Once More into the Breach
Posted on Sat Sep 7th, 2024 @ 10:22pm by Lieutenant Xex Wang & Ensign Mei Ratthi
Mission:
Mean Green Queen
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 0021
[Sickbay]
[3 days following 'Better Living through Biochemistry]
[0021]
Sickbay was quiet, its lights dimmed in response to the late hour. Although the minimal overnight staff continued their rounds and duties, the activity was subdued, the the daytime hum absent.
Or perhaps it wasn't the late hour, but their long-term denizen affecting the atmosphere, Xex reflected, looking down at Timmoz's still figure. He certainly knew he was being affected by his continuing failure to repair the damage done on Hukatuse Tugamik; he had to assume the same was true for the rest of his people, particularly the ones directly responsible for Timmoz's care. Although it was hard to tell in the muted lighting, Xex knew the Orion's color was not good. The stasis field was holding him frozen in time, and that time was not a good one for the Sojourner's chief flight controller. His features appeared sunken, the bones of his skull stark against the grayish-green skin.
Feeling as haggard as Timmoz looked, Xex tore his gaze from that dragonfly in amber, directing it to the bed's diagnostic, scanning the data for any telltale signs in the man's state state. His expression hardened. Although the Orion had been very slowly declining since he'd been placed in the field-- no stasis field he'd ever heard of was absolutely perfect-- each glimpse of his degraded function felt like a physical blow to Xex, another nail in Timmoz's coffin.
Before his sometimes-distractable brain could jump down the macabre rabbit-hole of wondering about Orion funerary practices, Xex jerked his head abruptly and spun away from the bed, hesitating only slightly before making for sickbay's main doors. Although it was too early for Liazra's most recent crop to be ready, brooding would accomplish nothing, and the coward in him could no longer stand to watch Timmoz lose the battle for his life.
A nurse, startled by the doctor's sudden movement, stepped back out of his way, her expression tightening from surprise to-- fear? Unused to seeing such a countenance directed at him, Xex made a conscious effort to relax his jaw, moving his features into what he hoped was bland pleasantness as he gave her a nod.
She did not look entirely convinced by this change and her brow crinkled in worry as she watched him pass. Xex dismissed her from his list of concerns-- he would make amends after Timmoz's recovery, if necessary. Sickbay's doors opened for him, and he swept out into the empty hallway, making for the turbolift.
[Deck 5]
[Physical Sciences Lab]
[A few minutes later]
It was, as usual, quiet in the lab at 0030. Those few scientists who had begrudgingly taken the later shift were inclined to be quiet, as though they were saving their energy for the hours afterward when they could go and have what fun they could while most of the crew was on the first shift.
Not Liazra, though. She preferred the solitude of the middle of the night. It allowed her the peace and distance to focus on her projects without the distractions caused by chattering crewmates and the random alerts that were prone to pop up between 0700 and 1800. And though she might not realize it, her labmates agreed that these quieter times made her more pleasant to be around, as the noise and bustle of the first shift made her irritable.
The short turbolift ride seemed to have been sufficient for Xex to regain command of his expression. It was pleasant as he stepped through the lab's doors, if starting to show the first signs of fatigue. A remedy for that would have to wait until Timmoz's survival was assured. "Good evening," he greeted, genuine pleasure at Liazra's company lightening the heavy pull of stress on his features.
This particular shift had been quieter than normal in the lab, so when the door swished open to reveal Xex, she seemed almost happy to see him. “Good evening, Doctor. If you’re here for the latest batch of those cellular structures, they’ll be ready in a few hours. There’s only so much I can do to accelerate their growth before it affects their stability.”
Looking slightly chagrined, like a child caught doing something he oughtn't, Xex ducked his head and said, "Guilty, as charged. In all honesty, I didn't think you'd still be here. I just couldn't--" He cut himself off with an impatient gesture. Liazra hardly needed to hear about his self-pity. "That is to say, movement was just the ticket. May I see them?" There was something boyish about the almost shy way he asked the question. Vague though it might have sounded, he knew she would easily take his meaning. What else could he be here to see, but the various crops of experimental lung tissue they'd been growing?
