We Work Until They Wake
Posted on Sun Aug 17th, 2025 @ 9:39pm by Lieutenant JG Malcolm Beckett M.D. & Ensign Charlotte Dawes & Lieutenant Alexandra Blackstone & Josef Forstinger & Ensign Iozhara
1,954 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Bombs or Bombshells
Location: Sickbay, Surgical Wing
Timeline: MD 004, Follows "The Man in Stasis"
Alex stood ready, anxiously bouncing on her toes as Malcolm finished catching the bleeders and stabilizing Josef. It felt like an eternity as she watched the rest of her team perform the dance that is unique to surgeons, especially as she refused to look at the clock. She heard Malcolm give the go ahead and jumped into action, activating a clamp that would hold Josef's head steady while she worked.
"Alright Nurse Dawes; I need another 5 cc's of Alkysine and point 4 cc's of Trianoline. Lets get him set up and connected to a Neural Transducer and I am going to need a programmable Neural Implant." Alex took a deep steadying breath and offered a silent prayer before she picked up the Exoscalpel and positioned herself to wait for the ready mark from the rest of the team. "Doctor Siv can you and Nurse Iozhara monitor his vital signs and work to keep him sedated and stable, please?"
"Yes, Doctor. Coming right up," Charlotte responded, quickly turning on her heels to retrieve the medications that were staged on a nearby tray. "Five cc's Alkysine, pint 4 cc's Trianoline." She held the hyposprays, one in each hand, waiting to see if the doctor would order her to administer the medication, or if she would be handling it herself.
Alex nodded to Dawes, indicating that she could administer the medications when she was ready. Slowly her gaze slid to Jezra and then over Josef again.
Charlotte nodded, her movements punctuated, serious. She administered the hyposprays in the order that the doctor had prescribed them, and then set the hyposprays aside, situating her body at an angle so that she had easy access to the equipment and medications that the doctors may ask her for during the procedure.
With the other survivors that kept appearing in sickbay, Jezra had her hands full, so it was no surprise that she had been largely absent when this particular newcomer came in. It wasn't until after the most recent survivor, a young woman, stabilised that things finally started to ease up in sickbay. A quick sitrep later, the Trill was monitoring the vitals through a console nearby to stay out of the way of the surgical team. "Oxygen saturation is holding at 95%, BP's 88 over 62, and body temperature is 36.1 Celsius," they reported. Given the blood loss and injuries reported, it was a stable but a highly delicate reading.
“Excellent; let’s save a life.” Alex held out her hand to Charlotte. “Extroscalpel.” Once she had the scalpel in hand she set to work; tracing a perfect line around Josef’s scalp. “Alright; let’s get the sonic separater in here and remove the cranial cap.”
Iozhara moved without a word. She had long since learned that there was no point in narrating a code-blue ballet. Everyone knew their part, the rhythm set long ago by years of training and repetition. The scalpel sang, the vitals flickered in steady pules in front of Doctor Siv, and through it all, Iozhara's job was not to think too hard. Thinking could come later--when the drapes were changed-out and the tray scrubbed-down.
She let her eyes drift across the patient's face, not from tenderness exactly, but from vigilance. Any twitch, any breath drawn too sharply, any change in tone or temperature--those were the signs she watched for. She steadied the neural transducer with two fingers, thumb braced just above his brow. His skin was slick with antiseptic and cooler than it should have been.
She watched Charlotte moving with quiet grace in the scrub nurse position--deft and practiced, always unflinching. She passed instruments before they were asked for, anticipated shifts in tempo as though she were born into the role. Doctor Siv stood just behind, watching the readouts, their attention flitting back and forth from the young man's vitals to Doctor Blackstone's steady hands. The surgeon was precise and efficient in her work.
That left Iozhara to do what she always did: monitor the edge where science met suffering. She tracked the vitals that didn't make the primary display. Airway, Sedation depth. Reflex. All of those soft margins that spoke to survival.
She reached down and took the man's hand in hers. Not out of comfort--that came later, if it came at all--but to feel what the monitors couldn't tell her. Temperature. Tension. The thread of a pulse thin as cotton. His hand was cold--nearly inert.
It wasn't nothing. Cold always meant something. It always did.
Alex lifted the cranial cap from Josefs head gently, careful not to touch the now exposed greymatter and gave a soft sigh to herself. Parts of the parietal and frontal lobes were dark; not quite necrotic but certainly heading that way. “Vascular regenerator; lets get the blood flowing properly again. I want to minimize anything we need to cut into. Nurse Iozhara can you get the pinpoint transporter set up please?”
"Yes, doctor."
Iozhara moved, fingers already at the console behind the biobed. The pinpoint transporter was a temperamental thing--like threading a needle in zero gravity--and you had to mean it when you told it to behave. She aligned the relay collar with the patient's temple and watched as it synced with a green flicker. It meant she had a lock, or something near enough to one.
"Transporter is spooling. I'll have the micro-displacement ready in fifteen seconds," she said through her surgical mask. Words were instruments here.
