How People Work

Posted on 19 Jul 2012 @ 3:46pm by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Lieutenant Commander Chauncey Remington III (KIA) & Lieutenant Commander Pola Ni Dhuinn M.D. & Commander Andreus Kohl & EMH Mark X-C "Shirley" & Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Crewman Vera Lin (KIA)

3,434 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Deuterium Storage, Sickbay, Various
Timeline: MD07 - 2226 hrs

Previously, in "Captured"...

Lilou swallowed hard. "I can get him. I can get up there. He's in the nacelle control room. I can throw a EV suit on and get there in minutes." She looked between Will and the XO. "Willis has the consoles from Engineering and better eyes on the system from down there too." She spoke quickly and quietly, but there was a determination in her. The Chief was responsible for them still flying. They couldn't do without him. They couldn't risk leaving him hurt and trapped somewhere. It just wasn't an option in her mind.

"Go." John acknowledged with a nod to the young engineer. He hated the idea of sending anyone into danger, but hopefully the protective equipment provided by Starfleet would be more than enough.

"As soon as you get him clear we'll beam him straight to sickbay - Mr Remington if the shields have to dip for a millisecond to make it possible then do it, the hull has held up pretty well so far."

The shielding within the nacelle was legendary for making transporting difficult, but at least with the missing engineer retrieved to the deck, then at least it might not take up quite so much power to save the life of an injured colleague.

"Yes, sir," Lilou said, already scrambling for the door. =^=Willis, the console's yours. Keep her running.=^=

=^=Bridge to Sickbay - Chief Quinn is being beamed across to you momentarily - prepare to receive him. =^=

=^=Sickbay to bridge; We are standing by, sickbay out=^=

"More transporter signals, sir," Remington interrupted once more. "Main Engineering, deck four. Now the cargo bays and-" He spun around, reaching for his phaser, "the bridge."

And now, the continuation...

[ON]

Deck three was locked down, but two wasn't and that was where she needed to start anyway. Lilou kept her phaser in hand as she sped off the turbo lift and into the containment area outside the Deuterium Surge Tanks. She stripped off her jacket and vest while she entered the (far too many) codes, released the container locks, and dragged the EV suit out. The chromo-metallic fabric suctioned to her as she pulled each part on - suit, gloves, boots. She hooked her phaser into the suit's holster, strapped her toolbelt back around her waist and thigh, hooked the second EV suit roll over her shoulders, and bolted back out to the nearest removable panel as she tugged the EV helmet on and secured the fasteners. Working with the gloves on didn't take that much longer than working without them and she soon had the panel off and was scurrying along the access route, dropping down a ladder chute, and hurrying towards the jeffries tubes. It took more time than she would have liked, overriding the locks and precautionary stopsafes she'd put in place one by one and resealing them behind her, but seven minutes later, she might as well have been swimming inside her suit. Sweat soaked her clothes and the suit pressed the sodden cloth to her skin, but she kept on. Her PADD was registering increasing radiation levels the further she went and her mind was full of a thousand awful images of just what might have happened to Quinn. What might be happening to him now. The thoughts only made her move faster.

Hitting the nacelle's control door, she tried to pry it open, but it was vacuum sealed tight. She swallowed hard. Hull breach. There had been... cursing under her breath, she latched her suit to a pull clamp, drew her cutter beam, and aimed directly where the locking mechanism fastened inside the door. Thirty seconds later, the door tore off and sped away into the inky black. Only the stabilizers and magnetic soles of her boots kept Lilou from speeding away with it. Carefully, she ratcheted herself across the destroyed remains of the control room. He'd managed to fix it, which meant he hadn't been pulled out into space with the rest. When she was close enough to the thick window of the door that led directly to the nacelle to see through it, her breath caught in her throat.

He looked dead. His skin was a funny color, his arm after the elbow was missing, and he wasn't moving. Why the hell hadn't she learned more about how people worked? =^=I need four and a half seconds of forcefield over the following ten meter hull breach,=^= she reported back to the bridge, naming the directional coordinates on the ship as she attached her suit line to another magnetic clamp beside the door and hooked her arm around it.

