—- USS Selene, Counselling Office 3 —

After finishing up in Cetacean Operations Ibile headed to the counselling session that she had. She’d never been to counselling and liked to think of herself as a rational and sane individual. However it seemed that everyone on the Selene had to see one of the four counsellors at least once a week. Starfleet had apparently found that on assignments it was an important part of keeping the crew healthy and performing at their best. Not that Ibile could imagine someone like Captain Kirk ever sitting down to share his feelings with someone.

A young brunette, not much older than herself was waiting in the office. The woman stood and smiled, introducing herself as Torma. 

“Is that a first name or a last name?” Ibile asked, unsure.

“It’s a name, my only one. So put it in whatever slot you want,” Torma said clearly joking around about the idea that all forms had at least two slots for names. The Gideon woman gestured to a seat and said, “Sit let’s talk. Have you ever done counselling before?”

Ibile looked around the office as she took a seat. As much as mental health was now more normalized in society she had not done formal counselling, and the closest that she had gotten was her career advisor back in high school. However, that didn’t seem like the kind of answer that would fit in this situation.
“No I haven’t,” she confessed. 

Torma nodded, “Well that’s okay. I’m Torma, as I said. On the Selene we’re all assigned to a counsellor, and we meet with them weekly during one of our assigned shifts. It’s to touch base, because let’s face it long-term space travel can be hard. Sometimes we just need to talk to someone.”

“What happens if we go ‘space mad’ or whatever?” Ibile asked, curious.

Torma nodded, “Well there was an incident on the Enterprise-D, it is in the textbooks of multiple men becoming involved with holographic women in the holodeck.”
“That’s just guys though right, guys are gross,” Ibile said.

Torma laughed, “Yes, they can be. But there’s also venting out a pressurized chamber and sending people into space to their deaths. Space can be isolating, lonely and this shell of a spaceship we’re in for all its wonder and fancy systems is still much more vulnerable than a planet. One person slipping at their job could lead to all of us dying. So my job is to ensure we’re all at work, focused and wanting to stay alive.”

Ibile nodded, “Okay.”

“So tell me how are you doing? Is this your first time in space?” Torma asked.

“I did a semester on the USS Okanagan. It’s a Reliant-class,” Ibile said, “but we didn’t go this far out. Do you know about what they’re calling the ‘point of no return’?”

“I do, it’s not a great name for it,” Torma said, “It’s what on the ship we call the point at which real time contact with Starfleet becomes impossible due to being too far away from the Starfleet communication network. We have to bundle up logs, reports and messages to be sent home on a twice-daily basis. But we can literally return, we’re scheduled to.”

“I’ve never been past that point though,” Ibile said, “I have never before been unable to call my dad if I want to talk to him. It’s sad, do you give me something for that?”

Torna shook her head, offering a slight smile, “It’s normal and expected to miss family and loved ones. ‘t I can’t cure all sadness, nor would I want to. But recognizing a feeling and giving yourself the space and grace to feel it is healthy. If you weren’t feeling something like that, I would worry.”

“So you don’t make me happier?” Ibile asked.

“It’s therapy, not magic. I make you realize that being unhappy can be normal. And that this is a limited time thing, we’re not on a Galaxy-class we’re not leaving for years. We’re gone for three months, and then back to Starbase 86,” Torma said. 

—- USS Selene, Senior Officer’s Lounge Delphi —-

Doctor Michelle Mueller was sipping a drinking watching the stars when fellow Academy instructor and fellow doctor Travis McCleod sat next to her. They sat silently looking at the stars as they went by, the ship doing a leisurely sprint at warp 8 for the moment. After awhile Doctor McCleod broke the silence.

“How you feeling?” McCleod asked.

Mueller was quiet as she considered the question. McCleod had been in her life in one way or another since almost medical school, and so she was not about to push him away by simply answering ‘fine’. She disliked when people asked her how she was doing, but he had earned that right.

“Adapting, I didn’t have ‘be a teacher’ on my career plan,” she said honestly. 

McCleod nodded, the Delphi was slow, with just a non-enlisted civilian serving drinks and a few others at other tables. They’d been friends, or colleagues for years, culminating most recently in his recruiting her to be the Assistant Chief Medical Officer on the California-Class the USS Anaheim. She’d rose to being CMO until clashing too much with their captain, and getting her own medical ship. Now they’d wound up together again, this time assigned to the USS Selene as academy instructors. It was, he thought, not the best use of her talents in medicine but at least they were going boldly where no one had gone before, not something that they’d done on the Anaheim.

“So you dating the twig in engineering then?” Mueller asked, not being particularly circumspect as to what she called the young woman he had gone on a date with before they’d left Starbase 86.

He laughed, “I don’t know. It’s hard, I’m a smart guy, did medical school and everything, but it’s hard to see what I can offer a woman whose older than… well… possibly then humans. It’s like dating a Q without the parlour tricks.”

“You always had problems with slowly aging species. You and Doctor Va’Tok never got on that well,” Mueller observed.

McCleod shrugged, “I wasn’t trying to date them. But yes, I like to be able to look at someone and roughly asses their age, and not be several centuries off.”

“We can’t always get what we want,” Mueller observed.
“But we can try sometimes,” McCleod answered picking up an old lyric from ancient Earth, adding, “you might find you get what you need.”

“I guess,” Mueller said, not following along.