hadn’t actually paid much attention, his mind focused more on the immediacy of a good shower and a comfortable sleep than where a ship he wasn’t really part of was actually headed.

The Ferengi tossed the sheets of his bed casually to one side, the lights in the room slowly rising in intensity in response to his deliberate movement. When the luminance was intense enough to make out the contents of the room, Tork’s lips curved upward at the sight of the large crates containing his personal belongings dominating the middle of the room, making the space feel rather crowded… just the way he liked it.

Tork pushed himself upright and immediately regretted his choice as the ship seemed to pitch and tumble around him. Knowing what he did about the effectiveness of both the artificial gravity generators as well as the inertial dampening systems, the Ferengi knew for a fact that it wasn’t the ship that had suddenly decided to behave like a poorly designed carnival ride he’d seen on Earth during his Academy stint, the fault lay firmly with his ears being damaged by the Trabe’s insufferable sonic device. After the world, as Tork perceived it, had stopped spinning around and he could focus again, he slid gingerly off the bed and plodded out into the common area to demand a new uniform from the replicator, since he hadn’t bothered to pack any spare clothes.

Once he was fully dressed, Tork decided the best course of action for the day’s start would be to visit the ship’s sickbay to get someone to fix what had been damaged during the harrowing escape from the Kazon ship. He exited his quarters and made his way through the corridors that hadn’t been damaged in whatever fighting the ship had seen recently until he found himself within the vessel’s sickbay. Given how small the ship was in comparison to most of the other vessels he’d served on in the past, and because he had nothing better to do, Tork was able to walk there. It also helped that his destination was on the same deck, though that detail would have been glossed over casually had anyone asked him to narrate his journey.

Stepping inside, Tork took a second to… appreciate… the view of the compartment. Sickbay on the Sojourner wasn’t a massive space like it had been on his other ships, nor was it populated with a vast array of personnel. If Tork were being generous about his mental narration of the space, he might have gone with cozy as a descriptor, however, the Ferengi was seldom in a generous disposition so he settled on weirdly small. As he was taking in the sights, his eyes found themselves settling on the office that sat adjacent to the entry slash main sickbay area slash pretty much the entire compartment. Tork shrugged to himself, figuring that the person inside was at least medically trained given the teal uniform and decided that ‘this one will do’ as he stepped into the office to make his request for serviced.

The teal-uniformed figure was bent over the desk, his broad back to the door, shuffling through a dauntingly large stack of PADDs and muttering under his breath in some language the universal translator either didn't know, or was being spoken too low for it to pick up. His locks were a shocking shade of purple today, and had been tied into a knot at the back of his head.

“Excuse me,” the Ferengi said upon entering the even smaller office space, “I need someone to look at my ears. Some idiot set off a sonic bomb while we were trying to get off a Kazon ship and now any time I turn my head too fast, it feels like the ship’s artificial gravity and inertial dampening systems forgot how to work. That and I think I’m mishearing people… I could have sworn I was in the Mirror Universe when your Executive Officer introduced herself and I swear I heard her say Execution Officer. Would you be able to look at that for me?”

Startled, the figure jerked upright, scattering a few PADDs from the pile. With a French-sounding curse out of all proportion for the action, he wrestled them back into some sort of order and straightened, and finally turned to be confronted with-- a Ferengi? Gatien was too old a hand to stare, but it was a moment before he could come up with anything intelligent to say. "Ahv course, monami, dat's what we heah fo'. Doan want nobody fallin' ovah o' gettin' into some kinda argument wit da ex oh," he added, his accent rounding off the edges of the words, the corners of his lips curling upward at the thought of calm t'Nai getting into any kind of argument at all.

"Full discloshah," Gatien continued as he stepped toward Tork and held out a hand in invitation for the engineer to proceed him, "if yoah lookin' fo' da Chief, he ain't heah. I'm Nurse Savoir, but you can call me Gatien, if you prefuh." The expression on his chestnut-colored face was open and agreeable, a clear invitation for Tork to introduce himself. It wasn't so much that Gatien didn't know who the only Ferengi on the ship was, but more that it would put them on more comfortable footing.