“Of course you can,” she said, already moving to pull up the readouts with all the vital statistics of the precious bundles of cells they’d concocted. “And of course I’m here at this hour. I volunteer for this shift, after all. I think better when there are fewer people about. Though it apparently gives me. . . how did my young colleague put it? Mad scientist vibes?” Liazra gave a careless shrug, as though willfully dismissing the ridiculous notions of youth.
Xex's brows raised, clearly surprised at her admission. His surprise ripened into pleasure, his smile widening. "Well, that makes two of us. I function just as well in the middle of the night as I do during the day shift. Why not let someone else keep their sleep cycles 'normal'? My colleagues might think me mad, but I must say, they don't say it to my face." The smile had become a grin and though his gaze flicked to the information readouts, he couldn't resist a mock-courtly bow, adding "Madness becomes you, lieutenant."
“I appreciate that, Doctor. At least someone appreciates these odd hours. You can get a lot of thinking done when the lights are low and there isn’t some kind of alarm ringing in your ear every ten minutes.” Liazra grinned. It was an expression that would likely surprise her colleagues from the day shift, for she was normally so sober. “So if burning the midnight oil is madness, then let us all be mad here. At least we’ll get things done.”
Once the informational displays were all active, Liazra stepped over to one of the hubs housing the lab’s active experiments, brushed a hand over a control, and cleared the glass covering a lumpy construct of greenish tissue. “I have a good feeling about this batch. The oxygen absorption levels are much higher than they were last time. I think I’ve cracked the issue I was having between tissue strength and elasticity, too. And while we’re talking about lungs, I’ve compiled the reports on that dust from the moon– Shaddam IVa, was it? I remember you were worried about lingering respiratory effects in the crewmembers who inhaled it. I can send them over whenever you want.”
Xex's attention was immediately absorbed; where the information was interesting, the samples themselves were captivating. He reached out a hand, touching lightly at the glass as though he could get a sense for the samples by touch, despite the barrier. "Oh?" he said, without looking away from the little lumps of flesh, "That's excellent news indeed. They're certainly looking healthier at their enmeshment points." He peered a little closer at where each sample was connected-- no, inextricably intwined-- in the biosynthetic manifold they'd formulated and Liazra had been perfecting. While Xex harbored some reservations about the technique, he couldn't deny that they looked natural and healthy, without the necrotic areas they'd encountered in some of the earlier batches.
Liazra's report about Shaddam IVa's dust derailed Xex's thought process, forcibly transferring it to a new set of tracks for which he was not entirely prepared. He blinked rapidly as he shifted his attention, glancing up sideways from the samples. "I am still worried about it," he admitted, "but I will admit that more pressing matters had taken over much of my allotted worrry time." Xex grimaced-- a dying crewmember was enough worry to have pushed the lingering respiratory issues from the dusty moon from his mind. While he misliked being distracted from the worries over the many for the worries over the few, triage dictated that he focus on Timmoz for the time being. "Perhaps once Timmoz can breathe on his own, we can go over them together?"
“I look forward to it. I’ll admit, the dust’s properties have been on my mind a lot lately. I think, if we could figure out how to replicate it, there could be all sorts of uses we could put it to. But that, as you said, is a conversation for the future.” She folded her arms and stared down at the samples, as though by sheer force of will she could make them grow faster and go on to solve the riddle of how to save Timmoz. “How does the manifold look to your eye? I think it’s doing the trick- plant cells are remarkably mutable, after all. But how it will function within an actual body is a question I’ll leave to you.”
