Lieutenant Commander Kaya Innis
Name Kaya Finn Innis
Position Chief Medical Officer
Rank Lieutenant Commander
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 39 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 6' | |
| Weight | 175 lbs | |
| Hair Color | Red | |
| Eye Color | Brown | |
| Physical Description | Kaya Innis is a bear of a woman. She's tall, solid as a brick house and well toned to boot. Her skin is a pale shade of milky white liberally dotted with freckles, not to mention a fair share of scars. Her eyes are a warm brown framed by long lashes. Her hair is thick and straight - she typically wears it clipped at shoulder length and pulled away from her face in combs. Though she has a good amount of curves, one wouldn't know from how she tends to dress. On duty her doctor's smock brings more attention to her broad shoulders. Off duty she prefers old button down flannel workmen shirts and loose slacks. The majority of Kaya's scars are deep thatches that run over her back or along her forearms. Her choice in dress covers those. The curling scars around her hands, both upper and palm and a reddish line running from hairline to just below her eyebrow over her left eye are the only marks visible in uniform. |
Family
| Spouse | James 'Jamie' Alan Innis (MIA) | |
| Children | N/A | |
| Father | Unknown | |
| Mother | Macie Finn (Deceased) | |
| Brother(s) | N/A | |
| Sister(s) | N/A | |
| Other Family | Martha Finn (Aunt - retired SF Medical Officer) Timothy Finn (Uncle - retired SF Medical Officer) Sheryl Finn (Cousin - Security Officer, SB 9) Chadd Finn (Cousin - Composer) Aralee Finn (Grandmother, retired) |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Salt of the Earth is a term used to describe Kaya quite a lot. She's an amiable person with an easy laugh and no end of matronly pearls of wisdom to dispense. She's a hard worker, an honest woman, lovably cranky, and friendly to a point- that point, once it's been reached however, she'll stand on your throat until she feels that a mutual understanding is reached. No one harms her patients. No one harms her. A great many terrible things have happened in Kaya's life. She suffered a traumatic childhood, lost her husband, spent three years rotting in a Cardassian prison camp- yet she's still standing. If nothing else, there's a great amount of willpower that keeps Innis on her feet and moving from day to day. She spends no time entertaining self-pity or depression any more than she'd waste time on a fool. She's a survivor to the core. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Strengths -Tough. There's not a lot that gets under Kaya's skin either figuratively or the hard way. She's a scrappy fighter and she can take a hit like a champ if need be. -Excellent shot with a phaser rifle. -Avid learner. She's constantly digging into medical journals and continuing education to stay on top of her game. -Natural Linguist. She picks up languages very quickly. Weaknesses -Haunted. Between all the people lost on Caltan IV, her husband and her own ordeals, Kaya has troubles with nightmares. With help from years of counseling she's manged to overcome the worst of her anxieties and guilt as well as tone down the nightmares, but she is still very much in a state of mourning. She knows that her husband is most likely dead. She just isn't quite at the precipice of letting go yet. -Moderately paranoid. There's a healthy dose of paranoia and skepticism that comes with being a doctor. You have to see through the lie, the facade, the stage dressing to find the true problem. This can lend to being a nosy, meddling, often times annoying woman that will show up at your doorstep or your post to ensure that what you need done gets done. Kaya calls this a house call. Sometimes it involves a phaser for emphasis. -The bear issue. Kaya is a homebody. She has a tendency to stick to herself unless tempted (or drug) out. Even then she tends to be socially awkward except in small groups. When in sickbay her dynamic is completely different: she's outgoing, a little pushy, talkative. Even in her own quarters or the quarters of close friends she's open. The problem gets significantly worse on shore leave when she's planet-side with downtime. |
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| Ambitions | Honestly, she has no long term goals. She gave those up years ago. Every day Kaya lives for the next and not beyond that. You never know when everything will abruptly crash to a halt.She'd like to bring her husband back home- but even that's a bit of a stretch to dream after 6 years of him being gone. | |
| Hobbies & Interests | Avid reader, fishing, singing (constantly humming), scenic walks, hiking, camping, boating, kayaking (almost exclusively in the holodeck). Kaya adores children and dogs and resents that she has neither. She will give in and play cards, but only if there's drinking involved (as there's no reason to bet credits without incentive). | |
| Languages | Federation Standard, Cardassian, Romulan |
| Personal History | The few memories that Kaya has of her mother are very brief and passive. Most of her childhood memories revolve around a prison camp called Leren where she spent the first ten years of her life. The general guess is that she was born there. It was a hot world with two suns that baked everything that dared stepped out onto its surface. Most of the prisoners- when not pressed into labor working in the factories for the Romulans- were prisoners taken from various colony raids, or defeated vessels, such as her mother was. The mix provided a steady work force of capable workers so long as no one rose up to try and rebel or escape. Then they were made examples of. In fact, one of those passing memories that she has is of her mother's corpse strung up and drying in the hot sun above their camp. The true foundation of her memorable childhood began with the Federation raid on Leren and her subsequent first trip into space. The stars out of the shuttle craft view port, the chatter back and forth between the team- it etched into her mind as something wonderful, something magic that she wanted to do or have or be some day because it was ultimately important. Once they got to the ship, however, her opinion changed as ships it was even MORE impressive.. except for sickbay because she didn't like the 'sit still'-poke-prod-scan-pinch-'don't eat that'. Them she didn't care for. That, and they kept inferring that she was slow and dim until it became clear that the 5'5" teen was actually a very tall and stubborn ten year old. A little genetic testing uncovered that Macie Finn, formerly of the USS Caridae and listed as KIA, was her mother and that she had family back on Earth, so that was where she was sent.. To a miserable little sheep farm in Northern Ireland and a grandmother who positively resented her for being. Because of that disconnect, Kaya's aunt and uncle took her in to be raised with their own children aboard various starships during their service with