It must be Tuesday...

Posted on Fri May 6th, 2011 @ 11:11am by Captain Nathan Cowell MD

Mission: Renegades
Location: Sickbay, Desk 7, USS Arizona
Timeline: After 'Hanging by a Thread'

Commodore Nathan Cowell had essentially moved in to Sickbay since the ship had been reassembled. Between saving his adopted daughter, Lieutenant Junior Grade Marion, the bridge crew of the badly damaged Secondary Hull that had managed to survive, and all the rest of the crew that he could get around to helping, Nathan hasn't spent more than a moment to himself since everything had gone down. Even with the USS Casey sending them extra medical personnel to aid in the aftermath, there weren't enough people to go around to everyone and dress minor wounds, sling fractured bones that would mend on their own, and all the little things that took Nathan and the other doctors away from those that really needed help.

Ensign Schenk came into the Sickbay, carrying a young woman in with a smoking right hip and charred flesh under it. Looking around, he gently laid her down on the nearest flat surface before catching sight of a very different Commodore; the man looking harried but in control, the undeniable aspect of his authority. His own uniform bloody, he stood and went to him. "Sir, that was the last casualty I could find on my second sweep. She has a plasma burn on her right hip. Is there anything I can do to help here?"

Nathan moved over and began looking the woman's wounds over before giving Ens. Schenk a sidelong glance, "You any good with bandages?"

Marc nodded. "Yes Sir. I learned first aid when I served on the Victory"

Taking initiative, Marc goes from person to person, checking to see how bad the situation was with each of them, putting bandages where they're needed and attempting to ease the pain of those that he can in whatever way. Suddenly, he came to a stop as he saw the unconscious form of the Assistant Chief of Security, Lieutenant JG Lischka. "Commodore! Lieutenant Lischka is in critical condition!" He grabbed a medical tricorder and scanned her. "Laceration to her liver, Sir! She's bleeding bad. If she needs blood, I'm Type O Rh D negative." Not pausing while he talked, he began to cut the cloth away from the wound to give the Doctor room to work.

Nathan grabbed his own tricorder out of its holster and began a more comprehensive sweep of the woman. The laceration was deep, to be sure, but the bleeding was being caused mainly by one of the arterial branches just above it taking a hit as well. Under normal circumstances, Nathan might have been able to do it all at once with a surgical regenerator, but most of the more sophisticated of medical equipment was currently down thanks to the overloads that had cascaded through the ship during the battle. Nathan lamented at just how sensitive modern medical equipment was...

"Alright, we're going to have to go this the hard way. Ensign, fetch me a laser scalpel, a hand-held dermal regenerator, and get be a package of clean gauze. Then I need you to fetch me some sterile surgical gloves for me and you... we're going in." the Commodore ordered as he gathered the woman up off the gurney she was on and placed her on one of the few vacant bio-beds left in the room that had enough illumination to perform the surgery properly.

Marc acknowledged the Commodore's orders, moving quickly but efficiently through the boiling mass of injured, nurses and doctors in Medical. Getting a surgical kit, he checked it; scalpel and a dermal regenerator. Moving around a patient being held down by two nurses, he grabbed a stack of gauze and used the top piece of gauze to get two pairs of sterile surgical gloves. Bringing everything back by the Commodore who was acting as the Doctor, he set the kit down and went to wash his hands. Returning, he helped the man put his pair of gloves on, and waited while the Commodore did the same for him. "Just tell me what to do, Commodore and I'm your man."

"Good," the Doctor said as he donned the gloves, "Put your gloves on and get some gauze ready. Once I cut her open, any blood that comes out needs to be soaked up. That's your job, keep the area clean while I work. Don't worry about what's in the opening, just catch it as it comes out. If I need to clear it out of the entry wound, I'll do it myself. You ready?"

"Yes, Sir," The Ensign nodded as he put his gloves on. Reaching for the gauze, he looked down at Lieutenant Lishka. She didn't look good to him at all, but he wasn't a doctor; for a fleeting moment, he wondered where the Commodore had gotten his medical expertise, but that wasn't important. Taking a breath, he prepared himself, the words 'Once I cut her open' ringing in his ears.

Stepping to the side, he got out of the Doctor's way and prepared to assist in getting his Assistant Chief fixed up and back on her feet once more.

