Unscheduled Therapy
Posted on Wed Mar 6th, 2024 @ 10:37am by Lieutenant Commander Sofia Nikedoros & Lieutenant Gunnar Arnason
2,440 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Pressure
Location: Gym
Timeline: before 'Echos'
Sofia took the fall and rolled up, but paused, not moving to the next attack but looking at her partner.
He'd started to move, but halted as she did, brows drawing down in concern. "Are you alright?"
"I was going to ask the same of you. That was the fourth kokyūnage so gentle I'm starting to think we should switch to Tai Chi today."
"Sorry." He ducked his head slightly, then stepped back, resuming a migi-hanmi stance to continue.
Lips pursed, she ran a practiced eye over stance, body language. As uke, he'd taken every fall and sprung back up without hesitation, but the same could not be said for the strikes, which had been noticeably slower. While she wasn't a medical officer, she had spent enough years practicing and teaching aikido to recognize signs of injury and didn't see any (besides, she'd like to think a nurse would call a halt if he felt any on-going discomfort). Which meant it was something else. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Gunnar swallowed a sigh. With anyone else he might have responded 'talk about what?' or simply insisted he was fine. But he'd known the Counselor long enough, both as a colleague and a patient to know better. "Do I have a choice?"
"Mr. Arnason, you always have a choice." Her mouth hitched in a half-smile. "We can talk now, or in our next session."
He puffed a helpless laugh. "So, not really. Okay." Dropping down, he settled into seiza to bow out. "I suppose it might as well be now since the whole zen/harmony thing is not happening for me today."
After the simple formality of bowing out, Sofia came across and put a hand on his shoulder. "That comes with practice," she reminded gently. "You may have learned enough aikido to pass hand-to-hand in the Academy, but you only began to really practice in the last year or two." And even that had initially been a compromise between a pacifist-leaning nurse and a Dosadi marine determined to make him better at self-defense. Sofia felt a touch of pride that she'd been able to draw him into more willing participation, and eventually genuine interest, by teaching not only technique but mind set and philosophy. She'd even occasionally been able to slip some spiritual aspects in with her agnostic friend. "You've done very well in that time, and anyone can have an off practice. Especially when they're unsettled."
"That obvious, is it?"
The Counselor nodded, and sat down beside him. "To me it is, but then I'd be rather bad at my job if it wasn't, eh?" That got a half-smile, but his eyes cast down and to the side. He was getting better about it, but having once spent months with well-meaning colleagues essentially walking on eggshells around him, being the object of other's concern was still uncomfortable. "However, I'm the only one outside of the t'Leiyas who would have any reason to think it's more than worry for Luka. And I think people would be more worried if you weren't unsettled about the disappearance of a friend."
"Thank you." He looked back up, grateful for that reassurance. He was normally a fairly open and honest person, but that part of his history was something he preferred to leave behind, which was easier if it was largely unknown. Which wasn't to say he wasn't grateful to have a few here that understood, albeit in different ways - the t'Leiyas provided a retreat where in true Romulan fashion nothing would be said unless he completely broke down, and Sofia would keep everything in confidence, but force him to talk when she judged that he needed to. Like now. "And you're right; I've been trying to keep everything as professional as possible on duty, but ...I'm not sleeping well."
Even if she didn't know his history the 'professional as possible' would have been the tip off. Gunnar normally projected a kindly warmth that helped reduce the stress of the hospital for patients and staff alike. But when covering anxiety or tension, he tended to fall back on efficiency and precision. Since Luka had disappeared, his duty shifts had run like clockwork. Highly wound clockwork. She'd been approached by some of the staff about it. "Nightmares." It wasn't a question, but confirmation of a symptom. "Flashbacks?"
He nodded, and shifted out of seiza, turning one leg bent against the floor, and propping the other up to rest an arm over the knee. "A few, but so far the only kind where I ...look like I've frozen up a moment. I'll turn down assisting with surgery, but otherwise I'm okay. If it was worse than that, you'd know because I'd take a medical leave."
Sofia nodded; the question had been more a measure of degree. As little as he liked giving in to the condition that had nearly forced him to take a medical discharge, she knew he'd never chance putting a patient at risk. "So, the nightmares have come back but haven't reach that level."
"They ever completely left, but I've learned to cope." He leaned forward, draping arms around the lifted knee. "However, it wasn't every night, or more than one a night. Taking Lugh has been a godsend. The last time it was this bad I had Divash or T'Ango staying over. Without someone there... well, I guess I'd be haunting night shift," he tipped a brow at her, "and driving the staff even more crazy."
Sofia compressed her lips against a smile. At least he was aware. "I won't say that no one has spoken to me. But it's less that they feel pressed than that they're concerned for you. You push yourself harder than anyone else," she admonished gently. "Which, of course, makes it difficult for them to complain."
His lips curled in a moment; he did remember being junior staff. "I'll try to ...take it down a notch."
"Try a couple notches," she advised, then offered a soft smile. "Talking could help."
"Maybe." The tone was apologetic, but not quite convinced. "I'm not so bad about that as I used to be." He flipped a palm upward, acknowledging an 'oh, really?' look. "I didn't say I was a good patient, just not as bad," he amended, lips turning in a wry smile. "I would have come to you if I'd thought it would help, but what would I talk about that we haven't been over a thousand times? Yes, there are uncomfortable parallels to my own abduction. Yes, I'm worried. Yes, my mind, both sleeping and awake, keeps conjuring scenes of him being beaten, tortured, subjected to mock executions and every twisted mind game that..." Hearing the way the volume of his voice had risen, he stopped, and closed his eyes, taking a deliberate breath.
"That you were subjected to," Sofia finished for him, and reached across to put a comforting hand on his forearm. "Just because we've been over it before, doesn't mean you don't need to talk. It helps to get it out."
