A Day In The Life

Posted on Mon Sep 18th, 2023 @ 9:15am by Captain Samuel Woolheater & Lieutenant J'airesh Mora-Heath

Mission: Season 6: Episode 3: Far From Home
Location: USS ELYSIUM - Sickbay
Timeline: Currently
2228 words - 4.5 OF Standard Post Measure

[ON:]

Woolheater hobbled into the medical bay. He was helping get a corridor cleared and a sharp fragment of transparent aluminum sliced open his uniform and the interior side of his right thigh. So much so that one could see the red muscle and a nice clean cut opening. It was bleeding but no arteries were cut. Still, he hobbled along to sickbay and entered the medical bay.

It was busy. So he wasn't the only klutz today. Sam had to sit down.

A nurse was trying to help an elderly female patient with dementia. The male nurse asked her what year it is. She said, "Oh, my, no, that's far too personal to discuss in polite company. A nice young lady like you shouldn't be concerned with such things."

The nurse looked at her. "Ma'am, I'm no lady" he said. She responded, "Well, however you earn a living its no business of mine." He shook his head and took her down the corridor guiding her. Sam thought to himself, ~If she didn't notice the beard, then she wasn't going to understand an explanation either~.

He waited, he looked at the wound and thought it was pretty cool seeing the muscle beneath tense and relax a few times.

“Here,” says one of the admitting nurses, handing a male patient a urine specimen container. “The bathroom’s over there.”

She looked over at Sam and said, "I'll be right with you sir."

Sam nodded his head. A few minutes later, the previous patient comes out of the bathroom.

“Thanks,” he says, returning the empty container. “But there was a toilet in there, so I didn’t need this after all.”

Sam watched the nurse and the look on her face was priceless. "Ugh!" she said. "Then let me reschedule you...come here!" she said irritated.

Sam just waited. He made himself a kind of tournequit. He used a handful of the "How Are We Doing?" review cards in the lobby as a kind of 'bandage'. He waited. From down one of the treatment wards he heard a kid, a teenager probably, moaning loudly.

A nurse came out and said to his parents, "We had to replicate a baseline Ketamine derivative. Your son...will be a little different. You can see him now." A few minutes later, a boy of about eleven years walks out assisted by his parents. As he was coming around he started with typical stream of consciousness babbling and then he seemed to snap awake to yelled for all to hear "I'm fuckin' LIIIIIT! I'm gonna do so many drugs when I get older".

Sam just smiled and chuckled to himself and the kid was led out still babbling like a pro. A nurse came by and took Sam by the arm and helped him down the corridor and onto a biobed. "Doctor will be right with you" and then he left.

Sam looked around the room. Then he noticed that his leg felt cold and prickly.

Mora-Heath finished with the patient she had been helping and had just discharged her. Thankfully it hadn't been too serious so it was a quick sign off and this freed J'air to move on to the next most urgent patient.

Emerging from the cubicle, she set the Biobed to self disinfect and re-set its controls to baseline etc. Leaving it to complete that, safe in the knowledge that it wasn't programmed to do anything that wasn't routine enough to warrant watching over it, she returned to the Main Desk and perused the PaDDs there.

The receptionist pointed out Captain Woolheater as next on the Triage List and taking up his PaDD with a brief thank you to the helpful receptionist, J'air cast an eye over the rest of the Triage list just to be certain and with one glance, concurred that Sam was the most needy patient at this time.

J'air approached Sam calmly but quickly, peering at his notes as she approached, the situation did seem fairly urgent and she wanted to get his care started.

"Captain, it's good to see you again.... personally of course, not that I'm happy for your misfortune with whatever that sharp piece of metal is doing to your leg." She applied plastiweb gloves that sprayed out of a hypospray, once appropriately loaded, and took a closer look at the wound without actually touching it yet.

Sam helped unwrap it. The tournequet came loose and the comment cards from the waiting room were bloody. He apologized, "Sorry. I was leaking."

"How did this happen, Sir?" she asked, frowning as she touched the leg softly slightly above the wound.

"Hey there. It's nice to see you again too. Thank you. I was working on deck twenty-three. And I wasn't paying attention. I moved a big ass piece of paneling out of the way and a piece of the unit fell off and got me on the way down. Walking here probably didn't help. You guys are pretty busy today huh? More injuries coming back to the ship than leaving it?"

"It does seem like that sometimes" J'air smiled broadly and then offered a seat on the end of the biobed to the injured Marine Captain. She lowered it slightly to allow him to sit without having to heave himself up and risk further harm, and once he was settled she asked:

"How much pain, on a scale of 0-10, 0 being none?" she asked and frowned as she looked at the torn uniform he was wearing and which was stopping her from taking a thorough look at his injuries. "Just one site, or multiple? If it was a whole unit, you're lucky not to have serious crush damage. Where did it land on you exactly? The main point of impact? Or were there more than one?" J'air was trying to get the full picture here and started on the pain scale to see how bad Woolheater was getting, not to mention monitoring if it was getting worse, by having a start measure to compare it with later.

