The Still Point of the Turning World, Part 1

Posted on Thu Oct 30th, 2025 @ 6:22pm by Ensign Iozhara & Lieutenant Alexandra Blackstone & Lieutenant JG Jezra Siv MD & Lieutenant JG Malcolm Beckett M.D. & Ensign Charlotte Dawes

1,416 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Peril at the Unification Accords
Location: Sickbay, Deck 12
Timeline: MD 08, 1755 (Follows "Medical Emergency")

Alex took a half step back, wobbling on her feet as her hand broke free from the Amabassador's body and she turned her head to look at Jezra; opening her mouth to say something but collapsed herself before any sound could escape her throat. The impact came with a heavy thud and her body went limp as though she were sleeping heavily.

About ten minutes had passed. Jezra stopped Malcolm with a lifted hand, eyes still on the monitor. "There's nothing else we can do." They barely finished calling the time of death when the loud thump jolted her attention. Eyes wide, she rushed to Alex, her temple bleeding from where her head hit the edge of the bed. This was exactly what she was afraid of. "Get her to biobed two!" She called out, positioning herself to support Alex's head as she grabbed under the arms. "Someone assess vitals, now!"

Iozhara, already feeling the weight of one death, shifted her focus to Doctor Blackstone. She slid her arms beneath Alex's legs, feeling the deadweight of a body suddenly emptied of itself. Another nurse took her midsection, and together with Jezra, they lifted--slow and careful.

Blood from Alex's right temple had trickled up and beyond her hairline, matting the raven black hair to her scalp. "That's a bad laceration," Iozhara observed, attempting to sound calm and in control. The blood was now streaked across Jezra's sleeve as they lowered her onto the biobed.

Pressing her ear to Alex's chest, Iozhara attempted to block-out the noise of Sickbay--the beeping, the murmurs, the shuffling about. There it was: a weak but steady rhythm. There was a gentle rise and fall to Blackstone's chest as well.

"She's breathing," Iozhara said quietly, clipped but soft. "Pulse... thready. Thirty-nine and dropping." The other nurse activated the clamshell for a deeper scan.

While the staff moved to get Dr. Blackstone to the nearby biobed that Dr. Siv had ordered, Malcolm put the wing on lockdown, preventing additional medical personnel from entering the area. The fewer people who saw Dr. Blackstone in this condition, the better.

Once Alex was on the biobed, that was when Jezra's ears finally registered the alarm that the tricorder at the head of biobed one was emitting. The one used to monitor Alex. Rushing over, they grabbed the tricorder and brought it back, reading the alert. "She's gone into neural shock," they said. Looking up, the vitals on the monitor began to match what the tricorder was showing as the scans caught up. The neural activity was chaotic. The vitals were low but strained. Jezra forced her own emotions aside to focus on saving the life of someone who should never have been injured. "Iozhara, neural stimulator. Nurse, patch the laceration. Watch for concussion symptoms." As they spoke, the Trill grabbed a hypospray and loaded it, then pressed it to Alex's neck. "Pushing 5ccs synaptizine."

Alex took a steady breath as the hypospray injected; hissing just slightly out of her bodies own natural responses to pain.

Iozhara reached for the neural stimulator on a completely untouched medical cart that had been covered with a sanitary sheet. Once again, she felt thrust into a rhythm that was far outside of her body but which she was caught within--it was like muscle memory or ritual. It was also the only way she knew to stop her hands from trembling. She locked the device into place over Doctor Blackstone's brow, carefully avoiding the still oozing gash at her right temple.

"Neural stimulator is engaged," she announced. The device came to life like a thin and vibrating note.

They watched as Alex's eyelids fluttered, but there was nothing behind them--just the faint tremor of synapses firing without aim. The monitor's readout pulsed in erratic waves, climbing high and then collapsing in straight lines. It told the story of someone lost between here and somewhere else.

Iozhara adjusted the feed voltage by two-tenths, just enough to stabilize the oscillation so Jezra could gain a clearer image.

