Incommunicado – In the Dog box
by Lieutenant JG Lance Murdoch & Commander Chelsea Dunham & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin
Post Details
[On]
Lance arrived in Chelsea's office to find a very contrite looking Lara, still dressed in her hospital gown sitting next to her very angry looking husband.
The head surgeon sauntered in as Drull - the Bolian orderly scurried up to hand him his morning cup of coffee. Lance slurped it noisily, the sound hieghtened by the incredibly tense atmosphere in the CMO's office.
The Ambassador jumped to his feet and turned to the CMO. "I want this man fired! Cashiered out! He's a disgrace!"
"You mean the man who saved your wifes life?" Lance replied with a yawn.
"I mean an immoral piece of scum who cannot keep his libido under control.. Call yourself an officer? I'll have you struck off!"
Lance took another long slurp of coffee before handing the cup back to Drull, who scurried off with it. "Your wife already did a pretty good job of 'striking me off'." He smirked.
The man turned almost purple with rage and spun round to Chelsea. "I demand you discipline your staff, Commander!"
Lance's grin spread from ear to ear, "Please do. I so enjoy being 'disciplined' by a pretty lady."
~Pretty? And here I thought he hated me!~ was the bizarre thought that sped across the horizon of Chelsea's subconscious mind before she replied a split-second later with much more clarity.
"That's enough Lieutenant, sit down and a least whilst you are wearing that uniform which makes you a representative of the Federation, contain your disrespectful facetious comments." She told Lance much to the apparent approval of the Ambassador judging by the expression on his face which faded when she turned to him next.
"I'd also be obliged if you would return to your seat Ambassador if you please. In response to your 'requests' I have a limited remit when it concerns what my departmental staff do in their own time, off duty. If there has been some form of misconduct then I would need to have a formal complaint from your wife if she were to wish to lodge one as currently all I have is an eye witness testimony that she was not wearing a wedding ring at the time that she willingly left a coffee house with Dr Murdoch." Chelsea realised this sounded as if she was defending Lance and, actually, she supposed she was.
Chelsea was personally very disappointed to find that she had failed to make any inroads with him in her attempts to convince him that his bristling, barbed-wire defence systems did him no favours but she *did* understand on a professional level that - judging by his *jacket* and the history of the damage and hurt, emotional and physical, that this man had endured as a child and a teenager at the hands of a violent and abusive father - he wasn't likely to allow anyone through that defence wall to attempt to help him to recover.
She tried to detach and deal with this with her 2CO hat on, which she felt was more neutral but she was between a rock and a hard place here and Lance wasn't helping her or himself.
Ben Kensington had sat silently on the other side of his sister and at this point he turned to her, taking hold of the trembling hand resting in her lap. "Lara?" it was half an appeal, half a question and ALL a tone of angst.
A tear slipped down his big sister's face as she finally raised her eyes to meet his, her fingers squeezing his in an appeal for understanding. "It's complicated, baby bro.... I.... but it's true. I went of my own accord. I was hurt and....... " now she turned towards her husband, still clutching her brother's hand, painfully aware of his horrified eyes, almost identical to hers in appearance, currently boring in disbelief into the cheek of the sister he had always looked up to and adored, as she appeared to him now in a new light, fallen and vulnerable, with feet of clay.
Lance eased himself onto the couch, behind the other 'visitors' to Chelsea's office. He extracted a cigar from almost nowehere. He clenched it between his teeth without lighting it. Then sat back and put his feet up on the coffee table. Seeing the expression on Chelsea's face and remembering last time he quickly removed them again.
"Can't we all just.... get along?" He mused out loud.
"Getting along doesn't resolve your gross misconduct!" the Ambassador spat. "I'm going to see you never work again!" He turned back on Chelsea. "And you! If you can't discipline your staff, I'll see it you get replaced with someone who can. I have influence with more than a few of the senior figures in Starfleet Medical, If you make me go over your head to get this dealt with, you will regret it."
