Post 8 - Curmudgeonly Miracles

Posted on Sat Feb 6th, 2021 @ 4:13pm by Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai & Commander Kora Lenek

Mission: The Waiting Game
Location: Lunar Annex, Starfleet Medical
Timeline: Prior to MD 5

[Lunar Annex, Starfleet Medical]

The hum of the transporter pad greeted the elderly Captain as he materialized inside the expansive hospital complex situated on the lunar surface. The old man had been to the facility a great many times over his long career, and had seen with his own eyes how it had changed and advanced over the last hundred or so years. The transporter chief nodded respectfully to the Captain as he descended the small series of stairs that brought him down to deck level.

"Thanks for the help," the old man said as he passed by the Transporter Chief.

"Did you need directions to where you're going, Captain?" came the courteous but unnecessary offer.

"Can't say that I do, kid. Been coming here since before your grandparents were born. Pretty sure I can find my way around," the elderly physician chuckled as he headed out of the door.

As he made his way through the long corridors that separated various wings from one another, the old man carried himself as if he owned every inch of the complex. His aura alone was enough to goad passersby into stepping to the side, nearly colliding into the wall at times, to get out of his way. Very few people he passed knew who he was, but none of them questioned his sovereignty for one reason or another. Such behavior happening around him merely made the old man smirk, as if it were a spectacle for his amusement.

After a lengthy walk, the old man finally arrived at the Critical Care portion of the facility, where only the most grievous of injured persons were brought. Without bothering to check to see if he was in the right place, the elderly physician entered a room and found a figure stretched out on a table, various life sustaining artifices affixed to various parts of her body, prolonging what might have well been the patient's inevitable demise.

"What am I looking at?" the old man barked, as if it were the most natural thing to do, demanding answers the second he walked into a space.

Emni t'Nai sat next to the prone figure, a PADD with scrolling vitals settled into her lap. Her Cardassian charge had been checked over by several nurses and orderlies upon their arrival. They had been thorough in their note making, but unable to convince the Romulan doctor to take a break. When she explained that she wanted to deliver her findings to the doctor who would be assisting Lenek herself she had received a few raised eyebrows, but blessedly few complaints. Perhaps her Romulan features were good for something at the very heart of the Federation where her kind were often so readily viewed with suspicion.

She looked up sharply at the entrance of an older doctor who, at first glance, appeared human. Recognizing the man's seniority if not his person she stood, walking around the bed and handing him her PADD. Not bothering with pleasantries she ran down the salient details. "Cardassian female, 46 years old, abducted by the Vidiian's in the Delta Quadrant while on assignment. By the time our crew were able to retrieve her they had removed several major organs and undertaken numerous other invasive tests. You can see the list here," she pointed to a file on the PADD, pinching from the screen and flinging it onto a holo display in front of her. "We stabilized her using notes from Doc Zimmerman of the Voyager after their first encounter with the Vidiian's in which one of their crew member's lungs were removed, but there was not an opportunity for us to recover her organs. We've kept her in an induced coma until we could get her someplace with the right equipment to help her."

The Romulan woman stopped her run down as quickly as she started, waiting expectantly for any questions from the man beside her.

"Did anyone have the brilliant idea of running a full DNA/RNA sequence on her yet?" the old man's piercing gaze swept the room. Several of the nursing staff turned pale, likely from the stark way they had all just been called out.

"Didn't think so," the elderly physician said with a grunt, "Do me a favor and run one now. And get the genetic fabrication lab technicians out of bed and on the job. We need organs and we needed them yesterday!"

Bodies flew into action, several of which nearly tripped over one another in an effort to scatter fast enough to escape the pressure being exerted on them. Once things were flowing in a manner that the old man seemed to approve of, he turned his attention to the woman who had so kindly filled him in.

"You her primary doctor?" the Captain asked flatly.

Emni loosed her empathic defenses slightly now that things were in motion, curious about the man who elicited such instantaneous obedience amongst the nursing staff. Immediately she was met with mild impatience and an underlay of disdain that seemed to linger as tendrils off in the direction of the medical team that had jumped to address the older doctor's orders. Beyond that, though, she found stillness--the sort of non-emotional space that she only encountered in telepathic or empathic species with years of training.

Not a human then.

"I am, yes," she replied to the Captain's inquiry. "Emni t'Nai," she added by way of introduction.

"That's nice," the old man said with a frown.

In the midst of their rather brief conversation, the elder physician had produced an older model tricorder, something that hadn't been in regular use in at least a decade or more. He approached the patient and ran the somewhat antiquated device in her general direction, stabbing at the controls a few times with his somewhat gnarled finger of his free hand.

"We have tricorders you can use, Doctor..." one of the remaining nurses started to offer before an icy glare from the old man seemed to freeze her in place.

"This one works just fine," the Captain intoned before returning his attention to his archaic device. It didn't take long for the nurse to scurry out of the room to escape any further ire being thrown her way. Before long, the old man snapped the device shut and slid it back in his pocket, turning to the hybrid officer that had yet to beat a hasty retreat.

