by Dabin Reece
81207.2300
After Goodnight, My Angel
-=Lethus IV=-
81207.2300
After Goodnight, My Angel
-=Lethus IV=-
“You aren’t joking,” Zanh Liis sighed. She hated it when Dabin wasn’t joking, because it meant something seriously bad was happening.
“Tell me you came in something with some kind of medical facility, and not a runabout of some sort,” Dabin pleaded with Liis and Will.
“Small ship,” Zanh replied regretfully. “Crew quarters for six, a med-station in the back, and no medical crew.”
“We can provide the crew,” Blane said. “Salvek sent us the LMH before he took off after the Romulans, and Lair Arie.”
TC waited for Zanh Liis’s stunned reaction, and could not believe it never came.
“How did you know?” Blane asked. Will Lindsay flipped open his temporal compass, which was lit up in what one would normally call a beautiful array of colors.
TC knew enough of their function now to know that a lit temporal compass was the last thing any TI agent ever cared to see. His eyes widened. “O’Sullivan?”
Liis averted her gaze, but only for an instant. “He couldn’t come with us.”
“We need to get her out of here, now Liisy,” Dabin interrupted, as he pulled back the entrance flap to the tent. Zanh rushed inside and saw Kellyn, white as a ghost and slipping away fast.
“Captain!” Rada’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. “How did you ever…”
Rada instinctively moved to pull his arm away from Kellyn’s shoulder, to face the Captain. Kellyn however tightened her grip, and mumbled something about Arie holding still. Zanh Liis did not have the time to even begin to process what she was seeing.
“Will! Get in here and beam her up!” Liis shouted. Lindsay rushed in, along with the rest of the away team.
“I can’t beam everyone up at the same time. Who goes first?”
Zanh Liis pointed at the people she wanted to go first. “Lair, McKay, and Reece,”
“Stand around her.” Will requested, ushering them into a group. “I’ll be back for the rest of you. Computer, four to beam directly to crew quarters.”
As soon as they were gone, Zanh Liis turned to Blane, Dengar and Hok. “Gentlemen, I want every detail.”
-=USS Vanguard=-
As soon as they materialized, Lindsay hefted Lair into his arms and carried her toward the med-bed that was actually built to fold up into the wall. He nodded to Reece.
“Lower it.” Reece snapped the bunk downward, and Kellyn groaned slightly as Lindsay set her down upon it.
“You’re not serious.” McKay glared.
“Sorry, doctor I’m afraid this is the best we’ve got.”
There was one cabinet beside it, and whatever it contained along with what could be replicated would be all that McKay would have to work with.
He began opening storage compartments to look for items he could use to save Lair Kellyn, but the selection was limited to little more than four by four gauze pads and a small dermal regenerator.
“Where’s the replicator? She needs blood.”
“Right over here,” Will said, leading the way and bringing the terminal on line.
Dabin Reece found a sink and sterilization center built into the cabinet and began lathering up his hands and forearms.
“Can I ask what you are doing Commander Reece?” McKay loaded the vial of blood from the replicator into a hypo, and rushed to press it into Kellyn’s arm.
“I’m scrubbing in,” Dabin said defiantly.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve performed a serious surgery like this. Son,” McKay continued, now addressing Lindsay. “Ask the computer for all the necessary instruments to repair a class 3 abdominal laceration consistent with a Romulan disruptor, and second degree burns to the lower lung and bronchioles. Got all that?”
Will nodded, and rushed to the replicator to prepare the items McKay asked for. Dalton recalled one other thing, “And for God sake don’t touch any of them if you are not sanitized. Just bring the whole tray over to Kellyn’s bed. As for you, Mr. Reece, you are under way too much emotional stress to be my second on this surgery. You need a hot shower and a warm bed.”
“Look,” Dabin began, as he furiously lathered his arms over and over. “First, you’re program has been malfunctioning, and if we lose you during the surgery, Rilan Reece’s experience is the only chance she has to live. Second, even if we don’t lose you, she is far better off with the two of us working together. It will make the surgery go faster, and she’ll make it into recovery faster. Third, I’ll be damned if my best friend is going to die while I’m taking a nap. She said she didn’t want me to see her die, and I’m going to make sure she lives so that doesn’t happen.”
McKay appreciated his enthusiasm for Kellyn’s well being. He knew the Trill and the Bajoran were close, and no one save Salvek himself would have been as determined to help her.
McKay also knew that in a medical environment, that type of emotional attachment was often more of a detriment than a help to those trying to save someone’s life.
“Let’s get this clear between the two of us then. I am in charge, Mr. Reece. You don’t so much as wipe her brow unless I tell you to. You are to follow all my instructions precisely, and if you have another course of action to suggest, you’ll do it in a calm and professional manner. This woman needs a Doctor, not a friend. Whatever feelings you have for her I need you to turn them off right now.”
Lindsay watched the entire exchange in silence. The Trill and the Hologram were so deadly serious the way they spoke, he wondered if they might actually take a swing at each other. Will knew all too well that situations like this often lead to events exactly like that.