"I think you might find that harder to achieve than you think." Lance replied, examining his fingernails critically. "For starters you might want to actually look up "gross misconduct" if you do, you'll realise you don't actually have any grounds to charge me with... well anything really."
"Secondly I suggest you put your bruised ambassadorial ego back into its box. You're not the only one with powerfull friends and if you chose to go that route be prepared to have you ego bruised further when you discover you're not as influential as you think you are. Hell, you can't even satisfy your own wife."
Chelsea stood up with a big gesture and slammed both palms down on her desk, her voice uncharacteristically and surprisingly deep and threatening as she ground out a command.
"That is ENOUGH, LIEUTENANT! Stand down NOW!" she aimed at Lance with a glare that would have pinned most staff to the wall although she knew Murdoch too well to think he was likely to be intimidated but she was counting on him not wanting to spend more time in the brig for refusing to obey a direct order. She turned immediately to the Ambassador.
"And I will NOT be threatened by you or anyone in my own Sickbay, Ambassador. I'll thank you to take your personal issues back to your Consulate. If your wife is not willing to accompany you, I will have Security take custody of her until the CO can consider her claim, should she choose to make one, otherwise, she is free to go too."
Ben opened his mouth to speak and Chelsea silenced him with a dose of the same glare she had impaled Lance with. "I am sympathetic to your feelings, ALL of you, but this whole tragic incident happened with Lara's consent and whilst Lieutenant Murdoch was off duty. I should be very sad indeed if anyone felt the need to involve *influential* friends as I believe doing so would bring great embarrassment upon us all, not least the Ambassador and his wife by having their private laundry washed in public."
The Ambassador opened and closed his mouth a few times in apoplectic rage, then shut it with a final click of his teeth. "I see. Well in that case there is no more to say. Lara," he didn't even look at his wife. "If you wish this marriage to continue, I suggest you leave with me now." He turned at stepped towards the door, paused there for a second, waiting for Lara's decision.
Lara looked around the room. She managed a sheepish nod towards Chelsea, a guilty apologetic look that pleaded for her brother to try to understand and a smile towards Lance.
"Stephen, I *did* want this marriage to continue but I can't go on being treated the way I have been enduring for this past year. If *you* want it to continue, you have to stop treating me like a possession and start treating me like a person again. Even now, you have dragged me in here not hearing a word I had to say and now you've made a scene about YOU and how YOU feel and how YOU were wronged. Well, in some ways you were but it was something we could have discussed and rectified if you had let ME have an opinion or a say." she drew in a short breath and held up her hand, palm towards him as he spluttered as if he was about to respond.
"If you cannot be reasonable about your part in what we have come to here, then i shall stay with Lance." She moved towards Lance. "At least he considers what *I* want. I could do worse than to stay with him if you can't remember that I exist?"
"You certainly could NOT do worse...." her brother cut in, his fury rising too as he moved towards his brother in law in moral support, not of the man's neglect of his sister but joining against her choice of Lance for anything at all.
Chelsea grimaced, realising she was losing Ben. "Lieutenant Kensington." she warned gently in a low tone.
Ben looked back, then at Stephen and then giving evils at Lance. "But Commander......." he began but he didn't have a chance to finish what he was about to say.
"Stay? Who... wha..?" Said Lance.
"Lara, I suggest you listen to your brother." her husband said coldly. "In the long term you will regret throwing yourself in with his," the sneer was long and heavy, "type."
"My type?" Lance raised an eyebrow. "Since when is successfull, handsome, doctor a bad type?" Lance replied sarcastically. "Besides, she's not throwing in her lot with me, she's just ridding herself of the likes of you!" He retorted.
There was more bristling and Lara softened. "I don't actually want to rid myself of anyone who cares about me. I was not chosing *types* I simply want to be loved and noticed."
She moved towards Lance and linked her arm with his. "Lance bothered to spend time with me. I want you to be prepared to do that sort of thing again like you used to when we first got married. If you can't then I'm not going to sit alone and be lonely any more. It's up to you. What are you going to do?"