It took several long seconds for a response to come from the bridge, but at last Remington's voice, calm as ever, but with a strained note hidden in its depths, came over the comm. =/\=Got it.=/\=

As soon as she saw the flicker of the forcefield, Lilou wrenched open the door, slammed inside, and closed and sealed it behind her just as the forcefield was released. Dropping down beside Quinn, she ran her tricorder over him. Basic stats, nothing fancy, but he wasn't dead. That was something, she thought, as she unrolled the second EV suit and carefully suited him up, sealing him in and pressing the suit functions to release the toxic air and replace the environment inside the suit with a survivable atmosphere. She stuffed the unnecessary glove into her belt and eyed the limp sleeve, dripping blood. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she whispered, stumbling away from him and routing a safety cable into a conduction unit. As the cable heated, she coiled one end and lined the coil up with the stump. "I'm so so so so so sorry," she kept whispering. The room filled with the smell of cooking flesh, but the bleeding slowed. Dropping the coil before it could burn itself into the Chief's flesh, she kicked its connection free, sealed the suit's sleeve over the wound, and hooked his suit to hers; short lining the connecting line, she triple checked it, and then dragged him towards the door. He outweighed her substantially, but she had fear and adrenaline on her side. Her voice was ragged when she reported through her combadge again. =^=Once more, same coordinates, seven point two seconds,=^= she requested and kept a hand on the seal as she waited for the glimmer of the forcefield again.

It took less time for a response, but the ops officer didn't respond this time.

She managed, somehow, to get them out, and the door sealed just before the forcefield dropped again. Legs and arms hooked around the safety line, she slowly dragged herself backwards as Quinn's unconscious body floated alongside of her. It was eerie, so she tried to focus on the line. On getting back into the containment room. Atmosphere. On getting him to someone who could actually help him instead of stare helplessly at him. After wrangling Quinn into the containment room outside the control room, she kicked the sealant button and the secondary shield door dropped down over the remains of the one she'd donated to space junk city. Almost immediately, gravity set in again. Now came the harder part. There was no way for her to get him up any of the ladders in grav, so she did the next best thing.

It took her about fifteen minutes to wedge and manipulate the lifeless body of her Chief through the narrow access routes, and during that time anyone who might have been able to hear her would have sworn she'd been taken over by an extremely pissed off sailor judging by the stream of invectives that poured out of her. Every locked passage seal required an entirely new set of swears as she fumbled her override codes into the small security consoles and dragged Quinn along again. Every muscle in her body was screaming by the time she collapsed out of the final wall panel back into the corridor just outside the shuttlebay. =^=Outside main shuttlebay doors,=^= she wheezed, unhooking her cable from Quinn's suit and slapping the emergency beacon on his suit. =^=Take him.=^=

From his position on the Bridge, John had been listening in to every moment that had passed. It seemed the Klingons had other things to worry about with their warp drive offline and their boarding parties scattered throughout the ship, and for now had decided to stop shooting at Galileo - either because they wouldn't or couldn't.

"Commander Remington - get those transporters in action." He nodded towards his Ops officer and current XO, hopeful that his colleague would be able to pull one more miracle out of his hat with power distribution.


Sickbay

Pola hadn't been able to drop everything as she waited for Quinn. Standing by an Ensign with third degree burns, wearing her surgical gown, she was trying to control the burning so as to limit skin loss. Once things where more under control he would require a skin graft. Until she had more of her staff back, right now was about evaluation, pain relief, damage limitation and getting people out with simplistic, injuries. After listening to the call from the bridge she was expecting the worst and had Kohl clear their main surgical bed and prepare a solution of arithrazine, which would require her full attention if administered would be needed if he has been bombarded with antimatter particles in any way, she needed to prepare for worse case scenario. She also had him prepare inaprovaline to stabilize Quinn and hyronalin to treat any further radiation he may have been subjected to, coming from an area which had been subject to a flood of radiation.

