Judgement – Duquesne - Man Down! (part I)
by Commander Chelsea Dunham & Alderman Dorian Gabriel & Lieutenant Bridget Stapleton
Post Details
ON:
The transporter shimmer faded and delivered Ben Kensington and his patient, Lt. Michael Duquesne, direct to Cubicle One where Ben set up the Med-arch over the patient on the bio-bed and started to set up the scans and stabilize him.
He looked up as Bridget came into the room. "Hi," he said, looking straight back down at the monitor. "Be with you in a tick."
"Sure."
It took several moments for Michael to recognize that he was no longer in the conference room, but had actually been transported to sick bay. His immediate reaction was to tell the Doctor that he was fine and that he did not need attention.
Unfortunately for him, as he tried to talk his mouth immediately filled with blood as he began to shake uncontrollably.
Ben allowed the patient to sit up to stop him choking as he ran tomography over his cranium. He fitted a drain to the outer cartilage of Duquesne's ear below where the scan said the damage had been done. Then he gently applied some anesthetic and allowed the tube to empty the accumulation of blood and cerebrospinal fluid to drain, relieving the pressure that had been forcing it to take the path of least resistance into Michael's mouth.
"Ease back now," he helped the weakened Duquesne back against the bed and began to apply the regenerator in focused beam so as to mend the bones of the inner ear selectively.
A nurse stopped next to Bridget and whispered to her, not wanting to interrupt the lieutenant. "I'll be right back," Bridget said to Ben, and received a mute nod. He was focused and she understood, quietly following the nurse out of the cubicle.
Ben set the biobed to administer antibiotics to protect Duquesne from the onset of meningitis equivalents. As the patient became woozy from the soporific that Ben administered to keep him calm, stable and rested without attempting to protest or leave, Ben told him that he had fractured his Temporal bone. "I take it you took a nasty blow to the side of your head, which you decided to ignore?" Ben muttered as he worked.
He measured the mild paralysis that seemed to be creeping down Michael's face on the left side and compensated with a neural block that took the pressure off the nerves in question, restoring the use of that part again.
Michael groaned as he tried to focus his eyes on a specific object in the room. He could hardly focus his vision and his hearing was consumed with ringing. He faded in and out of consciousness. His breathing was labored but his body ceased its previous shaking.
"Lieutenant Duquesne?" Ben moved closer and spoke softly, trying to help the man focus. "You're in Sickbay, don't try to do too much. Just let yourself regain your bearing for a minute or two."
Ben continued to adjust the LCARS panel on the Med-arch that was in position above Duquesne's chest.
"When you can tell, I need to know if you have any pain and if so, where?" he asked.
Duquesne lost consciousness again and Ben swore under his breath. He began to frantically scramble the med-arch controls in an attempt to re-stabilize him.
=^= Dr Stapleton? =^= he commed. =^= Kensington here, could you assist me please? My patient has crashed and I need to take him to theatre for more detailed scans and a lumbar puncture to take some of the pressure off his spinal fluids. =^=
Bridget held up a finger to the nurse she'd been in conversation with while she listened with alarm to Ben's message. =^= Be right there! =^= she commed back. Her reply mirrored Ben's urgency, and she handed the unopened instrument pack and two sets of padds to the nurse, dumping them in the other woman's arms like so much chaff. Bridget took off at a brisk walk, maneuvering around the busy geriatric residency department, while sending a comm badge call to an off-duty physician to report to the nurse's station there. Once she was out into the hallway and clear of other people, she broke into a run.
Triage was a beehive of activity, and she had to slow her progress to a walk, which made her chafe at the wasted seconds. Cubicle One was at the long end of the row, and she wove around nursing staff and patients alike until finally, breathless, she pulled to a stop just outside the cubicle. The patient could barely be seen around the bodies of physician and nurses, who were carefully moving him to a hoverbed to take him to surgery.
Ben was already scrubbing up. "Bridget, thanks for coming, I'd like you to second this procedure with me. I'm unsure why he's not responding as expected and two heads are better than one." He explained. The housemen took the patient through on a hover-gurney and set up the med-arch immediately.
"Scan everything. Throw the diagnostic book at him." Ben instructed, peering in concentration at the results so far with a puzzled frown on his face.
"Yeah, you bet," she replied, a worried frown on her face that mirrored that of the Lieutenant. "Bruce," she turned and addressed a nurse who wasn't immediately needed, "would you help me get into my kit for this?"
Bruce nodded and they headed quickly to get her gowned, masked, and gloved. Together they entered the sterile surgery theatre, finding the med-arch whirring away and Ben checking the anesthesia.
"So what do we have so far," she came to stand beside him, looking together at the readout above the patient's head.