"Tork," the Ferengi replied curtly, "Now that we're well acquainted, Mister Gas Station, let's get the medical miracles started." The Ferengi stared at the other man expectantly, as if he hadn't just completely butchered his name.

Gatien's expression did not even flicker. He had been called many worse things, and whether Tork was baiting him or whether the Ferengi's hearing loss was truly to blame, he doubted there was anything to be gained by an argument. "Ah am but a man, Tork," Gatien assured him as they stepped out of the office and Gatien ushered him to one of the biobeds, "Let's not get ahead o' ahselves where miracles ah concerned. Now," he said, all business now as he gestured for Tork to make himself comfortable on the bed, "Apaht from da hearin' loss an' equilibrium issues, any othah symptoms? Any blood o' effluent? Difficulty sleepin'? Pain?"

"I haven't lost any herrings," Tork responded to the battery of questions, "Not fond of fish. But no, other than the ship spinning around if I move too fast, I haven't noticed anything else. Slept perfectly fine last night, no issues there. Only pain I had was when I got hurt initially... after that I haven't felt anything."

Gatien nodded at each answer, busying himself with a device that looked something like the helmet from an evac suit. "Can you describe da original pain?" he asked as he manipulated the helmet's display, tapping in the diagnostic sequence he wanted.

"It was like someone was stabbing my brain in every place you could fit a knife, and then I passed out," the Ferengi explained.

Gatien grunted in acknowledgement and made a note on the PADD he'd placed to one side, then turned his attention back to Tork, the helmet held in both hands. "If you'd put dis on, she goan run t'ru some diagnostics so we can get a baseline o' yoah impairment. Once we 'ave that, we kin go from dere. Da device will measure yoah responses; you dun hafta do nuttin' but stand an' breathe." He lifted a dark brow in challenge to the forthright Ferengi, "Questions?"

Tork eyeballed the helmet for a few moments before casting a skeptical eye to the nurse, "You sure it'll fit?" Without waiting for an answer, the Ferengi grabbed the medical device and squeezed his bulbous head inside. "A bit snug..." he complained but ultimately shrugged, "Alright, Mister Gas Station, what next?"

Knowing Tork could no longer see him as the Ferengi was plunged into the darkness of the helmet, Gatien pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just wait," he counseled, starting the diagnostic sequence. The helmet would run through a series of hearing tests, playing tones and gauging Tork's reactions without the Ferengi having to consciously engage with the device at all. Even their brief acquaintance was enough for Gatien to surmise that patience was not the engineer's strong point, and he decided distraction was his best course of action, if he wanted the diagnostic to successfully complete. "Any damage from passin' out?" he asked, "Hit yoah head? Bruise yoah face? Twist yoah ankle? Anyt'in like dat?" Although the inside of the helmet was dimly lit to avoid claustrophobic feelings, the outside was awash with colors as the diagnostic progressed, the data the device was collecting splashed across its surface.

"Not that I remember, no," Tork shook his head, "But I was out for a while, so who knows."

Gatien carefully kept his expression neutral even though Tork couldn't see him. He was too old a hand to let his skepticism that some sort of brain function was affected show. Finally, the helmet's kaleidoscope of colors cleared and it washed in a neutral blue hue all over, signaling it was finished. Gatien reached out to remove it from Tork's head, thought better of it, and said, "You can take it off now."

The Ferengi struggled for a few seconds to get the helmet to dislodge itself, the time he'd spent wearing it had been enough for it to seem to form a rather tight seal thanks the the copious amount of skin contact that had been made possible by Tork's lack of hair. When it finally decided to grudgingly let go, the helmet made a soft popping sound and Tork was able to lift it off his head. Once he was free, he offered the device up to the nurse.

He took the apparatus and put it to the side, manipulating a few things on its side, then throwing the data into the air beside them. It showed a table of results from the diagnostic, as well as a schematic-like representation of a Ferengi's ear from outer lobe, all the way in to the large, more-complex-than-a-human's cochlea. A few areas were highlighted. "Dat sonic bomb?" his voice slipped upward in a question, making sure he had the cause of the Ferengi's problems correct. At Tork's nod, he continued smoothly, "Really did a numbah on you. See heah," he indicated one of the highlighted areas, gesturing so that it expanded, showing a membrane that was both torn, and an unpleasant shade of yellow, swollen out of shape. "Yoah ear drum is torn, an' unless dere's sometin' about Ferengi biology I doan remembah, you startin' a good ol' infection in dere."

