Chapter Four: Patching Up
Bashir gently lay the delta wave inducer on Gage's forehead before activating it, not finding it necessary to tell Walker and the others that he had set it to alert him if Gage slipped beyond delta wave sleep into the deeper unconsciousness of a coma. He didn't think that was likely, anyway; he was just used to having a biobed and the ability to glance at a screen and know his patient's condition in an instant.
Lacking that, he took the spare tricorder from the medkit and set it to monitor Gage's heart rate and breathing. As his final preparation, he took a boxy device from the satchel and fastened it to the wall before turning it on, adjusting the angle until the broad beam it emitted bathed Gage's hip wound in bluish light.
"Portable sterile field," he explained at Walker's curious expression, holding his hands in the beam in his time's equivalent of scrubbing up.
"Do you need any help, Doctor?"
Bashir hesitated an instant, weighing the advantages of another pair of hands against the need to explain everything, along with Walker's desire to help and his own need not to display his enhanced abilities. "If I lay out my instruments and tell you what they are, can you hand them to me as I need them?"
"Sure."
"Then hold your hands in that beam for a minute — make sure it touches every bit of skin. You may feel a slight tingling, especially if you have any minor cuts, but it's not uncomfortable."
After briefly explaining the necessary devices, Dr Bashir began the painstaking process of cleaning out the wound. It required more than simple disinfecting or even flushing to removed minute particles; scraps of fabric from Gage's pants were embedded in the flesh, along with coarse threads that he had to assume was fur from the bear.
Only when the wound was clean and free of foreign objects could he begin patching together the torn tissue. He regenerated as much as he could, but there were areas he had to hold together with microdermal sutures. On the station he would have treated them with the regenerator over the next few days; here there was no guarantee he would be here to do that, and it would probably have to finish healing on its own.
But that wasn't likely to be a problem, he assured himself as he applied an antiseptic dressing and covered it all with an adherent bandage.
Straightening, Dr Bashir stretched his shoulders back and rolled his neck to get out the kink from nearly an hour of bending over his patient. Glancing around the room, his eye fell on a hand pump he had subconsciously noticed earlier. "Alex, if that pump works, I would really appreciate a drink."
"Of course," she responded, going to test the pump before filling a tin cup and bringing it to him as he ran a tricorder scan of Gage's vitals.
"Thanks." Accepting it without taking his eyes from the instrument, he drained it at a single draught before handing it back. He had been thirsty, of course, but he also knew he had to keep himself hydrated on the chance Gage needed his blood.
"How is he?" Alex questioned, still standing beside him with them empty cup.
"Stable," Dr Bashir replied. It was true that Gage was running a low fever now that the shock-induced hypothermia had worn off, but that was merely his body's way of fighting the infection; there was no need to attempt to reduce it unless it approached dangerous levels, and it was even better for him if Bashir didn't.
Not feeling Gage needed any further medication at that time, the doctor merely switched out the empty bag of pseudoheme for one of saline solution before turning his attention to the wounds on Gage's chest.
"All right…let's see about getting this patched up," he murmured, adjusting the sterile field generator to bathe the flap of skin that had been torn away.
"Better not watch, Alex," Walker warned lightly; "Trivette almost lost his lunch when we were trying to patch up that one."
"Hey!" Trivette protested.
Walker winked at him, but Bashir glanced sharply at the Ranger, wondering if there was more underlying his words than a desire to relieve tension by teasing his partner. "Will you be all right to assist me?"
Only Bashir's enhanced eyes caught the slight hesitance in Walker's nod. "Yes, I'll be fine."
If this hadn't been the one where a second pair of hands was actually needed, Bashir would have refused the aid. But as it was, he had to trust that the Ranger's willpower was strong enough to overcome any revulsion he might feel. "Let me know if it gets to be too much for you," was all he said.
While the flap was only slightly askew, it was too far out of position to have begun to heal into place yet, for which Bashir was grateful. But the edges were sealed with half-clotted blood, and he had to gently tease it loose without starting the bleeding again. He worked patiently with meticulous care, paying no heed to the many minutes that were passing.
Finally he gripped the loose flap in a set of forceps. "Hold this, please," he instructed Walker. "Not too tight, but don't let it slip free."
"Got it," Walker assured him.
Dr Bashir watched just long enough to be sure Walker was indeed gripping it with the correct amount of pressure, then turned his attention to cleaning out the ugly wound beneath.
He whistled softly as sealing off the bleeding and sponging away the blood allowed him to see the full extent of the damage. "Whew; looks like that claw chipped a rib here."
He hesitated an instant before reaching for the osteoregenerator. It wasn't truly necessary; ribs were the only bones that would regenerate on their own, so it would probably repair itself without any intervention, and even if it didn't, the damage was slight enough that it would be unlikely to cause any problems.
But since ribs could regenerate themselves, a repair was unlikely to be remarked on on a future unrelated chest scan. And, anyway, the scans of this day wouldn't even pick up the minute difference of regenerated bone. Maybe an unrepaired rib would even excite more questions, if it didn't show up in Gage's medical record as having been noted at the time of injury.
