The Last Thing She Wanted to Hear

[Octavia Wynn]

It was a while before Grace was done with her other charges, so Octavia sat in the corner, trying to stay out of the way. She alternated between wiggling her forefinger in her ears and spinning an arrow for lack of anything else to do. Sean had since left, with promises to return once she was done, to assist her with getting settled into her bunk - wherever that was.

She watched as Halladay deftly repaired her crew mates and sent them on their way. It was clear that the woman was very good at her job. Octavia expected to be better in no time, but still couldn't help but be sour at the temporary emptiness of sound. It seemed to press in and suffocate her, drowning her in her own thoughts.

The redhead never truly realized how much audio input she processed. Although she did not possess eidetic tonal memory, she was still surprised how much her ears lead her eyes to what she needed. Only upon seeing did her memories become fully trapped, even as their sounds began to distort and fade.

She was afraid to read or focus on something other than the room and people around her. She felt as though she was constantly about to be snuck up on, even though she could think of no reason anyone would want to do such a thing. Without sound to alert her to anyone's approach she made due with keeping in her corner and watching the room.

Once Charity, Ammorue and the new guy were patched up and gone, only Octavia and Grace remained. She hopped up onto the exam table and with an awkward smile on her face said, too loudly, "My ears are wrecked after the explosion. There was a buzzing. Later, I got the pressure equalized and now it's just..." she sighed heavily and shrugged, "nothing."

[Grace Halladay]

After everyone had been looked after Grace went about cleaning up, moving all of the used tools beside the sink to sanitize.  Turning around however she found the redhead perching herself upon the table, Grace was slightly embarrassed that she had forgotten about the woman who hadn't said a word since arriving.  It didn't take long for an explanation why to be presented.

"My ears are wrecked after the explosion. There was a buzzing. Later, I got the pressure equalized and now it's just...  nothing."

Thankfully the woman didn't seem to notice or care about the doctors forgetfulness.  Then again the woman failed to introduce herself or even a simple hi which was a bit... different but welcome at the moment as the doc had little desire to chat right now.  Grace nodded to the woman in acknowledgement and did a cursory scan of both ears but didn't see any damage so took up her otoscope to take a deeper look.  Stepping around to the woman's side Grace brushed her crimson hair away from her ear and peered through the device looking for any physical signs of trauma, not seeing anything too obvious she moved to the other ear and came to the same conclusion.

"Well there's no physical damage that I can see anyway.  If you don't mind."  Grace stepped around back of her and slid her hand up the back of the unnamed woman's shirt feeling for spinal damage which to be fair was likely not the cause of the hearing loss since they all had just experienced an explosion but it paid to be thorough.  She sensed some level of discomfort in the woman with each time her hands came in contact with her body but there was nothing she could do about that if she was going to get to the bottom of this.

"Is there anything you can tell me about what you were doing when the explosion happened?"  She found herself speaking above normal volume as if that was going to help though she accompanied her words with basic sign language, something she picked up in the field just for instances such as this.  Hopefully the woman could understand.  She also had to get her name at some point.

[Octavia Wynn]

Halladay checked Octavia's ears and did a physical exam of her spine - for reasons that the redhead could not fathom. She was pretty sure that her hearing wouldn't be connected to her spine. The contact made her cringe, but she sat through it. She knew it was coming and it was not unexpected in visit with a medical professional. So, Ocatvia did her best to sit still and be compliant, even when Grace was behind her and she couldn't see the contact coming.

Octavia was almost certain the doctor was talking while doing the spinal check. She could feel the flow and stutter of breath on the back of her neck and a very slight rumble near where the doctors chest might be.

Finally, the physical exam seemed to be over and the other woman stood in front of Ocatvia again. She was definitely talking now and accompanied her words with some form of sign language. Octavia knew a fair few languages: English, Chinese, Latin and Hindi. Sign Language was not among them, unfortunately for her now.

She shrugged and looked defeated. Without giving a reply to words she couldn't hear, she got up and fished in her bag for her tablet. She tapped a few buttons and silently handed it to Grace.

[Grace Halladay]

With a shrug from her patient it was clear that the rudimentary sign language she knew wasn't working.  Luckily the woman had an idea of her own to increase their level of communication by pulling out a tablet, typing into it and passing it to Grace.

Looking down at it she saw a window with her name and the results of her last medical check up showing nothing abnormal.

<<This might be easier for you. I don't know sign language, yet.>>

A window that is running a video for learning sign language, which she had clearly only started playing after she retrieved the tablet from her bag.

Grace nodded slowly and then typed out some words of her own which took a bit of time.  Chuckling to herself at one point.