"See for yourself." Ben shook his head. "We have the *perfectly* recovering patient on all the scans and tests yet...... " he gesticulated with a wide sweep of his hand over the stricken Security Officer. "The evidence belies them!"
The corners of Bridget's mouth turned down farther than they were. "Well this doesn't make sense. Did you try a multi-level bio-electric scan? And did you check his synaptic relays?" She was scouring the test readouts as fast as she could.
Ben just handed her two other padds from the side, both crammed with test results and readouts. "Yup" he sighed. ".... and the Tomography, Resonance, 2D, 3D and timed delays synchronised echography. I've tried the old fashioned Ultrasound, the usual Hypersound and the mid-range Melatronic. I've used the bio-radiative, the sonic-reflective and even the old-fashioned Z-rays. The only one that looked in any way *unusual* was the biomemetic readout. I'm wondering about some kind of alien mutatable, perhaps biotic or viral, possibly a cellular reaction - there's a tiny increase in Phosporylation.... but it's almost insignificant. I can't see how it could imply anything like the symptoms he has....... unless.... "
Ben looked thoughtful and went on. "He's only just back from an alien environment. What if we're looking at the wrong parts of him. The symptoms are all in his head.... so to speak. His *actual* head and neck. But what if he inhaled something apparently benign but which affected his auto-immune system somehow. His T-cells would attack their own. Taking them for enemy cells. Kinda like the old days when humans used to get Arthritis... before we invented Polyparmatontricate."
He set some controls on the biobed. "I'm going to reconfigure the blood tests. I want to look for microscopic organic intrusives that wouldn't normally be recognised as problematic."
Bridget's eyebrows rose. "Wait, do we need to seal the room as a precaution? If it's airborne... hell, the horse might already be out of the barn, considering how long he's been here."
"If he *has* brought something back, the chances are that the whole away team will have been exposed and we did do the standard quarantine checks when they all came back. I wonder if this reaction is specific to his individual genetic make-up?" Ben replied, shrugging his shoulders as he watched the test-results come up one by one.
"Hmmm..." Bridget intoned. "Right, the away team would already have been checked for biologicals. So if it was something.... "Hey Ben, what's his racial background? Did we calibrate the scanners to take that into consideration? If he has any genetic alien mix, that could cause him to be reacting, couldn't it? Whereas the Human away team wouldn't?"
"Possibly." Ben agreed. "He's genetically half Vulcan, but there are few specific Vulcan reactions that humans can't get, or vice versa. Only thing is, Vulcans tend to be stronger, rather than more susceptible," he shrugged.
"The only strange reading I'm getting is a tiny rise in his T-cell reaction. The bloods show some form of sensitivity but until the lab results come back, we're in the dark as to what exactly. I'm widening the spectrum and the parameters well beyond the normal and we'll have to just wait and see. Let's try to make him comfortable in the meantime," he added, increasing the pain blockers and the anti-pyretics.
Duquesne groaned and he faded in and out of consciousness as the medication began to take affect. This period of unconsciousness appeared to be the only time when he wasn't suffering from searing pangs of pain throughout his body.
"Hey Ben," Bridget began, holding up a padd and looking from it to the display above the patient's head. "Looks like his core temperature is slowly going up. See that?" She pointed at a set of digits that measured to a hundredth of a degree. "It's six tenths of a degree higher than it was half an hour ago."
"Okay, isolate him. It could be infectious after all, but probably only to Vulcans, as no
one else is affected," Ben decided.
The isolation lights began to flash on the doorway indicating the need for protective clothing. Ben and Bridget donned their sterilized gloves and shoes, and walked through the spray.
It was all a little belated but protocol had to be followed as soon as a diagnosis was confirmed.
The Bio-bed settings were adjusted as were the meds, and they re-ran all the readings yet again.
Five tense minutes later, Bridget gave Ben a sidelong glance and said, "Looks like you were right. His core is coming back down. Slowly, but it's down two hundredths."
Ben drew the back of his forearm across his forehead and wiped off some sweat. "That's a relief," he sighed, clearly being frank as the tension in his shoulders appeared to ease. He stretched his neck and drew in a few deep breaths as he decided the danger was fading a little.
"We'll need to keep him under strict observation. I want U's and E's and full bloods relayed to me every 15 minutes." he instructed. A nearby medic nodded in acknowledgement.
"Time for a cuppa?" Bridget asked Ben. They had a full schedule that day, but he looked like he needed a short break before heading in to his next patient.
