Psych eval - Mara

Posted on Sun Jan 26th, 2020 @ 11:18pm by Lieutenant Commander Mara Ricci
Edited on on Tue Feb 4th, 2020 @ 3:58pm

Mission: S2:1: Into The Drowning Deeps
Location: Counseling Office
Timeline: MD 2 : 15:45

Like anybody in the universe, Mara hated psych evals. She knew she couldn't avoid them, though, so she didn't even bother trying. Early in her career, she had seen security escort a man to the counselor's office after avoiding his eval for almost a year. That had been enough to convince her to just go and get it over with.

So, she found herself sitting in the waiting area of the counseling office, waiting for the counselor to be ready for her.

Aimee came out of her office with a PADD in hand and looked up to see someone sitting there, "Strange," She mumbled under her breath before shrugging her shoulders. "I apologize Commander I was unaware that you had a psychological evaluation," Aimee commented with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Please this way," She indicated that the Commander could enter through the office doors first. Aimee was thankful that her office had finally been repaired.

It seemed like her day had finally started to improve steadily aside from the strange stare she still got from people of course, "Please take a seat," Aimee then made her way over towards the replicator after carrying her stool from one end of her office to the other, "Water three degrees," She grabbed the glass out of the replicator and sat down. "How did your last psychological evaluation go?"

Mara blinked at the girl. When she had first stepped out of her office, Mara had been confused and time had done nothing to change that. She had, however, refrained from exclaiming that she was certainly far too young to be a counselor and instead took the time to form the statement into a more tactful one. “I... you look incredibly young,” she said as she took a seat, her brain stalling on the question she’d been asked.

Aimee looked up from her seat wondering if she should even continue to bother wearing her uniform on the station at all. After a time a slight grin appeared across her face, "What you didn't know that Starfleet was allowing thirteen-year-old Lieutenant's to tell people how to solve their problems these days?" The question was laced with sarcasm and she sighed heavily after her question had been posed, "If you must know I am thirty years old, and following a strange set of circumstances I am forever trapped in the body of my thirteen-year-old self."

That must be annoying, Mara thought, but she only gave an understanding nod. No comment was needed.

Aimee leaned forward and took a drink from her glass of water, "Now then," She found herself starting all over again with the Commander, "Your last psychological evaluation," She had skimmed over the PADD quickly, "States that you are withdrawn. I'm not really all that concerned about that, but I am a bit curious as to why the Counselor who conducted the evaluation seemed to be?" That question was rhetorical, "Not every person does well in crowds of people and tend to withdraw when around people they don't know well," Aimee continued.

"Are you introverted?" Aimee asked this time not being rhetorical.

“Quite,” answered Mara. And then she grinned sheepishly. Her one word answer said more to that question than any amount of explanation ever could.

Aimee set to work correcting a few lines in the psychological evaluation, "The last counselor to work with you on your annual evaluation didn't put that you were introverted just distant. Sometimes Counseling is a bit more art than science and other times," She shook her head without finishing the sentence. "There's nothing wrong with being introverted Commander just make sure that you do what you need to do to recharge. Don't go to that party when you don't want to that sort of thing, and spend plenty of time alone." Aimee finally managed a smile as she set to work.

"Are there any psychological traumas that you suffered since your last evaluation that's not been noted?" Aimee asked as she began to analyze the Commander in silence.

“I don’t believe so,” answered Mara. “Well, I suppose you could count the arm thing, but I’m pretty much over that. I’ve got this awesome prosthetic, you see,” she added, holding up her completely normal looking left arm.

Information regarding the prosthetic arm was in the Commander's medical profile, "Tell me about it?" She found herself requesting before placing her PADD off to one side, taking a sip from her water, placing it back onto the table in front of her, and leaning back. She had her legs crossed and a slight smile on her face giving the Commander her undivided attention too of course.

“Oh,” said Mara, slightly alarmed. “Well... we wen down to Carpathia and the shuttle malfunctioned. We were marooned there. So we just sort of set up camp and tried to figure out what went wrong, but it was a mystery. I think we decided to just get on with what we went there to do, but this slave trader showed up and kidnapped us. Spires and I were the loudest ones, so they separated us. That’s when the slave trader decided to feed me to... he called it a pilot. Anyway, that’s when Ingram showed up on the Resolute and beamed us out of there. They couldn’t get the pilot off me, so they amputated. Spires was there for me. He might be a meddlesome reporter, but he’s a good... ah... a good friend.”

