"Chaos in sickbay"
 by Ensign T'Kang


*** Sickbay ***

People were running around, scrambling to various stations 
and preparing trauma equipment when crewman Darla 
O'Donald came walking into medical, carefully holding her 
bruised hand.

"Desmond to all medical personnel, medical emergency, we 
have a medical emergency, assume your emergency posts."

Darla stood in the entrance-way and slowly looked around 
as the Doctor's voice boomed over the loud speakers in 
medical.

"It's only a bruised wrist."  She said quietly to a passing 
medical officer.

The officer stopped in her tracks.  A young Trill with pretty 
green eyes.  "Oh my.   Let me have a look at that."  she 
smiled.

Darla extended her wrist, which was throbbing slightly, so 
the medic could examine it more closely.  "What's going on?  
Why all the fuss down here?"

Taking out a medical tricorder and flipping it open in her 
palm, Jezra began scanning the injury as she spoke.  "It's an 
emergency medical drill.  We have them occasionally when 
things are slow down here."

Darla nodded, "How do you know it's a drill?" she asked 
inquisitively.

Finishing her scans and reaching for a regeneration unit, 
Jezra smiled, "I know.  For one thing, there aren't dozens of 
wounded crew members lining up to get treated.  Now hold 
still a moment."   While the medic circled the silvery medical 
instrument over Darla's wound, she asked, "How did this 
happen?"

Darla's eyes raised to meet the assistant medical officers 
briefly.  She wasn't comfortable with the question but 
answered it anyway.  "Ensign T'Kang grabbed it when I tried 
to examine some of his tools in engineering."

Jezra finished rehabilitating O'Donald's wrist and then 
paused to give her a long stare.  "He grabbed you that 
hard?"

"T'Kang is a big Klingon officer in engineering.  I., I don't 
think he meant to injury me on purpose.  Just stop me from 
touching his tools."  Darla explained.

Putting her medical instruments away, Jezra's expression 
tightened.  "I think I know the person you are talking about.  
A real sour puss, always grumpy with no sense of humor, 
assistant engineer?"

"That pretty much describes him."  Darla admitted while 
flexing her wrist to test the repaired tissue.  "I was assigned 
to help work on the warp core injectors to learn how it's 
done."

"Well, your wrist should be okay.  Nothing was broken.  You 
should take it easy on it for a few days.  Since it was an 
accident I don't think we need to report this.  But be careful.  
If the Klingon injures you again, accidentally or otherwise, 
we will have to file an incident report.  Someone has to 
teach that Klingon to be more careful around humans."  
Jezra explained.

"Well, my wrist is fine now so hopefully we can forget the 
whole thing.  As long as I stay away from T'Kang's tools, I 
should be fine."  Darla smiled.

Jezra returned the smile.  "Well, I have a medical drill to get 
back to.  Remember what I said.  Take it easy on that wrist 
now.  And watch yourself around that Klingon."

O'Donald nodded and began walking out of sickbay to return 
to engineering.  She couldn't help but notice something in 
the medic's tone that left her feeling there was something 
she didn't approve of about the Klingon.

****

** Engineering **

T'Kang examined the schematics of the warp core injector 
unit.  Several engineers had reported to assist in the 
extraction that Chief Hannoyh had placed the Klingon in 
charge of.  Glancing around, the Klingon was hoping that 
crewman O'Donald would have returned quickly so she 
could be there when they began.  He felt bad over injuring 
her wrist out of instinct, but would never admit it to anyone 
other than himself.

"Are we ready to begin sir?"  one of the engineers asked.

T'Kang turned and gave the engineer one of his practiced 
stolid stares.  "I suppose we are.  Crewman O'Donald should 
be along shortly.  We will have to start without her."

Glancing at the half a dozen engineers, the Klingon finally 
consigned to begin, since waiting any longer was pointless, 
even if he did feel bad about it.

"Okay.  I want you two over on the upper gantry and you two 
here to the left.    We will begin by securing the extraction 
cradle over the injection unit and equalizing the mass with 
the anti-grabs.  I will supervise the placement and alignment 
of the retaining bolts.  You will tighten them with the  
repulsion spanner.   Any questions?"  T'Kang growled off in 
typical militaristic Klingon fashion.   One thing was sure, 
working with T'Kang was not going to be a picnic.

When none of the engineers had any questions about what 
was going to be done, T'Kang nodded.  "Good.  Let's get 
started then."

Moving towards the warp core assemble, T'Kang took one 
last glance towards the entrance to engineering to see if 
crewman O'Donald was going to return before they got 
started.   Sadly, she was no where to be seen as T'Kang 
and the rest of the engineers began their work extracting the 
warp core injection unit.