Sticks and Stones and Bulkheads

Posted on Sat Jun 14th, 2025 @ 9:11pm by Petty Officer 1st Class Leon Inaros & Lieutenant Astrid Nyx

2,707 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: To Boldly Go
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Day 4

[ON]

Nurse Inaros was breathing harder than usual as he carried the body over his shoulders. There was a weird familiarity in it, the smell of iron of blood, the weight on him. The man he carried was one unfortunate Mars station structural engineer who hadn't seen where he had walked and ended up falling, with the crate he was carrying, down a deck. Right in front of Inaros, who had gotten onboard and was trying to find his way around. It had truly been a series of unfortunate events.

After doing an initial check of the dazed man, he had ascertained that he had a deep cut to the left thigh, missing the artery, yet needing medical attention. On top of that, site to site transport was down as it was being worked on. So, because contacting the station for a transport meant queuing up and waiting for someone to 'deal' with him, and because the man - Lieutenant Brand - had started to become increasingly nervous at the red stuff inside being on the outside, Nurse Inaros had used some of his SFMC stupidity and carried the man to the turbolift and then to sickbay. He had regretted it when he set foot on the deck, the extra weight twinging at his hip and leg.

Nevermind.

The sickbay doors opened and he looked around, seeing a woman there. He had not yet met the medical staff, being new here, but he could tell it was an officer. "Doctor," he said, getting to the nearest biobed. "Nurse Inaros. This is Lieutenant Maxwell Brand. He fell down through an open panel, has a 4 inch long laceration to the left hip."

Astrid's mind sharpened immediately, zeroing in on the injured man. “Get him on the biobed,” she said, her voice quick and precise. The instant his weight was down, she moved, assessing the wound first. Four inches long, jagged but not deep enough to hit the artery—he’d been lucky. Her hands worked efficiently as she pressed a sterile dressing against the wound, applying pressure to slow the bleeding.

“Tricorder,” she muttered, reaching for it without looking, her eyes locked on the patient’s leg.

He looked around, frowning at the sickbay. He still wasn't used to the layout, since it was the first time he had set foot in it, and it took him a moment to find where the tricorders were.

There was a momentary delay, and she glanced at the new nurse. He seemed focused, as intent as she was, and yet... but that would wait. She refocused on the wounded man. The patient's breathing had steadied, but she noted the pallor of his skin. He also seemed delirious. More so than would be likely from a simple leg wound, unless he'd lost a rather significant amount of blood. She looked at Inaros again, noted the blood that stained his uniform. Where had they been that the man needed to be carried her single-handedly?

“Tell me how long ago this happened,” she asked, her voice calm but authoritative.

"Roughly five minutes ago," he said as he looked at her. "He fell through in front of me, doctor." It was the truth, although the roughly was anything between four and eight minutes in his head. He hadn't really been counting that much, focused on getting here instead. He shifted his weight on his leg, his jaw tightening briefly with discomfort.

While the nurse spoke, Astrid busied herself with a laser cutter, slicing open the injured man's clothing to get at the leg wound. "Five minutes..." she repeated. The question of why a medical transport hadn't been called for flashed through her mind, but this wasn't the time. Either there would be a reasonable explanation or there wouldn't be, and either she could handle later. Right now, something was wrong. The amount of blood loss hinted at more severe damage in the man's vascular system. And a fall from that height? Impossible to say what else had occurred.

"He's in shock," she said. The monitor on the biobed had already started automatically outputting vital signs, but she didn't need that to know the obvious signs. "Get me one ml tranex. We'll bring the bleeding under control, then move to repair."

Inaros moved quickly as he got her what was needed, moving with the efficiency of someone who had done things like this before. For all his flaws, he was a good nurse, a good medic. At least he could quickly identify what she needed and supply it in the correct doses. "Yes, doctor."

The tranex administered, Astrid moved closer, donning gloves and applying pressure directly to the wound again, ensuring the bleeding was controlled before doing anything else. Inaros certainly had the familiarity with emergency procedures that spoke of long practice. He was clearly capable and quick on the uptake.

By the time she looked back, the tranex had already slowed the bleeding to nearly nothing. "Good," she said, relieved. A feeling which faded into concern as she assessed the rest of his vitals. Brand's heart rate was elevated. His face contorted as if in sudden pain.