"Does it?" His eyes snapped open, and widened. "Because I do not feel less upset."
She contained a sigh. "It's a process. Which you know."
The last had come in a somewhat chiding tone, and he dipped his head in a reluctant nod. There were days when he regretted a minor in psychology, if only because it meant that Sofia would absolutely call him out on not applying what he knew to his own mental health. "It doesn't make the process easier... Particularly when I know it will feel worse before it gets better, and I'm apparently not functioning all that well at current levels of bad."
"You're not doing so poorly right now," she assured, albeit with a concerned smile. "But we both know you have a tendency to handle these things by compartmentalizing until functioning becomes ...much more problematic."
"You mean, until the bins burst and I fall apart. That won't happen again," he insisted firmly, less a denial than nearly a vow. "Yes, being in a medical setting makes it easier to compartmentalize, but throwing myself into work precedes all of that. Having something to do, where I'm actually helping someone, is the best counter I have for feeling helpless." He glanced aside with a frown. "Besides, while the nightmares are ...difficult... it's only been a few days. I don't crack that easily."
"I know you don't." She puffed a breath. He'd resisted months of terrorists trying to break and turn him, but had somehow become sensitive about being seen as on edge by people who only wanted to help. "It doesn't mean dealing with the stress now is a bad idea. Pain and fear and anger need expression. Do you remember our discussion after the 'bubble of forced LARPing'?"
He nodded, a corner of his mouth twitching upward. "You caught me out because of aikido practice then too." In that case because he was being extra gentle about takedowns, which he'd thought was readjustment from the barbarian warrior persona that had been forced upon him. "Are you trying to get me to find another partner?"
"Mr. Arnason, I genuinely appreciate having a man of your size and strength as an uke. When a technique works on you, I know it works." She returned his half-smile. "At least when you aren't pulling your attacks." Her hands returned to her lap, folding in an attitude of patience. "But that isn't the issue; you abhor causing harm, which is good, but not to the point that you're uncomfortable with anger because of the potential for ...finding release in physical expression."
A thin smile formed at the careful phrasing. "You mean, like enjoying taking an axe to a computer terminal, or literally pounding a holographic monster into the ground." His head dipped in nod. "Yes, that made me uncomfortable. I'm not a violent man; I feel frustration, anger... but not the kind that makes me want to hurt anyone. That's not me."
It wasn't denial; not entirely - his temper was in fact mild and difficult to provoke. Even when someone managed it, it was generally mitigated by a an almost reflexive tendency to try to understand the other's point of view. That did not however preclude anger, even violent anger. It just made it harder for him to process, or accept. "Less so than many, but you're human - it's in all of us. It's natural; sometimes even righteous. Anger, used rightly, can impel us to protect the vulnerable, to stop oppression and abuse."
"I understand that, even appreciate it. You do know both T'Ango and Divash."
The last was stated almost as though laying a trump card, and it certainly was evidence of truth. Both women had ...noteworthy... tempers, and would not hesitate to use force, even lethal force, to protect those they felt needed protecting. And there was no question that he loved them. Nor was it a matter of loving despite that. A mutual colleague had once quipped that the women he fell for had a type: 'alien valkyrie', which suggested a far greater acceptance of that capacity in others. "Yet you don't appreciate it in yourself. You resisted even acknowledging anger over what was done to you, and while I understand that you needed it under control in order to provide insight during the peace negotiations, it hindered your recovery."
"That was a fairly minor factor," he replied, if a touch of acerbically. A deep mind probe over questions of whether he had escaped or been programmed and allowed to escape had done considerably more damage. Of course, Sofia would say he should allow himself to be angry over that. But surviving captivity had often depended on containing any emotion that might be played on, so that sort of release felt like it would be a sort of defeat. ...Which might partially explain why he'd fallen apart later on... "But it was there, and you're right. I still feel like... It shouldn't be."
"I know." She was no stranger to anger herself - she was a pastor, but it had been challenging to remain civil to the agent who had made him imagine he was a such a danger to others that he'd asked for the probe that had cemented his PTSD. "And I know some of that came from what you went through, perhaps the only area where you did allow yourself to be conditioned, because it was as much you as them driving it. But this is not an enemy camp, and there is nothing wrong with being angry at whoever has done this to Luka. Or angry because of all the pain it has dredged up for you."
He sighed. "That might be easier if I knew who to be angry at. With my captors, I knew who was torturing me, but I also had a sense of why, and strange as it may sound, that helped. It's not that it excused them, or that I wasn't angry. I was. But I couldn't show it. I couldn't let myself be provoked, and I found I could distance myself by analyzing them. With this there's just ...some amorphous evil, without reason or purpose. There's no target, no focus, only..." he looked at a fist he hadn't realized he'd been clenching, and opened it, "...useless anger."
"Then release it," she advised simply. "You may be nowhere near where you'd ever snap, but think of it like... lancing a boil, or draining an absess. The incision is a cut but it isn't violence; it's a therapeutic procedure to reduce pain and promote healing. So, Yell. Throw something. Break something before the breaks form in you."
He chuffed a laugh. "You sound like Caithlin."
"A wise woman." Sofia nodded approvingly. "I knew I liked her. Come back to the office and I'll replicate a stack of plates."
"I still feel foolish shattering dinnerware," he demurred, then gave a slight smile. "I haven't completely ignored the advice though. I've been breaking personal bests at the gym."
No wonder he'd looked stiff the past few mornings. "Exercise can be helpful, but pushing your body to the breaking point isn't quite what I had in mind."
"I sometimes slam the weights a little?" he ventured, offering a weak smile.
"It's a start." She puffed a breath that was somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh, shaking her head slightly as she settled back into a more comfortable position. "But not all you need. Now, tell me about these nightmares..."
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