Medical Emergency

Posted on Mon Nov 15th, 2021 @ 5:00am by Captain Calypso Skyie & Lieutenant Syrial J'naii & Lieutenant JG Konata Hiiragi

Mission: The Dexic Negotiations
Location: Main Sickbay

[ON]

[Sickbay]

The flashes of a Yellow Alert began to flash without warning in sickbay, one of the nurses jerking upright and bashing a knee as they were startled. They rubbed their knee as everyone present looked at each other for several seconds, then the whole ship seemed to rumble as above them and further towards the back a shuttle exploded.

Syrial looked up from their mirror, where they had been preparing for the reception. They took in a breath. This came as no surprise to them. The good thing about always expecting the worse was that usually things turned out better than you thought. But sometimes they didn't.

This was one of those times. "All medical personnel to sickbay," The doctor called over the comms as they started jogging towards the turbolift to get to the sickbay.

Konata had just been putting the finishing touches on making sure sickbay sparkled for the visiting envoy to see when the call came in. Konata sighed that all her hard work had been effectively for nothing, as shortly Sickbay would be a giant mess again, and went to put the cleaning materials away.

It was only a couple minutes before the first one came in, a pair of security officers carrying a stretcher between them. On it, unconscious to the world, was a blonde woman in a red dress uniform, "It's the Captain!" The lead man got out through gasped breathes, "We think she's the worst off but you're gonna be busy, we've got more incoming fast!"

The Captain. Now that was unfortunate. Syrial looked at the two security officers. "Here," the doctor motioned towards a prepared biobed. The scans were already running, despite not having a patient on it yet. "Put her right here. What happened? How many more are coming" Syrial spoke even as they turned their attention to the display, trying to get a read of her vitals before deciding what to do. It didn't take a screen to tell Syrial some of what was going on though; with the blood and froth at her mouth, maybe some trauma to her lungs, and with all those gunshot wounds, blood loss was always a concern. The scans only seemed to confirm that. Hopefully not all the patients were this bad.

"Lieutenant, Ensign," Syrial called towards the other doctors, without even really looking up to see if they were there. "Get me the status of the other patients. If any of them are critical, Ensign, pick one and get them stabilized." As far as Syrial knew, the Ensign was not particularly experienced with directing nurses and triage, but they should be able and perhaps comfortable with taking care of a patient. Might as well use people to their advantages. As for Konata... well, Syrial wasn't quite sure how much they could rely on their other doctor, but considering she had been at some point promoted, she probably knew what she was doing.

"Lieutenant, what do you want me to do?" Konata piped up.

"We don't know how many more are coming in," Syrial responded. "Work with the nurses, see who needs a doctor's attention now."

"Nurse Vick," they turned to the closest nurse - a tall, red-haired man. “Start closing that leg wound. Then grab a bag of the Betazoid blood.” The shoulder wound would be more difficult, with removing that bullet and all – imagine that, an actual bullet showing up in the scans! Almost like Rene’s little misadventure was predictive. Removing it now would likely cause it to bleed even worse, which was the last thing the woman needed. But the leg wound was something that simple flesh regeneration could likely handle. Syrial was going to focus on this chest wound. The doctor started getting the woman on oxygen as they decided on the best way to go about stopping the bleeding and reflating the lung.

~Captain, what the hell happened?~ Konata sent out a telepathic message not expecting it to be answered, as she was busy treating the Dexicians with gunshot wounds that had been brought in while Syrial was focused on the Captain.

Nurse Vick pointed at Nurse Meyer and then towards where the extra blood was kept, even as she reached to the ready kit and pulled a tricorder and regenerator. Efficient as always, she made sure to make a deep scan of the wound to make sure nothing was abnormal, then stopped, “Doctor, I’ve got a damaged femoral artery here, it looks like the bullet nicked the wall, but not enough to sever it.”

