Wounded (Part 2 of 3)

Posted on 23 Jul 2020 @ 12:45pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant & Commander Andreus Kohl & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kala Gorvel & Petty Officer 2nd Class Donald Andrews & Petty Officer 3rd Class John Hollenday & Crewman Draia Thero
Edited on on 23 Jul 2020 @ 12:48pm

2,459 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 17 - Crystal of Life
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 7, Engineering
Timeline: MD 04, 2334 hrs

Previously, on Wounded (Part 1)...

"There you go, but being newly healed they are not up to making somersaults across the deck quite yet." It was supposed to be humour but somehow felt a little out of place. She placed a hand on his shoulder for a moment and then moved on to the less injured.

The ex-marine cracked a small smile but at least it was something, at least he could still smile after everything that had gone on. Feeling her hand on his shoulder he absorbed from her some of the warmth and comet that came with it before she left leaving a cold and empty void. Luke was tired, beaten and had very little left to give.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Deck 7, Engineering

John worked things best he could with one arm. He was concerned about Donald but it would be no use if they did not get something back and control and the ship went back down into the blast.

Finally some of circuits started showing yellow and some even green as things got bypassed. There was no way to fix things entirely but hopefully they had survived just loss of control.

"Looks like getting impulse back on line! Shielding is still petty ass poor, but holding! Warp forget it, we need a lot more time! See if we can get the dampers up to snuff as the power comes back up." He shouted.

Though he was not lead down here at this point no one was going to argue command structure.

=^=PO Hollenday, Engineering to bridge, impulse power coming back on, but take it easy if possible, got all sorts of bypasses going. Shields should be coming up as that power comes on but again, nothing full strength. Dampers should be coming back pretty soon as well.=^=

Over the intercom, Commander Kohl's reply was, "I could kiss you," in about as elated a manner as he had demonstrated since boarding the ship. "Fantastic work! I won't keep you. Bridge out."

From underneath an LCARS console, Draia Thero shifted her weight from being splayed out on the deck to her hands and feet. She swore in her native Cardassian under her breath and she shook her head. That last ride of the shockwave had sent her rolling across the deck, and it took her a few seconds to gain her bearings. Pivoting her gaze around the room, she struggled between the choice to support the rerouting necessary to get the inertial dampeners back online, or to check on Donald's battered body.

Gorvel bleeding, her uniform either blackened from the fire they had extinguished or ripped from the countless times they had been thrown around sat her right leg crushed underneath what she only assumed was a large portion of the support beam which held the warp core in place, that's going to need replacing. She thought in her drowsy state unsure if she meant her leg or the beam. Her hand was still holding onto the console above her where she had managed despite being thrown around after her harness had snapped to control the power regulations though it was still connected to her body she feared she had at least dislocated her shoulder. The pain now however had started to exceed the capabilities her adrenaline levels could mask a tear broke the seal and dropped onto her bloodstained trouser leg before she began to cry out for help, blood staining her mouth like blood wine from a likely unknown injury also was now visible as she screamed.

John jumped as the scream let out filling the section. That made his arm hurt even more but he was a good ol' farm boy and pain was not an unfamiliar thing to him.

He went back to work with the one hand. One nice thing about bio-neural circuitry over the old isolinear stuff was it was a bit like brain tissue. Once you got the pathways going they naturally reinforced themselves. Power levels from the impulse reactor were coming up, low nominal.

"You help with the injured. I got the reactor back on line. Warp damaged too much for right now." He shouted in general

“I’d say I’m going to need the help,” remarked Lake ir-Llantrisant in a deadpan timbre. Assigned to Galileo as the Chief Counsellor, Lake had been trained by Starfleet as a neurologist and a medical doctor. In practice, most of his career had been spent facilitating conversation in lush offices. This past year, though, his assignments to Hathaway and Galileo had been far more interesting.

