Star Trek Outwardly Mobile:

It is what it is
By
Jay P Hailey

I walked into the observation lounge. It was in the neck of the USS Discovery. Mostly ignored, it was a good place to get some private time looking at the stars and thinking.

It had a few low, overstuffed chairs and a low, wide coffee tables. It was meant as a "Wow. We're out in *SPACE*!" room, and to allow a clique of people to develop in the social eddy.

It was also expansion space for the primary/secondary power relay trunk, just behind the forward/port bulkhead, as well as a locker for emergency equipment. But those prosaic functions were hidden by the ergonomic friendliness overlaid on the compartment.

Ensign Hernandez was there. A pretty woman with large, deep, black eyes, She always looked to me like she should be dancing a flamenco dance somewhere.

I wandered around the back of the couches and saw something hideous. Hernandez had her jacket off and had peeled her right fore arm. I could see strips of bio-plastic skin all over the table. I could also see the delicate components of her cybernetic arm.

I winced. Hernandez had been injured in our encounters with the Kliges'chee a little more than a year ago. I didn't realize how badly.

"Hey." I said softly.

She looked up at me startled. She hadn't heard me come in. I saw warring impulses behind her beautiful eyes and her face.

"I… I…" She started

I sat down. "Talk to me."

She made a decision. "I can't get it off of me."

I titled my head. "Oh?"

"It feels like I'm wearing a glove or some sort of rubber covering all the time. I can't get it off. My arm itches. I want to feel the air on it." She dug at it a little more. A component of some sort sparked as it flew off.

"Ow." She said. "I could almost feel it that time."

I leaned over and took her left hand. She stopped for a moment. Then looking at me she squeezed my hand hard.

"You're safe here." I told her. "We're family."

She started crying. "I just want to take it off and feel my own arm."

I gathered her into a hug and held onto her for a while.

She cried softly at first. But louder and louder as she went on, until she was wailing. She'd never accepted on some level that her arm was gone. I rocked back and forth with her, while it all came out.

Eventually she stopped and became stiff. "C..Captain."

I let her go. "I mean it. We're family here."

She moved to wipe her tears and running nose. She did so with her damaged right arm. She looked at it and it all came back to her. Her face became red I could see her withdrawing.

"Just a bad patch. We all get them." I said At least she hadn't used any bio-weapons during hers.

She looked at me. I could tell that emotionally naked in front of me was the last place in the world she wanted to be.

I started to gather up the strips of bio-plastic. Bathed in nutrient and heated a little bit they would re-grow into the false skin that covered her right arm. "We'll go talk to Sickbay." I breezed. "We'll get you patched up." Nothing happening here. She just cut herself shaving. Perfectly ordinary thing. Could happen to anyone.

Bless her, she was tougher than that. "I guess I'm not doing too well."

I looked her in the face. "Maybe not. But I don't want you to feel like…"

She looked at me quizzically.

"…that it's permanent or irrevocable." I struggled.

She looked at me with emotions I couldn't identify. "Thank you."

"Let's get you to sick bay and get… things taken care of." I said.

Hernandez nodded. "Yeah. Let's do that."

The ride to sickbay was uncomfortable. Hernandez put her jacket on over her damaged arm and tried to pretend it wasn't there.

I held mangled strips of bio-plastic at my side, also trying to pretend they weren't there.

We went into Sickbay, I called T'Sing over. "Ensign Hernandez, has been having an issue with her arm."

Almost reluctantly Hernandez slipped off her jacket and displayed the damaged cybernetic unit.

T'Sing raised her eyebrow. "Indeed. We shall begin repairs immediately."

T'Sing looked at me as if she was expecting something more.

I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, but couldn't find the words.

T'Sing and Hernandez walked across the sick bay to one of the diagnostic beds.

I left the sick bay and wandered around for a while. I felt like I'd let Hernandez down. I couldn't trace exactly why. There were so many possible reasons.

-*-

"Ensign Lucia Hernandez." Mendez said. "She's been placed on restricted duty."

I looked up at him. "Oh?"

Mendez looked at the PADD "T'Sing says Hernandez has cybernetics rejecting syndrome. Sickbay is going to have to clone her a new arm. She'll be on restricted duty for at least three months until the cultured arm is grown and successfully transplanted."

I nodded sagely. I seemed to recall that cybernetics rejection was where the body's immune system attacked the implant as a foreign body. I'd been briefed when I got my new knee joint.

I looked at my right knee. Often I'd forgotten the tritanium lattice work bone replacement sculpted in place of my knee bones.

"It is what it is." I said. "It is what it is."

-end-

Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.

This story posted by permission of the author. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Jay P. Hailey

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