Alone and Angry

Posted on Thu Jan 30th, 2025 @ 9:22pm by Lieutenant Tyler Rehman

1,038 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Mission 3 - Discord of the Mind
Location: Sickbay Recovery Room
Timeline: After "Mangled After Midnight in the Maintenance Bay"

The silence was unnerving.

It was only the sound of his own light breathing that indicated he was alive. The small room was dark, except for the soft glow of the bio-bed monitor and standalone console. His small body felt heavy against the hard bedding of the biobed and the pressure on his chest felt even heavier. He was of two minds now, the hope of a peaceful death, and the fight to stay alive. There was so much to learn and discover out there in the large void that was known at the Milky Way Galaxy. He didn’t want to miss any of it. Yet, to be violated, to feel the changeling goo penetrate his chest cavity left him feeling like death would have been a blessing.

Tyler Rehman felt the tear form and the wetness of it slid down the side of his head. He wanted to wipe it away, to dry his eyes, but he could barely move his arms. His brain and his muscles were not cooperating with each other. He tried to scream in frustration, but barely a whisper left his lips. He felt helpless, weak, tired, scared, angry and alone. For the first time, in a long time, he felt alone. It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to being alone, he wasn’t one to make friends too easily, but he had, for the most part, been surrounded by people. Starship life provided him with a social life without having to try so hard for one.

He blinked and another set of tears fell. For the first time, since the Concord’s accident, he felt the weight of their predicament. He tried to stay positive through it all, he had work to do that kept him busy, especially when they had landed in that nebula. There were no options to get home at this point, there wasn’t even a way to fix the specialized engine. They were all stuck, thousands of lights years away from Earth… just like the Voyager. Then there was Gulati who had him verify there was a changeling on board. It just made their predicament much worse.

Speaking of Gulati, where was she? Had she even visited him since he had been confined to this recovery room? If she did, he couldn’t remember it, all the drugs in his system kept him in and out of consciousness for the better part of the last two days. He had remembered the doctor telling him that his body had been a horrific trauma and that he needed rest. Tyler remembered trying to fight the taller doctor and then he felt the business end of a hypospray against his arm and then nothing…

Until now.

Now he was fully awake, something he hadn’t been since right before the changeling had plunged its fist into his chest. The heaviness of that situation had caused his breath to hitch; he wasn’t exactly confined, but his body was still recovering, and he couldn’t move. Not without help anyway. Panic began to set in on the edges of his consciousness,

They were stuck in the Delta Quadrant.

No immediate way home.

A changeling was onboard.

He had almost died, and… and… and…

The one person on board he considered a friend had put him in harms way. A burst of anger came out of thin air and he felt himself clutch his left fist, his fingernails digging into pail flesh.

That came out of nowhere, Tyler thought to himself. He was angry at Gulati for dragging him into all this mess. He knew she had trust issues, he understood that those issues went back to the Academy. But she also knew he would never be able to fight a changeling. There were people far more capable of fighting changelings and lost their lives. He was almost mortally wounded because of her, because her revenge had been greater than common sense.

The anger coursed through him. He found that the anger went beyond Gulati now. He was angry for taking this God-forsaken assignment. He was angry at himself for not reading that letter from Noah, he was angry at himself for not taking more time to be with Noah. He was angry that he was alone.

He came back full circle to where the anger melded into the loneliness that he was feeling. Two things that he had pushed into the back of his overactive mind came to the forefront, the simmering anger and that unopened letter from Noah. That letter was still sitting on his bedside table, discarded there after he unpacked. He would read it the moment he got out of sickbay. He would need to take the time to do these things, and at some point, he and Gulati would need to have a heart to heart.

With that said, with that plan in place, he would have to wait. He lay there staring at the ceiling of his small recovery room. He let go of a guttural yell, his vocal cords straining to make the sound. The machines that monitored his vitals began to beep, he felt like his heart was trying to leap out of his chest, it was beating so hard. He gasped for breath, and tried to call out for help, the words came out soft and squeaky as if he was a twelve-year-old boy all over again.

Tyler began to cry, angry and scared that he was now dying. The single door opened, and a bright line of light filled the room.

“It’s okay, lieutenant, you are okay,” said the voice. It was the voice of Nurse Schaefer; he felt her hand squeeze his. “Just breathe, you are okay…”

He tried, he really tried, but he just couldn’t catch his breath. The panic attack that was creeping at the edges now had penetrated fully. Schaefer kept talking, but he could barely hear her. For a moment, their eyes locked, and then he felt the gentle hiss of a hypo. Immediately he felt relief, and a moment after that his eyes closed, lost in unconscious bliss.

OFF:

Lieutenant Tyler Rehman
Chief Science Officer

 

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