Joint Duty Log | Cmdr Grant, LtCmdr Neyes, Noah (NPC) | "Immersed In Echoes"

Posted on Fri Oct 31st, 2014 @ 7:53am by Commander Logan Grant, PhD. & Commander Tristan Neyes PhD.

2,580 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: All Hallows’
Location: Sickbay

=/\= Sickbay, Just after the Romulan battle =/\=

The shimmer of the blue transporter beam carrying Tristan and his patient down to sickbay, placed them on the floor next to a biobed. Immediately his senses were accosted with the smell of burning and the cries of those who did not escape the battle unscathed. Even within the confines of the massive ship, sensitive components often destabilized when the power grid took damage. Energy being released from something as simple as a console could instantly destroy a person's nervous system, among other painful and less serious injuries. The aftermath of their skirmish seemed to have resulted in a slough of burns and broken bones, and nurses carted the injured on hover-beds to more secure treatment rooms at the back of sickbay.

"I need assistance!" Tristan hollered to the nearest medical staff, a flickering light illuminating the two of them on the ground. Sickbay had not been entirely spared damage in the firefight, which was evidenced by a fallen support beam at the opposite end of the room, and the charred remnants of exploded conduits.

A nurse quickly assisted him in lifting the woman to the biobed, and he grabbed a medical tricorder off the wall above her head. Her seizures continued to assail her body, causing her to shake uncontrollably. With the nurse holding her down, he ran the tricorder over her head and torso. Like a firework display, the monitor taking note of her vital signs flared up, signalling her declining condition.

"I need three CC's of Cordrazine." Neyes pressed a finger over her eyelid and pulled it out of the way. Her blood-shot eyes vibrated back and forth, looking up and back. He shook off a sense of worry, pulling what stabilizing energy he could from his confident previous-lives. Being a medical doctor was hardly his first line of skilled experience, but he knew enough to keep her alive. As the woman began to succumb to her injuries, he felt an odd calm take over, and each action began to feel automatic.

Neyes shot the hypo into her neck, and tapped a few controls. Her systems began to stabilize, but her heart was fighting too hard. "Giver her four CCs of Metrazene."

"Over here! We've got Romulans!" Someone shouted.

Looking around, he noticed Rotek rush over to the entrance of Sickbay. When the doors opened to reveal Vlimar carrying the Captain, Tristan had to stop himself from bolting to her aid. She had minor injuries, and probably just lost consciousness. She would be fine, he told himself, she'd be fine.

"She's stabilized, Dr. Neyes. I can manage from here." The nurse said, pulling him back to the situation at hand.

Neyes immediately nodded, "Computer, grant medical command authorization to me, authorization Neyes 3-8-6-7 alpha. Add my attendance to incoming emergency medical cases." He said, moving toward the off-center location where the Romulans survivors had beamed aboard. His thoughts shifted to Zed for a moment, but he quickly dismissed them. Zed was prepared for this, they'd been over it a hundred times. He knew what to do.

The children were safe. Andrea was safe. The ship... Well the ship would survive. What he wasn't sure of was the number of people who wouldn't, or the identities of the people that would have perished in the fire fight.

Having double and triple checked the well being of his family, Logan had made a beeline to the infirmary in hopes of rendering assistance. A big ship in a big fight would sustain big casualties and Rotek was but one man, the nurses short in numbers. It was like bringing a knife to a gun fight, and whatever he could do to even the odds would be done in short time. What he wasn't prepared for was the sight of the Captain laying bloodied and unconscious on a biobed, Vlimar hovering and Rotek busily working. He was about to say something, to offer his assistance, when a young nurse grabbed him and dragged him towards where the Romulan survivors were being worked on.

"Vindicator patients are covered," She said, her fingernails practically digging into the Kiwi counselor's forearm as she shepherded him along, "I know we all took the same Hippocratic oath, Doctor Grant, but everyone would rather patch up out own before patching up these guys. We need you here." The Bajoran nurse finished and released him in the far room.

Logan could see Tristan hunched over a biobed and he nodded, oddly comforted by the sight of the other counselor. It meant he either hadn't seen Rochelle or that she wasn't hurt that badly. "Fine." He began, "Just tell me... Is the Captain alright?"