"Mmmhmmm," Xex grunted, agreeing in a distracted sort of way as he finally dismissed the informational readouts about the samples and turned the full of his attention to the actual organic tissue itself. Calling up a microscopic image of the samples, he peered into it, glancing over the edge of the image to the tissue and back to the magnified image again. "It certainly looks sturdier than anything we've come up with so far. The lung tissue seems to be meshing admirably," he said, then peered closer. "Stars... has it woven in there?" Disbelief colored the doctor's tone as he looked up at Liazra. "Did you induce that enmeshing?" Without waiting for her answer, he turned back to the image, entranced.
Liazra smiled, pleased that he had noticed such a small detail, but unwilling to take the credit for a natural process. “I did not. That’s how that particular plant grows. A riverine grass from Gecarro. The region it’s from experiences both high winds and flooding. After our previous experiments, some database searching brought this one up. I thought the structure might give it the necessary strength and flexibility. So far, it seems to be working. But as always, the proof will be in the execution.” She paused and made a face. “Though, that may not have been the best choice of words in this instance.”
Xex grimaced, silently agreeing with her admission without looking away from the samples. "Gecarro? I'm not familiar," he admitted, "but if such a place yields the answer to our problems, I shall be forever grateful. And it really is beautiful." He tuned the microscopic display a little differently, and continued, "On a cellular level, I have to say it also looks good. The shared DNA replication you affected seems to be functioning well, and all the cellular components look healthy. Even that mitochondrial rejection from earlier seems to have cleared up." When he finally looked up, Xex's silvery features held a glow of hope. "This might be the batch. And not a moment too soon. If they still look this good in a couple hours, I think we should immediately transplant. I can cue up the LMH and brief him in the meantime."
Liazra smiled. “I’m feeling confident about this batch. I tweaked the mitochondrial DNA a bit; it was a matter of adjusting the seventh chromosome to ensure it could enmesh itself with the Orion tissues. I do have the computer working on other simulations, just in case. But I think this may be the one. If you’re confident about it, too, then I don’t see why you shouldn’t prep the surgery and get a head start on things.” She clasped her PADD to her chest and stared down at the samples as though, through sheer force of well, she could make them flourish this time. “If you’d like to go and make your arrangements, I’ll bring this over as soon as it’s ready. If anything changes, I will inform you at once. But I have a good feeling about it.”
"I have a good feeling about your expertise," Xex countered, reaching out to give her upper arm a friendly squeeze. "Timmoz couldn't have a better team in his corner," he said, and finally stepped back, making for the door with a nod. It certainly was time he let the little samples generate, and instead turned his attention to his own theatre of expertise. The doors swished open and Xex departed, leaving Liazra in peace with her samples.
[Sickbay]
[0640]
With the privacy screen up around the biobed, the space felt a little claustrophobic, but Xex had experienced such an outpouring of feeling from the crew with regards to Timmoz-- everything from deep concern to vulgar curiosity-- that it seemed the least he could do for the Orion while he recovered. Certainly Timmoz wouldn't suffer for the confinement; he was still under heavy sedation while they monitored the newly-implanted lung. His stasis field had been banished in the interests of allowing his body to heal, and now they could only hope that his complicated physiology would play nicely with their bioengineered replacement.
Xex tore his eyes away from the status readout he was studying as Liazra stepped through the insubstantial barrier of the auditory and visual privacy field. "Oh, excellent. I was hoping you would have time to stop by. As you can see, the LMH has done a beautiful job, and now we just have to wait. We're not seeing any immediate signs of incompatibility or rejection but then--" he paused, and while he was too practiced a physician to show his concern in anything so obvious as the gnawing of the lip or the picking of a fingernail, he did fold his hands behind his back and take a steadying breath. "But then," he continued, "Timmoz is weak enough that it may simply be delayed. But please," he took a half step back, gesturing to the diagnostics. "See what you think."
On the bed, Timmoz's still figure breathed very slowly, the sedation retarding his metabolic processes far enough that even his two-way heart did not need quite so much oxygen. There was no obvious sign of where the surgery had taken place, the dermal regenerators already having closed the Orion's emerald skin back up. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his face seemed gaunt, almost skull-like beneath its verdant sheath.