Her husband looked at her, and then Lance, his contempt for the surgeon as clear as day. "I guess I will have to get Michael to clear out my diary. If thats what you want."
Lara's face lit up and she was across the room and in his arms before he could change his mind. "Yes!" she said definitively but looking into the hurt in his eyes she added gently.... "yes please".
As they went to leave she cast a glance backwards at Lance and mouthed the words "Sorry" before disappearing without another.
Chelsea sat in a rather stunned silence as did Ben who turned back to look at his boss with a questioning look. Chelsea shrugged a kind of "search me?" gesture back again and Ben turned to leave as well only his backward glance at Lance was clearly not one of sorrow or any other form of regret. He had a confused look and wondered if he'd ever understand women. That was his cue to go and find Jana.
Lance flashed Ben the most false smile he could muster and waggled his fingers in a taunting wave as the other man departed. He turned back to Chelsea, "Women Huh?" He shrugged. "I guess all's well that end's well," he added. "Sorry again about the rug."
"All's well?" Chelsea was horrified that he thought all had ended well but she would never be able to work out where Murdoch's reasoning came from or went to. He was on another planet to everyone she had ever met.
"You won't think all is well when you look at this." she handed him a padd showing that his probationary period had been extended.
"Now go and do something good and try to redeem your sorry self!" she sent him packing shaking her head. "I really don't know what to do about you." she said to herself rhetorically as he left.
"Yeah..women", Lance muttered to himself, just before the doors slid shut behind him. "Can't live with them... and they can't pee standing up."
A Joint Post Between:
Commander Chelsea Dunham
Chief Medical Officer
& Second Officer, DS5
and
Doctor Lance Murdoch
Head surgeon and Humanitarian
DS 5
and
Stephen Turner, Diplomatic Consul to Dynaria
and cuckolded husband
NPC by Notty
by Lieutenant JG Lance Murdoch & Commander Chelsea Dunham & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin
Post Details
| Title | In the Dog box | |
| Mission | Incommunicado | |
| Author(s) | Lieutenant JG Lance Murdoch & Commander Chelsea Dunham & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin | |
| Posted | Tue Apr 10, 2012 @ 8:26pm | |
| Location | CMO's Office | |
| Timeline | SD 41 |
Lance arrived in Chelsea's office to find a very contrite looking Lara, still dressed in her hospital gown sitting next to her very angry looking husband.
The head surgeon sauntered in as Drull - the Bolian orderly scurried up to hand him his morning cup of coffee. Lance slurped it noisily, the sound hieghtened by the incredibly tense atmosphere in the CMO's office.
The Ambassador jumped to his feet and turned to the CMO. "I want this man fired! Cashiered out! He's a disgrace!"
"You mean the man who saved your wifes life?" Lance replied with a yawn.
"I mean an immoral piece of scum who cannot keep his libido under control.. Call yourself an officer? I'll have you struck off!"
Lance took another long slurp of coffee before handing the cup back to Drull, who scurried off with it. "Your wife already did a pretty good job of 'striking me off'." He smirked.
The man turned almost purple with rage and spun round to Chelsea. "I demand you discipline your staff, Commander!"
Lance's grin spread from ear to ear, "Please do. I so enjoy being 'disciplined' by a pretty lady."
~Pretty? And here I thought he hated me!~ was the bizarre thought that sped across the horizon of Chelsea's subconscious mind before she replied a split-second later with much more clarity.
"That's enough Lieutenant, sit down and a least whilst you are wearing that uniform which makes you a representative of the Federation, contain your disrespectful facetious comments." She told Lance much to the apparent approval of the Ambassador judging by the expression on his face which faded when she turned to him next.
"I'd also be obliged if you would return to your seat Ambassador if you please. In response to your 'requests' I have a limited remit when it concerns what my departmental staff do in their own time, off duty. If there has been some form of misconduct then I would need to have a formal complaint from your wife if she were to wish to lodge one as currently all I have is an eye witness testimony that she was not wearing a wedding ring at the time that she willingly left a coffee house with Dr Murdoch." Chelsea realised this sounded as if she was defending Lance and, actually, she supposed she was.
