Ozone & a Handshake
Posted on Fri Apr 3rd, 2026 @ 6:17am by Lieutenant JG Rowan Hale
Edited on on Fri Apr 3rd, 2026 @ 10:25am
795 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
Character Development
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Current
The shift change was usually the quietest part of the day, but lately, the silence in Sickbay had felt heavy in general. Rowan stood at the replicator, his back to the room, staring and waiting for his standard black coffee. He took a sip as his eyes tracked the readout of a nearby monitor.
"You're drinking recycled battery acid Doctor and I've got a burn. Seems we've both got problems." a gravelly voice rasped from the doorway.
"It is chemically consistent with a standard caffeine delivery system," Rowan replied turning around. The scent reached him first - burnt insulation and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone. He glanced at the name tape on the grime-stained coveralls. "KAEL".
Kael stepped in, his presence a jagged contrast to the polished surfaces Sickbay offered. He held out an arm mapped with the angry, mottled red of a superheated conduit spray. Rowan's eyes went straight to the charred fabric of Kael's sleeve. "Bio-bed four. You're contaminating a sterile ward." Rowan said, setting his cup on a counter.
Kael smirked and sat, watching as Rowan prepped a dermal regenerator. The doctor’s movements were terrifyingly precise - the kind of efficiency earned in a Dominion War triage tent where every wasted second was a life lost.
"Second degree plasma burn," Rowan noted. "The integrity of the dermis is compromised. I’m initiating a cellular knit."
"Do you ever talk to the patient, or just the wound?" Kael asked, his voice rough. "Or are you just waiting for me to tell you I've had enough so you can stop?"
Rowan’s hand went perfectly still. The blue light of the regenerator hummed against Kael's skin, the only sound in the sudden, suffocating silence. Rowan didn't look up, but his jaw locked.
"I am a physician. I treat the conditions presented to me."
"I've heard the whispers," Kael continued. "About Marie Batel and you letting her walk into the dark. They say you stood there with that same stone face while a hero of the Federation decided to die, and you just... let it happen."
Rowan finally looked up. His eyes weren't just steel grey anymore; they were frozen. "I didn't 'let it happen.' I respected a patient's final directive. I chose the person over the Optimal Outcome. If that makes me a villain, I can live with that."
"It doesn't make you a villain," Kael said, his voice dropping an octave. "It makes you a funeral in a uniform. It’s not the decision people are questioning, Rowan," Kael continued quietly. "It’s the fact that you look like you were born for it. Like you're already prepared to sign the next one."
Rowan didn't have time to respond before Kael continued.
"Being the CMO isn't just about the ethics of the end, Doc. It's about the pulse of the living. And right now, the only thing I feel coming off you is the cold."
The silence in the room felt heavy. Kael's words were an aching reminder of a divorce that had been as clinical as a surgical separation and of a war that taught him feeling was a luxury the dying couldn't afford.
Rowan finished the treatment and stepped back, his chest feeling tight. Kael hopped off the bed, testing the new skin. He extended his hand as he looked at the replicated coffee Rowan had abandoned.
"That stuff is terrible" Kael muttered. "If you ever want to remember what it’s like to breathe air that hasn't been sanitised by a protocol, you'll usually find me on Deck 17 tinkering around. I’ve got a French press that survived the Dominion War. Come find me when you’re tired of being the only person on this ship who’s already buried himself."
Kael walked out, leaving a single, greasy thumbprint on the edge of the bio-bed. Rowan stood alone in the centre of his perfect Sickbay. He looked at the thumbprint. He looked at the notes on his PADD and as he moved into his office, Kael's words played in his head.
In the medical world, a Final Directive was a mercy. It was the moment a doctor stopped fighting the inevitable and allowed the natural end to arrive. It was clean. It was signed. It was a refusal of further intervention.
He looked around his office - the sterile surfaces, the lack of personal photos, the cold, calculated distance he kept from the crew. He realized then that he wasn't just defending Marie Batel's Final Directive... He had signed his own order years ago, somewhere between the trenches of the war and the quiet hallway of his divorce. He had stopped intervening in his own life and instead was just maintaining the machinery.
He was living one.
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