Yigehl

Yigehl grew up in a minor House on Qo’nos, and she was very young when she first understood something wasn’t right with her mother. Her father was an unimportant operations officer who was always sure to take positions close to home, such as local system patrols or transport ships. He did his best to take care of them both, until his ship was destroyed in a skirmish when Yighel was seven. The consolations of friends and family that he had died honourably in the line of service were of little comfort to her. All she saw was her mother, devastated by grief, more unwell than ever.

At the time, all Yigehl knew was that her mother, K’awoll, suffered episodes of what she, in her child’s perspective, termed “mind sickness.” K’awoll would have stretches of days, even weeks, where she could not rise from bed, cook, work, or sometimes even eat. Doctors assured she was physically well and there was no reason for her to be bedridden. Yigehl didn’t know how to tell them that it wasn’t a sickness of the body. As her mother was consistently unable to work, and the House’s finances crumbled, acquaintances muttered about a loss of honour, a disrespect of K’awoll for her family and House’s legacy, and accusations of laziness and selfishness.

In her primary schooling, Yigehl paid extra attention in health and science classes, looking for any clues to explain what she knew was more than laziness or selfishness. At the back of her schoolbooks, she would look up the references, and find new books and papers to read. It wasn’t until she was thirteen that she found the name she was looking for, in an Earth article used to explain mental sicknesses to human children her age. Depression. A real sickness, with real treatments. And there were others, many others, of many kinds. First she felt overwhelming relief, validation–then frustration that she had never learned these things, which other species accepted so readily–then anger, at everyone who doubted her mother’s honour.

Yigehl took care of her mother in her father’s place, until a cancer took hold. It was an aggressive, multi-genetic variant resistant to conventional treatment, and it spread too quickly for far-reaching experts to be sought. Her mother died in a hospital bed when Yighel was sixteen.

There was nothing on Qo’nos for her beside pity from those around her. She hated it even more for the fact that it came from a place of “poor thing, to have to live with such a mother.” Since reading that life-altering article at thirteen, she’d known she wanted to help others like her herself, who had no idea what was wrong with their family member or that anything could be done. As the time drew near to decide what to do, she knew that the Klingon Empire was not the place to follow that path. She looked into it and did discover several institutions and names of doctors, but her experience with the uneducated around her told her that even if she did find her niche here, she and those she helped would be surrounded by the same judgment and stigma. So at sixteen she moved to Earth with next to no possessions, carrying only her mother’s necklace and her father’s d’k tahg, and spent a year studying for the Starfleet Entrance Exams.

Hard work paid off, and Yigehl enrolled in the six-year Specialist Officer track in counseling, emerging on the other side with an M.D. in psychology, and a first, intimidating posting as Lieutenant Junior Grade on the massive Starbase Bravo.