The Floodwaters

Posted on 30 Sep 2023 @ 4:32pm by Lieutenant Commander Amelia Warner & Lieutenant Commander Derek Martin

1,231 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Miranda
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Just Prior to 'What A Headache'

Eight hours on a shift in sickbay, and Martin was ready to sleep. Ordinarily he'd take some time to unwind. He'd have a drink or maybe wander through the Lounge, but he instead decided to head straight back to his quarters. He could read. He enjoyed reading. The Prisoner of Zenda IV, or perhaps A Coffin for Demetrios. He enjoyed a good adventure novel in his spare time, which he had precious little of these days.

As with most of the plans of mice and men, however, his plan to read a book ended when his head hit the pillow and the PADD clunked against his chest and he didn't even really notice. He slept.

=/\= Sickbay to Lt. Commander Martin, =/\= came the comm signal over his badge. He grunted and snorted a little bit, mid-snore.

"Eh? Wha?" he muttered in a half-asleep stupor.

=/\= Sickbay to Lt. Commander Martin, =/\= the call came again. It was Nurse Hawkins, the charge nurse responsible for Sickbay between his shift and Amelia's. She was a capable diagnostician, and usually left him alone after getting people settled in. Unless there was a serious issue, she didn't bother him.

His half-asleep stupor began to fade, and the logical conclusion hit him in the face. It might have also been the headboard just above his bead as he woke up and accidentally whacked his head with a dull 'thud'. "Oooo!" he groaned.

Tapping his badge, he signaled in.

=/\= Lieutenant Commander Martin here. What's going on Hawkins? =/\= he asked with a small yawn as he rubbed his head and got out of bed. At least he'd fallen asleep in his uniform. It might be wrinkled, but oh well. Never trust a doctor without wrinkled clothes. It meant that they were getting far too much sleep, and far too few hours in working patients.

He thought to himself that he should write these little maxims down somewhere.

=/\= Sir, we're getting an influx of patients. I've already summoned Doctor Warner, but this is... =/\= Hawkins drifted off.

That snapped him out of it.

=/\= I'm on my way, Martin out.=/\= He tapped the comm badge to close the channel and left, heading to sickbay immediately. He walked in and stifled a yawn with his uniform sleeve.

"Doctor Warner? What do we have? I didn't hear any alarms blasting, what's going on?" he asked.

Amelia would have been glad to see the cavalry, if she thought even the cavalry could help at that moment. She looked at the CMO with clear exasperation, and she was suddenly glad that she didn't have the job anymore... "I don't know," she said, handing him three PADDs that she'd been carrying before she gestured around to seven people in various places. "Apparently, over the past couple of hours, people have started coming in. Everyone so far either has a headache or is nauseated, or both, yet no scan we have available seems able to point to a reason."

"Hours? What's going on?" he was curious. Sudden infections making their way through a ship weren't all that bizarre, and there were plenty of instances of 'station crud' that happened. A ship went to dock, people picked up a local bug, and then it made its way through. "Hours?" he muttered and looked over the PADDs one after another. The timestamps. People were recording symptoms in a broad wave but roughly within moments or hours of each other.

"It's like all these people got infected at once or something," he muttered to her as he set the PADDs aside on a nearby desk.

"Scans are negative, what about palliative care? Can we minimize the symptoms? Is this a bug of some kind?" Derek asked his fellow physician, courting her opinion.

She gestured him to follow her to one of the computer consoles with the larger screens. "So far, I can say that it's behaving like a virus, but the tests for all known viral agents are negative. I'm not seeing anything bacterial either, though." She tapped on the screen and pulled up the transmission vectors they'd been able to put together from registering patients as they came in. There seemed to be clusters in some cases. "We can pinpoint some areas where it's likely someone in the group became infected and passed it on, but there's no single source we've yet to figure out. It's like multiple patient zeros."

He walked with her to the screen.

"Then we must not have patient zero here. It must have come from somewhere else that infected a bunch of people all at once like some sort of gathering or like a computer networked to other computers that all downloaded the same infected file," Derek was thinking out loud and looked at Doctor Warner to see if his ideas made sense. He still felt a bit uneasy about coming in and taking over. It was never exactly an easy thing to do, so he did his best to solicit her opinion and listen to her. The last thing he wanted, in the middle of a medical crisis, was a personnel or a personal issue to arise.

Fortunately for them both, Doctor Warner was a professional. She knew how like in Starfleet went, so she did not hold him coming in as CMO against him. In fact, as she'd already thought once or twice, she was almost relieved it had happened this way now.

"That makes sense logically," she agreed, "but I do wonder..." She sighed, looking at the screen again. "Since we don't yet have clue one as to what this actually is, I'm not sure we can assume with any certainty that it behaves like a normal virus. We aren't even sure yet that it is a virus."

"I think you're right. We obviously have some sort of vector here though. Contact? Fluids? Not likely that. Aerosolized? Maybe. We can't just react. Doctor Warner, what was your medical specialty when you got out of the Academy?" Derek asked.

"It wasn't infectious diseases, I'm afraid," she said with a rueful smile. "I pursued general surgery and family medicine, though I took a minor in forensics." Her smile, so minor as it was, vanished there. "I really don't want to have to use that one."

"I didn't specialize in pathology or infectious diseases either. Surgery. Emergency medicine. Guess we'll just have to pool our resources. I may know a few doctors that can help though. Let's start gathering a timeline at least. Piece together when this all began, and let's keep a track of common symptoms so we can begin classifying this. Then we'll put it out to Starfleet and ask for assistance," he suggested.

Amelia nodded, already exhausted. "Yes, Doctor," she agreed. "I think I know an infectious specialist on one of the other ships in the convoy. I can reach out to them."

"Good. And we have to keep an eye on each other. Whatever you do, make sure that if I start behaving erratically, you pull the trigger on medical relief of duty, Doctor," Derek said sternly and looked right in her eyes. "I'm counting on you."

"Of course," she said somberly. "I trust you will do the same for me so I don't risk any of our patients because I've fallen ill."

"Agreed," Derek said soberly. "Let's just hope we can figure out what this is before it kills us."

 

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