Meanwhile, Crewman Perry was perched one the edge of biobed two. He looked ready to bolt for the door at any moment's notice. Ensign Andreus Kohl was circling the biobed, but his attention had drifted away from his patient. Rather, Kohl's eyes were down on the PADD where he was keeping a log of Doctor Ni Dhuinn's orders. Officially, Kohl was recording the names of the medications for the sake of the medical records for their incoming patient, CWO Quinn. Really though, Kohl was afraid he might forget what to provide his next patient if he didn't write it down. "You can go back to your station, Perry," Kohl said. As Kohl strode away from biobed two, he patted Perry on the shoulder twice, and moved towards the empty antigrav gurney that was locked to the bulkhead. "But come back tomorrow, yeah?," Kohl called back over his shoulder, "You need another treatment or you'll be left with scarring. And it's not going to be one of those sexy scars. It's going to be a put-your-shirt-back-on kind of scar, yeah?" But Perry had already bound out if Sickbay.

Moving on, Kohl called out, "Lin, grab your patient's legs." He was pushing the antigrav gurney towards the surgical biobed in the dead-centre of Sickbay, and he magnetically locked it into place beside the bed.

As Kohl approached, Lin was removing the surgical support frame from the biobed. Doctor Ni Dhuinn had just closed the patient up only five minutes earlier, and she had dashed off to treat burn wounds. Neither nurse suspected the patient was ready to be moved, but none of them could afford to slow down. None of them could stop moving or more beings would die. "I don't know if I want to work like this, sir," Lin snapped at Kohl, but she kept her tone low. She wrapped her arms around the patient's legs as Kohl hefted the patient up by her shoulders. "I don't like the way you give me orders, sir. Or maybe it's I don't like the tone you use."

Kohl and Lin lifted the patient from the biobed, and slid her onto the gurney. "It's a good thing you work alpha shift, then," Kohl said dismissively. He slapped his palm down on the contact that unlocked the gurney, and he walked away. "Take her to another bed for recovery," Kohl ordered Lin. Without slowing down, Kohl approached an open cabinet, where he pulled out a crimson surgical gown in a sterile pack. Kohl tore open the pack, and he used the time it took him to sprint for medicinal storage to punch his hands through the sleeves of the surgical gown. Once his hands were through, Kohl grabbed cartridges filled with liquid medicines. Once he made it back to the surgical biobed, Kohl started to hear a hum on the other side of the compartment. Moving quicker, Kohl loaded each of the medicinal cartridges into the biobed.

As she heard the sound of a transporter beam materialize behind her, Pola turned and felt a jolt as she realised that this was a hell of a lot worse then what they had anticipated. Grabbing Kohl and Lin, she got the engineer moved immediately to the surgical biobed, the body stripped of the EV suit and activated the status field to place the body in suspended animation until a complete review could be preformed to see what the issues were. Where the arm was severed, the bleeding was at a trickle. Grabbing a surgical clamp, Pola lifted the field in just this area so as to stop the blood flowing from the veins and artery. While the area was uncovered, she pushed the field back further in order to administer 20cc's of the analgesic metorapan, which was too hand as they were using it a lot right now, before rewidening the field to cover the body again. "Kohl I need the main sensor cluster now, it doesn't matter if it's being used, free it up. I also need a surgical kit and type his blood and get me 3 litres, he's lost a lot of blood and will loose more before we are finished." While Kohl ran around, she herself grabbed a surgical support frame in order to start prepping, continuing her visual analysis of Quinn.

Kohl darted off into the office of the Chief Medical Officer. With fewer and fewer medical personnel in Sickbay, Kohl and Lin had moved the most necessarily supplies within easy reach of the ICU. Along the back wall of Pola's office were stacks of small, self-contained refrigeration units. Each refrigeration unit was filled with replicated blood. Kohl recalled Quinn's blood type from glancing at the medical records to confirm Quinn had no drug allergies. As Kohl lifted the clearly-marked blood unit from the floor, the weight of it didn't bother him. What weighed on him more was the type-1 phaser attached to his belt, hidden beneath his uniform jacket and surgical gown. On the battlefields of Bactricia, then nurses were re-certified on a phaser range more often than they were rectified on external defibrillators. The armoury personnel aboard Galileo had studied Kohl's certification closely before issuing a phaser to him... But there were Klingons chasing the ship. That made it necessary.

As Kohl set up what she needed, Pola heard a voice behind her and turned to find the EMH had returned, "Perfect. I need you to start seeing to the cases coming in and use Lin, I need Kohl right now. We've too high a column of people coming through so you need to evaluate, pain relief, treat and send away if it's quick, otherwise just administer preventative measures and they'll be seen to properly once we can manage it. Use Lin to help you categories the patients to know what to do. If you get caught with something urgent, please let me know so we can get cover. I've got scientists with basic first aid skills helping with minor broken bones and first degree burns."

