catching up

Posted on Sun Jul 16th, 2023 @ 9:30pm by Captain Xavier Carey & Commander Antonia 'Tony" Stoffels

Mission: Starship Side Quest
Location: captain's ready room
Timeline: after mission

Tony hadn't seen much of Xavier in the last 24 hours. Only when she came to look after Sky did they occasionally share a few sentences but they mostly had different bridge schedules and Tony was pulling double duty at the moment. Yet she needed to find out how Xavier was holding up after everything that happened. So she hit the chime of his ready room after her own shift.

Xavier was reading the reports of the away team getting them ready to send, and trying to come up with a debrief for the rescue team, as well as the Commander and Soran. Upon hearing the chime, and after checking the time, he figured there could be only one at the other side of the door. "Enter Commander."

She came in and stifled a yawn. "Evening, sir. I have been very amiss in checking up on how you are doing." Usually she was not this direct in her approach.

"Given the circumstances, you have priorities," Xavier replied as he leaned back. "One of which is taking care of yourself."

"Yes." She said misunderstanding him. "I apologize that you were not first on my list. How have you been holding up, Xavier?"

"I am not on your priority list. You are priority on your list. Take care of yourself. First and foremost. You are first officer, counselling duties are for the counselling department."

"Kay is on her own there and she does not have the experience of taking care of severe trauma cases. Besides with the major down she is helping to run the marines as well." Tony said. "THere is nothing for it. The wellfare of people comes first."

"Your First officer now Tony, you oversee all the department heads, not just the counselling."

"You really want me to drop being Sky's therapist?" She looked at him arching an eyebrow.

Xavier thought about it. "Then you have one patient and one patient only. We have other counsellors to deal with patients."

"Really Xavier? What are we going to tell other patients? The captain's wife gets the best treatment? The other two senior counsellors on board are out of commission for the long run. I took an oath as a healer."

"She is a chief, and we will take it case by case. If need be, I can have another counsellor brought onboard temporarily until our counselling department is back up to par."

"Talk to Kay about it. I don't want to undermine her too much. But she did ask me to help out. It kills me that I can't help Ren." She sighed.

"This time comes for everyone lucky enough to be brought forth into the command position. Where we give up our specializations and work the ship as a whole, I did it with security, now its yours with counselling.'

"That is different, sir. I took an oath to help those in need. We are not in the midst of a mission now where I would be essential to the ship. In the aftermath it is my duty to help."

Xavier nodded. "Fine... but when it gets to it, your first thing is to the ship."

She nodded in agreement. "Yes sir, I will try that."