The nurse was at the head of the bed, dermal regenerator in hand to try and heal the laceration. The neural monitors were replaced by the neural stimulator while the head injury gradually closed.

Jezra frowned as the synaptizine struggled to properly kick in. The neural activity, it was like Alex was dreaming, but also not. It was as if her mind was fighting the medication, but why? Moving quickly, the Trill got oxygen stabilisation going. With her pulse so low, there was risk of not enough oxygenation. "Boosting oxygen support. If that pulse drops any lower we risk cardiac arrest and hypoxia." Jezra's voice was controlled, focused on the task at hand, but it wasn't calm. It couldn't be calm, not now. "Computer, analyse the data from the neural stimulator and isolate anomalous paracortical patterns." As the computer worked, she spared a worried glance toward Alex. "Come on, why are you not responding?" She muttered through her teeth.

Iozhara could feel the static rising under her palm as she adjusted the neural stimulator. Every sound seemed sharpened: the hum of the biobed, the oxygen feed, even Jezra's breathing. She glanced at the adjacent biobed where Doctor Beckett was making notes on a data PADD next to the lifeless body of the Vulcan Ambassador, occasionally glancing over at the others as they worked to stabilize Alex.

Something caught her attention and the Barzan nurse checked the neural display on the clamshell. "Paracortical resonance increasing," she murmured. "She's not stabilizing, doctor."

"Increasing??" Jezra looked to Iozhara, then to the results on the display. The computer chimed in to confirm the readings as anomalous. "The synaptizine should be preventing that." The readings were giving an unsettling sense of deja vu, and it didn't take long for Jezra to recognise the pattern. It was the same type of activity they saw right before T'Varel was transported to sickbay. The same kind that would lead into neural cascade if they did nothing. If that happened...

No. Not again.

A quiet string of sharp Trill words escaped Jezra's lips. They loaded another dose of synaptizine into the hypospray. Two doses in close succession were allowed, and in most cases worked to calm the neural hyperactivity, but any more could bring complications. "Pulse the neural stimulator, two bursts per second. We need to get that resonance under control before her neural activity surges. Nurse, crash cart on standby!" While Jezra would do everything possible to prevent resuscitation procedures, they had to be practical and would rather have it and not need it.

The nurse who was healing the laceration stopped what he was doing, acknowledged, and rushed off. The laceration had stopped bleeding and looked more like a scratch than a gash.

Iozhara adjusted the stimulator's pulse rate as ordered--two bursts per second. The device seemed to thrum against Alex's skin casting little ripples of light pulsing over the arc of her temple and all the way down her neck.

"First sequence engaged," Iozhara said, hopeful for a positive outcome.

Alex shuddered, almost as though an electrical shock had rippled through her nerves from head to toe, perhaps like she was unexplicably cold. Her mouth formed the words "Ambassador, wait" but no sound came from her throat. A moment later her head jerked strongly back and forth but it wasn't a seizure. It seemed completely unrelated to her condition.

Iozhara noticed it first: a small tightening at the corner of Alex's jaw, the barest tremor along the line of her neck. She had caught it in her periphery almost like seeing a candle's flame guttering before it bends sideways. The tremor in her neck subsided after a few moments, but now her arms began to stiffen--followed by her fingers curling inward. It was as though every muscle was finding its own slow resistance.

This was not a seizure, and Iozhara knew it. But it edged on something that could easily become one--become what the Ambassador went through just minutes before.

Iozhara laid a steadying hand on Blackstone's shoulder, feeling the find vibration of contracted muscle under her skin that has gone cold. The neural stimulator kept up its rhythm--pulse, pause, pulse.

"We need more," she said, more to herself. "I need a hand." Iozhara's normally soft voice had now become hard and loud.

Dr. Beckett abandoned his postmortem work on the Ambassador and tapped his communicator and called for Nurse Dawes to come assist as he rushed to Iozhara's side.


~TBC~

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