Make New Hands, but Keep the Old

Posted on Mon 27th Nov, 2017 @ 4:40am by Commander Paul Graves PsyD

1,102 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: A Phaser as Deadly as a Candlestick
Location: Counseling Offices
Timeline: A While Later

Lieutenant Riko Gray stood just outside the pickup range for the door sensor at the Counseling offices. She held up her left hand and flexed it, looking troubled. The creepy doctor had given her a referral to counseling, but... did she really want to sit and talk about her (s)mother?

Inside his office, Paul was enjoying the lately rare luxury of doing the work he'd been originally assigned to Vanguard to do--counsel people. Well, perhaps 'enjoy' was not precisely the correct word for this patient.

"I'm telling you, Doc, I don't have a problem. It was just a run of really crappy luck. I'll win it all back in no time. You'll see!"

Paul stifled a sigh. "Lieutenant, you gambled away 7000 credits in the casino--wiped out your family's entire savings and your latest salary warrant. You have a wife and children to provide for. Casino Royale has forbidden you further entry. You need to deeply examine what is going on in your life and consider what it means. Before we meet again next week, I want you to compile a list of difficulties your gambling has caused, and bring it with you to our next visit."

"This is stupid, is what it is!"

"And yet, your direct superior has ordered it and, having met you, I agree with him. I'll see you next week, Lt. Boothe."

Paul ushered the grousing lieutenant to his office door. He wanted nothing more than to retreat into the privacy of his office and shake from himself the annoyance and sense of absolute denial from his patient. Before Paul could do so, however, he noticed the young woman standing in the corridor. She had emanated the reluctance of someone who needed to see him but didn't really want to be there.

Paul glanced at her rank pips. "Lieutenant, may I help you?"

"Oh," Gray said, looking away from her hand. It dropped to her side. "Er. Commander, sorry to disturb. I was looking for the Counseling department yeoman... Commander Addams seemed to imply that dire things would happen if I didn't make an appointment."

Paul smiled at her comment. "Deosha's in training today and tomorrow, so I'm holding down the fort. Why don't you come on in and tell me why Dr. Addams is so anxious for you to see me. Just take a seat at the desk. Would you care for a beverage while we talk?"

Riko entered the office. She was tall for a woman, though not as tall as Doctor Addams, with burnished copper hair of the shade commonly called red, a delightfully retrousse nose, and steel-gray eyes with an epicanthic fold. She sat where she was directed, then looked down at her left hand and moved it into her lap. "Doctor Addams seems to feel that my trouble is all inside my head," she explained. "Which, apparently, needs to be about four sizes smaller than it currently is."

"And what exactly is your trouble?" Paul asked as he took a seat behind his desk. He was getting an odd emotional sensation from her--a feeling of ... despairing revulsion? That was the closest he could come to it; he'd never felt anything similar from a patient before. Paul suspected there might be a letter in his email requesting a consultation on Lt. Gray for some specific reason, but he hadn't had time to get to it yet, and he preferred to get his first impressions without preconceived notions.

Riko smiled tightly. "I'm wearing someone else's hand around on the end of my arm," she said.

Paul's eyebrows shot up briefly. "Interesting. I've heard of that, but I've never had a patient who's experienced it," Paul said. "Not paralyzed when you think about using it, I see, which is why she sent you to me and not to a physical therapist or neurologist. Do you have that sensation even when you're looking at it?"

"Oh, yes, it's functional." Riko made a face. "Medical was very thorough about that. Even reassured me that the plastic bits were biodegradable, and would be 'gradually replaced by autologous osteoblasts.' But it's not mine. It's foreign matter stuck on with chewing gum and bailing wire."

"So the surgeon used your own bone cells to repair your hand," Paul translated. "How was it injured?"

"That's how biosynthetic replacement works," Riko answered. "The bio part means that they use cultured cells; the synthetic part is that they arrange them scientifically. Artificially. And then they glue them on there. Like a kid with a model kit -- only sometimes, the glue gets smeared." She sighed, looking down at her lap, at the left hand in question. "Smeary, messy little kid fingerprints all over."

Interesting what she does and does not say, Paul thought as Lt. Gray's revulsion washed over him. "Kids will be messy," he agreed. "That's how they learn. Did you build models when you were a kid?"

Riko nodded. "Sure. Styrene, mostly. I must've made a dozen passes at the Winfield type shuttlecraft. I never could get the decals to work right, though... they always either tore or clouded."

"That's annoying," Paul said. "I used to like to build model sailing ships--not the ones in bottles, though; I didn't have that much patience." He thought of something. "Are you left or right-handed?"

"Right-dominant," Riko said. "That's why I used my left hand."

"So how was your hand injured?" Paul repeated. "You didn't say."

"Oh," Riko said. There was a long pause. "I, uh. I'm a security officer. Family tradition, sort of." The young lieutenant gave a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I was assigned to USS Kenryū, a Kokuryū class ship. But you didn't ask any of that. You asked how I... left it behind. My hand." She took a deep breath. "I closed a door on it."

"Ouch," Paul said. "What part was damaged? What made such extensive surgery necessary? Meaning, was it just an ordinary house door, or something more like a blast door?"

Riko nodded. "It was a pressure door on an L-type nucleonic fuel carrier, Sato Maru." She looked down at her hand. "I thought I could pull it out in time, but...."

Paul winced. "And you hoped your piano-playing days were over, but they fixed your hand, anyway?"

"I hoped I'd be able to pull my hand back in time. But you know what they say... hope in one hand and sh... poop in the other, and see which one fills up faster." She paused. "Or gets chopped off, first," she amended.

 

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