After 3 months in space, James found himself bored and unable to keep himself entertained in his free time after completing his assigned daily tasks to maintain the craft and the sleeping crew. He had trained himself for this but was quickly learning that training and reality are two very different things.
The first part of the mission he had kept himself busy texting and emailing with friends, family and friendly coworkers from the control center. He'd used The Craft's on board data to prepare to earn a few degrees while in flight and was doing well in his studies, but he needed some thing more fulfilling.
James was working through his monthly maintenance tasks in the crew hibernation quarters and was dreading the task of cleaning out the waste recycling system that was connected from each crew member into the collector. The crew were fed liquids and nutrients though feeding tubes and the waste recycling system took the waste, separated liquid from solids and left him with the unsavory task of moving the solid waste for storage and reuse. The system was all very clean with very little odor, but James still didn't like the idea that he was handling, essentially, the fecal matter of every crew member on board. With a crew of 50, there was only around 50-60 lbs of dried matter to dispose of each month, and all of the liquid went back into storage for drinking.
The upside of this rotation in the task list was the personnel utility wash. The crew inspection and saline wash was a weekly task where he would check vitals for each crew member, inspect them physically from head to toe to be sure that there were no lesions, radiation damage, or other concerns that needed to be addressed. There were 32 women in this crew of Of the 32 women on board, there were 10 that made the whole task worthwhile. He saved their inspection for last.
Early in the trip, James had moved the 10 favorites into the same area so that they were the final inspections for the day. For the weekly monitoring task, James was required to physically inspect all crew members, sanitize all feeding ports and waster ports, run a saline and moisturizing bath into their hibernation chamber and take care of any concerns or comfort maintenance of each sleeper. For the 40 crew members at the top of the list, all of the inspections were professional, clinical and boring.
All crew members knew that on a voyage this long, there would be an attending technician that would remain awake while the crew slept. They knew that the technician would eventually see and touch every inch of them in a 9 month voyage. Some even made jokes about who was going to get the most attention when it came to comfort maintenance. Everyone understood that comfort maintenance was part of inspection and included follow ups like custom levels of skin moisturizer in the bath and adjusting air pressure on the side of the skin touching the hibernation mattress. Anything done to prevent or correct lesions throughout the flight were comfort maintenance. In the days before the crew was to be brought out of stasis, more detailed things would be added. Finger and toe nails would be clipped and hair would be clipped using vacuum enabled devices. During voyage time, it was at the technician's discretion if a crew member needed additional care. James's favorite 10 got a lot of additional care. They even got their own internal designation in his mind. They were the F-10. F-10 described the group of people as well as the level of detail he took in the task of their comfort maintenance.
James never crossed any professional boundaries with his favorite 10, but their nails, hair, air pressures and moisture levels of their baths were always given extra attention. Their skin was maintained perfectly and they always looked angelic laying in their sleep tanks. James never crossed any professional boundaries, but it was part of his job to inspect and if needed, touch every inch of every one of his patients. One of his favorite team members and one of his F-10 jokingly told him to monitor her closely for breast cancer while she was sleeping. He jokingly told her that she would constantly be in good hands while she slept.