"Lieutenant Brand, can you hear me?" Astrid asked, her voice firm. The man's eyelids fluttered briefly, then closed again. But his discomfort was obvious, even in his unconscious state. What could be causing it? Had the scan missed something? The way the scan worked, there were any number of possible complications that it might have failed to address properly. She stared at her patient in silence, mentally sorting the possibilities from least to most likely.

"Nurse Inaros, I need to know more about what happened during his fall. Was there any indication of impact elsewhere on his body? Could he have hit his head?" Her gaze shifted from Brand to the nurse.

"Disorientated, briefly, from the impact, but pupil reaction was good," Leon reported as he looked at her. "He could have hit his head going down, but he landed on his legs and there was no obvious signs on head trauma. But I was focused on the leg wound after I saw he was conscious and talking."

Astrid's mind raced through the possibilities while she continued to monitor Brand’s condition. The tranex had done its job in slowing down the bleeding, but something else was still off. Her eyes darted between the biobed's readouts and the Lieutenant's grimacing face.

She felt a chill run down her spine as a realization began to form. “Compartment syndrome,” she muttered under her breath, a sense of dread creeping into her voice.

Leon's eyes widened as he heard the words, knowing too well what that was. His jaw tightened and he looked at her. "He wasn't trapped," he said, quietly. It was one of the things he'd look for if someone had been trapped, or if there was a visible break.

Astrid pressed her lips together, gathering her thoughts before explaining further. She felt sick. This should have been one of her first things to check. And with the tranex already in his system. She tried to steady herself, but tension knotted her muscles all the same. "It's not just the laceration. We've got the bleeding under control, but look at those vitals. Something else is constricting his muscles and nerves."

She pointed to Brand's leg. “When you were carrying him here, did his leg get jostled a lot?”

"No," he said as he clearly though about it, trying to recall it. "No, I...I was taught to carry in a way to keep the body as immobile as possible," he admitted, looking uncomfortable. This was feeling more and more like his fault.

"So, standard carry all the way here." The truth was, she didn't know if the petty officer's impromptu rescue manuver had been the cause. She still didn't know for certain if a compartment syndrome was what she had on hand. But Astrid felt heat rising up the back of her neck at her own failure to assess things with greater care. The tranex she had personally ordered administered would be coursing through the shocked man's system even now, stoppering the deadly flow of blood, but also potentially building a clot that could end his life in seconds. She had made a mistake. A damn stupid mistake. And because of that, she did something else that she instantly regretted: she lashed out.

"And you never once thought that you might be causing more damage? Dammit, man, you could have killed him!"

Inaros looked at her and his features hardened into a blank façade, the sort he adopted when officers yelled at him. He did not volunteer anything though, because she was not wanting an apology. She wanted to yell, to point his finger at the Marine medic stupid enough to step in.

If there had been anyone else there at that hour, Astrid might have replaced Inaros then. But her pride was between a rock and a hard place because he was the only pair of hands around, and now her own stupid mistake was like a noose around her patient's neck. "I need your help, crewman. In a moment, I'm going to have to open this man's leg, and you're the only person who can help me save his life. Can you do that? Can I rely on you?"

"You're going to perform a fasciotomy," he said without any hesitation, giving a nod. "Yes, Doctor." He had done it once, seen it once. See one, do one. That was in a battlefield though. And he suspected she would not let him close to any patient alone for a long time and certainly not assist on anything. Except this. For it was an emergency.

"Good." She didn't bother with more. She had never been in a position where someone wearing the colors of Starfleet medical let a patient down when push came to shove. She believed in that in the same way someone from a pre-warp society might believe in gods. Maybe this man had made a mistake, maybe she had as well, but all that mattered at that moment was the life in their charge.

She focused on her patient, took a deep breath, and let her training take control. In another circumstance, she might have relied on more drugs, but the tranex was acting too fast, far faster than it should. That meant that there was only one option: surgery.

The procedure went swiftly at first. An application of anastesiatic agent placed the lieutenant into a deeper unconscious state, and then a modified forcefield created an artificial respiration aid. Then Astrid made her initial cut, a long incision with a laser scalpel along Brand's leg. Astrid's breath hissed out.

"The blood's pooling. See it there? Damn. Damn, damn."

