| What the Tide Brought In |
| Summary: | In the aftermath of Kepner's Mutiny, the medical staff of the Cerberus struggle to aid the wounded. |
| Date: | 15 April 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | To Fly and Fight and Die, We Are Evocati, & From Hell's Heart |
| Players: |
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| Sickbay - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Being able to accommodate combat casualties requires room, and the Sickbay has it. Beds line each side of the room with privacy curtains strung up and readily available. Large vaulted lockers hold access to the supplies at the far end of the area. Nearer the front, a Petty Officer sits ready to dispense simple items like ibuprofen and aspirin. Further to the rear is an area prepped twenty-four hours a day for emergency surgery. To the side are a set of double doors that lead to the Recovery Ward where patients can recuperate. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #413 |
The Raptors have since touched down and those who cannot walk were loaded on to stretchers. One of them amongst the injured is Circe Lagana, used to guiding the injured in instead of being one. She is having trouble breathing with her new chest wounds and her skin is paling liberally. She gurgles some, catching the air and wincing. Gauze is the only thing that is keeping her from utterly bleeding out, the armor punctured and one larger hole in her right chest, blood still glistens fresh as it soaks through the gauze. She is an utter mess and the field dressings are torn and soaked through as well, her brown curls sticking to her face by the spent fluids. "We got incoming injured!" Chimes a field medic, moving the stretchers in along the beds. She is one amongst many to find their way here.
DeMaratus is immediately on his feet when he gets word of the incoming injured, frowning as he drapes his stethoscope over his shoulders. The sight of Circe on the stretcher, however, gives him momentary pause and he rushes to her side to take a close look at the wounds she's sustained. He doesn't offer a jovial comment this time, instead immediately moving to focus his attentions on the serious chest wound.
Her eyes focus in and out and as she looks up at DeMaratus as he comes to her side, "Hey…doc…" She says somewhat strained, a smile touching her lips as she coughs. The woman shifts and winces, the armor keeping him from getting to the wounds. "We won…" She tells him. Everyone who has been brought in on a stretcher is going to a bed, medical suddenly in full tilt. The corpsman starts to reach up one of her bandaged hands to try to undo the top clasps of her armor. "Off…" She says, swallowing past the salty taste of blood as she is moved to the cot and off the stretcher.
Dangum Marines. Never willing to sit. Not shrapnel, not hand grenades, not even HMG fire stops Lunair from … kinda wobbling while a frowning Corpsman protests. "'m good," she mumbles. She can still move! Of course, she's good! That's how they roll. She seems relieved seeing Circe here. "Medic-shooting bastards." Grumble. Apparently, she prefers a fair fight. But - she does need to take a knee, leaning hard on her right knee.
The problem with operating on adrenaline is how you collapse the moment the adrenaline leaves the system. Which happened to Sam in the Raptor on the way back here. So he's brought in on a stretcher now, a mess of dried blood, holey equipment and other gore. Amazingly, nothing hit him in the head, or legs, so his face at least looks like he's peacefully asleep.
"I've got it," DeMaratus answers, reaching to unclasp the body armor and throwing it to the floor - not much use anyway if it lets this kind of damage through, "You kicked their asses? Good news. Haven't heard much of what's going on back here, though." He takes a closer look at the wound on the chest and turns around to point at the triage nurse, "She's first. Prep a table." He gestures to Lunair, "Walking wounded can wait. I'll assess her while you prep her for surgery." That said, he moves over to take a close look at Samuel and his wounds.
As the body armor is thrown to the ground and off her figure, the damage to her chest is seen a little more clearly. The uniform is deeply colored red and black in some parts. She draws a long breath and looks up to the medic as she is slowly stripped of her clothing and wounds wrapped properly before she starts to drift, the lights in the sickbay stared at dimly. She winces, some shrapnel still left within her body. The injured are many and streaming in, some unmoving and past help. The medic turns her head, looking at Lunair.
As the surgery table is prepared in a hurried fashion, DeMaratus gives Samuel a thorough looking over. He reaches up to unclasp his body armor as well, throwing it to the floor and taking a close look at the chest wound that presents itself there. He frowns, reaching for a felt-tip marker in his pocket and drawing a prominent ‘2’ on the marine’s forehead. He makes a gesture to one of the nurses that would only really be understood by medical types and moves over to look at Lunair, immediately taking interest in the head wounds she’s sustained, "Can you hear me clearly, Lieutenant? You need to get on a gurney right now." That said, he doesn’t wait for permission to try and escort her over to one of the gurneys to lie down.