Liazra spared their patient a brief glance before turning her attention to the readouts. She stood there, silent for a few long minutes as she flipped through various screens, her brow creasing now and then when she saw something she was uncertain about or a reading she didn’t like. Not for the first time, Xex wished she were more expressive with her emotions, if only so he would have a vague idea of what was on her mind. He didn’t like her frowns, but they might not have been related to Timmoz’s condition at all. Perhaps she was frowning because her shoes were pinching her toes, or she didn’t like that her hair was in minor disarray. It was nearing the end of her shift. Perhaps she was hungry or tired?
Finally, he dared to ask, “Do you see something wrong?”
“I’m not sure. It could just be a response to such a recent surgery that will go away with time, but it seems like his immune system is reacting to the plant cells in the matrix. See that?” She pointed to a reading that showed his body’s immune response. The levels were elevated every so slightly. “It almost seems like his T lymphocytes see those cells as a threat. But this is your area of expertise. I could be blowing this out of proportion.”
Xex stepped up behind her peering more closely at the area of data she indicated. "Ah, yes," he said, relaxing just slightly at what he saw. "You're absolutely correct, those cellular counts are elevated; I wouldn't expect anything else this close to the transplantation. The genetic coding we put in won't have had time to generate the protein markers to call the T-cells off. Still, we cannot be too careful," he said, reaching out to the display and tapping a few commands that put a pulsing tag on the diagnostic; it would be hard to ignore any change in the data now.
"Thank you, as always," he said, turning from the screens and the patient himself, "for your attention to detail. We'll keep an eye on it."
“Of course. Details are what I do.” Liazra gave him a tight smile before glancing back at the monitor, staring at it for another minute before she let out a long breath and straightened. Nothing was likely to change one way or the other in the next five minutes, so what was the point of staring at it? The humans had a saying for it– something about watched cooking pots not boiling? However they said it, they had a point. Standing around wouldn’t change the outcome of this surgery, so there was no sense in doing it. “I should get back to my own duties. I have a feeling you’re perfectly capable of keeping an eye on things, but if anything changes for the worse, do let me know.”
“I’ll let you know if anything changes for the best, too. It’s always good to know when your work has a positive outcome.”
“That it is. Good night, then, Doctor. I hope both our nights go as well as we hope.” Her smile softened and grew more genuine. She cast a last glance back at the monitor and then at Timmoz before she reclaimed her PADD and headed out.
After the door closed behind her, Xex nervously chewed on his lip for a moment. Sickbay seemed eerily quiet now, despite the soft chimes of other monitors and the muffled sound of the night staff talking as they carried on with their rounds. “It’s going to be fine,” Xex muttered. “We’ve got it this time. It’s going to be fine.”
[CMO's Office]
[1252]
Xex looked up from his desk for the uncountable thousandth time, gaze drawn inexorably through the transparent panels that made up his office and out into sickbay to where Timmoz's privacy-shielded biobed remained. Despite his standing position, he couldn't see the Orion through the shielding, but he knew he was there, and the diagnostics from his biobed were front and center on Xex's wall display. Movement in sickbay-- just Marwol on his rounds-- jerked Xex's gaze away, unwilling to be caught staring. He looked back down at the PADD in his hand, trying to focus his attention on it. It was Liazra's report about the dust from Shaddam IVa. Xex blew out a frustrated puff of air. Normally, he would find it absorbing; it was actually extremely interesting. But just now, he was annoying himself with the depth of his abstraction. He simply couldn't focus on the report.
Staring at him will not make him well, Xex reminded himself sternly, but still felt his eyes sliding back to his wall display.