Chelsea was personally very disappointed to find that she had failed to make any inroads with him in her attempts to convince him that his bristling, barbed-wire defence systems did him no favours but she *did* understand on a professional level that - judging by his *jacket* and the history of the damage and hurt, emotional and physical, that this man had endured as a child and a teenager at the hands of a violent and abusive father - he wasn't likely to allow anyone through that defence wall to attempt to help him to recover.
She tried to detach and deal with this with her 2CO hat on, which she felt was more neutral but she was between a rock and a hard place here and Lance wasn't helping her or himself.
Ben Kensington had sat silently on the other side of his sister and at this point he turned to her, taking hold of the trembling hand resting in her lap. "Lara?" it was half an appeal, half a question and ALL a tone of angst.
A tear slipped down his big sister's face as she finally raised her eyes to meet his, her fingers squeezing his in an appeal for understanding. "It's complicated, baby bro.... I.... but it's true. I went of my own accord. I was hurt and....... " now she turned towards her husband, still clutching her brother's hand, painfully aware of his horrified eyes, almost identical to hers in appearance, currently boring in disbelief into the cheek of the sister he had always looked up to and adored, as she appeared to him now in a new light, fallen and vulnerable, with feet of clay.
Lance eased himself onto the couch, behind the other 'visitors' to Chelsea's office. He extracted a cigar from almost nowehere. He clenched it between his teeth without lighting it. Then sat back and put his feet up on the coffee table. Seeing the expression on Chelsea's face and remembering last time he quickly removed them again.
"Can't we all just.... get along?" He mused out loud.
"Getting along doesn't resolve your gross misconduct!" the Ambassador spat. "I'm going to see you never work again!" He turned back on Chelsea. "And you! If you can't discipline your staff, I'll see it you get replaced with someone who can. I have influence with more than a few of the senior figures in Starfleet Medical, If you make me go over your head to get this dealt with, you will regret it."
"I think you might find that harder to achieve than you think." Lance replied, examining his fingernails critically. "For starters you might want to actually look up "gross misconduct" if you do, you'll realise you don't actually have any grounds to charge me with... well anything really."
"Secondly I suggest you put your bruised ambassadorial ego back into its box. You're not the only one with powerfull friends and if you chose to go that route be prepared to have you ego bruised further when you discover you're not as influential as you think you are. Hell, you can't even satisfy your own wife."
Chelsea stood up with a big gesture and slammed both palms down on her desk, her voice uncharacteristically and surprisingly deep and threatening as she ground out a command.
"That is ENOUGH, LIEUTENANT! Stand down NOW!" she aimed at Lance with a glare that would have pinned most staff to the wall although she knew Murdoch too well to think he was likely to be intimidated but she was counting on him not wanting to spend more time in the brig for refusing to obey a direct order. She turned immediately to the Ambassador.
"And I will NOT be threatened by you or anyone in my own Sickbay, Ambassador. I'll thank you to take your personal issues back to your Consulate. If your wife is not willing to accompany you, I will have Security take custody of her until the CO can consider her claim, should she choose to make one, otherwise, she is free to go too."
Ben opened his mouth to speak and Chelsea silenced him with a dose of the same glare she had impaled Lance with. "I am sympathetic to your feelings, ALL of you, but this whole tragic incident happened with Lara's consent and whilst Lieutenant Murdoch was off duty. I should be very sad indeed if anyone felt the need to involve *influential* friends as I believe doing so would bring great embarrassment upon us all, not least the Ambassador and his wife by having their private laundry washed in public."
The Ambassador opened and closed his mouth a few times in apoplectic rage, then shut it with a final click of his teeth. "I see. Well in that case there is no more to say. Lara," he didn't even look at his wife. "If you wish this marriage to continue, I suggest you leave with me now." He turned at stepped towards the door, paused there for a second, waiting for Lara's decision.