Lunair looks - pretty beat up and starts to feel it now that the adrenaline is gone. She moves to sit somewhere. She stares blankly at DeMaratus a moment with intense violet eyes. She might smile weakly at Circe for a moment, but it's hard telling - she was a grenadier for the day and looks pretty messy. Her eyes flick to his rank for a moment and there's a slow nod. There's a soft sigh and a rasped, "Bald again…" It's an amusing outlook about it all. But judging by her expression it's a distraction from seeing all the injured, especially those she commanded. The wounded medics really stick in her craw. Who shoots doctors and corpsmen really? Savages. She will lie down then, not seeming too thrilled but too tired and hurt to complain. She /did/ get a face full of HMG after all.
Samuel's eyes open not long after the doctor has finished looking his wounds over, and he tries to sit up a bit now. Grimacing in the process and not quite succeeding with the sitting up, his head moves to the side so he can watch whatever he can of the room for now. "…Rifle…" he mutters, after a few moments, very quietly.
Once the gown is in place, Circe is moved once more back to a rolling stretcher. The medic lets her gaze remain on those being looked at, focusing for a moment as she is turned and rolled out of the room towards surgery.
"You’ve got a head wound," DeMaratus says slowly and pointedly to Lunair, just in case said wound makes it hard to comprehend what is going on, "I’m going to give you something for the pain." That said, he doesn’t wait for permission or assistance to remove the body armor she wears and leaves it to one side. Immediately he fetches a small syrette from his pocket, jabbing the pointed, needle end into the Lieutenant’s neck and releasing a flood of morpha. He then takes his felt-tip marker and draws a small ‘M’ on Lunair’s forehead.
Lysander would stroll into the medical bay if he could; since he cannot, he instead simply walks in with the help of others. He's abandoned most of his combat gear if only because the warped metal proved more of a hindrance to his movements than anything else. He's bleeding, too, for the most part. Crimson bandages have been swapped for cleaner sets. There's still a large set he's holding to against his chest, staunch the serious one while medics guide him in deeper. Because he can frakkin' walk, "I got it! I got it! Frak. I know where I'm going."
Lunair looks amused, but nods slowly. She looks surprised or startled by the speed the man works. Has he done this much? Her eyebrows quirk. Wait - is he drawing on her? Her expression is now less amused and she starts- … that … is morpha. Her start up is dreadfully slow, mind, given the injuries but it's determined. There's a sidelong glance and she just sort of sinks back, resigned. She sighs and closes her eyes, glad not to see red. She wipes at them with her uninjured hand at least. Stupid head injuries. She finally had /hair/.
Samuel raises one hand a bit now, while still looking towards the side he could manage to look to. Noticing Lysander's entrance, before the hand lowers again, and the eyes close as the Corporal, with the more imposing middle name of 'Hercules' drifts off again.
DeMaratus lets Lunair lie there and soak up the painkillers. He pauses for a moment to look at a horrifically burned marine lying still on a stretcher, struggling for breath, and shakes his head at the nurse tending to him. That done, the nurse simply injects another ampoule of morpha into the man’s IV. Moving on, DeMaratus moves over to Lysander to give him a critical once-over. He doesn’t speak to him, though, instead issuing orders to one of the other medics, "He’s going to need surgery, too. Get him on a gurney and give him one syrette and don’t forget to mark him!"
Lysander looks to DeMaratus. He then looks over to the corpsman that is still standing next to him, and he promptly laughs. It hurts though so the gesture is short-lived. "You mark me, and I'm gonna punch you. In the face, it's going to hurt." Because he's bleeding and they're ignoring the Sergeant's words in order to push him along and set a gurney, "An' what the frak is a syrette? Don't touch me with one of those."
Bright green eyes in a face that has gone a bit pale as she's made her way toward the sickbay sweep the hallway as she moves forward, noting the walking wounded and doing a brutal visual triage en route, and once Megan steps into the sickbay itself she rocks to an abrupt halt near the entrance. The stark white of her lab coat over the crisp uniform marks her as a newly minted - and green enough to warrant the image of mint - lieutenant who looks briefly lost as though thrown into the deep end with a sink or swim mandate. "Right," she breathes aloud, the single word barely audible until she spots the Captain, putting face to the name but recognizing him as the control nexus of this sickbay and makes a bee-line for him. "Captain, Lt. Amosi reporting for duty, where do you want me to start?"
