Arroz Arum sat ruefully on a chair by the science console on the runabout. Embarrassed the hell out of him, to get sick while questioning the suspect in a murder. But he’d felt off since getting to Gati, in fact, maybe even before. Seeing Talc’s dead body in a state of decomp outside the guy’s cabin on Astra, had made him ill twice. He’d put it down to the situation, but maybe he’d been coming down with something even then.
He felt slightly better now he was in the vessel and the ship’s gravity, which matched Astra’s, was normal to him. He’d changed his clothes, washed his face, brushed his teeth, taken something for nausea from the med kit. What if it was something serious though? Here he was, light years from home, finally in space after all these months of graft, and he had space sickness? Or was it worse. He checked his pulse. He’d tried the medical tricorder but it was fucking useless in this nebula. Some might think it’s colourful clouds twisting and turning was beautiful, it just made him queasy.
When he and Evan Torg had been looking for the ‘Blue Door’, Arroz had noticed a medical office. “Maybe there’s a doctor here.” He got up, took another drink of cool water, and pressed the button to open the runabout door. He walked through the village and past the buildings, ignoring the statue people, and trying not to look at the sky. Which way had it been?
Served Starfleet right if he had something serious and was forced to retire. On full pension.
Anjohl Morio chuckled as the little girl made a face at the taste of the medicine. There wasn’t enough sweet sap on N’doto to really take away the bitterness of the bark once it was ground up. But it would help her, he knew.
Her mother smiled at him as her daughter hopped down and they walked into the waiting room. Morio held the clinic’s door open for her and the females moved out into the slowly brightening Gati day. The mother spoke of trade in payment and Morio named a couple of vegetables in the greenhouse, where she worked. Agreement reached, she took her daughters hand and headed into the Rainbow Hen building, where her store was, while the little girl skipped off in the direction of Gati’s miniscule school.
Going back into the clinic, he sat at the front desk, writing down the treatment and the payment received, his head bowed in concentration, always amused at the idea of using pen and ink. The island was beautiful because of its lack of technology, he thought. Even further back than Bajor before ….
He brushed that thought away and continued to write, dipping his rainbow hen quill yet again.
Arroz continued to walk through the pathways until he found the blue building again. He leaned against it for a minute, to catch his breath, peering inside the window. There was someone sitting at the front desk. Good. He opened the door with a flick of his wrist. There was an odd smell, but not too unpleasant. He looked around, seemed vastly different from the sickbays he was used to, but closer to what he might have seen in his hometown of Tachylyte. This was in the southern province of Keratophyre. As he thought of this he felt a thrill of fear run through him. Last year there was a huge epidemic at home, dubbed the KP virus by the media. Hundreds died before it was contained. He began to sweat. Starfleet had worked closely with Astraionian scientists and there was now an innoculation against the virus, which he’d been given almost as soon as it was ready, being Starfleet security. But what if it didn’t work? What if he’d come in contact with a carrier? What if it had mutated? The vaccine wouldn’t work then. He could die! He moved quickly to the desk, “I have to see a medic, quick!” he gasped.
Morio looks up when the door opens and a man stumbles in gasping to see a medic. One look at the uniform tells the doctor that the man is Starfleet. They’d been several reported, and as a result, Morio had been giving out all manner of medication to relieve anxiety. It seemed they were more frightened at the idea of Starfleet than annoyed.
He stood. “I am Doctor Anjohl. Anjohl Morio.” he introduces himself. The man seemed pretty nervous. He touches the man on the elbow and motions him towards an exam room, soft beds and a chair or two. “What seems to be the problem ….” he pauses, not being too familiar with Starfleet beyond his parent’s stories. “Officer?” he guesses.
Follows the Doctor, clutching at his chest,” Doctor Annnjohhll, I am sick, very sick I could have KP virus I come from there, on Astra you know they had an epidemic last year I threw up three times now in three days I feel so strange, it could be very very serious, please HELP ME,” he throws himself on a bed with despair, moaning, “I feel hot and cold, my heart is racing, my stomach is reeling, I feel dizzy.” He rattles off his symptoms, “names’ Arroz, Arroz Arummmm mpfh. Security Officer,” he adds in a weak voice. “Am I going to die?” he goes still, body limp on the bed, pleading eyes on Morio.
Morio watches the man and suppressed a grin. He somehow reminds him of some of his child patients. Listening, he straightens the man on the hospital bed and takes his pulse with his fingers. It’s elevated, but the man seems to be in a state of extreme agitation. He reaches for a thin piece of equipment and wraps it around Arroz’s forearm, then looks at the readout. Confirming that his pulse was a bit high, but adding to that his blood pressure reading and body temperature. Looking down at him and giving him a confident ‘I am a doctor you will be alright’ look, he notices a few beads of sweat, but … the man seems to be thinking himself into some kind of plague virus like the one on Astra.
“Well, you seem pretty anxious about having this plague.” he tells him. “But my guess is that it’s something else.” he turns around and looks at some of the bottles around the room. Deciding on one, he shakes out a lavender square pill that is about an inch on all sides. “This should take care of your nausea.” he tells him. “It’s a local herb we compress and turn into these cubes. Lie back and roll it on your mouth. It will melt there in about a minute.”