Fine, he allowed, and permitted himself one last check, going over Timmoz's diagnostics on the wall, frowning slightly as the elevated lymphocytes Liazra had noticed earlier continued to climb. Their growth was not necessarily alarming, but it was worth keeping an eye on. With the good stuff they'd pumped him full of, plus the engineering they'd done on the transplanted tissue's genome, their numbers should be plateauing, then falling off soon. Still, the alarm tag was in place for a reason; when it went off, he would worry.
Turning resolutely away from the display, he firmly settled himself into his yet-unused chair. Perhaps a change of position would be enough to settle his mind. He called up the report again, this time on his main desk display and set his mind to absorbing the information.
Several minutes later, he blew out a sigh and flicked the report away. Mindless filing, that would be the ticket. At least he would get it done before the LCARS update-- he was happily anticipating the increased functionality, but he knew the hiccups encountered while they updated would be frustrating in the extreme. They always were, and that was before you were on a ship deep in the Delta Quadrant being beamed information packets from stars only knew how many subspace relays.
Xex opened his never-ending queue of reports and performance evaluations, equipment inventories and pending medical procedures. They all needed to be dealt with and put away, a task that while boring, was also necessary. He usually put it off, but perhaps it was just the thing to eat away the time while he waited for Timmoz to recover.
[1503]
subcutaneous abnormality which ultimately-- Xex jerked away from the report as an alarm-- the very alarm he'd been both studiously ignoring and silently dreading-- sliced through his concentration. Blinking blankly for a moment as it continued to sound, he finally gathered his wits enough to say, "Computer, silence alarm."
Blessed quiet did descend as he rose to his feet before Timmoz's diagnostics. His T-lymphocytes had spiked, and his immune system was currently spitting them out an exponential rate. Without a second thought, Xex activated his commbadge. "Wang to Ranaam. Please come to sickbay immediately." Only long practice allowed him to keep his voice calm as he strode from the office toward Timmoz's bed. He waved off Marwol's concerned glance; this was Xex's mess, and he intended to clean it up. He stepped through the privacy field to find the Orion looking grayer than he had-- closer to Xex's own skintone than his usual verdant hue. Although the sedation was keeping him from moving, his face looked even more sunken than before, and his vitals were dropping as he labored to breathe.
Xex immediately began snapping orders to the biobed, triaging the Orion's pulminory failure, and ensuring enough oxygen was circulating to keep him from going into cardiac arrest or killing his brain.
He’d managed to stabilize Timmoz– just– when Liazra appeared, looking only mildly disheveled for all that she’d been called in well outside her normal shift. “Doctor? You rang? Oh.” It didn’t take long for her to sort out what had happened, and her demeanor shifted from sleepy to dejected. “His body’s rejected it all, hasn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so,” Xex said as he stared down at the readings, occasionally glancing back at Timmoz’s face to see if his color had improved it all. It had, slightly. Nevertheless, it was still far from healthy. “You were right about the T-lymphocytes. Their levels increased over the last few hours, but it was well within normal ranges. They started increasing exponentially a few minutes ago. He’s stable for the moment, but as soon as his vital signs improve a bit more, we’re going to have to remove the new tissues. I don’t know what we’ll do next.”
For once, Liazra was at a loss for both words and ideas. “There– there must be something else . . . Something I’ve overlooked. I suppose I’ll go back to the lab and check on the progress of the other samples I’ve been running simulations on, but given that everything we’ve tried so far has failed, I’m starting to doubt that we’ll find anything suitable in time. I don’t suppose you’ve had any sudden insights over the past few hours?”
"I'm embarrassed to say I've mostly spent the past few hours hoping this worked. As a physician, I try not to place overmuch emphasis on hope-- I prefer action-- but in this case..." Xex's shoulders slumped into a defeated bow as he stared down at his gray-tinged patient. Liazra followed his gaze, her own expression clinically puzzled, rather than dispirited.