"It’s morpha. And the marking is so you don’t end up with so much of it you drop dead before we can pull those bullets out of you." All the same, he lets the orderlies deal with surly Lysander. Upon spying the new doctor, he immediately strides over to meet her as she walks towards him. DeMaratus doesn’t go easy on the rookies, it seems, and when Megan appears he barely lets her report for duty before he’s bossing her around. He points at Lysander, "That one doesn’t want to take his morpha. Let him play Rock Steele if he likes but you need to start treating him now. Start with the chest wound."
"Right," Megan says promptly, "roger, that is, I mean, yes sir," is sorted out aloud but she aims for the wounded marine identified with the gesture and turns her focus toward the chest wound assigned to the one that just threatened to punch the corpsman. She approaches the gurney that the marine is on and takes note of his facial features just enough to stamp his image in her immediate memory but is focused on the wound itself, "Through and through?" is asked of the corpsman even as she pulls a pair of gloves on and nods to the marine in greeting even as she's peeling up a flap of his uniform that's sticking to his skin with blood and grime. "Can't do anything until I get this cleaned; you sure about not wanting the morpha?"
"Oh," but still Sergeant Lysander looks on cautiously since he figures being able to walk and talk means that he isn't nearly as injured as everyone else. "Steele couldn't take on Kepner with just a machete like he did an airship in Rock Three." He scoffs at the notion and continues being surly all the way into being motioned to sit and try to relax. The marine eyes the doctor as blood begins to pool around his left hand's fingers. Releasing his hand and shifting his weight to better accommodate the process of not letting him die makes him grit his teeth to a spike in pain. "I'll take it right about… now. Frak. This is the only one, I think, s'what the corpsman said. Rest're dings. I'll thank my armor when I find it… as torn up as it is."
"Nothing beats ‘The Tauron Plainsman’ and I won’t hear anything against that," DeMaratus argues, referencing his favorite Rock Steele film. That said, he moves over towards the surgical area that has been prepped for Circe and begins to wash his hands as he changes into his scrubs. No time for modesty during a crisis, "Make sure she’s under anesthesia." He points to one of the nurses acting as a stand-in anesthetist as he washes his hands after the scrubs are donned.
"Administer the morpha," Megan asks of the corpsman, letting the talk go on above her head as she peels away the side of the marina's uniform and picks up a set of angled shears to cut away the areas that are most in the way and waits until the morpha is injected before using her fingertips to probe the edges of the wound. "Once this is clean, you'll need stitches to stop the bleeding," is explained as she turns to get the necessary tools to accomplish this. She sets to work doing exactly this, swabbing the side of the marina's chest and underarm, even going to the extent of flushing the wound through with saline to make sure that no dirt or debris is stuck inside the wound itself - a process that is likely disconcerting if not downright uncomfortable.
The Sergeant starts to speak out with regards to Rock Steele but then he's distracted by the woman poking and prodding at him. "You know, usually I just let Lagana do all of this." Whoo, then there's morpha involved and he keeps relatively quiet in listening to Megan. "Sergeant Lysander, by the way," because he should be respectful while he lifts his arm and winces to it and soon enough the further poking and prodding: "This is going to leave a mark."
"More than likely," Megan agrees as she lifts her gaze away from the wound cleaning long enough to aim a quick trace of a smile at the Sergeant, "but scars are all manly and chicks dig them, right?" is asked in the obvious attempt at levity as she finishes cleaning the wound site and wipes the area dry with a clean bit of cloth. "Now, to the stitching," she says and cautious aloud, "try to hold still," is asked as she reaches for the suture kit and selects the right tool and snips a precise length of suture for the task and moves forward to that part of the treatment.
"Maybe," truth be told, he has no idea if Circe does dig them. "I should ask her. I think I will, you know, after all of this is done and over- oh, oh," he presses his teeth together and closes his eyes. That was an odd sensation but it passes and he's zeroing his attention in on the needle. It leads into looking away and to the far left where one of his squad's riflemen are being carried in by two corpsmen. "Fancy that, corporal's passed out from shrapnel. Nearly took his eye if it weren't for the helmet." Hold still, he does.