Simultaneously, having gotten the blood, Nurse Meyer set it up on the rack and began to set up an IV for the uninsured right arm, when one of the monitors started flashing red, “Doctor, the patient’s blood pressure is dropping… Sixty over forty and dropping fast.”

"Well get that transfusion going! And Vick - fix up that artery before you mess with the tissue around it." Syrial grabbed the deep tissue regenerator and started doing a light layer over the woman's torso, not holding the regenerator there long enough for much tissue to be regenerated but enough to probably close any veins and capillaries on the corner of the liver and the damaged lung. That section was likely the major cause of the blood loss. It was a delicate process, though, with focus required to keep the regeneration at the right depth and Syrial heard themselves swear at least once in J'naii, a word that would be unintelligible to the rest as their translator was not set to pick up that language.

"Yes, ma'am." Vick confirmed, going in with a tissue regenerator and very carefully reinforcing the damaged femoral artery before beginning the regeneration of the leg tissue.

With several nurses tending to the Dexicians with minor gunshot wounds, Konata turned her attention to the next Dexician as he was being brought in. This one had multiple gunshot wounds, and it was evident that they were in a bad spot.

"Set this one on an operating table." Konata instructed the two officers carrying the Dexician in. "Nurse Johnson, prepare a Dexician blood transfusion." She instructed a passing nurse. "Nurse Miyafuji, prepare to operate."

Konata washed her hands from the last patient and put on some fresh scrubs before taking a tricorder scan of the patient:

"Multiple bullets still lodged inside..." She muttered. "Well, let's start with the bullets that won't make him bleed as much when we remove them. Miyafuji, be ready to start sewing the wounds closed once we get the bullets out."

"Right..." Miyafuji responded.

Syrial glanced up just long enough to see that the others were occupied before turning back towards their Captain. With the transfusion started and the bleeding mostly stopped in the leg and mid torso, they would work on trying to repair the lung. First they set upon repairing the puncture on the lung tissue itelf, and some of the ribs, making sure there were no bone fragments or sharp edges that would affect the healing and reflation process. It wasn't a full reconstruction of them; Syrial could work on that later when they tried to repair the liver. Only when the ribs were more or less back in place did Syrial start pumping the air and blood out of the chest cavity.

Vick finished the final repair on the leg and double checked with a scan, no problems there anymore. She took two steps up to opposite the open chest from Syrial, "Looks like good work there, Doctor." She said quietly, "It's been... Twenty minutes since she was brought in and she's still ticking. How can I help up here?" She wouldn't put any hands into the surgical field until she knew, too many hands could make for mistakes.

"Once I get this lung finished and move on to her shoulder, I want you to start the actual repair of her ribs, and the regeneration of that portion of her liver if you get to it." Repairing broken bones was a process that nurses had to quite often, though usually for things like holodeck accidents rather than physical gunshots or whatever Calypso had gotten herself into here. With the chest cavity drained of blood and loose air, the doctor checked to see if the lung was starting to inflate properly.

The lung was indeed inflating properly, no new blood aspirating as the Captain breathed very shallowly. "Her blood pressure is coming up, Doctor." Meyer said with a slight smile, "It's at ninety over sixty-four and holding steady." She watched as Vick began to arrange the bone fragments on the tray, making sure that there was nothing missed, "Did you want me to use original parts, or do a full bone regrowth?" Vick asked.

"I would do a full regrowth. We don't know what those bullets might have left behind in there." A full regrowth might take longer, but their Captain was going to be recovering for some time anyway. Now Syrial took a deep breath and moved on to her shoulder. The doctor pulled out a more precise scanner to see how precarious the damage was around the nerve. As much as Syrial would have liked to just pull the bullet out and start working on that shoulder, they didn't want to injure the nerve if they could avoid it.

"I'll get that started after we stabilize her fully." Vick confirmed, putting the fragments into a container, "For now, an artificial placeholder. Swapping them out should be a simple procedure."