The situation evacuating Deck 3 had been completed, and not a moment too soon from what the EMH could tell. Having been transferred back to sickbay it seemed the situation there had not improved either. Several organics were located throughout the room with various medical issues yet were not being treated. Triage it seemed, was the order of the day.

Heading towards one of the secondary biobeds, the EMH picked up a tricorder from the instrument tray. It seemed that the unfortunate Ensign in front of him had been in a rather close encounter with a plasma discharge, and as always, had come off second best, with evidence to prove it along the length of his right arm.

"Administer 3cc's of anaesthazine as an analgesic and treat with the dermal regenerator" the program instructed to one of the duty nurses, content that in this case, his impressive surgical skills were not necessary.

"On to the next unfortunate...."

Over in the middle of the ICU, Ensign Kohl was crouched down beneath the surgical biobed. He slid open a panel on the pedestal that held up the biobed, and he pushed the blood supply unit into the opening. Once he slid the panel closed, Kohl protected the top of his head with a hand to make sure he didn't hit it off anything as he stood upright. Kohl touched the controls on the surgical support frame, and he studied the read-outs confirming the injectors within the frame now had access to the blood supply.

As Kohl worked with connecting and starting the transfers of radiation and pain relief, Pola breathed a sign of relief as all scans indicated that Quinn had not been subjected to an antimatter leak. Even though it was small, it was something at least. "Kohl set up the transfer of 10cc's of hyronalin and safely dispose of the arithrazine." Watching as the blood transfer started, Pola started to do an analysis of the injuries that the engineer had sustained. She needed to start surgery on the arm but she couldn't until she had the patient stabilised and right now indicators seemed to be that his body was in shock.

Laying his hands on the surgical support frame, Kohl tapped a sequence into the LCARS interface to inject the hyronalin into Quinn. Once the LCARS came back to him with confirmation, Kohl ejected the arithrazine from the biobed, and walked away with the dangerous, designated substance.

As the medications started to enter Quinn's body, Pola grabbed the Dermaline gel and started to treat the third degree burns from the plasma torch which had resulted in the loss of his arm. Thankfully the third degree burns seemed to have been isolated to the remaining part of his arm. As the gel started to take effect alongside the drugs, Pola could see a marked improvement in the vitals. His heart rate was still increased but that was to be expected due to the shock that his body was in. "Kohl I need you to get a dermal regenerator and start to treat the second and third degree burns so we can get the stress on his body relieved."

"I'm on it, doctor," Kohl said. He kept his choice of words casual, but his timbre remained formal. He took up the dermal regenerator from an equipment tray, and it fit comfortably in one hand. Kohl squeezed the toggle on the tool, and the healing field was generated. Before he could bring it anywhere near Quinn--

With a gasp, Quinn opened his eyes and attempted to sit up, not fully awake, yet not totally under. "The ship, the ship! Is it safe?!"

As Quinn started to try sit up, Pola placed a restraining hand against his chest, "Don't move Markum. You've been in an accident and you're in sickbay. the ship is fine, you got the engines working again but now we need to fix you."

"Tarishiana, is she safe?" Markum looked around the room, slowly laying back. I can't feel my right arm Doctor. Am I paralyzed? I can't remember much but, Peers! I saw Peers...did she...?"

The voice of Galileo's XO came booming over the internal comm speakers.
=^= All hands this is the Bridge, secure your stations and prepare to repel boarding parties, repeat, prepare to repel boarding parties! =^=

[OFF]

To Be Continued...


Lieutenant JG Pola Ni Dhuinn
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

EMH Mk-X (NPC'd by Holliday)
Emergency Medical Hologram
USS Galileo

Lt Cmdr Jonathan Holliday
Executive Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Andreus Kohl
Nurse
USS Galileo

Crewman Vera Lin (NPC'd by Kohl)
Nurse
USS Galileo

Lt. Cmdr. Chauncey William Remington III
Chief Operations Officer
USS Galileo

Chief Warrant Officer Markum Quinn
Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

Master Warrant Officer Lilou Peers
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

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