Watching the medical tricorder carefully the Vulcan watched as the bone regrew and knit itself together “like a magic sweater” as an old mentor had once said.  Lieutenant N’Vea did not believe in magic sweaters but the appreciated the insight into human culture that had provided her such a euphemism for something so typical. Humans more than anything wanted to add wonder, excitement, and mystery to the world when a simple factual explanation was available. 

“You are done Ensign. Keep the arm elevated when you can and rest more for the next forty-eight hours,” she said as she filled out the form to discharge him from the medical bay. With another team taking care of  the Borg resolution she was handling all forms of standard medical care. On a Starbase this tended to be more predictable if regular than a starship. The volume was higher, though the staff was larger to help handle that.

At the end of her shift the Vulcan signed out and left. New to the station she had not made much in the way of social connections. While she enjoyed humans she tended to be self-sufficient when it came to social connections anyway. Her career path had been less straight forward than she would have imagined with her last Chief Medical Officer posting only lasting a few weeks before, well all Borg had broken loose. The ship had been decommissioned at least temporarily and she’d taken the next assignment possible here at Starbase Bravo.

Here she kept up her medical credentials and kept in practice. Being a Lieutenant was easy, it was being a doctor of medicine and working on so many divergent Federation species that was hard. Vulcans, Andorians, Humans… even those three seemed similar but their anatomies were so vastly different that keeping current on the medical knowledge needed to treat them in an emergency was a full time job. It was better to work her way through that then hope she retained that knowledge in six or eight months.

Dinner was at a place on the Upper Promenade that was called Downtime. She was not sure if this was some form of human joke, though it had that feel. Humans could get enjoyment out of naming conventions, a trait the Vulcan found pleasant. Humans could enjoy a lot when they wanted to, even what things were called. Eating a simple vegetable soup made with Earth vegetables mainly from North America, N’Vea then went to the gym.

At the gym she spent her regular two hours. Focusing mostly on  exercises and strength training her goal was to improve her endurance. Though she harbored neither athletic nor combat goals, she was a doctor not a soldier, long hours standing and performing her duties were easier when she was in peak physical condition. Thus it was logical to continue with this, working to achieve that in anticipation for shifts when she was not able to sit down for hours on end. Or ended to fighting the Borg with little to no notice, which was not something she’d anticipated until a nurse had tried to phaser her.

Her quarters were small, though more sizable than she was used to on starships. Sparsely decorated she had no mementos from her service years save for a model of her last posting that had been gifted to the senior crew on the USS Aquarius’ decommissioning as a way of making the more emotional members of staff feel valued. A photo of her and her father back when she was ten was the only insight that she had not simply arrived as a Lieutenant out of the ether. 

A magic sweater that knit itself together.

In her quarters she kept the lights at half strength. Dim she changed into her Vulcan robe and meditated for awhile. Next she lay on her bed and read a medical journal article on cybernetic enhancements in Trills and how joined Trills presented unique challenges for such adaptations. It was nothing that she had come across but knowledge was a tool that she got to wield and it was one that N’Vea made us of when she could.

After awhile she set aside the PADD and dimmed the lights. 

The next day she returned to the medical bay to find that a fight had broken out on the promenade and she was tasked with dealing with minor scrapes that had resulted. Nothing serious, just some civilians becoming too unruly and the Starfleet security that had intervened. 

“Endeavor in the future not to be stabbed,” she advised being perhaps a bit deliberately unhelpful, “Though the fleshy bit of the arm is a logical place to direct a wound.”

The civilian grumbled something racist about Vulcans which N’Vea pretended not to hear, or at least refused to acknowledge. Humans had been trying to get a rise out of her since Harvard and this was nothing new. She’d grown up the only daughter of a sanitation expert, she’d been insulted before. 

The cycle repeated. Duty, dinner, and on to the next day. Life repeated, continued. The Vulcan did not ask if the name of Downtime was a joke playfully made of the words for the time off-duty. She read, slept, and worked. Ready for her next challenge that went beyond triaging people who fell down stairs or got stabbed with forks during bar fights. 

Until then she had a new place. As if knit there like a magic sweater.