Lake was trudging into main engineering from the passageway, his body weighed down by two medikits. Behind him, Lake pulled an anti-grab patient gurney, which he had loaded with additional just-in-case equipment from Sickbay. (...Lake had assumed Alexion would know how to get by without some of it.) From his vantage point at the entryway, Lake supposed every engineer looked like a patient. John and Draia were walking wounded, at least, but Gorvel was pinned by her right leg under a support beam, and Donald was prone on the floor and unmoving. Gorvel was talking, at least, which gave her fewer triage points in the mental math going on in his head.

Lake abandoned the gurney and sprinted across the compartment in Donald Andrews' direction. Dropping to his knees, he slid the rest of the way to halt by Donald's side. While Lake palmed his medical tricorder, he began his visual and physical examination of his patient. Based on his palpations, Lake couldn't feel any movement in Donald's chest to indicate breathing. Flipping the tricorder open, Lake confirmed his suspicion. After cracking open his medi-kit, Lake snatched up a ventilator mask and a cardiostimulator bulb to jump-start Donald's most precious vital signs.

Donald's eyes shot open for a moment before closing again, his breathing extremely shallow as his heart tried to get everything circulating again. He grimaced as he started to feel the pain coursing through his upper body.

On Lake's tricorder, the biofunction monitor explained the changes in Donald's body language. Donald's breathing and circulation were stable and recovering, but the tricorder started to alarm about the cranial trauma the engineer had suffered. The tricorder's scanner imaging results were suggestive of a concussion and a small skull fracture that was open and depressed.

"Crewman Thero," Lake called out to grab Draia's attention. The Romulan's dark eyes watched for Draia's reaction. He waited until she made eye-contact with him, to ensure she was listening. All the while, his hands were sorting through hypospray cartridges in his medikit; his fingertips were well-familiar with the braille-like notches on the sides of each cartridge. "Don't let Chief Gorvel bleed to death before I get to her," he ordered Thero. From the medikit, Lake tossed a painkiller hypospray at Draia, followed by a metallic bandage patch, which had sterilization and dermal-regeneration properties.

The very moment the order was given, Lake returned his attention to Donald. Lake programmed a hypospray to deliver 2 ccs of impedrezine and pressed it to Donald's neck. As soon as the medicine was injected, Lake ejected the hypospray's cartridge and replaced it with a cartridge of vertazine. Just as quickly, Lake injected Donald with vertazine as well. Training his eyes on the tricorder to monitor Donald's reaction to the drugs, Lake's hands returned to the medikit, fishing out an osteogenic stimulator.

Scurrying in Lake's direction, Draia caught the medical tools between both hands. Using her momentum, she pivoted on her heel to run at Gorvel. From where Draia was looking down on her, Gorvel was still pinned beneath a support beam. If Lake had told Draia to build a new support beam by hand she would have felt more confident than trying to alleviate Gorvel's pain by even 1%.

"Where, uh, where does it hurt, Chief?" Draia asked. The young Cardassian dropped to her knees beside Gorvel and immediately applied the hypospray to her neck. The sooner the drugs hid away the pain, Draia supposed, the sooner Gorvel could tell her what to do. Draia held up the bandage patch as if it was a magic talisman, but judging by the amount of blood, Draia quickly suspected she was going to need a lot more bandages.

Kala tried to focus on Draia but her vision was doubled as her head spun she looked down to where the blood was seeping through her clothes and pooling around her leaving her oddly warm. She coughed several times blood being ejected from her mouth by the motion staining her teeth and unfortunately covering Draia. "Heeelp me" She said in a bloody gargled undertone before slumping to one side her leg and still trapped as she fell unconscious but still alive.

"Counselor Lake!" Draia Thero screamed out, after she wiped the Trill's blood off her own face with the palm of her hand. Breathing heavily all of a sudden, Draia alerted Lake to the fact that, "She-she-she-she she fell asleep!"

Donald's arm slowly came up from the ground and settled on his chest for a second before it moved up to hold his forehead, just as slowly his eyes opened again and stayed open as they explored his somewhat blurry surroundings. "How did I end up on the floor?" He asked very groggily to the equally blurry figure crouched over him.

