Solana had most of the medical equipment spread across one side of the transports mission bay when she heard someone enter behind her. The transport was still sitting aboard the Rubicon, which made it the best time to decide what actually belonged aboard and what was simply taking up space. Her field pack sat open on the deck beside a rolled recovery litter, two compact trauma cases, and enough specialized medical equipment to make an ordinary away-team kit look optimistic by comparison.

She was halfway through reorganizing one of the pharmaceutical modules when a man's voice came from behind her. "Please tell me that isn't your final arrangement."

The woman stopped, looked down at the case as though perhaps it had betrayed her, then slowly turned around. Lieutenant Commander Adrian Pembroke stood several meters away in the sanitized black field uniform she'd seen listed for Blackwatch medical personnel. There wasn't a Starfleet delta or rank insignia anywhere on it, leaving only the equipment at his belt and the unmistakable expression of a physician who had already found something disappointing to identify what he did.

"Good afternoon to you too" Solana said, glancing deliberately back toward the case.

"It was until approximately six seconds ago" Pembroke replied without any indication that he was joking. Solana straightened and folded her arms before acknowledging him properly with a restrained, "Commander Pembroke." He returned it with an equally measured "Lieutenant Vey" before letting his attention move across the equipment spread over the deck.

"I've been told you're the field medic assigned to this transport" Pembroke said as he approached. Solana corrected him with "Nurse and Field Medical Specialist," which earned little more than a glance before he answered, "Yes, I read the file." There was something about the way he said it that made her suspect he'd read considerably more of that file than she would have preferred.

Pembroke crouched beside the open pharmaceutical module but didn't touch anything immediately. He spent several seconds studying the arrangement before pointing toward one compartment. "Why is your hemostatic agent beneath the secondary analgesics?"

"Because if I'm digging into that case, I've probably already used the primary kit" Solana replied. Pembroke's eyes remained on the compartment as he told her, "That wasn't the question." She gave him a look before elaborating that it fit there and, more importantly, she could reach it with either hand without moving the trauma stabilizers.

That finally made Pembroke look up at her. "Better" he said, then returned his attention to the case as Solana crouched opposite him. She wasn't sure whether she'd just passed a test or merely prevented herself from failing one.

"Your layout is unconventional" Pembroke observed after another moment of inspection. Solana answered simply that it worked, which prompted him to note that many terrible things worked and that functionality alone was not generally considered an endorsement. She studied him for a second before asking whether he intended to rearrange her entire kit.

"No" Pembroke replied, indicating the open case between them. He explained that she was going to be the one trying to use it while somebody was bleeding on her, the lighting was terrible, and half the room was attempting to become structurally incompatible with the other half. If the arrangement made sense to her under those conditions, he didn't particularly care whether it satisfied a training manual.

Solana regarded him a little differently after that. "That sounded dangerously reasonable" she said, earning a dry warning from Pembroke not to spread that information around.

He reached into the case and removed one of the narrow medication cartridges, turning it enough to read the identification strip. "Sustain" he said before looking back at her. "Explain it."

Solana rested her forearms against her knees and told him she'd read the briefing. Pembroke's expression remained unchanged as he answered that he hadn't asked whether she could read, and there it was: the personality she'd been expecting from the moment he'd opened his mouth.

"Emergency operational sustainment" Solana began, deciding to humor him. She described its use for severe trauma when an operator medically shouldn't continue but operational circumstances required them to remain functional. Pain suppression, circulatory support, increased alertness, temporary neuromuscular reinforcement. It bought capability without repairing the underlying injury.

Pembroke nodded once before asking about the danger. Solana answered that the operator felt considerably better than they actually were, which was apparently the answer he wanted.

"Precisely" Pembroke said as he returned the cartridge to its slot with considerably more care than his tone suggested. He explained that Sustain was dangerous precisely because it worked. Give someone enough pain control and physiological support and they could suddenly believe the leg they couldn't stand on two minutes earlier had somehow repaired itself. It hadn't. Medical had simply removed most of the mechanisms their body used to tell them continuing was an exceptionally poor idea.