Cross Contamination (Part I of II)
Posted on Sun May 31, 2020 @ 4:33am by Civilian 'Key Holder' Yolanthe Ibalin & Commander Caleb Ryan & Commander Amia Telamon M.D.
1,952 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Et In Arcadia Ego
Location: Sick-bay
Timeline: MD-04 1400
[ON]
A security officer entered the reception of the sick bay leading a middle aged Ktarian man. "Hello." He let go of his charge and went to the desk. "I found this gentleman on the Promenade. I think he needs a doctor."
The Ktarian had turned when the officer had let him go, walking straight to the side, and into the wall. He staggered back a few steps and then walked forward again, with the same result. He repeated it a third time before the officer caught his hand and pulled him away again.
"You're right!" Opal agreed, moving out around the reception desk and raising her medcorder to try to start a medical assessment. "No identification? No papers or cards of any kind?" she asked, and indicated with an opened arm to a cubicle close by. "Give me a moment please and I'll join you. I just need to get the desk covered," she explained, and without waiting for the security guard's response tapped her comm badge and called up some cover for the desk from someone unseen on the other end of the transmission.
The replacement arrived quickly, presumably from not too far away, and after a sentence or two to hand over briefly Opal added that she would be in Cubicle 1A if she was needed and picked up her med kit, joining the guard and patient.
The officer had led the Ktarian, who was otherwise quite biddable, into the cubicle, but a moment after being pressed to sit on the bio bed, he was getting up. "I've got no ID, but there is a comm badge. Once we've got him under control, I can trace any associates using it."
"That would be very helpful if you can go ahead and arrange that please." Opal smiled and gently reached to redirect the patient from trying to insert himself into a closet for Spirits knew what confused misunderstood intention that had come into his head. She retained a calm, monotone voice and spoke to him as if it were perfectly natural a thing to do, but just not right now, a distraction method.
"Yes, ma'am." The security officer stepped away with the small badge.
The Ktarian man was not sitting still, but neither did he seem distressed at all. Each time he was redirected, he moved pliantly and without resistance. But after a moment or two in his new position, he would rise again and walk off, until an obstacle stopped him. At which point he would just keep trying to walk forward.
Having to now make a study of where the patient was trying to go, with an intention to work out what he was trying to do, Opal kept catching him and redirecting him and soon noticed there was one common area he was bent on getting to and that it was one that related to the one he was intent on in Reception. What could the common denominator be? Opal tried to work out any clue, and perhaps this was one?
"What do you need, sir?" she tried to engage him again. "Is it the replicator?" she started to guess whilst still preventing him bumping into the nearest biobed and damaging not only himself but unimaginably valuable equipment at the same time.
He didn't reply. In fact, he made absolutely no sign of even hearing her. He seemed utterly confounded by the wall. The door was five meters away, not that far, but it was as if there was no awareness of anything around him, just a desire to be elsewhere.
Opal tried to see if these two directions were the same on a compass and maybe he was tuned in to receive magnetic north, or if the magnetic norths and souths were phenomenons that were only detectable on a planet. She managed to get some remote tests done, mainly by trundling around beside or behind him in what might have resembled more of a pantomime or slapstick performance rather than a medical examination.
After much trial and error and lip chewing, Opal concluded that this was a Ktarian male of about fifty years and who clearly had some previous injuries, but they were old, not recent. He was somewhat dehydrated and malnourished. His stomach read empty, and his body temperature was slightly elevated from the norm for his species. There were also high readings of silica, more than should be expected in a carbon based lifeform.
His readings made little sense. His communication was even less clear and his documentation was zilch. Yet still he kept peacefully, but relentlessly, walking blindlessly into anything facing magnetic north.
"Okay, two things out of that little brainstorm... blind? And a set direction being judged or measured how?" Opal reasoned out loud, trying to get in front of him directly to see if he could actually make her out clearly.
He just bumped into her, staggered back, and walked forward again, this time just clipping her shoulder as he headed forward, to collide with a wall, still heading for that same point.
Opal had little else to try so she put a hypospray against his neck and attempted to put him drowsy enough to keep still. It might wake him up more if she was unlucky, but nothing else was working and this might. If he sat or lay still, they might be able to work out what he was trying to get to, and if they could help him here that would save too many big, scary Security officers, which might alarm him, and he had done nothing wrong. He'd shown no signs of hostility at all, so she didn't want to get heavy with this.
