by Lance Hartcort and Zanh Liis
90630.15
Concurrent with Not So Sweet Vindication
-=Sickbay, USS Serendipity=-
90630.15
Concurrent with Not So Sweet Vindication
-=Sickbay, USS Serendipity=-
Lance Hartcort looked at the readings on Wren Elton's biobed with a mixture of gratitude and dismay. How this had happened, he didn't know. How it was holding, he didn't really care. All he knew was that the woman who'd been mere breaths away from her last was now at least stable. That meant that damage could be repaired, that she could be healed.
That she could be saved.
He fired off a rapid series of orders to be carried out, medications to be administered and regeneration procedures to be employed to help her begin to recover. His capable staff swung into action around him, and he took a moment, just one moment, to lean back against the wall, rub his eyes, and feel, once again that he never ceased to be amazed by the strength of a person's will to live.
He heard heavy footsteps approaching and looked up. "What happened to him?" He asked, jerking his head in the direction of the man he was speaking of.
It was Dengar; the one man aboard ship Hartcort imagined should be feeling on top of the world at the moment and ready to leap up onto the nearest table and start singing showtunes to prove the point, looked anything but happy.0
He looked...extremely unwell.
"I'm not the doctor here." TC Blane grumbled, "But if you're asking my opinion, I'd say the man is in the midst of a complete mental breakdown. Job related."
"They weren't supposed to do that..." Dengar was mumbling softly, horror in his eyes. "They were supposed to listen. Save them all. It would have saved them all if they'd listened."
"Dengar!" Blane snapped, and the tone of his voice, which usually reached anyone without delay, still failed to reach Dengar, proving just how removed from the here and now he was. "Not a word. Captain's orders."
"What do you mean not a word?" Lance scanned Dengar with a tricorder.
"Security issues. He's not to talk to anyone, nor anyone to him, until the Captain gives the order." Blane replied. “Anything and everything that he utters is off the record and not to be repeated. Understood?” He eased Dengar into a seated position on one of the bio-beds.
Hartcort blinked and shifted his gaze between Dengar and Blane as he tried to put the pieces together.
Suddenly TC grabbed Lance's arm with enough force to get the doctors attention. “Doctor, do you understand?”
Lance nodded quickly. “Clearly.” He sighed as he rubbed his elbow. Just when his day was looking up...
Suddenly, a familiar female voice sounded over his combadge and brought his thoughts back into focus.
[Zanh to Hartcort. Incoming medical emergency.]
"I’m a little busy down here at the moment Captain…"
[Code White. The Admiral.]
"Understood. We’ll be ready for her." Hartcort glanced at Blane, who took the still unreachable Dengar by the arm.
"What should I do with him?" Blane asked.
"Just tell them to keep him sequestered for now. I'll get to him when I can." Lance asked, though he wasn't sure if there was much he could actually do for the man.
Blane nodded, then paused in the doorway. "I'd...recommend suicide watch."
Hartcort gave a quick, uncomfortable nod of acknowledgement.
“This certainly is your day of reckoning, kid.” TC mumbled as he led Dengar away.
Turning his attention to the crisis directly ahead of him, Lance began by bringing up Gemini Lassiter's medical records and scanning them. Immediately, he saw something that concerned him.
Recent notes from the CMO of the USS Gauntlet indicated that she had been having trouble sleeping and he'd had to give her a sedative during their trip to this location.
He saw something more disturbing a few lines down, however, that caused him to groan. Words that clearly warned of serious, impending heart problems if she refused to accept that her coronary condition, diagnosed six months previously, was not treated soon by means of surgical intervention.
Why she continued to refuse to submit to a cardiac replacement, Hartcort couldn't fathom. But there it was, in bold text and legally and morally binding- an order from the Admiral that she would not submit to having the procedure even if it meant her demise.
Seeing this, Lance only hoped that when she got here, anything besides her heart was the problem.
One quick scan of her with a tricorder upon her arrival, however, confirmed that was exactly what it was.
Her heart had deviated from any semblance of a proper rhythm and then stopped, along with her breathing.
"She's had a heart attack all right." He quickly set the bio-bed to start auto-defibrillation.
“Nurse July, could you please pull up the file on the electro-magnetic cardio pulmonary muscular fiber generator please and have two replicated ASAP.” He glanced at the monitors above the bed as Lassiter's heart rate and breathing normalized under the control of artificial life support system of the bio-bed. “Want them ready in ten minutes.”
