“I believe I understand now.”

Miala feared she’d never hear any semblance of those words from Ensign Nandan. She’d rotated through several variations of sitting cross-legged to keep sharp and pliant yet enduring his stream of exacting questions made her earlier workout high feel like a memory from last week rather than the past hour. Her patience would’ve long expired if she hadn’t recognized opportunities to gain insight into as well as build a rapport with him.  

 “Good,” she chirped, lowering her feet to the floor. “I know it’s counterintuitive. You’re used to approaching things with a precise system. But you’ve got this.”

“I shall strive to validate your confidence in me.”

Miala’s desire to huff dismissively came out as a sneeze instead. Vapors from the beverage he’d asked for lingered in her airways despite having flushed them with her own.

“If you can endure that. . .”

Another, harder sneeze overcame her attempt to further rally him.

“Fana, stop already!” Miala exclaimed, frantically batting her hands in front of her face.

The Benzite regarded her affectedly. “Lieutenant, I apologize again. I should’ve advised you to replicate my beverage in a cara. . .”

“Shush,” she chided, batting away the apology. “We’re going to lump extract fumes under the ‘strange new worlds’ part of the Starfleet experience and move on, okay? Save the fretting for us leaving port later.” That isn’t to say Miala expected problems. Tanjura’s crew had proven fundamentally capable, and she had no reason to expect anything from them other than growth. Rather, participating in that growth is what she wanted him to fret over.     

“Yes, Lieutenant,” Nandan answered, standing. “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”

Miala also stood in confirmation of the end of their discussion, only to notice a sudden regression in Ensign Nandan’s stance. He’d bent over slightly at the waist and groaned as he clutched at his chest.

“Dradas? Are you all right?” Her familiarity with Benzite resilience set the expectation of him straightening and dismissing her concern. Reality had other designs: he dropped back into the chair, breathing audibly labored.

“What in the deities?!” Miala gasped to slashing the distance between them. “Dradas! What’s wrong?!”

“I am uncertain,” he strenuously admitted, to which Miala began assessing his vitals. Fuzzy on baselines given she hadn’t encountered a compromised Benzite in the field until now, what she did discern was that his condition wasn’t good. Or improving.

“Stay with me,” she urged, striking her comm badge. Between its muffled activation tweet and not registering its texture on her palm, it was only then she realized that she hadn’t transferred it onto her sweater. “Zoxad to Sickbay, I have a crewmember down in my quarters with breathing difficulties. Requesting emergency transport for two.”  

“Prepare for transport,” came the crisp reply, and a moment later, both were on the medbay transport pad with Dr. Gable heading toward them, scanner already out.

“Get him to a biobed,” the doctor ordered, which instantly activated holographic nurses who lifted the Benzite, carrying him to a biobed.  “When did this start?” she asked Zoxad.

“Barely a minute ago,” Miala answered. The question momentarily pulled her out of processing the onset of this situation, which her modest medical knowledge impeded. It occurred to her that Ensign Nandan’s drink was a possible culprit. She just didn’t know how or why, especially since Benzite immunology was said to be among the hardiest of any Federation member race. And he surely wouldn’t have wittingly ingest something that could harm him.  

Still, she figured it prudent to say something. Experience and wanting to ensure his well-being cured her of worrying about overloading Doctor Gable with information.    

“I’ve been with him for roughly the last hour. He was completely fine. The only stimulus I can think of is that he asked for this drink that gave me a sneezing fit any time I caught a whiff of it.”

“What drink was it exactly?” Gable asked as she checked indicators in the medical scans.  “Because this looks like poisoning.”

“How do you even poison a–” began Miala incredulously, choking back the question with the realization that answering Doctor Gable’s would set them down the path of addressing her own. She knew nothing about the drink beyond Ensign Nandan referring to it as a coffee and that he remotely transmitted its composition file to her replicator, so she whisked to the nearest darkened terminal and pressed a hand to it. 

“Computer, download last replicator file import for Lieutenant Miala Zoxad’s quarters to this terminal. Verify tertiary authentication biometrically.” After briefly animating around Miala’s hand, the interface burst into luminescence with lines of streaming data. “Filter to show foodstuff composition only,” she added upon spotting programming minutiae and other irrelevant details.  

Gable’s brows rose as she scanned the resulting entry. “How would that even…” Then an item in the medical file she’d read when the transfer arrived jumped into active memory.  “10 ccs dylovene, 5 cortolin!” she snapped at the holographic nurse even as she set up a respirator with a mix set to his parameters and placed the mask over his face. “This will stabilize him until the worst of it is out of his system.” She looked down at the Benzite, hands on hips. “Did you think genetic mods to let you breathe without the vaporizer wouldn’t have any other effects?”

Miala’s brow furrowed. Ensign Nandan acting contrary to his own vulnerability didn’t track. “Clearly,” she said, approaching. She didn’t like the other woman’s reproachful air since he wasn’t in a state conducive to defending himself, but her response was intended more to express the deduction that he had for some reason. “I don’t think this is a tradeoff he expected.”      

“I should hope not.” Nancy frowned reprovingly – she’d been in Starfleet too long to get all nurturing with people who hurt themselves through carelessness. “But this should have been explained to him when the procedure was done.  That’s basic diligence and I find it hard to believe Benzite physicians skipped over it.”