Cursing in Romulan, Lake took great pleasure in saying, "Areinnye." He said it loudly --relishing every syllable-- in the hopes that it might offend the great brothers. The osteogenic stimulator had done most of the work to repair Donald's skull, but there was still a bloody wound where a shard of skull had been sticking out of Donald's head. Lake said it again. "Areinnye, don't you move," he said to Donald, and he put the flat of one palm on Donald's chest. Lake touched Donald gently, of course, given how recently the engineer had recovered from respiratory distress.

"You're alive. You're strong," Lake said to Donald. He used his most butterscotch Counselor voice with Donald, trying to soothe him and hide his own panic. Shifting from assurance to a direct order, Lake said, "You're going to be building ships in a model again, Petty Officer Andrews. Just. Don't. Move. ...I'm still scraping your brains off the floor."

Before he reached for a dermal regenerator, Lake tapped his combadge quickly. From that touch, a fingerprint of Donald's blood marred the silver arrowhead on Lake's chest. "Lake to transporter room two," Lake said; "Beam Kala Gorvel directly to Sickbay. Energize."

The injured and almost unconscious Trill was barely aware of the fact her body was being dematerialised by the ship's transporters, the only one factor that dominated her mind was the pain... so much pain.

John's arm hurt like the devil was sticking it with a hot poker but there were too many others in worse shape and the ship needed to keep going or it was going be like sliding off a greased log. He knew the bridge would probably be screaming for warp but it was just not going to happen for now.

"Heya doc," he called. "If'n ya get the time, I can do a bit better job with two arms than one."

Before leaving Donald's side, Lake retrieved a small circular monitoring device and affixed it to his patient's chest. As stable as Donald seemed now, Lake knew that could change drastically in a heartbeat. At the same time, Lake knew he was the only medic on hand. If Donald's vital signs changed appreciably, the monitor would set off an alarm on Lake's tricorder. "I'll be right back," Lake promised Donald. Tilting his head to look in John Hollenday's direction, Lake asked wryly, "Does that mean I can't amputate it?"

"I ain't going anywhere." Donald called out as Lake left his side.

John gave a sour expression. "Do you want to get warp back on line?" he asked and then apologized. "Sorry, doc, just hurts."

"Swear at me all you like," Lake offered, and he offered a thin smile. Hauling the medikit's strap over his shoulder, Lake rose to his knees and then to his feet. Striding across the compartment, Lake closed the distance between himself and the console where John Hollenday was still working. "Just tell me where it hurts," Lake said, sweeping his tricorder in John's direction as he approached.

"Left arm doc," John replied.

"Hm," Lake intonated and he followed it with a, "Yeah." His intent gaze had shifted to the display of the display of the tricorder. At a time like this, he trusted the prompts and diagnostic assumptions being offered up by the tricorder. Lake checked the readings one more time, and then he said, "Yeah, it's dislocated." Lake folded the tricorder into the holster on his hip, and then he started digging into his medikit for a device that was mostly thick straps, the size of seatbelts.

Looking John in the eyes, Lake asked him, "Would you prefer to go to Sickbay and do this right, or do you want to do this here?" Somehow, Lake suspected he could predict the answer.

"Best we get 'er done here. I have not gotten the screaming call from the bridge yet, but it is only goin' to be a matter of seconds before we get 'More power!! We need more power!!" John did his best imitation of Kohl's command voice but it came out with a Earth style Southern accent.

Nodding in agreement, Lake remarked, "You won't have nerve damage. I can promise you that much. This would be cleaner with a biobed, but you won't have nerve damage." Lake wrapped the osteotractor straps around John's shoulder and torso and he tightened them in place. "I'll get to that fracture in a minute," Lake said, as he synced the device's controls to his medical tricorder. For a moment, Lake spared a glance at Donald's vital signs through the monitor, and then he hit the activation toggle for John's osteotractor. "But let's get that shoulder in place," Lake said; "This might feel a little funny... Don't bite your tongue!"

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

PO3 John Hollenday
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Warraquim]

CN Draia Thero
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC ir-Llantrisant]

CDR Andreus Kohl
Commanding Officer
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC ir-Llantrisant]

CPO Kala Gorvel
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Wyatt]

LT Lake ir-Llantrisant
Counselor
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC ir-Llantrisant]

PO2 Donald Andrews
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

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