Stolen Speech

Posted on Sat Aug 12th, 2023 @ 8:59am by Nollel Livaam (*) & Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein & Dr. Izriel "Jaxx" Lonn

Mission: Fractures
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: MD -10 20:00
1773 words - 3.5 OF Standard Post Measure

Nollel had never been as scared for someone as she was as she pushed herself and Michael into sickbay through the slowly open door using her weight to force it open further. Normally she would have been patient for the doors to woosh over but holding Michael up and trying to understand what was happening to him was not in the slightest helping her mood. “Help!” She called out as she lead Michael over to the nearest biobed and helped him lie down. “Anyone around?” She called again knowing it was late but there had to be someone in sickbay. It was a permanently manned duty station. “Stay here I am going to check the stock room and get you help.” She said firmly to the Engineer.

Not trusting his capacity for speech, Burnie simply nodded. His head had begun to clear as they got further from the Grotto, but there was a lingering sense of confusion, and a throbbing headache - the sort an old friend in security had referred to as 'de ja fu' - the sense that somewhere, sometime, he'd been kicked in the head like this before.

Nollel ran towards where she knew there was a storage area and turned the corner to collide with someone coming out of the storeroom. “Ooof... Sorry… I have an emergency.” She cried as she gathered herself. She had no time to let herself get hurt when Michael was in a bad way.

Having been halfway up a ladder when the call for help triggered internal communications, Jaxx pulled up sharp with padd clutched to his chest as he tried to orient himself to the sudden flurry of panicked activity. Reaching out, he settled his free hand on Nollel's shoulder and peered closely to check her eyes as he asked, "Big deep breathes for me. What happened?"

Nollel batted the hand away and closed her eyes against the peering. She did not have time for herself to be checked over when it was Michael who was poorly. “It’s not me. It’s Michael. We were in the grotto and something happened.” She did not really even know what had happened but it had made her husband unwell.

More as a reflex, the doctor had held both hands up in defense. It wouldn't have taken a telepath to read the woman's anxiety, but the additional clamouring of over-active emotional output made it difficult to avoid wincing as he gestured for her to lead the way back into the main area. "Are you able to define 'something' in a little more detail for me? Physical injury? Electrical surge?" The Betazoid took one look at the man on the biobed and added, "Flammable substance?" It was not, as might have seemed the case from anyone else, framed as a joke. The only reference Jaxx had to their chief engineer, outside the photograph on his dossier, was his medical record and some things stood out as being repeat issues.

"Do I look..." Burnie began irritably, then paused, reaching for the word. Short word... He gritted his teeth, shook his head in frustration before throwing out the closest word coming to mind, "cooked."

"An honest answer?"

The medical tricorder was already doing its work, coupled with the display on the new biobed that pulled up the engineer's medical record and began the cross-referencing of symptoms.

"To the best of your ability," this was directed at Nollel, "I need you to explain what happened." The shift of hazel eyes back and forth between his readouts and Burnie's eyes specifically, focused Lonn's attention with enough fixation to leave his intention ambiguous for a split second before a glance towards the blonde woman added emphasis to the query. "Anything he touched, any prior symptoms, any potential trigger at all."

“We’re looking for something that was causing power surges and he picked up a box or container and it broke apart but I did not see what happened or what was in the container as he started to feel unwell so we came here..” Nollel admitted rushing back to take Michael’s hand tightly.

"Do we know what was in the box?" It was a question asked for thoroughness' sake and, this time, the scope of it broadened enough to loosely involved Burnie without making direct demands for his input.

As much as he trusted and was happy to rely on Nollel in most things, Burnie had spent enough time with people talking about him as a patient while he was right there to last a lifetime. Besides, he knew this answer. "Rocks."

The woman looked confused at what he said. She had seen dust but she had not seen anything that could be described as rocks before things started to go wrong. "I do not think that there were any rocks." She said squeezing his hand, trying to offer some type of comfort to him despite her worry.

"Something close enough to," Jaxx replied, lifting his gaze from the display screen as the updated scans merged with previous medical history to provide some basis of understanding, at least of the symptoms. He held the tricorder up once more, this time focusing the retinal scanner with lingering precision in front of each eye. "Do we normally keep things in this grotto that cause power fluctuations?"