It seemed to work. This time when she drew him to the biobed, he tried to rise, but there was too much lethargy in his limbs to make it up. After a moment he seemed to relax, his eyes half closed and limbs slack.
At last Opal managed to run tests to try to find out what was going on. She ran the standard tests, blood first, then an ultrasound, followed by a brain MRI, then a CAT CT for different views. With each test her frown deepened. Eventually she stood up and flicked her comm. “Oliver to Commander Telemon.” She brought in the big guns, as this made no sense.
“Telamon here. What's up, Opal?” Amia replied.
“I'm sorry to trouble you, ma'am, but I have a Ktarian patient behaving strangely whose tests show the most mystifying results. I wonder if you might be free for me to escalate this up to you for a more experienced second opinion please? I think he's in more trouble than it first seemed.”
“I'm nearby, I'll be with you in five. Telamon out.”
True to her word, the CMO was there before Opal had the blood results up on one screen for Amia to look at for herself.
Amia acknowledged Opal and the nurse helping her, and without more ceremony went straight to the results and took a good long look at each set.
Once Amia had considered all of them and returned to the head of the bio-bed and the patient himself, Opal spoke, "I noted that he's probably about the right age for male menopause, but then I found there's an excess of silicon building up in his brain stem and nervous system as a whole. He was up, mobile, and repeatedly walking around silently, but with no hostility or apparent agitation, just the intent of getting to magnetic north no matter which room he was in. Security brought him in and he seemed just missing a few spark plug firing pins, so to speak. He's deteriorated even in the hour he's been here, and I'm not sure he could walk around, even in silent circles."
Amia listened and added this extra information to what she had already seen from the tests. She had nodded attentively through Opal’s explanation of the details, all of which helped. "I see," Amia said, eyes out of focus, brain clearly searching her memories and training.
"Let's try to drain some of that silicon out then, and see if we can find out whether he has consumed it or if his body is making it somehow?" Amia began. "Opal, can you get the drain set up between C3 and C4, and once you're happy with it working, Marima can take it over just watching that nothing is obviously changing. Okay with those tasks, you two?" she delegated the first action she wanted to get underway.
"Yes, ma'am," Opal and Marima chorused, and then laughed about their harmony as they turned and went off to get started. "I'm worried about his lack of brain activity, especially in the frontal lobes. I can't see how he was walking at all, let alone around and around. It's not that I'm doubting you, Opal, but it's just that it's very much a problem. You were right to say he's in a lot more trouble than it first appeared." Amia spoke her thoughts out loud as they all worked. She went to the biobed and programmed it to raise the arch, ready for some more brain scans in five minutes' time. Those five minutes would give time for Opal and Marima to get their drain in and have the patient's head clear for the bio arch to envelope his whole head and keep taking scans every five minutes so they could see exactly how bad this deterioration actually was.
"Five minutes, ladies? is that okay?" Amia asked before pushing the button for the first scan setting.
Opal muttered from behind her mask that “Yes, roger that," confirming it.
Amia left them working quickly away as she set up the lab area en suite to this particular emergency cubicle. As soon as the drain had the first sample of spinal fluid, Amia was ready to test it manually and more quickly than the usual way of sending it off.
Opal finished setting the drain between the extremely sensitive and dangerous C3 and C4 discs of the spine, but she was steady handed with it and did it in one smooth try, no other necessary, and despite wearing most of the first specimen rushing out under so much pressure that it refused to wait patiently for them to harvest it. Changing her theatre apron with one hand, Opal managed to rescue enough on a petri dish for Amia to test and to position the tiny tube where Marima could change the receptacle as and when necessary. They had decided to guide it straight into test tubes, and Marima was challenged a little by how fast each was filling, but she knew she could call one of the others over if she couldn't keep up.
Amia was happy to see the pressure on the inside of the patient's skull was reducing as they carefully drained away as much of the silicon they could get.
"I'm watching to see if any frontal lobe activity returns as our drain helps the pressure subside," Amia explained what she was doing to the other two who were carrying out their jobs in silence and with deep frowns. Both ladies lightened a little hearing what was happening and that it was seeming to be positive at this stage.
"I never did find out about his family." Amia had another expressed verbally thought, but this one didn't seem to be one that anyone else could answer. "I wonder where that security officer has got with his enquiries," she added, thinking aloud.
To be Continued…
Commander Amia Telemon
Chief Medical Officer
DS5
NPCs by Soran
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