Casualties (Part 5 of 7)

Posted on 26 Sep 2014 @ 8:02pm by Lieutenant Elijah Williams IV, M.Sc. & Ensign Jaana Voutilainen & Lieutenant Olsam Mott & Lieutenant Commander Dea Mialin & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim
Edited on on 26 Sep 2014 @ 8:26pm

1,915 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 3, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 07 - 1605 hrs

Previously, on Casualties (Part 4)...

Elijah looked on, he had tried to get the commodore calm and walk away but where Aria succeeded he failed. He just wasn't persuasive enough, or forceful enough. It was the yelling, the threatening, that was what bothered him. In the end, he fell by the wayside and maybe that was for the best. He felt fatigue wash over him and he realized he still had most of his EVA suit still on. He moved from the group that was standing near Hex and began to remove the suit when he noticed his friend, standing over another woman. What was Abbey doing out of bed? He approached.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Abbey was awoken by the sudden burst of commotion, she had only seen her father for a split second before he was beamed away. He looked a state, clutching his ribs and dried blood over his face and clothes. Getting up from her bed shakily she moved out of the way and took hold of one of the doctors near by "Please help me get her onto my bed" She said pointing to Jaana the 'exoskelton' that had been placed on her helping her a great deal.

"I'll help," Elijah said. Getting out of his EVA suit as quickly as possible, he just left it where he dropped it then bent down and put his hands under the woman's arms and heaved her up and gently got her onto Abbey's biobed. The monitor above the bed beeped and Elijah reached up to silence the sound. "She is breathing,'' he said as he laid two fingers against Jaana's carotid artery to feel for a pulse. "Pulse seems slow, weak even." He turned to Abbey, "We should get you a chair."

Abbey waved of his concern and suggestion to find her a chair, her body did ache but there was clearly a rising tension in sickbay "I don't need a chair, you look rough as hell though" She pointed out and pointing to the blood on his suit wondering if it was his or someone else's.

One corner of his mouth upturned and then Elijah looked down the front of his tunic of his uniform and then to his EVA suit that was lying crumpled on the deck. Sure enough, there was blood in both places. "I'm not sure," he said. The pain in his back flared and he reached behind to rub the spot and felt frayed fabric. He winced and pulled his hand away and sure enough, it was covered in blood. "Huh, well I'll be damned... I guess it's mine."

Abbey put her hand to her mouth as she moved round and behind Elijah "Oh Elijah!" She said frowning disapprovingly. "Sit down" She said looking for something to clean the wound.

"Um okay." Elijah was dumbfounded, when did he get hurt like this? The fall? Though he didn't want Abbey to make a fuss, he pulled a stool next to the bio bed and sat gingerly. "I'm sure it's just minor. Maybe the red tentacle thingy got me when were running. Or maybe it was the 90 meter drop." He shook his head very unsure of himself.

Abbey had found on the side some cloth and cleaning agent. Pouring some onto his back with out warning she frowned as she wiped away the blood and debris. "Why did you have to go and get hurt Elijah Williams" She said still wiping away.

"Believe me..." Elijah sucked in a breath of air when Abbey started to clean the wound. Multiple curse words wanted to escape, but he bit his lip. "I didn't plan on it." He looked over his shoulder to try to glance at the wound. "It's probably superficial though right?" He was pretty sure it was superficial, he could still move and though it seemed like he was bleeding profusely, the bit splotches on his tunic just made it seem worse.

Allyndra glared around for a moment and then turned to the remaining patients. Her closest one at hand was Jaana. It was hard with one hand to work the medical tricorder but she got enough to see what was the pressing problem. The first thing she had to do was get Jaana conscious. From the scans it appeared that Jaana had just passed out. There had been nothing much better made then the old fashioned smelling salts and it was what she used.

Jaana slowly tried to lift her head, but a thumping pain in her head stopped her. "What happened" she automatically held her right arm close to her body with her left hand.

"Well, appears you fractured your right ulnar, let me go get a osteomender, but first," Allyndra fumbled with her medical pouch but got the hypospray. "Let's get some anaglesic on board, are you allergic to anything?" She asked.

"Yes, I am allergic to Metorapan." She answered vaguely. She turned her head in the hope to see her sister.

Allyndra nodded and then dialed in two ccs of morphenolog. That should keep Jaana relaxed and out of pain until they had a chance to treat her further.

Olsam pushed back from the electron resonance scanner in Allyndra's office. He'd been examining the activity in Dea's brain through the tissue sample for the past five minutes, trying to understand what effect the neural energy from the mine was having on her brain's functioning. Having at least formed a hypothesis based on the evidence, he stood up and spoke mostly to himself, with some sense of wonder. "She's stuck in a dream..."