"Vidiians are some of the worst surgeons that side of the galactic core. More than a few major blood vessels were practically obliterated while they were scooping her organs out with what might as well have been an ice cream scooper for all the damage it did. The fact that you kept her alive this long is worthy of praise... if I were in the mood to praise half-ass work... which I'm not. Did you happen to grab her last known intact transporter pattern buffer signature before you left your ship?" the elderly physician asked.

Emni took the insult with a grain of salt. Clearly this man was not used to anyone questioning him or his methods so rather than respond to the dig she simply responded to his question.

"I did," she said politely. "You'll find the access details for that data on the PADD I handed you."

"Oh good... at least someone in this building has half a damn brain... Do yourself a favor and transmit it to the fabrication lab. You might want to point out which organs we actually need... Let those morons have their way, they'd just clone her and tell us to put the brain in," the old man grumbled as he walked into the small antechamber that housed the surgical scrubs and other such equipment for such an activity.

Retrieving the PADD, Emni tapped quickly on a few key files, the transporter pattern along with a brief list she had prepared of the missing organs for whomever might need it. Sending them off to the aforementioned fabrication lab she returned the PADD to its former location and straighted in time for the man's return.

The elderly physician returned to the room, fully garbed in the protective garments required for surgical operations, a tray filled with equipment hovering silently behind him. With all the practiced impatience of a man who seemed to hate his lot in life, the Captain procured a stool and flopped onto it with a rather loud thud.

"Time to clean this mess up. You gonna suit up, or you got somewhere to be?" the old man asked, picking up a cutting implement from the tray.

Resisting the urge to chuckle, the Romulan retreated to the antechamber the older man had just vacated, selecting a set of protective gear and her own tray of equipment. Taking only a moment to pull the various garments into place, she returned to Lenek's bedside.

"Where would you like to start?"

"You start from that end, I'll start form this end, and we'll just work our way around until we've got the whole think fixed. Shouldn't take more than a few hours. They ought to be bringing us a few organs by then," the old man said, pointing to a spot near the patient's heart.

The following few hours were spent in relative silence, both physicians working on their respective portions of the patient's devastated circulatory system, though the old man tended to wander to other damaged organs as if they were afterthoughts once a portion of the work he was doing seemed to be at an end. His prediction that organs would be carted in near the end of their grueling work was proven to be correct as various medical techs began to parade a great many of them into the room, which prompted the two doctors to begin to install them. As the relevant body parts were being replaced, the elderly physician would toss the equipment that had been keeping his patient alive up to that point behind him like he was getting rid of useless trash.

There was something about the work that was almost meditative, allowing Emni to push back any concerns about other crew members who, despite soon being sent to shore leave, still weighed on her mind. Lenek's wounds were as extensive as the older doctor described and the work of regenerating her circulatory system was intricate and focused. Each time Emni managed to address on collapsed vessel it felt as though two more clamored for attention. And so she worked, quietly, methodically, and with little to say.

It took less time to place the fresh organic components in than it had to prepare for their arrival, which meant that when the pair finally closed the rather extensive surgical holes in the patient, they had managed to perform a task that could realistically take a much larger team nearly a full Terran day to accomplish in only seven hours.

"Alright folks, show's over. Get her to a recovery ward. Start her on a series of immunosuppressants to make sure she doesn't try to kill her own guts while she's recovering, and slowly wean her off the coma. She'll probably sleep for about twenty or so days, but that shouldn't stop you from routine medical maintenance," the Captain declared, making sure to pass along a few instructions while he was at it.

Emni stood, stretching her back where it had stiffened as she bent over her Cardassian XO's body. As the medical team began to set the Captain's orders into motion she nodded in his direction.

"Thank you Captain..." she realized that in all of the time they had worked together she hadn't yet asked his name. "I'm sorry, I never did ask for your name, sir."

"Nathan Cowell," the old man said briskly, "I probably taught your instructor at the Academy everything they knew. Might be why you aren't a useless physician like some of these kids around here..."

Emni proferred a small smile of appreciation at the praise recognizing its value as higher praise than perhaps the words themselves might convey. "Thank you, Captain Cowell."

She moved towards the antechamber now intent to remove the surgical garb well speckled in Cardassian blood. "Now that we're through the worst of it could I tempt you to get a post-op drink?" she inquired, curious to learn more about the unorthodox doctor who had so effectively placed her colleague back on a path toward survival.

"As long as it's real and not that synthetic piss water they like to pawn off on people, I won't say no to a drink after hours," Cowell remarked, pulling the dirty garments he was wearing off with the practiced impatience befitting someone who had been removing surgical vestments for the vast majority of his life.

"Absolutely," she remarked, mirroring Cowell's movements as she stripped out of her own surgical attire. "Is there anyplace that particularly suits your fancy?"

"As long as the liquor is hard and the stools aren't, I'll plant my ass just about anywhere," the old man said with a shrug, "Lead the way, kiddo."

-A Lengthy Medical Marvel by

Captain Nathan Cowell, MD
Curmudgeonly Doctor at Large

and

Lieutenant Emni t'Nai
Cheif Medical Officer
USS Adelphi