Charlotte reached for the regenerator as soon as Blackstone began asking for it. "Vascular regenerator, Doctor," she repeated as she held the instrument out for Bllackstone.
Alex swapped the scalpel out for the regenerator and brought it close to the brain before activating it and running it in small repeated swathes as she watched for signs of returning blood flow. She said nothing for several minutes while she worked; her focus completely on her hands and the regenerator beam.
The transporter's status light steadied. Iozhara keyed in the displacer spread, narrowing its focus for Blackstone, and nodded.
"Ready for displacement," she said. "I've isolated the bleed channel and thermal-tagged surrounding tissue."
“Dr. Beckett; can you work the transporter? Lets try to remove as little tissue as we can. Iozhara, can you take a sample from the patients mouth and get a sample of some stem cells?” Alex peered into the cavity and ran a mental checklist as she spoke; taking a deep breath.
"Aye, Doctor," Malcolm replied as he returned to the table freshly scrubbed back in after finishing the abdominal surgery.
"On it," Iozhara said, low and clear, and stepped around the bed.
Mouth samples were routine. A sterile swab, a light touch, a moment's patience. But the man's lips had begun to lose their colour, and that changed the feel of the task. It was like pressing fingers into snow to feel if there's earth beneath.
She reached gently, supporting the jaw with her non-dominant hand, thumb brushing the hinge. It wasn't the contact that unsettled her--it was the weightlessness. NO resistance in the muscles. Like his body had already begun letting go of the idea of being here.
The swab came way clean. No blood, no bile. Just a tidy spool of tissue and mucosal lining--just enough raw genetic material to rebuild something, if the rest of him could be convinced to stay. She sealed the sample, labeled it, and placed it onto the specimen tray.
Alex watched the sample be taken and uttered a soft curse. “Lets get 2cc’s inaprovaline onboard; it’ll help to mitigate cellular necrosis and buy us a little more time.”
"Yes, doctor," Iozhara replied sharply, moving gracefully to the secondary surgical tray and sliding a vial of inaprovaline into a hypospray. She deftly set the dosage to 2 CCs and injected it into the young man without delay.
"Inaprovaline administered."
“Thank you. Alex leaned down slightly; gently touching the brain to get a better feel for its condition and felt relief flood her as some of the areas that had looked bloodless were returning to normal color slowly.
“Miss Dawes; hows the neural implant looking?”
"Prepped and ready, Doctor," Charlotte replied calm and steady. She stepped away to bring the clear glass container that held the neural implant to the instrument table within the doctor's reach. The implant sat suspended inside of the cube, carefully protected by the antigravity field around it.
Alex withdrew her hand and glanced at Josef’s vitals, noting a small drop in them and shook her head but grimaced with determination. You are getting through this.
She picked up the neural implant with a pair of specially designed forceps and inspected it, nodding with satisfaction at its condition and then she gently placed it into the brain tissue, ensuring that it would be able to be programmed externally. Once she was satisfied that it was secure; the miniscule needles in its back giving it a good grip she pulled all of the tools away and lifted the cranial cap back into place; careful not to scrape the brain in any way. “Osseous Regenerator; lets close him.”
"Osseous Regenerator, Doctor," Charlotte repeated, the instrument already prepared to be handed off.
Alex took the Osseous Regenerator and activated it; tracing the line that she had cut through the skull and watching with some amazement as the bone sealed itself. She knew that it would still take some time to be at full strength but it meant that the patient was very likely to recover. After a long minute of work she stepped back and looked up. “Go ahead and finish closing. I will get started on the programming of the implant.”
"Nicely done, Dr. Blackstone. Pleasure to see you in action," Malcolm acknowledged. "Nurse Dawes, auto-suture please."
Charlotte had the auto-suture ready for the doctor's hands before he had finished asked for it, prompted first by Dr. Blackstone's orders for him to finish closing. Malcolm began working on the incision as he he continued his directions to the other staff.
"Nurse Iozhara, can you prep the dermal regenerator? I'm going to have you start working behind me here."
Iozhara was already moving. Her hands found the dermal regenerator on the tray, its weight as familiar as a Barzan bone teacup. She checked the settings by habit, the little blue indicators reflecting off the nearby consoles, and stepped behind Malcolm without crossing into his rhythm. Surgery was choreography--there were steps, there was space, and the trick was knowing which belonged to whom.
She powered on the device and set to tracing the line of freshly sealed bone with the meticulousness of someone who knew skin was as much a boundary as it was a shelter. The patient's face had lost the grey tint it carried when he had first arrived. It was a small thing, the return of some colour, but she catalogued it anyway--it being proof that sometimes the patient followed you back.
Alex watched the closing for a moment before nodding to Malcolm. “Aye; pleasure to have you all alongside me. It’s a team effort.” She gave a small, almost imperceptible smile before turning to scrub out.
Lieutenant Alexandra Blackstone
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Astrea
Lieutenant J.G. Malcolm Beckett
Medical Officer
USS Astrea
Ensign Iozhara
Nurse
USS Astrea
Ensign Charlotte Dawes
Nurse
USS Astrea
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