An Appointment Reminder

Posted on Sun Jan 19th, 2020 @ 2:44am by Lieutenant Commander William Gunnison & Ensign Elaine Goff

Mission: Dead Moon
Location: Office, Chief of Operations

Not long after the visit from Tamarack, the chime to Will's office door rang again. "Come in," he said.

The doors opened to admit Ensign Elaine Goff, one of the assistant counselors on board. She had been among the original counseling staff assigned to the ship, and since the departure of Counselor Engels, Will and Cole had both been meeting with Counselor Goff to continue working with both on the death of Kelly, Will's wife and Cole's mother, two years before.

"Lieutenant, you can be a hard person to track down sometimes," Goff said.

"Let me guess," Will said a bit dryly. "You're here because I haven't checked in with your new boss over those crew evaluations."

"You sure you haven't got some Betazoid in you?" she said with a bit of a smile as she took the seat that Tamarack had recently vacated. "Look, for what it's worth, this wasn't my idea, but Starfleet Command wants everyone who was on board at the time, especially the senior officers, evaluated, and apparently, my having been on board for recent events makes me 'suspect' as well as far as my own mental well-being and impartiality was concerned in the eyes, so I can't do those evaluations myself."

"Is it really necessary?" Will asked.

"Now, really, you know the answer to that. And since even I couldn't get out of being evaluated, the case can be made that no one else can claim that they're really exempt, either. It could especially be argued that it's necessary for individuals like yourself. Not only were you targeted by the Arg'oshians, but they also targeted your son, someone who is your responsibility to watch over and protect. It can be argued that the apparent inability to do so could...compromise your ability to be able to reasonably perform your duties. Now," she raised a hand to cut off Will before he could say anything in response to that, "in all fairness, all the other crewmembers on board who also have children with them here are also under similar scrutiny, so it's not like any of you are being singled out in this regard."

"It's just that...nothing's cropped up since the Arg'oshians left that would seem to indicate that any of us are unfit to return to duty," Will said. "Why is this suddenly coming up now?"

"Sometimes problems aren't immediately apparent," Goff said. "For things like PSTD, symptoms may not appear for months or even years, with nobody suspecting anything was wrong until it was too late - and all because the person in question thought they were fine and didn't need any evaluating."

After Will reflected on those words for a few moments, Goff continued. "Now, this doesn't mean that there is anything in your case, or Cole's, that needs to addressed as far as the Arg'oshians are concerned. There is still the ongoing counseling sessions that you and Cole have been having with me, and while Counselor Styvek could certainly pull up all the relevant information on that from the computers or from me, he should probably hear about it from you, for any questions he might wish to pose to you directly, if nothing else."

"All right," Will said with a sigh. "I'll make sure to talk to Counselor Styvek soon."

"Good, because I already made an appointment for you with him," Goff said, providing him with the appointment time before getting up. "Good talking with you. Oh, and by the way - don't be late to the appointment. I think Counselor Styvek hates that."