His big blue body came hurtling out out of the office and into the main room of Sickbay in a rush, carefully stepping over tribbles and patients alike. As he made his way to the medcart and began frantically and carelessly throwing pieces of medical equipment out of his way, a treatment plan was putting itself together in his head.

The neural energy had the lieutenant commander trapped in a dream state, but everything about it was wrong. Glycine should have been released to paralyze her motoneurons and prevent her from carrying out the physical actions occurring in her dreams; instead, she was thrashing about on the Sickbay decking. That had been the first important clue. But more distressing, she'd been in that nightmare for entirely too long - observing her brain tissue through the electron resonance scanner had revealed the neural energy was somehow blocking the release of neurotransmitters associated with wakefulness. Not only was she having a nightmare, but she was literally trapped in it.

Allyndra heard Mott as she was working with Jaana. "Try adding extra acetylcholinesterase. It is a primary nerutransmitter involved in REM. Also see if you can get an interference of the magnocellular nucelous." She called over.

"Huh?" Olsam said, looking up. He blinked at Allyndra, realized she'd been talking to him, then shook his head to clear it. Finally, he smiled and nodded an acknowledgement before turning back to the medcart to snatch up the delta-wave inducer that had been buried near the back of the shelf. With his free hand he went digging through the hypospray vials in the top drawer of the medcart until he found the three he was looking for, each containing a separate medication to work in different ways to induce the cerebral cortex to trigger wakefulness; one of them was the acetylcholinesterase, which would help quickly process acetylcholine out of Dea's system and bring her closer to a state of wakefulness. He might have been able to devise some way to override the neural energy's ability to block the neurotransmitters that would normally do the job, but he didn't have the luxury for such a finessed approach. He had a big heavy drug-based hammer, and he was going to use it.

"Hold on," the bulky Bolian said as he dropped to his knees next to Dea. The hypospray vials clattered to the deck as he fumbled with the delta-wave inducer, strapping it to her forehead and beginning a pre-programmed process to help stabilize the delta-wave patterns so vital to sleep. Hopefully, it would help mitigate some of the severity of the nightmares and allow her brain to begin moving toward a more wakeful stage of the sleep cycle. Next came the hyposprays, three in quick succession: the first designed to restore the magnocellular nucleous to normal function, which should cut down on all the involuntary thrashing about that the lieutenant commander was experiencing; the second full of acetylcholinesterase, as suggested by Dr. Allyndra; and the last contained a combination of animazine and formazine, both stimulants that promoted wakefulness.

Olsam took a deep breath, leaned back from his patient and sighed. Now the only thing left to do was wait and observe, he thought, as he picked up the tricorder and began taking detailed scans of her neural activity. The information relayed back from scans of the midbrain showed the activity in the magnocellular nucleous stabilizing and the medications seemed to be working to press the brain toward wakefulness.

Dea seemed to finally start to calm down. Her physical movement caused by the nightmare ceased. The subconscious battle slowed then finally ended as her sleep pattern shifted to a less dangerous phase.

Olsam let out a sigh of relief as all the indicators displayed on the tricorder began to normalize. Momentarily, Lt. Cmdr. Mialin would be brought up out of the deep nightmare and into a normal phase of light sleep created by the delta-wave inducer. He reached out and pressed a few buttons on the device on her forehead and waited for it to cycle through. Gently, Olsam removed the now unnecessary cortical inhibitor from her body, glanced again at the readings on the tricorder and finally stood up. The medication had been heavy-handed, at best, and if the delta-wave inducer was deactivated she'd likely pop awake. But this hardly seemed like the sort of scene to bring someone into after experiencing serious trauma, so he left it in place. Better she get some restful sleep than sit panicked on the Sickbay floor, looking at the injured crewmates all around her.

Mialin's brain patterns continued to shift into a more normal range for light sleep. Currently Dea appeared to be resting in a far calmer state than she had been when the away team first arrived back in sickbay.

Olsam looked down at the placid flight control officer with a sense of relief as the physical manifestations of the treatment began to take hold. The pained expression on her face, the thrashing and involuntary movement, all seemed to have passed away. She was far from cured; in fact, she likely had a long psychological journey ahead of her to address the lingering effects of her encounter with the aliens. But medically she'd been treated to the best of his abilities, leaving on some palliative measures to be undertaken once Sickbay returned to a sense of normalcy. Whenever that might be....

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

LTCMDR Dea Mialin
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Jaana Voutilainen
Stellar Cartographer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Elijah Williams, IV
Geologist
USS Galileo

Lt Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Gallileo

Lieutenant Olsam Mott, M.D.
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

CA Abbey-Mae Wyatt
Scientist's Mate
USS Galileo
[PNPC Wyatt]

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