The Bajoran woman sighed and pursed her lips at him, "I overheard something about a bad concussion, a broken nose and something about her wrist. Everything else is just superficial. She'll be fine. Rotek has a team buzzing around her the same way you should be buzzing around them." She huffed and took off to greet and treat new patients as they arrived, leaving Logan to sigh and run a hand through his hair.

"Whatcha got, boss?" He asked as he approached Tristan, the other survivors appeared to be stable for the most part, contained in biobeds by forcefields. The bed surrounding the Trill's patient, however, wasn't lit up like the fourth of July. It was oddly devoid of any such protection.

Neyes whipped around, a tight gasp escaping his breath when he noticed Logan; caught unaware of anyone up behind him. His face was red, strained, and his eyes were struggling to keep his feelings in check. Wetness threatened to betray his vision, tears forming in the corners. They darted around the room, checking for anyone else who may have happened upon him and this particular biobed. "Lo- Logan... I um, uh... are you alright? Your family?," Tristan stammered, in stark contrast to his usual and almost Vulcan articulation. He gripped the edge of the biobed, and pulled a sheet up over the figure as he spoke.

Logan showed the wild eyed man his palms in show that he approached in peace. "They're alright. Cooper scraped his knee, but nothing a band-aid couldn't fix." He answered, canting his head to eye the Trill sidelong. A lot could be said for the recently joined counselor, one of the biggest was that he failed miserably at shrouding his thoughts and emotions. The tell was written all over his face. It was red, his featured pinched and tight. What concerned Logan most were Tristan's eyes. They were tear filled, wild and filled with what looked so very much like confusion, relief and... Joy? Hope? Something like that. "What's up, Doc?" He asked him softly, closing the gap between them. An eyebrow shot up as he watched the sheet cover what appeared to be an extremely large Romulan.

With surprising efficiency and power, Tristan dismounted the biobed from its station against the wall. A subtle clanking of mechanisms and the exchange pulse of power sounded as the anti-grav emitters engaged beneath it. As if on wheels, the bed floated stationary and solid above the ground, and the monitors above it went black as the feed died between them and their patient. Neyes looked around once more to check for anyone besides Grant before addressing him again. Tristan met eyes with the counselor, the hazy blues meeting Logan's emerald greens. Unspoken, and almost desperate, a moment of silence fell between them as Tristan stopped to think. He looked Logan up and down once almost measuring his capacity in some way, then turned to push the bed off toward the quarantine rooms corridor of sickbay.

"Come with me." Neyes said, slowly collecting himself.

Under different circumstances, Logan would have grabbed the shorter counselor and checked him for a brain injury, a tumor... Something that would have explained his sudden switch in demeanor. Tristan had been gentle and soft spoken the entire time Logan had known him, granted it had been just a short while. It had been that nature that set the normally suspicious and skeptical Kiwi at ease.

The look in Tristan's eyes spoke volumes. They screamed and begged for Logan's trust and understanding, and he couldn't not give it to them. He nodded, running his tongue over his lower lip and casting a look over his shoulder to where a swarm of medics busily worked on the tiny body of his friend and Captain. His hand came up to hit his combadge as he looked back at Tristan, "Grant to Levine. You're needed in the sickbay. The phoenix has been knocked from the sky." Was all he said as he nodded once again and followed him out into the halls.

Noah knew the drill like the back of his hand, he'd spent his first twelve years on starships after all. During the attack you hunker down, watch out for flying weapons, then once the dust settles you work your way out from your inner circle to see what you could do to help. All the pastafarians had been together when the attack happened, so he'd had them all sit in a circle singing sea shanties, away from large objects that could fall, bulk heads with panels inclined towards exploding, and away from any view ports. When everything calmed down again, he told them all to stay put... then locked them into his quarters anyways when he left. Some of them -- like Gnocchi -- couldn't be trusted to think things all the way through, especially after something like that. Then he grabbed an emergency med kit and started making his way towards sickbay.

