Diagnosis: Toxic Masculinity

Posted on Tue Sep 1st, 2026 @ 8:27am by Commander Cressida Vale MD & Lieutenant Colonel Jesse Moriarty

1,367 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Pilot - "The Gate"
Location: Sickbay - USS Guinevere
Timeline: A week or so before encounter with the Zandaryi

Jesse glowered at the Sickbay doors.

The Ground Forces CO wasn't the kind of man that got sick often, but when he did, it floored him. And he always put off getting help for as long as humanly possible.

This time, however, when his friend, Elen, had spotted his attempts to look alive, she'd insisted he get himself to Sickbay. When he'd stubbornly insisted she wasn't his mother and he was perfectly fine, she'd almost split a side laughing at him trying to pick his pack up...and almost falling over with it.

So Elen had won, he'd come to Sickbay, but it didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

Jesse finally moved inside, his irritation at his own immune system clear even with his flushed features.

"Well that's not a good sign." Cressida had been working with their resident pharmacologist when the Light Colonel entered sickbay looking a little worse for wear. "Let's pick this up later," she told her colleague, who nodded and left her to her more immediately pressing duty.

"Mister Moriarty," she said to him, keeping her voice on the quieter side as she approached him. "If you don't mind me saying, you look unwell."

"It's nothing," the words came automatically from Jesse and he frowned, clenching his jaw as he folded his arms across his chest. "Well...maybe it's something..."

"If you're in here, it's probably something," the doctor said. She didn't know him all that well; he'd only been on board a couple of months, but she knew his type. This was not someone to seek medical attention unless it was needed, at least to their minds. Plus she knew they shared a friend in Elen Rell.

"Well, come over here, let me scan you," she said with a smirk. "We'll figure out what's wrong and get you back on your feet before you know it."

Jesse held back a sigh, and for a second, there was a stubborn set to his jaw that gave a glimpse into how he would have looked as a kid. "Fine," he finally sighed, moving over to a biobed to push himself up onto. Even that was done with a lacklustre effort that spoke to how under the weather he was feeling. "Went to bed with a headache last night....woke up feeling worse," he said it like he might be trying to figure out who he could write and complain to.

Cressida nodded as she scanned him. "That does not surprise me, Colonel. Tell me, how are your joints feeling?" She had a hypothesis, which her scans suggested might be correct.

"Like they're infested with rust..." Jesse grumbled, quite literally with the gruffness of his voice rolling in his throat with nothing less than weary exasperation.

"Oh dear." Cressida closed her tricorder and set it on the table. "Germs find their way to us, even on a hermetically sealed starship. Centauran Orthoflavivirus. You're the third case in two days. My guess is an engineer at Starbase was carrying it and accidentally contaminated a shipping crate. There's a pretty easy treatment, and a vaccine I'll need to start distributing, but I won't lie to you, Colonel, the next three or four days will not be fun for you. I hope you like bed rest."

Jesse just stared at her for a long moment as if she were talking Ancient Greek. The cogs turned slowly as he processed the news before his eyes finally widened. "Bed rest? Three or four *days*?" he repeated with a mixture of disbelief and horror. Hours, maybe...but days?!

Cressida sighed, perhaps a bit overdramatically. "Colonel," she said, "the ship needs you at your best. I'm serious when I say that this will not be a pleasant experience. If I administer treatments immediately, your symptoms will still get worse before they get better. The joint pain will be awful. The pain behind your eyes will be at best distracting and at worst unbearable. And it might be hard to aim a rifle when you're vomiting. So I am relieving you of duty for the next seventy-two hours," she said firmly.

"Ergh...." Jesse rubbed his forehead with the side of his hand, letting out a long, shaking breath. He tried to push himself up, as if that might convince her that she'd made a terrible mistake. "Nothing will stop me picking up a rifle..."

She smirked. "But if you think you can handle the pain and discomfort, there's an easy way to prove it." She walked away from the biobed and stood in an open spot of floor. "Colonel, if you can knock me down, feeling as you are, then I'll believe you're fit for duty despite your illness."

Jesse's jaw tightened, and usually he'd wave it off as nonsense talk. But he felt the prickle of pressure behind his eyes. He set his feet firmly to he ground and forced himself back up. He straightened, taking a moment, trying to pretend that it was just gravitas holding him place rather than joint pain. He finally made his way towards her, hands clenching up with each step. He rolled his weaker shoulder with determination...not planning to actually knock her down, but prove he was physically capable. He got a couple of steps away from before he had to finally stop and clap his hand over his eyes. "Why are the lights so bright in here?"

Cressida smirked. "It's a special new light configuration. It appears extra bright for people who are too sick to work," she joked. "Now, are you going to listen to your Chief Medical Officer? Who, I'll remind you, is also your superior officer aboard this ship. Or am I going to have to knock you on your ass? I'm good either way."

"Ergh..." Jesse pressed his hands to his knees, catching a breath as he realised he really was beat on this one. He didn't even really have the energy to get properly frustrated about it. "No, Doctor...I...don't think I'd be able to get back up if you did," he finally admitted.

“The right answer,” the doctor said. She tapped some controls into the screen and a vial materialized in a replicator. She examined it and inserted it into a hypospray. “This is a cocktail of antivirals,” she explained, “as well as a painkiller and something to get the fever down. Your orders,” she said with emphasis, “are to stay in your quarters for the next three days. Either I or someone from my staff will check on you daily and administer more medication. In the meantime, I’ll set about distributing vaccine, to prevent further cases. Beginning with the FGF detachment,” she added, assuring him that his team was in good hands. There were good chances that some might have become exposed from him if they were in meetings, or sparring, or otherwise in close quarters.

Jesse resisted the urge to nod more than once, not wanting the extra motion fighting with his dizziness. "You're an angel, doc..." he had to admit, relishing the thought of painkillers. And if he was being completely honest, also a nice dark room and his bed. But he would never, ever admit it. And he'd gone through resistance to interrogation training.

“Yes, I am,” she agreed, grinning as she applied the hypo to his neck. “Do you want any help getting back to your quarters?”

"Hm..." Jesse made a non-committal noise instead of answering. Because truthfully, the answer was yes, but there was no way on earth the soldier was going to say that out loud.

Cressida sighed, shook her head exasperated, and walked over to a nearby console. “I’ve got a site-to-site transporter online,” she said. “Setting coordinates to your quarters. Make a noise if this is okay.”

Jesse lifted a hand, flicking a loose salute her way from his temple, sighing softly with it. "I'll behave...we can keep it between us?"

She smirked and returned his salute. "Doctor-patient confidentiality, Colonel. Energizing now."


**

Commander Cressida Vale, MD
Chief Medical Officer and Second Officer
USS Guinevere

Lt. Colonel Jesse Moriarty
CO Federation Ground Forces
USS Guinevere

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