#also starfleet probably doesn't prepare them well enough for life on a starfleet vessel?

[bearsinpotatosacks]

I wrote a snippet of Bones welcoming some new Starfleet medical cadets. I'm not sure exactly how training works for Starfleet doctors, but after watching ER, I get the idea that it works mostly the same. Start training, do your rotations as a third year medical student, but I like to imagine that once you've chosen your area, surgery, psych, etc, you have to do a rotation on each kind of Starfleet vessel. Maybe they start on a starbase, then go to small ships that may or may not need your specialisation, then end up on some of the big ships such as the Enterprise. Enjoy!

Words: 1136

Looking at the group of fresh faced cadets in front of him, he knew that coffee wasn’t going to be enough. He hated when they hosted cadets. Partially because the little fuckers didn’t leave him alone when he was working, anything and everything he did was ripped apart and he couldn’t walk for two seconds without some question that a stupidly simple answer. The other reason was that they didn’t pester him anywhere near enough when they were off duty. It was like they were trying to pack all their questions into their eight hour shift and then were too scared to hold break their silence. 

Part of the journey of being a medical student, at least in his opinion, was pestering your mentors. You had to really get on their nerves because no matter how much it pissed him off, he knew that they had to learn somehow. And the ones who disregarded his gruff exterior, who plucked up the courage to ask him questions ten minutes after he’d woken up, or ten minutes before he was going to bed, were the ones who he answered. Not the fifth one in a row who’d stopped him as he went to go and check on a scan for a patient. There was a time and place for bothering him and these cadets never seemed to learn when that was. 

“Welcome to your rotation on board a constitution class vessel,” he said, not bothering to put any effort into the script they gave him to say. “This is where you’ll learn about the vital part you play, yada yada yada, be on the cutting edge of discoveries, yada yada yada, and face the final frontier.”

He rolled his eyes as he took a sip of his coffee. “Now that the mandatory stuff’s out of the way, here’s your real induction.”

The cadets looked at each other confused. Ah, so naive, they didn’t know about his reputation yet. Good, he wanted them to be shocked when they learnt how he really was. 

“Real induction, sir?” One of the cadets, who looked unnaturally groomed for someone standing in a sickbay, said.

He held up a finger and stopped the cadet before he continued. “First rule of sickbay, no one is sir, especially me, if you call me sir, I will not answer.” They seemed more puzzled. “You can call me Doctor, but that might get confusing fast, McCoy, Leonard, Len, or any number of curse words or well divised nicknames that I have no doubt the nurses will teach you in your time here, will suffice.”

They wrote that down. He almost laughed, but decided against it, he didn’t want to confuse them any further. Seeing them all so fresh faced was rather jarring for someone like himself. Medicine was in his blood, so to speak, it felt like a lifetime ago that he was in their place, all squeaky clean. Yet again, he hadn’t trained in Starfleet. And that was another point. 

“Who can hazard a guess as to why I don’t like being called sir, or by my rank for that matter?” 

Scanning the crowd, he didn’t see any hands popping up. Disappointing, he at least expected one person to be enough of a swot to look into the crew of the Enterprise. None of them were surprised when they saw Jim was their Captain, or Spock was XO, yet none of them did research into the department they were going to work in?

A sigh was on his lips as a cadet, near the back with her hair suitably tied out of her face, raised her hand. 

“Yes, Ms?”

“Cotteril.” She answered. “Is it because you didn’t train with Starfleet?”

“Bingo! I trained in Atlanta, Georgia, and despite the wonders we’ve made in socio-economic policies in the last few hundred years, some places remain rough, and nowhere else is that seen than in large cities. So trust me when I say, I am a doctor more than I am an officer of Starfleet, and I expect every single medical professional who works on this ship to follow that same rule of code.”

He stopped with the half hearted attempts at humour and made sure to stare across the group. A few of them gulped, some were either confused, or others annoyed. 

“My father, god rest his soul, was a doctor in the middle of bum fuck nowhere, so I learnt medicine in the best way you can, the messy way. My first experience in the medical field was helping a horse with a c-section because there ain’t no vet hospitals in the Appalachian Mountains, I can tell you that for free.” His accent was coming out now, it always did when he talked of his childhood home. “And I want you all to understand that when you walk into my sickbay you leave your politics at the door, understand?”

They didn’t reply. 

“Excuse me, I thought I asked y’all a question.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Good, because if you have Vulcan with a sprain and a Klingon bleeding out, I expect every one of y’all to pick the Klingon,” He gestured at them with his coffee mug, a splash got on the floor. “So, repeat after me, the Hippocratic Oath is my Prime Directive.”

“‘The Hippocratic Oath is my Prime Directive’” The group chorused.

He nodded at them again, “Good, you may now step into sickbay.”

Turning around he gestured for them to follow. He’d never say the q-word, but he was grateful that there weren’t a lot of people in today. The last thing he needed was some part of engineering breaking and causing an overflow of red shirts. They weren’t the best of friends, engineers and those in sickbay, and it wouldn’t be such a problem if they knew some kind of first aid down there. 

“I will give you a full introduction of staff when we do rounds, but first I'll give you lesson number two of serving in the Enterprise sickbay,” he turned on his heel to face them. “Do not disrespect a nurse. Not only because they do some of the most vital and downright disgusting jobs there are to do, they set up the beds, machinery, administer the drugs, take samples and bathe the crew when the replicators malfunction and start spewing rotten fish guts in the mess hall, don’t laugh that happened last Tuesday, but also because if you do you will get doing rectal exams for most of your time here while also, most definitely, getting a mystery hypo that will make your dick turn purple, if you have one, or make you grow one if you don’t, and you won’t even feel it either. Understand?”

Yet again, more confused faces. One cadet was looking down at his trousers, concerned. 

“Excellent, now for the tour.”

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Take this an early WIP wednesday, I guess? I'm not sure if this will go anywhere apart from this snippet, but it could. I mainly just had this scene fully written in my head this morning and finally had a chance to write it.