Field Hospital - Meatball Surgery

Posted on Tue Nov 20th, 2018 @ 7:22am by

Mission: Season 2: Episode 3: Determination is not always a good thing
Location: Cortic
569 words - 1.1 OF Standard Post Measure

"Ah!" Estelle exclaimed when blood squirted right in her eye. "Some help over here!" The patient's aorta nicked, at an unfortunate angle, and now she was squirting blood straight out of her chest. Telok, the doctor a table over rushed to help, leaving his less severely injured patients in the hands of the nurse. Together, Estelle operating by feel and her colleague by sight, they plugged the hole and laid an autosuture over it.

"We need to clear this interference", Telok said, looking at the sensor data on Estelle's monitor. "Our equipment is not so out of date that this should not appear clearly marked."

"I assure you, it did not", Estelle said, on her way to wash out her eye and change into fresh scrubs, while her patient was given some fresh blood. She assumed he was being polite about rebuking her, but he was factually correct. Estelle had to be more careful, not trust in the instruments as much as she was used to.

Two minutes later, Estelle was back at her table. "Blood pressure is increasing", the nurse told her.

"I'll check for any more bleeding", Estelle said. The last thing this girl needed was internal haemorrhage in post-op. Estelle stuck her hand into the chest cavity and manually tested the integrity of the major blood vessels around the heart, but they all held and the movement produced no unexplained oozings of blood. Estelle was satisfied and started closing up.

She did not bother with mending the ribs, Estelle only put them back in position, resting against the pleura. Julia could mend them in post-op, where by now the workload was greater than in triage, without the need to open her up again. "Joe, tell post-op to take care of the ribs on this one."

Cases got more severe as time progressed, not less so, despite the efforts of triage. This was because rescue workers cleared away more rubble and, beneath it, found survivors with more serious injuries. Without sensor interference, they could beam the survivors out without the need for digging them out by hand. Alas, that was not to be. Not for a while, Estelle figured.

"Suction", she ordered. She had a man on the table with an open belly wound, caused by falling debris which had pinned him to the ground. It was a messy affair. Despite the use of laser scalpels, the small intestine was perforated in several places and was leaking into his abdominal cavity. He was going to fight off a nasty infection later, no matter how well Estelle could patch him back together.

"We're shortening his intestine, here and here", she said, pointing at the display on the surgical frame, informing the junior colleague assisting her what she was planning to do.

"We can fix it", he told her.

"We haven't got the time", Estelle said. "Cut out the damaged parts, sew the ends back together and leave the rest for some other time." She smirked through her surgical mask. "It's not pretty, I know."

They worked to clean his bowels, the most difficult part of the operation, as they had to be careful not to miss anything that was bleeding, or otherwise leaking. Thankfully, Estelle's colonial surgical nurse was experienced with the local hardware, something Estelle hadn't seen used since her days in medical school, and was able to guide the servos expertly for both suction and suturing.