"That's the worst it's going to be," Megan says as she finishes the first set of sutures and snips the end off of each one before swapping the area again with a general disinfectant and turns to the other half of the wound. "You're going to need to keep this clean. No dirt, dust, nothing. The risk of infection is minor, but there's always a chance. So if you see any redness, any swelling, if it starts to smell," she's a pocket full of sunshine at this precise point of the process, "you need to come back so I can clean the wound through again."
Lysander starts to speak up but after seeing a gunshot wound on someone else he's momentarily stilled into silence. It doesn't last for too long. He's still himself and he's also a marine. "You've no idea how many times I hear that. Circe always-… she's going to be okay, right? I said she would be, but I'm only trained to wound, not heal," there's something of a rakish smile before he nods, "Will do though, sir- keep it clean, of course. This happens all the time. It went right through this time, didn't it?"
Megan finishes the sutures on the other end of the wound then uses medical tape to cover the wound with a thick pad of gauze and seals it in place. "I don't know who Circe is," she admits, "so I can't speak to her status." She tilts her head to the side and surveys the wounded marine, Sergeant Lysander, "Do you have any other wounds you need to confess to before I pronounce you good to go, at least for the moment?"
Sergeant Lysander is good to go, at least when it comes to this hole in his chest being plugged up from the front and where it exited out of his back. It would hurt like all Hell to if it weren't for the morpha. "Corpsman, tall, brown hair, really, really, really pretty," explains Garret and he would say more but he's giving up in lieu of lifting a hand in greeting to another wounded from his squad. His gaze flits to Megan at her question. He smiles. "The rest're dings and scrapes and glances. I'll be fine, doc', promise."
Megan nods once. "The superficial wounds, then, will be cleaned up and bandaged as soon as we can get to them," she says before stripping off the gloves and looking for a place to dispose of them or just discard them to be cleaned. A long look is swept around the room, "I believe the Corpsman you're talking of is being worked on by the Captain right now, so she's in good hands," is stated with another solemn nod before she picks the next patient to aim for and heads over to a Lieutenant with black hair and a rather impressive sampling of wounds, "That would mean you're next," she offers aloud once she reaches where Lunair is waiting for treatment.
Lysander nods once and then does so once more. He's particularly too out of it to try and escape from the medical bay at the moment and so he is left to being treated where he sits, on the parked gurney, lazily watching the others. He got lucky; real lucky compared to most of the marines.
Mercifully? The minigun didn't score a /direct/ hit. That said, Raptors have some serious force to bear and Lunair just charged into it, really. She's not the worst of the wounded, at least. Though, she's still in a pretty deep morpha haze. Her eyes open for just a moment, revealing their intensely purple color. Poor Megan gets a blank look, merely accepting. Officer or not, Lunair does seem to use them every so often. There's a hint of an amused smile.
Lysander nods once and then does so once more. He's particularly too out of it to try and escape from the medical bay at the moment and so he is left to being treated where he sits, on the parked gurney, lazily watching the others. He got lucky; real lucky compared to most of the marines.
DeMaratus emerges from surgery, scrubs and gloves bloody but his mood seems good - must have done something right. It was rather run-of-the-mill meatball surgery, after all. All the same, there isn't time to rest on his laurels. As he steps out he takes a look around, lining up his neck 'customer' in his head. He doesn't speak to anyone straight away, instead approaching a triage nurse to exchange a few words.
Khloe hobbles into sickbay, apparently one of several pilots that are beginning to trickle in from the concerted engagements going on throughout the fleet. Using a length of twisted metal - probably from a Viper or Raptor fuselage - she's managed to crutch-walk her way down to sickbay, followed by corpsmen attending to those actually accepting their help. Flight suit stripped down to her waist already, it's apparent that the Captain took some sort of burn to the center mass of her left thigh. "Captain Trask will be arriving shortly by gurney and will need immediate surgical care," she barks out, her voice shredded, no doubt from barking out orders during the lengthy combat in space.
Megan slides another pair of gloves on and begins a wound by wound analysis, working her way from the superficial wounds to ascertain that they are wounds that won't require serious work to repair before examining the wounds to chest and abdomen, leg and last but most intently the head wound. "What did this?" is asked, though she may not actually be expecting any answer as she uses her fingertips to carefully examine the head wound, watching the Lieutenant's face to check for signs of pain.
Just as advertised, Captain Trask does, indeed, arrive by gurney, unmistakably discolored courtesy of exsanguination. "Make way! Severe blood loss and internal trauma!" calls out one of the medics who accompanies the listless ECO. "Looks like his guts are being held in by duct tape!"