On the scanner, the bullet was in fragments, having impacted the scapula and shattered it along with itself. the nerve itself wasn't severed, but several of the bone and bullet fragments would be difficult to extricate without damaging it. The tissue damage was also severe, with the axial vein being the primary source of bleeding, but few people bled out from the veins, usually the arteries. Meyer looked at the damage and whistled softly, "That looks real ugly, Doctor..."

"I've dealt with worse," Syrial responded. That was most definitely true, though it didn't imply that they had successfully dealt with worse. They had, though not beautifully. Syrial was no surgeon. They weren't about to try freehanding this and pulling out the bullet fragments. But they weren't a fresh doctor, and they had been around emergencies in Starfleet for quite some time now. The doctor pulled out a regenerator to start healing the vein as much as they could, not yet handling the foreign bodies. "Get me the most precise scanner we have. I don't think we could safely pull those out without damaging the nerve." At least, not without a dedicated surgeon on board. "We're going to try getting a manual lock on the bullet and any detached bone, and transporting it out of the body." That would be tedious, but Syrial had done it before.

"I'll say I've never heard of that method before." Vick said, thinking over how it could be done, then nodded, moving away for one of the high detail, localized tricorders. Sure, she could adjust one of theirs to that level, but this would be faster. It would take some precision to scan the right spot, it was that sensitive to movement, but Vick was a pro at driving tricorders, "All right, Doctor... We'll have to be careful about any splinters, but perhaps if we get the big pieces out, we can go in to withdraw any of those."

"Let's get the bullet first. That should be easier than the bone; set the tricolor to filter for any metal." Syrial wasn't entirely sure what type of metal the bullet was, but on the initial scan it did, in fact, show up as metal. With the bone, Syrial would actually have to differentiate between what needed to be there or not. With the metal - assuming that Calypso didn't have some weird shoulder implant - Syrial could let the tricorder's filtering do the bulk of the work.

"Finding... Seventeen metal fragments of varying size..." Vick responded, mentally making a running tally of the information, "It looks like about nine grams of a composite metal." She turned the tricorder for a quick scan of the bullet from the chest wound, "Weights match exactly." Turned it back to the shoulder, "Beginning to tag the fragments for removal by transport."

"Thank you," Syrial spoke, before tapping their comm badge. "Transporter room - we are flagging seventeen metal pieces for transport out of sickbay. Please transport as soon as they are flagged." Syrial let out a breath after removing their hand from the badge. There was still so much that could go wrong. "Well, Captain," they looked down towards Calypso. "I must say, you have strong bones, to shatter a bullet." They frowned. If Calypso was not injured and unconscious, they would have patted her on the shoulder. Even thinking about it reminded Syrial just how fragile and helpless their Captain looked here on the table, especially compared to the Calypso they knew.

"Killian, go to the transporter room and retrieve those fragments." Vick demanded of the orderly that had just poked their head into the operating room, "Possibly frangible bullets..." She mentioned to Syrial, "Intended to break apart after hitting the target to do more damage. Hitting the bone would just make it worse, Doctor. I count seventeen fragments tagged." She turned the tricorder to the J'Naii for her confirmation.

"Seventeen... that sounds about right. We're good to transport now." The doctor turned to the side to grab the scanner again, updating the scans. If all went well, they should see a few fewer things that needed removed from Calypso's shoulder now. Perhaps the bone fragments would be in a less precarious position.

=^= "Energizing." =^= the transporter room announced, =^= "Transport complete." =^=

Vick looked over the doctor's elbow at the results. "Complete success, Doctor. It doesn't look like a lot of small fragments, getting the bullet bits out seems to have been the hard part of this one..." Indeed, the bone scan showed nine fragments, three of which were small and would probably just require to be removed while the other six could be pieced back together and repaired. Some structural reintegration and enhancement would be required, but pretty straightforward most likely.

"Good," Syrial responded as they began to get work repairing the shoulder. "A big thank you to modern technology."