Administrative Discovery
Posted on Tue Feb 17th, 2026 @ 8:38am by Lieutenant JG Rowan Hale
672 words; about a 3 minute read
Mission:
Character Development
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: After "Time to remember."
Rowan was alone in his office when the alert came through.
It wasn't a priority channel. Nor a medical flag. Just a soft chime from the administrative queue tied to his personnel file.
At first, he almost dismissed it entirely, instead choosing to clear the final diagnostic on Batel's neural trend line.
Efficiency first. Then interruption. he'd reasoned with himself.
When he was done with Batel's results, he opened the notification window.
The header was impersonal:
Starfleet Personnel Registry Update – Linked Record Modification
He frowned slightly. Linked record modifications were typically procedural. Emergency contact revisions. Promotion acknowledgements. Casualty cross-references.
He opened it.
Dr. Elara Hale.
Marital Status: Updated.
Spouse: Commander Arlen Voss
Effective Stardate:
"Three months ago," Rowan said, reading the report and doing the math in his head.
He didn't react immediately. His eyes moved back to the timestamp. He recalculated the stardate difference automatically.
The ship had been in transit then. Pre-assignment briefings. Transfer orders. He had been signing departmental authority codes the same week.
He read the entry again.
Commander Arlen Voss.
The name meant nothing to him.
That registered.
His thumb hovered briefly over the console surface. There was no message attached. No forwarding note. No courtesy notification. The registry update had been triggered by a system sync upon his assumption of CMO authority on Sunfire.
Administrative housekeeping.
He leaned back slightly in his chair. The room remained unchanged. The hum of Sickbay filtered faintly through the office partition.
Monitors steady. No alarms. No calls.
He became aware that he had stopped blinking.
He corrected that.
There was a sensation he initially catalogued as irritation. That assessment failed under closer review.
It was not irritation. It was displacement.
He had known the marriage was over. The divorce had been finalised eighteen months prior. Assets divided. Quarters reassigned. Professional references amended.
Clean. Clinical, even.
He had not considered the next step. That omission now felt… imprecise.
His jaw tightened slightly before he consciously released it. There was no loss here. Not technically.
He had signed the papers. He had agreed to the dissolution. He had told her, calmly and without accusation, that he would not ask her to remain in a life structured around unpredictability and triage.
She had said she did not want to compete with emergencies, and he had understood that. He still did.
He closed the notification before re-opening it.
Verification.
Three months.
He closed it again. There was work waiting. Always work waiting.
He returned to the console and resumed reviewing Batel’s scan. He completed two full read-throughs before realising he had not absorbed a single line.
That irritated him.
He stood abruptly and moved to the replicator, requesting water, which would later sit, still untouched.
He returned to his desk and deleted the registry alert from active queue.
Not erased. Archived.
He adjusted his posture, reopened the neural trend file, and forced his focus back into alignment.
He took note that his pulse was elevated by six beats per minute.
He stood and exited his office. The lights in Sickbay were still in low-cycle mode. Batel’s neural trace moved in steady rhythm across the auxiliary monitor.
Stable.
He appreciated stable.
Rowan straightened, adjusted his uniform cuff by a precise millimetre, and walked the length of the ward, checking biobed calibrations that did not require checking.
When he reached the far wall, he stopped. There was a faint reflection of himself in the darkened display panel.
Calm.
Controlled.
Unchanged.
He studied it as if it were a patient under observation.
No acute distress. No impairment of function.
He exhaled slowly.
“Not unexpected,” he said quietly.
The words sounded incorrect once spoken. He did not repeat them.
After a moment, he returned to the console and reopened the personnel file one last time.
Not the status line. The name.
He let it remain on screen for several seconds. Then he closed it.
--
Lieutenant JG Rowan Hale
Chief Medical Officer
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