He hands the man the pill and then stands over him, waiting for his orders to be carried out. “Now tell me about your last … oh … say … week or two …” he orders. “You’re showing some very classic symptoms of severe anxiety.” he tells him. “Now if you’re security and don’t want to tell me details about some case, then don’t, but at least tell me if you’ve been under an unusual amount of stress lately. My guess is you have been.” he waits for the reply, still looking completely confident in his ability to help the patient.
Arroz lay in flaccid despair, dimly aware of the doctor moving his limbs, attaching some kind of device to him. What can be done? They’ve sent him to this odd little moon in the nebula from hell, no ship in sight, no hope of a proper sickbay or even a properly trained medical doctor. This is some rustic guy who writes with some kind of odd spitting feather. He can’t possibly know anything at all. He groans but take the square and puts it in his mouth, wondering where it has been, who has touched it, and whether it will make him sicker instead of better. All these germs everywhere. “Hundreds of people died from KP before they found the vaccine. I saw people from home just last week. And I miss home. I don’t like Starfleet. The recruiter told us we’d be exploring space and helping the helpless but all I do is sit in an office and do rounds and I don’t really like space anyway Doctor, I really don’t. And now I had to look at a dead body, and I mean really really dead like for DAYS and it STANK and lord knows what germs or rodents or fleas or bugs were on it or near it and I’ve been sick ever since.”
Morio listens to his patient ramble on. He keeps his face relatively impassive, but he learns a great deal from this young man. Even though he had not needed to, Morio had learned a great deal about psychology during his medical school days. As he has suspected, it helped him a great deal with his patients. Smugglers and pirates who didn’t want to tell him where they had been, never mind who they had been transporting. An indigenous population for whom placing a cast on a broken arm often means doing things he once considered only while helping his grandfather put together an outdoor oven. He even had a patient who claimed to be human, avoided him as if he were in infections Bajorian disease, and from a distance, seemed to heal twice as fast as he had any right to.
“Arroz, if you don’t like your job, why not just …. quit?” he asks simply. “Because it is my professional opinion …. and I went to one of the best civilian medical schools on Earth …. and graduated third in my class, I will have you know …” it was a source of pride for him…. although he did not finish first, neither did he finish in the middle or at the bottom. “That is might just be your job that is making you sick.” he looks at him evenly. “This is your first time off your home world, isn’t it?” he asks, softly. Almost paternally, even though he is only about thirty-five years old. He pauses and watches him. “How are you feeling now? Stomach any better?”
Arroz sits up, the bed creaking slightly. He shakes his head at the doctor, “Not the first time, not really, because I had cadet cruises to do, you know, on that old rusty ship they call the Pemmican what a name I don’t even know what it means never mind how to spell it, but you had to log a certain number of hours each year to get your helm certification which you need as security so I had to do a lot more than my friends and I couldn’t go outside the system though without an escort and sometimes we were grounded because of tensions in the sector with places like,” here he lowers his voice, “Treman. I don’ t think I’m allowed to quit, I have to do some years don’t I or I lose my pension, I don’t really know all the rules I fell asleep in that class and I didn’t really care at the time because I was going to be like Worf or Major Kira and be one of the finest security officers ever. You came from Earth? That’s a HUGE distance away why would you come here,” he throws up a disdainful hand, adding, “I feel hungry.”
Morio understands he must be feeling better when he sits up. “Pemmican.” he then goes on to spell it for him. “It’s a concentrated mixture of fat and protein used as a nutritious food. The word comes from the Earth Indian tribe called Cree word pimîhkân, which itself is derived from the word pimî, "fat, grease". It was invented by the native peoples of North America on Earth.” he explains. “They used … well whatever they could lay their hands on … meat and fruits … dried .. stuff lasts a good long time and doesn’t taste too bad either, from what I’ve read.” he realizes he is rambling. He sighs. “I know what Treman is, I know where Treman is and …” he lets out an exasperated sound. “And I wouldn’t be presenting myself to you like a complete rube backwoods country doctor if they weren’t having another of their damnable coups.” he inhales and exhales slowly, calming himself. “I suppose you should be able to quit. Starfleet is always on about how they want freedom for everyone. That should include their own personnel, shouldn’t it?” he chuckles when he mentions Major Kira. “A Bajoran legend.” he murmurs, although what he knew of her, he sometimes had a hard time believing she was really a woman. “I went to Earth from Bajor and …” he shrugs. “By the time I was done with school there, I did a short residency on Deep Space Nine …” he shrugs again. “Then I became alienated by my own people, and Starfleet and … just … wanted to be someplace where I could actually help. I found this place completely by accident, but there was a minor epidemic going on here at the time that I helped end. All those nights reading on homeopathic and herbal remedies finally came in handy. I still use the modern stuff … when I can get it … but …” he stops himself again. “I’ll tell you more over a dinner. My treat. Then I will send you back to your ship to finish whatever it is you are here to do. We’ll have some rainbow hen soup. Very delicious, very filling and very mild on the nervous stomach.”
=^=
