A talk with the councilor.

Posted on Tue Jun 16th, 2015 @ 11:58pm by Lieutenant Mickey McClane & Lieutenant Mikela Reyes MD

Mission: Debts to be settled......
Location: Mickey McClane's Quarters/ Mikela Reye's office
Timeline: Sometime After taking pre-caution

Mickey McClane who was told by Sela Wakeman, the Assistant security chief that someone would be guarding his room until further notice because they weren't taking any chances. He also had learned that he would be confined to see to it there wouldn't be any harm to himself as he excepted that. He was waiting for whomever it was that would send him to councilor Reyes office.

"You know old friend, whom ever it is, they aren't going to be to surprised to hear you can talk now thanks to morolith's collar. It was a nice gift" Mickey smiled to his old friend.

"That Sela woman, was pretty unique well. After all this mess is over with maybe we can do something right this time and no Romulan ale, boy. Do something better that doesn't require alcohol." Aladdin said to him sternly

"All right, you win. Acting Ensign Aladdin" Mickey smiled as he pet his dog

Kevin entered Lt McClanes quarters and said "I've been assigned to take you to the Councillors office Lieutenant, if you're ready, shall we?" he said, gesturing with one hand to the door behind him.

"Come on, Mutt." Mickey followed the ways of the lord of sanquhar. Aladdin was not too far behind.

"So ensign. what brings you to this neck of the woods" Mickey asked nicely about what brings him to the Gamma Quadrant.

"I wanted to expand my experience in Security, and my former CO recommended me for a position on the Victory, so here I am" Kevin replied

"So interesting to hear, my lord" Aladdin spoke as the collar that Ensign Morolith continued to work.

Kevin didn't miss a step as 'a human voice' came from the dog next to the Lieutenant spoke. Instead he looked at Aladdin and just raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"Don't worry, you can ask Ensign Morolith as she was the one who gave me this collar now i can talk to everyone." Aladdin spoke nicely

"Rrrrrriiiiiiiggggghhhhhttttttt" Kevin replied "and that's really going to happen..."

"Well, sorry that you have to pull your weight to watch me. But, with security on this ship you can't take any chances, especially with people who even though messed up on the prank tried to kill himself for it." Aladdin said getting his mind of of things.

Kevin listened to what the dog said then replied "I was tasked to take the Lieutenant to meet with the Chief Counsellor, it's hardly what you just called pulling my weight, it's what you do as a Security Officer when you're given such orders by a superior officer. As for what happened with the prank, and the subsequent aftermath, that was the Chief of Securities call, how the detainee now acts determines how things will go. Please remember, my orders were to take him to the Chief Counsellor, you weren't mentioned, so it's still up in the air as to how this goes.

"Well, at least if i ever need to talk to someone at least i got you for a minute and the councilor" Mickey said nicely

"I'm sure you have other people you can talk to Lieutenant, even if they're not necessarily on this ship, so I'm sure you'll be fine" Kevin answered.

"of course, ensign." Mickey nodded

They had reached the Main Counselors office, so Kevin stopped and pressed the chime, then waited for an answer.

A young man at the main desk checked McClane's information and tapped it into the terminal. A moment later, he nodded and gestured to the door furthest to the left. "There's Counselor Reyes' office. She's ready for you."

The doors opened and Kevin stepped aside and let Lt McClane, then his dog go inside before going in himself. Once inside he said "Lt Reyes, this is Lt McClane, you wished to speak with him."

Mikela rose from her office chair. She had a decent-sized office, with a chair and desk dominated by a terminal at the wall opposite the door, a screen on one side of the room and a viewport on the other. She gestured McClane over to the side nearest to the viewport, where a few comfortable chairs were set around a small table and glanced at the other two. "My appointment is only with the lieutenant. Patient confidentiality."

"I'm required to stay with Lt McClane at all times, but rest assured, whatever is discussed I will never repeat" Kevin said, moving over to the corner with Aladdin.

Looking down at the canine he said "Not one word from you please, you let Lt Reyes and Lt McClane talk together. Even if Lt McClane turns to you to verify something, you don't say a word, are we clear?"

"Of course, Aye, Sir." Aladdin nodded

"I can handle this," Mikela insisted. "You can wait right outside the door, and if I need your help, I will let you know. Both of you. Nobody with a vocabulary surpassing a first-grader can sit in on the sessions."