Once he was certain the Admiral was stabilized, even if only by mechanical intervention, Lance tapped his badge. "Hartcort to Zanh."
[Go ahead.]
"The Admiral is in bad shape, Sir. She needs a new heart."
[Then give her one, Mr. Hartcort.]
"Yeah, see that's where we have a problem. She doesn't want one."
[What?]
"She has a living will attached to her file that insists that no heart replacement be done on her, regardless the consequences." Lance was truly frustrated. This was the second time in as many days that he'd been refused the right to use the best tools at hand to save a person's life. It was beginning to get to him.
He heard Zanh sigh heavily.
[What else have you got? There has to be something right?] Zanh insisted. [To buy time? Until she's awake and you can try to reason with her? Maybe her daughter can get through to her.] Even as she said the words, the captain sounded doubtful of them.
Lance doubted that reason would go anywhere with someone who was as direct and thorough in their written refusal of treatment as Lassiter had been. But from the moment he had read it he mind was already formulating way to circumvent it.
"There is a new device that is leaps and bounds in front of other artificial pulmonary devices that would help to regulate her heart rate and stimulate the muscular tissue if it fails again. It will work with her existing heart so technically I will be within her wishes.”
[Do what you can for her, Lance, and thank you. Keep me advised.]
“Captain there is one more thing. While our facilities are excellent here, we really are not set up for this procedure. However both the Gauntlet and the Zenith have more expansive sickbays.”
Zanh seemed to hesitate a moment. She didn't want to let the admiral out of her sight- there was still too much going on for her liking. [I'm sorry, Lance, but you're going to have to do your best here. I've got too many plates spinning aboard this ship and the others right now to have to worry about her being anywhere else. Can you get by?]
This complicated matters a bit, but Lance was never one to shy away from a challenge.
"Perhaps...if certain equipment is... procured from the Zenith and brought here, I can make it work."
[Whatever you need. Consider yourself in possession of a blank requisition check. I'll sign off on the whole damned warp core being handed over to you if it'd help.]
“Alright Captain, I’ll keep you informed of the status as we progress. I’ll need the LMH brought back here also to help attend to the other issues in sickbay as I will tied up in surgery for several hours. Also I strongly suggest that Vol be brought back from the Zenith as soon as possible to deal with our chief engineer, and where is Ensign Lassiter, Captain? I'd advise that she be brought here as soon as possible, just in case."
[I'm working on getting the Counselor back as quickly as possible, and Ensign Lassiter is still on the Alchemy. I'll see to it that they are beamed back directly. Unfortunately Dr. McKay is not available but you can feel free to add the CMO from the Gauntlet to your list of appropriations.] Zanh advised.
“Who is Dr. McKay? Oh, the hologram.” Lance thought out loud. Shaking his head. He still refused to address the holographic healer as anything other then a medical tool. He personally found it creepy.
“Thanks, captain but I think I’ll just use the medical staff here then. I don’t want too many chefs in the kitchen.” He glanced at nurse T’Dara. “I think we’ll manage.”
[Understood. Good luck.]
“Hartcort out.”
Immediately after closing the connection Lance turned to T’Dara. “Please get surgical suite A prepped and yourself as well because you’ll be assisting.”
T’Dara raised one eyebrow then nodded and quickly moved to follow Lance’s orders.
He snatched up a PADD and began to formulate a list of equipment that he would need from the Zenith's sickbay as he once again checked the admiral's vitals.
Nurse July returned with the replicated devices that Lance asked for. They both sat in small sanitized dishes of clear liquid.
“Here they are, doctor.”
Lance turned away from the monitor to inspect the items as his fingers absently continued to type. They were very small, no larger then a dime each. “Ah perfect.” He said.
“Doctor, I’ve never seen anything like these. When did they first become available?” The nurse asked as she moved to take the devices to the surgical suite.
Lance turned back to his list. “Final testing was completed about six months ago with a one-hundred percent success rate for its test subjects.”
“Wow, that pretty impressive. How did you get the schematics for it so soon?”
He looked up and smiled. “Because I created it.”
Commander Lance Hartcort
Chief Medical Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
-=/\=-Zanh Liis O'Sullivan
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Chief Medical Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
-=/\=-Zanh Liis O'Sullivan
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012