JDL | CMDR Marcus Carrol M.D. & LTCMDR Candice Leshini P.A. | "Flesh and Bone" (Part One)

Posted on 241708.07 @ 12:44am by Fleet Admiral Blyx Red & Commander Marcus Carrol M.D.

Mission: Hush [BQ Plot]
Location: Medical | Cold Station Theta

The alarms sounded and Marcus didn't wait to be paged. He knew the sound of the medical alert and it would forever be etched into his mind. Events of the not so distant past still haunted his dreams. Hundreds of wounded pouring into the medical decks during the aftermath of the Vindicator E's destruction. He was prepped and ready in under two minutes and stepped into the operating room as the injured was beamed directly onto the table and accompanied by two armed guards.

"What is the meaning of this?" Marcus barked at the two men carrying phaser rifles which were pointing directly at him. He disregarded the two and stepped up to the patient who wasn't struggling or making any attempt to do anything but stare blankly into the abyss of death. His eyes quickly took in the gash running across her abdomen and lower chest. He could see bits of the ninth and eighth ribs through the jaggedly torn flesh as well as bits of blood soaked cloth packing the wound. He tapped his communicator and said, "Carrol to all available surgical staff. Report to theater seven. Code Blue Alpha." This would alert the staff, get him all but instant support, and lock down this sector of medical allowing only cleared staff members to access the surgical theater. "Stand back!" He yelled at the guards as he nearly knocked one over getting to his tray of surgical instruments.

Seconds later a blonde haired woman bustled in, her body covered in scrubs. "Oh by thunder and Jesus, it's the Admiral." She gasped as she looked at the lifeless body laying under the garish lights of the surgery suite. Her vitals were barely registering, her O2 saturation some of the worst she'd ever seen, but Candy knew they had to work a miracle. Somehow. Crossing herself in prayer, she stepped to Carrol's side and ushered away the plethora of guards that had swarmed in with the Admiral, "Listen. We need room to work. You either get back or you kill her by smothering us!" She exclaimed, wasting no time in reaching to run an IV line. Sometimes old medicine was the best medicine, and they needed to start transfusing blood to try and keep her organs going or else they were going to lose her. "God damn!" She cursed, fighting with the vein she'd managed to stick. They were all nearly collapsed. But she got it. She got blood in the syringe and quickly washed it back out with saline before hooking up a bag. "I got it, Doctor!" She exclaimed before moving down the woman's body to start removing bits and pieces of blood soaked cloth, clearing the way for Carroll to work.

Marcus switched on the surgical support frame's plethora of monitors and the steri-field. He quickly set the frame's auto anesthetic and did not wait to watch the patient drift out. He was receiving scans of internal damage almost at once. "She is hemorrhaging from the internal thoracic artery and there is a small bleed from the aorta as well. If we can stop those bleeds we can worry about the tissue and bone damage later." Quickly, Marcus grabbed the proto-phaser and the cellular micro-suture device as well as a dermal-regenerator. "Nurse, grab the retractors we are going to have to get her opened up so I can stop the bleeding. Be careful of the lower right ribs three of them are shattered." Marcus lowered the temperature generated by the surgical frame to induce hypothermia, slowing the heart and the bleeding. "Time is of the essence here, get that chest open!"

As the scans completed on the Admiral's body, something caught Marcus' attention. In the lower section of her abdomen, there was a small flutter that drew his eye. He took only a second to realize what it was and his heart sank. The embryo couldn't be more than a few days to a week old based on its size. He knew at this point the priority was its mother and kept the discovery to himself. He was interrupted by the harried voice of the nurse.

"I'm on it, I'm on it..." Candy muttered more to herself than to him as she expertly worked at opening the Admiral up. Occasionally her eyes left her work to catch the woman's biorhythms, her breathing was mechanically induced at this point and offered no clue to the nature of her well-being. Normally she'd have found it so wrong to spoil skin as fine and fair as the Admiral's, but blood stained and shattered as it was, she had no qualm with it. Life hung in the balance. "Her ribs are useless." She announced as the injury came into view. She could see the breaks and the way they lacerated the flesh around them as she continued to cut, open, and set things into place to give Carrol a clean area to work in. "There!" She pointed, catching the way blood lurched from a wound, pulsing with the woman's fading heart beat and pooling into the cavity around it.

Taking a set of forceps in one hand and the micro-sutures in the other, Marcus set to work. "Magnification," he said to the system as he carefully guided the forceps to catch the top of the severed internal thoracic artery. He clamped it in place and then grabbed another set of forceps, repeating the process for the lower section of artery. He then took a small straw-like self-dissolving stent from a drawer in the cabinet and fed the large artery over it a centimeter at a time until it joined the two halves. "Computer, inflate the stent." Marcus watched on the monitor as the mesh straw inflated. Once it reached its full size he began suturing the two halves of the artery back together. Two minutes later he was finished and had switched to the proto-phaser to seal the vital tube completely.

Relief flooded Candy, even adding heat to her adrenaline cooled hands as she worked along side Carrol bring the woman back from the brink of death. Death would have other ideas. Just when the nurse began to relax, the blood chilling sound of a heart ceasing to beat flooded the room with its piercing squeal. Her eyes darted to the monitors, watching the flat line run where there should have been crests and falls of an actual bio-rhythm. "DOCTOR! WE'RE LOSING HER!" She yelled, racing to find a hypospray of adrenaline, knowing that order would be what came next. She couldn't bring herself to peek at the Admiral, to know that she was essentially laying there dead with all the hopes of taming the Quadrant laying there right beside her.

"Clear!" Marcus yelled out as he dropped the pads of the defibrillator module onto the Admiral's chest. "1000 volts. Activate." Marcus looked at the monitor showing her cardiac rhythm. As the surgical frame buzzed with electricity, the Admiral's body tensed momentarily then relaxed. The monitor peaked and then three more irregular pulses led back down to a flat line. "Again," Marcus said and again the frame buzzed the body tensed and the monitor peaked and then fell flat.

Marcus quickly through the frame aside and pulled out two metal disc shaped paddles on insulated handles. Carefully he guided them into the open chest cavity until they were touching the Admiral's heart. He connected the electrodes on the other end to the framework and said, "Clear. Set voltage to 1400. Activate."

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To be continued...

Commander Marcus Carrol M.D. (NPC APB Neil)
Chief of Surgery
Cold Station Theta

Lieutenant Commander Candice Leshini P.A. (NPC APB Bandit)
Surgical Assistant
Cold Station Theta