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Nesel Vyla’s office is small like most rooms on board DS9, hardly large enough for someone to pace in as you’d have to turn every six steps, but Hugh is feeling agitated enough that he does mind. He feels like if he doesn’t move he’ll burst out of his own skin.
He’s felt this way for nearly a week, ever since he learned of his identity, that he’s a Starfleet doctor who was supposed to have died over a hundred years ago. Since then he’s been unable to sit still for long, yet he feels stuck at the same time. Exercise had done nothing to rein in the energy, the day before he’d even finally caved and asked Bashir for something to help him sleep, making the past night the first in that week he’d had a decent night’s rest.
Now he’s attending he weekly session with his counselor, a Bajoran by the name of Nesel Vyla, but after having told him what he’s learned he isn’t sure how to proceed. And so he paces while Nesel observes.
“I don’t know what to do!” he exclaims dropping down on the couch in the corner. “My thoughts keep going round and round, but I can’t find an exit from the roundabout. In a way, learning who I am, who I was, have left me worse off than when I knew nothing. And I still can’t recall anything.”
Hugh sighs heavily.
“Maybe that’s my problem. My memories are still a blank. I had thought, hoped, that learning who I was I’d be able to get in touch with people who knew me, could tell me about myself. But anyone who knew anything about me would be long dead. Or they’d have been small children at the time and barely remember me, if they recalled me at all as anything but ‘the uncle who was a Starfleet officer and died in space’.”
“Do you think learning about who you were would help you move forward?”
“Maybe? I think that perhaps it would give me a foundation that I could build on. If I can’t have my own memories, I could learn about myself secondhand from other people’s? Does that make sense?”
“It does. People tend to live their lives by ties to people, to places, to events in our lives great and small. Right now you have none of those nor even the memory of having them. It sounds like you seek to recreate them for yourself.”
“Yes. Yes I think you’re right in that.”
“And now you’re stuck because the people who knew you are dead and the places you knew may no longer exist.”
“Yeah.”
“May I offer you a suggestion?”
“I’m open to almost any idea right now.”
“Since you can’t remember anything and since relying on others to tell you about yourself has shown itself to be impossible too, have you considered letting yourself tell you about yourself?”
“I don’t follow.”
“It is my understanding that most Starfleet officers keep personal logs in addition to the official ones they log as part of the duties. Have you thought about seeking access to those? Since Starfleet kept your file on record all this time, perhaps your own records will have survived as well?”
“I- No, I hadn’t thought about doing that,” says slowly and for the first time in nearly a week the energy that has kept him in constant motion drains away, leaving him fatigue but also feeling a sliver of hope.