Managing Medical Matters

Posted on 02 Oct 2016 @ 10:47pm by Captain Nathan Cowell MD & Lieutenant Kina Hena MD

Mission: Prelude; Breakfast at Curmudgeon's
Location: Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: MD -1: 0700 Hours

Kina hurried through the hallways, PaDD in hand. Upon arrival on the Arizona, she'd had just enough time to stow their belongings in their new quarters and drop off Andrew at school before she had to report for duty. He'd been nervous about a new school, but he was a friendly kid; he'd probably have twenty friends by the end of the day- and there were only 6 other kids there!

She found the Captain's ready room easily enough as they were always in the same place on ships. Ships were laid out more or less the same way fleet-wide, which helped tremendously. Oh, sure there were differences here or there- things were closer together on smaller ships- but Sick Bay was always in the middle, engineering near the engines, the bridge at the top. It made things more or less easy to find.

Standing outside the ready room door, Kina took a deep breath and pressed her thumb to the chime. She would never admit it to anyone, but she was probably just as nervous as Andrew had been.

A very loud and rather grumpy 'What?' was the only response to the call button being pressed. It was loud enough the Lieutenant Akron turned to see the woman standing in front of the door. For his part, the young man could empathize with pretty much anyone who had never before come into contact with the Old Man and his unique way of doing things.

"If I may, Lieutenant," Paul offered cheerfully, "That's his way of saying come in. You'll get used to it."

Kina had jumped at the grumpy and rather loud response she'd gotten from the other side of the door, but turned to grin at the officer on the bridge. "Thank you," she told him as the doors parted and she stepped into the office. "Doctor Kina Hena reporting for duty, sir," she said, holding out the PaDD with her orders on it.

Nathan eyeballed the woman skeptically from the moment she'd uttered the word 'doctor'. Having practiced medicine longer than humans had been in space, Nathan wasn't generally impressed by anyone that used it as their title. The old man glazed over the PaDD for about as long as most Captains he'd ever had took and tossed on the desk in front of him.

"Name sounds familiar, were you in one of my classes back before the war?" Nathan inquired. The only thing he'd actually read about her from the transfer orders was her name an position orders, everything else he hadn't bothered with since she would more than likely tell him about herself in far greater depth than a personnel file ever would.

"No, sir," Kina replied truthfully.

"I would remember being in one of your classes, sir. I do, however, look forward to learning from you at every possible opportunity. I understand you practiced medicine for literally hundreds of years," she added, almost as a question.

"Five hundred, give or take a decade," Nathan corrected as he leaned back into his chair a little further, "What made you want to be a physician?"

"I have been around medicine all my life," she replied, slightly nostalgically, "My parents are doctors, so I was raised around it. When you're raised with something you either love it or hate it. My brother and I both love it."

"Family history, eh?" Nathan took in the information for a moment before speaking again, "I'm going to level with you, kid. I generally don't have much love for other physicians. Most of them think they have it all figured out by the time they get put in charge of a sickbay and ain't nothing and nobody gonna tell them otherwise. You, however..."

The Old Man stopped in mid-sentence and gave her an appraising look, "You I can live with. You got the right amount of heart and none of the 'do it my way' attitude. Best advice I can give you, doctor to doctor, never forget you got something to learn. I've been doing it about two hundred years longer than man's been in space... and I still don't know everything there is to know. Now, you spread that around and we're going to have problems."

Kina grinned slightly, but schooled her features quickly. That was also part of how she was raised. There is always someone who knows more than you do. She had learned that from her father, who was always quick to take advice from those who'd been practicing longer than he and was never afraid to ask for help. She tried to be the same way. Was it her Sick Bay? Absolutely! But, if the Captain came in and told her she was doing something wrong, she was wise enough to know that he would probably be right.

Nathan rose from his seat and walked over to the window just slightly behind his desk, "As of right this minute, I haven't got a clue where we're going or what mess we'll find ourselves in, but I'm going to give you fair warning."

Warning? That didn't sound good. She hoped he wasn't going to try to run Sick Bay or something. She couldn't deal with micro-managing. "Warning, sir?" she asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

The Captain stared out into the stars for a moment before he turned to the woman, "Make damn sure you have double what you think you'd need to keep your department going for a full deep space mission. If you haven't heard hushed whispers about this boat yet, by the time you do it's gonna be too late to stock up. The last ship to bear the name Arizona almost didn't make it back. We lost more people... good people... than we should have because we didn't know what was out there waiting for us. It's not happening again. If you have ideas on how to make that sickbay better than it is, I'm giving you permission ahead of time to just do it. Hell, if you can manage it, I'd be happy to have a sickbay that makes Starbase One look like a field clinic... but do what you can."

She nodded, relieved that there would be no micro-managing. "I will do my best sir," she said, already mentally doubling supplies in her head. She would also have to request extra equipment, so she made a mental note to see OPS about procuring more tricorders, neural stimulators, regenerators, and other small devices.

"I'm sure you will, Lieutenant. That's all I have for you unless you needed anything from me," the Old Man said, still standing at the window.

"No, sir," said Kina with a single shake of her head. "I'll get started on inventory and make a list of what we'll need- then double it. Triple it where I can."

"Excellent, Lieutenant. I won't keep you from it," Nathan didn't bother to watch the woman leave. His thoughts were already focused on what loomed ahead of them.