Concussed
Posted on 08 Oct 2022 @ 8:02pm by Lieutenant Callisi Veera & Lieutenant Amelia Warner
1,855 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
A New Frontier
Location: Primary Medical
"You two, get the damage under control, someone tell Tailborn what happened here, I'm on her." the crewhand didn't even pause to realize what he had said. "Computer, emergency transport to medical!" and the two of them shimmered out of existence.
They reappeared in medical, Callisi on a previously vacant biobed and the crewhand ensign at her side. "Medic!" he called, more out of habit than anything else, as no doubt the doctor on call was notified of the emergency broadcast system. Callisi, on the other hand, was far less vocal. She was breathing, the rise and fall of her chest said that much, and she was awake. Her one eye was open, though droopy. "No no no, you stay awake." the ensign turned to the rabbitess, and called to her to keep her with him. "No no, you stay here." and her eye focused somewhere near him, and she gave a weak nod, though winced as she did. A mile north from her singular eye, there was a small marking of red in the inside of her ears.
Amelia had been alerted to the incoming emergency transport, although the system could only do so much to tell her about what was going on. She hurried out of her office, grabbing a triage med-kit on the way that would provide certain basics without needing the replicator. Her tricorder was in the pocket of her lab-coat, and she pulled it out right as she set the case down next to the bio-bed with her patient. "What happened?" she asked the man beside Veera, even as she started up her scans.
"Fire broke out in the fighter chassis that Ensign Kat was installed in. She rushed up to contain the fire before it got out of control." he started, staying out of Amelia's way. "Fire must have reached the backup energy storage, popped it once the temperature got too high. The blast was contained but it really didn't have many directions to go. Popped an access hatch, and blew out the cockpit where Veera was working against the fire."
Callisi was, for lack of a better term, intact. Her bones were durable, above the durability of human bones due to a rather interesting crystalline structure to the calcium. Stronger, it seemed, until it broke. Scans would show stress points across most of her ribcage, which presumably took the brunt of the blast. Sprains across her shoulders and hip to thigh connections, and muscle damage conducive to the type of event she endured. No breaks, but only just barely. Her breastbone had signs of microfatigue in the structure, but it seemed that landing on her back and skidding fifteen feet saved her ribs from breaking. She was breathing, her eye open but her glance distant. The deckhand with her would tap her gently every now and then to make sure she didn't fall asleep.
"She was thrown away from the craft and landed some ways away. That's when Jacobe called the emergency and had me beam her here." the deckhand recounted. "We saw some blood in her ears, but not a lot of external bleeding. We didn't move her from the point of landing, the only way she's been moved or positioned is getting her here." he went through the basics of trauma assessment.
Readings immediately pinged from the tricorder, the auditory alerts making it sound like it was composing a song rather than conducting a medical exam. The Ts'usugi people weren't biologically the same as humans--the most prolific members of Starfleet--but there were enough similarities for Amelia to recognize several things right off before the more nuanced explanations of the device and her study of the chief of operations.
"You did well," she told the deckhand, though with only the briefest of looks up and the most sparing of smiles.
The bones were damaged, but not nearly as bad as they could have been in the circumstances. The bigger concern was the information streaming in from Veera's head--comparative to a grade two concussion flirting with the edge of grade three. Slight swelling of the brain at the point of an impact and clear effect on the auditory nerves. She put the tricorder down and grabbed a hypospray from the bag, pressing it to the rabittess's neck to address the brain issues first--stop the swelling and prevent any bleeds.
"You can return to the flight deck," she told the deckhand with a nod once Amelia recognized that he was still there. "Thank you," she added with a fleeting smile as a nurse hurried over with a cart covered in devices and vials of medication.
With the handoff complete, the deckhand gave a nod, "Ma'am" and made his way out with haste. Not out of fear of the department but there was probably a clean up and work to be done back in the cargo bay. Leaving Callisi in the doctor's good hands.
As for Callisi herself, the beginning of treatment brought a look of relief to her features, even if it was too soon to really feel the effects. The sheer act of being in a safe place seemed to relieve her a touch. Her voice was raspy, shaken, less of a tone and more of a whisper. "Hurts." she started. "Neck." she took a breath before each word, "Back." another breath, "Jaw."
"Eye." a pause, "Bad one."