Collapsing the ear drum, he expanded the cochlea, the fluid-filled area deeper in the ear which on Tork, resembled less a sack and more a labyrinthine cave. "Now dis is a lil' more intriguing. See dese?" he pointed out some highlighted areas inside the cochlea. "Ah'm not sure what dey are, an' da computer's list o' options is too long fo' me to parse heah wit'out you fallin' asleep. Dat's goan hafta go to Doctor Marwol. But dey intereferin' with yoah balance, an' I suspect dere also contributin' to da hearin' loss. So."

Gatien returned the entire graphic back to a reasonable scale. He shunted it to the side, and turned to meet Tork's eyes, making sure he had the engineer's full attention. "We can't repair da ear drum 'til we knock out dat infection. I'mma give you some antibiotics and an antiviral dat should knock it out. Once da swellin's down, we can look at havin' da LMH repair da tear. An' by den... da Doc shoulda had a look at dem crystals an' 'ave a plan fer chasin' 'em down, ca va?"

"So this is something you can't fix today, then?" Tork asked with an impatient sort of grunt.

Gatien was too old a hand to snap the sharp retort that came to his tongue. Instead, he looked away to hide his expression, busying himself with tidying away the diagnostic equipment. "If we could, we would," he said simply, and once he'd wrestled his features into pleasant submission, he looked up again. "You of all people should know dat some repairs jus' take time, non? You've gotta clean up da plasma befo' you can repair the conduit, ca va?"

Tork cocked his head to the side at the last statement, "You don't, actually. I've rerouted plasma flow from plenty of conduits, rigged up shunting valves on the spot to keep feedback flows from coming in, and scrapped upwards of half a deck full of conduit piping while the ship was at high warp. Only lost about six kilowatts of grid power throughout the whole operation. We were being attacked by some... pirates or something... I really don't remember what was going on, but supposedly it was messy enough that I had to do those kinds of repairs on the fly. They made me Assistant Chief Engineer for that, so it wasn't all bad. Got to make some policy changes... got some favors I could call in to snag me some vintage Klingon micro-converter coils out of a cloaking device... it was very profitable..."

The Ferengi seemed to bask in the moment then shrugged it all away, "Well, if you say it isn't a one visit job, it isn't a one visit job. We'll call it a refit, those always take more time than they should. Just tell me when the next visit is and I'll try to remember it. Ooo!" Tork snapped his fingers suddenly, "Better yet, you can just call me over the comms network when the next visit is. That way I don't have to forget, because inevitably I will... especially with all the holes in the hull this ship has. I'm sure they can use my consulting services."

Gatien couldn't help the skeptical look that raised one of his dark brows. "Ah mean, if you want us to try rerouting yoah ear canal, we could take that route, but Ah t'ink we'd best stick with lettin' the med'cines do theah work," he said, a faint amusement warming his tone. The nurse took a step back as Tork snapped his fingers, letting his twitching lips spread into a cocked halfsmile. "We'll make sure you doan miss it," Gatien promised, making a mental note to add this very conversation to Tork's file alongside the automated reminders the Ferengi would receive. Let Marwol deal with it. "An' anyway, if you do fuhget, you'll know about it next time you fall face fuhst down a jefferies tube," he added, flashing Tork a smile to take any sting out of the prediction. He carefully said nothing about the help they would need on emergency repairs; that was well above his pay grade, whatever his opinions might be. "Just make sure you takin' those antibiotics and -virals on time. And fo' th'love of all that's holy, take the whole course, ca va?"

"I can do that. Shouldn't be too hard, as long as I don't get too sidetracked..." Tork mumbled before taking possession of the medication from the nurse, "Thanks for the help, doc. I'll see you when... ever..." The Ferengi didn't sound all that confident about his last few words, but shrugged and bounded off toward the exit to Sickbay anyway.

A joint post by

Lieutenant Tork
Ferengi Engineering Type, One Each

and

HM1 Gatien Savoir
Nurse and Fount of Patience for dealing with Ferengi Patients