<<I believe you have cochlear damage.  Could be permanent but if so there are medical facilities in the core that can repair it unless some zebra fish swim by.  For the time being I am going to prescribe you some medication called Tuxerin which should temporarily increase your hearing range but it won't last long an hour, maybe more each dose.  I'm sorry that is the best I can do for you with what I have.>>  She handed back the tablet and went into her medicine cabinet and routed out the required pills.  She grimaced as she looked at the container which was half full at best.  Usually there wasn't much use for this particular allergy medicine in space considering it was mostly used to treat nature-related allergies, thankfully it had recently been discovered that it had an ingredient linked to healing certain hearing deficiencies.  Fingers crossed it would work... fingers crossed even more that the poor woman didn't suffer any of the side effects.

[Octavia Wynn]

Octavia read the doctor's message swiftly and then read it again to make sure she didn't misread the first time.

Cochlear damage. Great. Just Fantastic.
Grace had laughed. How was that funny?

It wasn't. She was probably laughing about zebra fish.

Zebra fish? Really? She didn't understand the connection to her problem or why it was particularly amusing. She let it slide.

She looked up from the pad and said,"One pill for an hour benefit? Surely you could more than that? I could pay you a private patient rate for whatever medicine is needed if that's the problem."

There had to be something else here. Obviously this med bay wasn't the largest she'd been in, but the ship couldn't be that bad off that any needed medicine wasn't fully stocked. Octavia had paid a nice rate for the Wushu to ferry her over to the wedding. She expected better care than this.

[Grace Halladay]

"One pill for an hour benefit? Surely you could more than that? I could pay you a private patient rate for whatever medicine is needed if that's the problem."

Grace sighed at the woman's request.  It must have been quite frightening to be faced with potentially permanent hearing loss and despite he current mood she felt sympathetic towards Octavia's plight and wished she could do more to help her.

She gave a slight horizontal shake of her head and an apologetic shrug.  She grabbed an empty pill container and portioned out a few doses, cutting them in half.  If used sparingly this might last her until they came across a proper hospital to have her properly treated but it would be a stretch.  Either way Octavia was going to have a rough go of things for the next little while.  Snapping the cap on she handed over the pills to her patient and returned the rest to the cabinet.

"You should take...."  She started before exhaling a slow breath and borrowed the tablet again.

<<You should take one pill now to test.  There are some side effects with this medication potentially and I'd prefer the peace of mind of knowing how you react to it.  Sorry this is the best I can do for that.  Do you have any other concerns I might address?>>  She finished typing and offered the device back to the woman.

[Octavia Wynn]

<<You should take one pill now to test.  There are some side effects with this medication potentially and I'd prefer the peace of mind of knowing how you react to it.  Sorry this is the best I can do for that.  Do you have any other concerns I might address?>>  She finished typing and offered the device back to the woman.

Octavia frowned deeply at the news that there was nothing much to be done. She took one of the half-pills from the bottle she was handed, as instructed. She watched the slightly sped-up video on sign language while she sifted through her options.

She thought of a lot of things she wanted to say. Most of them inappropriate or rude. She thought of questions she didn't feel like asking at the moment. She got distracted and began mentally translating her thoughts into rudimentary sign language wherever she could. She could feel her face slip into blankness as she introspected.
It seemed a long time before she was pulled back into the world, ears first. Octavia's face and body language reanimated at the returned sensory input. She glanced at the clock on her pad, it had only been a few minutes.

The ambient sound blossomed brightly like fresh flowers around her. The sounds of her own breathing and heartbeat came first. Then came the constant low hum of the ship's systems and life support. The doctors breathing reached her next - she was breathing a little loudly as if she were annoyed or troubled by something. The plastic of the medical table crinkled underneath her as she shifted her weight. Finally, she remembered the question she'd been asked.
"No," she replied to Grace, slightly starting at the loudness of her own voice after the silence. "No other concerns. I'll just wait here for Sean to collect me, then."

Octavia hopped down from the table & returned to the chair she had waited in before. She hummed to herself and watched the signing video while she waited. After about twenty minutes Grace must have calmed because Octavia could no longer hear her breathing and other small vocal sounds as she tidied the space. Another five minutes after that the sounds of the ship had faded into the background. In a further five minutes or so, the sound of her own voice had grown muffled. She stopped humming abruptly in the middle of her melody.

By the time Sean had returned she was slumped down in her chair, her core and shoulder blades practically in the seat, her legs braced in front of her, the tablet playing her video proped up on her midsection. All symbolance of personal grace gone. All of her sounds gone as well.

As she left, she caught Grace's eye and signed something that, roughly translated to I didn't have any side effects. I'll be back if I do.