A JP Between:
Ensign Bridget Stapleton
Doctor (General Practitioner)
Main Sickbay, DS5
and
Lt Ben Kensington
ACMO - DS5
Lieutenant
Michael Duquesne
Tactical Officer
by Commander Chelsea Dunham & Alderman Dorian Gabriel & Lieutenant Bridget Stapleton
Post Details
| Title | Duquesne - Man Down! (part I) | |
| Mission | Judgement | |
| Author(s) | Commander Chelsea Dunham & Alderman Dorian Gabriel & Lieutenant Bridget Stapleton | |
| Posted | Mon Nov 28, 2011 @ 2:34pm | |
| Location | Sickbay | |
| Timeline | SD39 14:45 |
The transporter shimmer faded and delivered Ben Kensington and his patient, Lt. Michael Duquesne, direct to Cubicle One where Ben set up the Med-arch over the patient on the bio-bed and started to set up the scans and stabilize him.
He looked up as Bridget came into the room. "Hi," he said, looking straight back down at the monitor. "Be with you in a tick."
"Sure."
It took several moments for Michael to recognize that he was no longer in the conference room, but had actually been transported to sick bay. His immediate reaction was to tell the Doctor that he was fine and that he did not need attention.
Unfortunately for him, as he tried to talk his mouth immediately filled with blood as he began to shake uncontrollably.
Ben allowed the patient to sit up to stop him choking as he ran tomography over his cranium. He fitted a drain to the outer cartilage of Duquesne's ear below where the scan said the damage had been done. Then he gently applied some anesthetic and allowed the tube to empty the accumulation of blood and cerebrospinal fluid to drain, relieving the pressure that had been forcing it to take the path of least resistance into Michael's mouth.
"Ease back now," he helped the weakened Duquesne back against the bed and began to apply the regenerator in focused beam so as to mend the bones of the inner ear selectively.
A nurse stopped next to Bridget and whispered to her, not wanting to interrupt the lieutenant. "I'll be right back," Bridget said to Ben, and received a mute nod. He was focused and she understood, quietly following the nurse out of the cubicle.
Ben set the biobed to administer antibiotics to protect Duquesne from the onset of meningitis equivalents. As the patient became woozy from the soporific that Ben administered to keep him calm, stable and rested without attempting to protest or leave, Ben told him that he had fractured his Temporal bone. "I take it you took a nasty blow to the side of your head, which you decided to ignore?" Ben muttered as he worked.
He measured the mild paralysis that seemed to be creeping down Michael's face on the left side and compensated with a neural block that took the pressure off the nerves in question, restoring the use of that part again.
Michael groaned as he tried to focus his eyes on a specific object in the room. He could hardly focus his vision and his hearing was consumed with ringing. He faded in and out of consciousness. His breathing was labored but his body ceased its previous shaking.
"Lieutenant Duquesne?" Ben moved closer and spoke softly, trying to help the man focus. "You're in Sickbay, don't try to do too much. Just let yourself regain your bearing for a minute or two."
Ben continued to adjust the LCARS panel on the Med-arch that was in position above Duquesne's chest.
"When you can tell, I need to know if you have any pain and if so, where?" he asked.
Duquesne lost consciousness again and Ben swore under his breath. He began to frantically scramble the med-arch controls in an attempt to re-stabilize him.
=^= Dr Stapleton? =^= he commed. =^= Kensington here, could you assist me please? My patient has crashed and I need to take him to theatre for more detailed scans and a lumbar puncture to take some of the pressure off his spinal fluids. =^=
Bridget held up a finger to the nurse she'd been in conversation with while she listened with alarm to Ben's message. =^= Be right there! =^= she commed back. Her reply mirrored Ben's urgency, and she handed the unopened instrument pack and two sets of padds to the nurse, dumping them in the other woman's arms like so much chaff. Bridget took off at a brisk walk, maneuvering around the busy geriatric residency department, while sending a comm badge call to an off-duty physician to report to the nurse's station there. Once she was out into the hallway and clear of other people, she broke into a run.
Triage was a beehive of activity, and she had to slow her progress to a walk, which made her chafe at the wasted seconds. Cubicle One was at the long end of the row, and she wove around nursing staff and patients alike until finally, breathless, she pulled to a stop just outside the cubicle. The patient could barely be seen around the bodies of physician and nurses, who were carefully moving him to a hoverbed to take him to surgery.
Ben was already scrubbing up. "Bridget, thanks for coming, I'd like you to second this procedure with me. I'm unsure why he's not responding as expected and two heads are better than one." He explained. The housemen took the patient through on a hover-gurney and set up the med-arch immediately.
"Scan everything. Throw the diagnostic book at him." Ben instructed, peering in concentration at the results so far with a puzzled frown on his face.
"Yeah, you bet," she replied, a worried frown on her face that mirrored that of the Lieutenant. "Bruce," she turned and addressed a nurse who wasn't immediately needed, "would you help me get into my kit for this?"
Bruce nodded and they headed quickly to get her gowned, masked, and gloved. Together they entered the sterile surgery theatre, finding the med-arch whirring away and Ben checking the anesthesia.
