Slipping into a Coma - Part 1

Posted on Sat Sep 1, 2018 @ 6:55am by Lieutenant Kivan Ta'Gas & Commander Amia Telamon M.D.

1,096 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Victory Conditions
Location: Main Sickbay
Timeline: MD 08 (Following Trek to a Different Time and Place)

The four figures dematerialized within the confines of Sick Bay and barely waited for the rematerialization forcefield to deactivate before they immediately began rushing the hover-stretch towards the medical facilities.

River was a little startled by the blue shimmering as the figures and their patient appeared without so much as a forewarning or a communication hail to say they were on their way. It occurred to her that, considering they still had a lot of irradiated patients in quarantine, it could have been imprudent to have arrived right in the middle of a treatment of one of them and being endangered but still, the transporter system almost always directed materialisation to the centre of the main bay so it was unlikely that scenario she had imagined in the split second that they had restructured and began to run about the bay, to any old biobed in what appeared to be blind panic. She followed them, beckoning over a nurse to assist.

"Can you tell me what has happened?" River asked calmly, the nurse at her side, patiently waiting for the medics (she assumed that was what they were although they weren't of her own staff) to deliver their patient.

"We've got a Cardassian/Bajoran male with severe internal injuries and at least one failing lung." Shouted the Marine Corporal as she helped lift Ens. Kivan Ta'Gas onto the nearby bed. "We just retrieved him from down on the planet surface. I don't know what the hell happened in that portal, but he certain got his ass-kicked" She said, then she realized who she was speaking to and immediately went into attention. "I apologize, ma'am!" She said formally.

Ens. Kivan himself was barely cognizant of all that was going on around him. The last thing he remembered was stepping through the Fae portal and calling for retrieval from DS5. It had taken several hours for the Marine retrieval shuttle to arrive due to the fall-out following the USS Svikiri disaster. He originally believed that he was fine until he noticed that his stitches had torn and the bleeding was beginning to get worse. Ensign Jessica Mayhew tried her best, but she was no medic and all she could do was help him hold out until the shuttle arrived.

"I'm taking it that it's not actually his ass that i need to scan though..... " River said quietly, the contrast to the shouting of the Marine Medic being an attempt to calm and soften the woman's adrenaline and volume as River brought up the Med-Arch on the biobed.

Not waiting for an answer to the rhetoric, River added, still gently: "Thank you, we've got him now and can take it from here." and motioned her nurse into place at the other side of the bio-bed where the nurse automatically and immediately began to assist with setting up the standard initial tests and scans that River would be needing shortly - as soon as she had finished reconstructing the patient's damaged lung.

River administered a pain killer and whilst she began the regeneration she quietly asked the patient's name and if he had a lot of pain anywhere in particular?" she worked quickly but with experienced efficiency and when it was done and the danger of it collapsing had past she looked across at the nurse who read out the results of the scans she had just been doing. River thought about what she was hearing from the nurse and then asked her to make a note of the patient's details. The nurse confirmed that she had already done that as they were speaking and River thanked her.

The Acting CMO then turned back to the patient and focussed on his words. "So pain - on a scale of 1 - 10, ten being the very most and one the least.... which is the greatest pain you have right now?"

Kivan's fever had taken a turn for the worse and it was affecting his ability to communicate. He was delirious and what he was saying did not make sense. It appeared to be a cross between old Bajoran prayer rituals and Cardassian words and half-phrases. It was apparent that his time spent trying to nurse his own wounds had failed to prevent an infection from setting in.

River's scans gave her more information and she programmed the Biobed controls. The Med-Arch which she had already raised over the neck and shoulders of the Ensign enabled her to simply push LCARS to administer a 'Biotech' agent intravenously. It was designed to infiltrate his system and strengthen his red blood cells and bolster his white to clear out the infection at a molecular level - once, many centuries ago, in the medical dark ages, there would probably have been what had been called antibiotics, before they were so overused that they became totally ineffective. The modern equivalents were, like all medical science, so much more effective, gentle to the system and most importantly, vastly advanced.

She took the moment it gave her to check for other breaks and ruptures, regenerating any threatening ones first. She administered anti-febrile agents too, also via the biobed system and began to mend the damage to his left kidney as a priority too. Working through the worst of his injuries and the most threatening of his symptoms, River was silent for a while in concentration but then she spoke again.

"You say he was inside a Portal when this happened?" She asked the waiting Marines.

"Affirmative, ma'am" The Marine Cpl responded. "He was a part of the Cardie Expedition to return the boy back to his time through one of those portals. I can only assume that whatever happened on the other side of the portal killed the other Cardies and nearly took him out too." She added. "We also lost two Fleeters during the mission as well." She reported.

Ens. Kivan had stopped speaking and was slowly falling into a deep state of unconsciousness. the medication was working its way through his system and they were doing exactly what they were programmed to do: Stop the pain. As he drifted away, he could hear the voices around him having their conversation about what happened to him on the other side of the portal. He tried to open his eyes to respond, but they were so heavy, his body still ached, and the lull of unconsciousness was pulling him deeper and deeper.

TBC .....

A JP between:

Lt Cmdr River Hart-Morgan
Acting CMO on Secondment to Cover Maternity Leave.
DS5

Ens. Kivan Ta'Gas
Assistant Engineer
DS5

 

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