<USS Avalon> "Every Little Thing's Gonna Be All Right"
- From: Jamie Lawson <ayeshalan@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: avalon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:19:16 -0700
"Every Little Thing's Gonna Be All Right"
Moreya
2008:09:11
Moreya paused in the door of Sickbay, taking in the barely controlled
chaos. Dr. Mahler and two of his nurses were working over one
patient; not far away Dr. Lewis and another nurse were working on
someone else. A Vulcan lieutenant in Engineering uniform was working
with several other crew, apparently handling triage. All the beds
were full and the wounded, still flowing in, were being tended to
wherever there was room to have them sit -- or lie.
It had been some time, but Moreya remembered well her own time in Dr.
Mahler's shoes, as the CMO of the Avalon. This kind of scene was
hardly unknown to her. She thought for a moment about announcing her
presence to Mahler or Lewis, but discarded it quickly. They had more
important things to deal with than acknowledging her. She took a deep
breath and mentally settled herself in a calm center, a self-made
oasis among the chaos. She then approached the young Vulcan.
"I am Moreya -- Science Officer, but I am also trained as a physician.
I'm here to help. You have been doing triage, it looks like?"
"I am doing my best, ma'am."
"Indeed you are. Point me to where you've put the most critically
injured not yet seen to?" The Vulcan pointed to the bed nearest the
door. "Good, thank you," Moreya said. She stepped quickly and deftly
through the moving and motionless bodies, grabbed a scanner and tools
from a cabinet, and went back to her first patient.
She was a young human woman whose Engineering uniform was scorched and
blackened with burns along most of the left side, and who had in
addition sustained fractures of both tibias, fibulas, and several of
the bones in the right arm and wrist. To Moreya's amazement she was
still conscious. The smell of pain and fear was as strong in the
Deltan doctor's nose as the smells of burnt fabric and flesh.
Reaching out with one hand to gently touch the young woman's face even
as she was loading up a hypospray of sedative with the other, she
said, "You'll be okay. Sleep now. There's nothing to be afraid of."
She got her mind around the edges of the fear, enfolding it in a soft
blanket of calm and love, smiling down reassurance until the sedatives
took effect and the woman's eyes closed.
Then she set to work. Setting the broken bones and priming them to
grow back clean, clearing away ruined skin and replacing it with
synthflesh grafts that would protect the tissues beneath until the new
skin could grow back, replacing lost blood and precious moisture.
When she was done, she gestured toward the makeshift orderlies near
the Sickbay doors, who carried the young engineer back to the crew
quarters nearest -- all taken over as convalescent wards -- and
brought her another patient.
And so it went. She dismissed keeping track of the time she'd been
standing at that bed as a detail she didn't have resources for,
reminded herself that fatigue was just another sensation, and kept
working until there were no more patients being brought to her.
Leaving the last one sleeping on the bed, she walked away, stopping at
the nearest supply closet. Stepping inside, she stripped off her
uniform, throwing the sweat- and blood-stained mess, boots and all,
into the replicator's reclamation chute.
Clad only in her underthings, she stretched out on the floor of the
supply closet and surrendered herself to sleep immediately.
[Tag to anyone who might want to find Moreya asleep in the closet.]
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