"The Walk"
by Jzryn McCorvich

Jzryn walked onto the Atlantis before most of the rest of the crew had started arriving. They had been given an hour afterall, and only a few mins of which she had used to organize the Medical Units on the Starbase. The rest of the time she would need to go over the inventory on the ship, making sure that she had all the proper equipment. They would be going into territory that the Romulans felt they owned and controlled. Not only would they be going into Romulan space, they would be stealing dilithium for some planet. To top things off, they were the bait, the distraction for something else. It was this part about being the distraction that worried the doctor in her. This would be very open and very likely to cause some forms of injuries. If the ship didn't get attacked, then no matter how much dilithium it acquired, the primary part of the mission would have been a failure.

As she finished rechecking the supplies she heard the warning that the ship would be departing shortly. "Just in the nick of time" she thought to herself. Then she smiled at the fact that the ship was well stocked. Her staff knew her well. Even though she hadn't been incharge overly long, the staff had adjusted very well she thought. In fact, most seemed to really like the change.

The previous CMO had been very lax about the rules, very lax about supplies, very lax about . . . everything. This made things very difficult on the rest of the medical officers, the ones that filled the general doctor's category anyways. The specialists just went about their business more like they were on a planet or in a civilian's world. They cared little about a lot of the routines beyond the scope of their specialties. That left the running of Medical up to the general doctors. With the very lax CMO the rest of the staff had to try to compensate. If it had just been a small sickbay, like the one on the ship, it would have been no big deal. But in order to keep a large hospital like medical unit up and running, beaurocracy was the name of the game.

Jzryn watched as the rest of the medical crew reported into sickbay and started checking over the equipment and the supplies that they would likely be using themselves. She walked over to a young nurse. "Hey Morin."

The nurse stopped what he was doing and looked over to Jzy smiling, "Hey yourself Jez."

"I'm going to take a walk around the ship. If you see Doctor Caine will you let him know? Also let him know that if anything comes along, like meetings or what not that he should just go to them and report back to me what information was dispersed."

"I see, shirking off your duties as the chief are ya now? You don't want to go and sick in one of those conference rooms and listen to some boring new which you know won't be the whole truth do ya? You'd rather send someone else to do the dirty work." Morin smiled as he teased the doctor, who couldn't help but smile back at him. She shook her head, grinning, then turned and headed for the door.

"Just tell him Morin." She called off over her shoulders.

"Sure thing Jez." He went back about his duties as she went off to explore.

She knew he was right. Though not exactly about the boring meetings persay, but more about the half-truths. Understanding that the Romulans would try to pry information out of the crew in anyways possible and excepting that half-truths were required to combat this didn't exactly go hand in hand. Even though logic would state that it should, Jzy wasn't always a logical being. She tried to come off as such as much as possible while on duty and when working with those around her, it made things go more smoothly; but she wasn't overly logical in her heart. If she let her body and mind run the way it wanted too she would react to most things using feelings and intuition. She'd let her frustrations over all of the half-truths get the better of her.

Hard as she tried to not let her emotions get the better of her, they did start boiling over every now and then. It was at these moments that she either needed a medical emergency to get her mind focused or to take a nice long walk, usually ending up somewhere relaxing, like the arboretum.

She could walk aimlessly for hours, making her way slowly and not so directly to the arboretum or wherever she was going. It all depended on how much she had to let her mind work out. This never bothered her because in a medical emergency she had her comm badge with her and her staff could always get in contact with her.

Thinking back, she tried to remember when the last time she needed to talk a walk was. It must have been a while ago, she was thinking that it was even before she had become the CMO. She was pleased to see that it was taking longer and longer to overboil. Maybe one day she wouldn't need to take her "little" walks, but then she would probably miss them. It would feel good to not need them, though she would most likely take them every so often.

She half heard the call for members from each department to report to the conference room for the meeting. She was just about to dismiss it when she realized that the voice was that of Captain Sullivan. "Hmmm... She told me she wasn't going to be on this mission." Jzy spoke out loud to the empty corridor. She decided that something must have changed it. She didn't believe for a minute that the Captain was idiotic enough to think that she'd get away lying to her. Jzy knew the Captain was smarter then that. But that wouldn't stop her from making comments about it to the captain when she did finally come in for her physical.

The doctor put the meeting and Sullivan out of her mind as she finished her walk. She was not sure how long she had been gone or how long after the meeting had been called when she finally had her head clear and found herself on the Bridge. She did know that the meeting was over. Captain Sullivan was sitting in the Captains chair and Doctor Caine was standing not to far away. She was ready to return to duty now, as she smirked at this site. She knew that she didn't have the proper amount of time to do a physical now; the Captain would be needed on the bridge and she wanted to make sure that the physical was very thorough and complete. She walked over to Caine, while watching the captain.

THE END