Leon frowned as he looked at it, taking it in. It didn't look right. He let out a breath, shaking his head. "It doesn't look right," he said, quietly, almost to himself.

"The tranex. That's what I was worried about. It's designed to cause nearly instant clotting, but for some reason in Lieutenant Brand it's kickstarted compression of the compartment along the wounded area. It shouldn't be happening this fast, though." She shook her head, staring at the wound. She knew what she needed to do next -- open the compartment and relieve the pressure. But something stopped her hand. The tranex was the cause of all this, it had to be. And the pressure needed to be released no matter what. But this all seemed to be moving more quickly than it should, even with the drug interacting so negatively with the swollen tissues. Could something else be going on?

He looked at it, frowning as something niggled in his mind. He watched the blood, the colour of it, finding it just a little off to him. Something wasn't quite...

He pulled back quickly, moving to the computer, bringing up first the patient's profile and then the DNA sequence. He read it slowly, because truth was that he wasn't that great at it. "Computer, extrapolate," he said, firmly, watching the results come across on screen. "Doctor," he called out, turning to look at her. "He has Vulcan DNA, dating back about four generations. Tranex reacts to the hemocyanin in Vulcans. Since it's so far back, his profile doesn't flag it unless you go digging. And if he has never had anything like Tranex before, it might explain why he is reacting like this. Or...maybe there is something else?" his confidence faded as he talked, watching her...and he felt as if nothing he might say would change things.

"Heavens... oh, of course." Astrid felt momentarily sick in a sudden reprise of days during testing for her degree at the Academy. She stared at this hard-buttoned man before her, who she had been perfectly willing to blame for the situation at-hand, and held his gaze. "Fifteen milligrams reversolyn, Mr. Inaros. And then help me here... we're going to take some of the pressure off while the drug does its work."

"Yes Doctor," Inaros nodded and got the hypo, measuring it and handing her the hypo. "Whatever you need," he added, wanting to make it clear he was here to assist.

Over the next fifteen minutes, they worked in relative silence. Astrid managed to bring herself into the place of total focus that had taken so many years to perfect; nothing existed but her patient and her tools. And Inaros, whatever else he might have been thinking, responded to her every need with skill and poise.

When it was all over, with Brand sleeping off his repaired wound, she looked at Inaros and tried to think of exactly what to say. Only, it was obvious. She sighed.

"I made a mistake, Mr. Inaros. And you did fine work catching it. You thought on your feet and... and I appreciate that. It's something I look for in my staff. It's something I'll need going forward if I'm going to keep our crew safe. However... I want to impress upon you that communication is what saves lives. Carrying Lieutenant Brand here almost certainly risked worsening his condition. May I ask why you made that decision? Why you didn't just call in for a site-to-site, or at least an anti-grav stretcher?"

"Site to site transport was down," he said, meeting her eyes. "It was being worked on and...I didn't think about an anti-grav stretcher. It's not something I've had available before," he added quietly, with a frown that aged him further, giving her the truth. "I'm not used to having...those options around. I just knew I needed to get him to sickbay, fast."

She held that gaze for a heavy moment, then inhaled and exhaled deeply as she nodded. "That...that's understandable. It's always difficult to take a new path, learn a new skill. But unlearning is harder still. On the battlefield, we have to take risks. We judge and triage based on the situation at hand, and the situation isn't usually good." As she spoke, thoughts of her childhood swam up, murky and unsettling. Varda Prime hadn't exactly been a warzone, but the sprawling struggles of its many crime families sometimes made it feel that way. With effort, she forced her attention back on the moment at hand. She was the superior officer, here. She had a responsibility.

"But that's the thing I've had to learn," she continued. "In Starfleet, our greatest tool isn't our technology, it's one-another. Next time something happens, call on support. Get someone to your side as soon as possible. Maybe you'll have to carry someone again, but next time you can call for help as well."

"Yes Doctor," he said, watching her for a long moment before he let out a tight breath. "I'm...used to being the only one, in the field. This is new. This is different and I might be struggling to..." he stopped and shook his head with a soft chuckle. "Adjust."

"That," Astrid said with a very genuine laugh, "is something we share."

[OFF]

Dr. Astrid Nyx
Chief Medical Officer
USS Fenrir

&

Nurse Leon Inaros
Nurse
USS Fenrir
[PNPC Hanlon]

 

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