Fences and Citadels

Posted on Sat Jul 9th, 2011 @ 11:50pm by Lieutenant Elizabeth Lynn & Captain Vorn Krace

Mission: The Fate of the Swiftsure
Location: USS Iapetus - Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: MD3 1130 hrs

Lieutenant Elizabeth Lynn had decided, upon waking up, that her session with the Intelligence Officer warranted a bit of follow up. More to the point, she hadn't garnered much information from her service record that would allow her to understand the woman to the degree that she would have liked. She'd put in a request with the Captain for a meeting, and found that he was already booked solid until nearly noon. Had they not been in space dock, that might have been out of the ordinary. When the scheduled time came around, Lt. Lynn found herself on the bridge, standing outside the Ready Room door, waiting for him to open up and get an earful.

"...and tell the quartermaster I want the fresh food in cargo bay two to be his top priority," the Counselor heard, as the door to the ready room opened on the end of the conversation between the captain and another officer in operations gold. "I don't want to lose replicator power while we're out in the middle of the Delta Quadrant and have all our fresh food have gone off because it wasn't stored right." As the individual nodded his confirmation of the instructions and turned to go, Vorn turned his attention to his next visitor. "Ah, Counselor, come in please."

"Thank you..." Liz said, nodding to the passing man before putting on her charming smile, "Do you have a minute?"

"As long as it's not about supply allocations or maintenance checks or crew transfers, you can have as long as you like," Vorn joked sarcastically. It was one of the things that he disliked about the pause between voyages; he honestly wondered if sometimes his staff didn't gang up to have him constantly harassed during these periods. As he turned and led the way back into the ready room, he made a line straight for the replicator. "Can I get you anything?"

"No, I'll probably hit the lounge after I talk to you as it is, so I might as well wait," Liz remarked as she sank into a chair, "I wanted to discuss a patient of mine with you."

"Raktajino, hot," Vorn said, ordering his drink from the replicator before taking it by the handle and moving around to sit in one of the other chairs in the room - pointedly not sitting at the one behind his desk. He'd spent too long behind that thing already since they had arrived in the Delta Quadrant. "One of your patients on the Discovery, or one of your new patients here on the Iapetus?"

"Your intelligence officer," Liz said bluntly.

"Ah," Vorn said, knowingly. Sara had never particularly been a very sociable sort outside of her duties with regular conversations and interactions; somehow he knew that there would be more than a bit of tug and pull between her and their new counselor. "I take it you finally managed to coax her into your office?"

"Something like that. I've noticed that there are several people on this ship Ms. Duvall was, I guess, afraid of. Commander Archer was one of them, and it most likely stems from her having isolated herself from her own emotions so completely that she doesn't realize just how much of an impact it's really having on her performance..." the Counselor said in a business-like tone.

"Isolation appears to be Sara's strong suit," Vorn agreed, though the counselor's analysis that what the captain simply considered to be Sara's personality was affecting her performance of her duties in any way - professionally, he'd had nothing but excellence from her, even if he knew her less personally than he did some of his other officers. "How would you say that her behavior is impeding the performance of her duties, though?"

"Let me put it to you like this..." Liz said, pausing for a moment to summon an adequate metaphor, "That isolationist personality serves several purposes on a psychological level. First and foremost, it cuts her off from her emotions. Most people would consider this a boon in the intelligence field because you aren't easily baited, provoked, angered, and so on. And that might be true in some cases when prudence is the better part of valor. Secondly, that barrier cuts a patient off from reality at times. They have a false sense of well-being that has them convinced that they are just fine, and everything is perfectly normal. They are blind to any toll their detachments to others has on their relationships with their peers, family, any friends they might actually have. Then you have the threat of those emotional barriers caving in on themselves. Having been witness to such an event when I was still an Intern, I can attest to the fact that it takes nothing short of a miracle to rescue someone from that."

The woman paused for a moment before continuing, "Think of her isolationism as a fortress. At first, it was nothing but a single wall put up in front of a traumatic event she couldn't deal with properly at the time given a lack of coping skills or support... whatever the case may have been. The longer she avoids that event, the more earnestly it will try to circumvent that single wall. Fearing that it might get around that solitary barrier, she built another one, one that encircled her psyche, but the walls weren't so high that other things couldn't climb over the wall and still come in. Time passes, and her original trauma begins to fester, begins to outgrow the small fence, so to speak, that had kept it out so long. The threat of it coming through begins to be a real one again, so the fence becomes a stockade... soon a citadel, and ever larger until one day the issue becomes so overwhelming that the walls give in and fall back on her, crushing her under the weight of her fears and doubts and so forth and it renders her utterly incapable of functioning as a person."

"This isn't exactly obvious right now, since she's only gone so far as... maybe citadel construction just yet... But the fact remains, the longer she avoids the core issues and refuses to come to terms with... reality, basically, she is only working at half speed no matter what her actual fitness report might indicate. I've told her already that there will come a time when all that baggage catches her, and I would much rather it happen in my office where I can perform the damage control and give her all the survival tools she needs to rebuild her psyche than see her crumble out in the field when it matters the most. Best case scenario, a botched mission and she's back to work the next day... worst case scenario, she dies. Everything in the middle is just degrees of bad,' the counselor said at length, "And I want to make sure that you are on board with my methodology in dealing with her. She is not and probably won't be a willing patient until we finally break down those barriers and she sees the world with an unhindered and unobstructed view. Until then, I'm basically going to have to threaten her very livelihood to ensure that she attends the meetings as scheduled. That, unfortunately, means that if the need arises and I have to remove her from duty, you will support that mandate. I can't help her if she has that wiggle room of getting out of it when she just doesn't want to bother. It does her no good, and it will do this ship no good if she's just half a person."

"Well, you do have the authority to remove her from duty on medical grounds if you see fit," Krace responded, taking it all in. "And though I'd rather not be without my intelligence officer, I will support your order, if you see the need for it." He honestly didn't see Sara's isolationist nature being such a massive hindrance to her well-being as the counselor described - after all, he had things that he had kept bottled within before now, but he also knew that in medical matters, the counselor and Doctor Valdez could both countermand him in cases like this.

Liz nodded, "I would rather not have to pull her from your roster either, but I do want you to know ahead of time that if it happens, it will happen for a good reason. I may not take everything in life seriously sometimes... but I do take a crew's mental health incredibly seriously. Much rather Ms. Archer hate me for being insistent on her getting help and it somehow works than play at being friends and she end up dead."

Liz pushed herself out of the chair, "As it stands, I'm hoping I won't have to use my medical authority to drag her into the office. I got the feeling she was resisting the idea more out of pride than anything... at least I can work with that for now. Oh, and one more thing..."

Liz leaned over the Captain's desk, her arms holding her up in such a way that it accentuated her bust line as she did so, "You're about due for your first session as well. Don't make me hunt you down like I had to with Ms. Archer..."

Krace chuckled. "All in good time, counselor," he answered. "I want you to put the rest of the crew before me first. Once their needs are tended to, then I'll come and see you, but they are your first priority."

Liz issued a rather childish pout, "You're no fun... Fine... I'll let you off the hook for now, but I'll have you on the couch before it's all over with."

The woman straightened up, "I'll get back to it then..."

Vorn simply nodded as they stood together and he turned to face her. "Keep up the good work, counsellor."

___________________

Captain Vorn Krace
Commanding Officer

&

Lieutenant Elizabeth Lynn
Chief Counsellor
USS Iapetus