//------------------------------// // Chapter 4: Medical Emergency // Story: The Warp Core Conspiracy // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// McCoy’s patient was dying, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Her tiny body lay splayed out on the medical bed, her life signs dropping, and McCoy frantically trying to do something to slow her rapid descent. Nurse Chapel looked on, assisting but equally confused as to what to do. “Doctor, we’re losing her!” “Yes, nurse, I can see that!” McCoy backed away and tapped on a datapad, trying to access the scans but finding them badly distorted. “Damn it, even the scans won’t work, they can’t get through her body!” He went back to her. “We need to stop the internal bleeding--” “I can see that too! But I don’t even know where to start, I’m a Starfleet doctor, I’m trained to deal with HUMANS! They give us special training for each alien on the crew, but this, I don’t even know where to start! She has massive internal injuries and burns from inside her bones, but I don’t even know what’s meant to be a heart or a lung or how her brain is put together--” He held up his hand, which was covered in a viscous and highly reflective silver substance. “I don’t even know if this is blood! How am I supposed to perform a transfusion if I don’t even know the starting basis for her biology?!” He looked down at her little body as it struggled to take a breath. “Damn it, I need to attempt surgery!” “But doctor, you don’t even know what her anatomy is or what kind of injury--” “Damn it, I know that, but if I don’t do something now, we’ll lose her. I can’t even beam her down to her planet for help, the transporter tore her insides apart and she won’t survive another trip." “I’m not qualified for this, I don’t know where to start.” “I know.” McCoy’s rage calmed to steely resolve. “But we’re going to do the best we can. That’s all we can do.” “We need a doctor trained in xenobiology.” “Well that sure would be nice, but there aren’t exactly any around here apart from me.” McCoy wheeled over the surgical equipment and started attaching probes to where he suspected the brain and heart or hearts should be. Nurse Chapel stood up. Her face had assumed its own expression of steely resolve. Then she ran to the storage area of the infirmary, pulling open an unused locker and pulling out a heavy piece of equipment. McCoy stood up. “What in the Sam Hill are you--” Then he realized it. His eyes grew wide when he saw the machine. “No. NO! Damn it, Christine, put that back, we don’t need it!” “You said yourself, you’re not equipped to do the job alone, and I’m no help. We need it, doctor, regardless of what your pride says.” “NO! It will just make this harder, I can’t afford to have any distractions, get over here and--” Chapel pulled the machine to the side of the surgical bed. It was a large mass of metal with wheels and a handle, its surface ridged with heat sinks to protect its delicate technology and an array of enormous, glimmering lenses mounted on the top facing in each direction. She attached a heavy cable to the base of it and ran it to a computer port. “Christine, if you turn that on, I’ll have you—I’ll have you court-marshaled! You’ll be lancing boils on the lower decks of a colony garbage scow before we get to the next starbase—no, I'll have you demoted to a CALIFORNIA-CLASS ship--” Chapel looked him in the eye. “And if this little pony makes it back home to her family, I’ll lance those boils with goddamn glee.” She activated the system. The lenses ignited, filling sickbay with blue light that rapidly resolved into a translucent figure. This in turn resolved into a grainy, semi-human image of a barely-rendered balding man, its low-resolution hologram flickering in pulses as it moved. It spoke with a distorted, mechanical voice. “Please state the nature of the medical emergency.” “I have a xeno-equine patient with massive internal bleeding, transporter-related necrosis and severe internal burns from an unknown radio logical source.” The hologram, although it barely had a face, looked at the patient, then back at McCoy. “I’m a doctor, not a veterinar--” “Don’t give me your holographic sass, you leaky bucket of photons! I need to perform a transfusion but I can’t even figure out what her blood is based on, and I need assistance with this surgery! And as soon as we’re done, you’re going straight out an airlock!” “How rude.” The hologram looked down, and picked up a datapad and began entering data with extreme speed. “I am extrapolating the circulatory system based on known quadruped species, both sentient and sub-sentient, accommodating for an expansive brain. Additionally I am amalgamating all known non-iron blood hemoglobin equivalents to attempt to generate a universal form comparable with the medical replicator. I shall also perform the necessary surgery.” The hologram attempted to pick up a scalpel, but it fell through his hand and speared itself into the floor. “Oh,” it said. “It appears my matrix lacks density.” “Like hell some hologram is going to do surgery in MY sickbay! You’re not even qualified to cut in the galley on meatloaf Mondays! Stop flapping your holographic gums and do something useful! Get on the head, the cortical stimulator barely works but it’s the only thing keeping her with us right now!” “Because it is improperly calibrated for her brain configuration. It needs to be operated in manual mode.” “Goddamn it, that’s not medicine, it’s homicide!” “Not for me. My processing speed is more than adequate to handle it, if you are content to perform the surgery in accordance with my anatomical predictions.” McCoy glowered, but gestured to Chapel. “Nurse, get her on anesthesia, then get the hemostats ready, we’re going to need a lot of them.” Chapel nodded and started work. “Is there any chance this will work?” McCoy, his hands covered in silver, looked up. “About the same chance a snowball has of knocking Satan of his own throne, Christine. But I don’t have time to care, I have medicine to practice.”