Lara looked around the room. She managed a sheepish nod towards Chelsea, a guilty apologetic look that pleaded for her brother to try to understand and a smile towards Lance.
"Stephen, I *did* want this marriage to continue but I can't go on being treated the way I have been enduring for this past year. If *you* want it to continue, you have to stop treating me like a possession and start treating me like a person again. Even now, you have dragged me in here not hearing a word I had to say and now you've made a scene about YOU and how YOU feel and how YOU were wronged. Well, in some ways you were but it was something we could have discussed and rectified if you had let ME have an opinion or a say." she drew in a short breath and held up her hand, palm towards him as he spluttered as if he was about to respond.
"If you cannot be reasonable about your part in what we have come to here, then i shall stay with Lance." She moved towards Lance. "At least he considers what *I* want. I could do worse than to stay with him if you can't remember that I exist?"
"You certainly could NOT do worse...." her brother cut in, his fury rising too as he moved towards his brother in law in moral support, not of the man's neglect of his sister but joining against her choice of Lance for anything at all.
Chelsea grimaced, realising she was losing Ben. "Lieutenant Kensington." she warned gently in a low tone.
Ben looked back, then at Stephen and then giving evils at Lance. "But Commander......." he began but he didn't have a chance to finish what he was about to say.
"Stay? Who... wha..?" Said Lance.
"Lara, I suggest you listen to your brother." her husband said coldly. "In the long term you will regret throwing yourself in with his," the sneer was long and heavy, "type."
"My type?" Lance raised an eyebrow. "Since when is successfull, handsome, doctor a bad type?" Lance replied sarcastically. "Besides, she's not throwing in her lot with me, she's just ridding herself of the likes of you!" He retorted.
There was more bristling and Lara softened. "I don't actually want to rid myself of anyone who cares about me. I was not chosing *types* I simply want to be loved and noticed."
She moved towards Lance and linked her arm with his. "Lance bothered to spend time with me. I want you to be prepared to do that sort of thing again like you used to when we first got married. If you can't then I'm not going to sit alone and be lonely any more. It's up to you. What are you going to do?"
Her husband looked at her, and then Lance, his contempt for the surgeon as clear as day. "I guess I will have to get Michael to clear out my diary. If thats what you want."
Lara's face lit up and she was across the room and in his arms before he could change his mind. "Yes!" she said definitively but looking into the hurt in his eyes she added gently.... "yes please".
As they went to leave she cast a glance backwards at Lance and mouthed the words "Sorry" before disappearing without another.
Chelsea sat in a rather stunned silence as did Ben who turned back to look at his boss with a questioning look. Chelsea shrugged a kind of "search me?" gesture back again and Ben turned to leave as well only his backward glance at Lance was clearly not one of sorrow or any other form of regret. He had a confused look and wondered if he'd ever understand women. That was his cue to go and find Jana.
Lance flashed Ben the most false smile he could muster and waggled his fingers in a taunting wave as the other man departed. He turned back to Chelsea, "Women Huh?" He shrugged. "I guess all's well that end's well," he added. "Sorry again about the rug."
"All's well?" Chelsea was horrified that he thought all had ended well but she would never be able to work out where Murdoch's reasoning came from or went to. He was on another planet to everyone she had ever met.
"You won't think all is well when you look at this." she handed him a padd showing that his probationary period had been extended.
"Now go and do something good and try to redeem your sorry self!" she sent him packing shaking her head. "I really don't know what to do about you." she said to herself rhetorically as he left.
"Yeah..women", Lance muttered to himself, just before the doors slid shut behind him. "Can't live with them... and they can't pee standing up."
A Joint Post Between:
Commander Chelsea Dunham
Chief Medical Officer
& Second Officer, DS5
and
Doctor Lance Murdoch
Head surgeon and Humanitarian
DS 5
and
Stephen Turner, Diplomatic Consul to Dynaria
and cuckolded husband
NPC by Notty