The Long Walk Down
Posted on 04 Apr 2021 @ 7:13pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Mission:
M2 - Sanctuary
Location: OC, Recovery Ward, Rm 08
Timeline: Following Calling Home
1092 words - 2.2 OF Standard Post Measure
While she was still on the floor with the comm line staring at the end call signal following her discussion with her mother, Calliope had another call she felt she needed to make. As she dialed from the subspace directory, she was motivated by a sudden indignant fire.
He picked up the audio line and began with, “Calliope! I’m so relieved to—”
“Don’t you dare, Ryder. How could you?”
“You feel betrayed. I completely understand. Allow me to—”
“To explain? To explain how you ruined me?”
“Ruin you? Hold your fire, Commander! You’ve been on a prescription medication that you couldn’t quit! That’s the textbook definition of addiction. What did you expect I would have to say? Look at the lengths to which you—”
“Seven years we served together, You’ve been like a brother to me, Ryder. I can’t even tell you what it was like to hear you, of all people, made me out to be an addict!”
“Would you just listen?”
Ryder couldn’t see it but Calliope crossed her arms sullenly.
“You were addicted when you got here. I tried to tell you the first day I saw you, at your intake exam on the Paracelsus. You said you wanted the Vamiraxil refilled and I gave you the speech on file about the risks. All you said was ‘there’s a form I always fill out saying that I’ve heard this before.’ I didn’t want a fight with my new XO on day one. I gave you the waiver, you signed it. And then I did my research on this godforsaken drug. The next time you asked for the refill? Do you remember?”
“You said you’d get back to it and you didn’t. I got it from Dr. Vrie.”
“Yeah. Every time I tried to skip or blow it off, you found another way. Somebody else that would fill it for you. On ship, on installation, on planets, in and out of the Federation. I realized anything I tried was just going to drive you to another source. You were addicted. And you were damn resourceful. So… I stopped denying you the prescription. If you were going to find a source any which way, I was going to play the druggist myself. Only… I started drawing down the dosage in tiny increments.”
“You what?"
“I never told you, but for the last four years we served together, I’ve been gradually detoxing you. I couldn’t do it all at once. I would draw it down until I noticed you were acting off—”
“Acting ‘off’?”
“Yeah, you know, saucy more than normal, overly irritable, kinda…." he cleared his throat, "salacious.”
Calliope scoffed.
“When you got like that, then I’d come back up a little and let you stabilize before trying to draw the dosage down again. You were doing very well. Frankly, when you left in such a rush, there was such a minuscule amount in the last prescription. I tried to call you but you were unreachable. I wanted to congratulate you and tell you what you’d accomplished. You really only had a step or two more left on the way down and you were almost completely acclimated to managing your pheromones.”
“What?”
“If you'd been my patient still? A few months from now maybe we’d talk in sickbay, you could get pissed at me and we’d work it out while planning your therapies. All the addiction would be in the past and you’d never have to see it on your record. It would have been just between us. That was my plan, honest to Kahless. But it didn't shake out like that. The damage caught up to you first, Cal. they were right to take you off completely. I’m sorry. It sucks.”
“It sucks eggs, Ryder,” she said through clenched teeth.
“It sucks Horta eggs.” He agreed emphatically. He’d seen her file and been talking with her doctors and knew he would never wish her present experience on anyone. “I know that no one knew it when you first started the prescription. And I know that teen Orion and Deltan girls don’t usually start that prescription without some awful, messed up story behind it. Still, you could have saved yourself almost all of it years ago, Cal. You could have detoxed when it was easier. Right out of Academy when the first long term studies came out. You would have saved yourself so much pain.”
Calliope didn’t answer right away. Of course Ryder was right. It was just so late that it hurt to see it now for all that it was. She truly had wrecked herself. “Did Winters know?”
“No. I never told him. As long as you were fit for service, I considered it doctor-patient privilege. I mean, considering I wasn’t even telling the patient...” Ryder chuckled. “Winters thought you were the bees' knees, Cal. We all did. He was going to retire seven years ago. He got tired of being assigned XO’s that didn’t have their heart in the work. He only stayed on back then because you brought a new energy to the staff. Now it’s been almost a month and he’s still relying on Arvind in Ops to fill the job. I don’t think he’s going to pick a new XO though. I think he’s trying to decide where he wants to retire.”
“Winters? Retire?” Calliope wasn’t quite believing it. But if it were true? “They might offer you the Paracel.”
“The possibility hadn’t escaped me.”
“You’d deserve it.”
“So you’re not mad at me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Ryder chuckled. “It’s enough for me that you’re okay, Cal. You gave me a fright when I first heard the news from DeHavilland. But you’re going to recover. You know that. Right?”
Calliope hesitated to answer.
“You were a pain in the ass trying to detox you. Now you’re clear of it. No one can stop you getting anything you want, Cal. I learned that the hard way. Get back to it soon, yeah?”
“Goodbye, Ryder.”
She ended the call and reflected, feeling numb at all the revelations she had to process. She’d been detoxed against her will for four years and she wanted to be mad. All she could really think though was how much she hated herself.