He had come to his decision at warp speed, and the next instant was reaching without looking into the medkit for the osteoregenerator. He set it at its lowest setting, and in less than a minute had repaired the small nick so perfectly that he doubted even the advanced scanning equipment on the station could have detected the join.
Setting the instrument aside, he turned his attention to cleaning the underside of the flap, until the tissues looked as fresh as if it had been laid back by a surgeon's scalpel.
"Looks like good blood flow," he remarked. "This should heal without any trouble."
"Good," Walker remarked succinctly.
He watched in morbid curiosity as Dr Bashir applied wound sealant to the exposed flesh and then eased the flap back into place so precisely that only a thin line of red showed around it. Regenerating the surface layers would have kept fluid within the wound from draining, causing swelling and possibly abscess and infection, so he secured the edges with a line of microdermal sutures instead.
When he had finished, he turned at the vague sense of someone behind him to find Alex standing there with a cup of water ready, anticipating his request.
"Thank you," he told her.
"Can I get you anything else?" she asked him.
"No, thank you," he responded, passing the empty cup back before once more checking Gage's condition.
"Any sign of the bear?" Walker questioned.
Trivette looked again through the knothole where he had been keeping watch and shook his head. "Maybe he's given up," he said hopefully.
But Walker shook his head grimly. "That bear has a taste for blood; he's not giving up. He knows he has us right here where he wants us; he'll be back."
"But we can't stay here forever!" Trivette protested.
"You won't have to," Bashir assured him. "My people will be coming after me, and they have more than enough firepower to kill a bear." Whether they would be willing to use it was another question, he thought to himself. Dax had heard Tairvaul's theories as well, but that didn't mean she accepted them. If worse came to worst, he could always decoy the bear after himself; saving him wouldn't affect the timeline, and in what he was increasingly beginning to see as rather arbitrary regulations, killing an animal wasn't supposed to, either.
"I hope they come soon, then," Trivette remarked, returning to his vigil.
Soon. The very fact that he expected them to arrive at some point in his future indicated an innate, instinctual belief in theories he hadn't considered until Tairvaul put them into words. Otherwise, he might be half expecting the past few hours to vanish from history as the Defiant came to get him in what was now his past.
"Just as long as I can get these wounds tended to first," he said briefly, turning his mind away from thoughts of the bear or the Defiant and once more focusing on his patient.
The gashes looked ugly, but they were really fairly superficial; while they were showing signs of infection, he was confident he could clean it out easily with no fear of any remaining deep in a wound where he couldn't get at it without surgery.
When all five wounds had been disinfected, he gently pinched together the gaping edges of the first one, and paused to consider. He had held a wound closed with one hand as he regenerated it with the other, but this one was a bit long for that method to be as smooth as he would like. Since Walker's lack of flinching at the worse wounds had proved his strong stomach, the doctor might as well avail himself of the aid offered.
"Walker, can you hold this gash closed…just like that…good."
Walker watched in fascination as the torn flesh knit itself together before his eyes under the beam of the doctor's instrument. Within minutes, he could barely see a faint scar, and then only because he knew where to look for it.
Setting aside his instruments, Bashir gently pulled the reflective blanket to cover Gage's chest. "That's about all I can do," he said quietly, the note of satisfaction in his voice keeping the phrase from sounding as dire as it had often seemed when other doctors said it. "Let's see about waking him up now." He touched the settings on the delta wave inducer, adjusting it to stimulate Gage to full consciousness — or as close as his body would allow him to come.
He blinked slowly, his unfocused eyes swinging wildly around the room, and Dr Bashir removed the wave inducer from his forehead to replace it with a tender hand. "Easy," he murmured. "I'm Dr Bashir; just lie still. How are you feeling?"
"Water," Gage whispered, his voice raspy.
Bashir nodded to Sydney, who hurried to fill the tin cup, spilling a little on her hand as she carried it to Gage's cot.
"Here, Gage," she said softly, holding the cup to his lips as Dr Bashir supported his head and shoulders.
Gage blinked at her. "Syd?" he whispered in surprise, coughing slightly. "What are you doing here?" He coughed again, harder, and Bashir rubbed his back in a gesture intended more for comfort than any real therapeutic value. "Easy," he murmured.
"We came out to find Walker," Sydney explained softly, "Alex needed him to testify in a case."
"You mean — you didn't rush to my side when you heard I was mauled by a bear?" Gage questioned. The words set him coughing again, and Dr Bashir frowned, recognizing by the sound that this was more than swallowing a sip of water the wrong way; the early stages of pneumonia he had noted earlier were still unresolved.
Sydney laughed with a faint note of hysteria that betrayed how close she was to crying instead. "Maybe I would have — if I had heard about it," she admitted.
"Enough talking," Dr Bashir said firmly, and Gage merely offered Sydney a roguish wink that made her half wish she hadn't betrayed her feelings.
"We need to see about —" Dr Bashir continued, but was interrupted by a shout from Trivette. "Here comes the bear!"
Next chapter coming next week!
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