Chapter 1 - Hurting
A/N: I'm back! And again with the 'ing' verbs for chapter titles! Roll with it! I've always been intrigued by the idea of the character of Joanna McCoy, daughter of Bones and herself an M. training so I decided to give her her own shortish story (probably a threeshot) examining what it means to be a doctor. She's about 19 here. With a dollop of h/c, a generous helping of angst and a sprinkling of peril, on with the story…
"Come ON, Sir! Stay with me! Keep your eyes open for me, yeah?" The young medic shouted at her patient, urgency hiding the tremor in her voice well.
The man sprawled on the rubble-strewn ground before her was in a very bad way. His yells of pain had faded to weak, half conscious whimpers, the erratic rise and fall of his chest resembling the earthquake that had struck less than an hour ago. It had lasted barely six minutes but in that time had brought an entire city to its knees. The ruins of buildings and bodies; alive, dead and some in a nightmare state somewhere in between surrounding her. Pain, fear and chaos were the order of the day. Of course Joanna McCoy had been training and learning for such conditions for years but no textbook or Academy simulation could prepare someone for the sheer level of upset that currently surrounded her and her fellow Medical Track cadets. What was worse, backup was not going to be forthcoming right now due to the malfunctioning transporter. It was capable of beaming out but return trips were impossible until the Chief Engineer could fix the problem. And even miracle workers could only work so fast. Joanna brushed back her dark fringe, sodden with perspiration. 'Some damn shore leave, huh?' she thought, glad once again that the ship she had been assigned to was the legendary flagship, though this time for more practical reasons.
After an intense crash course in 'Actual Real Life on Board a Federation Starship', the medical cadets on Starfleet Academy's Advance Training Program had been looking forward to a relaxing shore leave on Merga Epsilon, a newcomer to the United Federation of Planets. The rich green planet had made up for being the only one in the system able to support life by being especially full of it. The rough-skinned, tall people always appeared to be cheerfully busy and welcomed the cadets, crewpeople and officers alike with zeal and loud voices. Even the children seemed to permanently boom at each other. It was quite bemusing until one got used to it. Not that they'd had time. Barely five hours into their well-deserved break, most of the once vibrant city's strange triangular buildings had been blasted to the ground by writhing seismic activity. Every member of Starfleet in the city had rushed to the Merganian's aid with a speed that would give most people whiplash. The instructors at the Academy would surely have been very proud of their students.
For her own part, Joanna had immediately leaped from shopping student to 'Doctor Mode'. Her head exploded with paramedic knowledge and her lectures on emergency triage. After taking an inventory of her own, relatively superficial injuries (okay maybe bruised ribs weren't all that superficial but she could work with that), she had grabbed medical supplies and ran. She had freed and stabilized her fellow cadet Carter who had had his leg and several ribs crushed by a gargoyle-like structure of all things before chucking a local doctor extra painkillers. Running between the burning, leaking remains of the commercial area, Joanna sought out more people in need of assistance. This is what she, and her dad before her, had been born to do. Save lives and soothe hurts. She had just finished bandaging the arm of a sobbing young girl when she heard the scream.
Which brought her back to her current patient, a male officer in his early forties from engineering judging by his uniform that was rapidly being dyed darker red. Strange how quickly a physician took ownership of responsibility for people, the paradox of tying oneself to another person while remaining objective. Still, that was implicit in the oath they all took. An oath she was trying to fulfil.
The medical tricorder had no good news for her. His blood pressure was very low at 80/40 and his heart rate fluctuated wildly to compensate. She looked at the horrifyingly large scarlet stain spreading across the dusty ground around her and calculated he had lost approximately 3 litres of blood. Ribs protruded from the man's broad chest and he had distention of the abdomen not to mention the lacerations caused by rubble fragments across most of his body. Diagnosis; dangerous blood loss, hypotension, broken bones, possible internal bleeding causing compression of the liver. Needless to say, things looked grim. He needed critical care on the sickbay up on the Enterprise.
In the absence of plasma synthesisers, dermal regenerators and advanced life support machines available on any starship worth her dilithium, she concentrated on staunching the bleeding and delivering pain relief while trying to communicate with the ship, taking some level of juvenile comfort from the fact her father and honorary Uncle Jim were up there. Still, she hadn't yet got a response from them and her concern was beginning to blossom into outright alarm.
Then the officer abruptly flatlined. "Shit! Dammit don't do this!" she hissed, starting compressions and forcing more precious blood from his wounds, covering her arms and science blues. More ribs cracked as she performed CPR, all the time muttering a mantra of "nononononono" interspersed with colourful swearing. Unresponsive. Two minutes passed, then four and the man's heart failed to flicker back to life. Joanna was sobbing now with desperate effort, the pain in her own side growing as she begun to realise she was fighting a loosing battle. Her head felt light and the monotone drone of the heart monitor on her tricorder wasn't helping the pounding ache behind her eyes. She shook her head to clear the fuzziness clouding her vision, not even registering someone yelling her name "JO!".
That was when the world around her suffered a second seizure and the already unstable masonry above collapsed on top of her trembling, slender form.
A/N P.S. So…what do you think? Cu next chapter?