Starfleet. And they were medical folk: an ultimately unimpressive fact because Kaya had been sure that she'd know how that route would go. It didn't. In fact, her uncle Timothy turned out to be a incarna of patience and warmth and devoted all the time in the world to trying to civilize the beast of a child that she was. All the cussing (in Romulan) and throwing things and temper tantrums and stealing things was eventually won over by the man, who then took great pains to help her reach the same level of trust with the rest of his family. Then their inner circle of friends. Then the community. Then school. Lord, schooling. It was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Kaya was an extremely bright child who learned rather quickly in the same way that a sponge soaked up any liquid medium that it was dropped into. A curse because Kaya was fiercely independent and did not adhere well to following rules or status quo. Her cousin Sheryl was the rescuer in that case, showing her as an older sibling would how to get what you wanted without completely following the rules. That, and every time she managed to make it through the day without getting a call to one of her guardians, her aunt would let her sit in sickbay to do her homework and watch other people get poked as incentive. People that markedly were not her. As she grew Kaya, continued to mellow out and form into a very caring, very friendly, very tall young woman. Her interest in her guardian's (whom she called mom and dad by then) careers had very much put her on a path towards her own career as a physician. It was no longer poke and prod and 'do not touch', but why and how and 'what we can save'- which fed back into that childhood need to save, to rescue, to fix as she had been. The concept never left her. The year after her older cousin applied for Starfleet Academy, Kaya did, too. This was her means to an end. Several, in fact. The first being the offer of continued life in space. She was infinitely more comfortably there than on any world, as it seemed like planets were ultimately benign things. Most ships at least had teeth of some kind to fight back with. Any day of the week, Kaya would opt to trade the wide open spaces of a planet with the narrow halls of a ship. Second, there was the draw of practicing medicine. Rather than opting for the lighter curses that would open up the door to nursing or minor specialist positions, Kaya dove full boor into reaching for a fully accredited and licensed practitioners path. There was a bit of a kerfuffle over that, as several of her physical training teachers attempted to talk her into switching her focus to security for the sheer dread factor that a six foot tall angry redhead could invoke, but Kaya wouldn't sway. This earned her the nickname Doctor Doom from her hand to hand instructor, who insisted that medical professionals didn't need to hit that hard. The third was the ultimate of placations: a man named James who stood nose to nose with her, toe to toe if he could, and argued and laughed and coerced her into becoming a truly social person. The two started dating almost immediately after meeting at one of Kaya's cousin's baseball games and quickly became inseparable. Even after they both graduated from Starfleet and were assigned to different ships, they maintained a long distance relationship that never faltered. The very first posting that they shared on the same ship (thanks to pleading, praying and string pulling) had them engaged and then married in short order. From there they managed to stay together, even accepting the offer to relocate to an outpost as they had decided to try and have children. Caltan IV was shiny and new- meaning there were tons of problems that only a handful of people knew how to fix. It was ultimately disorganized and after a year they were still in mobile living pods, but neither Kaya or James cared too much. They were happy together. As life so often likes to do- it took that joy and dashed it against the wall into a million tiny pieces. Cardassians attacked the outpost without provocation and took the entire colony by force. What they couldn't capture, they slaughtered. Prisoners were split up and sent to different sites. Where Kaya was sent they were testing weapons: specifically on the prisoners. She was afforded a minor amount of deference being a doctor- as she could keep their turnover of victims lower by upping their chances of survival. But when hope ran out and help didn't come, even that didn't keep her safe for long. What few people were with her from Caltan IV didn't hang on as long as she did. When help finally came, she was surrounded by strangers whose names she didn't bother trying to learn any more. Two years, three weeks, nineteen days. That's how long it took before the camp was liberated by the Federation. This time there wasn't awe or some sense of elation. Truthfully, Kaya withdrew within now that someone else was there to fix things and just shut down for awhile. Processed here, processed there. Checked and rechecked. Sent back to Earth first for a lengthy stay at a hospital in San Fransisco, then a smaller facility near her family's home in Ireland. Kaya spent a long time sitting empty and hurt, betrayed, lost. She'd perk up at reports of others from the outpost being recovered, but not one of them were James. At one point she was sent her wedding ring which was recovered, but no word, no sign of James. She mourned. She healed. She tried to immerse herself in her family, as Tim and Martha had long since retired and taken up the old farm, but it just wasn't filling up the hole left inside her. She'd tried burying the dead, but it seemed more like burying herself. Kaya tried signing on with a local medical group and offering her services, but there was little satisfaction with the work. Eventually- come late one night after a date with a bottle of single malt and the moon, Kaya finally hit the point of 'tired of this crud' and decided to take her own life back over. What she had was gone. What she wanted was gone. Life wasn't fair. To hell with dying. Kaya petitioned to be allowed back onto the active service roster with Starfleet and met much protest- everything from her not being psychologically sound to her physical well being were brought into question. She sat for test upon test.. failed a few.. waited the prerequisite time and retook them. Overall, through sheer tenacity and hellfire, she was given another chance to serve. It's her firm belief that if James is still alive, or anyone else out there going through a similar situation, that she owes them not to sit on her butt and feel sorry for herself, but be out there looking for them. |
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| Service Record | 2369 - Starfleet Academy 2377 - Starfleet Medical College 2378 - USS Cushing, Medical Officer 2382 - USS Lusitano, Assistant Chief Medical Officer 2387 - Caltan IV Outpost, Chief Medical Officer 2390 - Medical Leave 2391 - SB332, Chief Medical Officer |