For notes, warnings and disclaimers see chapter 1... and if you could spare a moment to review it would really make my day!
Chapter 26
(Kara's POV)
As soon as Cottle, Lee and the Old Man walk into my 'room' I can see I am in trouble. The three of them look uncomfortable as hell and then the Admiral gives me a bunch of paper that, for once, does not turn out to be paperwork. The problem is that, while I can certainly appreciate the thought behind that particular present, their obvious attempts to make 'amends' for something I can't quite identify isn't really helping matters as far as my own uneasiness goes, in fact they are only making it worse.
"I'm not going to like this, am I?" I ask, all too aware of the fact that there is something going on here, something that goes a lot deeper than the discomfort I've all but gotten used to in these past couple of weeks. I just wish someone would clue me in as to what the frak that 'something' is.
"Um, let me see... no," says Cottle.
"What's going on?" I prod, rolling my eyes at him.
"We need to know," says the Old Man, sounding about as comfortable as I feel.
"You need to know what?"
"What happened on New Caprica," he explains.
"No," I say.
"That wasn't a request, captain. You had to know that sooner or later there was bound to be a debriefing."
"I don't give a frak, I'm not doing this... you don't know what it was like," I growl, crossing my arms.
"And that's precisely why we are here," says the doc, making me realize that it is not just the Old Man I have to worry about but rather that I am up against a coordinated attack here and that I'm not likely to come out on top. Well, the good news is that at least now I know why they had been looking so uncomfortable all along... the bad news is that that is not really much comfort, not under the circumstances. "Listen, Starbuck, we don't want to hurt you but I think it would be best if we were to just get this over with once and for all."
"But..."
"Do you really want to have this hanging over your head?" he interrupts me before I can even argue.
"No, but..."
"It's going to be fine," the Old Man tries to reassure me.
"No, it won't."
"Listen, Starbuck, we are going to do this, that part is not up for debate, however you do have a couple of choices here," jumps in Cottle.
"What kind of choices?"
"Well, for starters we can either do this by the book or we can bend the rules a little. Your choice," he offers.
"Bend them?" I ask, almost against my will.
"Yes. The way I figure there are two things we have to do. Under normal circumstances I would ask you a number of questions that are relevant to your medical file and then the Admiral and the Major here would go over the military aspects of this thing but as far as I am concerned there's no point in asking you the same damn thing twice, and that is precisely what we would be doing so --if you agree to allow them to be present for the medical half of this-- we could probably merge both sessions... with the added benefit that, seeing how medical information is still considered privileged, the Admiral has agreed to forego the videotaping of this whole thing."
"I really don't have a choice, do I?" I finally ask, reluctantly accepting the fact that there is nothing I can do, that the only thing that's left to decide is how we are going to go about doing this, not if.
"About doing it? No."
"Frak!"
"I know, now the next thing you have to decide is whether or not you want your husband to be present for this."
"Isn't that against the rules?" I ask, somewhat taken aback and not quite knowing what to make out of that particular offer... or how I feel about it.
"Technically, but if you want him here I'm pretty sure it can be arranged," says Cottle, looking at the Old Man who just nods at him. "It may be against the rules but this is going to be hard enough for you already and the bottom line is that Sam will eventually have to be told about most of what's going to be said anyway so we are giving you the choice to let him hear about it now rather than..."
"No," I interrupt him, still nowhere near ready to deal with my husband. As far as I'm concerned this is going to be complicated enough already and I'm pretty sure that Sam's presence would only serve to make matters worse.
"Okay, that's your call," he says, nodding at me.
"Yeah, right," I snort.
"Are you ready?"
"You mean now?!" I exclaim.
"Unless you have somewhere else you'd rather be," he smirks.
"No, but aren't these things supposed to be scheduled?" I ask, glaring at him, even though I know that that's not likely to do me much good.
"What, you want us to allow you to stew in it for a couple of hours and then come back?"
"How long have you been planning this?" I ask.
"Me, a few days, them, I told them last night... that's when we scheduled it, to answer your original question."
"And you didn't think to frakking tell me?" I growl.
"Think about it, yes... but as I said, I figured it would do more harm than good. There was no point in letting you worry all night, besides the decision had already been made. So, are you ready?"
"No," I reply, still glaring at him.
"Good," says the doctor and I find myself itching to wipe that smirk off his face, unfortunately I also know that right now Cottle's bedside manner --or lack thereof-- is the least of my worries.
Author's notes: I'm baack! (what, you thought you were going to get rid of me that easily?)
Okay, now that that's out of the way I want to thank you for reading this and I also want to apologize for last week... as I said, I had no net access. Also I want to warn you that updates will be moved from Wednesday to Saturday on a permanent basis since there is no way I'm going to have the next chapter done in time this week and I don't want to have another delay. Sorry about that.
Take care and if you could take the time to review I would really appreciate it!
Alec