New Beginnings
Saval doesn't really know which part of this new assignment is more unsettling. There's the fact that he knows he's been chosen for it due to his lack of seniority among the doctors in his unit, none of whom wanted it, and then there's the fact that he's going to be spending the next several months as pretty much the only Vulcan on a starship, and then there's the fact that the next closest thing to a Vulcan on said ship is...well, Spock. And furthermore, there's the fact that he's not even entirely certain what this job description entails.
He's supposed to be working in conjunction with Starfleet doctors in order to facilitate the kind of information exchange that Vulcans had always been resistant to in the past, and they've got him traveling along on this exploratory mission so that he can both teach and learn at the same time. Vulcan scientists aren't exactly in any position otherwise to be doing cutting-edge xenomedical research, and yet it would be unthinkable for the Vulcan race to give up any hope of scientific advancement at all while they establish their new colony. Saval understands the logic behind his being sent off to become a medical ambassador, and yet his superiors have been disturbingly fuzzy on what exactly he's supposed to do in this position. The answer, he suspects, with increasing pessimism, is 'whatever Dr. McCoy feels like ordering him to do.'
His initial impression of Dr. McCoy is not a positive one. Then again, the same can be said about his initial impression of Starfleet in general. His fiancee, T'Zad, had more or less told him to suck it up; he doesn't need to like his new temporary colleagues, only to tolerate them. This is easy enough for her to say. She gets to spend the next several months in exactly the kind of solitude she likes, researching the colony's rainforest fauna to her heart's content. Saval has to spend his time wishing he'd paid more attention in his medical school xenobiology courses, because he's only able to distinguish with partial certainty between fluids human bodies are supposed to be secreting and fluids that signify a problem. It's all rather disgusting, if fascinating.
In any case, now he's in the mess hall, trying to get the replicator to spit out something recognizably Vulcan besides plomeek soup. He's never liked plomeek soup. But he'll still take it over all of these other dishes he's never heard of, collecting a bowl of it and a cup of tea and some dry-looking Vulcan biscuits and taking them to a solitary table.
He's supposed to be working in conjunction with Starfleet doctors in order to facilitate the kind of information exchange that Vulcans had always been resistant to in the past, and they've got him traveling along on this exploratory mission so that he can both teach and learn at the same time. Vulcan scientists aren't exactly in any position otherwise to be doing cutting-edge xenomedical research, and yet it would be unthinkable for the Vulcan race to give up any hope of scientific advancement at all while they establish their new colony. Saval understands the logic behind his being sent off to become a medical ambassador, and yet his superiors have been disturbingly fuzzy on what exactly he's supposed to do in this position. The answer, he suspects, with increasing pessimism, is 'whatever Dr. McCoy feels like ordering him to do.'
His initial impression of Dr. McCoy is not a positive one. Then again, the same can be said about his initial impression of Starfleet in general. His fiancee, T'Zad, had more or less told him to suck it up; he doesn't need to like his new temporary colleagues, only to tolerate them. This is easy enough for her to say. She gets to spend the next several months in exactly the kind of solitude she likes, researching the colony's rainforest fauna to her heart's content. Saval has to spend his time wishing he'd paid more attention in his medical school xenobiology courses, because he's only able to distinguish with partial certainty between fluids human bodies are supposed to be secreting and fluids that signify a problem. It's all rather disgusting, if fascinating.
In any case, now he's in the mess hall, trying to get the replicator to spit out something recognizably Vulcan besides plomeek soup. He's never liked plomeek soup. But he'll still take it over all of these other dishes he's never heard of, collecting a bowl of it and a cup of tea and some dry-looking Vulcan biscuits and taking them to a solitary table.