trans_9 | Working Through The Night [Open]

Who: Rory and Molly, Everyone
Where: Med Bay
Summary: Rory takes his daughter to work with him, works on supply lists.
Warnings: None

He had been trying to spend as much time with his daughter as he could, fearing another interruption that would make him miss things or give her time enough to forget him.

For the moment, he was doing an amount of boring bust work that any sane man would have balked at. Surprisingly, the recent events had left much undone.

It had also left an emptier infirmary in its wake.

Molly burbled, half of her hand pushed into her tiny face, bouncing in her chair. She had gotten bigger, and it had only been a month- two?- hard to tell in pod sleep, he had slept and Molly had grown and things had happened.

It would take time to sort it all out again, time to fix things.

He hoped he could fix things. "I doubt that foot tastes very good, little miss Molly, are you sure that's your meal of choice?"

His daughter laughed, reaching for him, and he let her steel his off hand, making faces at the baby and letting himself be distracted from his task.

He needed this too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Uh - 'scuse me."

The young man hovering in the doorway looked as though he hadn't slept properly for a very long time, but from the looks of his left hand he had bigger things to worry about anyway.

"I just wanted to see if I could get someone to take a look at this," Jamie ventured, holding up the appendage in question, which was bruised, swollen, and looking generally painful. He hadn't really wanted to come down to the infirmary at all since he'd injured himself toiling down in the hangar, but the swelling was making it difficult to work, and he'd figured it might be worth the hassle to see if they could patch him up so he could get back to what he'd been doing as quickly as possible.

Rory startled, staring at the injured kid for a full minute before rising, moving to guide the youngster deeper into the infirmary. "What happened? Do I need to inform security?" He motioned Jamie to the bed, indicating that he should sit down.

Molly fell silent, eyes wide at the tone of her father's voice and watching the proceedings.

"What landed on it?" He couldn't tell it was broken, he'd need to scan the bone to get a clear picture, but it looked bad. He swore the kids on this ship were trying to give him gray hairs, no matter how competent they might seem. "What's your name?"

Jamie recoiled a little under Rory's scrutiny, but let himself be led over to a bed, on whose edge he obediently perched. He gave the baby a passing glance, but in general he was about as interested in small children as any other chronically depressed eighteen-year-old boy, which was to say not at all.

"Security?...no, I just caught my hand in an access panel on one of the machines in the hangar while I was working on it. Wasn't being careful." Well, smashed his hand was more like it. Those panels could be deceptively heavy. "Wouldn't've bothered you but it's getting kinda hard to do anything with it like this.

"Jamie Hemeros. My file should be on record."

"You should have come right away." He nodded, pulling up the file and his scanner to make sure the wrist wasn't broken. A cursory glance showed nothing out of the ordinary. "Were you working alone?"

He picked up a bandage as he headed back for the bed with a tiny cup of pain killers, carefully lifting the wrist and starting to wrap it. Always best to save the lecture until after the patient was half splinted and incapable of escaping. "You'll need to rest it for at least twenty four hours, and it would be better if it was longer, Mister Hemeros. You could complicate the injury and make it worse, which could result in further damage to the tendon. Believe it or not, your hands do rely on those tendons to be in good working order. You'll need to ice it and keep it elevated until the swelling goes down. And if I need to, I will issue a medical ban for your privileges in the hanger until I'm satisfied that your wrist is up to it. I can give you some mild pain relievers, but the most important thing is to rest."

Wouldn't have bothered medical if it hadn't been too hard to work, the teenagers on this ship. He was certain Jamie and Tim would get along famously with pushing their bodies beyond anything approaching a reasonable limit.

Jamie grimaced as Rory began tending to his injured hand, half from pain and half out of chagrin at being scolded. "Yeah, I was alone. Usually am when I'm working in the hangar. Didn't think it was a big deal at first, I've hurt myself plenty of times working on stuff and it was never anything serious."

He frowned at Rory's instructions; he couldn't afford to waste a full day recuperating. And he definitely didn't like the threat of a temporary ban from his workspace. "Do I really have to give it that long? Isn't there anything you can do to just...make it better?" They'd given one person a prosthetic robot arm and saved another from dying after an alien had ripped itself out of his chest; a simple sprain should have been easy to fix, in Jamie's estimation.

"This is the reason you should have at least an AI down there, Mister Hemeros."

His eyebrow arched, though he managed to keep the amusement off his face. Teenage workaholic, well, he was the wrong nurse for quick fixes. Especially in these cases. "It's a sprained wrist, you haven't lost your arm. Twenty Four hours of down time will be sufficient. We're not in the middle of battle or anything like that. You'll need to come back tomorrow for us to check it, and I'll remove the medical hold on you access to the hanger."

"I always have my omnicomm in case something happens. And if I can't use that, Stacy's around. Watching everything." Jamie was trying very hard not let his annoyance show, but his nerves and patience were frayed by exhaustion already, and he wasn't accustomed to people telling him to be more careful - it was usually completely unnecessary.

"I know we're not in the middle of a battle now, but we could be. At any time. That's why I need to get back down there and get things done, and why I need to be in shape to fight." He made an effort to sound persuasive rather than plaintive, but the truth was the idea of sitting around idle for a whole day made him uneasy. He needed something to do, something to distract him from his thoughts.

"Having your comm unit is helpful, but if you're prone to being inside machines, there are things that can happen that Stacy won't know or you wouldn't be able to comm for. She's an A.I., a frighteningly intelligent and far reaching one, but A.I.'s have limits that an organic interface wouldn't experience. It's better to have someone organic there."

He nodded. "We could be, which is why it's important that you're well rested and your body is at peak performance." The eyebrow he arched in response to the plaintive plea was obviously asking if Jamie had really though that would work on him. "Come back tomorrow, I'll check it and see if you're fit to return to duty. I can give you a mild sedative to help you sleep as well. But you're not allowed in the hanger for the rest of today."

"Other people aren't always available when there's work to be done in the hangar. And I can't let it sit just because I don't have a babysitter." Yes, he was a little put out at not being allowed to run himself into the ground. "And I don't need anything to help me sleep," he added, defensively and far too quickly. Which was probably true - he was so exhausted he likely wouldn't have any problem falling asleep if he let himself relax - but sleeping meant dreaming and his dreams, more often than not, weren't pleasant.

He stifled a sigh, ran his good hand through his hair and carefully tried to extricate his injured one from Rory's grasp, assuming the nurse was finished bandaging it. "How will I know when twenty-four hours've passed? It's impossible to tell." He wasn't the slightest bit happy about being barred from the hangar, but he knew when to give up a lost cause.

Working Through The Night [Open]

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How bad is he hurt? Also, he's like 14, isn't he?

Not too seriously, just a bad sprain. And he's actually 18.

Sorry, looked at the Wiki. Bad habit for characters I don't know. Ok great, thanks.

np! Sorry for the confusion.

Re: np! Sorry for the confusion.

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