Dabin Reece drew himself up, and nodded curtly to McKay, as if flipping a switch in his own head to shut off his emotions.
Lindsay quietly crossed the room with the tray of instruments and set it down for the Doctor.
“Let’s begin then,” McKay said, satisfied that Reece knew the rules, and the stakes. They surrounded Lair Kellyn, and Dalton called for the first tool.
“Should I go get the others?” Lindsay asked.
“You’ll do no such thing,” McKay ordered. “What you will do is go scrub up and stand by the replicator in case I need more blood or another instrument for the lady. The away team will just have to wait.”
Reece was silent for a moment, as he waited for McKay to set the spacers that would hold open the cavity in her abdomen, as he worked to repair her lung. Dabin used a cutting tool to remove her uniform top below her chest. Once done he calmly spoke to McKay.
“We can hold out here for a few moments. The sooner he beams the rest of the crew up, the sooner we can make our heading for the Sera.”
McKay thought about for a moment, and then looked at Will, “I want you, or someone else who can assist us, back here in five minutes, tops.”
Will nodded, and hurried out of Sickbay, so the transporter would not distract their work.
“Listen to your father,” Kellyn said softly.
“Damn, she’s not quite out.” Reece said.
“Sedative.” McKay ordered, without so much as taking his eyes off Kellyn’s lung, which he was already attempting to repair.
“Arie, Jariel can help… speak to me, in the Celestial Temple, if you ask him. I'll wait for you there.”
“What the hell are you waiting for?” McKay looked at Reece, and saw the man’s chin was quivering. “SEDATIVE!” Dalton yelled, so forcefully that Reece simply snapped the hypo to Kellyn’s neck and knocked her out. Her head lolled to the side and she was asleep instantly. “Keep it together Commander.”
Reece felt the slightest movement in the deck plates. “We’re about to go to Warp,” He warned. McKay shut off the device he was using, and waited for the ship to leap into motion. Once it had, he resumed what he was doing.
A few moments later TC Blane walked in, and immediately began scrubbing his hands at the sink.
“Welcome aboard, sir.” Dabin said, trying to lighten the mood a bit. He had blocked it out at the time but Reece was suddenly very aware that the last time he had been with TC, he had punched the man for doing nothing more than trying to fulfill Kellyn’s dying wish.
“Will Lindsay said you two need an assistant. You’ve got one. Captain wanted to come but I told her this was my away team. I was in charge of making sure everyone came back safe, and I’m going to do anything I can to help make sure that happens.”
“Once you get cleaned up, replicate another vial of blood for the lady please, and hand it to Mr. Reece.”
Blane half saluted the Doctor, and resumed washing his hands.
“Son, I hate to ask you to do this,” McKay said with a sigh, “But there is tissue beyond the lung that is damaged. I need you to hold the lung aside so I can get in there to work.”
“Kellyn, you owe me so big,” Reece said. Without another thought he reached inside of her, and held the lung as McKay had asked.
He had done it so many times with his previous host, Rilan, who had been a surgeon. Still, there was something about quite literally holding a person’s life in your hands that made you appreciate how fragile people really are.
Kellyn had so much fight and fire, yet she was nearly done in by a wound that it took less than a second to inflict. As Dabin surveyed the damage to her body, he appreciated as well that another centimeter to the left, and the disruptor would have caused more damaged to her lung than could be repaired. The line between unlucky and lucky was completely blurred.
“We’ve got way too many more things to try off the Chinese menu, you can’t bail on me yet.”
TC Blane cleared his throat, holding out the hypo with the blood in it for Dabin.
“Thanks,” Dabin said. “Commander, I’d like to apologize, for what I did on the surface.”
“What did you do?” TC asked innocently.
Dabin sighed, “You know. When I hit you.”
“Is that what you call it?” TC said. The bruise to his face was almost nonexistent.
“Yeah yeah. You know I didn’t…” Reece began, but Blane cut him off.
“I know exactly why you did what you did. All you need to do to make it up to me is save her life.”
“Oh sure, no problem,” Reece responded with a chuckle. “Piece of cake.”
“You can let go now,” McKay instructed, indicating he was done repairing the tissue. Reece released Kellyn's lung, and applied the hypo Blane had given him with the blood to her forearm.
Dalton worked for a few more minutes, and then nodded to Reece. “I’ve done all I can do. Wish I could do more to repair the damage that is already there, but that can’t be helped. Lung function is as good as it can be. Nothing to do now but seal her up. Hand me the dermal regenerator.”
“What now?” Blane asked.
“Now, she rests, and I keep an eye on her till she wakes up. And we pray I did I good enough job cleaning her up that no infections develop, but I believe she’s going to make it.”
Reece kissed her forehead. “Did you hear that? Doctor says you’re stuck with me for at least a little longer.” Dabin felt tears welling up in him, “Thanks for not giving up.”
**********************
Dabin Reece
Temporary Nurse
Currently aboard the USS Vanguard
Dabin Reece
Temporary Nurse
Currently aboard the USS Vanguard