Sam's eyebrows lifted as he tried to answer her questions in order, "Uh...like...five...I think? Pretty cool seeing under the wrapper though. It's just this one cut. Got me pretty good. It didn't land on me like to crush me? It...uh....", here he used his hands to illustrate, "...I was reaching to make sure the panel didn't fall. One of the Engineers made a joke that if we couldn't get this area fixed there would be no ice cream tonight. Which was just so odd to say and I had to laugh. If it were just ice cream...if only it were.

Anyway, The panel moves and I jump back and I let slide this piece. I see it coming at me and I can see it's razor sharp and the only thing I can do is just back off. But, my ass wasn't fast enough and...there it is." Sam saw her kind of delicately peering around the torn uniform and he knew that the tricorder could tell her everything she wanted to know. Even so, He ripped open the torn pant leg wider to get it out of the way.

Exposed was his muscled thigh. Inside, right thigh, the spot between the large front muscle and the start of the back of the thigh muscle. "Sorry, I'm bleeding all over." he said. "Can you hand me that gauze...fuzzy...crap? I'll wipe it up. You guys have enough on your hands today ay?"

"There's no need for you to do the wiping up, Captain, you ARE the patient after all and you could end up bleeding more if you do something strenuous like bending and reaching around to clear up" J'air reassured him.

The medcorder told her how deep this cut was and it was also pretty apparent from a visual assessment too.

J'air began with some analgesic, checking first if he had any allergies and choosing something with a modern version of an anti inflammatory as well as a pain killer. She loaded the Hypospray with the correct dose and let it hiss into a vein in the side of his neck.

"Right, that's step one" she explained. "Now lets give the biobed a job to do with its big scanner - could you please try to carefully sit back onto the bed with your legs in front of you?" She adjusted the bed to sit as low as was needed to allow him to swivel round and lay his leg out in front of him without having to lift it too much. Once in place, she raised the bed again, with him on board and she put a couple of pillow pads behind his back and head so he could try to relax the leg as best as possible.

The hiss of the medicine was a relief. The pain of the cut vanished and he instantly felt calmer and more relaxed. He did as she suggested and tried to sit back, "You know...what was I thinking? I could have just got to the medical bay in Marine Country and gotten a dermal regenerator. I'm sorry to have bothered you doc. Maybe, I just wanted to see you again?"

"Awww" J'air grinned but also blushed at the same time. "You're more than welcome here, you don't have to go to the Marine Medical Corps, we're just as good here and we don't tell your senior officers what you came here for. We're super confidential." she told him, still manipulating the biobed LCARS and recording the results she was getting to the tests she was running through.

"But you're not wasting my time and a dermal regenerator is the last layer of the rebuilding I'll be putting onto and into your damaged leg today. It really is deeply sliced and needs some major repair work if it's to knit back together as strongly as it needs to, not to mention quite a bit of careful top work to smoothe out the cells so it doesn't ruckle up and scar badly" she went on. "I'm seriously thinking about surgery"

Sam listened as she spoke, the medicine having more and more of a relaxing affect. "Surgery?" he spoke slowly as if with a southern drawl, "for this? Awwww c'mon...it..its....it just...damn!" he said under breath and realized that the medicine was having an effect.

"If you're seriously against it, then naturally I wouldn't.... but it would be the easiest, quickest and most effective fix and also it would scar less." She went on, careful to speak a little slowly herself in response to his own slowing down.

"No...no...you're the medical professional. This isn't going to take me off duty right?" he asked her. "I can't go off duty when there is so much to do. The guilt would be worse than the scar."

"Well, perhaps 24hrs to recoup properly but if you want to do some desk duties or light....with no strain on the leg, nor weight etc..... but then again, it's very deep and no matter how tightly we can get the opening of the wound to seal, it would be very possible - if not even likely - that it will continue to bleed beneath that seal.

Even if you're lucky and that doesn't happen, we could still be looking to keep you off that leg for days, perhaps weeks if it refuses to settle or worse case scenario, if it takes any infection at any level. The surgical option would be your quickest way back to rights again and the least amount of risk or sick leave on offer. I'm sorry." she explained, fully understanding his frustration and angst about a prolonged recovery time.

Sam's eyebrows lifted as he looked at her. She was cute when she got all concerned like. She was easy on the eyes as they say. He lifted his hands, "Welp. Then surgery it is. If that's what you recommend than that's what we'll do. You sure that I won't be in the way? Seems like you're kinda short on beds?" He asked as he stole another look at her as she busied herself in a screen.

"Beds can be opened in the Secondary Sickbay if we need them" J'Air reassured Sam almost absently as she worked on the system to book him in and get all the data in place for his procedure to be scheduled today.

"There, I think I have it all straight." she looked up and smiled at Sam. "Is 15:00 hours convenient Captain? Do I need to contact anyone in your Section to let them know you'll be here for a while. I'd like to keep you overnight if that's okay, just as a precaution and to monitor how you take the whole procedure physically? - I'm sorry, another barrage of questions. Take your time. Do you have any questions for me?" she sat down again, pulled up a stool to the side of the bed and took in a deep breath to let him take it all in at last.

He smiled back after a moment, "No questions. I'll just need to send on message to the Diplomatic Officer. Then, I'll be ready. Thank you doctor."

[OFF:]

Lieutenant J'airesh Mora-Heath
ACMO

&

Captain Samuel Woolheater
Scout/Sniper