The progress on Savin Colbee Peretal's wounds was slow; there was only so much Abbey could do with a ten centimeter diameter pole sticking out of her patient's chest. She was receiving periodic updates from Lt. Hoskins and Dr. Jackson, acknowledging each with the minimum response required, the lines from the cardiology and pulmonary chapters of her Zevian physiology text occupying most of the space in her mind. The two-chambered heart is centrally located in the upper abdomen, below the diaphragm but still protected by the rib cage. The lung, consisting of fifteen to twenty-one bronchial lobes, is located above the diaphragm. Oxygenated blood enters the right chamber of the heart from the superior vena cava; deoxygenated blood enters from below in the inferior vena cava. Oxygenated and deoxygenated blood mixes in the right chamber before it is pumped into the left chamber and out to the body. The superior aorta carries blood to the lungs, upper extremities, and head; the inferior aorta supplies the abdomen and lower extremities. Due to the mixing of blood…
"I've patched the leak in the superior aorta the best I can without removing the pole," Dr. Paris reported, interrupting her own internal monolog. "Even with the fluids replicator, her oxygenation hasn't improved much. I'm starting to worry about tissue and end-organ damage here. I've already given her a hypo of tri-ox, but that doesn't seem to be doing much. She has some pneumothorax around the pole with complete collapse of three lobes. I'm going to see about getting some of that air out of her chest so those can re-expand," she reported, exchanging tools in her med kit.
*Even if you can reinflate the lobes and prevent recollapse with the tools you have, I'm not sure it's going to make much of a difference,* Dr. Jackson said from the other end of the comm link. *She still has fifteen of the eighteen lobes functioning properly.*
"Well, what else do you suggest?" Dr. Paris snapped in reply as she deftly inserted a small, stiff communicating duct into her patient's chest. It was a crude repair, one that wouldn't last, but the best she could do under the circumstances. "I can't definitively repair the superior aorta until we get that damned pole out of the way, and we can't do that until Hoskins and his lackeys get their work done." She knew she'd have to apologize for that comment eventually, but at the moment she was too worked up to care.
*We're almost there,* Hoskins said, sounding slightly put out by her words. Her attention back on her patient, Paris ignored him. *Standby.* A few seconds later, the whole pile of rubble seemed to shake, dust and small debris falling onto Paris and Colbee. Reflexively, Abbey threw her body over that of her patient, protecting the small Zevian woman from the worst of the fragments. When she no longer felt the pieces falling on her, she pulled herself back into a sitting position before swearing loudly.
"Damn it, Hoskins!" she snapped, letting loose with a few particularly vile Klingon phrases as she unceremoniously dropped the instrument she had been holding in order to reach for the laser scalpel. The shaking had moved the pole just enough to open all of Paris' repairs to the superior aorta and then some, sending blood spurting out of the wound. "I told you not to let that Hu'tegh pole move! Qu'vatlh!" She continued her angry curses as she opened the skin around the pole, giving herself a larger area to use to repair the torn artery. The blue blood was now coming slower, less forcibly; the heart was beginning to weaken from the lack of oxygen and could barely keep up with the work of keeping the blood circulating. "HoH," Paris muttered, the angioregenerator again in her hand as she painstakingly repaired the torn layers of tissue.
*How are you doing over there, Paris?* Dr. Jackson asked, his voice tight with concern.
"How do you think I'm Hu'tegh doing?" she snapped in reply. Forcing herself to take deep breaths in efforts to calm her frayed nerves, she tried that again. "The motion from that last redecorating job shook loose the pole. She's doing her best to bleed out."
*Just as long as you're doing your best to stop her,* Jackson replied.
"Oh, is that what I should be doing?" Paris muttered sarcastically.
*Good news, Doctor,* Lt. Hoskins chimed in. *The pole is no longer weight-bearing. We can beam it out.*
"Let's just hope we have a patient to beam with it," Paris replied. For the next half an hour, she wasn't sure if the comm link was silent or if she was just concentrating too hard to hear anything other than the recitation of the vasculature chapter of her Zevian physiology text in her head as she reconstructed the layers of the large muscular artery, slipping rapidly through the controls on the angioregenerator as she made her way millimeter by millimeter along the tear. "The artery is stable, for now," she finally said. "I constructed a vascular pouch. It's not a definitive repair by any means, but it should last long enough to transport her to the field hospital and get her in surgical stasis." She flipped open her tricorder and frowned. "Oxygen saturation is down to sixty-three percent. The fluid replicator is on the highest setting, but she lost so much blood that it can't keep up."
*Let's just hope that any damage done isn't permanent,* Jackson said bitterly. *How are we coming on transport?*
Dr. Paris pressed a hypospray of antibiotics to Colbee's neck before responding. "I think I can make it easier on everyone," she said, replacing the angioregenerator for that tiny phaser. "Hoskins, I hope that beam is as non-weight-bearing as you claim it is."
*What are you doing, Paris?* he asked wearily.
"I'm going to cut the pole," she replied, activating the phaser and watching the narrow beam slowly cut through the metal. "Are you watching? I don't want this to fall on me as soon as it's cut, so if you could beam it away before it does that, I'd really appreciate it."
*We have you covered, Doc, don't worry,* the engineer replied. She nodded slightly, only somewhat aware that he probably couldn't see that movement. Biting her lower lip and praying to whatever deity was paying attention that this wouldn't backfire on her, she kept her hand steady, the progress as it went through the pole agonizingly slow. Just as he promised, though, Lt. Hoskins beamed away the larger piece of the pole the instant the phaser beam made its way through to the other side, leaving a stub about twelve centimeters high sticking out from Savin Colbee Peretal's chest.
"Okay," Abbey finally said. "She's ready for transport. Beam her directly to the surgical stasis field, pole and all, as soon as Dr. Jackson is ready."
*All stations are go on this end,* the senior flight surgeon replied. *Good job, Abbey. We got this covered here. Stay over there and try to get to the others.*
"Aye," she replied, suddenly exhausted.
*One to beam over,* Jackson ordered. A second later, the dark blue woman and the stub of a pole sticking out of her chest shimmered out of existence.
Abbey closed her eyes, drawing deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth, trying to suppress the sudden flow of adrenaline through her veins. Not now, not now, she willed her body, trying to calm down. Against her wishes, her heart began to pound, her breathing becoming shallow. The space within the wreckage, always small, seemed to be closing in on her, her vision darkening. Suddenly, she could understand what her father was talking about when he tried to describe an attack of claustrophobia. "Get me out of here," she finally managed, clutching to the med kit as if it were a life preserver in a raging sea. "Now!" By this point in a full-blown panic attack, she didn't even register the familiar tingle of the transporter as it carried her away from the rubble.