As they watched, Timmoz's labored breathing gained a new dimension: an odd hitch like his lungs couldn't fully expand. The strange jerk drew Xex closer as curiosity began to take over from dejection. Even as he neared, the phenomenon was becoming increasingly pronounced. Frowning with concentration, he stooped, placing his ear directly over the Orion's chest. The concentration on his features deepened the lines that had etched themselves in place the last several days, and without moving his ear, he rummaged in the biobed's instrument drawer, coming out with an audio amplifier. With a deft movement, he replaced it where his ear had been and the sound was abruptly projected out into the tiny privacy space.
The labored wheeze of air was immediately obvious, filling the air with the sound of a not-quite-rhythmic exchange of oxygen, underlayed with an alarming bubble. But in concert with these sounds, there was a rasping click-- or maybe a clicking rasp-- and it was to this that Xex drew Liazra's attention. "Do you hear that?" he asked, hushed so they could listen. He lifted a finger, tapping it against the air each time the rasping click punctuated the breathing. At the same time, he reached out with another finger and pointed to Timmoz's chest, which was still working to breathe despite the rejection of the new lung. The hitch in his breathing pulled and shifted in time with the clicking rasp.
"Of course," Liazra replied, having cocked her head to the side to listen to whatever it was had patently caught the doctor's ear. "But what--" she began, and didn't bother finishing as Xex was already stepping forward to manipulate the ever-hovering diagnostic images. A few he dismissed with a swipe of his hand, and the remaining he rearranged, blowing up the cross-section of Timmoz's lungs and magnifying the new lung in particular. The immune response was immediately obvious, and even as they watched, the battle between Timmoz's own (rather robust, if Xex was being honest) immune system and the implanted lung began to cause bronchiole swelling and fluid build up in the lung itself. This didn't seem to interest the doctor-- it was the obvious conclusion to the T-lymph attack-- but rather he focused in on the peripheries of the new lung tissue where the greatest concentration of the attacking immune cells was focused. "Look," he said, "this is where it started. But... why? The lung tissue was healthy and well-meshed within the biosynthetic manifold you had grown."
Liazra had a faraway look on her face, though it spoke of concentration not distraction. What had initially sound like a popping noise was, when she listened more closely, more like a crackling sound. It certainly could have come from the fluid building up in the lung, but it didn’t have quite the right sound for a bubbling liquid. To her ear, it sounded more like the flexing of plant material, like leaves or bark curling up or being folded. “It’s the manifold,” she said, apropos of nothing, as it seemed to Xex.
“What about it?” he asked, flicking back through the readouts as thought that would tell him something he didn’t already know.
“I think it’s still too rigid,” she said. “That sound– it’s not from the fluid. It’s the manifold interacting with the T-lymphocytes. You see, where the build-up started, that specific point flexes more than the rest of the lung does. The lack of flexibility caused irritation, which caused swelling, which triggered an immune response when his system, for lack of a better term, woke up and realized there was foreign material in his body. Unless you majorly tamp down on his immune response and do that for the rest of his life, you’re going to have to remove the lung. And we’ll have to start over.”
Xex paused in his flicking, flinging out the best image of what she was talking about and studying it closely. It wasn't long before his conclusion agreed with hers. He'd known the lung was going to have to come out, but the problem with the biosynthetic manifold was the real kick in the teeth. With a frustrated gesture, he snatched the audio amplifier off Timmoz's chest and abruptly, the little bubble of privacy was dropped into quiet as Timmoz's labored breathing returning to normal volumes.
The doctor visibly gathered himself, his jaw setting and his shoulders squaring, his expression smoothed by the time he turned back to Liazra. "Not start over. You've got other samples already growing. We will crack this," he promised fiercely, the disarray of his usually neat hair finally lending the 'mad scientist' vibe to the pronouncement. Taking a deep breath he ran a hand through the locks, which did nothing to quiet their disorder and said, "Let me know when you've got some results, and we'll look at them together." Then, without seeming to notice the rudeness of the dismissal, he said, "Computer, activate LMH. We have work to do."
A post by:
Doctor Xex Wang, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Lieutenant (JG) Liazra Ranaam
Biochemist
