Chapter Text
“Lena Francis level three access granted.” As the console read those words out she moved her wrist away from the scanner and walked through the gate. The queue kept moving behind her as she walked off in the direction of the med bay. Bening a nurse back on earth had helped her to secure a position working onboard the Resolute, she was assigned to working in the med bay until their arrival on Alpha Centauri.
After a short while Lena arrived at the med bay and walked over to the nurse stocking shelves in preparation for potentially injured colonists.
“Hello I’m Lena Francis one of the new colonist nurses.” She held out her hand to shake. The other nurse stopped stocking shelves to shake Lena’s hand.
“Hello there I’m Emily the charge nurse on the Resolute.” She turned behind her to pickup a few sheets of paperwork and handed them to Lena, “If you could just sign these then we can assign you to a level of the ship.”
“Thank you.” Lena turned round to lean against the table to sign the papers, pulling a pen from her pocket. She signed her name on the line and then gave the papers back to Emily.
“Thanks, I’ll send you a message when we assign you to a level to work on, you room is in the corridor with the rest of the medical staff, there should be a sign on the door.”
Lena thanked her again before walking out of the med bay and down to where her room was going to be. She scanned the writing on the doors until she got to the one that read Lean Francis when she pushed open the door of her cabin. The room was simple with a bed pushed against one of the walls, a small desk occupying one corner and a wardrobe opposite her bed. She set her bag down on the end of her bed and began to unpack it, the clothes going into the wardrobe, trinkets on the small shelves above her bed, books going on the desk. Before she could finish packing everything away there was a ping from the device on her wrist. Lena Francis, please report to the maintenance deck to receive your assignment. She let out a sigh before abandoning the task at hand and picked up her jacket to head down to the maintenance deck.
She waved her hand over the sensor outside the stairwell and the door hissed open. She hurried down the stairs to the bottom floor, eager to make a good first impression on who she was going to be working with. She reached the bottom of the stairs and heard loud rock music coming from behind the closed bulkhead door. As she went to open the door it slid open before she could reach it and out stepped a man wearing the standard orange of crew members. He was holding a rag covered in grease stains and he was wiping his hands on it, as he cleaned of his hands Lena caught a glimpse of his forearm and saw an intricate pattern tattooed onto his arm, her eyes traced the design before the man cleared his throat and snapped her out of her own head.
“Hi, can I help you miss?” the man spoke from where he was looking down on her with a confused look on his face.
“Oh I’m sorry, I was told to come down here to report for my assignment, I’m one of the new colonist nurses aboard the ship.” Lena stumbled slightly over a few words before regaining her footing, “do you know who I’m supposed to talk to?”
He threw the rag into a corner onto a box and she caught a glimpse of another tattoo on his other arm, she couldn’t see clearly what it was of but tore her eyes away and looked back up to his face. He was smirking slightly as his eyes tracked the movement of her eyes, he held out his hand for her to shake, she swallowed and shook his hand, his hand was bigger than hers, calloused and warm, she shook her head internally to try and clear her head when he spoke again,
“Don West, mechanic extraordinaire at your service, and you are?”
“I’m Lena Francis nice to meet you.” She looked down at her hand in his and swallowed before letting go. The man she now knew was Don West began to walk through the door and down a corridor, when she didn’t follow him he stopped and turned round to face her.
“Come on, med station’s down here.” Then her turned back around to continue walking in the same direction. Lena jumped into action and jogged after him to catch up. He turned off at a junction and entered a room that looked like the med bay upstairs but messier. The bed was half covered in boxes, crates of supplies stacked against the walls and dishes piled in the sink. The room seemed well stocked despite the state of it. There was another man stood in the corner of the room reading a sheet of paper and checking the list against the contents of boxes. He was stood with his back to her and Don but when Don entered the room, he greeted him cheerfully.
“Hey Doc, how’s it going?” Don said to the man and he turned around to respond.
“Hello West, I’m good how are you?” the man responded shaking his hand.
“Well the usual you know, got a new nurse for you.” As her mentioned Lena she shook the other mans hand as he said hello.
“Hello I’m Lena Francis one of the colonist nurses on this trip.” She smiled at the man, intent on making a good first impression.
“Nice to meet you, this is going to be where you are working during the trip, you’ll be tending to injuries suffered by the maintenance crew and ensuring anyone has any medication they need during your stay.” The doctor waved his hand around the room as he explained her role. She nodded along as he spoke and when he finished he excused him self and went back to checking his list.