As those who weren't injured enough to justify taking space inside sickbay started to gather, he used what first aid he knew to help them by using the emergency med kit in the corridor, enlisting others to help as he patched up scrapes, minor first degree burns, and the like. He'd soon freed all the emergency med kits in the area from their storage spaces and had a whole army of helpers carefully sorting people out as they arrived -- non-critical along one side of the corridor, and more critical injuries guided and assisted into sickbay. He'd just escorted one such injury inside, passing her off to a nurse when he spotted two familiar figures guiding a biobed with a covered body deeper into sickbay. Normally Noah would have assumed it was nothing, that they'd only been helping too... but something about the Trill's body language made him think something else was up. So he passed off the emergency med kit to a helper and excused himself to follow the two counselors and the biobed.

Tristan's mind was spinning at a million kilometers an hour, and his headache was beginning to flair up again. The lights in the corridor were dimmer because of the red alert, and the quarantine rooms were completely empty. With the all the medical staff occupied out in the main of sickbay, they were free to move unimpeded. Neyes' eyes kept catching on the figure beneath the sheet, a large male. He'd been unsure about the man at first, especially since he wasn't like the others.

"This way," Neyes said urgently, turning down a separate and more isolated corridor. They went a few rooms down before Tristan pushed the bed into a room around the corner. It was the last in the line off the corridor, and just around the corner from the others. No one would have any reason to come this far, he thought to himself. No need to waste time with the doors. Tristan's breathing was quick and shallow, his movements were intense and forced, and he was clearly in a hurry.

"Assist me." The Trill motioned to the hookup-assembly for the biobed and the wall. "Please."

Something was wrong.

Logan didn't have to be a Betazoid to sense the emotions pouring off of Tristan like perfume off a middle-aged barfly. Desperation was steadily edging it's way into the mix, jockeyed by panic that was heavy handed with its whip. The sheet covered everything, concealing the identity of the person beneath beyond the roughest of sketches supporting that they were an adult male humanoid of some form. The notion that this could have been a Romulan was quickly thrown out the door. Too tall. Too heavily muscled, even under the sheet Logan could tell that Tristan was kidnapping a big bloke.

The trip was made in double time, streaming away from the insanity of the rest of sickbay and deep into the bowels of the infirmary where nary a soul would ever come to look. This too piqued the Kiwi's sense of interest and set his ever analytic mind into overdrive. This... Had personal written all over it. "Sure." Logan nodded, working to help hook the biobed back up to the bulkhead. "You mind telling me why we kidnapped a patient or am I to start a round of twenty bloody questions?" He asked, pushing the last couplings together and gestured to the sheet. It was moving, breathing to be exact. He knew that this crew, ever loyal to their savage little Captain, had done some questionable things... Many of them behind her back. While they'd been done to protect her, and he'd been right there to play his part, Logan also knew that the road to Hell was paved with only the very best of intentions. The question of the hour regarding this latest sketchy act was simply 'why?'.

Tristan continued working the bed, and it snapped into place. The equipment in the room lit up in response, and readings began flowing into the monitors. Neyes stopped for a moment as he read over the vitals, looking a Logan for a moment before reading them off. "Heart's steady, minor lacerations, deep hematomas, muscle tissue decay, infection..." he continued reading, the list growing more severe as he said the words out loud. His voice caught in his throat. When the time came for a sample, Tristan suddenly felt the weight of what was about to happen build up.

"Just look." The Trill slowly pulled down the sheet, uncovering the man beneath it down to the shoulders. His skin was dirtied with soot and char, no clothes to speak of. His short, cropped hair was matted like the beard across his jaw. He almost looked like a transient. Or a prisoner.

And look Logan did. The strangely familiar face of a man appeared as the stark white of the sheet folded back to reveal him. He was beaten, blooded and burnt, but he was familiar and decidedly Trill. The connection that was made quickly made his blood run cold.

Neyes took a hypo and pressed it to the man's neck, taking a blood sample. He carefully placed it beneath a medical station for detailed scanning, and entered a few commands into the terminal next to the bio bed. "Computer. Please seal all medical information collected for this patient, encrypt and transfer data to my personal database, authorization Neyes 21."

"Medical records encrypted." She chirped back.

"Please identify this patient, based on blood sample 001." Neyes said, wetting a towel and moving to wipe away some of the filth from the man's face.

=/\= To Be Continued... =/\=

Lt Commander Tristan Neyes
Chief Counseling Officer
USS Vindicator

Commander Logan Grant
Counselor
USS Vindicator

Noah Waterhouse
Pastafarian Minister
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

 

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