"I’ll be the judge of that," DeMaratus says flatly as Khloe arrives and makes her announcement, although he does move near the hatchway so he can get a close look at Trask upon his arrival. And indeed, he does need urgent medical attention. The table has only just finished being prepped for the next patient when the ECO is jumped right to the head of the que, DeMaratus waving him through and changing out of his bloody scrubs once more and into more appropriate surgical attire. As he moves, he vocally announces his intentions to the other members of the surgical team, "Lacerations to the hand and chest. Not good, but the stomach wound is what we’re focusing on. Get him under anesthesia right now."
Wade walks inside Sickbay, the place he virtually ran from just a bit ago. His gaze moves towards Trask for a moment, and he is about to shout something but the Medical team seems to have that. He finds Khloe now and walks towards her. "Captain…" says Wade to her and then looks at her status. Immediately, he looks around for someone to help her, but knowing better, he looks back at her and he says "You gonna be alright?"
Worst … injury? Lunair is really drugged up. She kind of manages and mouths 'Raptor … minigun …' but then she's gone again, shivering into a quiet unconsciousness. Mind, one should note she didn't stay coherent long enough to answer 'not directly'. She'd've been toast if it got her head on (No pun intended).
Khloe snorts lightly, and hobbles off to the side, getting out of the way of any comings-and-goings to handle Trask and anyone else more injured. She holds on to her improvised cane, though - it's as if this shred of bird hull is almost a security blanket for her. "I'll be fine, Drips, now get the frak out of the way," she unnecessarily snarls, voice sounding like she just finished smoking a pack of the CAG's smokes. Clearly, the Captain is a little rattled from her experiences, and is probably running on only adrenaline by now.
Sergeant Lysander looks to the arrival of even more half-dead people. He should probably get out of the way or help while drugged but for now he simply strokes the stubble along his length of jaw, and watches. A moment later and he's gesturing for a corpsman available to help him walk to the recovery room where there is less chaos and more morpha, maybe. He asks just in case.
Megan starts to look up at the new arrivals, the instinct is enough to make her move slightly until the remembered voice of instruction hammers her focus back into place. Focus on the one in front of you, to the exclusion of everything else, or risk losing this one too. She exhales soundlessly but nods as she sets to work, cleaning the wounds as swiftly but thoroughly as possible while trying to catch Lunair's attention with a series of routine questions to try to judge the possibilities of internal trauma to the head instead of just tissue damage.
That heavily blood-soaked, equally heavily duct taped flighsuit is going to need to be cut open. One of the attending surgical assistants checks Trask's tags and lets it be known, "We need some A-B-positive here." Perhaps it's some semblance of delirium from all the trauma, but there are faint traces of what one might term as amusement tugging at the corners of the patient's mouth, and perhaps that gleam in his big brown eyes is not entirely from the presence of pain-provoked tears.
Wade just shakes his head and half chuckles at Khloe's words, "Alright Captain…" With that said, he takes a last look around, takes a deep breath and gets out of the way, stepping into the Recovery Room. Could be said that his arm was visibly bleeding, but it is nothing that can't be taken care of when the others are out of danger.
"You’ve got one sick sense of humor if you’re grinning at this," DeMaratus says down to Trask, holding his hands aloft in front of him as the flightsuit is cut away. He looks down at the wound when it is exposed to the open air and frowns, calling for the transparent plastic curtain to be drawn around the surgical space that has been set aside, "Or maybe you’re just glad to see me?" That said, he gestures to one of the nurses, "Where in Hades is that damn nitrous?"
The nitrous eventually comes, as does the much needed plasma. As for the sick sense of humor, Trask is guilty-as-charged, but really is incapable of saying anything to his credit or in his defense, except what might be a quiet, "Heh."
In fairness, it might be tough to get much out of a morpha-doped up Marine. She … seems to be trying, but blood loss, head wound and morpha have left Lunair dazed, lost and somewhere between frustration and amusement. Her eyelids flicker, as she tries to muster a response. Signs aren't too good - likely her brain got a /teeny/ bit rattled from Minigun Misadventures and Grenade Tangoes. She just … can't. Her eyes flicker closed again.
"Nighty night, sweetheart," DeMaratus says with a wink down at Trask, some sort of joke it would seem – or else he’s a highly inappropriate surgeon. Either way, once Trask is under he sets to work with the arduous surgical task of putting Poor Kal Trask together again. A process that will likely take hours.