“Alright I’m off then, see you around nurse Francis.” Don clapped his hand over her arm then walked out of the med station. Lena followed him with her eyes until he was out of sight and turned back to the room she would be spending the majority of her time on the ship working in. The doctor looked to be very wrapped up in his work so she scanned the room to find something to do. She settled on the pile of dishes in the sink and decided that would be her first task. She walked over to the sink and assessed the damage, the metal dishes had spots of blood from small procedures on them as well as other substances. In the cabinet under the sink was a pair of rubber gloves that Lena then pulled out and put on. She turned on the hot water and squirted some washing up liquid into the basin.
As the water warmed up she busied herself with organising the dishes into piles to make them easier to wash and found herself think back to West. Was he in charge down here? He certainly had the confidence for it, but at the same time he could just be one of those guys who pretended to be in charge to impress people, anyway that wasn’t important right now. Once the water was hot enough she began to wash the dishes starting with the biggest ones first.
It didn’t take her very long to wash and dry all the dishes and soon she was trying to locate the shelf they originally came from, which in the mess of the mad bay was a difficult task. Every inch of spare space was taken up by something that clearly did not belong there or wasn’t supposed to be in the room at all. While scanning the shelves she found a box of air filters that obviously weren’t supposed to be there. She sighed and decided she would deal with that later and just piled the dishes neatly on the limited counter space.
At some point in her washing of the dishes the doctor that was previously there had walked off to do God knows what without saying a word to her. She got the impression that he probably wasn’t the keenest on being sent to the bottom level of the ship to do his work, he struck her as the kind of guy who would enjoy using his status as a doctor to impress girls in bars rather than to do his intended job. Lena herself wasn’t chuffed that she got sent down here to do her work but no point complaining, she would probably deal with less entitled rich people down here than if she worked in the main med bay, plus the people down here seemed nice enough, the one guy she met so far.
The rest of the day pottered along slowly with her wandering around to find small things to clean up. There were no patients that came into the med bay today so Lena busied herself with tiding shelves and trying to clean the ever present layer of grunge sticking to the floors in the med bay and around the doorway. She had been cleaning for about an hour now and her sleeves where they were bunched around her elbows were pinching her, her hands were going numb and the bucket of water beside her was running low. She was tired and the clock was ticking slowly down to when she could leave and go back to her bunk.
“Hey, you busy?” A voice broke the silence, and she whipped her head up to see who was talking.
As she turned round, she caught sight of West stood behind her holding his arm aloft. Lena traced his arms with her eyes, it was impossible not to she felt, it was just one of her weak spots. After she finished ogling helplessly she finally noticed the blood dripping down his arm from a cut in his arm.
“Oh Jesus are you ok?” she shot up from where she was crouched and ushered West into the med bay and sat him down on the bench.
“Yeah I’m fine just scraped myself on a loose coupling, can’t get this one myself.” He replied, gesturing to the wound on his arm. Lena set about finding some antiseptic and a dressing to cover the shallow cut, while West continued to blather on about something or other,
“Whoa its way cleaner in here now, Doc couldn’t be bother to clean it up half the time.”
“Yeah I had a feeling he didn’t like doing his job very well.”
“Well I cant say your fully wrong about that.” West chuckled as he said that then winced as she passed a disinfecting wipe over his arm. The muscles in his arm flexed under her fingers as he tried to pull away and she pulled his arm back into place. She was still trying to decide whether the cut would need stitches or just a bandage when he started to talk again. He wasn’t saying anything particular just talking about whatever mechanism he was trying to fix. Lena’s fingers skimmed carefully over his skin sliding over the tiny ridges and the old pale scar that cut across the skin of his elbow, she fixed the adhesive bandage carefully over the cut and smoothed over the edges. She was lost in her own head and her fingers absently slid down his arm and over the thin skin that covered the inside of his wrist, his talking paused as he watched her finger tips skim over the skin and his breath hitched ever slightly before it resumed its normal rhythm. At that Lena withdrew her hands and wiped them on her trousers to distract herself.
“Well there you go, all set,” she hesitated slightly before talking but then put up the default bedside manner screen voice used by all nurses, “just try not to get the bandage wet for about 3 days to give it time to heal, then come back so I can make sure its not infected and I’ll give you the all clear.”
“Well thank you for all your help nurse Francis and I guess ill see you around.” And with those last words he left the room smiling at her before he left. As soon as he rounded the corner Lena collapsed in on herself, Christ what was that all about, why the fuck did I do that, you only just got here and already your making a massive fool of yourself, pull it together Lena.
The alarm on her wrist device finally went off signalling the end of her shift, thank fuck, she packed the last of the supplies on the bench away then grabbed her jacket and made for the stairwell. The doors slid open and she hurried up the stairs, once she made it to her bunk she flopped down on the bed throwing her hands over her eyes. The first day aboard the resolute and she already had some weird thing for a random guy, well more his arms, oh god this was going to be bad.