"Is he still in your life?" Aimee asked after listening to the story intently. It was important, in her opinion, that people talked about their most traumatic experiences in life. The arm meant something to the Commander otherwise she wouldn't have said anything and Aimee was sensitive to the fact that the Commander had been through something so life altering. Aimee had never lost a limb, but during her time as a Counselor she had helped a number of people through it.

We had raunchy, loud sex last night, so yeah, I guess you could say that, thought Mara. “Yes, he is,” she replied with a slight grin, feeling the tiniest bit of heat come to her cheeks. “I just don’t really know what to call him.”

Aimee managed to get a sense that there was something hidden behind the response from the Commander. She even had noticed the shade and skin tone had shifted slightly to one that may have been a slight shade of pink though she didn't comment on it. Aimee decided to dig a bit deeper out of curiosity, "You don't know because something happened that was good or that was bad?" She asked. Deciding to probe slightly, "Your grin certainly says something happened..." She said already knowing the answer.

“Yeah,” said Mara. “A lot of something’s happened. Many times.” She gave the counselor a significant look.

The Counselor managed a nod though she was a bit uncertain what the Commander had meant by a lot of somethings. She had an inkling of an idea, "Well sometimes a lot of somethings are just that and other times they mean another thing entirely," Aimee told her in response. One of the many problems that had come with the way Aimee looked now including the lack of the something that she thought was being indicated. Aimee didn't really mind that it was the constant accusation of being a child that really got on her nerves sometimes.

She opted to continue pressing forward, "I would recommend taking things slowly, but then it sounds to me like you may already be past the idea of slowly. Only the two of you can come to the determination as to where you are at in your relationship, however, it sounds to me like things are really good?" She questioned.

“Yes,” replied Mara, but it was almost a question in itself. “I mean yeah. It’s just.... I don t really know what to make of him. We didn’t have a great beginning, see. We hated one another. Purposely did things to annoy each other. Or I don’t know, maybe we always liked each other and it was our way of dealing with something for which we weren’t ready.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why I’m talking about this,” she muttered.

"Because I opened the door," Aimee told her with some sense of confidence in her voice. She took another drink from the glass of water before standing up. She made her way around to the back of the couch with her hands behind her back, "Not every fairy tale relationship starts out with a prince and princess falling hopelessly in love with each other Commander." Aimee had come to a stop and leaned onto the back of the sofa.

"I've only ever dated one person in my life before I became this," She indicated herself with a swift wave of her hands. "He used to torment the living daylights out of me on the Wincott and I came to find out later it was because he had a crush on me and didn't know how to handle it. Sometimes relationships have weird beginnings and even weirder endings luckily we had split about two weeks before I became this otherwise things would have been really weird.

"What I'm getting at is," Aimee said with the same amount of confidence, "Don't dig too much into the weeds about how your relationship starts. As long as you are both happy then that is all that matters, and no matter what your happiness and his is the most important thing otherwise your relationship becomes a job."

Was Mara happy? That was a good question. She had opted to stop arguing with him rather than bring up all his old offenses. And she had decided that being on speaking terms with him was much preferable to shouting at him all the time. She supposed she liked being with him.

She shook her head. It was too much to think about now. "Yeah," she said. "I guess.... I guess I'm hesitant. My friends tell me he's bad news. That he'll only hurt me. Part of me wants to trust him, but... well, he seems sincere." She sighed. "Maybe I'm just afraid they're right. I don't know."

Aimee caught on immediately to the hesitation in the Commander's voice, "Have you both considered talking to a Counselor together? I would be more than willing to sit with both of you at the same time. It wouldn't be anything that would go into the official record since it would be a regular counseling session."

"No!" answered Mara too quickly. "I mean. We've only been together for like a week and a half. That's not enough time to figure out how to work together. Or to discover if we really want to work together after all."

Aimee continued to stand behind the sofa, "If that's your choice, but know my door is always open to the two of you," She said and leaned up and over the sofa. Her feet weren't on the deck anymore as she squirmed around until she had hold of the PADD and she made a few notes into it before closing the profile, "Is there anything else you wish to discuss? If not I think I've got everything I need in order to update your annual psychological evaluation report."

Alarmed, Mara blinked. She hadn’t done any of the typical counselor questioning that Mara was used to. How could she have enough for her file already? “That- that’s all?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

Aimee resisted the temptation to laugh a little bit, "Yes that's all," She responded with a slight grin on her face. She didn't know what Mara had expected, but had returned to her seat once she was alone inside of her office once again. She desperately needed a break from people and went in to check here list of appointments to possibly move them around slightly.