1939 Hours

Posted on Sat Jul 26th, 2025 @ 6:48pm by The Narrator & Lieutenant JG Gwenwyn Marwol

Mission: Seven Souls
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 1900

[Deck 2]
[Sickbay]
[MD 1, 1900hrs]
[Immediately Following 'A Glowstick in Sickbay']

”Sir,” the diminutive tech said, her voice edging toward desperate, as though she'd been trying to get Marwol's attention for some time. Greatly daring, she reached out to tug on Marwol's uniform jacket in a last bid to grab his attention. “She's crashing, sir!”

Gwenwyn was chatting away with the LMH, trying to brainstorm why the Kazon had thorium in its blood, being in the ER granted skills... Like how to drown out people and beep-beep. When the tugging got his last nerve, he spun around, ready to spew verbal fire.

“Chief F'Rar!” she said, frustration making her voice shrill. “We've done what we can but...” she let the sentence hang. 'But we need an actual doctor.' Gesturing urgently, she led the way to the intensive care alcove of sickbay where the Sojo's Chief Engineer lay ominously still on the biobed. They'd removed what they could of her clothing, and the awful plasma burns on her chest cleaned but looking all the more terrible for all that. The diagnostic readout showed nonthreatening internal injuries, but that was hardly comforting when the ones on the surface were certainly enough to kill. Needlessly, she hoped, the tech said, “It's the plasma burns, sir. Her pulse rate has plummeted and we're having a difficult time getting blood pressure back. We've already pushed fluids and type K blood but...”

Again the 'But we need an actual doctor,' hung, unspoken, in the air.

Dr Marwol followed the tech through to the ICU. He admired Xex's strength to lead the Medical Department despite the incredible lack of resources. By all means, Gwen was not a trauma surgeon, but he knew a decision had to be made. "For now, douse in cold, clean water."

The tech's eyes grew wide, her face freezing as though it were she who had been doused in cold water. After but a beat of delay, any hesitation she might have felt was subsumed under her training and she made immediately for the medical replicator. The doctor said 'jump,' you asked how high. He said, 'douse in cold, clean water,' you fetched some. Although the ship was still on emergency power, sickbay was one of the places where emergency power meant most things worked as they should. The lighting was not quite as bright as full power, a few of the most processor-heavy diagnostic subroutines were out of commission, and they'd never be able to replicate volumes of matter, but the main sickbay functions remained operational.

Meanwhile, at the biobed, F'Rar remained quiescent, deceptively still while her body fought to hold on to life that, if the bed's diagnostics were any indication, was slipping from her proverbial fingers.

The tech returned, toting a large container of what was hopefully water. "Cold and sterile, sir," she said a bit breathlessly as she stepped up beside Marwol, trying to hide the doubt on her face. After all, nothing else they'd tried had worked, why not give her a dousing?

Gwenwyn was simply running out of ideas. Following the books for treatment of burns was all Gwenwyn could do, he needed a surgical consult and the only surgeon was the LMH... Who was in surgery and with the amount of issues that arose, the LMH could be in surgery for the next 12 hours. Think, think, think...But the banned surgeon couldn't think, for this was not his area of specialty.

The tech shifted her weight uncertainly, worried glance flicking from Marwol to F'Rar and back. Steeling herself, the woman swallowed and stepped closer to the bed. "Do I just..." she asked, lifting the container in illustration of her intent to simply sluice it over the unconscious engineer.

"No, dab it like it's a zit," Gwenwyn snapped. Rubbing his temple, he was struggling to think. Prefering to admit his mistakes, he said quietly as if he was protecting his reputation. "...I don't know what to do, Nurse... We need a Surgeon... I was a surgeon but never trained on burns..."

The nurse’s hands trembled. Not from fear: she’d long since learned how to quiet that. But from something else… a kind of awful inevitability that clung to the edges of her focus and refused to let go. This was F’Rar. The Chief. And she was slipping through their fingers.

“Yes, sir,” she said, almost by reflex, her voice tight as she lifted the container. The water inside shifted audibly, its cool promise doing little to calm the rising dread in her chest. With practiced precision, she grabbed sterile gauze and began to dab gently at the engineer’s scorched skin. The burns were deep, the tissue angry and raw despite their efforts. But she continued to do as told, even as Marwol searched and blanked on any other way to help.

They worked on her for another thirty minutes. Cleaning and dressing wounds, trying every protocol and stimulant in the book when a body was so deeply in shock that nothing seemed to reach the heart or the brain to wake them up again—to get the Chief’s body stabilized enough to survive the injuries. The work blurred into a rhythm. Clean, monitor, adjust, repeat. The nurse barely registered the time slipping past. But as each minute fell away from the digital time readout above the biobed, the beeping—that incessant damned beeping—grew slower in the face of growing inevitability.

F’Rar lay still. Too still. The kind of stillness that didn’t come with sleep. The kind that came when a body was giving up. A tremor rippled beneath the nurse’s fingertips as she looked up at the biobed’s readout. “BP’s dropping again,” she said, this time with urgency. “Systolic is barely seventy. I’m not getting a pulse,” she said flatly, the words falling like stones in the quiet after her hand had moved to the carotid, hoping, somehow, that the monitor was lying. But it wasn’t.

“Burns are too severe for chest compression,” the nurse reported, looking at Marwol with accepted failure clouding her features. They switched to a cortical stimulator then but, after a few repeated attempts—each sparking less of a jolt, less of a twitch from F’Rar—the nurse sighed and sagged. The biobed and its beeping went quiet. Not a silence of peace, but the kind that pressed in from all sides. A void where life used to be.

She stared at the flatline for a moment, unwilling to speak. Her hands dropped away from the stimulator controls. Then, quietly, she said, “Time of death, 1939 hours.” It wasn’t the first time she’d said it. Wouldn’t be the last. But it always felt like it should matter more. Like the room should do something to mark the moment. Instead, nothing changed.

Gently, almost reverently, she pulled the medical sheet up over F’Rar’s face. The fabric snagged slightly as it passed over the Chief’s brow. She smoothed it out with one hand, her other brushing away a fleck of blood from the engineer’s cheek. The gesture was small. Maybe pointless. But it felt necessary.

“She fought,” the nurse said, turning toward Gwenwyn with red-rimmed eyes. “Whatever happened down there, she did what she could.” Her voice was quieter now, the adrenaline wearing off and leaving something hollow behind. “I’ll log the report, sir…”

And with that, attention turned back to the many other cases streaming in, all needing attention while the LMH continued to work in the surgical suite next door.


=/\= A joint post by... =/\=

Lieutenant JG Gwenwyn Marwol
Assistant Chief Medical Officer

and

The Nurse (Narrator)