"I'm sorry Lieutenant, my orders are to stay with Lt McClane at all times, and that's from the Chief of Security" Kevin replied, "by all means, you can contact him yourself and ask him to ask me to step outside and wait till your finished, but, and I don't mean this disrespectfully in any way, till I hear that order from Lt Cuprum himself, I stay with Lt McClane in this room. The reason this order was given specifically is because of the nature of what happened with the Lieutenant, this is for your safety as well as his own" he finished.

"My safety?" Mikela blinked, surprised and honestly confused for a moment. Then she shook her head, remaining silent, controlling what was almost a chuckle. "Alright, but you take your position up by the door and don't hear a thing. I'll keep this session preliminary and I'll... talk... to the Security Chief later. Aladdin, buddy, you have to stay out in the lobby. Here... think fast!" She had palmed a dog biscuit from her desk drawer when she had received notification of their arrival. Now she tossed it to the dog.

"Yay!" Aladdin said excitedly as he caught the doggy treat and went outside. "Thanks, Mikela!" Aladdin said outside the hallway

"Not a problem Lieutenant, I won't listen to a thing" Kevin replied "and by all means, you...talk...with Lt Cuprum, I'm simply following protocol and orders" he finished, moving over to the door.

Mikela gave the security officer a kind smile that had just a little too much understanding behind it. "Believe me, I'm not going to give *you* trouble over following protocol."

"Sorry, that this has to be this way councilor. I really wished this was on better terms but i expect that this won't be pleasant. I take it you know" Mickey said as he sat down at the chair.

Mikela stepped over to the chair facing not *quite* across from McClane and settled herself into it. "I start with as little as possible, Lieutenant, so that I can form my own conclusions. Her face was neutral, neither welcoming nor forbidding, and she was, as before, about as empathically readable as a brick wall. "So why don't we start with you explaining to me, in your own words, what happened?"

"I had a moment were, i was playing a prank with the chief. I had smuggled some romulan ale aboard. But then it didn't go so well for me. Cor was going to take one for me which was irrelevant to me, when that officer does wrong it isn't up to the other person. I had a moment were i didn't want to live anymore, so i had a plan to blow myself out of the airlock, and eliminate myself from this world" Mickey said the short story to her. He wasn't going into a long drawn story but short at best.

Mikela took a moment to let that settle, and spoke, her voice still even. "You didn't want someone else blamed for something you did, so you were going to kill yourself?"

There were no words for the situation from it because Mickey admitted his guilt by nodding because it wasn't something that he could ever have to deal with but if he didn't deal with this he wouldn't be returning anytime soon. "It was stupid now." He looked at her then looked back down in guilt

Mikela responded, oddly enough, with a friendly smile. "That's good," she said. "You recognize now that it was a stupid thing to do. There are a number of problems you could have had, that we now know you don't have." She gave another pause, letting him think that over. "You know it wasn't a good idea. Why did you think it was a good idea then? What was your reasoning at the time?" she asked matter-of-factly, still not sounding the slightest bit annoyed, disgusted, or, for that matter, sympathetic. She leaned back in her chair, giving him space to think.

"There were some moments. I felt like i had messed up again, but it didn't matter at the time i was like, if i took myself out of the problem one less officer to worry about, it wouldn't have been easy. But, that would have been the easy way out, but that damn Lieutenant Cuprum, he's good. But, he gave me a message saying life was too important to throw away, he had been at Wolf359, that old coot, i cannot imagine what he went through when he faced the Borg" Mickey said as he tried to see in his eyes what it would have been if it were the other way around but he can sympathize, but can never imagine.

"One less officer to worry about?" Mikela shook her head. "Do you have any idea how much work it generates to have an officer commit suicide? After the initial trouble, bringing the ship to a full halt, retrieving your body - because we're Starfleet and we will always retrieve the body - going through the medical work, the paperwork, the letters, the mandatory investigations... You just displayed a very common belief, did you know that? People who have a momentary suicidal desire - and almost everyone does at one time or another - often seem to think that it would be 'less work', that it would be 'easier for everyone else', that they are, in some way, doing the universe a favor. I'd like you to remember this and remember it hard.

"It never is."

"I know that now" Mickey nodded then told her this. "If anything where to have happened to me you would have been legal guardian of my dog. I made sure of that, he likes people who are kind. Though, i know right now we are in the Doctor Patient relationship right now, Councilor Reyes." Mickey nodded as he let what Mikela say all sink in.