“Not overly sure. It’s mostly not inventoried as it’s just full which was why we were looking through stuff.” Nollel admitted watching the Captain stride in, having gotten word via an engineering who had seen them coming out of the grotto.

His mind was clearing, but Burnie's facility with language was still spotty. It was so frustrating - like being right back after the accident, trying to mime out concepts for words he couldn't find. Worse, he'd overheard the screaming match between Dr. Divash and the Temporal Investigations agent (probably all of medbay, if not the entire station, had) so he knew how much information in his medical records had been scrubbed.

Lifting one palm to signal attention, he shook his head sharply. "Not power..." he tapped his head, then concentrated reaching for the word, "...t... temp..." Dammit! gritting teeth in frustration, looked around. He pointed at a chronometer. "Time."

“Time?” Nollel asked quietly trying to work out what the connection was to the what had happened. “Like your accident?” She wondered softly squeezing his arm.

He nodded. "Damage..." he mimed a gun held to his head, flexing a finger until the word came to him, "...triggered by ...time... temporal..." he waved hands as if trying to gather the terms before giving up. "...stuff. Risk of..." he opened his hands, fingers splayed to display his current state, "...why I was discharged."

As the pair spoke, Jaxx set the bed's scanning protocols to update in two-minute increments and glanced up at Gregnol's arrival. Thus far, the description of the incident was less than detailed enough for him to offer the Captain any coherent explanation, and thus the surgeon focused on the immediate need to alleviate symptoms. "Michael," he ventured, having no social reference to refer to his patient by any other name, "your medical records indicate some previous treatment for damage to your language processors." The Betazoid paused, seemed to reconsider his wording, and continued. "This has happened before?"

Deciding that his attempt to get that across had failed, Burnie simply nodded.

Nollel frowned wishing she could understand better what was happening now. She had no seen anything which spoke to her of timey whimey stuff but she had been distracted. “So something temporal is happening?” Gregnol wondered only hearing half of what had happened as he came over.

"Has to be!" Burnie paused, then smiled, pleasantly surprised he'd managed almost a sentence. Maybe whatever Divash and DuBlois had done to contain the 'anomalous particles' lodged in his brain was kicking back in.

Gregnol nodded firmly and pulled out his communicator. “I am going to get someone to check the grotto out.” He knew there had been power surges on and off for awhile but nothing had ever been found. He moved away to give a little bit more privacy as he arranged for Jeassaho and whoever she could find to look in there.

"It goes without saying that they should exercise extreme caution, Captain." Lonn had known Gregnol long enough now that the pointed look, coupled with stating the ridiculously obvious, carried some element of personal experience. Or, at the very least, Jaxx had some idea who the captain was about to send in. "Tell her not to touch anything."

“Why I am sending Jea and not anyone else.” Gregnol commented over his shoulder as he took on final glanced at Burnie.

“How did they help last time?” Nollel asked quietly rubbing her thumb over Michael’s hand.

He looked up at her helplessly. While he had some idea of the physics involved, he was an engineer; not a doctor. But even if he could explain it all under normal circumstances, the fact was that right now he could barely articulate why he knew there had to have been some sort of temporal disturbance. Burnie sighed heavily. There was an option though - one that had been given to him (unofficially) at his 'retirement' party. "Ask Doctor..." he stopped, mouth snapping shut because the name coming to mind was 'Honey'. It had been a joke, a reference to her name being nearly the word in Hebrew, which was... "Divash!"

Nollel squeezed his hand tightly. “I am going to contact her.” Nollel declared simply letting his hand go as she looked at Gregnol talking animatedly to his communicator whilst he watched. “Doctor look after him I am going to come back with something to help.” She declared.

Burnie returned the squeeze, giving a grateful smile. "Ask..." he stopped double checking mental image against name, because even though intervention had resolved a lot, mistaking one Romulan woman for another would NOT go over well, "...Kali."

“I will.” Nollel lent over kissing him before she ran out of sickbay to track down the flight chief.

“Jeassaho is going to look and you are going to rest.” Gregnol declared just as firmly as Nollel had. He hated temporal stuff. It never boded well for his ship and more importantly his crew. It had not been on the Victory and had not at any point on Rosie so far with Cassie and her fellow people trapped in the transporter. "And we are going to fix this." He added. He had to get better there was no SS Mary Rose without Burnie now.