Nathan picked up a hypospray from inside of the case Ens. Schenk had procured and found the sedative that was provided. It wasn't overly powerful, but the woman wasn't conscious to begin with, so it would probably be enough to keep her under for the duration of the surgery. He administered the medication quickly before tossing the device back into the case unceremoniously. Nathan then grabbed the laser scalpel, turning it over in his fingers for a minute as if he was sizing the device up. It didn't feel right... the old Doctor was used to hard steel blades when he did this kind of work. But, sadly, there wasn't enough time and the replicators probably weren't working anyway... he would just make due with the technology at hand. His fingers worked the area around the wound for a minute, probing for the weakest point on her body to enter through to make it a little easier not only to get at the wound, but to repair the damage he was about to do. Once he was satisfied with his point of entry, the El-Aurian made his incision into the woman's abdomen and began the surgery.

The blood cascaded out of the wound at first, rushing down the woman's skin like a river. Nathan ignored it as he continued to cut layer upon layer of skin until he was finally in her body cavity. The moment he was inside, he put an empty hand out toward the Ensign, "Gauze."

Marc quickly handed gauze to the Commodore/Doctor and grabbed another stack in the event that he needed more. The blood that was coming out of the Lieutenant horrified him for a minute - the point of saving someone was to prevent blood loss, not cause more. Swallowing and more than a little pale, the Ensign gritted his jaw as he watched the man working to save her life.

Nathan ran a wad of the sterile material inside the wound, soaking up a good deal of blood before he discarded it and began feeling around in her innards. He could feel the arteries that were damaged, and decided to get those first, since they were the cause of their problems.

"Regenerator," the man demanded, again offering up an empty hand.

Setting the new stack of gauze down, Marc handed him the regenerator to him. Picking up the gauze once more, he watched the Commodore probing inside of the young Lieutenant, praying to whatever god existed that she be spared.

Nathan began moving bits of skin and organs about gently as he exposed the arterial cluster that was now his foe. It was a small blessing that the cluster was just a redundant blood source and not a primary one, or else he wouldn't have been able to do what he was about to do to save her life. He set the regenerator to the cauterize setting and, in essence, seared the openings up to prevent blood from flowing out. It took several long, painful seconds before the work was done. Next came the tricky part, her liver. The organ itself was easily exposed with very little in the way of shuffling of the other organs. The real issue was going to be, oddly enough, keeping the regenerator from doing too good of a job. While skin and even arteries were fairly simple to repair, most softer tissue, and especially specialized tissue like that of the liver and so forth, had a nasty habit of taking to the process a little too well, causing abnormalities that would later have turned into a cancer or some such if it weren't for their ability to stave such things off with medicines and other therapies. While there was no really risk with doing a life saving 'patch job', Doc Cowell had never been one for the easy fixes and the follow-up rectification therapy.

"Mister Schenk, I need you to hold this open," Nathan said, indicating the opening he had made in her body, "Put two fingers here and two fingers on the opposite side. Don't stretch it any more than it already is, just hold it so I can use both hands for this."

Steadying his hand and nerves, Marc placed his fingers where the Commodore had instructed. It was the first time that he had helped saved someone's life and he prayed that he didn't screw up. Although he wanted to ask questions of the man, he knew that silence would assist him more than bothering him with questions. Breathing in through his nose, the scent of blood and fecal matter from exposed intestines threatened to overwhelm him, he steadied himself once more as he glanced from the Lieutenant's face to the wound that the Commodore was working on getting fixed.

Doc Cowell began the slow and meticulous task of sealing the lacerations, waiting for the freshly regenerated tissue to exhibit any signs of over-stimulation, the removal of excess and mutated tissue, and the soaking up of any errant blood he hadn't gotten out before. The entire process took nearly twenty minutes, a far cry from the hours it used to take to do the same thing back in the old days. Once the liver was sufficiently repaired, Nathan set the dermal regenerator off to the side and nodded to the Ensign.

"You can let go now. All that we need to do now is seal her up and get her to an empty recovery cot. Why don't you run along and find somewhere to put her," Nathan said.

Letting out a sigh of relief and taking a much needed breath - which didn't help with the stench in the air, he released the edges of Lieutenant Lishka's wound. "Thank you, sir. If she needs blood, I'm still willing to donate." With that, the Ensign turned and began searching for an open recovery spot where she could finish the healing process while the Commodore wrapped up the surgery.

Nathan chuckled, the Ensign hadn't done too bad even with the paling of his skin and the obvious revulsion on his face. 'Might even make a worth while nurse someday...' the old man mused as he began the much faster process of repairing the incision. By all accounts, while the woman would likely be sore for at least three days, she would be back on her feet within a few hours. That was a timetable that, while rushed normally, would only go to aid others in getting the care they needed as well. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't how he wanted things to go down... but at least the wounded wouldn't run the risk of dying like they did so often back when he first started life as a field surgeon in the Union Army...