It took me two more days of resting to feel good enough to finally get to work again but it was all up to Eva whether or not she would declare me fit for duty again. Luna had already gone up to the bridge for the start of the shift as I made my way to the med bay. About halfway there I ran into Gunny who was in his gym gear.
“Good morning, Commander.” He saluted me as I approached.
I saluted back with a smile. “Good morning, Gunnery Sergeant. Going to the gym?”
“Physical readiness is important.”
“That’s true.”
“Speaking about which, how are you holding up? Feeling better already?”
“I’m doing okay but I’m heading to the Doctor now so she can greenlight me again.”
Gunny nodded. “Think you’ll be able to start working out again too?”
“Probably.” I nodded back. “Why are you asking?”
Gunny smirked and prodded me in my stomach. “I see a little bit of bounce coming back already.”
I snorted. “Yeah, sure.” I looked around for a moment and then looked back at Gunny. “Let’s just see about that. Why don’t we see who can do fifty sit-ups first, you or me?”
“Right here, right now?”
I nodded. “Right here, right now, I put the offer out.”
“And what’s at stake?”
“Hmmm.” I thought for a second. “5 thousand Federals?”
“Let’s make it 7 thousand. The price of one burger on Earth.”
“Sure thing.” I agreed to it with a shake of hands. “Ellie will be the judge so we won’t be able to cheat.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea, Commander?” Ellie spoke up from the speakers above.
“Fifty sit-ups isn’t that much, Ellie. It’ll be fine.” I assured her.
“If you say so, Commander.”
“Alright, let’s get into position and do this thing.” I rolled my head around to loosen it up a little.
“Don’t cry too much if you lose, okay?” Gunna smirked and cracked his fingers.
Our little contest got a couple of incidental spectators as there were only a handful of people around, most of them being marines who were pretty much off-duty right now although there were a couple of sailors there too.
When we got into position Ellie spoke up once more. “Are you really sure about this, Commander? Docto-”
I cut Ellie off in the middle of her sentence. “Ellie, just count, we’ll be done in five minutes.”
Ellie stayed silent for a couple of seconds before she spoke up again. “Alright Commander. I’ll commence a countdown.”
“If you would.”
After Ellie’s countdown Gunny and I started our little competition. At first I managed to keep the pace quite considerably, even managing to stay ahead of Gunny when it came to the amount of reps I did, but about halfway I started to feel the effort catching up to me. My heart racing a lot harder than it used to for this kind of exercise.
In the end Gunny grabbed the victory while I still had to do 8 sit-ups to get to my fifty. The small crowd around us cheered Gunny on as he stood up straight and lifted his arms in the air.
“Looks like you are not yet completely recovered, Commander.” Gunny offered me a hand.
“Yeah…” I replied, half out of breath already, after which I took his hand so he could pull me up. “I’ll transfer the Federals later, okay?”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
He put his hand on my good shoulder. “I know you always pay your debts, Commander.”
“Yeah.”
“Commander.” A stern voice from behind me made the hairs on my back stand up straight. It was Eva who had called out to me.
“Oh boy… Well, you are on your own for this, Commander. Good luck.” Gunny quickly skiddled off to avoid the Doctor’s wrath.
I put on my best smile and turned around to face the music. “Doctor, I was just about to head over to you.” The crowd in front of me was quickly disappearing too so they wouldn’t catch any flak either.
“What do you think you are doing, exerting yourself like this? Do you want to go back to lying in your bed in pain again? If you really want that, I can make it happen”
“It was just a friendly competition, nothing more.” Just as I said that a pang of pain shot through my body making me wince a little which was obvious for Eva to see.
Doctor Winter shook her head and sighed. “I can’t believe you marines sometimes. And where did the Gunnery Sergeant go? I want to have some choice words with him too.”
“It was entirely my idea, Doctor. Please don’t put any blame on him.”
“The Gunnery Sergeant should have known better.” She sighed again. “Come, let’s head to the ward and do some tests, I’ll probably give you another painkiller as well. It’s clear that you’ll need it…”
As I walked the short, yet longer than I had wanted, walk of shame together with Eva, I decided to use the special skill of smalltalk to hope that she would be a little bit milder on me.
“So, uh, how are you doing, Eva?”
“Lauren, if you think I’m going to go easy on you just because we are friendly with one another, you would be thinking wrong.”
-Shit-
“Just put you in my spot, how would you like me to explain to Luna that you fell sick again because you didn’t take recovery seriously enough? Having a sit-up competition of all things…”
“I just thought I felt good enough for it.”
“Lauren, don’t try to out-though Gunny, that’s not going to end well any time soon.”
“... I know… But it was a good morale boost for those around us though.”
“Until you fall sick, again, yes.” Eva rolled her eyes and sighed. “Anyway, to come back to your question, I’m doing okay. And in all honesty I actually wouldn’t have noticed you were doing your little competition if I wasn’t running late myself.”
“So you didn’t come over specifically to reprimand me?”
“No, how should I know?” Eva chuckled. “I would have been able to tell by your heartrate afterwards though.”
“And why were you running late? Had any issues?”
“Just ran into doctor Freemann in the hallway, he wanted to discuss one of the patients.”
“Anything bad?”
“Not really, but he proposed an alternative medicine and we had a bit of a discussion about that.”
“Bad discussion?”
“It was a serious discussion but we remained professional of course.”
“Can you give me the jist of it?”
Eva shrugged. “He suggested a treatment which I know is very effective but which also has a higher possibility of side-effects, combined with a different medicine to then lower the chance of side-effects. It’s pretty experimental and I’ve read about it before, but I still prefer the medicine we currently use for ailments like that but which requires you to take the medicine for a longer period of time. It’s a more cautious approach but I don’t see many reasons to step away from it. As I said, not a very harsh discussion, just professional differences.”
“Did you decide on a course of action yet?”
“No. I told him I was going to think about it and let him know when the shifts change again this evening.”
“If any troubles arise or if you have any knots to cut through, just tell me, okay?”
Eva smiled. “That all depends if I pass you for duty or not.” Eva then opened the door for me that led into the medical ward, we had arrived. “In all seriousness though, we will get through it ourselves.”
I nodded as Eva pointed me towards the bed in the corner of the room.
“You know the drill, everything above your waist off.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Eva closed the holo-curtain behind me and waited for me to get undressed. After which she swiftly began her examination. “The rash on your back seems to be mostly gone, that’s good.” I felt her trace the line between my implant and the fleshy part of my body. Some of those areas were still a bit sore to the delicate touch though.
“Ouch!”
“Yeah. A painkiller is definitely going to be in order still.” She then took out her holo stick and used one of the nearby machinery to run a scan over my body. “Heart rate is still elevated too, although that’s just marginal, knowing that you just did some exercise. Breathing also sounds relatively fine. Still have a headache?” She was just quickly going over everything.
“No headache. Just a bit dizzy if I get up too fast.”
“That should be fine.” Eva nodded and put her holo stick away, getting out a syringe instead. “I’ll just take a bit of blood to run some bloodworks and then we are almost done.”
Before I could well and truly prepare myself Eva had already jabbed me with the syringe.
“Ellie, could you please notify the Lieutenant-Commander that I’ll be slightly delayed with my assessment of the Commander. Shouldn’t take much more than ten minutes while we wait on the blood results.”
“Yes Doctor.” Ellie replied.
-It was impressive to see how Eva could just commandeer the entire room when she was busy with her field of expertise. Then again, she is one of the best of the best, so it’s not surprising at all.-