Zeva system
Peretal, Zeva V
*You're less than a meter away, Dr. Paris,* the voice of Lt. John Hoskins drifted over the comm system. *Do you see anything yet?*
"I see more debris," she muttered darkly, crouching to duck under yet another fallen beam. "Are you sure this has an end?"
*Soon,* he replied. *You have a large section with seats attached right in front of you, right?*
"Right," she confirmed.
*Your patient is right behind that.*
"So how do I get around it?" she asked, her eyes alternating between the tricorder and the rubble.
*There's an opening to your left. There's a lot of little stuff around the casualty. I hope you have enough room to work.*
"So do I," she muttered in reply, turning slightly to the left to see what she assumed was the small tunnel he was referring to. Using the beam above her head for balance, she gently slid her body into the opening. Righting herself on the other side, she found herself in an area identical to the ones she had been in for the last three hours, with the exception of the supine body in front of her. She gave a low Klingon curse as she quickly switched her tricorder from standard to medical mode, followed by, "Shit, shit, shit, shit."
*What is it, Paris?* Dr. Rex Jackson asked quickly.
"Is there a reason nobody told me about this?" she snapped.
*About what?* Lt. Hoskins interjected. She quickly scanned the patient, sending the data along the comm link. She heard Dr. Jackson's reaction, almost identical to her own, as he processed what she was seeing.
"Nobody told me she had a damn pole through her chest!" she retorted angrily. "Damn it! It's going through her superior aorta. It's amazing that she hasn't—."
*Slow down, Paris!* Jackson snapped. *You're getting ahead of yourself. This is a trauma, just like any other trauma. Run your ABC's.*
"Right," she replied, straightening her posture the best she could in the confined space. She knew what to do in a trauma; she had done three trauma rotations in medical school. The first had been during her first year for her Injuries and Wound Healing rotation, the second in her third year for Advanced Topics in Surgery, and the final at the Starfleet hospital on Mars Station as part of her flight surgeon training. By the end of that third rotation, she had been running traumas, giving the orders for medications and treatments to the doctors and nurses. "Airway is patent," she began. "No obstructions. Breathing is shallow and tachypnic, about thirty breaths per minute. Normal Zevian respiratory rate is between sixteen and twenty-two breaths per minute. Chest wall movement is symmetrical, but there are three segments of the lung in the center that have collapsed, right around where that giant pole plunges into her chest. Oxygen saturation is seventy-eight percent. Maximal Zevian saturation is ninety-two percent; tissue damage begins around seventy-six to seventy-nine percent."
*But the breathing is stable?* Dr. Jackson asked.
"For now," she confirmed. "But she's not going to be able to breathe at thirty respirations a minute for long without getting tired."
*She's probably breathing fast because of the poor oxygenation,* Jackson pointed out, *which is probably a cardiac issue. C.*
"Circulation," Dr. Paris replied quickly. She closed her eyes for a second, remembering her readings on Zevian physiology. The two-chambered heart is centrally located… "She's tachycardic, pulse is 168 beats per minute, normal is between seventy and one hundred twenty. Pulses are equal in the upper extremities, weaker in the lower extremities. Her right leg is pinned under a beam, and I'm not feeling a pulse in that foot. She is bleeding from several lacerations all over her body, but all appear to be superficial, no external hemorrhages, but I haven't exposed her completely yet. There is some internal bleeding, quite a lot, actually, but not surprising, considering the metal rod lodged in her superior aorta. The heart itself is structurally undamaged." She loosened the straps of her med kit, shrugging it off her shoulders and placing it on a somewhat stable surface. She opened it, removing a small disk. "I'm replacing her blood loss," she said, pressing the disk over her patient's ribs. It was a fluids replicator, scanning the patient's blood and replacing it with identical fluids. She had read in her History of Medicine course that humans once used isotonic saline injected directly into the veins for rehydration, resorting to donated blood from other people in cases of severe blood loss, hoping that the two people, donor and recipient, were similar enough not to cause a fatal immune reaction in the recipient. Based on those criteria, not even her own twin brother would have been able to donate blood to her. For as much as liked learning about history, she was glad she didn't have to live it.
"Lt. Hoskins," she said. "This pole?"
*Unfortunately, it's load-bearing,* he said, his voice apologetic, as if he arranged it that way. *If we beam it away, the whole structure collapses on top of you two.*
"Let's try to avoid that," she quipped. Deciding that the cardiac situation was stable for the moment, she quickly checked for neurologic disability, taking note of the cold right foot. Pulling a tiny phaser from her med kit, she cut away at the beam over the leg, revealing an open fracture and completely lacerated artery. The osteoregenerator and angioregenerator immediately went to work at the limb.
*Sounds like a good idea, Doctor,* Hoskins replied. *We're working on removing some of rubble resting on your beam without moving it.*
"Pick-up sticks," Paris muttered.
*Come again?*
"Pick-up sticks," she repeated, still working on the leg. "That was my first thought when I saw the wreckage. I used to play when I was a kid. I think it was my mother's idea of trying to train me to be an engineer. You remove one stick at a time, and if any others move, you lose."
*That's pretty much it,* Hoskins replied.
"Only in this case, if the pole going through her chest moves, she loses. I'm serious, Hoskins. A millimeter could cause her to exsangunate in seconds."
The engineer gave a low curse in response. *Can we beam her out?*
"Not unless you beam the pole with her," Paris replied. "Otherwise, you get one Zevian female with a hole in her chest. It wouldn't even take seconds before she loses all her blood. No, she's not going anywhere until this pole can go with her. Dr. Jackson, I've repaired the artery laceration and given a quick repair to the bone. It's not stable by any means, but it's not bleeding, either. Nerve function was compromised, but these are not the conditions for that kind of repair."
*I agree,* Dr. Jackson replied. *As long as the limb is perfused, we should be able to do the nerve repair here after transport. Any other neurologic injury?*
"Not that I can tell from here, but I can't exactly get her up to do a full neurologic exam," she replied dryly before returning her attention to the center of her patient's chest and the metal pole impaled in it. "Do we know her name?" she asked distractedly as she again activated the angioregenerator, this time to work on the torn superior aorta.
*We checked the DNA scan you sent us with the Zevian registry,* Dr. Jackson replied. *She's a local, name's Savin Colbee Peretal.*
"Kahless," Paris breathed, her hands stilled in surprise. "Her fiancée is my abdominal pain patient back at the field hospital. He kept asking me if we had any news about her." She looked down at her patient with a new understanding, no longer seeing just the small, dark blue woman with a metal bar in her chest, but the woman who joked about cheering for both teams in the championships, the woman who promised to love and marry the man Abbey had gotten to know over the last few days.
She straightened, reaching for her med kit with a new sense of purpose. "I'm getting you out of here," she promised softly. "You're getting out of here, you're going to be okay, and you're going to live a long and happy life with Anuj. I will make sure of that."