PRIVATE JOURNAL
I got a new assistant today, a tech specialist named Robyn Thomas. She's young, but I have been assured by the staff director at Mayo that her brilliance will more than outweigh her inexperience. We'll see about that. I will say, though, she's energetic and enthusiastic. I can't exactly say she's 'optimistic' - her thoughts are about the gadgets, not the patient, but she is a refreshing breath of confidence.
She actually asked for assignment to Jude. It took me a little while to understand that one. Most of the professional staff here are people close to retirement. They get posted to Jude as a reward for undistinguished careers of competently failing to let a majority of their patients die, so they are allowed to rest a few years before they draw a pension. They're expected to do little more than keep hopeless cases comfortable until their lives are done as well. Exciting work happens on Elba where the interesting and violent criminals are kept, and the pathological voyeurs of my profession get to study them. Jude is where hope goes to die.
My, are we maudlin and cynical this evening? I could blame the two pipes of Rigellian I just had, but I'm too honest for that. I was feeling maudlin and cynical before I lit up.
Robyn had heard through the grapevine that I was considering whether to use psycho-cin therapy. Apparently, there are more than a few people in the psychiatric world who are interested in this case. James T. is, after all, a hero many times over. Robyn's specialty is psycho-cin equipment, and it turns out she developed many of the features which are quickly becoming the standard. I guess the chance to help Fleet's best-known captain was worth the price of spending a sentence on Jude. Anyway, she's brought absolutely cutting-edge equipment with her. We should be ready for a test run in a few days. Take that, Elba.
I really should transcribe my notes from today's sessions with James. I think the details will wait until tomorrow, after I've had some rest and whatever perspective a few hours can give me. The short version is that James lost some ground. He had forgotten where he was. He thought at first that I was a nurse, and he asked for the nurse who'd been caring for him in the torture chamber that passed for a psychiatric hospital back in twentieth-century Terra. I made the mistake of telling him I'm a doctor, not a nurse, and he went into a full-blown screaming panic, followed by an infantile regression. To see James Tiberius Kirk curled into a fetal ball was - well, no, this is his therapy, not mine, so I'll just say that what it did to me was convince me to escape into my pipe after I got him to sleep.
And Baker, of course, was no help. He insisted we sedate James, and actually had the audacity to ask if I felt we should assign someone else who wouldn't make the mistake of using the word 'doctor'.
Well. One more pipeful should sedate me enough to achieve unconsciousness myself. Today's official report will happen tomorrow. Baker can deal.
Ah yes, but can I?
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