“Or maybe something’s gone against their expectations,” Miala speculated. Neatly as it fit into her personal reservations about genetic engineering, she refrained from taking the conversation in that direction out of respect for her assistant and the expectation that Doctor Gable could lend such a discussion substance well beyond her scope. “How do we handle something like this?” The question also showcased her ignorance, but she accepted any loss of face it might’ve imposed in light of this situation’s rarity. Besides, she was ready to do something other than stand around helplessly. 

Nancy pursed her lips, thinking. “Possible… the official reason that genetic modification is banned is because everywhere it’s been used, it’s led to situations like the Eugenics Wars or Angosian soldiers, but there’s also the fact that unaccounted variations, random mutations, can lead to unexpected outcomes. Even with established procedures for the limited exceptions allowed for medically justified cases…” …” she began tapping commands into the biobed console. “I’m going to map his altered genes and their related sequences to check for anomalies.  Have a seat; this could take a bit.”

Miala slumped. Of course Doctor Gable would tell her to do the one thing welcomed even less by her sensibilities. She nevertheless moved to comply after reassuringly clasping Nandan’s shoulder, her impatience tempered by genuine curiosity. 

—

Nancy busied herself with monitoring the patient’s recovery, and by the time he was breathing more easily on his own, the terminal pinged, indicating the analysis was complete.  The doctor read over the results, mouth tight but nodding as the picture became clear.  “Yes, it appears there was an ancillary single-nucleotide polymorphism in r79832 of his 13th base pair.” She looked down at the patient, who was far enough beyond the crisis to be able to understand now. “I’m afraid certain Benzite flavoroids need to be permanently off your menu.”

Nandan sat up, his eyes bunched pensively. “You can not correct the anomaly?”

En route from Gable’s implied beckoning, Maila recognized he’d spoken, yet the mask ensured she didn’t comprehend what he said.  

Gable shook her head. “You should see a specialist for this. Starfleet Medical College does not exactly emphasize genetic manipulation, so for something not life-threatening as long as you follow some dietary restrictions, I wouldn’t want to do it here.”

Nandan’s swift removal of his mask without Doctor Gable’s direction seized Miala’s attention. The motion was as rooted in anger as it was familiarity with medical respiratory equipment if she didn’t know better, a suspicion bolstered by the brusque demeanor framing his otherwise innocuous words to the physician. “Please transmit the restrictions to my quarters.” He then slid off the biobed and beelined for the exit. 

“Ensign!” It wasn’t often that Miala referred to subordinates by rank, and even as the room’s relative silence threatened to reassert itself, she realized that she didn’t know how she would’ve followed up had he stopped. She was accustomed to people avoiding sickbay altogether, not bailing mid-treatment.    

“We’ve got a runner,” Gable called, which resulted in two holographic orderlies appearing at the door and unceremoniously taking hold of Nandan and firmly escorting him back to the doctor.

“This, Ensign,” Gable snapped, “is what hospitals call leaving against medical advice.” Her eyes narrowed. “And given that I did not dismiss you, what Starfleet might well consider insubordination. Not sit your ass back down on that biobed and I will determine if you are fit to leave my medbay.”

Miala had sufficiently recovered to determine that Nandan’s self-discharge attempt warranted an explanation. “What the hell was that?” she guffawed at him, amusement with its deft snuffing apparent despite her authoritative posture. He clearly wasn’t Doctor Gable’s first willful patient rodeo, and the seamlessness with which the holograms facilitated her will offset Miala’s reservations about working with them. Assuming she wasn’t forced to lock up her resident expert his first day aboard. 

“This should not have happened,” Nandan answered simply, having perched back onto the biobed as ordered.

“Agreed, but that doesn’t answer my question.” It distantly occurred to Miala that she construed a different read of what he meant by ‘this,’ though it ultimately didn’t affect her intent. The obstruction imposed by subsequent silence irked her into considering dragging out answers with her telepathy, which she liked her chances of against his agitated state. 

“Anger. . .that more can not be done,” Nandan finally replied, backing Miala away from the precipice, “and with the failure of my attempt to optimize my ability.” 

Nancy rolled her eyes upward, as if for strength, but just as much in exasperation. After all the death and loss and destruction she’d witnessed, not to mention lived through personally, this kid acting out over not optimizing himself elicited feelings quite the opposite of sympathy.  “Suck it up.  I didn’t say this couldn’t be corrected, only that you needed a specialist.  It’s a delay at worst.”  She fixed him with a hard glare. “Certainly no excuse for behaving like a child.  You’re a Starfleet officer.  Act like it.”  With that she took a long moment to study the read-out, then shut the bioscanner down with a sharp tap.  “Now you’re cleared and may go.”

Nandan turned his gaze to Miala, whose shrug portended her decision to let the dress-down stand. She agreed with Doctor Gable’s point despite the acerbic delivery, which she thought a valid foil to conduct rawer than she’d pegged of him. Miala was also interested in better understanding what drove Nandan to act as he had, which she absolutely would’ve insisted on here and now had he challenged her purview.

“See you in the morning,” she added, committing to letting him recollect himself. Nandan in turn nodded curtly, then slinked out.

Once the door sealed behind him, Miala let loose a question that had sprung into the forefront of her thoughts. 

“Are those orderlies standard or personal programs?” 

“They seem to have come Standard Issue with this medbay,” the doctor replied, her manner turning satisfied, almost smug. “I didn’t know if I’d like being staffed with so many holograms, but the concept is starting to grow on me.”

“That makes two of us,” said Miala, grinning as she leaned back into her own departure.