"We will need to make some adjustments to your prosthetic," Amelia confirmed, her tone gentle in a way that only doctors can achieve while speaking in formal words. "However, I want to make sure that your brain and spine are healthy first. I'm next going to give you something for the pain, however." She watched the lieutenant's face while holding out her hand, the nurse putting a vial of a strong painkiller into the doctor's hand. Amelia ejected the used one from the hypospray and deftly slid in the next one, administering the next bit of treatment in what was going to be a long line of them. "The pain should ease in just a few moments."
"Agree." she said softly, not wanting to nod. Or not capable at the moment. "Consent." another soft whisper, vocalizing what she couldn't emote. Callisi's face had the markings and damage of someone who had essentially stared into a detonation first hand, and lived to tell about it. "Ringing." she looked up, towards her ears.
That certainly wouldn't be a surprise, the doctor thought soberly. "One or both ears, Lieutenant?" she asked, bringing out the tricorder again to scan both ears with a secondary scan.
Callisi was quiet for a moment, as though trying to figure out the actual answer to the question. "Both." she answered after a moment or two of silence. By now the pain was gone, a bit of peace in her current situation. "Both." she affirmed. She tried to look around the medical bay without having to move her head, then when she saw all she could she turned her glance towards the doctor. A little redness to her living eye, her prosthetic still hidden under the simple eyepatch, "Empty." she said softly, then a small smile graced her features. "Good."
"Just. Me."
"I'll give you something for the ringing," Amelia said, somewhat uncertain as to why empty was good but now wasn't the time to ask and clarify. She grabbed another vial and pressed the hypospray again. "Let me know when the ringing lessens, Lieutenant. Try to focus on that." She gestured for the nurse to wheel over a larger device that would set into the biobed for a more in depth neuro-scan.
The rabbitess watched in silence as the doctor went to work. About thirty seconds after the hypospray was administered she spoke again, "Better. Ringing is less." She confided, her confidence in having enough breath to talk was rising. Pain killer were doing their thing, but still there was plenty of damage. The prosthetic needed adjustment and attention but that might be a joint medical / engineering issue. The rest was the theater of Amelia.
The doctor maneuvered the device over the lieutenant's head and keyed in the sequence. "Are you able to tell me more about what happened?" she asked. While some knowledge of the origin event was useful, Amelia was mainly asking because having Veera speaking and her brain being active would be more useful for the scan.
"Don't know how it started." Callisi started, feeling better enough for longer sentences. "Fire in fighter unit four." that was Kat's fighter. Why not just call it Kat's fighter, though? "Heat and smoke inside. Cargo bay suppression, water. Didn't stop it. I went in, manual suppressor. Found the fire behind the core. Started to fight it. Something popped. Maybe a battery." she paused, "Woke up on the floor." Callisi concluded her recap of the events. "No one else here. No one else hurt. Good."
"It looks like you managed to spare others a similar fate by taking the brunt of it," Amelia agreed with a faint, mirthless smile while she watched the neurological data coming across the screen. "It looks like you've bruised your brain, but there's no bleeding. That's good." She turned to the orderly for a moment and spoke in a low voice, "Call in an engineer. We will need their assistance with her eye." The young Bajoran man nodded and hurried off to make the call while the doctor came back to Veera. "You're going to have to stay here as our guest for a bit, though. We'll need to keep scans going to make sure no bleeds begin. The brain can be rather particular that way, and it seems true across many species."
"I'll be as good a guest as I can." she said, possibly in humor considering. Knowing that no one else was hurt did ease her soul, even if it didn't do much to ease the pain. Medical science handled that on its own. "No bleeding, that's good." she affirmed. She wasn't fully certain what most of the medical terms being thrown at her meant, but she knew from the Doctor's demeanor that things could have been a lot worse. "Thank you." she managed. "Should I... take off the patch?" she offered, knowing full well the doctor could just as easy, if not easier.
"That can wait until the engineer gets here," Amelia said. "For now, try to rest a little. We'll treat some of your other physical injuries and monitor your brain in the meantime. How are you feeling now? Is there still pain anywhere?"
"It's dull. An ache more than a.. a pain." the rabbitess replied, "Not really pain, just, sore. Better than it was. Still feel a bit, I don't know how to say it." she thought for a minute. "Light headed? Not dizzy, but just... off balance."
Amelia listened and nodded. "That feeling will probably hold for a bit, but it's normal. For now, just rest until we can fix your eye."
She gave a nod, "Thank you doctor." and her solitary eye closed. Rest came quick for the rabbitess, and soon her breathing was a steady rhythm.