Mikela shook her head. "I grew up on a farm, colony girl. It wasn't an easy life. One of the neighborhood kids, a boy about my age, died in an accident. After his funeral, they noticed that his dog had gone missing. I'm the one who found the old fellow. He was at the graveyard. He'd posted himself at his young master's grave. We tried to drag him back. He wouldn't do it. This dog refused to eat, refused to drink, refused to leave the grave. There was nothing we could do..."

"But Aladdin isn't like that, Councilor Reyes" Mickey said as the councilor was about to speak again.

"Dogs aren't the only ones who are affected," Mikela pointed out. "We're social creatures, all of us. You know how you feel when you find out that the Federation sports team won against the Klingons or Romulans, or when you find out that a Federation athlete has lost, badly? The death of one person affects all of us, even those of us who didn't know him. We all wind up sadder, quieter. Those who have really had to face feelings of suicide get hit the hardest when someone on the ship falls to it, the same way we feel when any on our side falls to an enemy. Cuprum was correct in pointing out that life is important to throw away. I want you to know that no matter how insignificant you feel, even if you really are as insignificant as you feel, which you aren't, suicide is always the hardest way.

"I know that now, but there was also this ghost memory of the past. I never got to say goodbye to the love of my life which she died on my last vessel before i retired. I had never gotten over it" Mickey looked down as one of his pain's came out in the open he tried not to think about it but he had no choice.

Mikela remained detached, at least on the surface, and that was all that could be seen. "And there it is. You're hanging on to the grief, and it's destabilizing you. It'll only get worse. It's like an untreated injury. You wind up with an infection, and before you know it, your very life is in danger." She paused again, this time thinking, and making a few notes on her PADD. "I'm going to ask, and I want a well-thought answer, so take the time you need. Do you believe that, right now, in your current state of mind, you are fit for active duty?"

"No, but if i know i can talk to you. Knowing that i can find a way to move on from the grief. Will you help me?" Mickey looked at her with sincerity from his eyes as he doesn't want to die of stress but he wanted to know if she would see his errors in life. That way, he would find a way to learn from them.

Mikela pursed her lips for a moment, then smiled. "That's my job," she told him. "I'm going to start by recommending that you be taken off-duty for the rest of the week. I'm also going to recommend a low dose of a mood stabilizer for the CMO to administer. It should be just enough to keep you from falling too far when something upsets you. An incident like this leaves some chemicals in your brain for a while, and they make you more likely to feel worse than you normally would, so I strongly recommend that you agree to take your medicine. We'll give it a couple of days to see how you do with the medicine and then have another counseling session. Is that okay with you?"

Mickey nodded he agreed with everything. "Do you think you can get the restrictions off my quarter's even though right now i don't know. Because i would like to get out and socialize again. But, it's really up to you because i am not telling you what to do. Just asking permission?" Mickey said even though he was at her mercy but he was hoping that sooner or later he would get out just to walk and socialize

She thought about this for a moment. "Tell you what. I have a few trips to make once this session is over. I'm going to drop off the recommended prescription at the CMO's office. I'll let him monitor your reaction to it and decide when the restriction is lifted. I'm actually a licensed psychiatrist, I have the authority to prescribe medication, but I prefer working with the doctor when I can. That way we're always on the same page."

"Excellent, i will comply" Mickey said nicely

Mikela smiled. She propped her cane and rose stiffly to her feet. "I'd say we've reached a point of stability, then. Session's over. I'll get right on that medication matter for you, so you won't have to wait." She reached out to shake hands with him. "You take care of yourself meanwhile, right?"

Mickey shakes her hand and takes it easy as he heard Aladdin come in

"Mikela, i wanna hang out with you for awhile" Aladdin popped back in the room

"Hey, maybe later, bud," Mikela told the dog. "I've got plenty of work to do. You take good care of your buddy. He needs you now."

Kevin saw that both the Counselor and Lt McClane had stood up, so made the assumption that their talk had come to an end. He waited patiently for the Lieutenant so he could escort him back to his quarters.

"Well, Ensign. You ready for the walk back?" Mickey asked nicely to the ensign.

"Yes Lieutenant, I'm ready" Kevin answered.

"Well, Mikela. Don't be a stranger when you come to visit me, Ok?" Aladdin said nicely

"I won't, buddy." Mikela answered with a small, wryly-amused smile.

"All right, Councilor we're off." Mickey said as the three left the office at least now with a chance he can get out of this mess with patience.

Posting By

Lieutenant Mickey McClane
Lieutenant Mikela Reyes MD
Ensign Kevin, Lord Kilbane of Sanquahr
Ensign Aladdin