"So what do we have so far," she came to stand beside him, looking together at the readout above the patient's head.
"See for yourself." Ben shook his head. "We have the *perfectly* recovering patient on all the scans and tests yet...... " he gesticulated with a wide sweep of his hand over the stricken Security Officer. "The evidence belies them!"
The corners of Bridget's mouth turned down farther than they were. "Well this doesn't make sense. Did you try a multi-level bio-electric scan? And did you check his synaptic relays?" She was scouring the test readouts as fast as she could.
Ben just handed her two other padds from the side, both crammed with test results and readouts. "Yup" he sighed. ".... and the Tomography, Resonance, 2D, 3D and timed delays synchronised echography. I've tried the old fashioned Ultrasound, the usual Hypersound and the mid-range Melatronic. I've used the bio-radiative, the sonic-reflective and even the old-fashioned Z-rays. The only one that looked in any way *unusual* was the biomemetic readout. I'm wondering about some kind of alien mutatable, perhaps biotic or viral, possibly a cellular reaction - there's a tiny increase in Phosporylation.... but it's almost insignificant. I can't see how it could imply anything like the symptoms he has....... unless.... "
Ben looked thoughtful and went on. "He's only just back from an alien environment. What if we're looking at the wrong parts of him. The symptoms are all in his head.... so to speak. His *actual* head and neck. But what if he inhaled something apparently benign but which affected his auto-immune system somehow. His T-cells would attack their own. Taking them for enemy cells. Kinda like the old days when humans used to get Arthritis... before we invented Polyparmatontricate."
He set some controls on the biobed. "I'm going to reconfigure the blood tests. I want to look for microscopic organic intrusives that wouldn't normally be recognised as problematic."
Bridget's eyebrows rose. "Wait, do we need to seal the room as a precaution? If it's airborne... hell, the horse might already be out of the barn, considering how long he's been here."
"If he *has* brought something back, the chances are that the whole away team will have been exposed and we did do the standard quarantine checks when they all came back. I wonder if this reaction is specific to his individual genetic make-up?" Ben replied, shrugging his shoulders as he watched the test-results come up one by one.
"Hmmm..." Bridget intoned. "Right, the away team would already have been checked for biologicals. So if it was something.... "Hey Ben, what's his racial background? Did we calibrate the scanners to take that into consideration? If he has any genetic alien mix, that could cause him to be reacting, couldn't it? Whereas the Human away team wouldn't?"
"Possibly." Ben agreed. "He's genetically half Vulcan, but there are few specific Vulcan reactions that humans can't get, or vice versa. Only thing is, Vulcans tend to be stronger, rather than more susceptible," he shrugged.
"The only strange reading I'm getting is a tiny rise in his T-cell reaction. The bloods show some form of sensitivity but until the lab results come back, we're in the dark as to what exactly. I'm widening the spectrum and the parameters well beyond the normal and we'll have to just wait and see. Let's try to make him comfortable in the meantime," he added, increasing the pain blockers and the anti-pyretics.
Duquesne groaned and he faded in and out of consciousness as the medication began to take affect. This period of unconsciousness appeared to be the only time when he wasn't suffering from searing pangs of pain throughout his body.
"Hey Ben," Bridget began, holding up a padd and looking from it to the display above the patient's head. "Looks like his core temperature is slowly going up. See that?" She pointed at a set of digits that measured to a hundredth of a degree. "It's six tenths of a degree higher than it was half an hour ago."
"Okay, isolate him. It could be infectious after all, but probably only to Vulcans, as no
one else is affected," Ben decided.
The isolation lights began to flash on the doorway indicating the need for protective clothing. Ben and Bridget donned their sterilized gloves and shoes, and walked through the spray.
It was all a little belated but protocol had to be followed as soon as a diagnosis was confirmed.
The Bio-bed settings were adjusted as were the meds, and they re-ran all the readings yet again.
Five tense minutes later, Bridget gave Ben a sidelong glance and said, "Looks like you were right. His core is coming back down. Slowly, but it's down two hundredths."
Ben drew the back of his forearm across his forehead and wiped off some sweat. "That's a relief," he sighed, clearly being frank as the tension in his shoulders appeared to ease. He stretched his neck and drew in a few deep breaths as he decided the danger was fading a little.
"We'll need to keep him under strict observation. I want U's and E's and full bloods relayed to me every 15 minutes." he instructed. A nearby medic nodded in acknowledgement.
"Time for a cuppa?" Bridget asked Ben. They had a full schedule that day, but he looked like he needed a short break before heading in to his next patient.
A JP Between:
Ensign Bridget Stapleton
Doctor (General Practitioner)
Main Sickbay, DS5
and
Lt Ben Kensington
ACMO - DS5
Lieutenant
Michael Duquesne
Tactical Officer