Chief Medical Officer
Posted on September 9th, 2021 by Emilaina Acacia

It had been a few weeks now, and now it only occasionally surprised Emily when her console called her ‘Chief Medical Officer’. She’d watched her dad’s holo-recording for the occasion, which was full of fatherly advice that she hoped she was taking to heart. It had been a while since she’d heard from her real dad, so she was a bit surprised when a message from him came through to her quarters during her free time.

She was quick to sit down and open the message, grinning widely as she was faced with her father, “Dad!”

“Emilaina!” Darok returned, then took a deep breath, “It has been a while. I have yet to congratulate you in person.”

“Holo-dad took care of that, it’s alright,” Emily chuckled.

“Ah, good! See, it can beat me to the punch,” the older man grinned.

“But yes, thank you, I’m… still getting used to it,” Emily admitted.

“Ah, well, so am I,” Darok, himself the Chief Medical Officer of the Albatross, replied, “But being in charge gets easier.”

“I almost turned it down,” Emily shrugged, “But Captain Harper talked me into it. I couldn’t say no to her in the end.”

Darok smiled widely at that, “Ah, so you took my advice and made friends with your Captain!”

“We became quite close during the… time travel incident,” Emily had yet to call it that out loud, and the words felt wrong in her mouth.

The two both shook their heads and sighed out in unison, “…Starfleet.”

“Well Captain Harper was, and is, lucky to have you,” Darok proclaimed with certainty.

The two went on to share stories, and at one point Emily picked up Vinny, now a strange rodent-chicken creature with white fur and brown feathers, much more healthy in appearance than the bald creature she’d started with. Darok loved hearing about Vinny, even as Emily went into much more detail than necessary about the process of developing the perfect Vinny food pellets. She stroked the animal’s head while she spoke, his beady black eyes staring straight forward into eternity.

After a while Darok had to get back to work, so Emily let him go. She was left in her quarters alone with her thoughts. Vinny was back to running around the room smashing his face into anything he found interesting, which was usually the legs of tables or the bottoms of chairs.

Though she had already read it, Emily opened the message from her older sister congratulating her on her promotion to read it again. She rested her chin in her hand and smiled, tapping her fingers lightly on the table.

When she was satisfied she got up so she could pace around the room, the words finally starting to feel right when she said them, “Computer, record Chief Medical Officer’s personal log…”